I moved along to him, being
minded to learn what particular brand of brotherly love he might
be expounding. In the same tone a good friend might employ in
telling you what to do for chapped lips or a fever blister he was
saying that clergymen and armaments were useless and expensive
burdens on the commonwealth; and, as a remedy, he was advocating
that all the priests and all the preachers in the kingdom should
be loaded on all the dreadnoughts, and then the dreadnoughts should
be steamed to the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean and there
cozily scuttled, with all aboard.
There was scattering applause and a voice: "Ow, don't do that!
Listen, 'ere! Hi've got a better plan." But the next speaker was
blaring away at the top of his voice, making threatening faces
and waving his clenched fists aloft and pounding with them on the
top of his rostrum.
"Now this," I said to myself, "is going to be something worth
while. Surely this person would not be content merely with drowning
all the parsons and sinking all the warships in the hole at the
bottom of the sea. Undoubtedly he will advocate something really
radical. I will invest five minutes with him."
I did; but I was sold.
