the rich is complete in this.


CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM

Such is the false position from which neither the Salvation Army
nor the Church of England nor any other religious organization
whatever can escape except through a reconstitution of society.
Nor can they merely endure the State passively, washing their
hands of its sins. The State is constantly forcing the
consciences of men by violence and cruelty. Not content with
exacting money from us for the maintenance of its soldiers and
policemen, its gaolers and executioners, it forces us to take an
active personal part in its proceedings on pain of becoming
ourselves the victims of its violence. As I write these lines, a
sensational example is given to the world. A royal marriage has
been celebrated, first by sacrament in a cathedral, and then by a
bullfight having for its main amusement the spectacle of horses
gored and disembowelled by the bull, after which, when the bull
is so exhausted as to be no longer dangerous, he is killed by a
cautious matador. But the ironic contrast between the bullfight
and the sacrament of marriage does not move anyone. Another
contrast--that between the splendor, the happiness, the
atmosphere of kindly admiration surrounding the young couple, and
the price paid for it under our abominable social arrangements in
the misery, squalor and degradation of millions of other young
couples--is drawn at the same moment by a novelist, Mr Upton
Sinclair, who chips a corner of the veneering from the huge meat
packing industries of Chicago, and shows it to us as a sample of
what is going on all over the world underneath the top layer of