elopment
of warlike stresses, be discovered--they will discover
themselves--almost surprisingly with roads and railways, carts and
cities, drains, food supply, electrical supply, and water supply, and
with guns and such implements of destruction and intimidation as men
scarcely dream of yet, gathered in their hands. And they will be
discovered, too, with a growing common consciousness of themselves as
distinguished from the grey confusion, a common purpose and implication
that the fearless analysis of science is already bringing to light.
They will find themselves with bloodshed and horrible disasters ahead,
and the material apparatus of control entirely within their power.
"Suppose, after all," they will say, "we ignore these very eloquent and
showy governing persons above, and this very confused and ineffectual
multitude below. Suppose now we put on the brakes and try something a
little more stable and orderly. These people in possession have, of
course, all sorts of established rights and prescriptions; they have
squared the law to their purpose, and the constitution does not know us;
they can get at the judges, they can get at the newspapers, they can do
all sorts of things except avoid a smash--but, for our part, we have
these really most ingenious and subtle guns. Suppose instead of our
turning them and our valuable selves in a fool's quarrel against the
ingenious and subtle guns of other men akin to ourselves, we use them in
the cause of the higher sanity, and clear that jabbering war tumult out
of the streets."... There may be no dramatic moment for the expression
of this idea, no moment when the new Cromwellism and the new Ironsides
will come visibly face to face with talk and baubles, flags and
patriotic dinner bells; but, with or without dramatic moments, the idea
will be expressed and acted upon. It will be made quite evident then,
what is now indeed only a pious opinion, namely, that wealth is, after
all, no ultimate Power at all, but only an influence among aimless,
police-guarded men. So long as there is peace the class of capable men
may be mitigated and gagged and controlled, and the ostensible present
order may flourish still in the hands of that other class of men which
deals with the appearances of things. But as some supersaturated
solution will crystallize out with the mere shaking of its beaker, so
must the new order of men come into visibly organized existence through
the concussions of war. The c