Evening star., 1925-12-27

mean in France and Norway what 1t
means in England. and it is even
different thing in Scotland to what it
is in England. But if you take 1t in
its widest sense, that it means regis
tration by the state, of an association
OF two persons of opposite sexes with
a view to producing family, then
you Will always have marriage, and
what the people will make of that
marriage will, of course, depend very
largely on themselves.
"One does not see, beyond the fact
of registration, that Socialism is going
TO interfere with Them
New Freedom in Religion.
In his closing paragraph, Mr.. Shaw
took up the place Of religion in his
new Utopia.
"Grown-up people must find their
own religion he said. You cannot
control their religion; you can make
them go to church, you can make
them repeat a certain creed, you can
say, If you do not repeat the creed
we will burn you'-under such cir
cumstances, they say, Thank you, /
will repeat the creed That does not
make people believe the creed, and it
finally cannot make them behave as if
TIC tTttu IucdIt diy luiHS-
But when you come to the ques-
ton of children, then. of course, Social
ism will necessarily bring about a
very great change. You see. Socialism
is not one of these things that Is
going to be established by nationali2-
ing the means of production and ex-
change and so on, and you must not
think that on that basis the thing
will go on and that we shall live
happily ever after. That is a nine
teenth~ century delusion. If there is
one lesson which we ought to have
learned from the history of the last
two centuries it is the lesson taught
US by the German poet Goethe, who
said that the man who wanted life
and freedom has got to fight for them
every day. Socialism has not only
to be set going but it has to be kept
going. and it never can be kept 60
ing unless every child is educated as
a Communist.
How utterly disheartening it has
been to us all to find that when we
had educated these people in our own
generation who were live wires. who
were capable of education. that then
few years passed and the whole
thing was gone; new generation had
come up in the hands of the parSon.
In the hands of the squire. being
taught in the old ways and taught
the old things, being given the Bible
as rule of conduct. and being given
the catechism and the prayer book
and SO on,
Religious Education for Children.
I'VE fail because we can't get at
the children. We with great diff
Guilty root out of the minds of our
generation everything that was taught
at school. and then another genera.
tion comes along with all the old
things going. Now, il anybody i'm
agines that a Socialist state, a Social
list government, is going to let the
schools alone and let that sort Of
thing go on in the name of religious
freedom or anything else. they are
tremendously mistaken.
Take the Bible, for instance, H.
G. Wells pointed out quite q long
time ago that Deuteronomy and
Leviticus, the Ten Commandments
and the laws of Moses are no use
to US. because there Is nothing in
them about capital and dividends,
nothing about modern political econ
omy. They are not applicable. AS
far as they are applicable, they are
entirely anti-Socialtst; they are indi-
vidualist, as we sometimes improperly
call them.
1T is clear to me that a Socialist
government will say of the Bible:
This literature Is very interesting from
an artistic point of view; people who
want to become cultivated, people
who, for instance, want to get an
artistic literary cultivation, certainly
must read the Bible, but we are not
going to allow any person to put that
Bible into the hands of a child and
tell the child either that 1t is true as
statement of fact in every particular
or that it is d desirable guide to con-
duct.
ITO teach them, we have got to get
a Bible of our own. Remember, that
the book we call the Bible is the lit
erature Of the Jews. We have very
magnificent literature of our own
one quite comparable to that; and
Socialism will say: We will have our
own religion: we will not have an
Oriental religion which is completely
out of date and is getting out Of date
even in the East. we will have an Oc-
cidental. a Western religion. that be-
longs to our own time and that
touches the morality of our own time.
Can't Destroy Religion.
You will have, of course, many
Socialism wants to abolish religion.
II the sort of thing that they teach
In the schools is religion, we are go
ing to abolish 1t. But genuine re-
iigion is not quite so easily killed; even
the Bible cannot kill it, no matte how
unscrupulously you use it.
Il remember our friend, Stewart
Headlam, who was a clergyman, used
to say in our early days, although he
was a strong Christian Socialist
What we have got to do with the
Bible is to bury it for 100 years, and
then let it be discovered for what it
is and admired for what it is
Il do not say that Socialism will
bury the Bible for 100 years, because
it is thing you cannot do; the Bible
would be too strong if you tried to do
that. But you can put 1t in it's prop
er place; and you will have to dc W hat
they are trying in Russia-take the
children and teach them the moral.
ity of communism and socialism,
teach them freedom in the service of
the community.
You may take it that on the whole
there will be a tolerably stiff state re-
ligion which will be taught to chill
dren, and anybody endeavoring to
teach the children anything else will
probably be treated exactly as we
should treat a person like Fagin in
oliver Twist, who deliberately taught
children how to pick pockets. A great
deal Of the morality which is taught
at the present time, and which chill
dren are taught to regard as very
u