It was not my place, I thought, and thus their bones
are bleaching, and the memory of their names has flown away like a
mephitic vapour that was better dispersed. Are there many like me, I
wonder, who have not only done nothing to battle with the mightiest
modern evil, but have half encouraged it through cynical recklessness
and pessimism? We entrap the poor and the base and the wretched to their
deaths, and then we cry out about their vicious tendencies, and their
improvidence, and all the rest. Heaven knows I have no right to
sermonize; but, at least, I never shammed anything. When I saw some
spectacle of piercing misery caused by Drink (as nearly all English
misery is) I simply choked down the tendency to groan, and grimly
resolved to see all I could and remember it. But now that I have had
time to reflect instead of gazing and moaning, I have a sharp conception
of the thing that is biting at England's vitals. People fish out all
sorts of wondrous and obscure causes for crime. As far as England is
concerned I should lump the influences provocative of crime and
productive of misery into one--I say Drink is the root of almost all
evil. It is heartbreaking to know what is going on at our own doors,
for, however we may shuffle and blink, we cannot disguise the fact that
many millions of human beings who might be saved pass their lives in an
obscene hell--and they live so in merry England.
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