said Kendricks.

Fulkerson laughed. "Telepathy--clear case of mind transference. Better
see March, here, about it. I'd like to have it in 'Every Other Week.' It
would make talk."

"Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as well as talking," said
the colonel.

"Well, sir," said Dryfoos, setting his lips so tightly together that his
imperial stuck straight outward, "if I had my way, there wouldn't be any
Brotherhood of Engineers, nor any other kind of labor union in the whole
country."

"What!" shouted Lindau. "You would sobbress the unionss of the
voarking-men?"

"Yes, I would."

"And what would you do with the unionss of the gabidalists--the
drosts--and gompines, and boolss? Would you dake the righdt from one and
gif it to the odder?"

"Yes, sir, I would," said Dryfoos, with a wicked look at him.

Lindau was about to roar back at him with some furious protest, but
March put his hand on his shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to
him to say in German: "But it is infamous--infamous! What kind of man is
this? Who is he? He has the heart of a tyrant."

Colonel Woodburn cut in. "You couldn't do that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your
system. And if you attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that
kind of thing, it might bring the climax sooner than you expected. Your
commercialized society has built its house on the sands. It will have to
go. But I should be sorry if it went before its time."

"You are righdt, sir," said Lindau. "It would be a bity. I hobe it will
last till it feelss its rottenness, like Herodt. Boat, when its
hour gomes, when it trope to bieces with the veight off its own
gorrubtion--what then?"

"It's not to be supposed that a system of things like this can drop to
pieces of its own accord, like the old Republic of Venice," said the
colonel. "But when the last vestige of commercial society is gone,
then we can begin to build anew; and we shall build upon the
central idea, not of the false liberty you now worship, but of
responsibility--responsibility. The enlightened, the moneyed, the
cultivated class shall be responsible to the central authority--emperor,
duke, president; the name does not matter--for the national expense and
the national defence, and it shall be responsible to the working-classes
of all kinds for homes and lands and implements, and the opportunity to
labor at all times.

"The working-classes shall be responsible to the leisure class for the
support of its dignity in