ion. Their
system is perfect, their lines of supply and communication are without a
flaw. The Prussian army machine of other days was but a bungling
experiment by comparison with the efficiency of this new mechanism. I
tell you, Gabriel, we've got to give these tyrants credit for being
infernally efficient tyrants! All that science has been able to devise,
or press and church and university teach, or political subservience make
possible, is theirs. And back of that, military power, and the courts
and the prisons and the electric chair! And back of all _those_, the
power to choke the whole world to submission, in a week!"

Gabriel thought, a moment, before replying. Then said he:

"I know it, Craig. All the more reason why we must hit them at once, and
hit hard! These reports here," and he gestured at the papers that
Brevard had spread out under the lamp-light, "prove that, at the proper
signal, every chance indicates that we can paralyze transportation--the
keynote of the whole situation.

"True, the government--that is to say, the Air Trust, and _that_ is to
say, Flint and Waldron--can keep men in every engine-cab in the country.
They can keep them at every switch and junction. But this isn't France,
remember, nor is it any small, compact European country. Conditions are
wholly different here. Everywhere, vast stretches of track exist. No
power on earth--not even Flint and Waldron's--can guard all those
hundreds of thousands of miles. And so I tell you, taking our data
simply from these reports and not counting on any more organized
strength than they show, we have today got the means of cutting and
crippling, for a week at least, the movements of troops to Niagara. And
that, just that, is all we need!"

A little silence. Then said Catherine:

"You mean, Gabriel, that if we can keep the troops back for a little
while, and annihilate the Air Trust plant itself, the great revolution
will follow?"

He nodded, with a smouldering fire in his eyes.

"Yes," said he. "If we can loosen the grip of this monster for only
forty-eight hours, and flash the news to this bleeding, sweating,
choking land that the grip _is_ loosened--after that we need do no more.
_Apres nous, le deluge_; only not now in the sense of wreck and ruin,
but meaning that this deluge shall forever wash away the tyranny and
crime of Capitalism! Forever and a day, to leave us free once more, free
men and women, standing erect and facing God's own sunlig