The Open Conspiracy will not be in health until it has segregated its home life and much of its social life from the general confusions of to-day, until its adherents marry and associate preferentially within the movement and keep themselves essentially aloof from the prevalent methods of wasting time and interest. They must evolve a new social atmosphere. It will be a minor aspect of the world revolution to live down the contemporary theatre, contemporary “amusements,” the sentimental booms and imitative chatter, the ovine congregating to gape at this or that, the dull pursuit of sports and “games” and quasi-innocent vices, the fashions and industrious futilities of current life so soon as it escapes from poverty. The whole drift of the contemporary world is to tempt and ensnare and waste our children. It has a diabolical disposition to make life altogether trivial and ineffective. Over all these matters women seem to have much more aptitude and power than men. It may not be true that “woman’s sphere is the home,” but certainly the home and its immediate social atmosphere is her empire. She can be the moral quite as much as the physical mother of the days to come. * * * * * Always, as long as I can remember, there has been a dispute and invidious comparisons between the old and the young. The young find the old prey upon and restrain them and the old find the young, shallow, disappointing and aimless in vivid contrast to their own revised memories of their own early days. The present time is one in which these perennial accusations flower with exceptional vigour. But there does seem to be some truth in the statement that the facilities to live frivolously are greater now than they have ever been for old and young alike. In the great communities that emerge from Christendom, there is a widespread disposition to regard Sunday as merely a holiday. But that was certainly not the original intention of Sunday. As we have noted already in an earlier chapter, it was a day dedicated to the greater issues of life. Now great multitudes of people do not even pretend to set aside any time at all to the greater issues of life. The churches are neglected and nothing of a unifying or exalting sort takes their place.