"I've got a notion," said Ned, looking straight back.
"There are socialists and Socialists, just as there is socialism and
Socialism. The ones babble of what they do not feel because it's becoming
the thing to babble. The others have a religion and that religion is
Socialism."
"How does one know a religion?"
"When one is ready to sacrifice everything for it. When one only desires that the Cause may triumph. When one has no care for self and does not fear anything that man can do and has a faith which nothing can shake, not even one's own weakness!"
There was a pause. "I'll try to be a Socialist of the right sort," said
Ned.
"You are young and hopeful and will think again and again that the day of redemption is dawning, and will see the night roll up again. You will see great movements set in and struggle to the front and go down when most was expected of them. You will see in the morning the crowd repent of its enthusiasm of the night before. You will find cowards where you expected heroes and see the best condemned to the suffering and penury that weaken the bravest. Your heart will ache and your stomach will hunger and your body will be bent and your head gray and then you may think that the world is not moving and that you have wasted your life and that none are grateful for it."
"I will try not," said Ned.
"You will see unionism grow, the New Unionism, which is simply the socialistic form of unionism. You will see, as I said before, penal laws invoked against unionism here in Australia, under the old pretence of 'law and order.' You will see the labour movement diverted into political action and strikes fought and lost and won at the polling booths."
"Will it not come then?"
"How can it come then? Socialism is not a thing which can be glued like a piece of veneering over this rotten social system of ours. It can only come by the utter sweeping away of competition, and that can only come by the development of the socialistic idea in men's hearts."