I want to ask every dominie who believes in coercion what he thinks of the results of many years' coercion. Obviously present-day civilisation with its criminal division of humanity into parasites and slaves is all wrong.
"But," a dominie might cry, "can you definitely blame elementary education for that?"
I answer: "Yes, yes, yes!"
The manhood of Britain to-day has passed through the schools; they have been lulled to sleep; they have never learned to face the awful truth about civilisation. And I blame the coercion of the teachers. Train a boy to obey his teacher and he will naturally obey every dirty politician who has the faculty of rhetoric; he will naturally believe the lies of every dirty newspaper proprietor that is playing his own dirty game.
* * *
I have been spending the week-end with a man I used to dig with in London. He is a great raconteur and we sat late swopping yarns.
"Did you ever hear a good yarn without a point?" he asked.
I said that I hadn't.
"Well, I'll tell you one," he said, and he trotted out the following.
In a small seaside town on the east coast an ancient mariner sits on the beach and yarns to visitors. When the Balkan War was going on my friend asked him if he had ever been to Turkey. My friend assured me that the man had never been farther than Newcastle in his life.