Their very presence, the fact of their existence, is an
outrage to the fresh, bright sun and the green and growing things. The
clean, upstanding trees cry shame upon them and their withered
crookedness, and their rottenness is a slimy desecration of the sweetness
and purity of nature.
Is the picture overdrawn? It all depends. For one who sees and thinks
life in terms of shares and coupons, it is certainly overdrawn. But for
one who sees and thinks life in terms of manhood and womanhood, it cannot
be overdrawn. Such hordes of beastly wretchedness and inarticulate
misery are no compensation for a millionaire brewer who lives in a West
End palace, sates himself with the sensuous delights of London's golden
theatres, hobnobs with lordlings and princelings, and is knighted by the
king. Wins his spurs--God forbid! In old time the great blonde beasts
rode in the battle's van and won their spurs by cleaving men from pate to
chine. And, after all, it is finer to kill a strong man with a clean-
slicing blow of singing steel than to make a beast of him, and of his
seed through the generations, by the artful and spidery manipulation of
industry and politics.
But to return to the hops.
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