For the poor themselves--I do not mean the noisy professional poor, but
the silent, fighting poor--one is bound to feel a genuine respect. One
honours them, as one honours a wounded soldier.

In the perpetual warfare between Humanity and Nature, the poor stand
always in the van. They die in the ditches, and we march over their
bodies with the flags flying and the drums playing.

One cannot think of them without an uncomfortable feeling that one ought
to be a little bit ashamed of living in security and ease, leaving them
to take all the hard blows. It is as if one were always skulking in the
tents, while one's comrades were fighting and dying in the front.

They bleed and fall in silence there. Nature with her terrible club,
"Survival of the Fittest"; and Civilisation with her cruel sword, "Supply
and Demand," beat them back, and they give way inch by inch, fighting to
the end. But it is in a dumb, sullen way, that is not sufficiently
picturesque to be heroic.

I remember seeing an old bull-dog, one Saturday night, lying on the
doorstep of a small shop in the New Cut. He lay there very quiet, and
seemed a bit sleepy; and, as he looked savage, nobody disturbed him.
People stepped in and out over him, and occasionally in doing so, one
would accidentally kick him, and then he would breathe a little harder
and quicker.

At last a passer-by, feeling something wet beneath his feet, looked down,
and found that he was standing in a pool of blood, and, looking to see
where it came from, found that it flowed in a thick, dark stream from the