of view. All this sermonising does no good. We are
very simple people who want to live quietly and have plenty to eat and
have no one worry us or hurt us in the little span of sunlight before we
die. All we have now is the same war between the classes: those that
exploit and those that are exploited. The cunning, unscrupulous people
control the humane, kindly people. This war that has smashed our little
European world in which order was so painfully taking the place of
chaos, seems to me merely a gigantic battle fought over the plunder of
the world by the pirates who have grown fat to the point of madness on
the work of their own people, on the work of the millions in Africa, in
India, in America, who have come directly or indirectly under the yoke
of the insane greed of the white races. Well, our edifice is ruined.
Let's think no more of it. Ours is now the duty of rebuilding,
reorganising. I have not faith enough in human nature to be an
anarchist.... We are too like sheep; we must go in flocks, and a flock
to live must organise. There is plenty for everyone, even with the huge
growth in population all over the world. What we want is organisation
from the bottom, organisation by the ungreedy, by the humane, by the
uncunning, socialism of the masses that shall spring from the natural
need of men to help one another; not socialism from the top to the ends
of the governors, that they may clamp us tighter in their fetters. We
must stop the economic war, the war for existence of man against man.
That will be the first step in the long climb to civilisation. They must
co-operate, they must learn that it is saner and more advantageous to
help one another than to hinder one another in the great war against
nature. And the tyranny of the feudal money lords, the unspeakable
misery of this war is driving men closer together into fraternity,
co-operation. It is the lower classes, therefore, that the new world
must be founded on. The rich must be extinguished; with them wars
will die. First between rich and poor, between the exploiter and
the exploited...."

"They have one thing in common," interrupted the blonde Norman, smiling.

"What's that?"

"Humanity.... That is, feebleness, cowardice."

"No, indeed. All through the world's history there has been one law for
the lord and another for the slave, one humanity for the lord and
another humanity for the slave. What we must strive for is a true
universal humanity."

"True," c