human
They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will not go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has awakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes.
gpt
They only want their leader,
human
And then?
gpt
You could do what you would;--the world is yours.
human
The old dreams, and the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one man--_one man_--?
gpt
Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire of their hearts.
human
I have not your faith, he said,
gpt
I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No--let me speak. I want to do--not right--I have not the strength for that--but something rather right than wrong. It will bring no millennium, but I am resolved now, that I will rule. What you have said has awakened me... You are right. Ostrog must know his place. And I will learn--.... One thing I promise you. This Labour slavery shall end.
human
And you will rule?
gpt
Yes. Provided--. There is one thing.
human
Yes?
gpt
That you will help me.
human
Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?
gpt
Need you ask whether I will help you?
human
Even now, he said,
gpt
Ostrog will be waiting. He hesitated, facing her.
human
When I have asked him certain questions--. There is much I do not know. It may be, that I will go to see with my own eyes the things of which you have spoken. And when I return--?
gpt
I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again.
human
After all these years, said Ostrog, when Graham pressed enquiries;
gpt
But order had been restored in these cities. Graham, the more deliberately judicial for the stirring emotions he felt, asked if there had been any fighting.
human
A little, said Ostrog.
gpt
In one quarter only. But the Senegalese division of our African agricultural police--the Consolidated African Companies have a very well drilled police--was ready, and so were the aeroplanes. We expected a little trouble in the continental cities, and in America. But things are very quiet in America. They are satisfied with the overthrow of the Council. For the time.
human
Why should you expect trouble?
gpt
There is a lot of discontent--social discontent.
human
The Labour Department?
gpt
You are learning, said Ostrog with a touch of surprise.
human
Yes. It is chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It was that discontent supplied the motive force of this overthrow--that and your awakening.
gpt
Yes?
human
We had to stir up their discontent, we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness--all men equal--all men happy--no luxury that everyone may not share--ideas that have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive these ideals, impossible as they are--in order to overthrow the Council. And now--
gpt
Well?
human
Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and people whom we have stirred up--remain surging. There was scarcely enough fighting.... We made promises, of course. It is extraordinary how violently and rapidly this vague out-of-date humanitarianism has revived and spread. We who sowed the seed even, have been astonished. In Paris, as I say--we have had to call in a little external help.
gpt
And here?
human
There is trouble. Multitudes will not go back to work. There is a general strike. Half the factories are empty and the people are swarming in the ways. They are talking of a Commune. Men in silk and satin have been insulted in the streets. The blue canvas is expecting all sorts of things from you.... Of course there is no need for you to trouble. We are setting the Babble Machines to work with counter suggestions in the cause of law and order. We must keep the grip tight; that is all.
gpt
Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police,
human
They are useful, said Ostrog.
gpt
They are fine loyal brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads--such as our rabble has. The Council should have had them as police of the ways, and things might have been different. Of course, there is nothing to fear except rioting and wreckage. You can manage your own wings now, and you can soar away to Capri if there is any smoke or fuss. We have the pull of all the great things; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades union in the world, and so are the engineers of the wind-vanes. We have the air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one of any ability is organising against us. They have no leaders--only the sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very opportune awakening. Mere busybodies and sentimentalists they are and bitterly jealous of each other. None of them is man enough for a central figure. The only trouble will be a disorganised upheaval. To be frank--that may happen. But it won't interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make revolutions are past.
human
I suppose they are, said Graham.
gpt
I suppose they are. He mused.
human
This world of yours has been full of surprises to me. In the old days we dreamt of a wonderful democratic life, of a time when all men would be equal and happy.
gpt
The day of democracy is past, he said.
human
Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crécy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before--it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth. On your behalf.... You must accept facts, and these are facts. The world for the Crowd! The Crowd as Ruler! Even in your days that creed had been tried and condemned. To-day it has only one believer--a multiplex, silly one--the man in the Crowd.
gpt
No, said Ostrog.
human
The day of the common man is past. On the open countryside one man is as good as another, or nearly as good. The earlier aristocracy had a precarious tenure of strength and audacity. They were tempered--tempered. There were insurrections, duels, riots. The first real aristocracy, the first permanent aristocracy, came in with castles and armour, and vanished before the musket and bow. But this is the second aristocracy. The real one. Those days of gunpowder and democracy were only an eddy in the stream. The common man now is a helpless unit. In these days we have this great machine of the city, and an organisation complex beyond his understanding.
gpt
Yet, said Graham,
human
You will see, said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these difficult questions aside.
gpt
I have not roused the force to destroy myself--trust me.
human
I wonder,
gpt
said Graham with his emotions at the speaking point.
human
Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes been vain?
gpt
What do you mean? said Ostrog.
human
Hopes?
gpt
I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!
human
Well,--but you are the chief tyrant.
gpt
Well, said Ostrog,
human
But aristocracy! those people I met--
gpt
Oh! not _those_! said Ostrog.
human
But for the most part they go to their death. Vice and pleasure! They have no children. That sort of stuff will die out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning back. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasure seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve the race!
gpt
Pleasant extinction, said Graham.
human
Yet--. He thought for an instant.
gpt
There is that other thing--the Crowd, the great mass of poor men. Will that die out? That will not die out. And it suffers, its suffering is a force that even you--
human
Don't trouble about these things, he said.
gpt
Everything will be settled in a few days now. The Crowd is a huge foolish beast. What if it does not die out? Even if it does not die, it can still be tamed and driven. I have no sympathy with servile men. You heard those people shouting and singing two nights ago. They were _taught_ that song. If you had taken any man there in cold blood and asked why he shouted, he could not have told you. They think they are shouting for you, that they are loyal and devoted to you. Just then they were ready to slaughter the Council. To-day--they are already murmuring against those who have overthrown the Council.
human
No, no, said Graham.
gpt
They shouted because their lives were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me--in me--they hoped.
human
And what was their hope? What is their hope? What right have they to hope? They work ill and they want the reward of those who work well. The hope of mankind--what is it? That some day the Over-man may come, that some day the inferior, the weak and the bestial may be subdued or eliminated. Subdued if not eliminated. The world is no place for the bad, the stupid, the enervated. Their duty--it's a fine duty too!--is to die. The death of the failure! That is the path by which the beast rose to manhood, by which man goes on to higher things.
gpt
I can imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You regret all the old forms of representative government--their spectres still haunt the world, the voting councils, and parliaments and all that eighteenth century tomfoolery. You feel moved against our Pleasure Cities. I might have thought of that,--had I not been busy. But you will learn better. The people are mad with envy--they would be in sympathy with you. Even in the streets now, they clamour to destroy the Pleasure Cities. But the Pleasure Cities are the excretory organs of the State, attractive places that year after year draw together all that is weak and vicious, all that is lascivious and lazy, all the easy roguery of the world, to a graceful destruction. They go there, they have their time, they die childless, all the pretty silly lascivious women die childless, and mankind is the better. If the people were sane they would not envy the rich their way of death. And you would emancipate the silly brainless workers that we have enslaved, and try to make their lives easy and pleasant again. Just as they have sunk to what they are fit for. He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly.
human
You will learn better. I know those ideas; in my boyhood I read your Shelley and dreamt of Liberty. There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within--not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose--which is impossible--that these swarming yelping fools in blue get the upper hand of us, what then? They will only fall to other masters. So long as there are sheep Nature will insist on beasts of prey. It would mean but a few hundred years' delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured. The end will be the Over-man--for all the mad protests of humanity. Let them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will arise--other masters. The end will be the same.
gpt
I wonder,
human
But I must see these things for myself, he said, suddenly assuming a tone of confident mastery.
gpt
Only by seeing can I understand. I must learn. That is what I want to tell you, Ostrog. I do not want to be King in a Pleasure City; that is not my pleasure. I have spent enough time with aeronautics--and those other things. I must learn how people live now, how the common life has developed. Then I shall understand these things better. I must learn how common people live--the labour people more especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--
human
You get that from our realistic novelists,
gpt
I want reality,
human
There are difficulties, said Ostrog, and thought.
gpt
On the whole--
human
I did not expect--
gpt
I had thought--. And yet perhaps--. You say you want to go through the ways of the city and see the common people.
human
You would need to go disguised, he said.
gpt
The city is intensely excited, and the discovery of your presence among them might create a fearful tumult. Still this wish of yours to go into this city--this idea of yours--. Yes, now I think the thing over, it seems to me not altogether--. It can be contrived. If you would really find an interest in that! You are, of course, Master. You can go soon if you like. A disguise Asano will be able to manage. He would go with you. After all it is not a bad idea of yours.
human
You will not want to consult me in any matter?
gpt
Oh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any rate, said Ostrog, smiling.
human
Even if we differ--
gpt
There is no fighting likely to happen soon?
human
Certainly not.
gpt
I have been thinking about these negroes. I don't believe the people intend any hostility to me, and, after all, I am the Master. I do not want any negroes brought to London. It is an archaic prejudice perhaps, but I have peculiar feelings about Europeans and the subject races. Even about Paris--
human
I am not bringing negroes to London, he said slowly.
gpt
But if--
human
You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens, said Graham.
gpt
In that matter I am quite decided.