"'Been playing a blind school?'" And then Crooks would go on: "Well, we workers have been the blind school, and we have been allowing other classes to score goals against us all the time. If we haven't been blind we've certainly been blindfold. Tear the bandage off your eyes. Be men." Behind all his banter there was a serious message in all his Sunday morning addresses. "Labour may be the new force by which God is going to help forward the regeneration of the world," he told his hearers. "Heaven knows we need a little more earnestness in our national life to-day, and if the best-born cannot give it, the so-called base-born may. We common people have done it before. Who knows but what it is God's will that we should do it again? We can all afford to laugh at that dear lady, bless her, who could not bear the idea that some of the Apostles were fishermen, and who solemnly asked her minister whether there was not some authority for believing that they were owners of smacks. "We working men are gaining power. Let us see that we also gain knowledge to use the power, not to abuse it. Parliament is supposed to protect the weak against the strong. It doesn't pan out like that. After all these years of popular education, isn't it about time we taught the dialectical champions in the House of Commons that the people are the creators of Parliament, and that we demand as its creators that Parliament should be at the service of the people and all the people, instead of at the service of the powerful and the wealthy? "But don't think that Parliament and municipality can do everything. They are not going to make the world perfect. What they can do and what we should insist on their doing is to make it easier to do right and more difficult to do wrong. They can deal with those 'who turn aside the needy from judgment and take away the right of the poor of My people,' but they cannot make good men and good women. That must depend upon ourselves." That College at the Dock Gates can point to some notable achievements. The Blackwall Tunnel, which has its entrance at the very spot where the meetings take place, was one of the earliest things the College agitated for. Between the dock wall and the tunnel is a large municipal gymnasium and recreation ground, the scheme for which was first unfolded by Crooks at the College, when the ground was a waste and the children were without play-places.