I'm not a Catholic, but I know this: that if a girl that's been left by one
-- no matter what Church she belongs to -- goes to the priest, they'll work
all the points they know (and they know 'em all) to get her righted,
and, if the chap, or his people, won't come up to the scratch,
Father Ryan'll frighten hell out of 'em. I can't say as much
for our own Churches."
"But you're in favour of socialism and democracy?" asked Joe.
"Of course I am. But the world won't do any good arguing over it.
The people will have to get up and walk, and, what's more, stick together
-- and I don't think they'll ever do that -- it ain't in human nature.
Socialism, or democracy, was all right in this country
till it got fashionable and was made a fad or a problem of.
Then it got smothered pretty quick. And a fad or a problem
always breeds a host of parasites or hangers-on. Why, as soon as I saw
the advanced idealist fools -- they're generally the middle-class,
shabby-genteel families that catch Spiritualism and Theosophy
and those sort of complaints, at the end of the epidemic
-- that catch on at the tail-end of things and think they've caught
something brand, shining, new; -- as soon as I saw them,
and the problem spielers and notoriety-hunters of both sexes,
beginning to hang round Australian Unionism, I knew it was doomed.
And so it was. The straight men were disgusted, or driven out.
There are women who hang on for the same reason that a girl
will sometimes go into the dock and swear an innocent man's life away.
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