the race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all
things vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful
actuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the
Eugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may
say so, funny.

Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given.
There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection
than any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject
of this book. It had long been the model State of all those more
rational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of
society. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform.
All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly
borrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it
convenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and
neutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a
privilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the
gratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale
and very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary
idealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams;
or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait
for it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but
in the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent
for five years.

The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It
might be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether
leave the memories of men; but men's memories are unstable things. It
may be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together,
and attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes.
There may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested
that they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of
that broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there
are limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once
deceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen their
paragons of science and organisation playing their part on land and
sea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of
humanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the
testimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither
would they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the
million