ldn't stand it. I couldn't stand
it, neither."

Day by day the element who wished to compromise and end the strike grew
stronger, brought more and more pressure on the leaders. These people
were subsidized, Antonelli declared, by the capitalists....

CHAPTER XVIII

A more serious atmosphere pervaded Headquarters, where it was realized
that the issue hung in the balance. And more proclamations, a la
Napoleon, were issued to sustain and hearten those who were finding
bread and onions meagre fare, to shame the hesitating, the wavering. As
has been said, it was Rolfe who, because of his popular literary gift,
composed these appeals for the consideration of the Committee, dictating
them to Janet as he paced up and down the bibliotheque, inhaling
innumerable cigarettes and flinging down the ends on the floor. A famous
one was headed "Shall Wool and Cotton Kings Rule the Nation?" "We are
winning" it declared. "The World is with us! Forced by the unshaken
solidarity of tens of thousands, the manufacturers offer bribes to end
the reign of terror they have inaugurated.... Inhuman treatment and
oppressive toil have brought all nationalities together into one great
army to fight against a brutal system of exploitation. In years and
years of excessive labour we have produced millions for a class of idle
parasites, who enjoy all the luxuries of life while our wives have
to leave their firesides and our children their schools to eke out a
miserable existence." And this for the militia: "The lowest aim of life
is to be a soldier! The 'good' soldier never tries to distinguish right
from wrong, he never thinks, he never reasons, he only obeys--"

"But," Janet was tempted to say, "your syndicalism declares that none
of us should think or reason. We should only feel." She was beginning to
detect Rolfe's inconsistencies, yet she refrained from interrupting the
inspirational flow.

"The soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine." Rolfe
was fond of adjectives. "All that is human in him, all that is divine
has been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath. No man can fall
lower than a soldier. It is a depth beyond which we cannot go."

"All that is human, all that is divine," wrote Janet, and thrilled a
little at the words. Why was it that mere words, and their arrangement
in certain sequences, gave one a delicious, creepy feeling up and down
the spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical,