CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 579 



keep tlieir vast machinery in motion whilst ' The hungry sheep look up and 

 are not fed.' 



Our industries were animated mainly by the greed of gain, and those of them 

 ■which needed extra brains, and newer methods, and better ecientific skill, were 

 quietly appropriated by more enterprising lands. Instead of combining to 

 make the most of their common country, the classes and the masses stood aloof 

 and glared at each other, and ever and anon growled like two packs of hungry 

 wolves. Although we were spending more on education than ever before, 

 nobody was really educated, and we have not found our educational Eirenicon 

 even yet. As for our Empire, with all its greatness and its latent loyalty, 

 with all its untold possibilities in men and in material, it was such a ramshackle 

 arrangement that one cannot wonder at the Germans for thinking that, when 

 the ,grim hour struck, it would incontinently fall to pieces. And as for the 

 world, the best that it could do, after an infancy of unimaginable years, was 

 to use its ever-growing powers for purposes of sheer destruction, ' plot mutual 

 slaughter,' and ' reel back into the beast.' But amid the chaos there has 

 been the vision of the ' men with growing wings.' This -welter of blood 

 and sorrow has revealed such heights of human nobleness as we had never 

 dreamed of ; such possibilities of properly co-ordinated effort, turned to less 

 ignoble uses, as the bravest hitherto had scarcely ventured to conceive. 



One of the most disheartening experiences -which comes to us all, at times, 

 is the sense of loneliness in the pursuit of any great ideal, and this is par- 

 ticularly true in the realm of science, literature, and art. The people who really 

 care about these things, especially in small provincial places, are so few, the dis- 

 couragements so many, that sometimes we are half inclined to abandon the 

 pursuit as hopeless, and echo the lament of Elijah in the Wilderness, ' And I. 

 even I only, am left.' But Elijah was a moody misanthrope, and, while he 

 was egotistically hugging to his breast the delusion that he was the only genuine 

 prophet that remained in Israel, it was revealed to him, in the very depths of 

 his despair and darkness, that there were seven thousand others, every one of 

 them perhaps as loyal and as staunch as he. It is so easy to lose faith, and so 

 futile. And appearances are often so misleading. How many of us who have 

 been working patiently for any good and worthy cause, especially in matters 

 intellectual, have been disposed to echo the old cry, and, seeing all our efforts 

 imavailing, 'and the high purpose thwarted by the worm,' have felt inclined 

 to give it up. Little Belgium might have felt like that, and Serbia, and Monte- 

 negro, and French's ' contempti'ole ' but ever glorious 'little army.' But, 

 instead of this, they ' stuck their corner,' and the months went bj', and now 

 the tramp of the innumerable millions comes to cheer them, and the ' forlorn 

 hopes ' of yesterday are the splendid and triumphant armies of to-morrow. 



But, just as in the War we are learning to organise and mobilise our forces, 

 on land and in the air, and on the sea and under it, in workshop and in factory, 

 at the forge and at the plough, and thus are building an unconquerable force 

 to fight for freedom and for righteousness, so we ought to mobilise the whole 

 of our intellectual resources and lay them all upon the altar of the common 

 weal. The individual, feeling helpless and disheartened, seeks for congenial 

 spirits, and they unite to form a society. But the societies themselves are 

 often isolated and comparatively ineffectual. Yet in nearly every town there are 

 other men and women, and other societies with similar objects, feeling lonely 

 too, and often enough unconscious of the neighbourhood, or even of the exist- 

 ence, of the rest. Taken separately, they have a curious sense of impotence. 

 If they could but be brought together, and organised, and co-ordinated, a new 

 enthusiasm would inspire them all. Instead of competing, they ought to 

 co-operate. Societies with identical aims might unite, or form .small federa- 

 tions of their own. 



The idea which I have thus endeavoured to expound was intended, in the 

 first instance, as I have said, to apply to literary and philosophical societies. 

 But there is not any earthly reason -why it should be restricted to them. The 

 local federation whose foundations have been laid in Warrington, for instance, 

 included, in addition to our own Society, which is primarily antiquarian, the 

 Arts and Crafts, the Literary and Philosophical, the Philomathic, the Musical, 

 the Photographic, the Shakespearean, the Esperanto, the Caledonian and the 

 Welsh National Societies, the Field Club, the Municipal Officers' Guild, and 



p p 2 



