"Don't know anything about Christ!" said Philip uneasily. There was something disturbing in this treatment of Christ. Christ belonged in the first place to Russia, where they impaled babies in His honour; and then to the Baptist Missionary Chapel, where He was associated with soup and magic lanterns; and to the Christian prayers at school wherein, of course, Philip had no part.
"Christ was a Jew, after all," Harry put in tentatively, "like Karl Marx."
"Karl Marx?"
"Yes, that's the chap who wrote the big book you were looking at, on the chair near you. I can't say I quite understand it, but they all say you've got to read it, so I got it out of the library."
"Oh that! I don't like that sort of Socialism, it's as bad as Mathers' Latin! I prefer Shelley's. How does it go? Oh yes, don't you think this is fine poetry and fine Socialism, both together in one?
Arise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fatten upon you.
Ye are many. They are few!
Isn't it fine?"
"Whist! Yes, that beats the song we sing at the Socialist meetings—all about keeping the red flag flying, eh? It leaves old man Tennyson a bit husky, what do you think?"
"Steady dog, isn't he, Tennyson? Wants to take his time about it. Doesn't he say something like
Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent....?