But none of us felt inclined to laugh at Jephson's stories, for they
dealt not with the goodness of the rich to the poor, which is a virtue
yielding quick and highly satisfactory returns, but with the goodness of
the poor to the poor, a somewhat less remunerative investment and a
different matter altogether.
For the poor themselves--I do not mean the noisy professional poor, but
the silent, fighting poor--one is bound to feel a genuine respect. One
honours them, as one honours a wounded soldier.
In the perpetual warfare between Humanity and Nature, the poor stand
always in the van. They die in the ditches, and we march over their
bodies with the flags flying and the drums playing.
One cannot think of them without an uncomfortable feeling that one ought
to be a little bit ashamed of living in security and ease, leaving them
to take all the hard blows. It is as if one were always skulking in the
tents, while one's comrades were fighting and dying in the front.
They bleed and fall in silence there. Nature with her terrible club,
"Survival of the Fittest"; and Civilisation with her cruel sword, "Supply
and Demand," beat them back, and they give way inch by inch, fighting to
the end. But it is in a dumb, sullen way, that is not sufficiently
picturesque to be heroic.
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