be pounding the table with his blacksmith fist.

"I tell you society doesn't want to hear about such things," he
was declaiming. "It wants to go along comfortably without being
disturbed. Ignore everything that's not pleasant, that's liable to
harrow the feelings. The sins of our neighbors make spicy reading.
Fill the papers with 'em. But their distresses and their poverty!
That's different. Let's hear as little about them as possible.
Let's keep it a well-regulated world."

Nearly everybody began to talk at once. James caught phrases here
and there out of the melee.

". . . Democratic institutions must either decay or become
revitalized. . . .To hell with such courts. They're no better than
anarchy. . . .In Verden there are only two classes: those who
don't get as much as they earn and those who get more. . . . Tell
you we've got to get back to the land, got to make it free as air.
You can't be saved from economic slavery till you have socialism.
. . ."

Suddenly the hubbub subsided and Marchant had the floor. "All of
life's a compromise, a horrible unholy giving up as unpractical
all the best things. It's a denial of love, of Christ, of God."

A young preacher who was conducting a mission for sailors on the
water front cut in. "Exactly. The church is radically wrong
because--"

"Because it hasn't been converted to Christianity yet. Mr.