rather upset things in the country last night.'

'That makes no odds,' the Mayor returned. 'We're all provisioned for six
months. _We_ take no chances.'

Nor, when you come to think of it, does any one else. It must be
three-quarters of a generation since any house or city faced a food
shortage. Yet is there house or city on the Planet to-day that has not
half a year's provisions laid in? We are like the shipwrecked seamen in
the old books, who, having once nearly starved to death, ever afterwards
hide away bits of food and biscuit. Truly we trust no Crowds, nor system
based on Crowds!

De Forest waited till the last footstep had died away. Meantime the
prisoners at the base of the Statue shuffled, posed, and fidgeted, with
the shamelessness of quite little children. None of them were more than
six feet high, and many of them were as grey-haired as the ravaged,
harassed heads of old pictures. They huddled together in actual touch,
while the crowd, spaced at large intervals, looked at them with
congested eyes.

Suddenly a man among them began to talk. The Mayor had not in the least
exaggerated. It appeared that our Planet lay sunk in slavery beneath the
heel of the Aerial Board of Control. The orator urged us to arise in our
might, burst our prison doors and break our fetters (all his metaphors,
by the way, were of the most mediaeval). Next he demanded that every
matter of daily life, including most of the physical functions, should
be submitted for decision at any time of the week, month, or year to, I
gathered, anybody who happened to be passing by or residing within a
certain radius, and that everybody should forthwith abandon his concerns
to settle the matter, first by crowd-making, next by talking to the
crowds made, and lastly by describing crosses on pieces of paper, which
rubbish should later be counted with certain mystic ceremonies and
oaths. Out of this amazing play, he assured us, would automatically
arise a higher, nobler, and kinder world, based--he demonstrated this
with the awful lucidity of the insane--based on the sanctity of the
Crowd and the villainy of the single person. In conclusion, he called
loudly upon God to testify to his personal merits and integrity. When
the flow ceased, I turned bewildered to Takahira, who was
nodding solemnly.

'Quite correct,' said he. 'It is all in the old books. He has left
nothing out, not even the war-talk.'

'But I don't see how this stuff can upset a child