| 254 | 255 | 256 | 257 | 258 |
| 1 | 90 | 179 | 269 | 358 |
|
simple men played out their honest lives!
"
And there!" he swung round to where the young Cossars muttered to one
another of their wrongs.
"
Look at them! And I know their father, a brute, a sort of brute beast
with an intolerant loud voice, a creature who has ran amuck in our all
too merciful world for the last thirty years and more. An engineer! To
him all that we hold dear and sacred is nothing. Nothing! The splendid
traditions of our race and land, the noble institutions, the venerable
order, the broad slow march from precedent to precedent that has made
our English people great and this sunny island free--it is all an idle
tale, told and done with. Some claptrap about the Future is worth all
these sacred things.... The sort of man who would run a tramway over his
mother's grave if he thought that was the cheapest line the tramway
could take.... And you think to temporise, to make some scheme of
compromise, that will enable you to live in your way while that--that
machinery--lives in its. I tell you it is hopeless--hopeless. As well
make treaties with a tiger! They want things monstrous--we want them
sane and sweet. It is one thing or the other."
"But what can you do?"
"Much! All! Stop the Food! They are still scattered, these giants; still
immature and disunited. Chain them, gag them, muzzle them. At any cost
stop them. It is their world or ours! Stop the Food. Shut up these men
256
Page
Quick Jump
|