eckage. You can manage your own wings now, and you can soar away to
Capri if there is any smoke or fuss. We have the pull of all the great
things; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades union
in the world, and so are the engineers of the wind vanes. We have the
air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one of
any ability is organising against us. They have no leaders--only the
sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very
opportune awakening. Mere busy bodies and sentimentalists they are and
bitterly jealous of each other. None of them is man enough for a
central figure. The only trouble will be a disorganised upheaval. To
be frank--that may happen. But it won't interrupt your aeronautics. The
days when the People could make revolutions are past."

"I suppose they are," said Graham. "I suppose they are." He mused. "This
world of yours has been full of surprises to me. In the old days we
dreamt of a wonderful democratic life, of a time when all men would be
equal and happy."

Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "The day of democracy is past," he
said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, it ended
when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the
battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic
railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth
now is power as it never was power before--it commands earth and sea and
sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth.... You must accept
facts, and these are facts. The world for the Crowd! The Crowd as Ruler!
Even in your days that creed had been tried and condemned. To-day it has
only one believer--a multiplex, silly one--the mall in the Crowd."

Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre
preoccupations.

"No," said Ostrog. "The day of the common man is past. On the open
countryside one man is as good as another, or nearly as good. The
earlier aristocracy had a precarious tenure of strength and audacity.
They were tempered--tempered. There were insurrections, duels, riots.
The first real aristocracy, the first permanent aristocracy, came in
with castles and armour, and vanished before the musket and bow. But
this is the second aristocracy. The real one. Those days of gunpowder
and democracy were only an eddy in the stream. The common man now is a
helpless unit. In these days we have this great machine of the cit