On the whole, the trade unions ought to play a more important part in the creation of the forms of the new life. The guilds of the Middle Ages were powerful, because they hemmed in the life of the apprentice, laborer, and mechanic on all sides. They greeted the child on the day of its birth, led it to the school door, and to church when it married, and buried it when it had fulfilled the duties of its calling. It is on these lines that our industrial unions are largely developing, with this difference, certainly, that in opposition to the medieval, the forms of the new life will be free from the church and her superstition and imbued with an aspiration to utilize every conquest of science and machinery for the enrichment and beautifying of life. Marriage, if you like, more easily dispenses with ceremonial.
Custom refuses to be reconciled to the mere marriage, unbeatified by a spectacular ceremony.
The question of burial is an infinitely more difficult one. To be laid in the ground without the due funeral service is as unusual, disgraceful, and monstrous as to grow up without baptism. Some of the members of the Moscow conference emphasized the need for a speedy adoption of cremation, proposing to set an stample by cremating the bodies of prominent revolutionary workers. They justly regarded this as a powerful weapon to be used for anti-church and antireligious propaganda. But cremation, which it is high time we adopted, does not mean giving up processions, speechmaking, marches, the rifle salute.