knew, might be an agent of the Iron Heel. We mined the
organization of the Iron Heel with our secret agents, and the Iron Heel
countermined with its secret agents inside its own organization. And
it was the same with our organization. And despite the absence of
confidence and trust we were compelled to base our every effort on
confidence and trust. Often were we betrayed. Men were weak. The Iron
Heel could offer money, leisure, the joys and pleasures that waited
in the repose of the wonder cities. We could offer nothing but the
satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal. As for the rest, the
wages of those who were loyal were unceasing peril, torture, and death.

Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness we were compelled to
make the only other reward that was within our power. It was the reward
of death. Out of necessity we had to punish our traitors. For every man
who betrayed us, from one to a dozen faithful avengers were loosed upon
his heels. We might fail to carry out our decrees against our enemies,
such as the Pococks, for instance; but the one thing we could not afford
to fail in was the punishment of our own traitors. Comrades turned
traitor by permission, in order to win to the wonder cities and there
execute our sentences on the real traitors. In fact, so terrible did
we make ourselves, that it became a greater peril to betray us than to
remain loyal to us.

The Revolution took on largely the character of religion. We worshipped
at the shrine of the Revolution, which was the shrine of liberty. It was
the divine flashing through us. Men and women devoted their lives to
the Cause, and new-born babes were sealed to it as of old they had been
sealed to the service of God. We were lovers of Humanity.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SCARLET LIVERY

With the destruction of the Granger states, the Grangers in Congress
disappeared. They were being tried for high treason, and their places
were taken by the creatures of the Iron Heel. The socialists were in a
pitiful minority, and they knew that their end was near. Congress and
the Senate were empty pretences, farces. Public questions were gravely
debated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality all
that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to the
mandates of the Oligarchy.

Ernest was in the thick of the fight when the end came. It was in the
debate on the bill to assist the unemployed. The hard times of the
pre