Look where we may, in times of prosperity or times of bad trade, there is this strife which undermines confidence, destroys religion, and makes us all warriors in a fight where all are losers--for we can all surely echo the words of our Lord: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” There is no soul in business to-day; it is just one wretched struggle for pelf and place, and the working class are pawns in the game. If it pays to employ them they are given work; if it does not pay, out they have to go, for business is business and business is profit-making. Consequently the worker discovers that as he grows older he is wanted less and less. Before the war the cry was “too old at forty.” That state of things has changed for the time being, but will come back again when what are called peace conditions once more prevail, unless, indeed, the war changes our whole attitude of mind towards one another. How often I have seen the aged worker sacked, with not a halfpenny of allowance, and his son taken on in his stead! I have said there is no soul in business, and it is true. Someone has traced all this down to the limited liability companies, which have “no body to be kicked and no soul to be damned.” No doubt the institution of such companies is to a large extent responsible for modern relationships; but what I want to emphasise is the point made a little way back--that if men are employed for wages, and cannot get employment or earn their bread otherwise, then they are living in subjection to other people. We may endeavour to get round this as we will, but it will remain the outstanding fact of present-day conditions, making of life one long struggle, not only for comparative comfort even, but for mere existence. It is true that classes merge more and more into each other, but new classes are continually being created: more divisions, more ranks, in the perpetual warfare which we make of life. For the multitude this strife and struggle bring sorrow and sadness, the maiming and wounding of body, of soul, of spirit. For us all it produces meanness and sordidness, making us capable of brutal and demoralising conduct which stamps us with the mark not of men but of beasts, turning us into liars and hypocrites, destroying our faith and confidence in each other, and leaving us all beggared and hopeless in the fight upward for a nobler life.