126 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



active hostility towards Church or Chapel. 

 Nor, again, is any public approval accorded to 

 crude and abusive denunciations of religion. 

 The speakers who in Hyde Park hold up 

 religious faith in general, and Roman Catholi- 

 cism in particular, to contumely or ridicule 

 would not be appreciated in the average village. 

 The prevailing attitude of mind would appear 

 to be one of sheer indifference tinged less often 

 with bitterness than with a kindly toleration. 

 The force of tradition prevails even where 

 religious sympathies have disappeared. " I 

 want the little devils to be taught something 

 about God " was the criticism passed on 

 certain proposals in the Education Bill of 1908 

 by a labourer who never said a prayer or 

 entered a place of worship, and even life- 

 long Nonconformists will have their children 

 christened, their youths and maidens married 

 and their dead buried in accordance with the 

 ^ancient rites of their forefathers' Church. 



The ancient joys of rural life have vanished, 

 crushed out by Puritanism and poverty, and 

 free education and the newspaper have shown 

 the villagers how unhappy they are. The 

 face of a loving Deity is obscured by the 

 mists which have settled on lives of ceaseless 

 toil and miserable penury. One old man I 

 knew used to sit beside the tiny fireplace in his 



