There was a knock at the door. It was Hugo Brockle who came in. Everard looked at his watch, then at Hugo. The expression on his face was menacing. “Why are you so late?” he asked in a terrifying quiet voice.
Hugo blushed. “I hadn’t realized the time.” It was only too true. He had been lunching with the Upwiches, twenty miles away across the moors. Polly Logan was staying with them. After lunch old Upwich and the others had gone to play a round of golf on the private links in the park. Polly, providentially, didn’t play. He had taken her for a walk through the woods along the river. How should he have realized the time? “I’m sorry,” he added.
“I should hope you were,” said Everard, and the latent violence broke out from under his quietness. “I tell you to be back at five and it’s now a quarter-past six. When you’re with me on British Freeman business you’re under military discipline. My orders are to be obeyed, do you understand? Do you understand?” he insisted.
Sheepishly Hugo nodded. “Yes.”
“And now go away and see that all the arrangements for this evening’s meeting have been properly made. And mind, this sort of thing mustn’t happen again. You won’t get off so lightly next time.”
Hugo shut the door after him. All the anger instantly vanished from Everard’s face. He believed in frightening his subordinates from time to time. Anger, he always found, was an excellent weapon, so long as you didn’t let yourself be mastered by it. He never did. Poor Hugo! He smiled to himself and went on with his letter. Ten minutes later Hugo came in to say that dinner was ready. The meeting was at eight; they had to eat very early.
“But it’s so silly, all this political squabbling,” said Rampion, his voice shrill with exasperation, “so utterly silly. Bolsheviks and Fascists, Radicals and Conservatives, Communists and British Freeman—what the devil are they all fighting about? I’ll tell you. They’re fighting to decide whether we shall go to hell by communist express train or capitalist racing motor car; by individualist bus or collectivist tram running on the rails of state control. The destination’s the same in every case. They’re all of them bound for hell, all headed for the same psychological impasse and the social collapse that results from psychological collapse. The only point of difference between them is: How shall we get there? It’s simply impossible for a man of sense to be interested in such disputes. For the man of sense the important thing is hell, not the means of transport to be employed in getting there. The question for the man of sense is: Do we or do we not want to go to hell? And his answer is: No, we don’t. And if that’s his answer, then he won’t have anything to do with any of the politicians. Because they all want to land us in hell. All, without exception. Lenin and Mussolini, MacDonald and Baldwin. All equally anxious to take us to hell and only squabbling about the means of taking us.”
“Some of them may take us a little more slowly than others,” suggested Philip.
Rampion shrugged his shoulders. “But so very little more slowly that it wouldn’t make any appreciable difference. They all believe in industrialism in one form or another, they all believe in Americanization. Think of the Bolshevist ideal. America but much more so. America with government departments taking the place of trusts and state officials instead of rich men. And then the ideal of the rest of Europe. The same thing, only with the rich men preserved. Machinery and government officials there. Machinery and Alfred Mond or Henry Ford here. The machinery to take us to hell; the rich or the official to drive it. You think one set may drive more cautiously than the other? Perhaps you’re right. But I can’t see that there’s anything to choose between them. They’re all equally in a hurry. In the name of science, progress, and human happiness! Amen and step on the gas.”
Philip nodded. “They do step on it all right,” he said. “They get a move on. Progress. But as you say, it’s probably in the direction of the bottomless pit.”
“And the only thing the reformers can find to talk about is the shape, colour, and steering arrangements of the vehicle. Can’t the imbeciles see that it’s the direction that matters, that we’re entirely on the wrong road and ought to go back—preferably on foot, without the stinking machine?”
“You may be right,” said Philip. “But the trouble is that, given our existing world, you can’t go back, you can’t scrap the machine. That is, you can’t do it unless you’re prepared to kill off about half the human race. Industrialism made possible the doubling of the world’s population in a hundred years. If you want to get rid of industrialism, you’ve got to get back to where you started. That’s to say, you’ve got to slaughter half the existing number of men and women. Which may, sub specie aeternitatis or merely historiae, be an excellent thing. But hardly a matter of practical politics.”
“Not at the moment,” Rampion agreed. “But the next war and the next revolution will make it only too practical.”
“Possibly. But one shouldn’t count on wars and revolutions. Because, if you count on them happening, they certainly will happen.”
“They’ll happen,” said Rampion, “whether you count on them or not. Industrial progress means overproduction, means the need for getting new markets, means international rivalry, means war. And mechanical progress means more specialization and standardization of work, means more ready-made and unindividual amusements, means diminution of initiative and creativeness, means more intellectualism and the progressive atrophy of all the vital and fundamental things in human nature, means increased boredom and restlessness, means finally a kind of individual madness that can only result in
