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“It isn’t necessary they should,” Hughes answered, “though some of them
do already. Several of the best friends of our cause are capitalists;
and there are numbers of moneyed people who believe in the
nationalization of the telegraphs, railroads, and expresses.”
“Those are merely the first steps,” urged the young man, “which may lead
now’ere.”
“They are the first steps,” said Hughes, “and they are not to be taken
over the bodies of men. We must advance together as brothers, marching
abreast, to the music of our own heart-beats.”
“Good!” said Kane. Ray did not know whether he said it ironically or
not. It made the short-haired girl turn round and look at him where he
sat behind her.
“We, in Russia,” said another of the foreign-looking people, “have seen
the futility of violence. The only force that finally prevails is love;
and we must employ it with those that can feel it best--with the little
children. The adult world is hopeless; but with the next generation we
may do something--everything. The highest office is the teacher’s, but
we must become as little children if we would teach them, who are of
the kingdom of heaven. We must begin by learning of them.”
“It appears rather complicated,” said the young Englishman, gayly; and
Ray heard Kane choke off a laugh into a kind of snort.
“Christ said He came to call sinners to repentance,” said the man who
would have been the better for benzining. “He evidently thought there
was some hope of grown-up people if they would cease to do evil.”
“And several of the disciples were elderly men,” the short-haired girl
put in.
“Our Russian friend’s idea seems to be a version of our Indian policy,”
said Kane. “Good adults, dead adults.”
“No, no. You don’t understand, all of you,” the Russian began, but
Hughes interrupted him.
“How would you deal with the children?”
“In communities here, at the heart of the trouble, and also in the West,
where they could be easily made self-supporting.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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