Chapter 40
Then the man at the table on the rostrum got up abruptly, and pulled out his red handkerchief as though to wipe his face.
At the sudden flourish of the red fabric, a burst of applause came from the benches. Orator and audience were _en rapport_; the former continued to wave the handkerchief, under pretence of swabbing his features, but the intention was so evident and the applause so enlightening that a police officer came part way down the aisle and held up a gilded sleeve.
"Hey!" he called in a bored voice, "Cut that out! See!"
"That man on the platform is Max Sondheim," whispered Brisson. "He'll skate on thin ice before he's through."
Sondheim had already begun to speak, ignoring the interruption from the police:
"The Mayor has got cold feet," he said with a sneer. "He gave us a permit to parade, but when the soldiers attacked us his police clubbed us. That's the kind of government we got."
"Shame!" cried a white-faced girl in the audience.
"Shame?" repeated Sondheim ironically. "What's shame to a cop? They got theirs all the same----"
"That's enough!" shouted the police captain sharply. "Any more of that and I'll run you in!"
Sondheim's red-rimmed eyes measured the officer in silence for a moment.
"I have the privilege," he said to his audience, "of introducing to you our comrade, Professor Le Vey."
"Le Vey," whispered Brisson in Palla's ear. "He's a crack-brained chemist, and they ought to nab him."
The professor rose from one of the benches on the rostrum and came forward--a tall, black-bearded man, deathly pale, whose protruding, bluish eyes seemed almost stupid in their fixity.
"Words are by-products," he said, "and of minor importance. Deeds educate. T. N. T., also, is a byproduct, and of no use in conversation unless employed as an argument--" A roar of applause drowned his voice: he gazed at the audience out of his stupid pop-eyes.
"Tyranny has kicked you into the gutter," he went on. "Capital makes laws to keep you there and hires police and soldiers to enforce those laws. This is called civilisation. Is there anything for you to do except to pick yourselves out of the gutter and destroy what kicked you into it and what keeps you there?"
"No!" roared the audience.
"Only a clean sweep will do it," said Le Vey. "If you have a single germ of plague in the world, it will multiply. If you leave a single trace of what is called civilisation in the world, it will hatch out more tyrants, more capitalists, more laws. So there is only one remedy. Destruction. Total annihilation. Nothing less can purify this rotten h.e.l.l they call
Amid storms of applause he unrolled a ma.n.u.script and read without emphasis:
"Therefore, the Workers of the World, in council a.s.sembled, hereby proclaim at midnight to-night, throughout the entire world:
"1. That all debts, public and private, are cancelled.
"2. That all leases, contracts, indentures and similar instruments, products of capitalism, are null and void.
"3. All statutes, ordinances and other enactments of capitalist government are repealed.
"4. All public offices are declared vacant.
"5. The military and naval organisations will immediately dissolve and reorganise themselves upon a democratic basis for speedy mobilisation.
"6. All working cla.s.ses and political prisoners will be immediately freed and all indictments quashed.
"7. All vacant and unused land shall immediately revert to the people and remain common property until suitable regulations for its disposition can be made.
"8. All telephones, telegraphs, cables, railroads, steams.h.i.+p lines and other means of communication and transportation shall be immediately taken over by the workers and treated henceforth as the property of the people.
"9. As speedily as possible the workers in the various industries will proceed to take over these industries and organise them in the spirit of the new epoch now beginning.
"10. The flag of the new society shall be plain red, marking our unity and brotherhood with similar republics in Russia, Germany, Austria and elsewhere----"
"That'll be about all from you, Professor," interrupted the police captain, strolling down to the platform. "Come on, now. Kiss your friends good-night!"
A sullen roar rose from the audience; Le Vey lifted one hand:
"I told you how to argue," he said in his emotionless voice. "Anybody can talk with their mouths." And he turned on his heel and went back to his seat on the bench.
Sondheim stood up:
"Comrade Bromberg!" he shouted.
A small, shabby man arose from a bench and shambled forward. His hair grew so low that it left him practically no forehead. Whiskers blotted out the remainder of his features except two small and very bright eyes that snapped and sparkled, imbedded in the hairy ensemble.
"Comrades," he growled, "it has come to a moment when the only law worth obeying is the law of force!----"
"You bet!" remarked the police captain, genially, and, turning his back, he walked away up the aisle toward the rear of the hall, while all around him from the audience came a savage muttering.
Bromberg's growling voice grew harsher and deeper as he resumed: "I tell you that there is only one law left for proletariat and tyrant alike! It is the law of force!"
As the audience applauded fiercely, a man near them stood up and shouted for a hearing.
"Comrade Bromberg is right!" he cried, waving his arms excitedly.
"There is only one real law in the world! The fit survive! The unfit die! The strong take what they desire! The weak perish. That is the law of life! That is the----"
An amazing interruption checked him--a clear, crystalline peal of laughter; and the astounded audience saw a tall, fresh, yellow-haired girl standing up midway down the hall. It was Ilse Westgard, unable to endure such nonsense, and quite regardless of Brisson's detaining hand and Shotwell's startled remonstrance.
"What that man says is absurd!" she cried, her fresh young voice still gay with laughter. "He looks like a Prussian, and if he is he ought to know where the law of force has landed his nation."
In the ominous silence around her, Ilse turned and gaily surveyed the audience.
"The law of force is the law of robbers," she said. "That is why this war has been fought--to educate robbers. And if there remain any robbers they'll have to be educated. Don't let anybody tell you that the law of force is the law of life!----"
"Who are you?" interrupted Bromberg hoa.r.s.ely.
"An ex-soldier of the Death Battalion, comrade," said Ilse cheerfully.
"I used a rifle in behalf of the law of education. Sometimes bayonets educate, sometimes machine guns. But the sensible way is to have a meeting, and everybody drink tea and smoke cigarettes and discuss their troubles without reserve, and then take a vote as to what is best for everybody concerned."
And she seated herself with a smile just as the inevitable uproar began.
All around her now men and women were shouting at her; inflamed faces ringed her; gesticulating fists waved in the air.
"What are you--a spy for Kerensky?" yelled a man in Russian.