er it) something about how
'Those waves of enthusiasm on whose crumbling crests we sometimes see
nations lifted for a gleaming moment are wont to have a gloomy trough
before and behind.' And he said:

"'That's what it is with us, Hapgood. We've been high on those crests in
this war and already they're crumbling. When the peace comes, you look
out for the glide down into the trough. They talk about the nation,
under this calamity, turning back to the old faiths, to the old simple
beliefs, to the old earnest ways, to the old God of their fathers. Man,'
he said, 'what can you see already? Temples everywhere to a new
God--Greed--Profit--Extortion. All out for it. All out for it,' I
remember him saying, 'all out to get the most and do the least.'

"He got up and hobbled about, excited, flushed, and talked like a man
who uses his headpiece for thinking. 'Where's that making to, Hapgood?'
he asked. 'I'll tell you,' he said. 'You'll get the people finding
there's a limit to the high prices they can demand for their labour:
apparently none to those the employers can go on piling up for their
profits. You'll get growing hatred by the middle classes with fixed
incomes of the labouring classes whose prices for their labour they'll
see--and feel--going up and up; and you'll get the same growing hatred
by the labouring classes for the capitalists. We've been nearly four
years on the crest, Hapgood,--on the crest of the war--and it's been all
classes as one class for the common good. I tell you, Hapgood, the
trough's ahead; we're steering for it; and it's rapid and perilous
sundering of the classes.

"'The new God,' old Sabre said. 'High prices, high prices: the highest
that can be squeezed. Temples to it everywhere. Ay, and sacrifices,
Hapgood. Immolations. Offering up of victims. No thought of those who
cannot pay the prices. Pay the prices, or get them, or go under. That's
the new God's creed.'

"I said to him, 'What's the remedy, Sabre?'

"He said to me, 'Hapgood, the remedy's the old remedy. The old God. But
it's more than that. It's Light: more light. The old revelation was good
for the old world, and suited to the old world, and told in terms of the
old world's understanding. Mystical for ages steeped in the mystical;
poetic for minds receptive of nothing beyond story and allegory and
parable. We want a new revelation in terms of the new world's
understanding. We want light, light! Do you suppose a man who lives on
meat i