id, "the
machinery will run down and--stop?"

CHAPTER XXIX

THE REVOLT OF THE YOUNG

Amid all the strife and clamour of the next few days one thing stands
out now in my mind with sinister radiance. It is that peculiar form of
lawlessness which broke out and had as its object the destruction of the
old.

There is no doubt that the idea of immortality got hold of people and
carried them away completely. The daily miracles that were occurring of
the renewal of health and vigour, the cure of disease and the passing of
those infirmities that are associated with advancing years, impressed
the popular imagination deeply. As a result there grew up a widespread
discontent and bitterness. The young--those who were as yet free from
the germ--conceived in their hearts that an immense injustice had been
done to them.

It must be remembered that life at that time had taken on a strange and
abnormal aspect. Its horizons had been suddenly altered by the germ.
Although breadth had been given to it from the point of years, a curious
contraction had appeared at the same time. It was a contraction felt
most acutely by those in inferior positions. It was a contraction that
owed its existence to the sense of being shut in eternally by those in
higher positions, whom death no longer would remove at convenient
intervals. The student felt it as he looked at his professor. The clerk
felt it as he looked at his manager. The subaltern felt it as he looked
at his colonel. The daughter felt it when she looked at her mother, and
the son when he looked at his father. The germ had given simultaneously
a tremendous blow to freedom, and a tremendous impetus to freedom.

Thus, perhaps for the first time in history, there swiftly began an
accumulation and concentration of those forces of discontent which, in
normal times, only manifest themselves here and there in the
relationships between old and young men, and are regarded with
good-humoured patience. A kind of war broke out all over the country.

This war was terrible in its nature. All the secret weariness and
unspoken bitterness of the younger generation found a sudden outlet.
Goaded to madness by the prospect of a future of continual repression,
in which the old would exercise an undiminished authority, the younger
men and women plunged into a form of excess over which a veil must be
drawn.... There is only one thing which can be recorded in their favour.
Chloroform and drowning appe