we wouldn't get to the tank; we'd die of thirst, and the missus and kids,
or the old folks, would be sold up and turned out into the streets,
and have to fall back on a `home of hope', or wait their turn
at the Benevolent Asylum with bags for broken victuals. I've seen that,
and I don't want anybody belonging to me to have to do it.

"Reminds me that when a poor, deserted girl goes to a `home' they don't make
a problem of her -- they do their best for her and try to get her righted.
And the priests, too: if there's anything in the sex or any other problem
-- anything that hasn't been threshed out -- they're the men that'll know it.
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