them. One blushes with shame at the looseness and laxity with which the
greater municipalities of our Earth are governed, and all this under the
shadow of our schools and church spires.

Centuries ago the good people of Plasden learned how to co-operate when
they desired to win in a struggle against iniquity. I would give my
life-blood if I could transport this secret in such a way as to make it
effective on the Earth.

In our world we have before us a most humiliating spectacle. If an
effort is made to extirpate some form of sin that has taken audacious
root in the soil of our moral life, one reform element or denomination
fights with the other until the hoe is so broken that there is nothing
left wherewith to dig out the miserable roots of the obnoxious weed.
Thus do we spend our energies opposing one another instead of fighting
the Devil.

O, for the Plasden power of unity, before which any species of
corruption can be crushed out that is opposed by the forces of
righteousness!

We have succeeded, to a bitter extreme, in getting the church and state
separated from each other so far that the latter scarcely ever gets a
glimpse of the former, and we stand by priding ourselves in the absolute
divorce. Then we have also succeeded in getting the different creeds
separated by chasms so wide that it is impossible to make a combined
attack against a common foe. However, these separations between sects
are gradually disappearing, and over the lessening gaps the hands of a
more Christian fellowship are being extended.