him Socialism was a noble, and yet a very human and fallible system of ideas. To them, as, again to him, it was an intellectual process, a project for the re-*shaping of human society upon new and better lines—the good will of the race struggling to make things better. This broad and tolerant view was the one to which they held, though they seemed too closely to identify all the good will in the race, operating, as I believe it to be, in many ways and through many agencies, as Socialism, and the pontifical Socialism taught in our town, at least, was so explicitly a class hatred that most of the time it was anything in the world rather than good will. Anyone with a good heart could be a Socialist on Mr. Wells's terms, if it were not his inevitable fate to be assured by the orthodox custodians of the party faith, the high priests who alone could enter the holy of holies and bear forth, as occasion required, the ark of the covenant, that Mr. Wells's Socialism is no Socialism at all and that he is no man to consult or accept.
My friends among them were like him in the condemnation they had to hear from the machine, or, perhaps I should say, the governing or directing committee—whatever the euphemism that cloaks the familiar phenomenon with them—they too were said to be no Socialists at all; they were mere "intellectuals" or "sentimentalists," or easily fell into some other of the categories the Socialists have provided for every manifestation of life. They have doubtless rendered society a service by their minute classification; which seems complete if they would
