at 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!"

"Pleasant extinction," said Graham. "Yet--." He thought for an instant.
"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--"

Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
than before.

"Don't trouble about these things," he said. "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."

"No, no," said Graham. "They shouted because their lives were dreary,
without joy or pride, and because in me--in me--they hoped."

"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."

Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. "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 o