There is such a thing as Progress, even with a capital P. The word has been discredited by those whose concept is superficial; who see plumbing as of the essence of progress, or a higher school-leaving age a gain regardless of what is taught in the schools. Over a short span progress is hard to plot. Fifty years ago people died of starvation in British slums: today no one need starve in Britain. Yet the majority are perhaps less happy in their work. Again, fifty years ago Russians who were sent to Siberia were at least treated as men: today in their slave camps their descendants are treated like beasts, and valued as such. British children are now kept longer at school: yet juvenile delinquency has increased and seems at the moment to become more vicious. In many ways do we see both progress and retrogression active in society, until there appears to be no constant direction, only a heaving flux in men’s affairs. Seeing it, some of us turn cynical or irresponsible, others turn to a brutal materialism, an idealism that condones diabolism as a means to an end that it poisons.

‘We are not islands’, we cannot dissociate ourselves completely from our fellow-men. The sons of Adam are one, although individual. That is perhaps why efforts to found ideal communities, cut off from the rest of the world, fail. Men are of their nature missionaries, they must share and pass on what they possess. Only in a very special way, by abnegation and withdrawing from normal social life, can religious communities survive: