MYSTERIES OF THE POOR,

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 37, 12 August 1905, Page 13

MYSTERIES OF THE POOR,

There is a mystery about the attitude of the poor towards existence (writes G. K. Chesterton in the Daily News) which will never perhaps^ be pierced; certainly it has never been pierced by philosophers, or even "demagogues, and least of all by our fanciful slum-noveliits, who desenbs the poor as pessimists. That is one of the few truths which does, at any rate, disentangle itself. The poor are not pessimists ; they ha-ve too hard a lime ; they cannot uttord' to be pessimists. But what they are (beyond the fact that they are all advanced ritualists, in love witli bymbol and decorum) it is almost impossible to say. But among tho nine hundred and ninety-nine fragmentary facts which we may notico about the poor there is one to which I wish here to draw attention. The poor have some hatreds. Ami their hatreds are not, as would appear from the poetry of Shelley and Swinburno (those two thoroughly typical aristocrats), hatreds of kings and Popes, of priests and princes, and all tho old machinery of discipline or oppression. The tilings that the poor really hate with a living and genuine hatred are tho modern things, the rationalistic things— above all, the scientific things. Tho moro optimistic Secularist and the vainer kind of curate endeavour to persuade .themselves that tho masses of the unwashed iiate the Churches. Tho poor do not hate (he Churches in the least. Since the Middle Ages and tho wars of religion they have hardly hud any emotions at all in connection with them. The things they really do hate are the hospitals. They have never anything wbise than a lukewarm displeasure, they have often n lukewarm respect, for tho temples of theology. They have a Warning scorn, hatred, and terror of the temples of physical science. Some people persuade theWelves that tho working classes have a horror of priests. Hero and there it is true that you will find an English working man who keeps up the old custom of looking in the cupboard for a parson, or under the bed for a Jesuit. But ho is not the average , man. The average, man does not care much for priests, but he heartily hates policemen, doctors, and School Board inspectors. Tho poor never showed any aversion to jroing for help to the old and corrupt inonsisteries. But they will often die rather than go to the modern and efficient workhouso. It is not, lam sorry to say, probable that there will be a Hiinguinnry revolution in London. But if ever we did touch and stir that dark heart of the peoplo, and that human under-world rose in arms, I think we should ago some strange judgments upon our modernity. I think the priests would be left alone ; I fear tho tyrants might escape j but I believe that the gutters would bo simply running with tlio blood of philanthropists.

Ada: "Timid, isn't he?" May: "Awfully. He's so afraid, that she'll say no that ho won't give her a chance to eny yes,"