The World’s Tragedy

XXXII PREFACE. I should look ! ; (f) God said I musn’t. And so on through the alphabet of cowardice. Look at your Christian as he sits down to dinner. He won’t eat melon because the weather is hot, and he might get cholera ; mutton ? think of the poor sheep ! pota- toes ? bad for his fat ; artichoke ? bad for his gout. Tomatoes ? cause of cancer. Wine ? the great curse of our day, my dear sir. Milk ? a mere mass of tubercle bacilli. Water ? Typhoid ! do you want to poison me, my dear friend ? Beer ? Well, perhaps a little beer — for he has sha- res in a brewery. You have already seen how this awful fear of nature and of God is twisted into an engine of oppression and tor- ture against any one who declines to grovel and cringe before their filthy fetish. It is obvious that cowardice is the cause of cruelty : the brave man strikes a strenuous blow, and all is over ; the coward brought to bay snarls and strikes in desperation, and if by chance the blow goes home, he jumps on and muti- lates and insults his victim. Of course all this insane Christianity has produced its own toxin. Our prudery goes hand in hand with the most disgusting system of prostitution in the world, and our Theatres (too pure for that corrupter Sophocles) are disgraced by the most senseless and witless legshows. Our praise of poverty has produced the worst poor-laws in civilization ; our democracy has perfected a snobbery which would make Thackeray stare with surprise. Queen Victoria the Good