Autor: Editor

“That!” said the curate, when presently it happened again.

“Yes,” I said. “But what is it?”

“A Martian!” said the curate.

I listened again.

“It was not like the Heat-Ray,” I said, and for a time I was inclined
to think one of the great fighting-machines had stumbled against the
house, as I had seen one stumble against the tower of Shepperton
Church.

Our situation was so strange and incomprehensible that for three or
four hours, until the dawn came, we scarcely moved. And then the light
filtered in, not through the window, which remained black, but through
a triangular aperture between a beam and a heap of broken bricks in the
wall behind us. The interior of the kitchen we now saw greyly for the
first time.

The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed
over the table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet.
Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the top of the
window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor was littered
with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the house was
broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident the
greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly with this
ruin was the neat dresser, stained in the fashion, pale green, and with
a number of copper and tin vessels below it, the wallpaper imitating
blue and white tiles, and a couple of coloured supplements fluttering
from the walls above the kitchen range.

As the dawn grew clearer, we saw through the gap in the wall the body
of a Martian, standing sentinel, I suppose, over the still glowing
cylinder. At the sight of that we crawled as circumspectly as possible
out of the twilight of the kitchen into the darkness of the scullery.

Abruptly the right interpretation dawned upon my mind.

“The fifth cylinder,” I whispered, “the fifth shot from Mars, has
struck this house and buried us under the ruins!”

For a time the curate was silent, and then he whispered:

“God have mercy upon us!”

I heard him presently whimpering to himself.

Save for that sound we lay quite still in the scullery; I for my part
scarce dared breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light of
the kitchen door. I could just see the curate’s face, a dim, oval
shape, and his collar and cuffs. Outside there began a metallic
hammering, then a violent hooting, and then again, after a quiet
interval, a hissing like the hissing of an engine. These noises, for
the most part problematical, continued intermittently, and seemed if
anything to increase in number as time wore on. Presently a measured
thudding and a vibration that made everything about us quiver and the
vessels in the pantry ring and shift, began and continued. Once the
light was eclipsed, and the ghostly kitchen doorway became absolutely
dark. For many hours we must have crouched there, silent and shivering,
until our tired attention failed. . . .

At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to believe
we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that awakening.
My hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to action. I
told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way towards the
pantry. He made me no answer, but so soon as I began eating the faint
noise I made stirred him up and I heard him crawling after me.

II.
WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE.

After eating we crept back to the scullery, and there I must have dozed
again, for when presently I looked round I was alone. The thudding
vibration continued with wearisome persistence. I whispered for the
curate several times, and at last felt my way to the door of the
kitchen. It was still daylight, and I perceived him across the room,
lying against the triangular hole that looked out upon the Martians.
His shoulders were hunched, so that his head was hidden from me.

I could hear a number of noises almost like those in an engine shed;
and the place rocked with that beating thud. Through the aperture in
the wall I could see the top of a tree touched with gold and the warm
blue of a tranquil evening sky. For a minute or so I remained watching
the curate, and then I advanced, crouching and stepping with extreme
care amid the broken crockery that littered the floor.

I touched the curate’s leg, and he started so violently that a mass of
plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a loud impact. I
gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out, and for a long time we
crouched motionless. Then I turned to see how much of our rampart
remained. The detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit open
in the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam I was
able to see out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet
suburban roadway. Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld.

The fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the house
we had first visited. The building had vanished, completely smashed,
pulverised, and dispersed by the blow. The cylinder lay now far beneath
the original foundations—deep in a hole, already vastly larger than the
pit I had looked into at Woking. The earth all round it had splashed
under that tremendous impact—“splashed” is the only word—and lay in
heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent houses. It had behaved
exactly like mud under the violent blow of a hammer. Our house had
collapsed backward; the front portion, even on the ground floor, had
been destroyed completely; by a chance the kitchen and scullery had
escaped, and stood buried now under soil and ruins, closed in by tons
of earth on every side save towards the cylinder. Over that aspect we
hung now on the very edge of the great circular pit the Martians were
engaged in making. The heavy beating sound was evidently just behind
us, and ever and again a bright green vapour drove up like a veil
across our peephole.

The cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on the
farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel-heaped shrubbery,
one of the great fighting-machines, deserted by its occupant, stood
stiff and tall against the evening sky. At first I scarcely noticed the
pit and the cylinder, although it has been convenient to describe them
first, on account of the extraordinary glittering mechanism I saw busy
in the excavation, and on account of the strange creatures that were
crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped mould near it.

The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one
of those complicated fabrics that have since been called
handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an
enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first,
it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs,
and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching
and clutching tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were
retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of
rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently
strengthened the walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them,
were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.

Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not
see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. The
fighting-machines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary
pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen
these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or
the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon,
scarcely realise that living quality.

I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to
give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently made a
hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge
ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either
flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of
effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable
vogue, and I mention them here simply to warn the reader against the
impression they may have created. They were no more like the Martians I
saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the
pamphlet would have been much better without them.

At first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a machine,
but as a crablike creature with a glittering integument, the
controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements
seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab’s cerebral portion. But
then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown, shiny, leathery
integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and the true
nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon me. With that realisation
my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real Martians.
Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the first nausea
no longer obscured my observation. Moreover, I was concealed and
motionless, and under no urgency of action.

They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to
conceive. They were huge round bodies—or, rather, heads—about four feet
in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This face had no
nostrils—indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of
smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just
beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body—I
scarcely know how to speak of it—was the single tight tympanic surface,
since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost
useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen
slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight
each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly, by that
distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the _hands_. Even as I saw
these Martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to
raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased
weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason
to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some
facility.

The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since shown,
was almost equally simple. The greater part of the structure was the
brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles.
Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the
heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused by the denser
atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in
the convulsive movements of the outer skin.

And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem to a
human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the
bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were
heads—merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less
digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures,
and _injected_ it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being
done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I
cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to
continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still
living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by
means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . .

The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the
same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous
habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.

The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are
undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and
energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process. Our bodies are
half made up of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning
heterogeneous food into blood. The digestive processes and their
reaction upon the nervous system sap our strength and colour our minds.
Men go happy or miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy livers, or
sound gastric glands. But the Martians were lifted above all these
organic fluctuations of mood and emotion.

Their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment is
partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had
brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge
from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were
bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the
silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high
and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or
three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were
killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for them, for the
mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have broken every
bone in their bodies.

And while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place
certain further details which, although they were not all evident to us
at the time, will enable the reader who is unacquainted with them to
form a clearer picture of these offensive creatures.

In three other points their physiology differed strangely from ours.
Their organisms did not sleep, any more than the heart of man sleeps.
Since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate, that
periodical extinction was unknown to them. They had little or no sense
of fatigue, it would seem. On earth they could never have moved without
effort, yet even to the last they kept in action. In twenty-four hours
they did twenty-four hours of work, as even on earth is perhaps the
case with the ants.

In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the
Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the
tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men. A young
Martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth during
the war, and it was found attached to its parent, partially _budded_
off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals in the
fresh-water polyp.

In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of
increase has disappeared; but even on this earth it was certainly the
primitive method. Among the lower animals, up even to those first
cousins of the vertebrated animals, the Tunicates, the two processes
occur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded its
competitor altogether. On Mars, however, just the reverse has
apparently been the case.

It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of
quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did
forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian
condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November or December,
1893, in a long-defunct publication, the _Pall Mall Budget_, and I
recall a caricature of it in a pre-Martian periodical called _Punch_.
He pointed out—writing in a foolish, facetious tone—that the perfection
of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the
perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair,
external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential parts of
the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would lie
in the direction of their steady diminution through the coming ages.
The brain alone remained a cardinal necessity. Only one other part of
the body had a strong case for survival, and that was the hand,
“teacher and agent of the brain.” While the rest of the body dwindled,
the hands would grow larger.

There is many a true word written in jest, and here in the Martians we
have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression of
the animal side of the organism by the intelligence. To me it is quite
credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not unlike
ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands (the latter
giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last) at the
expense of the rest of the body. Without the body the brain would, of
course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of the
emotional substratum of the human being.

The last salient point in which the systems of these creatures differed
from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial particular.
Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on earth, have
either never appeared upon Mars or Martian sanitary science eliminated
them ages ago. A hundred diseases, all the fevers and contagions of
human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such morbidities, never
enter the scheme of their life. And speaking of the differences between
the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may allude here to the curious
suggestions of the red weed.

Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a
dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint. At any rate, the seeds
which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with them
gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths. Only that known
popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition
with terrestrial forms. The red creeper was quite a transitory growth,
and few people have seen it growing. For a time, however, the red weed
grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance. It spread up the sides of
the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, and its
cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe to the edges of our
triangular window. And afterwards I found it broadcast throughout the
country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water.

The Martians had what appears to have been an auditory organ, a single
round drum at the back of the head-body, and eyes with a visual range
not very different from ours except that, according to Philips, blue
and violet were as black to them. It is commonly supposed that they
communicated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations; this is asserted,
for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet (written
evidently by someone not an eye-witness of Martian actions) to which I
have already alluded, and which, so far, has been the chief source of
information concerning them. Now no surviving human being saw so much
of the Martians in action as I did. I take no credit to myself for an
accident, but the fact is so. And I assert that I watched them closely
time after time, and that I have seen four, five, and (once) six of
them sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations
together without either sound or gesture. Their peculiar hooting
invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation, and was, I believe,
in no sense a signal, but merely the expiration of air preparatory to
the suctional operation. I have a certain claim to at least an
elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter I am
convinced—as firmly as I am convinced of anything—that the Martians
interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation. And I have
been convinced of this in spite of strong preconceptions. Before the
Martian invasion, as an occasional reader here or there may remember, I
had written with some little vehemence against the telepathic theory.

The Martians wore no clothing. Their conceptions of ornament and
decorum were necessarily different from ours; and not only were they
evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than we are, but
changes of pressure do not seem to have affected their health at all
seriously. Yet though they wore no clothing, it was in the other
artificial additions to their bodily resources that their great
superiority over man lay. We men, with our bicycles and road-skates,
our Lilienthal soaring-machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are
just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked
out. They have become practically mere brains, wearing different bodies
according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a
bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet. And of their appliances,
perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the curious fact that
what is the dominant feature of almost all human devices in mechanism
is absent—the _wheel_ is absent; among all the things they brought to
earth there is no trace or suggestion of their use of wheels. One would
have at least expected it in locomotion. And in this connection it is
curious to remark that even on this earth Nature has never hit upon the
wheel, or has preferred other expedients to its development. And not
only did the Martians either not know of (which is incredible), or
abstain from, the wheel, but in their apparatus singularly little use
is made of the fixed pivot or relatively fixed pivot, with circular
motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost all the joints of the
machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over
small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while upon this
matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their
machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of
the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn
closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of
electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions,
which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was
attained. Such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine
which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I watched unpacking the
cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians
lying beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual
tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space.

While I was still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight, and
noting each strange detail of their form, the curate reminded me of his
presence by pulling violently at my arm. I turned to a scowling face,
and silent, eloquent lips. He wanted the slit, which permitted only one
of us to peep through; and so I had to forego watching them for a time
while he enjoyed that privilege.

When I looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put together
several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the cylinder
into a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and down on
the left a busy little digging mechanism had come into view, emitting
jets of green vapour and working its way round the pit, excavating and
embanking in a methodical and discriminating manner. This it was which
had caused the regular beating noise, and the rhythmic shocks that had
kept our ruinous refuge quivering. It piped and whistled as it worked.
So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at
all.

III.
THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT.

The arrival of a second fighting-machine drove us from our peephole
into the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation the Martian
might see down upon us behind our barrier. At a later date we began to
feel less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the dazzle of the
sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness, but at
first the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery
in heart-throbbing retreat. Yet terrible as was the danger we incurred,
the attraction of peeping was for both of us irresistible. And I recall
now with a sort of wonder that, in spite of the infinite danger in
which we were between starvation and a still more terrible death, we
could yet struggle bitterly for that horrible privilege of sight. We
would race across the kitchen in a grotesque way between eagerness and
the dread of making a noise, and strike each other, and thrust and
kick, within a few inches of exposure.

The fact is that we had absolutely incompatible dispositions and habits
of thought and action, and our danger and isolation only accentuated
the incompatibility. At Halliford I had already come to hate the
curate’s trick of helpless exclamation, his stupid rigidity of mind.
His endless muttering monologue vitiated every effort I made to think
out a line of action, and drove me at times, thus pent up and
intensified, almost to the verge of craziness. He was as lacking in
restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I
verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought
his weak tears in some way efficacious. And I would sit in the darkness
unable to keep my mind off him by reason of his importunities. He ate
more than I did, and it was in vain I pointed out that our only chance
of life was to stop in the house until the Martians had done with their
pit, that in that long patience a time might presently come when we
should need food. He ate and drank impulsively in heavy meals at long
intervals. He slept little.

As the days wore on, his utter carelessness of any consideration so
intensified our distress and danger that I had, much as I loathed doing
it, to resort to threats, and at last to blows. That brought him to
reason for a time. But he was one of those weak creatures, void of
pride, timorous, anæmic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who
face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves.

It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I set
them down that my story may lack nothing. Those who have escaped the
dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of
rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is
wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. But
those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to
elemental things, will have a wider charity.

And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers,
snatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the
pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the
unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit. Let me return to those
first new experiences of mine. After a long time I ventured back to the
peephole, to find that the new-comers had been reinforced by the
occupants of no fewer than three of the fighting-machines. These last
had brought with them certain fresh appliances that stood in an orderly
manner about the cylinder. The second handling-machine was now
completed, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the
big machine had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in its
general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and from
which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin below.

The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the
handling-machine. With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was
digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped receptacle
above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed
rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the machine.
Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin along a
ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the
mound of bluish dust. From this unseen receiver a little thread of
green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. As I looked, the
handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended,
telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere
blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. In
another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight,
untarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a
growing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit. Between sunset
and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a hundred
such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust rose
steadily until it topped the side of the pit.

The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these
contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was
acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter
were indeed the living of the two things.

The curate had possession of the slit when the first men were brought
to the pit. I was sitting below, huddled up, listening with all my
ears. He made a sudden movement backward, and I, fearful that we were
observed, crouched in a spasm of terror. He came sliding down the
rubbish and crept beside me in the darkness, inarticulate,
gesticulating, and for a moment I shared his panic. His gesture
suggested a resignation of the slit, and after a little while my
curiosity gave me courage, and I rose up, stepped across him, and
clambered up to it. At first I could see no reason for his frantic
behaviour. The twilight had now come, the stars were little and faint,
but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came from
the aluminium-making. The whole picture was a flickering scheme of
green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying to the
eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at all. The
sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of blue-green
powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a fighting-machine, with
its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner
of the pit. And then, amid the clangour of the machinery, came a
drifting suspicion of human voices, that I entertained at first only to
dismiss.

I crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying myself
now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a Martian. As
the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his integument
and the brightness of his eyes. And suddenly I heard a yell, and saw a
long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little
cage that hunched upon its back. Then something—something struggling
violently—was lifted high against the sky, a black, vague enigma
against the starlight; and as this black object came down again, I saw
by the green brightness that it was a man. For an instant he was
clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed;
three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of
considerable consequence. I could see his staring eyes and gleams of
light on his studs and watch chain. He vanished behind the mound, and
for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking and a
sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians.

I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands over my
ears, and bolted into the scullery. The curate, who had been crouching
silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed, cried out
quite loudly at my desertion of him, and came running after me.

That night, as we lurked in the scullery, balanced between our horror
and the terrible fascination this peeping had, although I felt an
urgent need of action I tried in vain to conceive some plan of escape;
but afterwards, during the second day, I was able to consider our
position with great clearness. The curate, I found, was quite incapable
of discussion; this new and culminating atrocity had robbed him of all
vestiges of reason or forethought. Practically he had already sunk to
the level of an animal. But as the saying goes, I gripped myself with
both hands. It grew upon my mind, once I could face the facts, that
terrible as our position was, there was as yet no justification for
absolute despair. Our chief chance lay in the possibility of the
Martians making the pit nothing more than a temporary encampment. Or
even if they kept it permanently, they might not consider it necessary
to guard it, and a chance of escape might be afforded us. I also
weighed very carefully the possibility of our digging a way out in a
direction away from the pit, but the chances of our emerging within
sight of some sentinel fighting-machine seemed at first too great. And
I should have had to do all the digging myself. The curate would
certainly have failed me.

It was on the third day, if my memory serves me right, that I saw the
lad killed. It was the only occasion on which I actually saw the
Martians feed. After that experience I avoided the hole in the wall for
the better part of a day. I went into the scullery, removed the door,
and spent some hours digging with my hatchet as silently as possible;
but when I had made a hole about a couple of feet deep the loose earth
collapsed noisily, and I did not dare continue. I lost heart, and lay
down on the scullery floor for a long time, having no spirit even to
move. And after that I abandoned altogether the idea of escaping by
excavation.

It says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that at
first I entertained little or no hope of our escape being brought about
by their overthrow through any human effort. But on the fourth or fifth
night I heard a sound like heavy guns.

It was very late in the night, and the moon was shining brightly. The
Martians had taken away the excavating-machine, and, save for a
fighting-machine that stood in the remoter bank of the pit and a
handling-machine that was buried out of my sight in a corner of the pit
immediately beneath my peephole, the place was deserted by them. Except
for the pale glow from the handling-machine and the bars and patches of
white moonlight the pit was in darkness, and, except for the clinking
of the handling-machine, quite still. That night was a beautiful
serenity; save for one planet, the moon seemed to have the sky to
herself. I heard a dog howling, and that familiar sound it was that
made me listen. Then I heard quite distinctly a booming exactly like
the sound of great guns. Six distinct reports I counted, and after a
long interval six again. And that was all.

IV.
THE DEATH OF THE CURATE.

It was on the sixth day of our imprisonment that I peeped for the last
time, and presently found myself alone. Instead of keeping close to me
and trying to oust me from the slit, the curate had gone back into the
scullery. I was struck by a sudden thought. I went back quickly and
quietly into the scullery. In the darkness I heard the curate drinking.
I snatched in the darkness, and my fingers caught a bottle of burgundy.

For a few minutes there was a tussle. The bottle struck the floor and
broke, and I desisted and rose. We stood panting and threatening each
other. In the end I planted myself between him and the food, and told
him of my determination to begin a discipline. I divided the food in
the pantry, into rations to last us ten days. I would not let him eat
any more that day. In the afternoon he made a feeble effort to get at
the food. I had been dozing, but in an instant I was awake. All day and
all night we sat face to face, I weary but resolute, and he weeping and
complaining of his immediate hunger. It was, I know, a night and a day,
but to me it seemed—it seems now—an interminable length of time.

And so our widened incompatibility ended at last in open conflict. For
two vast days we struggled in undertones and wrestling contests. There
were times when I beat and kicked him madly, times when I cajoled and
persuaded him, and once I tried to bribe him with the last bottle of
burgundy, for there was a rain-water pump from which I could get water.
But neither force nor kindness availed; he was indeed beyond reason. He
would neither desist from his attacks on the food nor from his noisy
babbling to himself. The rudimentary precautions to keep our
imprisonment endurable he would not observe. Slowly I began to realise
the complete overthrow of his intelligence, to perceive that my sole
companion in this close and sickly darkness was a man insane.

From certain vague memories I am inclined to think my own mind wandered
at times. I had strange and hideous dreams whenever I slept. It sounds
paradoxical, but I am inclined to think that the weakness and insanity
of the curate warned me, braced me, and kept me a sane man.

On the eighth day he began to talk aloud instead of whispering, and
nothing I could do would moderate his speech.

“It is just, O God!” he would say, over and over again. “It is just. On
me and mine be the punishment laid. We have sinned, we have fallen
short. There was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in the dust,
and I held my peace. I preached acceptable folly—my God, what
folly!—when I should have stood up, though I died for it, and called
upon them to repent—repent! . . . Oppressors of the poor and needy! . .
. The wine press of God!”

Then he would suddenly revert to the matter of the food I withheld from
him, praying, begging, weeping, at last threatening. He began to raise
his voice—I prayed him not to. He perceived a hold on me—he threatened
he would shout and bring the Martians upon us. For a time that scared
me; but any concession would have shortened our chance of escape beyond
estimating. I defied him, although I felt no assurance that he might
not do this thing. But that day, at any rate, he did not. He talked
with his voice rising slowly, through the greater part of the eighth
and ninth days—threats, entreaties, mingled with a torrent of half-sane
and always frothy repentance for his vacant sham of God’s service, such
as made me pity him. Then he slept awhile, and began again with renewed
strength, so loudly that I must needs make him desist.

“Be still!” I implored.

He rose to his knees, for he had been sitting in the darkness near the
copper.

“I have been still too long,” he said, in a tone that must have reached
the pit, “and now I must bear my witness. Woe unto this unfaithful
city! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! Woe! To the inhabitants of the earth by
reason of the other voices of the trumpet——”

“Shut up!” I said, rising to my feet, and in a terror lest the Martians
should hear us. “For God’s sake——”

“Nay,” shouted the curate, at the top of his voice, standing likewise
and extending his arms. “Speak! The word of the Lord is upon me!”

In three strides he was at the door leading into the kitchen.

“I must bear my witness! I go! It has already been too long delayed.”

I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. In a
flash I was after him. I was fierce with fear. Before he was halfway
across the kitchen I had overtaken him. With one last touch of humanity
I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. He went headlong
forward and lay stretched on the ground. I stumbled over him and stood
panting. He lay still.

Suddenly I heard a noise without, the run and smash of slipping
plaster, and the triangular aperture in the wall was darkened. I looked
up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming slowly across
the hole. One of its gripping limbs curled amid the debris; another
limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams. I stood
petrified, staring. Then I saw through a sort of glass plate near the
edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and the large dark eyes
of a Martian, peering, and then a long metallic snake of tentacle came
feeling slowly through the hole.

I turned by an effort, stumbled over the curate, and stopped at the
scullery door. The tentacle was now some way, two yards or more, in the
room, and twisting and turning, with queer sudden movements, this way
and that. For a while I stood fascinated by that slow, fitful advance.
Then, with a faint, hoarse cry, I forced myself across the scullery. I
trembled violently; I could scarcely stand upright. I opened the door
of the coal cellar, and stood there in the darkness staring at the
faintly lit doorway into the kitchen, and listening. Had the Martian
seen me? What was it doing now?

Something was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now and then
it tapped against the wall, or started on its movements with a faint
metallic ringing, like the movements of keys on a split-ring. Then a
heavy body—I knew too well what—was dragged across the floor of the
kitchen towards the opening. Irresistibly attracted, I crept to the
door and peeped into the kitchen. In the triangle of bright outer
sunlight I saw the Martian, in its Briareus of a handling-machine,
scrutinizing the curate’s head. I thought at once that it would infer
my presence from the mark of the blow I had given him.

I crept back to the coal cellar, shut the door, and began to cover
myself up as much as I could, and as noiselessly as possible in the
darkness, among the firewood and coal therein. Every now and then I
paused, rigid, to hear if the Martian had thrust its tentacles through
the opening again.

Then the faint metallic jingle returned. I traced it slowly feeling
over the kitchen. Presently I heard it nearer—in the scullery, as I
judged. I thought that its length might be insufficient to reach me. I
prayed copiously. It passed, scraping faintly across the cellar door.
An age of almost intolerable suspense intervened; then I heard it
fumbling at the latch! It had found the door! The Martians understood
doors!

It worried at the catch for a minute, perhaps, and then the door
opened.

In the darkness I could just see the thing—like an elephant’s trunk
more than anything else—waving towards me and touching and examining
the wall, coals, wood and ceiling. It was like a black worm swaying its
blind head to and fro.

Once, even, it touched the heel of my boot. I was on the verge of
screaming; I bit my hand. For a time the tentacle was silent. I could
have fancied it had been withdrawn. Presently, with an abrupt click, it
gripped something—I thought it had me!—and seemed to go out of the
cellar again. For a minute I was not sure. Apparently it had taken a
lump of coal to examine.

I seized the opportunity of slightly shifting my position, which had
become cramped, and then listened. I whispered passionate prayers for
safety.

Then I heard the slow, deliberate sound creeping towards me again.
Slowly, slowly it drew near, scratching against the walls and tapping
the furniture.

While I was still doubtful, it rapped smartly against the cellar door
and closed it. I heard it go into the pantry, and the biscuit-tins
rattled and a bottle smashed, and then came a heavy bump against the
cellar door. Then silence that passed into an infinity of suspense.

Had it gone?

At last I decided that it had.

It came into the scullery no more; but I lay all the tenth day in the
close darkness, buried among coals and firewood, not daring even to
crawl out for the drink for which I craved. It was the eleventh day
before I ventured so far from my security.

V.
THE STILLNESS.

My first act before I went into the pantry was to fasten the door
between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was empty; every
scrap of food had gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all on the
previous day. At that discovery I despaired for the first time. I took
no food, or no drink either, on the eleventh or the twelfth day.

At first my mouth and throat were parched, and my strength ebbed
sensibly. I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of
despondent wretchedness. My mind ran on eating. I thought I had become
deaf, for the noises of movement I had been accustomed to hear from the
pit had ceased absolutely. I did not feel strong enough to crawl
noiselessly to the peephole, or I would have gone there.

On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance of
alarming the Martians, I attacked the creaking rain-water pump that
stood by the sink, and got a couple of glassfuls of blackened and
tainted rain water. I was greatly refreshed by this, and emboldened by
the fact that no enquiring tentacle followed the noise of my pumping.

During these days, in a rambling, inconclusive way, I thought much of
the curate and of the manner of his death.

On the thirteenth day I drank some more water, and dozed and thought
disjointedly of eating and of vague impossible plans of escape.
Whenever I dozed I dreamt of horrible phantasms, of the death of the
curate, or of sumptuous dinners; but, asleep or awake, I felt a keen
pain that urged me to drink again and again. The light that came into
the scullery was no longer grey, but red. To my disordered imagination
it seemed the colour of blood.

On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised to
find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the hole in
the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a crimson-coloured
obscurity.

It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar
sequence of sounds in the kitchen, and, listening, identified it as the
snuffing and scratching of a dog. Going into the kitchen, I saw a dog’s
nose peering in through a break among the ruddy fronds. This greatly
surprised me. At the scent of me he barked shortly.

I thought if I could induce him to come into the place quietly I should
be able, perhaps, to kill and eat him; and in any case, it would be
advisable to kill him, lest his actions attracted the attention of the
Martians.

I crept forward, saying “Good dog!” very softly; but he suddenly
withdrew his head and disappeared.

I listened—I was not deaf—but certainly the pit was still. I heard a
sound like the flutter of a bird’s wings, and a hoarse croaking, but
that was all.

For a long while I lay close to the peephole, but not daring to move
aside the red plants that obscured it. Once or twice I heard a faint
pitter-patter like the feet of the dog going hither and thither on the
sand far below me, and there were more birdlike sounds, but that was
all. At length, encouraged by the silence, I looked out.

Except in the corner, where a multitude of crows hopped and fought over
the skeletons of the dead the Martians had consumed, there was not a
living thing in the pit.

I stared about me, scarcely believing my eyes. All the machinery had
gone. Save for the big mound of greyish-blue powder in one corner,
certain bars of aluminium in another, the black birds, and the
skeletons of the killed, the place was merely an empty circular pit in
the sand.

Slowly I thrust myself out through the red weed, and stood upon the
mound of rubble. I could see in any direction save behind me, to the
north, and neither Martians nor sign of Martians were to be seen. The
pit dropped sheerly from my feet, but a little way along the rubbish
afforded a practicable slope to the summit of the ruins. My chance of
escape had come. I began to tremble.

I hesitated for some time, and then, in a gust of desperate resolution,
and with a heart that throbbed violently, I scrambled to the top of the
mound in which I had been buried so long.

I looked about again. To the northward, too, no Martian was visible.

When I had last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight it had been a
straggling street of comfortable white and red houses, interspersed
with abundant shady trees. Now I stood on a mound of smashed brickwork,
clay, and gravel, over which spread a multitude of red cactus-shaped
plants, knee-high, without a solitary terrestrial growth to dispute
their footing. The trees near me were dead and brown, but further a
network of red thread scaled the still living stems.

The neighbouring houses had all been wrecked, but none had been burned;
their walls stood, sometimes to the second story, with smashed windows
and shattered doors. The red weed grew tumultuously in their roofless
rooms. Below me was the great pit, with the crows struggling for its
refuse. A number of other birds hopped about among the ruins. Far away
I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces of men
there were none.

The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly
bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed that
covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh! the
sweetness of the air!

VI.
THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS.

For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my safety.
Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had thought with a
narrow intensity only of our immediate security. I had not realised
what had been happening to the world, had not anticipated this
startling vision of unfamiliar things. I had expected to see Sheen in
ruins—I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of another
planet.

For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men,
yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as
a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by
the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I
felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my
mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a
persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the
animals, under the Martian heel. With us it would be as with them, to
lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed
away.

But so soon as this strangeness had been realised it passed, and my
dominant motive became the hunger of my long and dismal fast. In the
direction away from the pit I saw, beyond a red-covered wall, a patch
of garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I went knee-deep,
and sometimes neck-deep, in the red weed. The density of the weed gave
me a reassuring sense of hiding. The wall was some six feet high, and
when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift my feet to the
crest. So I went along by the side of it, and came to a corner and a
rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble into the garden
I coveted. Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs,
and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I secured, and,
scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through scarlet and
crimson trees towards Kew—it was like walking through an avenue of
gigantic blood drops—possessed with two ideas: to get more food, and to
limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed
unearthly region of the pit.

Some way farther, in a grassy place, was a group of mushrooms which
also I devoured, and then I came upon a brown sheet of flowing shallow
water, where meadows used to be. These fragments of nourishment served
only to whet my hunger. At first I was surprised at this flood in a
hot, dry summer, but afterwards I discovered that it was caused by the
tropical exuberance of the red weed. Directly this extraordinary growth
encountered water it straightway became gigantic and of unparalleled
fecundity. Its seeds were simply poured down into the water of the Wey
and Thames, and its swiftly growing and Titanic water fronds speedily
choked both those rivers.

At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle
of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the Thames water poured in a broad
and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As the
water spread the weed followed them, until the ruined villas of the
Thames valley were for a time lost in this red swamp, whose margin I
explored, and much of the desolation the Martians had caused was
concealed.

In the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread. A
cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the action of certain
bacteria, presently seized upon it. Now by the action of natural
selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting power
against bacterial diseases—they never succumb without a severe
struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead. The fronds
became bleached, and then shrivelled and brittle. They broke off at the
least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early growth
carried their last vestiges out to sea.

My first act on coming to this water was, of course, to slake my
thirst. I drank a great deal of it and, moved by an impulse, gnawed
some fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly,
metallic taste. I found the water was sufficiently shallow for me to
wade securely, although the red weed impeded my feet a little; but the
flood evidently got deeper towards the river, and I turned back to
Mortlake. I managed to make out the road by means of occasional ruins
of its villas and fences and lamps, and so presently I got out of this
spate and made my way to the hill going up towards Roehampton and came
out on Putney Common.

Here the scenery changed from the strange and unfamiliar to the
wreckage of the familiar: patches of ground exhibited the devastation
of a cyclone, and in a few score yards I would come upon perfectly
undisturbed spaces, houses with their blinds trimly drawn and doors
closed, as if they had been left for a day by the owners, or as if
their inhabitants slept within. The red weed was less abundant; the
tall trees along the lane were free from the red creeper. I hunted for
food among the trees, finding nothing, and I also raided a couple of
silent houses, but they had already been broken into and ransacked. I
rested for the remainder of the daylight in a shrubbery, being, in my
enfeebled condition, too fatigued to push on.

All this time I saw no human beings, and no signs of the Martians. I
encountered a couple of hungry-looking dogs, but both hurried
circuitously away from the advances I made them. Near Roehampton I had
seen two human skeletons—not bodies, but skeletons, picked clean—and in
the wood by me I found the crushed and scattered bones of several cats
and rabbits and the skull of a sheep. But though I gnawed parts of
these in my mouth, there was nothing to be got from them.

After sunset I struggled on along the road towards Putney, where I
think the Heat-Ray must have been used for some reason. And in the
garden beyond Roehampton I got a quantity of immature potatoes,
sufficient to stay my hunger. From this garden one looked down upon
Putney and the river. The aspect of the place in the dusk was
singularly desolate: blackened trees, blackened, desolate ruins, and
down the hill the sheets of the flooded river, red-tinged with the
weed. And over all—silence. It filled me with indescribable terror to
think how swiftly that desolating change had come.

For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and
that I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard by the top of
Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton, with the arms dislocated and
removed several yards from the rest of the body. As I proceeded I
became more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was,
save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished in this part
of the world. The Martians, I thought, had gone on and left the country
desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps even now they were
destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might be they had gone northward.

VII.
THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL.

I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill,
sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to
Leatherhead. I will not tell the needless trouble I had breaking into
that house—afterwards I found the front door was on the latch—nor how I
ransacked every room for food, until just on the verge of despair, in
what seemed to me to be a servant’s bedroom, I found a rat-gnawed crust
and two tins of pineapple. The place had been already searched and
emptied. In the bar I afterwards found some biscuits and sandwiches
that had been overlooked. The latter I could not eat, they were too
rotten, but the former not only stayed my hunger, but filled my
pockets. I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian might come beating that
part of London for food in the night. Before I went to bed I had an
interval of restlessness, and prowled from window to window, peering
out for some sign of these monsters. I slept little. As I lay in bed I
found myself thinking consecutively—a thing I do not remember to have
done since my last argument with the curate. During all the intervening
time my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague
emotional states or a sort of stupid receptivity. But in the night my
brain, reinforced, I suppose, by the food I had eaten, grew clear
again, and I thought.

Three things struggled for possession of my mind: the killing of the
curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate of my
wife. The former gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall; I
saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but
quite without the quality of remorse. I saw myself then as I see myself
now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, the creature of a
sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that. I felt no
condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me. In the
silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of God that
sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I stood my trial,
my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear. I retraced every step
of our conversation from the moment when I had found him crouching
beside me, heedless of my thirst, and pointing to the fire and smoke
that streamed up from the ruins of Weybridge. We had been incapable of
co-operation—grim chance had taken no heed of that. Had I foreseen, I
should have left him at Halliford. But I did not foresee; and crime is
to foresee and do. And I set this down as I have set all this story
down, as it was. There were no witnesses—all these things I might have
concealed. But I set it down, and the reader must form his judgment as
he will.

And when, by an effort, I had set aside that picture of a prostrate
body, I faced the problem of the Martians and the fate of my wife. For
the former I had no data; I could imagine a hundred things, and so,
unhappily, I could for the latter. And suddenly that night became
terrible. I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark. I
found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and
painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from
Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers,
had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I
prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the
darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn
had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat
leaving its hiding place—a creature scarcely larger, an inferior
animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be
hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely,
if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity—pity for
those witless souls that suffer our dominion.

The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink, and
was fretted with little golden clouds. In the road that runs from the
top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon was a number of poor vestiges of the
panic torrent that must have poured Londonward on the Sunday night
after the fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart inscribed
with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with a smashed
wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat trampled into
the now hardened mud, and at the top of West Hill a lot of
blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough. My movements
were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I had an idea of going to
Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest chance of
finding my wife. Certainly, unless death had overtaken them suddenly,
my cousins and she would have fled thence; but it seemed to me I might
find or learn there whither the Surrey people had fled. I knew I wanted
to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the world of men, but
I had no clear idea how the finding might be done. I was also sharply
aware now of my intense loneliness. From the corner I went, under cover
of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of Wimbledon Common,
stretching wide and far.

That dark expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there
was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the verge
of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I
came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the
trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout
resolve to live. And presently, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling
of being watched, I beheld something crouching amid a clump of bushes.
I stood regarding this. I made a step towards it, and it rose up and
became a man armed with a cutlass. I approached him slowly. He stood
silent and motionless, regarding me.

As I drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and
filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged
through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches
mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. His
black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and
sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut
across the lower part of his face.

“Stop!” he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I stopped.
His voice was hoarse. “Where do you come from?” he said.

I thought, surveying him.

“I come from Mortlake,” I said. “I was buried near the pit the Martians
made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and escaped.”

“There is no food about here,” he said. “This is my country. All this
hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge of the
common. There is only food for one. Which way are you going?”

I answered slowly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have been buried in the ruins of a house
thirteen or fourteen days. I don’t know what has happened.”

He looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed
expression.

“I’ve no wish to stop about here,” said I. “I think I shall go to
Leatherhead, for my wife was there.”

He shot out a pointing finger.

“It is you,” said he; “the man from Woking. And you weren’t killed at
Weybridge?”

I recognised him at the same moment.

“You are the artilleryman who came into my garden.”

“Good luck!” he said. “We are lucky ones! Fancy _you_!” He put out a
hand, and I took it. “I crawled up a drain,” he said. “But they didn’t
kill everyone. And after they went away I got off towards Walton across
the fields. But—— It’s not sixteen days altogether—and your hair is
grey.” He looked over his shoulder suddenly. “Only a rook,” he said.
“One gets to know that birds have shadows these days. This is a bit
open. Let us crawl under those bushes and talk.”

“Have you seen any Martians?” I said. “Since I crawled out——”

“They’ve gone away across London,” he said. “I guess they’ve got a
bigger camp there. Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky
is alive with their lights. It’s like a great city, and in the glare
you can just see them moving. By daylight you can’t. But nearer—I
haven’t seen them—” (he counted on his fingers) “five days. Then I saw
a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big. And the night
before last”—he stopped and spoke impressively—“it was just a matter of
lights, but it was something up in the air. I believe they’ve built a
flying-machine, and are learning to fly.”

I stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes.

“Fly!”

“Yes,” he said, “fly.”

I went on into a little bower, and sat down.

“It is all over with humanity,” I said. “If they can do that they will
simply go round the world.”

He nodded.

“They will. But—— It will relieve things over here a bit. And
besides——” He looked at me. “Aren’t you satisfied it _is_ up with
humanity? I am. We’re down; we’re beat.”

I stared. Strange as it may seem, I had not arrived at this fact—a fact
perfectly obvious so soon as he spoke. I had still held a vague hope;
rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind. He repeated his words,
“We’re beat.” They carried absolute conviction.

“It’s all over,” he said. “They’ve lost _one_—just _one_. And they’ve
made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world.
They’ve walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was an
accident. And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming. These green
stars—I’ve seen none these five or six days, but I’ve no doubt they’re
falling somewhere every night. Nothing’s to be done. We’re under! We’re
beat!”

I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in vain to devise
some countervailing thought.

“This isn’t a war,” said the artilleryman. “It never was a war, any
more than there’s war between man and ants.”

Suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory.

“After the tenth shot they fired no more—at least, until the first
cylinder came.”

“How do you know?” said the artilleryman. I explained. He thought.
“Something wrong with the gun,” he said. “But what if there is? They’ll
get it right again. And even if there’s a delay, how can it alter the
end? It’s just men and ants. There’s the ants builds their cities, live
their lives, have wars, revolutions, until the men want them out of the
way, and then they go out of the way. That’s what we are now—just ants.
Only——”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re eatable ants.”

We sat looking at each other.

“And what will they do with us?” I said.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said; “that’s what I’ve been
thinking. After Weybridge I went south—thinking. I saw what was up.
Most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves.
But I’m not so fond of squealing. I’ve been in sight of death once or
twice; I’m not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst,
death—it’s just death. And it’s the man that keeps on thinking comes
through. I saw everyone tracking away south. Says I, ‘Food won’t last
this way,’ and I turned right back. I went for the Martians like a
sparrow goes for man. All round”—he waved a hand to the
horizon—“they’re starving in heaps, bolting, treading on each other. .
. .”

He saw my face, and halted awkwardly.

“No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France,” he said. He
seemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on:
“There’s food all about here. Canned things in shops; wines, spirits,
mineral waters; and the water mains and drains are empty. Well, I was
telling you what I was thinking. ‘Here’s intelligent things,’ I said,
‘and it seems they want us for food. First, they’ll smash us up—ships,
machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation. All that will
go. If we were the size of ants we might pull through. But we’re not.
It’s all too bulky to stop. That’s the first certainty.’ Eh?”

I assented.

“It is; I’ve thought it out. Very well, then—next; at present we’re
caught as we’re wanted. A Martian has only to go a few miles to get a
crowd on the run. And I saw one, one day, out by Wandsworth, picking
houses to pieces and routing among the wreckage. But they won’t keep on
doing that. So soon as they’ve settled all our guns and ships, and
smashed our railways, and done all the things they are doing over
there, they will begin catching us systematic, picking the best and
storing us in cages and things. That’s what they will start doing in a
bit. Lord! They haven’t begun on us yet. Don’t you see that?”

“Not begun!” I exclaimed.

“Not begun. All that’s happened so far is through our not having the
sense to keep quiet—worrying them with guns and such foolery. And
losing our heads, and rushing off in crowds to where there wasn’t any
more safety than where we were. They don’t want to bother us yet.
They’re making their things—making all the things they couldn’t bring
with them, getting things ready for the rest of their people. Very
likely that’s why the cylinders have stopped for a bit, for fear of
hitting those who are here. And instead of our rushing about blind, on
the howl, or getting dynamite on the chance of busting them up, we’ve
got to fix ourselves up according to the new state of affairs. That’s
how I figure it out. It isn’t quite according to what a man wants for
his species, but it’s about what the facts point to. And that’s the
principle I acted upon. Cities, nations, civilisation, progress—it’s
all over. That game’s up. We’re beat.”

“But if that is so, what is there to live for?”

The artilleryman looked at me for a moment.

“There won’t be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so;
there won’t be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little feeds at
restaurants. If it’s amusement you’re after, I reckon the game is up.
If you’ve got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating peas with
a knife or dropping aitches, you’d better chuck ’em away. They ain’t no
further use.”

“You mean——”

“I mean that men like me are going on living—for the sake of the breed.
I tell you, I’m grim set on living. And if I’m not mistaken, you’ll
show what insides _you’ve_ got, too, before long. We aren’t going to be
exterminated. And I don’t mean to be caught either, and tamed and
fattened and bred like a thundering ox. Ugh! Fancy those brown
creepers!”

“You don’t mean to say——”

“I do. I’m going on, under their feet. I’ve got it planned; I’ve
thought it out. We men are beat. We don’t know enough. We’ve got to
learn before we’ve got a chance. And we’ve got to live and keep
independent while we learn. See! That’s what has to be done.”

I stared, astonished, and stirred profoundly by the man’s resolution.

“Great God!” cried I. “But you are a man indeed!” And suddenly I
gripped his hand.

“Eh!” he said, with his eyes shining. “I’ve thought it out, eh?”

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, those who mean to escape their catching must get ready. I’m
getting ready. Mind you, it isn’t all of us that are made for wild
beasts; and that’s what it’s got to be. That’s why I watched you. I had
my doubts. You’re slender. I didn’t know that it was you, you see, or
just how you’d been buried. All these—the sort of people that lived in
these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down
_that_ way—they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud
dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other—Lord!
What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to
work—I’ve seen hundreds of ’em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild
and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d
get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to
take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t
be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the
back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because
they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make
for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world.
Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on
Sundays—fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well,
the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages,
fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing
about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they’ll come and be
caught cheerful. They’ll be quite glad after a bit. They’ll wonder what
people did before there were Martians to take care of them. And the bar
loafers, and mashers, and singers—I can imagine them. I can imagine
them,” he said, with a sort of sombre gratification. “There’ll be any
amount of sentiment and religion loose among them. There’s hundreds of
things I saw with my eyes that I’ve only begun to see clearly these
last few days. There’s lots will take things as they are—fat and
stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it’s all
wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things
are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the
weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always
make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and
submit to persecution and the will of the Lord. Very likely you’ve seen
the same thing. It’s energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean inside
out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety. And those
of a less simple sort will work in a bit of—what is it?—eroticism.”

He paused.

“Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them
to do tricks—who knows?—get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up
and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt us.”

“No,” I cried, “that’s impossible! No human being——”

“What’s the good of going on with such lies?” said the artilleryman.
“There’s men who’d do it cheerful. What nonsense to pretend there
isn’t!”

And I succumbed to his conviction.

“If they come after me,” he said; “Lord, if they come after me!” and
subsided into a grim meditation.

I sat contemplating these things. I could find nothing to bring against
this man’s reasoning. In the days before the invasion no one would have
questioned my intellectual superiority to his—I, a professed and
recognised writer on philosophical themes, and he, a common soldier;
and yet he had already formulated a situation that I had scarcely
realised.

“What are you doing?” I said presently. “What plans have you made?”

He hesitated.

“Well, it’s like this,” he said. “What have we to do? We have to invent
a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure
to bring the children up. Yes—wait a bit, and I’ll make it clearer what
I think ought to be done. The tame ones will go like all tame beasts;
in a few generations they’ll be big, beautiful, rich-blooded,
stupid—rubbish! The risk is that we who keep wild will go
savage—degenerate into a sort of big, savage rat. . . . You see, how I
mean to live is underground. I’ve been thinking about the drains. Of
course those who don’t know drains think horrible things; but under
this London are miles and miles—hundreds of miles—and a few days rain
and London empty will leave them sweet and clean. The main drains are
big enough and airy enough for anyone. Then there’s cellars, vaults,
stores, from which bolting passages may be made to the drains. And the
railway tunnels and subways. Eh? You begin to see? And we form a
band—able-bodied, clean-minded men. We’re not going to pick up any
rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again.”

“As you meant me to go?”

“Well—I parleyed, didn’t I?”

“We won’t quarrel about that. Go on.”

“Those who stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we want
also—mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies—no blasted rolling
eyes. We can’t have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the
useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die.
They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty, after all,
to live and taint the race. And they can’t be happy. Moreover, dying’s
none so dreadful; it’s the funking makes it bad. And in all those
places we shall gather. Our district will be London. And we may even be
able to keep a watch, and run about in the open when the Martians keep
away. Play cricket, perhaps. That’s how we shall save the race. Eh?
It’s a possible thing? But saving the race is nothing in itself. As I
say, that’s only being rats. It’s saving our knowledge and adding to it
is the thing. There men like you come in. There’s books, there’s
models. We must make great safe places down deep, and get all the books
we can; not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas, science books. That’s
where men like you come in. We must go to the British Museum and pick
all those books through. Especially we must keep up our science—learn
more. We must watch these Martians. Some of us must go as spies. When
it’s all working, perhaps I will. Get caught, I mean. And the great
thing is, we must leave the Martians alone. We mustn’t even steal. If
we get in their way, we clear out. We must show them we mean no harm.
Yes, I know. But they’re intelligent things, and they won’t hunt us
down if they have all they want, and think we’re just harmless vermin.”

The artilleryman paused and laid a brown hand upon my arm.

“After all, it may not be so much we may have to learn before—Just
imagine this: four or five of their fighting machines suddenly starting
off—Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in ’em. Not a Martian
in ’em, but men—men who have learned the way how. It may be in my time,
even—those men. Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its
Heat-Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control! What would it
matter if you smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a
bust like that? I reckon the Martians’ll open their beautiful eyes!
Can’t you see them, man? Can’t you see them hurrying, hurrying—puffing
and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something
out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they
are fumbling over it, _swish_ comes the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has
come back to his own.”

For a while the imaginative daring of the artilleryman, and the tone of
assurance and courage he assumed, completely dominated my mind. I
believed unhesitatingly both in his forecast of human destiny and in
the practicability of his astonishing scheme, and the reader who thinks
me susceptible and foolish must contrast his position, reading steadily
with all his thoughts about his subject, and mine, crouching fearfully
in the bushes and listening, distracted by apprehension. We talked in
this manner through the early morning time, and later crept out of the
bushes, and, after scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately
to the house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair. It was the coal
cellar of the place, and when I saw the work he had spent a week
upon—it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to
reach to the main drain on Putney Hill—I had my first inkling of the
gulf between his dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in
a day. But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that
morning until past midday at his digging. We had a garden barrow and
shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range. We refreshed
ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring
pantry. I found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the
world in this steady labour. As we worked, I turned his project over in
my mind, and presently objections and doubts began to arise; but I
worked there all the morning, so glad was I to find myself with a
purpose again. After working an hour I began to speculate on the
distance one had to go before the cloaca was reached, the chances we
had of missing it altogether. My immediate trouble was why we should
dig this long tunnel, when it was possible to get into the drain at
once down one of the manholes, and work back to the house. It seemed to
me, too, that the house was inconveniently chosen, and required a
needless length of tunnel. And just as I was beginning to face these
things, the artilleryman stopped digging, and looked at me.

“We’re working well,” he said. He put down his spade. “Let us knock off
a bit,” he said. “I think it’s time we reconnoitred from the roof of
the house.”

I was for going on, and after a little hesitation he resumed his spade;
and then suddenly I was struck by a thought. I stopped, and so did he
at once.

“Why were you walking about the common,” I said, “instead of being
here?”

“Taking the air,” he said. “I was coming back. It’s safer by night.”

“But the work?”

“Oh, one can’t always work,” he said, and in a flash I saw the man
plain. He hesitated, holding his spade. “We ought to reconnoitre now,”
he said, “because if any come near they may hear the spades and drop
upon us unawares.”

I was no longer disposed to object. We went together to the roof and
stood on a ladder peeping out of the roof door. No Martians were to be
seen, and we ventured out on the tiles, and slipped down under shelter
of the parapet.

From this position a shrubbery hid the greater portion of Putney, but
we could see the river below, a bubbly mass of red weed, and the low
parts of Lambeth flooded and red. The red creeper swarmed up the trees
about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and dead, and
set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its clusters. It was strange how
entirely dependent both these things were upon flowing water for their
propagation. About us neither had gained a footing; laburnums, pink
mays, snowballs, and trees of arbor-vitae, rose out of laurels and
hydrangeas, green and brilliant into the sunlight. Beyond Kensington
dense smoke was rising, and that and a blue haze hid the northward
hills.

The artilleryman began to tell me of the sort of people who still
remained in London.

“One night last week,” he said, “some fools got the electric light in
order, and there was all Regent Street and the Circus ablaze, crowded
with painted and ragged drunkards, men and women, dancing and shouting
till dawn. A man who was there told me. And as the day came they became
aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham and looking
down at them. Heaven knows how long he had been there. It must have
given some of them a nasty turn. He came down the road towards them,
and picked up nearly a hundred too drunk or frightened to run away.”

Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!

From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his grandiose
plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently of the
possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than half
believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to understand
something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid on doing
nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no question that
he personally was to capture and fight the great machine.

After a time we went down to the cellar. Neither of us seemed disposed
to resume digging, and when he suggested a meal, I was nothing loath.
He became suddenly very generous, and when we had eaten he went away
and returned with some excellent cigars. We lit these, and his optimism
glowed. He was inclined to regard my coming as a great occasion.

“There’s some champagne in the cellar,” he said.

“We can dig better on this Thames-side burgundy,” said I.

“No,” said he; “I am host today. Champagne! Great God! We’ve a heavy
enough task before us! Let us take a rest and gather strength while we
may. Look at these blistered hands!”

And pursuant to this idea of a holiday, he insisted upon playing cards
after we had eaten. He taught me euchre, and after dividing London
between us, I taking the northern side and he the southern, we played
for parish points. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to the sober
reader, it is absolutely true, and what is more remarkable, I found the
card game and several others we played extremely interesting.

Strange mind of man! that, with our species upon the edge of
extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before
us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the
chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the “joker” with vivid
delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough
chess games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit a
lamp.

After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the artilleryman
finished the champagne. We went on smoking the cigars. He was no longer
the energetic regenerator of his species I had encountered in the
morning. He was still optimistic, but it was a less kinetic, a more
thoughtful optimism. I remember he wound up with my health, proposed in
a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence. I took a
cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights of which he had spoken
that blazed so greenly along the Highgate hills.

At first I stared unintelligently across the London valley. The
northern hills were shrouded in darkness; the fires near Kensington
glowed redly, and now and then an orange-red tongue of flame flashed up
and vanished in the deep blue night. All the rest of London was black.
Then, nearer, I perceived a strange light, a pale, violet-purple
fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze. For a space I could
not understand it, and then I knew that it must be the red weed from
which this faint irradiation proceeded. With that realisation my
dormant sense of wonder, my sense of the proportion of things, awoke
again. I glanced from that to Mars, red and clear, glowing high in the
west, and then gazed long and earnestly at the darkness of Hampstead
and Highgate.

I remained a very long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque
changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the midnight
prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent revulsion of
feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful
symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. I seemed a
traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse. I
resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great things to
his drink and gluttony, and to go on into London. There, it seemed to
me, I had the best chance of learning what the Martians and my
fellowmen were doing. I was still upon the roof when the late moon
rose.

VIII.
DEAD LONDON.

After I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and by
the High Street across the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was
tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its
fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that
presently removed it so swiftly.

At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I found a
man lying. He was as black as a sweep with the black dust, alive, but
helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I could get nothing from him but
curses and furious lunges at my head. I think I should have stayed by
him but for the brutal expression of his face.

There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and it
grew thicker in Fulham. The streets were horribly quiet. I got
food—sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable—in a baker’s shop here.
Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of powder, and I
passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of the burning was
an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet
again.

Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon
dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the Fulham
Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly past
them. The black powder covered them over, and softened their outlines.
One or two had been disturbed by dogs.

Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in the
City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds drawn,
the desertion, and the stillness. In some places plunderers had been at
work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine shops. A
jeweller’s window had been broken open in one place, but apparently the
thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains and a watch lay
scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch them. Farther on
was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the hand that hung over
her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown dress, and a smashed
magnum of champagne formed a pool across the pavement. She seemed
asleep, but she was dead.

The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the
stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death—it was the
stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction that
had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis, and had
annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these houses and
leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and derelict. . . .

In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black powder.
It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling. It crept
almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing alternation of
two notes, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” keeping on perpetually. When I
passed streets that ran northward it grew in volume, and houses and
buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off again. It came in a full tide
down Exhibition Road. I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens,
wondering at this strange, remote wailing. It was as if that mighty
desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude.

“Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” wailed that superhuman note—great waves of
sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway, between the tall
buildings on each side. I turned northwards, marvelling, towards the
iron gates of Hyde Park. I had half a mind to break into the Natural
History Museum and find my way up to the summits of the towers, in
order to see across the park. But I decided to keep to the ground,
where quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the Exhibition Road.
All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and still,
and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. At the top,
near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight—a bus overturned, and
the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over this for a time,
and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew
stronger and stronger, though I could see nothing above the housetops
on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to the northwest.

“Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to me,
from the district about Regent’s Park. The desolating cry worked upon
my mind. The mood that had sustained me passed. The wailing took
possession of me. I found I was intensely weary, footsore, and now
again hungry and thirsty.

It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city of the
dead? Why was I alone when all London was lying in state, and in its
black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely. My mind ran on old friends
that I had forgotten for years. I thought of the poisons in the
chemists’ shops, of the liquors the wine merchants stored; I recalled
the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as I knew, shared the
city with myself. . . .

I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were black
powder and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the gratings
of the cellars of some of the houses. I grew very thirsty after the
heat of my long walk. With infinite trouble I managed to break into a
public-house and get food and drink. I was weary after eating, and went
into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black horsehair sofa I
found there.

I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, “Ulla, ulla,
ulla, ulla.” It was now dusk, and after I had routed out some biscuits
and a cheese in the bar—there was a meat safe, but it contained nothing
but maggots—I wandered on through the silent residential squares to
Baker Street—Portman Square is the only one I can name—and so came out
at last upon Regent’s Park. And as I emerged from the top of Baker
Street, I saw far away over the trees in the clearness of the sunset
the hood of the Martian giant from which this howling proceeded. I was
not terrified. I came upon him as if it were a matter of course. I
watched him for some time, but he did not move. He appeared to be
standing and yelling, for no reason that I could discover.

I tried to formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of “Ulla,
ulla, ulla, ulla,” confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired to be very
fearful. Certainly I was more curious to know the reason of this
monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back away from the park and
struck into Park Road, intending to skirt the park, went along under
the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this stationary, howling
Martian from the direction of St. John’s Wood. A couple of hundred
yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping chorus, and saw, first a
dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws coming headlong
towards me, and then a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of him. He
made a wide curve to avoid me, as though he feared I might prove a
fresh competitor. As the yelping died away down the silent road, the
wailing sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” reasserted itself.

I came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to St. John’s Wood
station. At first I thought a house had fallen across the road. It was
only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw, with a start, this
mechanical Samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and
twisted, among the ruins it had made. The forepart was shattered. It
seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been
overwhelmed in its overthrow. It seemed to me then that this might have
happened by a handling-machine escaping from the guidance of its
Martian. I could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the
twilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat was
smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had left,
were invisible to me.

Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards
Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second
Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the
Zoological Gardens, and silent. A little beyond the ruins about the
smashed handling-machine I came upon the red weed again, and found the
Regent’s Canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation.

As I crossed the bridge, the sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” ceased.
It was, as it were, cut off. The silence came like a thunderclap.

The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees
towards the park were growing black. All about me the red weed
clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness.
Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. But while
that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable; by
virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life about
me had upheld me. Then suddenly a change, the passing of something—I
knew not what—and then a stillness that could be felt. Nothing but this
gaunt quiet.

London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in the white houses
were like the eye sockets of skulls. About me my imagination found a
thousand noiseless enemies moving. Terror seized me, a horror of my
temerity. In front of me the road became pitchy black as though it was
tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway. I could
not bring myself to go on. I turned down St. John’s Wood Road, and ran
headlong from this unendurable stillness towards Kilburn. I hid from
the night and the silence, until long after midnight, in a cabmen’s
shelter in Harrow Road. But before the dawn my courage returned, and
while the stars were still in the sky I turned once more towards
Regent’s Park. I missed my way among the streets, and presently saw
down a long avenue, in the half-light of the early dawn, the curve of
Primrose Hill. On the summit, towering up to the fading stars, was a
third Martian, erect and motionless like the others.

An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it. And I would
save myself even the trouble of killing myself. I marched on recklessly
towards this Titan, and then, as I drew nearer and the light grew, I
saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and clustering about
the hood. At that my heart gave a bound, and I began running along the
road.

I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund’s Terrace (I
waded breast-high across a torrent of water that was rushing down from
the waterworks towards the Albert Road), and emerged upon the grass
before the rising of the sun. Great mounds had been heaped about the
crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it—it was the final and
largest place the Martians had made—and from behind these heaps there
rose a thin smoke against the sky. Against the sky line an eager dog
ran and disappeared. The thought that had flashed into my mind grew
real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling exultation,
as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Out of the hood
hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds pecked and tore.

In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon
its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space
it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of
material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in
their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines,
and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the
Martians—_dead!_—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against
which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being
slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest
things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen
had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease
have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of
our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this
natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no
germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause
putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are
altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly
these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic
allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they
were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and
fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought
his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would
still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For
neither do men live nor die in vain.

Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in that
great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have seemed to
them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also at that time
this death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that these things that
had been alive and so terrible to men were dead. For a moment I
believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that
God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain them in the night.

I stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously, even
as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his rays. The
pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and wonderful
in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their tortuous forms,
rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows towards the light.
A multitude of dogs, I could hear, fought over the bodies that lay
darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me. Across the pit on its
farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine
with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when
decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At
the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the huge fighting-machine
that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh
that dripped down upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primrose
Hill.

I turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed now
in birds, stood those other two Martians that I had seen overnight,
just as death had overtaken them. The one had died, even as it had been
crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to die, and its voice
had gone on perpetually until the force of its machinery was exhausted.
They glittered now, harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the
brightness of the rising sun.

All about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting
destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities. Those who have only
seen London veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine
the naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses.

Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the
splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear sky,
and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs caught
the light and glared with a white intensity.

Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted, blue and crowded with houses;
westward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the Martians,
the green waves of Regent’s Park, the Langham Hotel, the dome of the
Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant mansions of the
Brompton Road came out clear and little in the sunrise, the jagged
ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far away and blue were the
Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like two
silver rods. The dome of St. Paul’s was dark against the sunrise, and
injured, I saw for the first time, by a huge gaping cavity on its
western side.

And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and
churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous hopes
and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this
human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung
over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and
that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city
of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of emotion that
was near akin to tears.

The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The
survivors of the people scattered over the country—leaderless, lawless,
foodless, like sheep without a shepherd—the thousands who had fled by
sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and
stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the
vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the
destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of
houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would
presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with
the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended my hands
towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought I—in a year.
. . .

With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the
old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever.

IX.
WRECKAGE.

And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is not
altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly, all
that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising
God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget.

Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that, so
far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow,
several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the
previous night. One man—the first—had gone to St. Martin’s-le-Grand,
and, while I sheltered in the cabmen’s hut, had contrived to telegraph
to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a
thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed
into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh,
Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the verge of the
pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and
staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making up trains,
even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church bells that
had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, until all
England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced, unkempt, scorched
along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to
gaunt, staring figures of despair. And for the food! Across the
Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and
meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed
going Londonward in those days. But of all this I have no memory. I
drifted—a demented man. I found myself in a house of kindly people, who
had found me on the third day wandering, weeping, and raving through
the streets of St. John’s Wood. They have told me since that I was
singing some insane doggerel about “The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah!
The Last Man Left Alive!” Troubled as they were with their own affairs,
these people, whose name, much as I would like to express my gratitude
to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves
with me, sheltered me, and protected me from myself. Apparently they
had learned something of my story from me during the days of my lapse.

Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me what
they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was
imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian.
He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any
provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness
of power.

I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely man
and a sad one, and they bore with me. I remained with them four days
after my recovery. All that time I felt a vague, a growing craving to
look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so
happy and bright in my past. It was a mere hopeless desire to feast
upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could to divert me
from this morbidity. But at last I could resist the impulse no longer,
and, promising faithfully to return to them, and parting, as I will
confess, from these four-day friends with tears, I went out again into
the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and empty.

Already they were busy with returning people; in places even there were
shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water.

I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my
melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking, how busy the
streets and vivid the moving life about me. So many people were abroad
everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed incredible
that any great proportion of the population could have been slain. But
then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met, how
shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, and that
every other man still wore his dirty rags. Their faces seemed all with
one of two expressions—a leaping exultation and energy or a grim
resolution. Save for the expression of the faces, London seemed a city
of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread sent
us by the French government. The ribs of the few horses showed
dismally. Haggard special constables with white badges stood at the
corners of every street. I saw little of the mischief wrought by the
Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and there I saw the red
weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge.

At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts of
that grotesque time—a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket of the
red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. It was the
placard of the first newspaper to resume publication—the _Daily Mail_.
I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket. Most of
it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing had
amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on
the back page. The matter he printed was emotional; the news
organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned nothing fresh
except that already in one week the examination of the Martian
mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the
article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the “Secret
of Flying,” was discovered. At Waterloo I found the free trains that
were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already over.
There were few people in the train, and I was in no mood for casual
conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat with folded arms,
looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows.
And just outside the terminus the train jolted over temporary rails,
and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened ruins. To
Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy with powder of the Black
Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain, and at Clapham
Junction the line had been wrecked again; there were hundreds of
out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by side with the customary
navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty relaying.

All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and
unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue of
its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along the
line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass of
red weed, in appearance between butcher’s meat and pickled cabbage. The
Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the red
climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain nursery
grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the sixth cylinder. A
number of people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in
the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in
the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with
the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and
very painful to the eye. One’s gaze went with infinite relief from the
scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green
softness of the eastward hills.

* * * * *

Judged by the foregoing specimens, the literature of what we are
provisionally considering as hypnotic telepathy would not be regarded as
very cheerful. As a whole, however, the pictures it presents from an
alleged postcarnate life, are cheerful, and some of them very attractive.

Below are some from an alleged George Eliot. They are from notes of Piper
sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor Newbold.

To my taste the matter savors _very_ little of the reputed author. And yet
assuming for the moment that our great authors survive in a fuller life,
presumably they would have to communicate under very embarrassing
conditions: for not only would they have to cramp themselves to produce
work comprehensible here, but the System of Things would have to limit
them, lest their competition should upset the whole system of our literary
development, or rather would have involved a different one from the
beginning.

My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me to scout
it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what that great soul
would have sent from a better world if she had been permitted to
communicate anything more profound than we have been left to find out for
ourselves, or even if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her
manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came
through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come _from_ her, wherever it came
from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within
our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as
distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor
telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material
would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a
reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest
the weakest possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I
have no space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might
be expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from George
Eliot.

And now, since writing the last paragraph and going through the material
half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or perhaps worked myself
up to the conclusion, that if a judicious blue pencil were to take from it
what could be attributed to imperfect means of communication, and what
could be considered as having slopped over from the medium, there would be
a pretty substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without
straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the
heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and the rest of
us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective tastes. But what
would have to be taken out is often ludicrously incongruous with George
Eliot, and taking it out would certainly be open to serious question.

Yet whatever may be the qualities, merits, or demerits of this "George
Eliot" matter, what character it has is its own, and different materially
from any I have seen recorded from any other control. What is vastly more
important, despite the lapses in knowledge, taste, and style, which
negative its being the unmodified production of George Eliot, it
nevertheless presents, _me judice_, the most reasonable, suggestive, and
attractive pictures of a life beyond bodily death that I know of: it is
not a reflection of previous mythologies, it is congruous with the tastes
of what we now consider rational beings, and might well fill their
desires; and it _tallies with our experiences_–in dreams. Yet it is not a
great feat of imagination; but in recent times no great genius has
attacked the subject, and George Eliot would not have been expected to
devote her imagination to it, which raises a slight presumption that what
is told is really told by her from experience.

If I had to venture a guess as to how it came into existence, I should
guess that somebody within range, hardly Mrs. Piper herself, had been
reading George Eliot, or about George Eliot, and the musk-melon pollen had
affected the cucumbers. Professor Newbold, for instance, was entirely able
involuntarily to create and telepath the stories, and better shaped ones.
Some real George Eliot influence may have flowed in too, but on that my
judgment is in suspense.

"George Eliot" comes in abruptly to Hodgson, on February 26, 1897. After a
few preliminaries, in response to a remark of Hodgson's on her dislike of
and disbelief in spiritism, she says:

"… You may have noted the anxiety of such as I to return and
enlighten your fellow men. It is more especially confined to
unbelievers before their departure to this life."

This remark and the persistent efforts of the alleged G.P. who, living,
was a thorough skeptic, would seem strongly "evidential."

_March 5, 1897._

_Hodgson sitting._

[G.E. writes:] "Do you remember me well?… I had a sad life in
many ways, yet in others I was happy, yet I have never known what
real happiness was until I came here…. I was an unbeliever, in
fact almost an agnostic when I left my body, but when I awoke and
found myself alive in another form superior in quality, that is,
my body less gross and heavy, with no pangs of remorse, no
struggling to hold on to the material body, I found it had all
been a dream…." R.H.: "That was your first experience?" G.E.:
"… The moment I had been removed from my body I found at once I
had been thoroughly mistaken in my conjectures. I looked back upon
my whole life in one instant. Every thought, word, or action which
I had ever experienced passed through my mind like a wonderful
panorama as it were before my vision. You cannot begin to imagine
anything so real and extraordinary as this first awakening…. I
awoke in a realm of golden light. I heard the voices of friends
who had gone before calling to me to follow them. At the moment
the thrill of joy was so intense I was like one standing
spellbound before a beautiful panorama. The music which filled my
soul was like a tremendous symphony. I had never heard nor dreamed
of anything half so beautiful….

"Another thing which seemed to me beautiful was the tranquillity
of everyone. You will perhaps remember that I had left a state
where no one ever knew what tranquillity meant."

_March 13, 1807:_ "I was speaking about the songs of our birds.
Then the birds seemed to pass beyond my vision, and I longed for
music of other kinds…. When, to my surprise, my desires were
filled…. Just before me sat the most beautiful bevy of young
girls that eyes ever rested upon. Some playing stringed
instruments, others that sounded and looked like silver bugles,
but they were all in harmony, and I must truly confess that I
never heard such strains of music before. No mortal mind can
possibly realize anything like it. It was not only in this one
thing that my desires were filled, but in all things accordingly.
I had not one desire, but that it was filled without any apparent
act of myself.

"I longed to see gardens and trees, flowers, etc. I no sooner had
the desire than they appeared…. Such beautiful flowers no human
eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable, yet everything
was real…. I walked and moved along as easily as a fly would
pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had no weight,
nothing cumbersome, nothing…. I passed along through this
garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all friendly to
me, each and every one seemed to be my friend…. I then thought
of different friends I had once known, and my desire was to meet
some one of them, when like every other thought or desire that I
had expressed, the friend of whom I thought instantly appeared."

How much all this is like dreams!

_March 27, 1897._ (A good deal of confusion, out of which appears)
"He will insist upon calling me Miss, but let him if he wishes. I
am very much Mrs. Never mind so long as it suits him….

"I have a desire for reading, when instantly my whole surrounding
is literally filled with books of all kinds and by many different
authors…. When I touched a book and desired to meet its author,
if he or she were in our world, he or she would instantly appear.
[Is this purely incidental reiterated claim for female authors, by
one of them, 'evidential,' or was Mrs. Piper ingenious enough to
invent it? Ed.]…."

The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike touch.

_March 30, 1897._ "I wished to see and realize that some of the
mortal world's great musicians really existed, and asked to be
visited by some one or more of them. When this was expressed,
instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein stood before
me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first. Then the
instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played upon it
with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he was
playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his strains of
music."

She wanted to see Rembrandt, and he came, with a quantity of pictures. She
wanted a symphony, and an orchestra "of some thirty musicians" at once
appeared and gave her several, which she enjoyed to the full.

Now George Eliot was a remarkably good musician. If she wanted an
orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably more than a
hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited resources in
Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane dilution of the writing
(which of course does not appear at its worst in the selected passages)
make a genuine George Eliot control hard to predicate, and yet this
control, like virtually every other one, is an individuality, and is less
unlike George Eliot than is any other control I know. Will difficulties of
communication or any other _tertium quid_, make up the difference? I first
read the record with repulsion, and now find in it some elements of
attraction.

Do you care for a little more? She wanted to see "angels," and gives a
very pretty picture of an experience with a bevy of children. Telepathy
from the sitter will hardly account for the following, especially the
strange turn at the end, which is signally dreamlike.

"I being fond, very fond of writers of ancient history, etc., felt
a strong desire to see Dante, Aristotle and several others.
Shakespeare if such a spirit existed. [An odd bunch of 'writers of
ancient history'! Ed.] As I stood thinking of him a spirit
instantly appeared who speaking said 'I am Bacon.' … As Bacon
neared me he began to speak and quoted to me the following words
'You have questioned my reality. Question it no more. I am
Shakespeare.'"

_June 4, 1897._ "… Speak to me for a moment and if you have
anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose would you kindly
recite a line or two to me. It will give me strength to remain
longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites a poem of Dowden's
beginning,

'I said I will find God and forth I went
To seek him in the clearness of the sky,' etc. Excitement.]

G.E.: 'I will go and see G. and return presently (R.H.: Who says
that?) I do. (R.H.: I do not understand what you mean by G.) I do.
My husband. Do you not know I had a husband? (R.H.: Do you mean by
G. Mr. George Henry Lewes?) [Hand is writing Lewes while I am
saying George Henry] Lewes. Yes I do. Oh I am so happy. And when I
did not mistake altogether my deeds I am more _happy than tongue
can utter_."

As bearing on her feeling for Lewes not many months after his death, the
foregoing does not correspond with some widely credited but unpublished
allegations.

Now does not all this read as if Mrs. Piper were dreaming of George Eliot,
just as any of us might dream? Its quality seems as if it might be a
transcript of one of my own dreams, with the important exceptions that the
dreamer wrote it all out, and that it is made up from a series of dreams,
coming up at intervals for about six months, and apparently only when
Hodgson was present, though there are records of George Eliot appearing to
other sitters at other seances.

* * * * *

We have, then, groped our way to a vague notion of a dream-life on the
part of certain sensitives, which seems to participate in another life, in
some ways similar, that is led by intelligences who have passed beyond the
body.

We are not saying that this interpretation of the phenomena is the correct
one: on the contrary we are constantly haunted by a suspicion that any day
it may be exploded by some new discovery. But we do say, with considerable
confidence, that of all the interpretations yet offered–even including
the pervasive one that "the little boy lied," it surpasses all the others
in the portion of the facts that it fits, and in the weight attached to it
by the most capable students–even by James, who, however, did not accept
it as established, though he gave many indications that he felt himself
likely to. Myers definitely accepted it, not from the impressions of the
sensitives, but from having them capped by a veridical impression of his
own. Through the church service one Sunday morning, he felt an inner voice
assuring him: "Your friend is still with you." Later he found that Gurney,
with whom he had a manifestation-pact, had died the night before. We are
not aware that Myers ever published this, but he told it to the present
writer and presumably to others. The convictions of Hodgson and Sir Oliver
Lodge were interpretations of the phenomena of the sensitives, though
Hodgson, it is now known, was probably mainly influenced by communications
from the alleged postcarnate soul of all possible ones most dear to him.

But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists who talk
out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams. What they see,
and consequently what they say, is a good deal of a jumble. They see and
hear persons they never saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves
more or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does.
Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to
sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found.
Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But
from here on the experiences of the sensitives are more and more unusual.

Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the representative of a
class) never saw before, and of whom she never saw portraits, she
identifies from photographs. Very few people have done that: perhaps very
few have had the chance. There have been many times when I am sure I
could, if photographs had been presented.

Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always "dead"
friends, not of the sensitives, but of the sitters, and abound in
indications of genuineness in scope and accuracy of memory, in
distinctness of individual recollections and characteristics, and in all
the dramatic indications that go to demonstrate personalities. She sees
and hears these personalities again and again, and _keeps them distinct_
in feature and character.

Now what do we mean by personalities? Is one, after all, anything more or
less than an individualized aggregate of cosmic vibrations, physical and
psychical, with the power of producing on us certain impressions. You and
I know our friends as such aggregates, and nothing more.

And what do we mean by discarnate personalities? In most minds, the first
answer will probably bear a pretty close resemblance to Fra Angelico's
angels, and very nice angels they are! But to some of the more prosy minds
that have thought on the subject in the light of the best and fullest
information, or misinformation, probably the answer will be more like
this: A personality, incarnate or postcarnate, in the last analysis, is a
manifestation of the Cosmic Soul. From that the raw material is supplied
with the star dust, and later, through our senses, from the earliest
reactions of our protozoic ancestors, up to our dreams; and the material
is worked up into each personality through reactions with the environment.
Thus it becomes an aggregate of capacities to impress another personality
with certain sensations, ideas, emotions. As already said, the incarnate
personality impresses us thru certain vibrations. But after that portion
of the vibrations constituting "the body" disappears, there still abides
somewhere the capacity of impressing us, at least in the dream life.
Perhaps it abides only in the memory of survivors, and gets into our
dreams telepathically, though that is losing probability every day; and,
with our anthropomorphic habits, we want to know "where" this capacity to
impress us abides. The thinkers generally say: In the Cosmic reservoir,
which I would rather express as the psychic ocean, boundless, fathomless,
throbbing eternally. It seems to be made up of the original mind-potential
plus all thoughts and feelings that have ever been. And into this ocean
seem to be constantly passing those currents that we know as
individualities, that can each influence, and even intermingle with, other
individualities, here as well as there: for here really is there. While
each does this, it still retains its own individuality. This is, of
course, a vague string of guesses venturing outward from the borderland of
our knowledge. It may be a little clearer, the more we bear in mind that
the apparent influencings and interminglings seem to be telepathic.

Now apparently among the accomplishments of a personality, does not
_necessarily_ inhere that of depressing a scale x pounds: for when that
capacity is entirely absent, from the apparent personalities who visit us
in the dream state, they can impress us in every other way, even to all
the reciprocities of sex. But for some reasons not yet understood, with
ordinary dreamers these impressions are not as congruous, persistent,
recurrent, or regulable in the dream life as in the waking life. But with
Mrs. Piper, Hodgson after his death, and especially G.P. and others, were
about as persistent and consistent associates as anybody living, barring
the fact that they could not show themselves over an hour or two at a
time, which was the limit of the medium's psychokinetic power, on which
their manifestations depended. But that these personalities are not in
time to be evolved so that they will be more permanent and consistent with
dreamers generally, would be a contradiction to at least some of the
implications of evolution.

* * * * *

Accepting provisionally the identity of a postcarnate life with the life
indicated in dreams, are there any further indications of its nature?
There are some, which may lend some slight confirmation to the theory of
identity.

It seems to show itself not only in the visions of the sensitives, but in
the dream life of all of us. If Mrs. Piper's dream state (I name her only
as a type) is really one of communication with souls who have passed into
a new life, dream states generally may not extravagantly be supposed to be
foretastes of that life. And so far as concerns their desirability, why
should they not be? Our ordinary dreams are, like the dreams of the
sensitives, superior to time, space, matter and force–to all the trammels
of our waking environment and powers. In dreams we experience unlimited
histories, and pass over unlimited spaces, in an instant; see, hear, feel,
touch, taste, smell, enjoy unlimited things; walk, swim, fly, change
things, with unlimited ease; do things with unlimited power; make what we
will–music, poetry, objects of art, situations, dramas, with unlimited
faculty, and enjoy unlimited society. Unless we have eaten too much, or
otherwise got ourselves out of order in the waking life, in the dream life
we seldom if ever know what it is to be too late for anything, or too far
from anything; we freely fall from chimneys or precipices, and I suppose
it will soon be aeroplanes, with no worse consequences than comfortably
waking up into the everyday world; we sometimes solve the problems which
baffle us here; we see more beautiful things than we see here; and, far
above all, we resume the ties that are broken here.

The indications seem to be that if we ever get the hang of that life, we
can have pretty much what we like, and eliminate what we don't
like–continue what we enjoy, and stop what we suffer–find no bars to
congeniality, or compulsion to boredom. To good dreamers it is unnecessary
to offer proof of any of these assertions, and to prove them to others is
impossible.

The dream life contains so much more beauty, so much fuller emotion, and
such wider reaches than the waking life, that one is tempted to regard it
as the real life, to which the waking life is somehow a necessary
preliminary. So orthodox believers regard the life after death as the real
life: yet most of their hopes regarding that life–even the strongest hope
of rejoining lost loved ones–are realized here during the brief throbs of
the dream life.

There seems to be no happiness from association in our ordinary life which
is not obtainable, by some people at least, from association in the dream
life. And as this appears to exist between incarnate A and postcarnate B,
there is at least a suggestion that it may exist between postcarnate A and
postcarnate B, and to a degree vastly more clear and abiding than during
the present discrepancy between the incarnate and postcarnate conditions?
This of course assumes, that B's appearance in A's dream life, just as he
appeared on earth (though, as I know to be the case, sometimes wiser,
healthier, jollier, and more lovable generally), is something more than a
mild attack of dyspepsia on the part of A.

Dreams do not seem to abound in work, and are often said not to abound in
morality, but I know that they sometimes do–in morality higher than any
attainable in our waking life. Certainly the scant vague indications from
the dream suggestions of a future life do not necessarily preclude
abundant work and morality, any more than work and sundry self-denials are
precluded on a holiday because one does not happen to perform them.
Moreover, the hoped-for future conditions may not contain the necessities
for either labor or self-restraint that present conditions do: they may
not be the same dangers there as here in the _dolce far niente_, or in
Platonic friendships.

* * * * *

Men are not consistent in their attitude regarding dreams. They admit the
dream state to be ideal–constantly use such expressions as "A dream of
loveliness," "Happier than I could even dream," "Surpasses my fondest
dreams," and yet on the other hand they call its experience "but the
baseless vision of a dream." What do they mean by "baseless"? Certainly it
is not lack of vividness or emotional intensity. It is probably the lack
of duration in the happy experiences, and of the possibility of
remembering them, and, still more, of enjoying similar ones at will. Yet
the sensitives do both in recurrent instalments of the dream life, and
like the rest of us, through the intervening waking periods, after the
first hour or so, generally know nothing of the dreams. It is not
vividness of the dream life itself that is lacking, but vividness in our
memories of it. James defines our waking personality as the stream of
consciousness: the dream life gives no such stream. To-night does not
continue last night as to-day continues yesterday. The dream life is not
like a stream, but more like a series, though hardly integral enough to be
a series, of disconnected pools, many of them perhaps more enchanting than
any parts of the waking stream, but not, like that stream, an organic
whole with motion toward definite results, and power to attain them. But
suppose the dream life continues after the body's death, and under
direction toward definite ends, at least so far as the waking life is, and
still free from the trammels of the waking life–suppose us to have at
least as much power to secure its joys and avoid its terrors as we have
regarding those of the waking life; and with all the old intimacies which
it spasmodically restores, restored permanently, and with the discipline
of separation to make them nearer perfect. What more can we manage to
want?

The suggestion has come to more than one student, that when we enter into
life–as spermatozoa, or star dust if you please–we enter into the
eternal life, but that the physical conditions essential to our
development into appreciating it, are a sort of veil between it and our
consciousness. In our waking life we know it only through the veil; but
when in sleep or trance, the material environment is removed from
consciousness, the veil becomes that much thinner, and we get better
glimpses of the transcendent reality.

Does it not seem then as if, in dreams, we enter upon our closer relation
with the hyper-phenomenal mind? All sorts of things seem to be in it, from
the veriest trifles and absurdities up to the highest things our minds can
receive, and presumably an infinity of things higher still. They appear to
flow into us in all sorts of ways, presumably depending upon the condition
of the nerve apparatus through which they flow. If that is out of gear
from any disorder or injury, what it receives is not only trifling, but
often grotesque and painful; while if it is in good estate, it often
receives things far surpassing in beauty and wisdom those of our waking
phenomenal world.

Apparently every dreamer is a medium for this flow, but dreamers vary
immensely in their capacity to receive it–from Hodge, who dreams only
when he has eaten too much, or Professor Gradgrind who never dreams at
all, up to Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Piper.

As oft remarked, dreams generally are nonsense, but some dreams, or parts
of some dreams, are perhaps the most significant things we know. Each
vision, waking or sleeping, must have a cause, and as an expression of
that cause, must be veridical. On the one hand, the cause of a trivial
dream is generally too trivial to be ascertained: it may be too much
lobster, or impaired circulation or respiration; while on the other hand
(and here the paradox seems to be explained), the cause of an important
dream must, _ex vi termini_, be some important event. But important events
are rare, and therefore significant dreams are rare; while trivial events
are frequent, and therefore trivial dreams are frequent.

The important and rare event _may_ be such a conjunction of circumstances
and temperaments as makes it possible for a postcarnate intelligence,
assuming the existence of such, to communicate with an incarnate one. That
such apparent communications are rare tends to indicate their genuineness.

* * * * *

Now to develop a little farther the time-honored hypothesis of a cosmic
soul as explaining dreams, and supported by them.

Admit, provisionally at least, that the medium is merely an extraordinary
dreamer. Does a man do his own dreaming, or is it done for him? Does a man
do his own digesting, circulating, assimilating, or is it done for him? If
he does not do these things himself, who does? About the physical
functions through the sympathetic nerve, we answer unhesitatingly: the
cosmic force. How, then, about the psychic functions? Are they done by the
cosmic psyche?

Like respiration, they are partly under our control, but that does not
affect the problem. Who runs them when we do not run them, even when we
try to stop them that we may get to sleep? Even when, after they have
yielded to our entreaties to stop, and we are asleep, they begin going
again–without our will. The only probability I can make out is that our
thinking is run by a power not ourselves, as much as our other partly
involuntary functions.

To hold that a man does his own dreaming–that it is done by a secondary
layer of his own consciousness–is to hold that we are made up of layers
of consciousness, of which the poorest layer is that of what we call our
waking life, and the better layers are at our service only in our
dreams–that when a man is asleep or mad he can solve problems, compose
music, create pictures, to which, when awake and in his sober senses, and
in a condition to profit by his work, and give profit from it, he is
inadequate.

Nay more, the theory claims that a man's working consciousness–his
self–the only self known to him or the world, will hold and shape his
life by a set of convictions which, in sleep, he will _himself_ prove
wrong, and thereby revolutionize his philosophy and his entire life.
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to attribute all such results–the
solutions of the problems, the music, the pictures, the corrections of the
errors–to a power outside himself?

I cannot believe that there's anything in my individual consciousness
which my experience or that of my ancestors has not placed there–in raw
material at least; or that in working up that raw material _I_ can exert
any genius in my sometimes chaotic dreams that I cannot exert in my
systematized waking hours. All the people I meet and talk with in my
dreams _may_ have been met and talked with by me or my forebears, though I
don't believe it; but the works of art I see have not been known to me or
my ancestors or any other mortal; nor have I any sign of the genius to
combine whatever elements of them I may have seen, into any such designs.
And when in dreams _other_ persons tell me things contrary to my firmest
convictions, in which things I later discover germs of most important
workable truth, the persons who tell me that, and who are different from
me as far as fairly decent persons can differ from each other, are
certainly not, as the good Du Prel would have us believe, myself. All
these things are not figments of _my_ mind–if they are figments of a
mind, it's a mind bigger than mine. The biggest claim I can make, or
assent to anybody else making, is that my mind is telepathically receptive
of the product of that greater mind.

Here are some farther evidences of the greater mind, given by Lombroso
(_After Death, What?_, 320 f.):

It is well known that in his dreams Goethe solved many weighty
scientific problems and put into words many most beautiful verses.
So also La Fontaine (_The Fable of Pleasures_) and Coleridge and
Voltaire. Bernard Palissy had in a dream the inspiration for one
of his most beautiful ceramic pieces….

Holde composed while in a dream _La Phantasie_, which reflects in
its harmony its origin; and Nodier created _Lydia_, and at the
same time a whole theory on the future of dreaming. Condillac in
dream finished a lecture interrupted the evening before. Kruger,
Corda, and Maignan solved in dreams mathematical problems and
theorems. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his _Chapters on Dreams_,
confesses that portions of his most original novels were composed
in the dreaming state. Tartini had while dreaming one of his most
portentous musical inspirations. He saw a spectral form
approaching him. It is Beelzebub in person. He holds a magic
violin in his hands, and the sonata begins. It is a divine adagio,
melancholy-sweet, a lament, a dizzy succession of rapid and
intense notes. Tartini rouses himself, leaps out of bed, seizes
his violin, and reproduces all that he had heard played in his
sleep. He names it the _Sonata del Diavolo_,…

Giovanni Dupré got in a dream the conception of his very beautiful
_Pietà_. One sultry summer day Dupré was lying on a divan thinking
hard on what kind of pose he should choose for the Christ. He fell
asleep, and in dream he saw the entire group at last complete,
with Christ in the very pose he had been aspiring to conceive, but
which his mind had not succeeded in completely realizing.

It is a quite frequent experience that a person perplexed by a problem at
night finds it solved on waking in the morning. Efforts to remember, which
are unsuccessful before going to sleep, on waking are often found
accomplished.

A dream is a work of genius, and in many respects, perhaps most,
especially in vividness of imagination, the best example we have. It is
the most spontaneous, constructed with the least effort from fewest
materials, the least restrained, and often immeasurably surpassing all
works of waking genius in the same department. A genius gets a trifling
hint, and being inspired by the gods (anthropomorphic for: flowed in upon
by the cosmic soul?) builds out of the hint a poem or a drama or a
symphony. You and I build dreams surpassing the poem or the drama or the
symphony, but our friends Dryasdust and Myopia inquire into our
experiences, and sometimes find a little hint on which a dream was built,
and then all dreams are demonstrated things unworthy of serious
consideration. Is it not a more rational view that the fact that the soul
can in the dream state elaborate so much from so little, indicates it to
be then already in a life which has no limits?

Havelock Ellis, in his _World of Dreams_, says (p. 229):

Our eyes close, our muscles grow slack, the reins fall from our
hands. But it sometimes happens that the horse knows the road home
even better than we know it ourselves.

He puts "the horse" outside of the dreamer plainly enough here. He further
says (p. 280).

If we take into account the complete psychic life of dreaming,
subconscious as well as conscious, it is waking, not sleeping,
life which may be said to be limited…. Sleep, Vaschide has said,
is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and,
it may be added, the elder brother….

He quotes from Bergson (_Revue Philosophique_, December, 1908, p. 574):

This dream state is the substratum of our normal state. Nothing is
added in waking life; on the contrary, waking life is obtained by
the limitation, concentration, and tension of that diffuse
psychological life which is the life of dreaming…. To be awake
is to will; cease to will, detach yourself from life, become
disinterested: in so doing you pass from the waking ego to the
dreaming ego, which is less _tense_, but more _extended_ than the
other.

Ellis continues (p. 281):

I have cultivated, so far as I care to, my garden of dreams, and
it scarcely seems to me that it is a large garden. Yet every path
of it, I sometimes think, might lead at last to the heart of the
universe.

But with the exception of a few spasmodic inspirations, the records of
dreams, ordinary or from the sensitives, contain nothing new–nothing to
relieve man from the blessed necessity of eating his bread, intellectual
as well as material, in the sweat of his brow; and, perhaps more important
still, little to make the interests or responsibilities of this life
weaker because of any realized inferiority to those of a possible later
life.

It would apparently be inconsistent in Nature, or God, if you prefer, to
start our evolution under earthly conditions, educating us in knowledge
and character through labor and suffering, but at the same time throwing
open to our perceptions, from another life, a wider range of knowledge and
character attainable without labor or suffering.

I have no time or space or inclination to argue with those who deny a plan
in Nature. He who does, probably lives away from Nature. It appears to
have been a part of that plan that for a long time past most of us should
"believe in" immortality, and that, at least until very lately, none of us
should know anything about it. Confidence in immortality has been a
dangerous thing. So far we haven't all made a very good use of it. Many of
the people who have had most of it and busied themselves most with it, so
to speak, have largely transferred their interests to the other life, and
neglected and abused this one. "Other-worldliness" is a well-named vice,
and positive evidence of immortality might be more dangerous than mere
confidence in it.

All this, I think, supports the notion that whatever, if anything, is in
store for us beyond this life, it would be a self-destructive scheme of
things (or Scheme of Things, if you prefer) that would throw the future
life into farther competition with our interests here, at least before we
are farther evolved here. Looking at history by and large, we children
have not generally been trusted with edge tools until we had grown to some
sort of capacity to handle them. If the Mesopotamians or Egyptians or
Greeks or Romans had had gunpowder, it looks as if they would have blown
most of themselves and each other out of existence, and the rest back into
primitive savagery, and stayed there until the use of gunpowder became one
of the lost arts. But the new knowledge of evolution has given the modern
world a new intellectual interest; and the new altruism, a new moral one.
The reasons for doing one's best in this life, and doing it actively, are
so much stronger and clearer than they were when so many good people could
fall into asceticism and other-worldliness, that perhaps we are now fit to
be trusted with proofs of an after life. It is very suggestive that these
apparent proofs came contemporaneously with the new knowledge tending to
make them safe; and equally suggestive that it is when we have begun to
suffer from certain breakdowns in religion, that we have been provided
with new material for bracing it up.

At the opposite extreme, it also is suggestive that these new indications
that our present life is a petty thing beside a future one, have come just
when modern science has so increased our control over material nature that
we are in peculiar danger of having our interest in higher things buried
beneath material interests, and enervated by over-indulgence in material
delights.

If it be true that, roughly speaking, we are not entrusted with dangerous
things before we are evolved to the point where we can keep their danger
within bounds, the fact that we have not until very lately, if yet, been
entrusted with any verification of the dream of the survival of bodily
death, would seem to confer upon the spiritistic interpretation of the
recent apparent verifications, a pragmatic sanction–an accidental embryo
pun over which the historic student is welcome to a smile, and which,
since the preceding clause was written, I have seen used in all
seriousness by Professor Giddings. Conclusive or not, that "sanction" is
certainly an addition to the arguments that existed before, including the
general argument from evolution. And, so far as the phenomena go to
establish the spiritistic hypothesis, surely they are not to be lightly
regarded because as yet they do not establish it more conclusively.

* * * * *

When during the last century science bowled down the old supports of the
belief in immortality, there grew up a tendency to regard that belief as
an evidence of ignorance, narrowness, and incapacity to face the music.
May not disregard of the possible new supports be rapidly becoming an
evidence of the same characteristics?

When the majority of those who have really studied the phenomena of the
sensitives, starting with absolute skepticism, have come to a new form of
the old belief; and when, of the remaining minority, the weight of
respectable opinion goes so far as suspense of judgment, how does the
argument look? Isn't it at least one of those cases of new phenomena where
it is well to be on guard against old mental habits, not to say
prejudices?

Is it not now vastly more _reasonable_ to believe in a future life than it
was a century ago, or half a century, or quarter of a century? Is it not
already more reasonable to believe in it than not to believe in it? Is it
not already appreciably harder _not_ to believe in it than it was a
generation ago?

* * * * *

So far as I can see, the dream life, from mine up to Mrs. Piper's, vague
as it is, is an argument for immortality _based on evidence_.

The sensitives are not among the world's leading thinkers or
moralists–are not more aristocratic founders for a new faith than were a
certain carpenter's son and certain fishermen; and only by implication do
the sensitives suggest any moral truths, but they do offer more facts to
the modern demand for facts.

Spiritism has a bad name, and it has been in company where it richly
deserved one; but it has been coming into court lately with some very
important-looking testimony from very distinguished witnesses; and some
rather comprehensive minds consider its issues supreme–the principal
issues now upon the horizon, between the gross, luxurious, unthinking,
unaspiring, uncreating life of today, and everything that has, in happier
ages, given us the heritage of the soul–the issues between increasing
comforts and withering ideals–between water-power and Niagara.

The doubt of immortality is not over the innate reasonableness of it: the
universe is immeasurably more reasonable with it than without it; but over
its practicability after the body is gone. We, in our immeasurable wisdom,
don't see how it can work–we don't see how a universe that we don't begin
to know, which already has given us genius and beauty and love, and which
seems to like to give us all it can–birds, flowers, sunsets, stars,
Vermont, the Himalayas, and the Grand Canyon; which, most of all, has
given us the insatiable soul, can manage to give us immortality. Well!
Perhaps we ought not to be grasping–ought to call all we know and have,
enough, and be thankful–thankful above all, perhaps, that as far as we
can see, the hope of immortality cannot be disappointed–that the worst
answer to it must be oblivion. But on whatever grounds we despair of more
(if we are weak enough to despair), surely the least reasonable ground is
that we cannot see more: the mole might as well swear that there is no
Orion.

THE MUSES ON THE HEARTH

"How to be efficient though incompetent" is the title suggested by a
distinguished psychologist for the vocational appeals of the moment. Among
these raucous calls none is more annoying to the ear of experience than
the one which summons the college girl away from the bounty of the
sciences and the humanities to the grudging concreteness of a domestic
science, a household economy, from which stars and sonnets must perforce
be excluded. We have, indeed, no quarrel with the conspicuous place now
given to the word "home" in all discussions of women's vocations.
Suffragists and anti-suffragists, feminists and anti-feminists have united
to clear a noble term from the mists of sentimentality and to reinstate it
in the vocabulary of sincere and candid speakers. More frankly than a
quarter of a century ago, educated women may now glory in the work
allotted to their sex. The most radical feminist writer of the day has
given perfect expression to the home's demand. Husband and children, she
says, have been able to count on a woman "as they could count on the fire
on the hearth, the cool shade under the tree, the water in the well, the
bread in the sacrament." We may go farther and say that our high emprise
does not depend upon husband and children. Married or unmarried, fruitful
or barren, with a vocation or without, we must make of the world a home
for the race. So far from quarrelling with the hypothesis of the domestic
scientists, we turn it into a confession of faith. It is their conclusions
that will not bear the test of experience. Because women students can
anticipate no more important career than home-making, it is argued that
within their four undergraduate years training should be given in the
practical details of house-keeping. Any woman who has been both a student
and a housekeeper knows that this argument is fallacious.

Before examining it, however, we must clear away possible
misunderstandings. Our discussion concerns colleges and not elementary
schools. Those who are loudest in denouncing the aristocratic theory of a
college education must admit that colleges contain, even today, incredible
as it sometimes seems, a selected group of young women. It is also true
that the High Schools contain selected groups. Below them are the people's
schools. The girls who do not go beyond these are to be the wives of
working men, in many cases can learn nothing from their mothers, and
before marriage may themselves be caught in the treadmill of daily labor.
It is probable that to these children of impoverished future we should
give the chance to learn in school facts which may make directly for
national health and well-being. But the girls in the most democratic state
university in this country are selected by their own ambition, if by
nothing else, for a higher level of life. Their power and their
opportunities to learn do not end on Commencement Day. The higher we go in
the scale of education, until we reach the graduate professional schools,
the less are we able and the less need we be concerned to anticipate the
specific activities of the future.

Furthermore, we are discussing colleges of "liberal" studies, not
technical schools. Into the former have strayed many students who belong
in the latter. The tragic thing about their errantry is that presidents
and faculties, instead of setting them in the right path, try to make the
college over to suit them. The rightful heirs to the knowledge of the ages
are despoiled. The most down-trodden students are those who cherish a
passion for the intellectual life. Among these are as many women as men.
If domestic science were confined to separate schools, as all applied
sciences ought to be, we should have nothing but praise for a subject
admirably conceived, and often admirably taught. In these schools it may
be studied by such High School graduates as prefer to deal with practical
rather than with pure science, and, in a larger way, by such college
graduates as wish to supplement theory with practice for professional
purposes. But in liberal colleges domestic science is but dross handed out
to seekers after gold. Against its intrusion into the curriculum no
protest can be too stern.

Faith in this study seems to rest upon the belief that the actual
experiences of life can be anticipated. This is a fallacy. There is no
dress rehearsal for the rôle of "wife and mother." It is a question of
experience piled on experience, life piled on life. The only way to
perform the tasks, understand the duties, accept the joys and sorrows of
any given stage of existence is to have performed the tasks, learned the
duties, fought out the joys and sorrows of earlier stages. In so far as
"housekeeping" means the application of principles of nutrition and
sanitation, these principles can be acquired at the proper time by an
active, well-trained mind. The preparation needed is not to have learned
facts three or five or ten years in advance, when theories and appliances
may have been very different, but to have taken up one subject after
another, finding how to master principles and details. This new subject is
not recondite nor are we unconquerably stupid. To learn as we go–_discere
ambulando_–need not turn the home into an experiment station.

But "every woman knows" that housekeeping, when it is a labor of love and
not a paid profession, goes far deeper than ordering meals or keeping
refrigerators clean, or making an invalid's bed with hospital precision.
We are more than cooks. We furnish power for the day's work of men, and
for the growth of children's souls. We are more than parlor maids. We are
artists, informing material objects with a living spirit. We are more even
than trained nurses. We are companions along the roads of pain, comrades,
it may be, at the gates of death. Back of our willingness to do our full
work must lie something profounder than lectures on bacteria, or interior
decoration, or an invalid's diet or a baby's bath. Specific knowledge can
be obtained in a hurry by a trained student. What cannot be obtained by
any sudden action of the mind is _the habit_ of projecting a task against
the background of human experience as that experience has been revealed in
history and literature, and of throwing into details the enthusiasm born
of this larger vision. She is fortunate who comes to the task of making a
home with this habit already formed. Her student life may have cast no
shadow of the future. When she was reading Æschylus or Berkeley, or
writing reports on the Italian despots, or counting the segments of a
beetle's antennæ, she may not have foreseen the hours when the manner of
life and the manner of death of human beings would depend upon her. She
was merely sanely absorbed in the tasks of her present. But in later life
she comes to see that in performing them, she learned to disentangle the
momentary from the permanent, to prefer courage to cowardice, to pay the
price of hard work for values received. Age may bring what youth
withholds, a sense of humor, a mellow sympathy. But only youth can begin
that habitual discipline of mind and will which is the root, if not of all
success, at least of that which blooms in the comfort of other people.
Carry the logic of the vocation-mongers to its extreme. Grant that every
girl in college ought someday to marry, and that we must train her, while
we have her, for this profession. Then let the college insist on honest
work, clear thinking and bright imagination in those great fields in which
successive generations reap their intellectual harvest. Captain Rostron of
the Carpathia once spoke to a body of college students who were on fire
with enthusiasm for the rescuer of the Titanic's survivors. He ended with
some such words as these: "Go back to your classes and work hard. I
scarcely knew that night what orders were coming out when I opened my
mouth to speak, but I can tell you that I had been preparing to give those
orders ever since I was a boy in school." Many a home may be saved from
shipwreck in the future because today girls are doing their duty in their
Greek class rooms and Physics laboratories.

But this fallacy of domesticity probes deeper than we have yet indicated.
It is, in the last analysis, superficial to ticket ourselves off as
house-keepers or even as women. What are these unplumbed wastes between
housekeepers and teachers, mothers and scholars, civil engineers and
professors of Greek, senators and journalists, bankers and poets, men and
women? A philosopher has pointed out that what we share is vastly greater
than what separates us. We walk upon and must know the same earth. We live
under the same sun and stars. In our bodies we are subject to the same
laws of physics, biology and chemistry. We speak the same language, and
must shape it to our use. We are products of the same past, and must
understand it in order to understand the present. We are vexed by the same
questions about Good and Evil, Will and Destiny. We all bury our dead. We
shall all die ourselves. Back of our vocations lies human life. Back of
the streams in which we dabble is that immortal sea which brought us
hither. To sport upon its shore and hear the roll of its mighty waters is
the divine privilege of youth.

If any difference is to be made in the education of boys and girls, it
must be with the purpose of giving to future women more that is
"unvocational," "unapplied," "unpractical." As it happens, such studies as
these are the ones which the mother of a family, as well as a teacher or
writer, is most sure to apply practically in her vocation. The last word
on this aspect of the subject was said by a woman in a small Maine town.
Her father had been a day laborer, her husband was a mechanic. She had
five children, and, of course, did all the house-work. She also belonged
to a club which studied French history. To a foolish expression of
surprise that with all her little children she could find time to write a
paper on Louis XVI she retorted angrily: "With all my children! It is for
my children that I do it. I do not mean that they shall have to go out of
their home, as I have had to, for everything interesting." But the larger
truth is that the value of a woman as a mother depends precisely upon her
value as a human being. And it is for that reason that in her youth we
must lead one who is truly thirsty only to fountains pouring from the
heaven's brink. It might seem cruel if it did not merely illustrate the
law of risk involved in any creative process, that the more generously
women fulfil the "function of their sex" the more they are in danger of
losing their souls to furnish a mess of pottage. The risk of life for life
at a child's birth is more dramatic but no truer than the risk of soul for
body as the child grows. In the midst of petty household cares the nervous
system may become a master instead of a servant, a breeder of distempers
rather than a feeder of the imagination. The unhappiness of homes, the
failure of marriage, are due as often to the poverty-stricken minds, the
narrowed vision of women as to the vice of men.

Their sense is with their senses all mix'd in,
Destroyed by subtleties these women are.

George Meredith's prayer for us, "more brain, O Lord, more brain!" we
shall still need when "votes for women" has become an outworn slogan.

No one claims that character is produced only by college training or any
other form of education. There are illiterate women whose wills are so
steady, whose hearts are so generous, and whose spirits seem to be so
continuously refreshed that we look up to them with reverence. They have
their own fountains. It would be a mistake to suppose that because they
are "open at the outlet" they are "closed at the reservoir." But there is
a class of women who are impelled toward knowledge (as still others are
impelled toward music or art) and whose success in anything they do will
depend upon their state of mind. We ought to assume that the girls who go
to college belong to this class, however far from the springs of Helicon
they mean to march in the future. It is a terrible thing that we should
think of taking one hour of their time while they are in college for any
course that does not enrich the intellect and add to the treasury of
thoughts and ideas upon which the woman with a mind will always be
drawing. Spirit is greater than intellect, and may survive it in the
course of a long life. But in the active years, for this kind of woman,
the mental life becomes one with the spiritual. A lusty serviceableness
will issue from their union. If mental interests seem sterile, the cure,
as far as the college is concerned with it, is to deepen, not to lessen
the love of learning. The renewal of sincerity, humility and enthusiasm in
the age-old search for truth is more necessary than the introduction of
new courses, which must be applied to be of value, and which at this time
in a girl's experience, and under these conditions, can give only partial
and superficial data.

Our lives are subject to a thousand changes. In the home as well as out of
it, we shall meet, face to face, fruition and disappointment, rapture and
pain, hope and despair. In these tests of the soul's health what good will
_domestic_ science do us? Not by sanitation is sanity brought forth. Women
do not gather courage from calories, nor faith from refrigerators. But
every added milestone along the road from youth to age shows us the truth
of Cicero's claim, made after he had borne public care and known private
grief, for the faithful, homely companionship of intellectual studies:
"For other things belong neither to all times and ages nor all places; but
these pursuits feed our growing years, bring charm to ripened age, adorn
prosperity, offer a refuge and solace to adversity, delight us at home, do
not handicap us abroad, abide with us through the watches of the night, go
with us on our travels, make holiday with us in the country."

Upon women, in crucial hours, may depend the peace of the old, the fortune
of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the young. In such an hour we do
not wish to be dismissed as were the women of Socrates's family, who had
had no part in the bright life of the Athens of which he was taking leave.
Shall we become the bread in the sacrament of life, ourselves unfed? the
fire on the hearth, ourselves unkindled?

THE LAND OF THE SLEEPLESS WATCHDOG

If from almost any given point in the United States you start out towards
the Southwest, you will reach in time the Land of the Sleepless Watchdog.
On each of the scattered farms, defending it against all intruders, you
will find a band of eager and vociferous dogs–dogs who magnify their
calling because they have no other, and who, by the same token lose all
sense of proportion in life. It is "theirs not to reason why," but to put
up warnings and threats, and to be ready for the fight that never comes.

If you enter a domain without previous understanding with them, you are
powerless for mischief, for you are in the center of a publicity beside
which any other publicity is that of a hermit's cell. The whole farm knows
where you are, and all are suspicious of your predatory intentions. You
can have none under these conditions. Meanwhile the whole pack voices its
opinion of you and your unworthiness.

This is supposing that you are actually there. If you are not, it amounts
to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be there, or at any
rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone equally bad. The
slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird, the ejaculation
responsive to a flea–any of these, anything to set the pack going.

And one pack starts the next. And the cries of the two start the third and
the fourth, and each of these reacts on the first. The cry passes along
the line, "We have him at last, the mad invader." There being no other
enemy, they cry out against each other. And of late years, since the
barbed wire choked the cattle ranges, and gave pause to the coyote, there
has been no enemy. But the dogs are there, though their function has
passed away. It is but a tradition–a remembrance. Only to the dogs
themselves does any reality exist.

Yet, such is the nature of dogs and men, the watchdog was never more
numerous nor more alert than today. He was never in better voice, and
having nothing whatever to do, he does it to the highest artistic
perfection. At least one justification remains. Civilization has not done
away with the moon. In the stillness of night, its great white face peeps
over the hills at intervals no dog has yet determined. Under this weird
light, strange shadowy forms trip across the fields. The watchdogs of each
farm have given warning, and the whole countryside is eager with
vociferation.

Men say the Sleepless Watchdog's bark is worse than his bite. This may be,
but it is certain that his feed is worse than both bark and bite together.
In the language of economics, the Sleepless Watchdog is an unremunerative
investment. He has "eaten his master out of house and home," and by the
same token, he imagines that he himself is now the master.

* * * * *

By this time, the gentle but astute reader has observed that this is no
common "Dog Story," but a parable of the times we live in; and that the
real name of the Land of the Sleepless (but unremunerative) Watchdog is
indeed Europe.

And because of the noisy and costly futility of the whole system in his own
and other countries, Professor Ottfried Nippold of Frankfort-on-the-Main,
has made a special study of the Watchdogs of Germany.

The good people of the Fatherland some forty years ago were drawn into a
great struggle with their neighbors beyond the Rhine. To divert his
subjects' attention from their ills at home, the Emperor of France wagered
his Rhine provinces against those of Prussia, in the game of War. The
Emperor lost, and the King of Prussia took the stakes: for in those days
it was a divine right of Kings to deal in flesh and blood.

The play is finished, the board is cleared, Alsace and Lorraine were added
to Germany, and the mistake is irretrievable. A fact accomplished cannot
be blotted out. But hopeless as it all is, there are watchdogs who, on
moonlight nights, call across the Vosges for revenge–for honor, for War,
War, War. And the German watchdogs cry War, War, War. The word sounds the
same in all languages. The watchdogs bark, but the battle will never
begin.

It is Professor Nippold's purpose, in his little book _Der Deutsche
Chauvinismus_, to show that the clamor is not all on one side. The
watchdogs of the Paris Boulevards are noisy enough, but those of Berlin
are just the same. And as these are not all of Germany, so the others are
not all of France. A great, thrifty, honest, earnest, cultured nation does
not find its voice in the noises of the street. On the other hand,
Germany, industrious, learned, profound and brave, is busy with her own
affairs. She would harm no one, but mind her own business. But she is
entangled in mediæval fashions. She has her own band of watchdogs, as
noisy, as futile, as unthinkingly clamorous as ever were those of France.
The "Sleepless Watchdog" in France is known as a Chauvinist, in England as
a Jingo, in Prussia as a Pangermanist. They all bay at the same moon, are
excited over the same fancies; they hear nothing, see nothing but one
another. All alike live in an unreal world, in its essentials a world of
their own creation. With all of them the bark is worse than the bite, and
their "Keep" is more disastrous than both together.

And as each nation should look after its own, Dr. Nippold
lists–blacklists if you choose–the Chauvinists of Germany.

At first glance, they make an imposing showing. A long series of
newspapers, dozens of pamphlets, categories of bold and impressive
warnings against the schemes of England and France, a set of appeals in
the name of patriotism, of religion, of force, of violence. A long-drawn
call to hate, to hate whatever is not of our own race or class; and above
all the banding together of the "noblest" profession as against the
encroachments of mere civilians, of men whose hands are soiled with other
stains than blood.

We have, first and foremost, General Keim, Keim the invincible, Keim the
insatiable, Keim of the Army-League, Keim the arch hater of England and of
Russia and of France, Keim the jewel of the fighting Junker aristocracy of
Prussia–the band of warriors who despise all common soldiers–"white
slave" conscripts, and with them all civilians, who at the best are only
potential common soldiers. "War, war, on both frontiers," is Keim's
obsessing vision. War being inevitable and salutary, it cannot come too
soon. The duty of hate, he urges on all the youth of Germany, maidens as
well as men. It is said that Keim is the only man of the day who can
maintain before an audience of Christians such a proposition as this: "We
must learn to hate, and to hate with method. A man counts little who
cannot hate to a purpose. Bismarck was hate."

From Gaston Choisy's clever character sketch of General Keim, we learn
that as a soldier or tactician, he was a man of no note. He has no ability
as a thinker or as a speaker, but this he has: "the courage of his
vulgarity." "At the age of 68, suffering from Bright's Disease, he
travelled all Germany, his great head always in ebullition, gathering
everywhere for the war-fire all the news, all the stories and all the lies
susceptible of aiding the Cause." "Without Bismarck's authority, he had
his manner–a mixture of baseness, of atrocious joviality, a studied
cynicism and a lack of conscience." "How generous are circumstances! The
spirit of Von Moltke the silent, with the speech of an _enfant terrible_,
an endless flow of language, an endless course of words."

To the Chauvinists of France, Keim is indeed Germany. As to his own
country, Von Ferlach sagely remarks: "Keims and Keimlings unfortunately
are all about us. But they are a vanishing minority." The great culture
peoples do not hate one another. ("Die grossen Kultur-volker hassen
einander nicht.")

Next on the black list, comes General Frederick von Bernhardi, with his
_Germany and the Next War_, the need to obliterate France, while giving
the needed chastisement to England. A retired officer of cavalry, said to
be disgruntled through failure of promotion, a tall, spare, serious, prosy
figure, a writer without inspiration, a speaker without force. Germany has
never taken him seriously; for he lacks even the clown-charm of his rival
Keim, but the mediæval absurdities and serious extravagances in his
defense of war are well tempered to stir the eager watchdogs in the rival
lands. In spite of his pleas, "historical, biological and philosophical,"
for war, he is a man of peace, for which, in the words of General
Eichhorn, "one's own sword is the best and strongest pledge."

Doubtless other retired officers hold views of the same sort, as do
doubtless many who could not be retired too soon for the welfare of
Germany. Into the nature of their patriotism, the Zabern incident has
thrown a great light. "Other lands may possess an army," a Prussian
officer is quoted as saying, "the army possesses Germany."

The vanities and follies of Prussian militarism are concentrated in the
movement called Pangermanism. Behind this, there seem to be two moving
forces, the Prussian Junker aristocracy, and the financial interests which
center about the house of Krupp. The purposes of Pangermanism seem to be,
on the one hand, to prevent parliamentary government in Germany; and on
the other, to take part in whatever goes on in the world outside. Just
now, the control of Constantinople is the richest prize in sight, and that
fateful city is fast replacing Alsace in the passive role of "the
nightmare of Europe." The journalists called Conservative find that
"Germany needs a vigorous diplomacy as a supplement to her power on land
and sea, if she is to exercise the influence she deserves." And a vigorous
foreign policy is but another name for the use of the War System as a
means of pushing business. From the daily press of Germany may be culled
many choice examples of idle Jingo talk, but analysis of the papers
containing it shows their affiliation with the "extreme right," a small
minority in German politics, potent only through the indiscretions of the
Crown Prince, and through the fact that the Constitution of Germany gives
its people no control over administrative affairs. The journals of this
sort–the _Tägliche Rundschau_, the _Berliner Post_, the _Deutsche
Tageszeitung_, and the _Berliner Neueste Nachrichten_ are the property of
Junker reactionists, or else, like the _Lokal Anzeiger_, the
_Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung_, the organs merely of the War trade
House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single
imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who
"casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of æsthetics,
the prophet of a great, strong and saber-rattling nation," whose force
shall be felt everywhere under the sun.

Bloodthirsty pamphlets in numbers, are listed by Nippold. But the
anonymous writers ("Divinator," "Rhenanus," "Lookout," "Deutscher,"
"Politiker," "Activer General" and "Deutscher Officier") count for less
than nothing in personal influence. They do little more than bay at the
moon.

Impressive as Nippold's list seems at first, and dangerous to the peace of
the world, after all one's final thought is this: How few they are, and
how scant their influence, as compared with the wise, sane, commonsense of
sixty millions of German people. The two great papers that stand for peace
and sanity, the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, with
the _Münchener Neueste Nachrichten_, are read daily by more Germans than
all the reactionary sheets combined. The Socialist organ _Vorwaerts_,
avowedly opposed to monarchy as well as to militarism, carries farther
than all the organs of Pangermanism of whatever kind.

We may justly conclude that the war spirit is not the spirit of Germany, a
nation perforce military because the people cannot help themselves. So far
as it goes, it is the spirit of a narrow clique of "sleepless watchdogs"
whose influence is waning, and would be non-existent were it not for the
military organization which holds Germany by the throat, but which has
pushed the German people just as far as it dares.

A second lesson is that while forms of government, and social traditions,
may differ, the relation of public opinion towards war is practically the
same in all the countries of Western Europe. It is in its way the test of
European civilization. Each nation has its "sleepless watchdogs," and
those of one nation fire the others, when the proper war scares are set in
motion by the great unscrupulous group of those who profit by them. The
war promoters, the apostles of hate, form a brotherhood among themselves,
and their success in frightening one nation reacts to make it easier to
scare another.

This the reader may remember, as a final lesson. There is no civilized
nation which longs for war. There is nowhere a reckless populace clamoring
for blood. The schools have done away with all that. The spread of
commerce has brought a new Earth with new sympathies and new relations, in
which international war has no place.

If you are sure that your own nation has no design to use violence on any
other, you may be equally sure that no other has evil designs on you. The
German fleet is not built as a menace to England; whether it be large or
small should concern England very little. Just as little does the size of
the British fleet bear any concern to Germany. The German fleet is built
against the German people. The growth of the British army and navy has in
part the same motive. Armies and navies hold back the waves of populism
and democracy. They seem a bulwark against Socialism. But in the great
manufacturing and commercial nations, they will not be used for war,
because they cannot be. The sacrifice appalls: the wreck of society would
be beyond computation.

But still the sleepless watchdogs bark. It is all that they can do, and we
should get used to them. In our own country, whatever country it may be,
we have our own share of them, and some of them bear distinguished names.
No other nation has any more, and no nation takes them really seriously,
any more than we do. And one and all, their bark is worse than their bite,
and the cost of feeding them is doubtless worse than either.

EN CASSEROLE

_Special to our Readers_

Those of you who have not received your REVIEWS on time will probably now
find a double interest in the article in the last number, on _Our
Government Subvention to Literature_. In conveying periodicals so cheaply,
not only is Uncle Sam engaged in a bad job, but he is doing it cheaply,
and consequently badly, and he has more of it than he can well handle. _He
is at length carrying them as freight_, and most of you know what that
means. We are receiving complaints of delay on all sides, and an
appreciable part of the unwelcome subvention Uncle Sam is giving us, goes
in sending duplicates of lost copies. We don't acknowledge any obligation,
legal or moral, to do this; but we love our subscribers–more or less
disinterestedly–and try to do them all the kinds of good we can. Partly
to enable us to do that, as long as the subvention is given, we follow the
example of the excellent Pooh Bah, and put our pride (and the subvention)
into our pockets. Even if we did not love our subscribers so, we should
have to do the pocketing all the same, because our competitors do.
Competitors are always a very shameless sort of people.

We wish, however, that Uncle Sam would keep his subvention in his own
pocket, and so lead to a higher plane all competitors in the magazine
business, including some of those who don't want to rise to a higher
plane. The best of such a proceeding on his part would be that he would
also, through the complicated influences described in the article referred
to encourage up to a higher plane those who write for popular magazines.
Those who write for THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW are, of course, on the highest
possible plane already. This remark is made solely for the benefit of
readers taking up the REVIEW for the first time. To others it is
superfluous, and if there is anything we try to avoid, it is, as we have
so many times to tell volunteer contributors, superfluities. Even
popularity we do not try to avoid, but–!

The foregoing paragraph was written with little thought of what was coming
to be added to it. You and we have something to be proud of. Our REVIEW
has been doing its part in saving all Europe from the waste of hundreds of
millions of money, and the literatures of all Europe from a degradation
like that through which our own is passing. Read the following letter:

Dear Mr. [Editor]:

I have already sent a line through —- thanking you for the copy
of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW, which you were good enough to send me,
but I should like to repeat my thanks to you again direct, and at
the same time, tell you how the REVIEW has been of service to
European publishers.

The article in the last number entitled _Our Government Subvention
to Literature_ naturally interested me very much from a personal
point of view, but the statistics you give showing the effect of
second class matter rate on book sales was very valuable to me as
the representative of the English Publishers on the Executive
Committee of the International Publishers Congress.

At the Congress held at Budapest last June, a resolution was
adopted instructing the Congress to press for a reduced rate of
postage on periodicals, and an international stamp. The steps to
be taken in order to carry out this resolution were discussed at
the meeting of the Committee last week held at Leipzig, when I
produced the copy of your article, and gave the Committee a
summary of the statistics. The result was the unanimous decision
to take no further steps in the matter.

I tremble to think of what might have happened if I had not had
your article before me, for the point of view which you have put
forward was one that had not occurred to anyone else connected
with the Congress, and if the resolution had not been cut out at
this last meeting of the Executive Committee, it would have gone
before the Postal Conference which is to be held in Madrid this
autumn, backed by practically every European country.

I feel we all owe you a debt of gratitude for bringing out the
facts so clearly, and believe that you will like to know what has
taken place.

While we are not slow to take all the credit that our supporters and
ourselves are entitled to in this matter, we should be very slow tacitly
to accept the lion's share of it, which is due to Colonel C.W. Burrows of
Cleveland, who supplied all of the facts and nearly all of the expression
of the article in question, and who has for years, lately as President of
the One Cent Letter Postage League, been devoting himself with unsparing
energy and self-sacrifice to stopping the waste of money and capacity that
the mistaken outbreak of paternalism we are discussing has brought upon
the country.

Demos is a good fellow–when he behaves himself, and that generally means
when he is not abused or flattered; but how supremely ridiculous, not to
say destructive, he is when he gets to masquerading in the robes of the
scholar or the judge; and how criminal is the demagogue who seeks personal
aggrandisement by dangling those robes before him.

* * * * *

Our modesty has been so anesthetized by the preceding letter, that it
permits us to show you, in strict confidence of course, a paragraph from
another. A new subscriber, apparently going it blind on the recommendation
of a friend, writes:

"I am told it is the best gentleman's magazine in the United
States."

Now, somehow, "gentleman" is a word that we are very chary of using. We
couldn't put that remark on an advertising page, but perhaps there is no
inconsistency in putting it here, and confessing that we like it–and that
we even suspect that we have always had a subconscious idea that it was
just what we were after–that it includes, or ought to include, about
everything that we are trying to accomplish. In any interpretation, it is
certainly an encouragement to keep pegging away.

* * * * *

Most of our readers probably remember a letter on pp. 432-3 of the
_Casserole_ of the April-June number, from an individual who thought we
were trying to humbug the wage-receiving world into a false and dangerous
contentment with existing conditions. This inference was probably drawn
from our insistent promulgation of the belief that a man's fortune depends
more upon himself than upon his conditions.

As a contrast to that remarkable letter, it is a great pleasure to call
attention to the following still more remarkable one. It is from a
printer–not one in our employ.

I wish to congratulate you on the excellence of the REVIEW, both
from a literary and mechanical standpoint. As a "worker," "a
member of the Union," it might be inferred that I endorse the
views of the critics given on page 432 of the second number. Not
so. It is such views as his that harm the unthinking–those who
think capital is the emblem of wickedness.

I believe that individual merit and worth are the only things
worth while. The workman who puts his best efforts into his labor,
and takes a personal pride in making his productions as nearly
perfect as possible, will be recognized, and his individual worth
to his employer will raise him above the "common level." All this
rot about a "ruling oligarchy" "grinding down the poorer class" is
dangerous. The man who has no ambition above ditch digging, and
who endeavors to throw out as little dirt in a day as he possibly
can, will always be one of "the submerged." It lies with each
one–outside of unavoidable physical or mental
infirmities–whether he shall rise or sink.

Again I must congratulate you on the stand you are taking in THE
UNPOPULAR REVIEW. I "take" and read twenty to twenty-five
magazines and for over forty years have been trying to educate
myself to a right way of thinking, and the result is I believe as
above briefly outlined.

Especially good is _The Greeks on Religion and Morals_, also _The
Soul of Capitalism, Trust-Busting as a National Pastime_, and _Our
Government Subvention to Literature_.

* * * * *

Possibly some of you are disappointed at not finding this number as full
as the daily papers of wisdom on War and the Mexican situation. In one
sense we are disappointed ourselves: for we had made arrangements for at
least one article of that general nature from one of our best qualified
contributors; but when it came time to write it (speaking by the
calendar), he showed the excellence of his qualifications by saying that,
considering the situation and the function of this REVIEW, it was _not_
time–that the situation had not yet become mature enough or broad enough
for any general conclusions–for any treatment beyond that already well
given by the newspapers and other organs of frequent publication, and that
they were giving all the details called for. We will wait, then, and try
to philosophize when the time comes.

We find, however, that with little deliberate intention on our part, this
number has turned out "seasonable" in another sense, and hope you will
find it so. Witness the articles on _Chautauqua_, and _Railway Junctions_,
and _Tips_ (entitled _A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism_) and several others.

_Philosophy in Fly Time_

In the old days, before the destruction of the white pines removed the
chief source of American inventiveness–the universal habit of
whittling–every boy had a jackknife, and also had boxes, sometimes of
wood, sometimes of writing paper, in which he kept flies. Now he has
neither flies nor jackknife.

Then, when he wanted a fly, nine times out of ten he could catch one with
a sweep of the hand. That was before the fly was charged with an amount of
bad deeds, if they really were as bad as represented, which would have
destroyed the human race long before the plagues of Egypt; or if not
before the fly plague, would have caused that plague to leave no Egyptians
alive to enjoy the later ones. With these new opinions of the fly, began a
crusade against him; and now the boys can't have any more fun with
him–that is, only good boys can–the kind that catch him with illusive
traps, for a cent a hundred. The other kind of boys may occasionally be
sports enough to hunt him with the swatter; but it's pretty poor hunting:
for the game is so shy that generally before you get within reach of him,
he is off: so swatting him is difficult, while catching him by hand, as we
boys used to, is virtually impossible.

Now for some questions profound enough to befit our pages. (I) Have only a
select group of very alert and quick flies survived? or (II) Have the
flies told each other that that big clumsy brute with only two legs to
walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts of foolish things–the
brute with only one lens to an eye (though he sometimes puts a glass one
over it) and a pitifully aborted proboscis–the brute that has no wings,
and can't get ahead more than about once his own length in a second–that
this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of the six legs,
hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of the fly, that he had
started a new crusade against him, and must be specially avoided?

Then, after it is ascertained whether the timidity of the flies is because
this story has been passed around among them, or only because men have
already killed off all but the specially quick and timid ones; we hope our
investigators may find an answer to the farther question: (III) How, if a
tenth of what some folks say against flies is true, the human race has so
long survived?

To avoid misapprehension, it should be added that despite the
availability, in our boyhood, of flies as playmates, we don't like 'em,
especially when they light on our hands to help us write articles for this
REVIEW.

_Setting Bounds to Laughter_

That there is even a measure of personal liberty on the earth, is one of
our most pointed proofs that the universe is governed by design. For
liberty is loved neither by the many nor by the few; its defense has
always been unpopular in the extreme, and can be manfully undertaken only
in an age of moral heroism. The present is no heroic age, and hence our
personal rights fall one by one, without defense, and apparently without
regret. The losses thus incurred must be left to future historians to
weigh and to lament. There is, however, one of our natural rights, now
cruelly beset by its enemies, that is too precious to surrender to the
threnodies of the future historians. This is the right to laugh.

It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the first appearance of
organized efforts to curb the spirit of laughter. All good men and women
were hectored into believing that one should weep, not laugh, over the
absurdities of men in their cups. Next, we were warned that it is unseemly
and unChristian to laugh at a fellow-man's discomfiture–an awkward social
situation, a sermon or a political oration wrecked by stage fright, or a
poem spoilt by a printer's stupidity. Under shelter of the dogma that to
laugh at the ridiculous is unlawful, there have recently grown into vigor
multitudinous anti-laughter alliances, racial, national and professional.
Not many years ago a censorship of Irish jokes was established, and this
was soon followed by an index expurgatorious of Teutonic jokes. Our
colored fellow citizens promptly advanced the claim that jokes at the
expense of their race are "in bad taste"; and country life enthusiasts
solemnly affirmed that the rural and suburban jokes are nothing short of
national disasters. A recent press report informs us that the suffragette
joke has been excluded from the vaudeville circuits throughout the
country. And the movement grows apace. Domestic servants, stenographers,
politicians, college professors, and clergymen are organizing to establish
the right of being ridiculous without exciting laughter.

But what does it all matter? What is laughter but an old-fashioned aid to
digestion, more or less discredited by current medical authority? It is
time we learned that laughter has a social significance: it is the first
stage in the process of understanding one's fellow man. Professor Bergson
to the contrary notwithstanding, you can not laugh with your intellect
alone. An essential element of your laughter is sympathy. You can not
laugh at an idiot, nor at a superman. You can not laugh at a Hindoo or a
Korean; you can hardly force a smile to your lips over the conduct of a
Bulgar, a Serb, or a Slovak. You are beginning to find something comic in
the Italian, because you are beginning to know him. And all the world
laughs at the Irishman, because all the world knows him and loves him.

When Benjamin Franklin walked down the streets of Philadelphia, carrying a
book under his arm, and munching a crust of bread, just one person
observed him, a rosy maiden, who laughed merrily at him. As our old school
readers narrated, with naïve surprise, this maiden was destined to become
Franklin's faithful wife. And yet psychology should have led us to expect
such a result. The stupidest small boy making faces or turning somersaults
before the eyes of his pig-tailed inamorata, evidences his appreciation of
the sentimental value of the ridiculous. When did we first grant some
small corner in our hearts to the Chinese? It was when we were introduced
to Bret Harte's gambler:

For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.

The natural history of the racial or professional joke is easily written.
At the outset it is crude and cruel, wholly at the expense of the group
represented. In time the world wearies of an unequal contest, and we have
a new order of jokes, in which the intended victim acquits himself well.
This, too, gives way to a higher order, in which race, nationality or
profession is employed merely as a cloak for common humanity. The
successive stages mark the progress in assimilation, induced, in large
measure, by laughter. There is no other social force so potent in creating
mutual understanding and practical fraternity of spirit; in establishing
the essential unity of mankind underneath its phenomenal diversity.
Setting bounds to laughter: why, this is to indenture the angel of charity
to the father of lies and the lord of hate.

_A Post Graduate School for Academic Donors_

At a recent meeting of an University Montessori Club the case of donors to
colleges and universities was reported on by a special committee. The
majority report drew a pretty heavy indictment. It was shown that the
givers to colleges and universities seldom considered the real needs of
their beneficiaries. Donors liked to give expensive buildings without
endowment for upkeep, liked to give vast athletic fields, rejoiced in
stadiums, affected memorial statuary and stained glass windows, dabbled in
landscape gardening, but seldom were known either to give anything
unconditionally or, specifically, to destine a gift for such uninspiring
needs as more books or professors' pay. The result of giving without first
considering the needs of the benefited college or university, was that
every gift made the beneficiary more lopsided. Certain universities were
almost capsized by their incidental architecture. Others were subsidizing
graduate students to whom the conditions of successful research were
denied. Still others were calling great specialists to the teaching force
without providing the apparatus for the pursuit of these specialties.
Others preferred to offer financial aid to students who were poor–in
every sense. Donors apparently without exception had single-track minds.
They saw plainly enough what they wanted to give, but never took the pains
to see the donation in its relation to the institution as a whole. The
majority report, which was drawn by our famous Latinist, Professor
Claudius Senex, concluded with the despairing note _Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes_. The minority report was delivered orally by young Simpson Smith
of the department of banking and finance. He "allowed" that everything
alleged by the majority report was true, but saw no use in dwelling on
such truths, since donors always had done and always would do just as they
darned pleased.

The Club took a more hopeful view of the case, and it was voted that our
Club should resolve itself into the trustees and faculty of a Post
Graduate School for Academic Donors. Our committee recommended that we
qualify our advanced students by conferring the lower degree of Heedless
Donor (H.D.) every year upon all givers who can be shown to have given at
random. No method of instruction seemed more appropriate than the seminar
plan of practical exercises based on concrete instances. The first
laboratory experiment was performed in the presence of a Seminar of seven
H.D.'s. in a specially called meeting of married professors attired only
in bath gowns borrowed from the crews and base ball teams. Into this
assembly the class of H.D.'s was suddenly introduced. They naturally
inquired into the meaning of the spectacle, and were informed that in no
case did the mere salary of these professors enable them to wear clothes
at all. "But you do usually wear clothes?" inquired a student of a
favorite professor. "How do you get them?" "By University extension
lecturing at ten dollars a lecture" was the quiet answer. Another
professor explained that he got his clothes by tutoring dull students,
another by book reviewing. One somewhat shamefacedly said the clothes came
from his wife's money. One declined to answer, and, as a matter of fact,
his clothes are habitually first worn by a more fortunate elder brother.

On the whole the results of our first seminary exercise were satisfactory.
One student immediately drew a considerable check for the salary fund,
another, who had been planning to give a hockey rink, said he would think
things over. Still a third deposited forty pairs of slightly worn trousers
with the university treasurer, "for whom it might concern." Only one
accepted the demonstration contentedly. He admitted that low pay and extra
work were hard on the Professors, but he also felt that these outside
activities advertised the university and were good business. Of course you
wore out some professors in the process, but you could always get others.

Our second seminary exercise was of a less spectacular sort. The post
graduate donors were each provided with a bibliography. This in every
instance contained the titles of books that a particular professor or
graduate student in the university would need to consult for his studies
of the ensuing week. It was briefly explained by Professor Senex that
original research could not be successfully accomplished without reference
to all the original sources and to the writings of other scholars. The
bibliographies ran from ten titles or so to nearly a hundred, according to
the nature of the particular research involved. The exercise consisted in
going to the university library and matching these titles of desiderata
with the books actually in the catalogue. After varying intervals, the
post graduate donors returned with their report. Nobody had found more
than half the books sought for: many had found less.

The effect of this demonstration was interesting. The donor who had tended
towards the hockey rink, instead transferred his $100,000 to the book
purchase fund. He said he guessed the old place needed real books more
than it needed artificial ice. Others followed his example according to
their ability.

The student who was satisfied with our bath robe faculty meeting, came
back from the library equally pleased. He had not compared his
bibliography with the catalogue, but a brief general inspection had
convinced him that there were already more books in the library than
anybody could read. His intention held firm to give his Alma Mater a tower
higher than any university tower on record and containing a chime of bells
that periodically played the college song. The tower was naturally to bear
his name, which was also his dear mother's.

_A Suggestion Regarding Vacations_

Why wouldn't it be well for the country colleges to shorten their summer
vacations, and lengthen their winter ones? Then urban students would not,
for so long a period in summer, be put to their trumps to find out what to
do with themselves; and, what is more important, in winter both faculty
and students would have increased opportunity for metropolitan experience.
In the summer vacations, the cities are empty of music, drama, and most
else of what makes them distinctively worth while. Intellectually, the
country needs the city at least as much as, morally, the city needs the
country.

_Advertisement_

We are disposed to do a little gratuitous advertising for good causes.
Below is the first essay. It is perfectly genuine. Please send us some
more.

_Help Wanted._ From a young gentleman of education, leisure and energy,
who desires to devote a part of his time, in connection with scholars and
philanthropists, to a reform of world-wide importance. Such a person may
possibly learn of a congenial opportunity by addressing.

X.T.C.

Care of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW.

A few hundred persons of the kind whose help is sought by this
advertisement would have the salvation of the republic in their hands. But
somehow those who have the leisure generally lack the desire; and those
who have the desire generally lack the leisure.

_Simplified Spelling_

After receiving, in answer to the invitation in our first number, a few
bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have felt like apologizing
each time we approached the subject. Perhaps the best apology we can make
is that apparently the majority of our readers are interested in it.
Therefore we hope that the others will tolerate as equably as they can,
the devotion of a little space to it in the interest of the majority.
Perhaps the objectors may ultimately be able to settle the difficulty as
we and our house have settled another unconquerable nuisance–the
dandelions on our lawns–: we have concluded to like them.

Our recent correspondence regarding Simplified Spelling has developed a
few points which we submit to those who abominate it, those who favor it,
and those who, like the eminent school-superintendent we have already
quoted, and like ourselves for that matter, do both:

To a leading Professor of Greek:

I am more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant
beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the
preceding syllable, as in "differ", "fiddle", "gobble", etc.,
_wil_ "be generally accepted", especially in view of the fact that
it is _alreddy_ "generally accepted", and needs only to be
extended to a minority of words.

"Annutther" is not "a fair illustration". On the contrary, it is
an exception that I probably was very injudicious to call any
attention to; and the trouble with you scholars, I find all the
way thru, is that you permit those little exceptions to influence
you too much. If a good simplification is ever effected, it will
be by cutting Gordian knots, and you all of you seem absolutely
incapable of anything of the kind. I don't expect anyhow to make
much out of a man who will spell "peepl" "peopl". Imagine all this
said with a grin, not a frown!!

You wil never get back to "the old sounds" of the vowels, in God's
world.

As to the long sounds, I am going in for all I am worth on the
double vowels. I alreddy agree with the English Society on
"faather", "feel" and "scuul", and am going to do all I can for
_niit_, and for spredding the _oo_ in _floor_ and _door_ into
_snore_, _more_, _hole_, _poke_, etc. "Awl", "cow" and "go" are
spelt wel, and their spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the
lines of least resistance. I find that they work first-rate in my
own riting.

You make enuf serious objections to diacritical marks, but my
serious objection to them is that they ar obstacles to lerners,
especially forreners.

From his answer:

All right; I catch the grin, and cheerfully grin back. The
business of a scholar (Emerson's "man thinking", Plato's [Greek:
philosophos]) is to take as long views as he can; in this case, to
look far beyond the possibilities of my life-time. The more you
people with the shorter views, as I venture to think them, agitate
for and practise each little partial solution, the more you help
on the threshing out which must go on for many years before we can
arrive at any general solution. So, more power to your elbow!

Meantime my own spelling will continue to be–like the
conventional spelling of the printers of today–a hodge-podge of
inconsistencies, quite indefensible on rational grounds, and
varying with circumstances. Of course the rational way to spell
_people_ is _piipl_, or _pipl_.

Which we think is an attempt to bolster up a lost cause.

From another reader:

Your closing sentence in the first number of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW
states with a most distressing combination of vowels and
outlandish collocation of consonants that you would like to hear
from your readers on the subject…. Z is not a pretty letter, and
to see it so frequently usurping the place so long held by s is
far from gratifying to the eye….

Suppose you establish to your own satisfaction a method for
assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in
vowel sounds that prevail in the United States? The New
Englander's mouthing of _a_ differs from that of the Northern New
Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the
Southerner–indeed, in the different Southern States there is
variation…. At first I was interested in simplified spelling,
but the eccentricities developed by its advocates alienated me
long since, so I beg of you, drop it.

From our answer:

I delayed thanking you for your letter of the 29th until there
should be time for you to see the April-June number.

I hope you are feeling better now.

If you are not, I do not think I can do much to console you,
because when a man has been irritated into that position where the
alleged beauty of a letter counts in so serious a question, he is
probably beyond mortal help.

I have no desire "to reach the differences in vowel sounds that
prevail in the United States". There is not much difference among
cultivated people. Probably a fair standard would be the
conversation at the Century Club, where there are visitors from
Maine to California, and hardly any noticeable difference in
pronunciation.

There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a
simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among
children….

Of course I have not been able to answer most of the letters I
have received on the subject. I single yours out because you have
had a fall from grace, and I feel guilty of having had something
to do with it, by presenting stronger meat than was necessary, in
our January number. I have fought on the Executive Committee of
the Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English
S.S.S.'s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such
prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly
led into, myself, publishing things that looked just as
outlandish.

As I said at the outset, I hope you feel better since seeing the
April-June number, and should be glad to know how you do feel.

From his reply:

Thank you very much for the courtesy of your letter of 9th April.
I was surprised to receive it, as I did not suppose that your
multifarious duties would permit you to notice my rather feeble
protest. I was somewhat amused that you should think my irritation
so extreme as to call for an effort to console me. I am sure I
appreciate your attempt to do so. But really, I was not so hard
hit as you thought, because I do not expect in my day (I am no
longer a young man) to see the champions of "simplified spelling"
(some of it seems to me the reverse of "simplified") gain such
headway as to materially mar my pleasure in the printed page, for
I do not believe you will allow the atrocities of the last few
pages of your first number to creep into the delightful essays
which render THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW such pleasant and profitable
reading….

I do not think any great respect is due the opinion of those who
think that a simplified spelling would save a great deal of time
among children, for it also seems to have its rules which will
present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of
our present system….

Why _thru_? U does not always have the sound of double _o_–very
rarely in fact. Why not _throo_–if the aim is to make the written
sign correspond to the sound. Thru suggests _huh_.

From our answer:

Regarding "thru", you justly say that _u_ does not always have the
sound of _oo_. The only sound of _oo_ worthy of respect, with
which I have an acquaintance, is in "door" and "floor". The idea
of using it to represent a _u_ sound is perhaps the culminating
absurdity of our spelling.

Your statement that simplified spelling "seems to have its rules
which will present as much difficulty to memorize as do the
peculiarities of our present system" overlooks the advantage that
writing with a phonetic alphabet, like those of Europe, has over
writing with purely conventional characters, as in China. Now
English writing is probably the least phonetic in Europe.
Simplifying it in any of the well-known proposed methods would be
making it more phonetic, and consequently easier. At present it is
a mass of contradictions, and the rules that can be extracted from
it are overburdened with exceptions. Simplification will decrease
both the exceptions and the rules themselves. There are now
several ways of representing each of many sounds, and therefore
several "rules" to be learned for each of such sounds.
Simplification will tend to reduce those rules to one for each
sound, and so far as it succeeds, will _not_ "present as much
difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our present
system."

All the degrees of reformed spelling now in use are professedly but
transitional. They may gradually advance into a respectable degree of
consistency, but we expect that to be reached quicker by a coherent
survival among the warring elements proposed by the S.S.S., the S.S.B. and
the better individual reformers. Probably there is already more agreement
than disagreement among these elements.

While the others are fighting it out, the various transition styles will
do something to prepare parents to accept a more nearly perfect style for
their children, and perhaps take an interest in seeing the various
counsels of perfection fight each other.

A few words have already found their way into advertisements–_tho_,
_thru_, _thoro_ (a damnable way of spelling _thurro_), and the shortened
terminal _gram(me)s_, _og(ue)s_ and _et(te)s_; and these and a few more
have found their way into correspondence on commonplace subjects; and the
interest in the topic, especially among educators, is spreading. But most
of the inconsistencies will probably bother and delay children and
forreners until they are given something with some approach to
consistency.

* * * * *

After we fight to something like agreement on a system, how are we to get
it going?

It does not seem extravagant to expect that as soon as the weight of
scholarly opinion endorses a vocabulary from our present alphabet
consistent enough to afford a base for a reasonable spelling book,
spelling books and readers will be prepared for the schools, and adopted
by advanced teachers. Many are clamoring for such now. When the youngsters
have mastered these, which they will do in a small fraction of the time
wasted on their present books, they will of their own accord pick up
without troubling their teachers a knowledge of the present forms. This
they have always done when their teaching has been by the various phonetic
methods with special letters, and have done both in much less time than
they have needed for learning in the ordinary way. But they will prefer
the reasonable forms, and this demand the publishers will probably not be
slow to supply.

Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

The Unpopular Review

SOME THINGS IN WHICH WE ARE TRYING TO DO OUR BIT

In disarming Germany–and, after that's done, everybody else, except an
international police.

In securing to all nationalities the right to choose their own
governments and affiliations.

In making trade free.

In securing the rights of both organized labor and the individual
workman, which involve on the one hand recognition of the Trade Unions,
and on the other, of the Open Shop.

In cleaning up and bracing up literature and art.

In modernizing and revivifying religion.

Our humble efforts for these causes have so far been not only gratuitous
but costly. Therefore we feel justified in suggesting to the reader who
has not yet subscribed, the question whether out of the sums which he
devotes to those great objects, a trifle might not be spent as hopefully
as in any other way, in backing us up by subscription or advertisement.

75 cents a number, $2.50 a year. Bound volumes $2. each, two a
year. (Canadian $2.70, Foreign $2.85.) Cloth covers for
volumes, 50 cents each. No one but the publishers is
authorized to collect money for the Review. Persons
subscribing through agents or dealers to whom they pay money,
do so at their own risk.

For the present, subscribers remitting direct to the
publishers can have any back number or numbers additional to
those subscribed for, except No. 9, for an additional 50 cents
each (plus 5 cents a number for postage to Canada, 9 cents to
Foreign countries), _provided the whole amount is paid direct
to the publishers at the time of the subscription_. Number 9
is out of print, and can be furnished only with complete sets,
which are sold at the rate of 75 cents a number.

Owing to the Post-office department spending many millions
annually in carrying periodicals below cost, it has become so
loaded with them as to be obliged to send them as freight.
Therefore subscribers should not complain to the publishers of
non-receipt of matter under from one to two weeks, according
to distance. This subject is fully treated in No. 2 of THE
UNPOPULAR REVIEW, and in the Casserole of No. 3.

In order that the new writers may stand an equal chance with
the old, and the old not unduly depend upon their reputations,
the names of writers are not given until the number following
the one in which their articles appear.

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
18 WEST 45th STREET
NEW YORK CITY
LONDON: WILLIAMS & NORGATE

CONTENTS OF THE PRECEDING NUMBER (18, for April-June, 1918)

WHY AMERICA LAGS, Alvin S. Johnson, Professor in Stanford
University.
ON GOING AFOOT, Charles S. Brooks.
THE PROBLEM OF ALSACE-LORRAINE, C. D. Hazen, Professor in
Columbia University.
VISCOUNT MORLEY, Paul Elmer More, Advisory Editor of _The
Nation_.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE TRAINING CAMP, George R. MacMinn,
Professor in University of California.
HALF SOLES, Herbert Wilson Smith.
PRICE FIXING BY GOVERNMENT, David McGregor Means.
TURKEY UNDER GERMAN TUTELAGE, Rufus W. Lane.
MACHINE AND MAN, Grant Showerman, Professor in University of
Wisconsin.
THE ATHLETIC HABIT OF MIND, Edward F. Hayward.
ARBITERS OF FATE, Virginia Clippinger.
FOOD CONSERVATION AND THE WOMAN, Mary Austin.
SOME REFLECTIONS ON REVOLUTION, T. Lothrop Stoddard.
THE JOB AND THE OUTSIDER, H. W. Boynton.
DURCHALTEN! Vernon L. Kellogg, Professor in Stanford
University.
A NEW PSYCHIC SENSITIVE, The Editor.
CORRESPONDENCE: "The Obscurity of Philosophers"–Our Tax
Troubles Again.
EN CASSEROLE: Concerning these Hasty War Marriages–Bergson
and the Yellow Peril–A Problematic Personality–"Clause" and
"Phrase."

CONTENTS

FOR JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1918

NATURALIZATION IN THE SPOTLIGHT OF WAR 1
WAR PROPHETS 19
MY FRIEND THE JAY 33
THE FLEMISH QUESTION 43
IMMORTALITY IN LITERATURE 56
CARLYLE AND KULTUR 66
THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 79
THE CONDITIONS OF TOLERANCE 94
THE NEO-PARNASSIANS 106
HUMANISM AND DEMOCRACY 114
THE MODERN MEDICINE MAN 127
"THE PUREST OF HUMAN PLEASURES" 140
WAR FOR EVOLUTION'S SAKE 146
JOHN FISKE 160
PLEASE EXPLAIN THESE DREAMS 190
CORRESPONDENCE 201
More Freedom from Hereditary Bias
EN CASSEROLE 202
If We are Late–The Kindly and Modest German–What the Cat
Thinks of the Dog–A Hunting-Ground of Ignorance–Maximum
Price-Fixing in Ancient Rome–Darwin on His Own
Discoveries–Reflections of an Old-Maid Aunt–An Obscure
Source of Education–Heart-to-Heart Advertising–The Curse of
Fall Elections–Larrovitch–Our Index

The Unpopular Review

NO. 19 JULY-SEPTEMBER VOL. X

NATURALIZATION IN THE SPOTLIGHT OF WAR

Amid the manifold uncertainties into which the war has plunged us, one
fact stands out with increased definiteness–that in our midst, and even
voting on our policies, of life or death,–we have had for many years
large numbers of people who at best give only a divided allegiance to
this country, and at worst are devoted and violent partisans of some
foreign state. The evidence of this truth has been of the most
diversified character, including the destruction of warehouses, docks,
and munitions factories, the burning of immense quantities of food, the
manufacture of ineffective torpedoes, the attempted blowing up of war
ships, and the dissemination of disease germs among children, soldiers,
and cattle. The uniform object of all these activities has been the
decrease of the war efficiency of the United States. The indications
seem conclusive that the perpetrators have been, not special German
spies or agents sent over here after our entry into the war or in
anticipation of it, but among the candidates for Mr. Gerard's five
thousand lampposts–persons who have lived in our midst for long
periods, and have been accepted as belonging to us.

So suddenly overwhelming has been the demonstration since the war began,
and particularly since the United States entered the war, that there is
great danger that the impression will become established that the war
created the situation, that the danger is a war danger, and that the
problem will automatically solve itself when the war is over. Nothing
could be more prejudicial to a correct understanding of the situation,
and to a sound solution of the national problems which will confront us
when the war is over. The war has not created the danger from
alien-hearted members of the body politic, it has merely revealed it.
The situation is the creation of our traditional policy toward
foreigners, and the menace inherent in the situation existed, and was
discerned by many close students of political affairs, long before the
war was dreamed of. Although then the manifestations of this danger were
less spectacular, the danger itself was no less persistent, pervasive,
and insidious. When Carl Petersen is triumphantly inducted into
municipal office, not because he is a Republican or a Democrat, not
because he stands thus and so on important public questions, but because
he is a Swede; when Patrick O'Donnell is made detective sergeant, not
because he has the highest qualifications of all the men available, but
because he belongs to the same Irish lodge as the chief of police; when
Salvini, and Goldberg, and Trcka receive political preferment or
judicial favor because of the race from which they spring or the nation
from which they come, the essence of the peril is exactly the same as
when Hans Ahlberg tries to sink an American merchantman because its
cargo of wheat is destined for England instead of Germany.

The peril in question is the peril of having in a democracy large groups
of voters actuated by racial and national affiliations other than those
of the country in which they live: in other words, large elements of
unassimilated foreigners. The assertion of this danger does not
necessarily carry the implication of any inferiority, mental, physical,
or moral, on the part of the foreigners. Difference without inferiority
is dangerous, difference coupled with inferiority is definitely
injurious. There is no need to reiterate the manifold evils which have
already developed, and which threaten to develop, from immigration of
the poor quality which our selective tests have not sufficed to prevent.
Undoubtedly the physical and mental average of our people, possibly also
the moral average, has already been definitely reduced, and the progress
of the working classes toward a reasonably high standard of living has
been checked, but the point which needs emphasis here is that difference
in itself is dangerous. The immigrant who is still a foreigner in
sympathy and character exerts a prejudicial influence upon the life of
the nation at every point of contact. It is impossible for him to
function as a normal unit in the social complex. If by naturalization he
acquires the right to participate in political affairs, the opportunity
for injury is multiplied. He cannot possibly approach public questions
as if his allegiance were wholly with the country of his residence.
These facts are particularly illustrated with us by the very large
element known as "birds of passage." The only way these evils can be
overcome is through genuine assimilation.

Assimilation is a spiritual metamorphosis. It manifests itself in many
changes of dress, of language, of manners, and of conduct. But these
outward semblances are not assimilation. An alien is thoroughly
assimilated into a new society only when he becomes completely imbued
with its spiritual heritage. He must cease to think and feel and imagine
in ways determined by his old social environment, and must respond to
the stimuli of social contact in all ways exactly as if from the very
beginning he had developed under the influence of his adopted society.
And this involves, of course, the entire abandonment of any sympathy,
affection, or loyalty different from that which might be felt by any
native of his new home for the country of his origin or the people of
that country. Complete assimilation so defined may seem impossible to
the adult immigrant. This is almost universally the truth. The spiritual
impress of the environment of one's infancy, childhood, and youth, can
seldom be eradicated during the later years of life. Realizing this,
those who hate to admit that our immigrants are not being assimilated,
hasten to modify the definition. But this does not help the case,
because it does not alter the situation.

In this respect, the war has already rendered a distinct service to this
country. No longer can we blind ourselves to the fact that national
unity does not exist. Professor William Graham Sumner used often to
remark that the United States had no just claim to the name of nation,
because of the presence of the negroes within its borders. Whether that
particular definition of "nation" is adopted or not, there can be no
doubt that real national homogeneity is wholly lacking, and that the
negro is by no means the only discordant element. In fact, in many ways
the immigration problem is more imminent and menacing than the negro
problem: for the negro problem is in a sense static, since it is not
aggravated by continuous accessions from without. We know what the negro
problem is, and can state it in terms which will be relatively
permanent. But the immigration problem presents constantly changing
aspects, not only because of its growing numerical proportions, but
because of the diversity of its elements, and the uncertainty as to its
future developments.

One of the striking manifestations of this new recognition of our
dangerous situation is the change of front of those who are opposed to
the restriction of immigration. The stock answer to the warnings of the
restrictionists used to be the assertion that assimilation was taking
place with perfectly satisfactory rapidity and completeness. America was
the great "melting-pot" of the nations, out of which was to flow–was,
in fact, actually flowing–a new and better type of man, purged of all
slag and dross. As conclusive proofs of this claim, were advanced all
those superficial adaptations to new surroundings which the immigrant
and his children make with so much display and gusto. The assimilating
power of the American People was asserted to be unlimited, and if there
were any hitches in the process, they could all be remedied by
distribution. How suddenly has this elaborate erection of analogies,
metaphors, and pseudo-arguments been shown up for the flimsy camouflage
that it really was! Miss Grace Abbott, the avowed champion of the
immigrant, is forced to admit that "unity of religion, unity of race,
unity of ideals, do not exist in the United States. We are many
nationalities scattered across a continent." Miss Frances Kellor writes
a book on _Straight America_, in which she confesses the failure of
assimilation in the past, and turns to universal military service as a
last resort. Mrs. Mary Antin remains discreetly silent, and Mr. Isaac A.
Hourwich is less in the public eye than formerly.

* * * * *

But even yet the opponents of restriction are not willing to submit to
the logic of the situation, and instead of admitting the present need of
true restriction, come forward with a new substitute. This substitute
goes by the general name of "Americanization," and is urged upon us as
the appropriate and adequate remedy for the ills which none can longer
deny. The essence of this movement is that those who embody the true
American ideas and ideals–a group seldom named or definitely described,
but usually vaguely referred to as "we"–should bend all their energies
toward the assimilation of our foreign population, and should seek by
artificial and purposive expedients to accomplish that cultural
transmutation for which the natural and unconscious relationships of the
immigrant have proved wholly inadequate. And it must be freely granted
that many of the specific proposals of the "Americanizers" are
intrinsically meritorious and worthy of adoption. When it is suggested
that our foreign populations ought to be better housed, fed, clothed,
educated and amused, we all rise in assent–provided he will do his
share toward it; yet in self-defence we must do more than ours. When we
are urged to assist the immigrant to learn the English language and
familiarize himself with the political history and government of this
nation, our common sense gives ready response. The gross absurdity of
the movement lies in the assumption that any or all of these things,
good as they are, constitute assimilation, or will, in the natural
course of their accomplishment, produce assimilation. Who will undertake
to show that those persons of foreign birth who, in the last three and a
half years, have most flagrantly violated their obligations to the
country of their adoption, are on the whole less well educated, less
familiar with the English language, less prosperous, or even less versed
in American institutions, than those who have remained loyal at heart,
or at least in conduct? By all means let us have as small a proportion
of our people as possible who cannot read and write, who do not
understand the English language, who treat their women according to the
code of mediaeval semi-barbarism, and who are content with living
conditions something lower than what we consider proper for domestic
animals. But let us not imagine that those who have freed themselves
from these anomalies are therefore true Americans.

* * * * *

However, the crowning insult offered to the intelligence of the American
people by the Americanization movement is the soberly uttered and
persistently reiterated proposition that the best way to cure the evils
of a heterogeneous population is to naturalize the foreigners! In the
voluminous literature issued by the group of organizations directly
connected with this movement, the three injunctions to the foreigner
which appear with the greatest frequency and emphasis are: "Attend night
school," "Learn the English language," "Become an American citizen." As
already stated, no fault can be found with the first two admonitions in
themselves. But the third calls for close scrutiny, particularly as it
involves a fundamental question which is sure to rise to prominence when
the war is over. What benefits can be expected from our hasty
naturalization of aliens? What is the effect upon the aliens and upon
the country, of this urgent invitation to become citizens? Ought it to
be made easier or harder to acquire citizenship?

The first step in the answer to the foregoing questions is the
examination of the real meaning of naturalization, and the process by
which it is achieved in the United States. Naturalization is the act of
conferring citizenship by a certain state upon a certain individual who
hitherto has been a citizen or subject of another state. Citizenship
implies rights and privileges, allegiance and obligations. The only
difference that may be looked for in an individual after naturalization
is that he now enjoys such rights and privileges, and owes such duties
and obligations as appertain to State B instead of State A. The act of
naturalization is not a developmental experience or process, but merely
the registry of a change of status. Any transformations in the character
of the individual which are regarded as essential to fitness for
citizenship in State B should have taken place before naturalization.
The act of naturalization will not produce them, nor is there adequate
ground for assuming that they will generally follow that act. The only
question which concerns the naturalizing official is whether the
candidate is already affiliated at heart with the new country instead of
the old, and the tests imposed upon the candidate are theoretically
designed to determine or guarantee that affiliation. If, therefore, the
foreigner was in any degree dangerous to his adopted country while an
alien, there is no reason to suppose that he will be materially less so
as a naturalized citizen. On the contrary, he is in a position to do
much greater harm, because of the new powers and opportunities which
naturalization confers, and because of the new confidence and trust
which he enjoys through his citizenship.

The harm thus done by naturalized but unassimilated citizens may be
malicious and intentional or incidental. Many of the notorious election
scandals of the past have been made possible by large numbers of
foreigners who, having sought citizenship for narrowly selfish reasons,
have used it in unscrupulous ways. It is true that they have frequently
been abetted by native-born politicians; but the foreigners furnished
the material. The injury done involuntarily, however, by
well-intentioned voters who simply are not Americans, is even more
serious because more extensive and more insidious. These are the men who
have taken the oath of allegiance in all sincerity, supposing themselves
to be as much in tune with the spirit of American life as the occasion
called for. They have lived up to their lights as consistently, perhaps,
as the majority of native-born voters of the same class. But their
participation in public affairs has constantly been colored by racial or
national affiliations, by a foreign outlook on life, and by incapacity
to appreciate the true genius of the American nation. Their influence
has therefore been to neutralize or thwart the efforts of conscientious
intelligent Americans to grapple with national problems. An interesting
case in point is the naturalized German referred to in "A Family Letter"
in the December _Atlantic Monthly_, who refused to buy an inch of land
in this country, in order that he might be free at any time to return to
Germany. It has taken the emergency of a war to reveal to many
naturalized citizens how mistaken they were (this at least is the most
charitable interpretation) when they supposed that the old allegiance
had been thoroughly subordinated.

It is a most extraordinary inversion of logic, this mental process by
which people persuade themselves that rushing our aliens through the
naturalization courts will better our national situation. The line of
argument seems to be something like this: A foreign resident of the
United States who desires to participate fully in the life of the
nation, and who is sincerely devoted to the best interests of the
country, will wish to become a citizen; therefore, every naturalized
citizen desires to participate fully in the life of the nation and is
sincerely devoted to its best interests. Or perhaps a slightly less
fantastic process of cerebration might be this: Naturalization is
conferred upon foreigners who have fitted themselves to be received into
citizenship; therefore, to accelerate the process of naturalization is
to reduce the number of foreigners unfitted for citizenship.

If our naturalization laws were so strict, and the courts which
administer them so scrupulous, that no alien could acquire citizenship
except upon a convincing demonstration of his assimilation, it would do
less positive harm to urge aliens to become citizens, because they would
know, or would in time learn, that to do so they must bring themselves
into complete harmony with the spirit of the nation. It is therefore
essential to examine the prescribed qualifications for naturalization,
and see exactly what citizenship papers stand for.

* * * * *

The requirements are simply stated. The candidate must be a free white
person, or a person of African nativity or African descent. He must be
twenty-one years of age. He must have resided continuously five years in
the United States, and one year in the State in which he makes
application. He must have had his "first paper" at least two years, but
not more than seven years. He must be of good moral character, must be
attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and
must be able to speak English (unless registered under the Homestead
Laws) and to sign his name. He must not be an anarchist or a polygamist.
He must renounce any hereditary title or order of nobility, and all
allegiance and fidelity to any foreign potentate, prince, city, or state
of which he is a subject. He must affirm his intention to reside
permanently in the United States, and must declare on oath that he will
"support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States
against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and
allegiance to the same." He must have as witnesses two citizens of the
United States who testify as to his residence in the United States, his
moral character, his attachment to the Constitution, and his general
fitness (in their opinion) to be admitted to citizenship.

Now, assuming for the time being that the court officials apply the law
with the utmost possible rigor, what is there in the foregoing list of
requirements that guarantees that the newly made citizen is free from
any lingering attachment to any other country, and ready to enter
single-heartedly into the life of the nation, ready to share its burdens
and the responsibility of grappling with its problems, in a way at all
comparable to the native-born citizen?

The qualifications in question fall into two groups: first, those which
are matters of demonstrable fact, and second those which are mere
asseverations of the candidate himself, or of his witnesses. Most
important in the first category is the period of residence. With the aid
of the records of the immigration bureau this fact can be definitely
established. But what of it? What does a residence of five years mean as
to assimilation? Under modern conditions almost nothing. This provision
was written into the law over a century ago, after heated debate, and
has never been changed, though in the middle of the nineteenth century
it was subjected to vigorous attacks by powerful parties who wished the
period raised to twenty-one years. In a simpler organization of society,
there was some meaning in the five-year requirement. When communities
were small, when foreigners were few, when the United States still
preserved some of the character of mediaeval society, of which it has
been said, "the essence … was that, in every manor, every one knew
everything about his neighbor," it was scarcely possible for an alien to
reside five years in the country without becoming well known to a number
of native citizens in his community, and establishing many points of
contact with Americanizing influences. But in twentieth century America
conditions are completely reversed. It is not only possible, but in
innumerable cases the fact, that an alien may live, not only five nor
twenty-one, but forty or fifty years in the midst of an American
community without experiencing more than the most infinitesimal molding
from a definitely American environment. In fact, the majority of recent
immigrants do not really live in America at all, in anything more than a
strictly geographical sense, but in communities almost as foreign as
those from which they came. The mere physical fact of five years
residence of itself signifies absolutely nothing as to the fitness of
the alien to share in controlling the destiny of the nation. Let us
therefore examine the other requirements in this group.

The candidate must be twenty-one years of age. This is reasonable and
desirable, but tells us nothing of the alien's fitness for citizenship.
The period of at least two years intervening between the issue of the
first and second papers was presumably designed to give opportunity for
investigation of the candidate's fitness, but rarely serves that purpose
now. There remain, then, three positive requirements of fact–race, and
ability to speak English and to sign one's name. The general question of
the greater desirability of one race over another, as material for
American citizenship, is too involved to be adequately treated in this
connection; clearly there is nothing here to indicate the fitness of the
individual. This leaves just two tests of real assimilation, viz.,
ability to speak English and to sign one's name. These are assuredly
among the minimum requirements for citizenship, but they do not go very
far.

Turning then to the qualifications which rest upon the statements of the
candidate and his witnesses, we find that he must be of good moral
character, and not a polygamist nor an anarchist. Assuming that the
truth is told, these requisites are beyond objection, but what do they
tell us of the fitness of the alien for American citizenship? To
renounce hereditary titles is a proper enough requirement, but one that
throws no light upon the candidacy of the majority of modern immigrants.
The statement of intention of permanent residence in this country is
meant as a guarantee of the good purposes of the alien in becoming a
citizen. But naturally this will be treated most lightly by those who
need it most, and it is a question whether a foreigner whose motives are
questionable is any more desirable in the country than out of it.
Anyway, the destination of good intentions is proverbial. Finally, then,
the alien must renounce all foreign allegiance and fidelity, and swear
to his attachment to the principles of the Constitution of this country,
and engage to support and defend it and the laws against all enemies.

Remembering that, whatever may have been the efficacy of the provision
about witnesses in the early stages of our history, it has degenerated
into a sorry farce in modern times, when professional witnesses hang
about the courts, ready to swear to anything for anybody, what does the
whole naturalization procedure, as stipulated by law, amount to?
Practically to nothing more than the statement by the alien himself that
he wishes to transfer his allegiance from a foreign state to this, and
the swearing of fidelity. We virtually offer citizenship freely to any
alien who can meet certain arbitrary requirements as to residence, race,
etc., and is willing to take the oath of allegiance. The one tangible
thing is the oath, and the unreliability of the oath as a guarantee of
undivided allegiance has been demonstrated over and over again in past
decades, and most emphatically by the traitorous behavior of some of our
naturalized citizens since 1914.

In practice, officials may or may not add to the requirements of the law
a brief examination designed to reveal the candidate's knowledge of the
workings of the federal and state governments. But even at best, these
questions and their appropriate answers occupy only half a dozen pages
or so in a convenient little textbook, which assures the alien that if
he "thoroughly familiarizes himself with the meaning of the questions
and with the answers thereto, he will be sufficiently qualified to be
admitted to citizenship," even though the order in which the questions
are asked should be varied a little. To cram up on this examination
could hardly occupy an intelligent high school boy a couple of hours.

Since we thus offer citizenship almost for the asking to any white or
African alien who has resided here five years, it follows that the
issuance of naturalization papers does not guarantee any degree of
assimilation, and to urge aliens to become naturalized is in no sense
equivalent to urging them to fit themselves for the responsibilities of
citizenship. There is accordingly absolutely nothing to be said in
defense of the notion that urging naturalization upon our aliens will
improve our domestic situation.

* * * * *

But what of the opposite side of the case? Are there any positive
objections to the propaganda in question? The answer involves an
analysis of the probable effects upon the alien of such vigorous
encouragement, and the probable effects upon the United States of a
large increase of naturalized citizens. The latter problem practically
resolves itself into the query whether an unassimilated foreigner is
less dangerous as citizen than as an alien. This has already been
answered. Because of the added power, opportunity, and protection which
the naturalized citizen enjoys, and because of the greater demands he
may make upon the government, he is in a position to do much more harm,
maliciously or otherwise, as a citizen than as an alien. It is true that
federal naturalization does not give him the right to vote. The suffrage
is a matter of states' rights. Most states require federal
naturalization; some require additional qualifications, such as
literacy, while about fifteen allow even unnaturalized aliens to vote.

In the absence of guarantees to the contrary, it is quite possible, not
only that the alien may not be fitted for citizenship, but that he may
desire citizenship for unworthy or ulterior purposes. Until stopped by a
recent law, it was a common practice for subjects of backward or
despotic foreign countries to come to the United States, remain five
years and take out their citizenship papers, with no intention of even
remaining longer, but with the definite purpose of returning to their
native land and there carrying on their various businesses in the
enjoyment of the greater facilities and protection given by the American
flag.

Another common motive is to qualify for a better municipal or state job.
Among the documents issued by the Americanizing agencies is a poster,
bordered in red, white, and blue, and illustrated by a representation of
Uncle Sam, his right hand clasping that of a sturdy immigrant, while his
left points invitingly to the judge who is issuing naturalization
papers. After the customary plea to become a citizen, the legend
continues: "It means a better opportunity and a better home in America.
It means a better job. It means a better chance for your children. It
means a better America." (Why not add, "It means a chance to turn a few
honest dollars on election day?") If these statements were true, the
case would be bad enough, as, with the exception of the last, they
appeal to a decidedly low motive for seeking citizenship. But they are
not true. The newly made citizen in time finds out that they are not
true, and then he feels cheated. When the better home and better job
fail to materialize, any budding sense of obligation to his new country
receives a sad shock.

Urging citizenship upon the alien must inevitably produce an attitude of
mind exactly the opposite from that which would make him a useful
citizen. That which comes easily is lightly regarded, and that which is
presented in such a way that the taking of it appears a favor, is not
looked upon with great reverence or respect. In this respect much of the
literature of the Americanization movement is most pernicious. Moreover
the emphasis is all on the personal advantages of citizenship, not at
all on its duties or responsibilities.

In this particular our forefathers were much wiser than we. They
recognized that American citizenship was a thing of great value, to be
regarded as a boon, procurable only by earnest endeavor and true merit.
They could not have comprehended how the liberties for which the
Revolutionary heroes fought and bled could ever be so degraded as to be
hawked about the market place. We would do well to follow their example.
We esteem the United States most highly of all nations. We believe that
it owes a peculiar debt to posterity, that those entrusted with its
career should be imbued with the most profound respect for it, the
deepest sense of their responsibility to it, and the most thorough
equipment for the adequate performance of their duties with respect to
it. To participate in the control of the destiny of this great democracy
is an undertaking of the gravest sort; and five years residence and the
other requirements of the naturalization law are no more a fit
preparation for it than five years of service in the office of a
corporation and familiarity with the office routine fit the office boy
to become a director.

Any propaganda directed toward our aliens should therefore take the form
of urging, even to the point of insistence, that they _fit themselves_
for citizenship. This will make them more useful and less troublesome
residents, whether they are eventually naturalized or not. But
citizenship itself should be held aloft, portrayed to them as a
priceless boon, to be won only as a reward of long and patient effort,
and a complete demonstration of their fitness. If this results in
discouraging some foreigners from coming to this country, no harm will
be done. If it results in increasing the proportion of residents who do
not share in the government, and if this is in itself an evil, the
remedy is to be applied at the ports of entry, and not in the
naturalization courts.

It is emphatically true that changes in our naturalization procedure are
needed. But they should be in the direction of greater strictness, not
of greater laxity. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss in
detail what these changes should be, but to emphasize the necessity that
in general the requirements should be more inclusive, more positive,
more significant of the assimilation and fitness of the candidate, more
determinative of his good intentions in presenting his petition. One
change that is certainly called for is the modification of state laws,
by federal coercion if necessary, so as to make it impossible for aliens
to vote. As social organization becomes more complex, the influence of
government upon the life of the individual becomes more extensive, more
intimate, and more vital; and as the sphere of government expands, the
responsibilities of the electorate become heavier and more intricate.
When peace is restored, and the period of reconstruction commences, the
demands upon the intelligence, fidelity, and conscience of the voter
will be vastly greater than ever before in the world's history. It is
essential to the maintenance of democracy and the progress of humanity
that the United States face this critical period with the most efficient
and harmonious electorate possible.

Does emphasis upon national homogeneity and solidarity seem too
reactionary in this crisis of the world's history? Does it appear that
laying stress on the differentiation of nationalities within our borders
will prevent the United States from playing its appropriate part in the
coming period of reconstruction, which, we are told, must involve
recognition of the principle of internationality? A moment's thought
will make it clear that this position is a mistaken one when the war is
over. Nations will still exist, nor will they pass out of existence with
the progress of any revolutionary international adjustments that may be
made. Whatever action is taken in the direction of a world federation
must be made by self-conscious units, and must rest upon the basis of
well-knit nations. The recent unusually sound and suggestive piece of
sociological thinking, _Community_, by Mr. R. M. Maciver, contains a
most timely chapter on "Co-ordination of Community." In the course of
his study of the way the principle of association and common action is
extended, the author observes:

Whether the ideal of nationality grows stronger or weaker in
the future, the fact of nationality … will always remain….
Understanding the service and limits of nationality, we are
now in a position to consider how nations both are and can be
co-ordinated within the wider community which they build. Such
co-ordination can be directly achieved only through the State,
which is the primary association corresponding to the
nation…. It is true that the limits of nations and States
are still far from being coincident, but the great historical
movements have been leading towards that ideal. In any case it
must be the co-operation of States, whether they do or do not
coincide with nations, which will bring order into the still
existing chaos of the nations.

In the period following the war, the necessity will be greater than ever
before that the government of the United States shall be able to deal
with intricate and far reaching problems with intelligence, unity,
harmony, and force. This can be done only through an electorate that is
intelligent, homogeneous, sympathetic, and free from divisions into
antagonistic or incongruous groups.

An extreme but significant illustration of this principle is furnished
by the present situation in Russia. If a general truce were declared
tomorrow, and the nations sought to get together to discuss a permanent
basis of settlement, one of the greatest obstacles in the way of success
would be Russia, simply for the reason that at present there is no
Russia in the sense that a nation must exist to participate in such a
council as that supposed. There is no danger that the United States will
fall into any such state of disruption as Russia. But there is a
distinct danger that it may suffer from a lesser degree of the same
malady, the existence of discordant elements in the body politic, and
consequent inability to exert her maximum force in attacking the
problems of reconstruction.

The period following the war will be a time for new things. Easier than
ever before will it be to shake off the trammels of tradition and
precedent, and inaugurate approved though novel political policies.
Foremost among the matters which the United States will be called upon
to see to will be the reconsideration of our entire attitude toward
aliens, and their naturalization. The time to prepare for that
reconsideration is now.

WAR PROPHETS

The war is generating prophets as the Nile generated frogs under the
mandate of Moses, and there is a similarity in the speech of both
products. The prophets are too cautious to risk their reputation in
predicting the events of the war; their forecasts relate to the sort of
a world we shall find ourselves in after peace returns. But even this
measure of prediction is a by-product of the soothsayers who, whether
their lips have been touched with a coal from off the altar, or not,
certainly wield the pen of the ready writer. The main industry of the
busy prophets is to expound to us the meaning of the war, and to
disclose to us those causes of the war which we should never have
discovered for ourselves.

The ordinary uninspired man feels when he has read the diplomatic
correspondence of a couple of weeks at the end of July and the beginning
of August, 1914, that he knows fairly well what were the immediate
causes of the war, and where the responsibility lies. If he carries his
reading back as far as the annexation of Bosnia in 1908, he is satisfied
that he has a pretty comprehensive view of the forces that precipitated
the war. And if he has read pretty abundant selections from the
Pan-German literature and the panegyrics on war–such a literature as no
branch of the human race, Christian or pagan, ever produced before–he
thinks he understands how it was possible to plunge the German nation
into this attack on the world.

But all this is merely a matter of reading and reflection. Any one can
reach such conclusions. The prophet must reach some different conclusion
in order to sustain his claim to inspiration:

If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be.

The prophet has got to attribute the war to causes that would not have
occurred to the common mortal, and see in it meanings that ordinary eyes
cannot trace, or abdicate his tripod.

It is equally unreasonable and equally immoral to say that the war
proves that Christianity is a failure, and to say that it proves
Christianity has never been tried. Because if either of these hypotheses
be correct, one set of belligerents is as deep in the mud as the other
is in the mire, and there is no personal culpability for this war, and
no national culpability either. We are all guilty of not being
Christians, or all unfortunate in having grown up in ignorance of
revelation, and beyond that there is no blame for the war.

If this war is not the result of certain perfectly well known
individuals using their own nations for an attack on others, but is the
result of impersonal enmity between Teuton and Slav, then no person or
persons are responsible for the war, there is no more blame on one side
than there is on the other, and the moral element is as lacking as it is
in an encounter between the inhabitants of the jungle. It is a curious
thing that the prophet assumes the role of a moral censor, and devotes
much the greater part of his energies to confusing the moral issues, to
obliterating moral distinctions, and to blunting the ethical sense.

To condemn all war, which is a congenial theme for a moralist, is rank
immorality; for it puts the nation that attacks, and the nation that
repels the invader, in the same category, and refuses to make any
distinction between the burglar, the householder who resists him, and
the policeman who overpowers him and drags him away to jail.

The prophet readily drops his eye on armies, and at once announces that
it is their existence that accounts for the war. If there were no armies
there would possibly be no wars, but we have shown more than once that
armies can be pretty rapidly extemporized. Besides, this, too, confuses
the moral issues. All nations have armies, and if America and England
had relatively small armies before this war, they had the largest navy
in the world and the navy which ranked second or third. The highwayman
carries a pistol, and so does the paymaster who is obliged to transport
a treasure chest. If the possession of a revolver was the cause of the
homicide that occurred, the guilt lies equally on the souls of both.

We are told that no truth is more certain than that "if you create a
vast fighting machine it will sooner or later compel you to fight,
whether you want to fight or not"–which is about as dubious a truth as
was ever paraded as an axiom–that "these vast machines, whether armies
or engines of war, are made to be used," and that "the military machine
will overpower the minds which have called it into being." Then their
responsibility is not for the ensuing war, but for carelessness in
leaving a war weapon around. But if these vast military machines were
made to be used, then why complicate the question of responsibility by
representing the machine as overpowering its careless but really
peaceful creator, and compelling him to fight whether he wants to fight
or not?

If the Kaiser and the Crown Prince and the General Staff and the
military caste and the Pan-German element created the army to use
against other nations, in accordance with Bernhardi's alternative of
"world domination or decline," and if all the professors and preachers
and pamphleteers had taught the people that war was a high, holy, and
beautiful thing, and–more particularly–that Germany could beat any
other nation in a few weeks, and the armies would return loaded down
with spoils and indemnities and title deeds to new provinces, and that
"our good old German God" had specially deputized the German nation to
overpower all the rest of the world, make German the universal tongue,
and the primitive moral code of Germany the ethical law of the world,
then we know precisely who is guilty of this war. But if the German army
compelled the German Government to back Austria in an attack on Servia,
and on its own account to invade Russia, Belgium and France, we are very
much at sea about the place where the moral burden is to be laid.

* * * * *

The prophet is particularly prone to find the causes of the war in a
material civilization, in our existing industrial system, and especially
in greed. The prophet and the political orator are equally stern in
their denunciation of greed. At a time when prophets were so accustomed
to physical exercise that they could run ahead of Ahab's chariot, and in
the absence of normal sources of supply, were fed by the ravens, their
indignation at greed, their contempt for commerce, and their superiority
to a material civilization, was free from incongruity. The modern
prophet does not live on locusts and wild honey, nor is his wardrobe
limited to a belt of camel's hair. His uncompromising denunciation of
his age is somewhat impaired by the obvious fact that he has "some of
the pork."

The deliverances of the prophet on this class of themes are rather
tiresome in their iteration, and distinctly irritating in their oblivion
to history. There is no civilization that does not rest upon the
possession and acquisition of property; there is no clime or time in
which men have not worked for their living, and sought the means of
buying the things which their tastes, coarse or refined, craved, in
which there have not been rich and poor, and in which it has not been
much pleasanter to be the former than the latter. The earliest social
satirist, like the latest, berated the accursed greed for gold, and
castigated his contemporaries for their love of luxury and their eager
pursuit of money. It would seem as if the prophet might recognize that
it is a very old sermon he is preaching, and familiarize himself with
the extraordinary age of those evils of his own day which he feels it
his mission to chastise.

What distinguishes this age from others, and our own country from others
is that here and now wealth is acquired more easily and more rapidly
than at other times and places. This being the very obvious fact, it
shakes our confidence in the whole fraternity of prophets that they
should, one and all, attribute the larger fortunes made here and now to
the greater love of money, or its more assiduous pursuit. The rich man
is more successful in amassing wealth than the poor man, but he is not
more mercenary. Two men try equally hard to get rich; one succeeds, and
the other fails; the man who failed is quite likely to be more eager for
money than the man who succeeded.

The industrial system never meets the approval of the prophet. An
occasional prediction is that the war will destroy our deplorable
economic life, in which every man is trying to get as high wages or as
large a salary or as ample profits as possible, and will usher in the
golden age, in which such base considerations as pecuniary compensation
will have a very secondary place in every man's mind. Before this war
came, the most eminent educator in America assured the workingman that
he ought to work for the pleasure of it, and not for the contents of his
Saturday night envelope. Such admonitions have occurred, in one form or
another, in the literature of the sages, for centuries and millenniums.
But it was never evolved by a man who was digging postholes, and a noble
ambition to mine the very best coal cannot carry a miner far when he is
obliged to cut such coal as there is in front of him.

It is barely possible that by devoting some weeks to the task, a man
could produce a pair of shoes notably superior to the ordinary run of
shoes, and his professional pride as a devout follower of St. Crispin
might take keen delight in the work of his hands; in the fact that he
had made the very finest pair of shoes in the world. But, after all, he
needs food, and possibly he is obliged to pay rent, and he ought to have
a wife to make comfortable, and children to send to school in
presentable form: so something besides pride in his work is necessary.
If he is to be adequately compensated for his labor on that pair of
shoes, their price will be such that only the rich–if the rich are to
be permitted to survive–can buy them; and if such shoemakers prevail,
the greater part of mankind will go barefoot. For does not the prophet
who has poured out the phials of his wrath upon an economic system that
makes quantity and cheapness, instead of real excellence, its ideals,
recognize that the purpose of quantity is to supply the wants of a
greater number of human beings, and the purpose of cheapness is to
enable human beings to supply more of their needs? For certainly if the
shoes which are the very best shoes in the whole world, and whose
excellence affords the keenest satisfaction to the soul of the
shoemaker, cost $50, then it is quite certain that the customer who
carries them home will go without many other things that he ought to
have. If the shoes are made by machinery and sold for $3, they may not
be quite so beautiful or durable as the artistic product of hand labor,
regardless of time, and yet be in the interest of the customer and the
community.

After the prophet has got through with his ravings at the present
industrial system, the fact will remain that there are a good many
millions of us on this earth, and that we have got to earn our livings,
and that the agriculture and industries of the Middle Ages would not
keep all of us alive. In addition to which, we may also venture to
suggest that the people of the Middle Ages were not quite as honest as
we are, and were not less particular about getting a financial return
for their exertions. The modern industrial system was not created by
capital for capitalists; it is the result of the efforts of the
community as a whole to supply the needs of all of its members, and to
afford employment to all of them. Hunting and fishing are pleasanter
than most of the industries, but 100,000,000 of civilized people are
living and are equipped with intellectual and moral accessories, where a
quarter of a million Indians once roamed. And although they toiled not
(systematically), neither did they spin (much), they were not happier or
better than we are.

One prophet of more discrimination than most of his clan admits that the
industry and thrift which produce capital are valuable qualities
morally, but he is still confident that the great wealth of the modern
world is thoroughly demoralizing. Whence it appears that the safe course
for the world to pursue is to work hard and save carefully and burn up
its accumulations every year in order to keep itself poor but pious,
like the parents of the subjects of a style of religious biography now
quite out of date. Of course this prophet would prefer the wiser course
of not earning enough to afford wealth to accumulate. If we would only
adopt his system and work for the pleasure of working, and for the
satisfaction of producing absolutely perfect products of our own skill,
there would be no danger of our sinking our souls into perdition with a
load of gold. Noah and his sons appear to have built the Ark by the
processes of domestic industry, in distinction from the accursed factory
or capitalist system. How their support was provided for during the 120
years has not been recorded, but if one man undertook to build a
locomotive, instead of merely making repetitions of a single part, it
would be necessary to make arrangement for this. And when we are trying
to replace the vessels destroyed by German submarines, it seems
necessary to use more rapid methods of construction than sufficed before
the Deluge.

Will some prophet please tell us how poor we must be in order to be
virtuous and pacific, and how virtuous and pacific the world was before
it became prosperous? Were there no wars before the Twentieth Century?
The extent of this war is scarcely a result of the world's opulence,
when Sir Edward, now Viscount, Grey, offered to keep England out of it
if Germany would limit the war to the Balkans or to Russia. The war has
involved most of the world because Germany began it by attacking France
and Belgium, and followed that up by attacking Americans on the high
seas, where they had as much right to be as at home.

This argument that the war is the result of wealth is immoral, because
it makes the guilt of America and England even greater than that of
Germany (for they are richer); and because it is the argument of the
communist–that theft is not wrong, because it is the inevitable
consequence of private property: if no one has any right to anything,
then no one will steal anything.

* * * * *

Nothing holds the attention of the prophet better than the idea that the
war is the result of commercial competition. This also is an invention
of the devil to exculpate Germany. All of us are in business for gain;
we are actuated by greed; we are making cotton cloth to cover Africans
for the profit that we can get out of it; we ought to think only of
clothing the naked, and if we would only give the cotton cloth to the
Hottentots without material return, we should have the proud
satisfaction of seeing them draped in chintzes, and we should be safe
from that wealth which is so certain to make us wicked. On those terms
there would be very little competition in supplying the Hottentots, and
no danger whatever that any nation would fight us to gain that portion
of the export trade.

But the "peaceful penetration" of all other countries by German industry
and commerce had been going on for thirty years before the war. England
had stamped "Made in Germany" upon the imports from that country under
the delusion that people would not buy them if they knew they were not
made by domestic industry, but the only result was to advertise German
business. Shipping interests at Antwerp, factories in France, hotels in
Switzerland, iron works in Italy, commercial establishments in China and
South America, the trade and transportation of Turkey, passed into
German hands, and no nation offered armed resistance. No less a witness
than Prince von Buelow testifies that England could easily have stopped
German naval expansion, but did not do so. German commercial expansion
did not cause the war, unless Great Britain, the principal sufferer from
German business success, attacked Germany in 1914. And this is the
German official explanation of the war supplied for domestic
consumption. And yet it is repudiated by the highest witness who could
be put upon the stand. No less a person than Prince Lichnowsky, who was
German Ambassador in London at the outbreak of the war, traces the war
to Austrian projects in the Balkans, with the "blank check" of Germany,
together with irritation in Russia caused by Germany's own efforts to
establish a dominating influence in Constantinople. This leaves nothing
of the story invented for the German people, and propagated by the
university professors, that England attacked Germany because the latter
was getting its trade away from it. And this falsehood, invented to
shield the guilty nation, has a special fascination for the prophets. It
looks so much like taking a broad and general and impartial view of the
world. Satan is very liberal; it pains him to have guilt attached to any
individual. It is more in accord with his philosophic and humane ideas
to regard crime as a product of social conditions, and war as the result
of trade competition.

* * * * *

But the guilt of Germany is betrayed by the selection by Germans of Sir
Edward Grey as the especial subject of hatred among all the hated
British race. Nothing but the consciousness of guilt can explain the
extraordinary vituperation of the British Minister who did in 1914
precisely what he was highly praised for doing in 1913 in a speech in
the Reichstag by Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. That was the speech
calling on the Reichstag for an increase of about 136,000 men in the
German army, an addition of $50,000,000 a year to the military budget,
and a non-recurring capital tax for military purposes of $250,000,000.
The difference between 1913 and 1914 was not in anything that Sir Edward
did, but in the fact that before the army increase of 1913 Germany was
not prepared for war and supported Sir Edward's efforts for peace. After
that increase Germany was prepared for war, and would do nothing to
support Sir Edward's efforts to avert war, and the coarse abuse of Sir
Edward is a "smoke box" designed to conceal the changed position of
Germany.

Dr. von Jagow, Foreign Minister from 1913 to 1916, has been put forward
to reply to Prince Lichnowsky, but agrees with the Prince that England
did not desire war, and that Sir Edward Grey, who is described by a
German divine as having "a cancerous tumor in place of a heart," acted
in good faith in his efforts to find a peaceful solution for the
difficulty. One American writer finds the origin of the war in the rival
interests of Germany and England in the Bagdad Railway, but Dr. Paul
Rohrbach, now or recently of the German Colonial Office, has admitted
that just before the war opened the interests of the two nations were
settled by a treaty, in which England made surprisingly large
concessions. This is also stated by Prince Lichnowsky. So that the
testimony of three particularly eminent Germans destroys the fiction
that England attacked Germany because it was jealous of German
commercial expansion.

The fundamental trouble with the whole race of war prophets is that they
think the war is a new thing, and they feel called upon to tell the rest
of us what to make of it. War is about the oldest human industry. This
is the greatest of all wars, but that does not alter the meaning of war.
Nor does it necessarily alter the results of war. While it is the
greatest of all wars, it is not yet a long war, and in proportion to the
population it is not certain that it is greater than other wars. It is
not even certain that in proportion to the men involved, it is more
bloody than other wars. We have no means of getting at the figures
except in the loosest way, because the several Governments do not tell
how many men they have at any given time or place, or the casualties in
any individual engagements. But some approximations have been made, and
they do not indicate that the great war is decidedly more bloody, in
proportion to the armies, than other wars have been. Our Civil War
lasted full four years; the War of Independence occupied seven. Before
that was the seven years of the French and Indian war, and one war is
known as the Thirty Years War. From the beginning of the French
Revolution to Waterloo was more than quarter of a century, and at the
end of that period another Bourbon was on the throne of France. Our
Civil War made nearly, if not quite, as heavy a draft upon the
population as the present war has made upon the population of England or
France.

The moral and religious questions involved in war are not notably
different in the greatest of all wars and in wars which are not quite so
great. Most of them are involved in the ordinary administration of the
criminal law by which an orderly community protects itself from its
predatory members. Doubtless there will be social and political results
from this war, but if other wars have not created a new heaven and a new
earth, why should this one? The prediction that this war will produce
great changes in the direction of democracy and of applied religion are
probably well founded. But the war will act only as an accelerator.
These changes have been going on for a long time; the movements for
fifteen or twenty years before the war opened were very evident. Woman
suffrage and prohibition seem impending, but they are not the products
of this war: they had made great progress between 1900 and 1914.

None of the prophets betray any knowledge of history, or see things in
any perspective. The great war is the first great cataclysm that they
seem to be aware of, and they are rushing to and fro, like the
Chaldeans, to find explanations of it, and to impress the public by
their ability to forecast its consequences.

But when peace comes it will leave us face to face with greed and
materialism, and an industrial system in which some men prosper and
others do not, and an obligation to labor from which no important
fraction of mankind can escape, and wants will multiply as fast as the
means of satisfying them increase, and for the greater part of us the
weekly pay envelope and the possibilities of a competence, and the
demand from the other side of the world for the grain we produce, will
continue to be our principal incentives to work.

Progress, intellectual and moral as well as material, has been made in
the past, but the world has not taken great leaps ahead as the result of
great wars, and still less has it changed the direction of its movement
as the result of wars. The one thing of which the vastness of this war
gives us a fairly good assurance, is that no nation will again be
trained from infancy to old age to regard war as a high, holy and
beautiful process of attaining its manifest destiny to rule the rest of
mankind. For generations no statesman will purpose a war, and no monarch
will again have the power of hurling his people at neighboring nations.
If Germany fails in its present effort, neither Germany nor any other
nation will repeat the experiment of 1914.

But the prophets will have no chance to point with pride to the great
religious, moral and economic revolutions whose advent they pointed out
amid the clash of arms. We have found our soul, the prophets love to
tell us. They disagree on some things, and those who have no revelation
upbraid the others for not giving us a spiritual interpretation and
getting a vision of the future from the carnage of the war, as the
augurs pretended to see the future when they were only looking at the
viscera of their victims. But all of them agree that we have found our
soul. When did we lose our soul? When Mr. Roosevelt was President he was
very apprehensive that we had lost our "fighting edge." Is any one
worried now about our lack of a "fighting edge?" Possibly our soul was
never lost. We betrayed some evidences of possessing a soul very early
in the war.

The charge that we had lost our soul, or, at least, had mislaid it,
rests on two facts. One is that we are prosperous. That fatal
alliteration of poverty and piety has a fearful hold upon the soul of
the prophet. The other is that we did not go to the rescue of Belgium
when it was invaded. But Mr. Roosevelt himself did not realize that we
ought to have gone to the rescue of Belgium, till March, 1916. He is on
record in September, 1914, as satisfied with the course of the
Administration, and convinced that we should not have entered the war
when our own interests were not touched. And it ought to be forgiven a
statesman, if he is very reluctant to plunge his country into war, and
declines to put his Government in the position of a knight errant,
wandering around the world in search of maidens to be delivered from
donjons. And furthermore, as the Monroe Doctrine is the corner stone of
our foreign policy, we were properly slow about intruding into a
European quarrel, until it became unmistakable that it was much more
than a European quarrel–that it was an attack upon civilization and
popular Government. We were also justified in assuming that Great
Britain, France and Russia, three of the five guarantors of Belgian
neutrality, were capable of punishing the two guarantors who violated
their pledge, several times renewed by Germany, even up to the day
before Germany invaded the country it had pledged its honor to protect.

But our soul, whether it was lost or not, is now in our possession. Let
us be thankful that the prophets recognize that encouraging fact. And if
our mind is also in our possession, we may look forward to a world not
entirely different from the one we have known, but unquestionably less
likely to play with firearms, and quite certainly one in which the
common people will have much greater control of their political
destinies, and one in which no War Lord, with chatter about shining
swords and shining armor and mailed fists, will be able to hurl his
nation against the others in a desperate effort to establish for himself
an overlordship of the world. Nor will any nation ever be likely to
rhapsodize over carnage, and feed its sordid soul with thoughts of the
territories and indemnities to be got by war, or intoxicate itself with
the delusion that it is a race of supermen charged by the Almighty with
the duty of forcing its harsh language and its brutal habits upon all
other nations.

MY FRIEND THE JAY

"Every man who comes into the world has need of friends." What Ursa
Major thus profoundly observes of mankind, from China to Peru, might be
applied with special force to the blue jay, at least to those jays that
come into the world. Of the rest "deponent saith not." For by common
consent the blue jay is a rascal, nay even a villain; and to deepen his
turpitude to an infinity of wickedness, I have heard one uncherished
female with a disposition slightly acid liken him to a Man. Indeed, were
some of his detractors to be believed, there is scarcely a crime in the
whole avian calendar that has not been meditated upon and hatched in his
nest.

It is true that there are people of such impinging personality that
merely mild dislike with respect to them seems impossible. The reactions
they produce are violent. Their admirers, when they have any, pursue
their loyalty to an _O Altitudo!_ their enemies (and such are usually
legion) make of their names a hissing, and spit them out of the mouth.
To particularize, I might refer to a gentleman who was vigorously active
in the political unpleasantness of 1912. His friends saw in him a
Godefroy, come to lead the politically pure against the hordes of the
standpat infidels; his enemies, when they had wiped the froth from their
lips, turned the vocabulary of prayer to evil uses, and accused him of
being in league with the devil.

But these are merely individuals. The cases in which an indictment is
drawn up against a whole people are comparatively rare,–the Goths,
perhaps, the Turks, and the bloodthirsty Belgians, to bring it down to
modern times, will serve as examples. Just such an inclusive indictment
is brought against the jay. "I fear," says one amiable and authoritative
writer on bird life, "that the blue jay is a reprobate"; and in this
opinion most authorities concur. Are there not, then, three righteous
jays in all Israel? No, say his judges. Peradventure one? "Only in the
museums of natural history," they inexorably answer. All living jays are
impudent, profane, mischievous, cannibalistic, "the hul cussed tribe of
'em," as one exasperated gardener wrathfully declared to me.

Dear, dear! This is a terrible situation. Like Fuzzy Wuzzy, the poor
blue jay "'asn't got no papers of his own." Nor can he follow the
example of those benevolent corporations whose judicious investments in
advertising space temper the unshorn lamb to receive the shears in a
docile mood, and at the same time protect them from too close scrutiny
by the newspapers. He must bear the slings and air-guns of outrageous
boyhood with scarcely a voice raised in his behalf. It seems hardly
fair.

It is true that the jay is not delicate in his appetite. He cannot, like
the ethereal maiden whom Burton mentions, subsist for months on the
smell of a rose. I knew one old gentleman, to be sure, who secured a
brief respite from care, and achieved a state of mild hilarity, by
applying his nose to the mouth of a whiskey jug. But the jay enjoys not
these olfactive refections. He needs more substantial food. He is
omnivorous; and out of that important characteristic springs his most
reprehensible trait: he eats little birds.

One morning last summer I got up rather earlier than usual to transplant
some asters before the sun should come out hot. It was a calm,
breezeless morning, with scarcely a sound to disturb the cool quietude,
except the song of a robin on the top of the old maple. Heaven be
praised! we have no trolley cars in our village, and no factories.
Suddenly there broke out in the alley, the wildest commotion imaginable.
It sounded as though the sparrows from five counties were there, and had
eaten of the insane root. The air was filled with shrill cries, chirps,
and excited chatterings. I rushed to the fence, my fingers all mud, and
looked over. In the midst of a flock of sparrows forty or more in
number, all hopping about distractedly but none daring to attack him,
stood a big blue jay with his crest militantly erect. From time to time
he pecked at something, but what that something was, like Peterkin, I
could not well make out. At every stroke of his strong black beak the
cries of the sparrows shrilled louder; whenever he paused and looked
around in his truculent contempt, their frenzied crescendos somewhat
abated.

Curious, I drew nearer and discovered that the object of his unpleasant
attention was a young sparrow, a mere fledgeling, scarcely old enough to
be out of the nest. He was murderously pecking it in the eye. The wee
helpless thing fluttered weakly in its agony and cheeped piteously. I
grabbed up an empty fruit jar that had protected a rose cutting from the
blasts of winter, and hurled it at the jay. He flew screaming to a sour
cherry tree a short distance away, from which safe vantage point he
cursed me with every oath and revilement in his scandalous vocabulary.
The little sparrow I put out of its misery.

As I went back to my asters, I could not help reflecting on the scene I
had witnessed. I seemed to see in it a small counterpart of what had
happened in Europe. Here was little Servia in the person of this young
sparrow–something of a nuisance, perhaps, yet comparatively
defenseless. And here in the arrogant, domineering jay, relentless and
powerful, was Austria. A similitude might likewise be made out for
Belgium and Germany. And where, I wondered, did my own country come in?
With almost sinister significance a sleek bronze grackle, plump and
round, his eyes standing out with fatness, emerged leisurely from among
the currant bushes and gobbled up a worm. I had been vaguely aware of
his presence from the first, and now as I noted his well-fed
complacency, and remembered that he had been foraging around utterly
oblivious of the little tragedy being enacted in the alley, I lost my
patience and let fly a good-sized clod.

But jays are jays, and it were unfair to demand from them a standard of
conduct that even human beings, with all their centuries of moral
education, find it hard to apply. As a matter of fact the only jay I
ever caught red-beaked at such murderous work was the one in the alley,
and my field of observation has extended clear from the coast of Maine
part way to the Rocky Mountains. Yet if a man from Mars were to pick up
a bundle of newspapers, and could make out the strange little characters
imprinted thereon, he would probably infer that murder was a trade
common enough among human beings, particularly to-day. He would see it
as a highly organized and severely technical activity carried on by
whole nations under the direction of their respective governments. It
must be said, however, that although the sensitive nerve of national
honor seems oftenest to reside in the national belly, nations rarely
murder with the object of eating their victims. And those jays that
murder are censurable chiefly in this: they have learned so little from
humanity's civilized forbearance.

* * * * *

To tell the truth, the jay is not the fiercely courageous and militantly
aggressive biped his harsh cries and erected crest might lead one to
suppose. His aspect is doubtless frightful to some small birds, but most
of them recognize in him much of the Pistolian braggart. I have seen a
house-wren, about the size of a large colored gentleman's thumb, drive
him away from her vine-shaded dwelling. Robins quickly put him to
flight, and so, too, do catbirds and cardinals. Even the mourning dove
(gentlest of birds) does not fear to measure her mild weapons with his;
and one of the most amusing spectacles I ever witnessed was the comical
bluff of a dove who puffed out her breast, fierce as a lamb, and
literally pushed the swash-buckling blue jay clean off the feed board.

That the jay does not always exercise the discretion of which the timid
proverb speaks, the crown of my head can very well testify. One pleasant
afternoon, while I was breathlessly pursuing the phantom of an idea
through the syntactical mazes of a freshman theme, I became aware of the
sharp screaming of a pair of jays directly beneath my open window. I
glanced out and saw (item) one baby jay squatting all hunched up on the
close-cut lawn in the sunlight; (item) one long, lithe, black cat in the
shadow of the syringa bush, blinking its greedy yellow eyes and moving
its tail with a gentle, snaky, anticipatory motion; and (item) two
frantic parent jays darting viciously at the black sphinx, and shrieking
like a couple of suffragettes in the hands of a pair of miserable London
bobbies. I watched the little drama until I saw the cat quivering for
the spring; whereupon, forsaking the role of spectator, I threw my
bottle of red ink and drove the dark marauder from the field. Surely
never was preceptorial red ink put to more humane uses.

As I turned back to my themes, it occurred to me that here was the very
opportunity I had been looking for. My favorite hobby is taking bird
pictures, and I had long desired a picture of a young jay. Most
fledgelings bear a ludicrous likeness to very old men. They wear an
expression of solemn and pessimistic wisdom such as comes only to those
who have looked long on the vanities of mankind. And it has always
seemed to me that the infant jay bears a weird resemblance to England's
Grand Old Man, Mr. Gladstone, after he had passed the prime of old age.
Out of regard, then, for the great Liberal minister, and also because I
am no rifler of nests, I seized my old black hat and a camera, and
dashed downstairs. My plan was to drop the hat over the unsuspecting
fledgeling so that I could pick him up without any fuss, and pose him on
the grape-vine behind the house. But the young rascal, divining my
intention, hopped away, and kept with exasperating nicety just out of
reach. Finally, by dint of much scrambling along on my knees, taking
care to preserve as innocent an expression as I could, I managed to clap
the hat over him. But as I took him out from the sudden gloom, he gave
one terrified shriek, and the next instant BING! something sharp,
something penetrating, something entirely unexpected, struck me on the
head. It was the marvellously efficient beak of Mr. Jay.

I did not try to reason with him or placate him in wheedling tones. The
ambient air was too full of a shrapnel burst of screaming, darting,
pecking, whirling, shrieking blue jay. His shrill and angry cries,
moreover, called to his aid three other jays, and such a stream of
feathered Billingsgate followed as, I felt sure, must fix the eyes of
all the neighborhood upon me. And so I retreated to the house,
endeavoring in my gait to preserve that dignity of bearing which is
generally supposed to be the fruit of an academic life. But the jay,
with the uncomfortable persistence of a bee or a small heel-snapping
terrier, pursued me to the very door, and might have chased me upstairs
had it not been for the screen. After that I decided never again to
attempt kidnapping a jay without the protection of a policeman's helmet.

But the fierce detractors of the blue jay will doubtless scoff at this
as evidence of a sometimes resolute daring. I do not resent the implied
aspersion of my own courage; I am content to leave that to the judgment
of my readers. There is, however, one bit of commendation to which even
they must "assent with civil ear," as a freshman of mine put it. The
blue jay is almost humanly intelligent. Mind, I do not argue that he
can, offhand, give you the distinction between free verse and a page
from a real poet's note-book, or that he can explain precisely why
certain matters are deleted by the British censors. But with the
intrepidity of a new Congressman delivering a speech in the _Record_, I
dare assert, "without fear of _successful_ contradiction," that the blue
jay is among the most intelligent of feathered bipeds.

Not long ago, during a particularly sharp attack of bitter weather, with
frosty bayonets in the air but no snow on the ground, I was holding a
conference in the English office with one of my students, a girl whose
sweet deep eyes gave no flicker of understanding as I tried to make
clear to her the difference between a sentence and a clause. To conceal
my sorrow I stepped to the window and gazed off through the grayish-blue
beeches with their dead brown leaves shivering in the keen air, trying,
meanwhile, to recall what principle of pedagogic efficiency I had failed
to employ. Presently a blue jay with something white in its beak
alighted upon the twisted limb of a maple not a rod from the window, and
began a close inspection of the rough bark. He found what he was looking
for, a hole; and into this he thrust the white substance which he
carried in his beak, suet possibly, from the feed-board below, or a bit
of bread. He cocked his head on one side and eyed the little cache in a
thoughtful manner. Then he dropped to the ground.

I thought that was the end, but I was mistaken. Soon he shot up to the
limb, this time with a dead leaf in his beak. I watched intently and saw
him carefully lay the leaf over the hole where he had hidden the suet. A
gust of wind, however, blew the leaf off the limb, and sent it swirling
to the ground. Quick as a hawk the jay swooped after it in an
ineffectual attempt to capture it while it was still in the air. They
reached the ground together. Convinced apparently that the leaf was too
large, he selected another, much smaller, and carried it up to the limb.
This time he did not merely lay the leaf over the hole; he had learned
his lesson. Instead, he rammed the leaf into the hole on top of the
suet, a really difficult job, and packed it firmly with his beak. It was
safe from the other jays if not from the inquisitive redheaded
woodpecker who lived only a few branches away. Now all you host of
cocksure psychologists, was it instinct or reason that led the jay?

I know it has been argued that since a jay will attack a stuffed owl
placed near his nest, he must be without the power of reason. The test
seems hardly fair, for the ghoulish mystery of the taxidermist is known
to no animal but man. Thus at the very start the jay is laid under an
unreasonable handicap. Consider, too, the ingeniously cruel nature of
this test; it pierces him as it were in the eye of his most sensitive
instinct. Even human parents, faced by an ordeal at all comparable to
this in sudden poignancy, would scarcely act in a manner calmly
rational. What mother, leaving her infant slumbering in the cradle, and
suddenly returning to find a brutal visaged mannikin bent over it in a
posture of menace, would expend the millionth of a second in the
psychologist's reflective delay? Like the jay, she would act in such a
situation from instinct alone, nor would we consider her deficient in
intelligence.

But even if the jay were as stupid as an old-model political
prison-warden, or an English official in Ireland, which he indubitably
is not, I would still look upon him with an indulgent eye. The redbird
excepted, he is the sole bit of lively color in our winter landscape. No
matter how sharp the wind or deep the snow, you will find him foraging
among the low bushes or uttering his cheerfully vigorous _jay! jay!
jay!_ from the airy chambers of some tall, bare maple. And if you are of
that generous company who share their winter bounty with the birds, from
none of your feathered charity scholars will you receive more evident
tokens of full appreciation than from the maligned jay. He is as prompt
to the feeding board as an impecunious college professor to the bursar's
office at the end of the first quarter. To be sure, his table manners
are somewhat rude, but what he lacks in elegance he more than atones for
with a certain robust beef-and-pudding gusto that I have somehow come to
associate with Lord Macaulay.

It is in the spring, however, in the days of warm sunshine and clear
air, when the grass begins to quicken along the walks and around the
roots of the big elm-trees, when the vanguard of the crocus legions have
thrust their green spear-heads up through the sere lawn, and the buds on
the lilac bushes along the garden fence have begun to swell, that the
jay reveals how really amiable he can be. To many who do not know him
well it will come as a surprise to learn that he possesses vocal
attainments far beyond the harsh cry from which he takes his name. Under
the spell of love he becomes truly melodic. He will sit for ten minutes
at a time in the old black cherry-tree, and beginning with a soft,
prelusory, ventriloquial whistle, as though he were a musician testing
his flute, he will run through a series of little musical snatches
surprising in their mimetic variety. Now it will seem like a baby's
silver rattle, or like clear water gurgling over a sunny bed of pebbles;
again you will hear a note or two of the robin, or a plaintive echo of
the bluebird's song, or even the beautiful sliding legato of the
cardinal,–with a crack in it, perhaps.

As the head of a family the blue jay is exemplary. He is not one of
those who think they perform the whole duty of husbands when they preen
their gay feathers in the sunlight, or lift their voices in flattering
song, while their plain little wives build the nest, hatch the eggs, and
go in search of the nourishing worm. Not much! He believes that marriage
is a partnership involving equal duties and responsibilities; and so,
during the nesting season, you will see him busily at work, searching
for the best twigs, paper, string, tendrils, and rootlets obtainable. I
once saw a nest that had a piece of yellow paper sticking out of its
side, with the cryptic legend–_otes for wom_–plainly legible on it,
but I am not sure that it had any real significance. Feeding the young
jays, too, he considers part of his fatherly duties, and sometimes,
though not often, he even treats Mrs. Jay to a specially delicate tidbit
of bug or worm. If the latter should happen to be fuzzy, he will follow
his careful wife's example and thoroughly wipe the fuzz off on the rough
bark of some tree.

And he likes his bath; no monocled Englishman better. Indeed, if you
really wish to enjoy a treat, set a rusty shallow pan of water on your
lawn, not _too_ near the tulip-bed or shrubbery (Cats!), and see what
follows. If you have been thoughtful enough to place a stone or a piece
of brick near the rim of the pan, Mr. and Mrs. Jay will step right in
and enjoy a thorough wetting without much preliminary skirmishing. But
little Willie Jay and his four brothers will exhibit all the delicious
trepidation of childhood. While their parents are in the bath, they will
be bold enough, even to running up and allowing themselves to be
splashed on; but when it comes to actually entering the water, ugh! They
will linger around the edge of the pan, fluttering their wings, hop
across it, dip their beaks into the water, turn around, and splash the
water with their tails–in short, go through all the motions of a small
boy having his first "duck under" without the assuring grasp of his
father's strong hand. But once let them get in, and oh, what a joyous
splashing ensues, what a ruffling of feathers, what a beating of wings,
what a fan-like fluttering of the tail! Like most small boys, too, they
will stay in until they are thoroughly soaked, scarcely able, in fact,
to fly up to some sunny limb where they may preen themselves and dry off
out of harm's reach.

No, the jay is not an unprincipled scoundrel, not the bloodthirsty
reprobate he is sometimes made out to be. He has his faults, it is true,
properly censurable; but he has some very commendable virtues as well.
And I am sure that if the reader will watch his career as carefully as I
have, from his fledgeling childhood to his gay and dashing cavalier
youth, he will agree with me that the imaginations of the blue jay's
heart are not wholly evil.

THE FLEMISH QUESTION

_Divide ut imperes_–make a faction among your enemies, and thus
overcome them. This is German policy all over the world. By it the Danes
of Slesvig have been to a large extent robbed of their own language and
national traditions. By it the Prussian intruders have, with
characteristic inability to understand foreign souls, endeavored, in
their periods of repose after acts of brutality, to alienate from France
the French-speaking and French-minded inhabitants of Alsace and
Lorraine. It has failed not only there, but notoriously also in Posen or
Prussian Poland, where it was long ago abandoned in favor of a system of
downright and unscrupulous repression. It has succeeded, for the moment
at least, in Russia, which now lies dismembered at the feet of a
triumphant betrayer. What was a year ago Russia is now dissolved into
Lithuania, Livonia, Esthonia, Courland, Finland, Poland, the Ukraine,
the country of the Don Cossacks, the Caucasus, and the vague and
fluctuating realm of Bolshevism. Historic memories, linguistic
variations, religious differences, local jealousies, class feeling, and
commercial rivalries have been emphasized by German agents behind the
frontier, and through the gaps thus made the German sword has pushed its
point, breaking up the old mortar of loyalty and union. One typical
example of the method employed may be cited here. According to the
Berlin _Lokal Anzeiger_ of March 26, 1917, Zimmermann, the German
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, our Zimmermann, welcomed a
delegation of Lithuanians and piped sweetly to them about the tender
interest his government took in the welfare of their people, promising
to satisfy various local desires. We have seen the result.

German intrigue of the same sort has long been at work in India, where
it has happily been baffled by the good sense of the Indian population
who appreciate the fact that with all their numerous languages, races,
and religions, they owe their concord to the light rule of Britain and
to her even-handed justice. One of the boldest, meanest, and cruelest
instances of the same policy of treacherous penetration was the effort
to cause a rebellion in Ireland, for the Germans knew that rebellion
meant the destruction of their own tools and Ireland's shame and ruin.
As Americans, we have reason to keep our eyes upon the large German
colonies in southern Brazil and upon the outposts of German imperialism
in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, and still greater reason to look out
for the thin wedges of Prussian intrigue insinuating themselves among
our own many racial and confessional varieties.

The most thinly disguised of all German attempts to conquer by division
is also one of the latest to be disclosed, although it began at least
three years ago. "Love me," says the Kaiser to the outraged daughters of
the Belgian household; "or if you will not both love me, I shall take
the likelier of you, and give her a seat at the royal feast, and put my
ring upon her finger, and make her sister serve us in our mirth."

As is well known, there is no such thing as a Belgian language, and the
people of Belgium speak one or both of two languages, French and
Flemish. Both French and Flemish are and have long been officially
recognized by the Belgian government, and are used in Parliament, in
public documents, in the courts, and in the national schools. The French
spoken and written by educated Belgians is standard or central French,
differing in no essential respect from the language of France; but among
the people who have French as their native tongue, the Walloons, there
is employed a dialect of French, just as the people of many parts of
France, and indeed of all countries, have their local dialects. The
Walloons differ from the rest of the Belgians chiefly in language and in
the fact that they inhabit the southern and southeastern parts of the
kingdom, where mining and metallurgical industry are highly developed.
They also have more points of contact with France, both geographically
and morally. If you take a map of Belgium and draw a line from Vise, the
point where the Meuse passes into Holland, almost straight west through
Brussels, Audenarde, and Courtrai, or a little south of these cities,
you will have traced the northern boundary of the Walloon country.
Almost anywhere along this imaginary line, one can, by going a short
distance south, be among people who nearly all speak French or the
Walloon dialect of French, and, by going a little way north, be among
people who, though they may write French and speak it as an acquired
language, use Flemish as their native tongue. Nevertheless, in this
densely populated, busy, rich, and closely unified kingdom, the various
elements of the population were happily mingled. Thousands of Belgian
families are part Walloon and part Flemish. When a Walloon family moves
north into a Flemish village it usually changes its language in the
second generation, and vice versa. Many Walloons have Flemish names;
many Flemings have Walloon names.

Flemish is scarcely distinguishable from Dutch. Although philologically
they may be regarded as twin dialects of one tongue, they are for
practical purposes the same. There are, to be sure, a few slight
differences of idiom, and numerous differences of vocabulary, even
between standard written Flemish and standard written Dutch, but
scarcely more important than those between the English of Mr. Howells
and the English of Mr. Hardy. In popular speech the gap is naturally
wider, and perhaps justifies the view that Flemish and Dutch are
separate dialects of one language, though "dialect" may really be too
strong a word. From my own observation in East Flanders, I should say
that a Dutchman would be in about the same situation there with regard
to difference of speech as a New Englander in Virginia.

According to the census of 1910, there were in Belgium about 3,832,000
persons speaking French or belonging to French-speaking families, and
about 4,153,000 speaking Flemish or belonging to Flemish families. The
Flemish population, being to a larger extent agricultural, has for many
years been increasing faster than the Walloons. Yet French, being by
acquisition or second-nature a language perfectly familiar to all
educated Belgians, appears to have, and really has, an immense advantage
over Flemish. The literature of the French language is enriched and
glorified with the names of many great authors, from Jean Froissart and
Philippe de Comines to Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, who belong by birth or
residence to what we now call Belgium.

But the Flemish had, and probably always will have, a pride of their
own. In the Middle Ages their cities were among the first in Northern
Europe to emerge from obscurity. The names of Flemish towns strike the
ear with a strange ruggedness in the liquid lapse of Dante's lines, but
a stranger thing it is that even in the thirteenth century these
vigorous municipalities were looked to for independence, and called upon
for vengeance on tyranny; we hear, in the Purgatorio, of "the evil plant
that overshadows all the Christian land," and are told that "if Douai,
Lille, Ghent and Bruges had power, there would soon be vengeance taken."
A curious example this of "ancestral voices prophesying war."

In the sixteenth century Flanders was the scene of tragic resistance to
Spain and the Inquisition. Liberty was lost and recovered and lost
again; but prosperity still bloomed from the ashes of destroyed
commerce, the language and institutions of the land were redeemed with a
fearful price, civilization was preserved with blood and sorrow, art
flourished in the midst of horrors; and how all this came to pass is
explained only by the stubbornness with which the people kept up their
local patriotism. The visible signs of this municipal pride and glory
were, until four years ago, and in part still are, the great churches,
town-halls, and guild-houses of Flanders. Among the most impressive of
these monuments were the Cloth Hall at Ypres, the Belfry of Bruges, the
Town-halls of Audenarde, Alost, Termonde, Louvain, Brussels, and Ghent,
the Cathedrals of Antwerp and Malines, the quaint Beguinages or cities
of retirement for religious women, and many another less renowned but
hardly less beautiful expression of ancient faith and community of
enterprise.

The Austrian yoke was shaken off at the time of the French Revolution,
and after a short period of republican government Belgium, together with
France, came under the domination of Napoleon. At the Congress of
Vienna, in 1815, Belgium and Holland were united under the name of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, in an ill-assorted combination which lasted
only till 1830, when the present Kingdom of Belgium was established.
From that year to 1914 the Flemish people of Belgium, though more than
satisfied to live in political union with the Walloons, and indeed being
the more prosperous and rapidly growing part of the population, were
solicitous to preserve their local customs and particularly their own
language. Societies were formed for the cultivation of Flemish
literature. Endowments for the same purpose were established. One of the
parliamentary aims of political parties in the provinces of East and
West Flanders and Antwerp and the northern sections of Brabant and
Limbourg was the safe-guarding of Flemish as one of the official
languages and a medium of instruction. There was not the slightest
flavor of disloyalty in this desire. It was entirely constitutional. It
expressed itself openly, and had no need for secrecy. The tendency thus
created was called the Flamingant movement. No one connected with it, so
far as I can discover, entertained the slightest notion of appealing to
Germany for countenance or support. The Flemings in general and the
Flamingants in particular would have been the last people in the world
to admit that their language was a dialect of _German_ or that their
manifest destiny was absorption in the German Empire. The unity of
Belgium was as precious to them as to the Walloons, and was placed above
every consideration of race and speech. But there is no country under
the sun in which local self-government and community interests are so
highly developed as in Belgium. Under the Belgian constitution the
communes enjoy the maximum of freedom. Civic pride nowhere else burns so
bright. It is the habit of local self-government, the strong
personalities developed under this system, and the spirit of the
communes that have saved Belgium from starvation during the war. As
every one of Mr. Hoover's American delegates in Belgium will testify,
the spectacle was and is magnificent. As early as October, 1914, when
the wave of invasion had passed over Belgium, the communes stood firm,
and in all of them committees with almost absolute power, and enjoying
the perfect confidence of the people, were formed and got to work
commandeering the visible supply of food and distributing it prudently.

Within a very short time after the invasion the Germans showed that they
intended to take advantage of the difference between Flemings and
Walloons, a difference which, as we have seen, was purely domestic, and
concerned with no really vital political issue. Among the offices of his
hated administration, Governor-General von Bissing established a bureau
for dealing with "the Flemish question," a bureau consisting of German
specialists in philology and discord. For about seven months, this
commission, which was working in secret, attracted hardly any attention.
Then it began to operate visibly. In the summer of 1915, I was
stationed, as delegate of the Hoover commission, in Ghent, the capital
of East Flanders, and witnessed the beginning of German coquetry. As may
be imagined, it was very clumsy and ineffectual. One day an attempt
would be made to flatter the local pride of the peasants by printing
official notices and war bulletins in Flemish and German only, instead
of Flemish, German, and French, as had previously been the practice; the
next day they would be informed, in these same posters, that they must
surrender their hay-crop to the German military authorities. The Germans
appeared to be as much detested in Flanders as anywhere else in Belgium.
I saw the wife of a distinguished citizen of Ghent burst into tears of
vexation and anxiety because a German officer of high rank spoke to her
in a restaurant. She said she feared she would be distrusted for the
rest of her life by her fellow-citizens for having listened to a German
officer. Yet he was evidently a gentleman, behaved with propriety, and
had the excuse for addressing her that he was quartered in her house. I
have known persons in Ghent to go willingly to prison rather than comply
with German rules or pay fines into the German treasury. "Do you see
that man?" said to me an acquaintance in Ghent one day, pointing to a
German in uniform who was speaking Flemish to some peasants. "He lived
here before the war; he will not be able to live here after the war; his
life will not be safe."

Before the war there were four universities in Belgium: the Catholic
university of Louvain, the liberal or non-sectarian university of
Brussels, and the two state universities of Liege and Ghent. The
instruction was given entirely in French, except that there were certain
courses at Louvain and Ghent which were paralleled, rather expensively,
one would think, by courses in Flemish. In 1911 a bill was introduced in
the Belgian Parliament looking to the gradual transformation of the
University of Ghent into an institution completely Flemish. In 1912 this
proposal was again discussed, and was reported favorably in the Chamber
of Representatives. The war of course put an end to the project.

Now the Germans have taken it up with enthusiasm, trying to harvest for
their own purposes the sympathies that were formerly cultivated in its
favor. Whether they annex all or part or none of Belgium, they desire to
pose as the liberators of Flanders, and to foment a permanent jealousy
between the Flemish-speaking people and the rest of the Belgian
population. This is precisely like their conduct in the south of
Ireland, in the Province of Quebec, and in Russia. They have their eye
on Antwerp, which they intend to keep, whatever happens, and they
realize that Flanders would be a good basis for the eventual absorption
of Holland.

On December 2, 1915, it became known in Belgium that the German
authorities purposed to reopen the University of Ghent, which of course
had been closed, and to make Flemish the language of instruction. Their
design was instantly understood by everybody, including the leaders of
the old Flamingant movement, who, instead of falling in with it, met it
with a vigorous protest. This was disregarded, and on the 31st of
December the decree was promulgated. A commission of German professors
was empowered to draw up regulations for carrying out the plan of
transformation. Meanwhile, in order to encourage as many Belgian young
men as possible to escape from the country and find their way into the
Belgian army, the real authorities of the four universities were keeping
these institutions closed. Their passive resistance enraged the Germans,
who, on March 18, 1916, arrested the two most celebrated professors of
Ghent, Henri Pirenne, and Paul Fredericq, eminent historians, and sent
them to prison-camps in Germany, where they have been treated with
disgusting brutality. The colleagues of these two brave men were not
less courageous themselves, and signed a second protest. Thereupon the
Germans made up a ridiculous little faculty of their own, and imposed it
upon the university, which, we must remember had no students. There were
at first seven of these professors, of whom one was a German, another a
native of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and five were Belgians without
distinction in the learned world or respectability as citizens. To these
were later added a number of equally insignificant Dutch and German
teachers of minor rank, and a very few Belgians. Opinion in Holland rose
in disgust, and an unpleasant life awaits the Dutch instructors if they
ever dare return to the land of their birth. They have been canny enough
to make sure of pensions from the German government, in view of the
probability that they will in the near future be men without a country.

On April 5, 1916, the German Chancellor, making a curious mixture of
cynicism and hypocrisy, in a speech before the Reichstag, promised that
the Imperial Government would help the Flemish population to free itself
from "the preponderance of French culture." The Germans no doubt
expected some backing from the Flamingant societies, the trustees of the
Flemish endowment funds, and the former political supporters of the
Flemish movement. In this they have been disappointed, for their conduct
has aroused protest upon protest from all these quarters. It is
difficult to determine, from the boasts in the German newspapers and the
denials of exiled Belgians, just how many teachers and students had been
scraped together by the beginning of 1917, but the faculty was a motley
collection of German, Dutch and Belgian nonentities, and there were less
than three students for every teacher. To-day there is only one student
in agriculture, the subject that would naturally be most sought in a
Flemish university. Of all the war-babies, this University of Ghent is
surely the most anaemic. Yet if we are to believe General von Bissing in
the speech in which he declared it alive and viable, "The God of War
held it at the baptismal font with naked sword in hand!" This is _echt
Deutsch_ in taste and feeling. And while these proceedings were solemnly
going on, the deportation of workmen from Ghent was beginning; on the
very day of inauguration, husbands and fathers were being torn from
their families to suffocate in German salt-mines, to sweat and faint in
German collieries, to dig and die in German trenches. Has the world ever
seen a more revolting instance of hypocrisy? I happened to be in
Courtrai one morning when a number of Flemish wives and mothers were
herded into the jail there, from the village of Sweveghem, because their
men had refused to make barbed wire for the Germans. International law
forbids a conqueror to compel the vanquished to produce munitions of
war, but what of that!

Parallel with the ludicrous pretence of enriching Belgium with a
Germano-Flemish university, close observers of Belgian affairs, by
reading the Dutch and German newspapers, have watched the development of
another German scheme for producing discord. On February 14, 1917,
thirty Belgian tools of the German military authorities set themselves
up, or rather were set up by German backers, as a "Council of Flanders,"
with the avowed purpose of creating an autonomous state out of the
Flemish-speaking portion of Belgium. The plot began to culminate in
Baron von Bissing's decree of March 21, 1917, establishing two
administrative regions, one Flemish, the other Walloon. Brussels was to
be the capital of the former, Namur of the latter. This decree sent
consternation into the hearts of all true Belgians, and has led finally
to an ominous result, the resignation of nearly all the Belgian
judiciary. Up to this time, protected by international law and by the
national constitution, which even the Germans professed to respect, the
magistrates of Belgium had continued to perform some of their functions,
thereby shielding the people to a certain extent from direct contact
with German judges and police officers, and no doubt saving the country
from bloody and useless insurrections: for if the minute and daily
administration of local affairs, such as the collection of private debts
and the enforcement of town ordinances, had been all this time in German
hands, the irritation would have been unbearable.

With a few delightful exceptions, newspapers in Belgium, even though
appearing under their old names and in French, are controlled by the
Germans. I used to amuse myself, in 1915, by translating passages from
_Le Bruxellois_, ostensibly a real Belgian journal, back into the German
in which they were originally written or thought. The style betrayed a
Teutonic source. The delightful exceptions are the brave little
clandestine _Libre Belgique_ and other papers of a similar character,
which keep up the spirits of the Belgian people and drive the Germans to
impotent fury.

In this case, as in that of the University of Ghent, the Germans
professed to be responding to Belgian desires. They point to the
so-called Council of Flanders, in reality a collection of renegade
Belgians who were brought together by German influence, and protected by
German arms from the violence of Flemish mobs, who dared to hiss them
and insult them. A delegation of these worthies was conducted to Berlin,
where they presented a humble request for the strangulation of Belgian
liberty and the partition of their native land. Against this plot all
Belgium has risen. How can Belgium have risen? The answer will give some
idea of the bravery of those people, even in the isolation and darkness
and hunger of their present life. Last June between four and five
hundred Belgian magistrates and members of the bar signed a fruitless
petition to the German Chancellor against the decree. Judges and local
administrative officials gave up their functions and their livelihood.
For this, many of them were arrested and deported to Germany. Against
the decree of separation, and in favor of "the Belgian Fatherland, Free
and Indivisible," petitions have been signed by nearly all the former
senators and deputies remaining in Belgium, by the Flamingant leaders,
by municipal councils, and by the heroic Cardinal Mercier. The Cardinal
especially drew attention to the fact that international law demands
that the domestic administration of an invaded country shall be allowed
to proceed unmolested, if military necessity permits. To this point
Baron von Falkenhausen, the German Governor-General, made the following
insolent rejoinder: "Your Eminence addressed to me on the 6th of June a
letter in which, taking your stand on the principles of international
law, you criticize certain of my official acts. I must respectfully
reply to your Eminence that I refuse to enter with you upon a discussion
of this subject."

Decree has followed decree with steady insistence. The courts, even in
Brussels, which is mainly a French-speaking city, must hold their
sessions in Flemish; official correspondence north of the imaginary line
must be in Flemish; the Official Bulletin of German Laws and Decrees in
Occupied Belgium is printed in German and Flemish for one part of the
country and in German and French for the other. On August 9, 1917, von
Falkenhausen issued an edict declaring that in the Flemish
administrative region "Flemish must be the exclusive official language
of all the authorities and all the functionaries of the state, the
provinces, and the communes, as well as their establishments, including
educational institutions and the teachers therein." On October 6 the
communes in the Province of Brabant were ordered immediately to organize
courses in Flemish for the instruction of their employees who did not
know that language.

All of the original Project Gutenberg Etexts from the
1970's were produced in ALL CAPS, no lower case. The
computers we used then didn't have lower case at all.

***

The following edition of The Consitution of the United States of America
has been based on many hours of study of a variety of editions, and will
include certain variant spellings, punctuation, and captialization as we
have been able to reasonable ascertain belonged to the orginal. In case
of internal discrepancies in these matters, most or all have been left.

In our orginal editions the letters were all CAPITALS, and we did not do
anything about capitalization, consistent or otherwise, nor with most of
the punctuation, since we had limited punctionation in those days.

This document does NOT include the amendments, as the Bill of Rights was
one of our earlier Project Gutenberg Etexts, and the others will be sent
in a separate posting.

***

We would ask that any Consitutional scholars would please take a minute,
or longer, to send us a note concerning possible corrections.

***

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1787

We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.

Article 1

Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members
chosen every second Year by the People of the several States,
and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite
for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a citizen of the United States,
and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which
he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among
the several States which may be included within this Union,
according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined
by adding to the whole number of free Persons, including those
bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed,
three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made
within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the
United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years,
in such Manner as they shall by law Direct. The number of
Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand,
but each State shall have at least one Representative;
and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire
shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island
and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six,
New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six,
Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive
Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers;
and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section 3. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of
two Senators from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof,
for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election,
they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of
the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the expiration of the
second Year, of the second Class at the expiration of the fourth Year,
and of the third Class at the expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third
may be chosen every second Year; and if vacancies happen by Resignation,
or otherwise, during the recess of the Legislature of any State,
the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the
next meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.

No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of
thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States,
and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State
for which he shall be chosen.

The Vice-President of the United States shall be President of the Senate,
but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall choose their other Officers, and also a President
pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice-President, or when he shall
exercise the Office of President of the United States.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.
When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.
When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice
shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence
of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal
from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor,
Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall
nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and
Punishment, according to Law.

Section 4. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and
Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof;
but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations,
except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year,
and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December,
unless they shall by law appoint a different Day.

Section 5. Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections,
Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a
Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business;
but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day,
and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members,
in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Each house may determine the Rules of its Proceedings,
punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the
Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.

Each house shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings,
and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may
in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the
Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of
one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the
Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to
any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Section 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation
for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury
of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and
Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance
at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning
from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House,
they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected,
be appointed to any civil Office under the authority of the United States,
which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been
increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the
United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance
in Office.

Section 7. All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the
House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with
Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and
the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the
President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it,
but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House
in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections
at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.
If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that house
shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent,
together with the Objections, to the other House, by which
it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds
of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such Cases
the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays,
and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be
entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill
shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted)
after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law,
in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their
Adjournment prevent its Return, in which case it shall not be a Law.

Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate
and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question
of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States;
and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him,
or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of
the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules
and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

Section 8. The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties,
Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence
and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises
shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,
and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws
on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin,
and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities
and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing
for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right
to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas,
and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,
and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use
shall be for a longer term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union,
suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for
governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the
United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment
of the Officers, and the Authority of training the militia according
to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever,
over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may,
by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress,
become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to
exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent
of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be,
for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, Dockyards,
and other needful Buildings;–And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested
by this Constitution in the Government of the United States,
or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Section 9. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any
of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not
be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight
hundred and eight, but a Tax or Duty may be imposed on such Importation,
not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless
when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion
to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue
to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to,
or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence
of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account
of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be
published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States;
and no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall,
without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument,
Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince,
or foreign State.

Section 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or
Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money;
emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender
in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law,
or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties
on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing
it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts,
laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury
of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision
and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of
Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any
Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or
engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger
as will not admit of delay.

ARTICLE 2

Section 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President
of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during
the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President
chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,
a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives
to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or
Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under
the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot
for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of
the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of
all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each;
which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to
the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the
President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall,
in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives,
open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted.
The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President,
if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed;
and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal
Number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately
chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have
a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House
shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President,
the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State
having one Vote; a Quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member
or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the
States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice
of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of
the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain
two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them
by Ballot the Vice President.

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors,
and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day
shall be the same throughout the United States.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States,
at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to
the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that
Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years,
and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death,
Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the
said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the
Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation
or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what
Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly,
until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services,
a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during
the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive
within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the
following Oath or Affirmation:–"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that
I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,
and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States."

Section 2. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States,
when called into the actual Service of the United States;
he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer
in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to
the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power
to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States,
except in Cases of impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the
Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators
present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice
and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public
Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other
Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein
otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law:
but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers,
as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law,
or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen
during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall
expire at the End of their next session.

Section 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress
Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their
Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;
he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either
of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to
the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall
think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers;
he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall
Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the
United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for,
and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

ARTICLE THREE

Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested
in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may
from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme
and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good behavior,
and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation,
which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity,
arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties
made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting
Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty
and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States
shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;–between a
State and Citizens of another State;–between Citizens of different States;
–between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of
different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof,
and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls,
and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have
original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the
supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact,
with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury;
and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall
have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial
shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in
levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them
Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on
the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession
in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of Treason,
but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood,
or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

ARTICLE FOUR

Section 1. Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the
public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.
And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts,
Records, and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Section 2. The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all
Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime,
who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State,
shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from
which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having
Jurisdiction of the Crime.

No person held to Service or Labor in one State, under the Laws thereof,
escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein,
be discharged from such Service or Labor, But shall be delivered up on Claim
of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due.

Section 3. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union;
but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction
of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two
or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the
Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules
and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging
to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so
construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States,
or of any particular State.

Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union
a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against
Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive
(when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

ARTICLE FIVE

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary,
shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of
the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention
for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents
and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures
of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths
thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by
the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the
Year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect
the first and fourth Clauses in the ninth Section of the first Article;
and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of it's
equal Suffrage in the Senate.

ARTICLE SIX

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption
of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States
under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made
in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made,
under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme
Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary
notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the
several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers,
both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound
by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious
Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust
under the United States

ARTICLE SEVEN

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the
Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present
the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one
thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the Independence of the
United States of America the Twelfth In Witness whereof We have
hereunto subscribed our Names,

Go. WASHINGTON–
Presid. and deputy from Virginia

New Hampshire

John Langdon
Nicholas Gilman

Massachusetts

Nathaniel Gorham
Rufus King

Connecticut

Wm. Saml. Johnson
Roger Sherman

New York

Alexander Hamilton

New Jersey

Wil: Livingston
David Brearley
Wm. Paterson
Jona: Dayton

Pennsylvania

B Franklin
Thomas Mifflin
Robt Morris
Geo. Clymer
Thos FitzSimons
Jared Ingersoll
James Wilson
Gouv Morris

Delaware

Geo: Read
Gunning Bedford jun
John Dickinson
Richard Bassett
Jaco: Broom

Maryland

James Mchenry
Dan of St Thos. Jenifer
Danl Carroll

Virginia

John Blair–
James Madison Jr.

North Carolina

Wm. Blount
Rich'd Dobbs Spaight
Hu Williamson

South Carolina

J. Rutledge
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Pinckney
Pierce Butler

Georgia

William Few
Abr Baldwin

Attest:
William Jackson, Secretary

The United States Bill of Rights.

The Ten Original Amendments to the Constitution of the United States
Passed by Congress September 25, 1789
Ratified December 15, 1791

I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

II

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house,
without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war,
but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath
or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched,
and the persons or things to be seized.

V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,
unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising
in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service
in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for
the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature
and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him;
to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,
and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed
twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved,
and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court
of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.

The Time Machine

An Invention

by H. G. Wells

CONTENTS

I Introduction
II The Machine
III The Time Traveller Returns
IV Time Travelling
V In the Golden Age
VI The Sunset of Mankind
VII A Sudden Shock
VIII Explanation
IX The Morlocks
X When Night Came
XI The Palace of Green Porcelain
XII In the Darkness
XIII The Trap of the White Sphinx
XIV The Further Vision
XV The Time Traveller’s Return
XVI After the Story
Epilogue

I.
Introduction

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him)
was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and
twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
fire burnt brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent
lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and
passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and
caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that
luxurious after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free
of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking
the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his
earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.

“You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance,
they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.”

“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said
Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.

“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground
for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of
course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness _nil_, has no real
existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane.
These things are mere abstractions.”

“That is all right,” said the Psychologist.

“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
real existence.”

“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things—”

“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an _instantaneous_ cube
exist?”

“Don’t follow you,” said Filby.

“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real
existence?”

Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any
real body must have extension in _four_ directions: it must have
Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural
infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we
incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three
which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is,
however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former
three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our
consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter
from the beginning to the end of our lives.”

“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his
cigar over the lamp; “that . . . very clear indeed.”

“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,”
continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.
“Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some
people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It
is only another way of looking at Time. _There is no difference between
Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our
consciousness moves along it_. But some foolish people have got hold of
the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say
about this Fourth Dimension?”

“_I_ have not,” said the Provincial Mayor.

“It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is
spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length,
Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three
planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical
people have been asking why _three_ dimensions particularly—why not
another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even
tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb
was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month
or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two
dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and
similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could
represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the
thing. See?”

“I think so,” murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows,
he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who
repeats mystic words. “Yes, I think I see it now,” he said after some
time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.

“Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry
of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious. For
instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at
fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. All
these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional
representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and
unalterable thing.”

“Scientific people,” proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
required for the proper assimilation of this, “know very well that Time
is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a
weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of
the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then
this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the
mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space
generally recognised? But certainly it traced such a line, and that
line, therefore, we must conclude, was along the Time-Dimension.”

“But,” said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, “if
Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has
it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move
about in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?”

The Time Traveller smiled. “Are you so sure we can move freely in
Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough,
and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions.
But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.”

“Not exactly,” said the Medical Man. “There are balloons.”

“But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.”

“Still they could move a little up and down,” said the Medical Man.

“Easier, far easier down than up.”

“And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the
present moment.”

“My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the
whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present
moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no
dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform
velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel _down_
if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth’s surface.”

“But the great difficulty is this,” interrupted the Psychologist. “You
_can_ move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about
in Time.”

“That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that
we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an
incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I
become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course
we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than
a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a
civilised man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go
up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that
ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the
Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?”

“Oh, _this_,” began Filby, “is all—”

“Why not?” said the Time Traveller.

“It’s against reason,” said Filby.

“What reason?” said the Time Traveller.

“You can show black is white by argument,” said Filby, “but you will
never convince me.”

“Possibly not,” said the Time Traveller. “But now you begin to see the
object of my investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long
ago I had a vague inkling of a machine—”

“To travel through Time!” exclaimed the Very Young Man.

“That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as
the driver determines.”

Filby contented himself with laughter.

“But I have experimental verification,” said the Time Traveller.

“It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,” the Psychologist
suggested. “One might travel back and verify the accepted account of
the Battle of Hastings, for instance!”

“Don’t you think you would attract attention?” said the Medical Man.
“Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.”

“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,” the
Very Young Man thought.

“In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The
German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

“Then there is the future,” said the Very Young Man. “Just think! One
might invest all one’s money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and
hurry on ahead!”

“To discover a society,” said I, “erected on a strictly communistic
basis.”

“Of all the wild extravagant theories!” began the Psychologist.

“Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until—”

“Experimental verification!” cried I. “You are going to verify _that_?”

“The experiment!” cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.

“Let’s see your experiment anyhow,” said the Psychologist, “though it’s
all humbug, you know.”

The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and
with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly out of
the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to
his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us. “I wonder what he’s got?”

“Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,” said the Medical Man, and Filby
tried to tell us about a conjuror he had seen at Burslem, but before he
had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and Filby’s
anecdote collapsed.

II.
The Machine

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic
framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately
made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline
substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that follows—unless
his explanation is to be accepted—is an absolutely unaccountable
thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered
about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on the
hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a
chair, and sat down. The only other object on the table was a small
shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell full upon the model. There
were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon
the mantel and several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly
illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair nearest the fire, and I drew
this forward so as to be almost between the Time Traveller and the
fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking over his shoulder. The Medical
Man and the Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right,
the Psychologist from the left. The Very Young Man stood behind the
Psychologist. We were all on the alert. It appears incredible to me
that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived and however adroitly
done, could have been played upon us under these conditions.

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. “Well?”
said the Psychologist.

“This little affair,” said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon
the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, “is only
a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will
notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd
twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way
unreal.” He pointed to the part with his finger. “Also, here is one
little white lever, and here is another.”

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.
“It’s beautifully made,” he said.

“It took two years to make,” retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we
had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: “Now I want
you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends
the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the
motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently
I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will
vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the
thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no
trickery. I don’t want to waste this model, and then be told I’m a
quack.”

There was a minute’s pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
his finger towards the lever. “No,” he said suddenly. “Lend me your
hand.” And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual’s hand
in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it was the
Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its
interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain
there was no trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame
jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little
machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost
for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory;
and it was gone—vanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare.

Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under
the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully. “Well?” he
said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then, getting up, he
went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to
fill his pipe.

We stared at each other. “Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you in
earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine has
travelled into time?”

“Certainly,” said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the
fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist’s
face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped
himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) “What is more, I have
a big machine nearly finished in there”—he indicated the
laboratory—“and when that is put together I mean to have a journey on
my own account.”

“You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?” said
Filby.

“Into the future or the past—I don’t, for certain, know which.”

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. “It must have
gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,” he said.

“Why?” said the Time Traveller.

“Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled
into the future it would still be here all this time, since it must
have travelled through this time.”

“But,” said I, “If it travelled into the past it would have been
visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we
were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!”

“Serious objections,” remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

“Not a bit,” said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: “You
think. _You_ can explain that. It’s presentation below the threshold,
you know, diluted presentation.”

“Of course,” said the Psychologist, and reassured us. “That’s a simple
point in psychology. I should have thought of it. It’s plain enough,
and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor can we
appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel
spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling
through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it
gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it
creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it
would make if it were not travelling in time. That’s plain enough.” He
passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been. “You
see?” he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time
Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

“It sounds plausible enough tonight,” said the Medical Man; “but wait
until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”

“Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?” asked the Time
Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way
down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly
the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of
the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how
there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little
mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of
nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of
rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted
crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of
drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed
to be.

“Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you perfectly serious? Or is
this a trick—like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?”

“Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft,
“I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in
my life.”

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby’s eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he
winked at me solemnly.

III.
The Time Traveller Returns

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time
Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are
too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him;
you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush,
behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the
matter in the Time Traveller’s words, we should have shown _him_ far
less scepticism. For we should have perceived his motives: a
pork-butcher could understand Filby. But the Time Traveller had more
than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things
that would have made the fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his
hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The serious people who
took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were
somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was
like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china. So I don’t think any of
us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that
Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in
most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical
incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter
confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied
with the trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the
Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnæan. He said he had seen a
similar thing at Tübingen, and laid considerable stress on the
blowing-out of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not
explain.

The next Thursday I went again to Richmond—I suppose I was one of the
Time Traveller’s most constant guests—and, arriving late, found four or
five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical Man was
standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his
watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and—“It’s
half-past seven now,” said the Medical Man. “I suppose we’d better have
dinner?”

“Where’s——?” said I, naming our host.

“You’ve just come? It’s rather odd. He’s unavoidably detained. He asks
me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he’s not back. Says
he’ll explain when he comes.”

“It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,” said the Editor of a
well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who
had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the Editor
aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another—a quiet, shy man with
a beard—whom I didn’t know, and who, as far as my observation went,
never opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation at
the dinner-table about the Time Traveller’s absence, and I suggested
time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that
explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden account of
the “ingenious paradox and trick” we had witnessed that day week. He
was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor
opened slowly and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it
first. “Hallo!” I said. “At last!” And the door opened wider, and the
Time Traveller stood before us. I gave a cry of surprise. “Good
heavens! man, what’s the matter?” cried the Medical Man, who saw him
next. And the whole tableful turned towards the door.

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared
with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to
me greyer—either with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually
faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it—a cut
half-healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense
suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been
dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room. He walked with just
such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. We stared at him in
silence, expecting him to speak.

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion
towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed it
towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked
round the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered across his
face. “What on earth have you been up to, man?” said the Doctor. The
Time Traveller did not seem to hear. “Don’t let me disturb you,” he
said, with a certain faltering articulation. “I’m all right.” He
stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draught.
“That’s good,” he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came
into his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces with a certain
dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room. Then
he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words. “I’m
going to wash and dress, and then I’ll come down and explain things….
Save me some of that mutton. I’m starving for a bit of meat.”

He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
was all right. The Editor began a question. “Tell you presently,” said
the Time Traveller. “I’m—funny! Be all right in a minute.”

He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I
remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and
standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had nothing
on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. Then the door
closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he
detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was
wool-gathering. Then, “Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,” I
heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in headlines. And this
brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table.

“What’s the game?” said the Journalist. “Has he been doing the Amateur
Cadger? I don’t follow.” I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read my
own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time Traveller limping
painfully upstairs. I don’t think anyone else had noticed his lameness.

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man,
who rang the bell—the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at
dinner—for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork
with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner was resumed.
Conversation was exclamatory for a little while with gaps of
wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. “Does our
friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his
Nebuchadnezzar phases?” he inquired. “I feel assured it’s this business
of the Time Machine,” I said, and took up the Psychologist’s account of
our previous meeting. The new guests were frankly incredulous. The
Editor raised objections. “What _was_ this time travelling? A man
couldn’t cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?”
And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature.
Hadn’t they any clothes-brushes in the Future? The Journalist too,
would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work
of heaping ridicule on the whole thing. They were both the new kind of
journalist—very joyous, irreverent young men. “Our Special
Correspondent in the Day after Tomorrow reports,” the Journalist was
saying—or rather shouting—when the Time Traveller came back. He was
dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look
remained of the change that had startled me.

“I say,” said the Editor hilariously, “these chaps here say you have
been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little
Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?”

The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word.
He smiled quietly, in his old way. “Where’s my mutton?” he said. “What
a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!”

“Story!” cried the Editor.

“Story be damned!” said the Time Traveller. “I want something to eat. I
won’t say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries. Thanks. And
the salt.”

“One word,” said I. “Have you been time travelling?”

“Yes,” said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head.

“I’d give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,” said the Editor. The
Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with
his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his
face, started convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the dinner
was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on rising to
my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others. The Journalist
tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The
Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the
appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched
the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even
more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and
determination out of sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller
pushed his plate away, and looked round us. “I suppose I must
apologise,” he said. “I was simply starving. I’ve had a most amazing
time.” He reached out his hand for a cigar, and cut the end. “But come
into the smoking-room. It’s too long a story to tell over greasy
plates.” And ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the
adjoining room.

“You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?” he said
to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests.

“But the thing’s a mere paradox,” said the Editor.

“I can’t argue tonight. I don’t mind telling you the story, but I can’t
argue. I will,” he went on, “tell you the story of what has happened to
me, if you like, but you must refrain from interruptions. I want to
tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like lying. So be it! It’s
true—every word of it, all the same. I was in my laboratory at four
o’clock, and since then … I’ve lived eight days … such days as no human
being ever lived before! I’m nearly worn out, but I shan’t sleep till
I’ve told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed. But no
interruptions! Is it agreed?”

“Agreed,” said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed “Agreed.” And with
that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat
back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he
got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only too much
keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink—and, above all, my own
inadequacy—to express its quality. You read, I will suppose,
attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker’s white, sincere
face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation
of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of
his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the
smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist
and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees downward were
illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each other. After a
time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller’s
face.

IV.
Time Travelling

“I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time
Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the
workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the
ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it’s
sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday; but on Friday, when
the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel
bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get remade; so
that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten
o’clock today that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I
gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of
oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a
suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at
what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one
hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost
immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation
of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before.
Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had
tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it
had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past
three!

“I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark.
Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards
the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the
place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I
pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the
turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow. The
laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. Tomorrow
night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and
faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb
confusedness descended on my mind.

“I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time
travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly
like that one has upon a switchback—of a helpless headlong motion! I
felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I
put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The
dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me,
and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every
minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had
been destroyed and I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression
of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of any
moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast
for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively
painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the
moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a
faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still
gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged into one
continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a
splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun
became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter
fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and
then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.

“The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hillside upon
which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and
dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown,
now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge
buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole
surface of the earth seemed changed—melting and flowing under my eyes.
The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round
faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and
down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that
consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the
white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by
the bright, brief green of spring.

“The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They
merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked,
indeed, a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to
account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind
of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I
scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new
sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my
mind—a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread—until at last
they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of
humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilisation, I
thought, might not appear when I came to look nearly into the dim
elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and
splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings
of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I
saw a richer green flow up the hillside, and remain there, without any
wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the earth
seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of
stopping.

“The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance
in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled
at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered: I was, so to
speak, attenuated—was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of
intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of
myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant
bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle
that a profound chemical reaction—possibly a far-reaching
explosion—would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all
possible dimensions—into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to
me again and again while I was making the machine; but then I had
cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk—one of the risks a man
has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the
same cheerful light. The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute
strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the
machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely
upset my nerves. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust
of petulance I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I
lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over,
and I was flung headlong through the air.

“There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been
stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was
sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still
seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was
gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a
garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their
mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating
of the hailstones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a little cloud
over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I
was wet to the skin. ‘Fine hospitality,’ said I, ‘to a man who has
travelled innumerable years to see you.’

“Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white
stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy
downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.

“My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew
thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for
a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in
shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being
carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to
hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick
with verdigris. It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless
eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the
lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant
suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a little space—half a
minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as
the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from
it for a moment, and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and
that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun.

“I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity
of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy
curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men?
What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this
interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into
something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might
seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and
disgusting for our common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinently
slain.

“Already I saw other vast shapes—huge buildings with intricate parapets
and tall columns, with a wooded hillside dimly creeping in upon me
through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned
frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I
did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey
downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a
ghost. Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint
brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings
about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the
thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled
along their courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps
a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will
swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth,
and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave
under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently.
One hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
in attitude to mount again.

“But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house,
I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and
their faces were directed towards me.

“Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the
White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these
emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I
stood with my machine. He was a slight creature—perhaps four feet
high—clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt.
Sandals or buskins—I could not clearly distinguish which—were on his
feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing
that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.

“He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful
kind of consumptive—that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so
much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my
hands from the machine.

V.
In the Golden Age

“In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile
thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my
eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at
once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke
to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

“There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps
eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them
addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too
harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears,
shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my
hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and
shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in
this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty
little people that inspired confidence—a graceful gentleness, a certain
childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy
myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like ninepins. But I made
a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling
at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought
of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the
machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and
put these in my pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in
the way of communication.

“And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further
peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair,
which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek;
there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears
were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather
thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and
mild; and—this may seem egotism on my part—I fancied even that there
was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.

“As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round
me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the
conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then,
hesitating for a moment how to express Time, I pointed to the sun. At
once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white
followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of
thunder.

“For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was
plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these
creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see, I
had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and
Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art,
everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed
him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old
children—asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a
thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their
clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of
disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had
built the Time Machine in vain.

“I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of
a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and
bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful
flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was
received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running
to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I
was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can
scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years of
culture had created. Then someone suggested that their plaything should
be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx
of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a
smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone.
As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a
profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible
merriment, to my mind.

“The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal
dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of
little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me
shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw over
their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long
neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of
strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of
the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated
shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine them closely at this time. The
Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.

“The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not
observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions
of old Phœnician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that
they were very badly broken and weather-worn. Several more brightly
clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in
dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded
with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright,
soft-coloured robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of
laughter and laughing speech.

“The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with
coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The
floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not
plates nor slabs—blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the
going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along
the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable
tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised, perhaps, a foot from
the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognised as a
kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they
were strange.

“Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon
these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise.
With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with
their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round
openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their
example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall
at my leisure.

“And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.
The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern,
were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower
end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the corner of the
marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect
was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of
hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to
me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little
eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same
soft, and yet strong, silky material.

“Fruit, by the bye, was all their diet. These people of the remote
future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of
some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found
afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the
Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful;
one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was
there—a floury thing in a three-sided husk—was especially good, and I
made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits,
and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive their
import.

“However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future
now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make
a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine.
Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a convenient
thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began a series of
interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty
in conveying my meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of
surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fair-haired
little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. They
had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other,
and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their
language caused an immense amount of genuine, if uncivil, amusement.
However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and
presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at my command;
and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb ‘to eat.’
But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to
get away from my interrogations, so I determined, rather of necessity,
to let them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined.
And very little doses I found they were before long, for I never met
people more indolent or more easily fatigued.

VI.
The Sunset of Mankind

“A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was
their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of
astonishment, like children, but, like children they would soon stop
examining me, and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my
conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that almost
all those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how
speedily I came to disregard these little people. I went out through
the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was
satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men of the future,
who would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and,
having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my
own devices.

“The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great
hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun. At
first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely different
from the world I had known—even the flowers. The big building I had
left was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the Thames
had shifted, perhaps, a mile from its present position. I resolved to
mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a mile and a half away, from
which I could get a wider view of this our planet in the year Eight
Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One, A.D. For that, I should
explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded.

“As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly
help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I found the
world—for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for instance, was a
great heap of granite, bound together by masses of aluminium, a vast
labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps, amidst which were
thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants—nettles possibly—but
wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of
stinging. It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure,
to what end built I could not determine. It was here that I was
destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience—the first
intimation of a still stranger discovery—but of that I will speak in
its proper place.

“Looking round, with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested
for a while, I realised that there were no small houses to be seen.
Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had
vanished. Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings,
but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features
of our own English landscape, had disappeared.

“‘Communism,’ said I to myself.

“And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the
half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash, I
perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless
visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem strange,
perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything was so
strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all the
differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from
each other, these people of the future were alike. And the children
seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged
then that the children of that time were extremely precocious,
physically at least, and I found afterwards abundant verification of my
opinion.

“Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt
that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would
expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the
institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are
mere militant necessities of an age of physical force. Where population
is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than
a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring
are secure, there is less necessity—indeed there is no necessity—for an
efficient family, and the specialisation of the sexes with reference to
their children’s needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even
in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I must
remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate
how far it fell short of the reality.

“While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a
pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in a
transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed
the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings towards
the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently
miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a
strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.

“There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognise,
corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered in
soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance of
griffins’ heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our
old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and fair a
view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the horizon
and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of
purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the
river lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already spoken of the
great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins
and some still occupied. Here and there rose a white or silvery figure
in the waste garden of the earth, here and there came the sharp
vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There were no hedges, no signs
of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had
become a garden.

“So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had
seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was
something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a half
truth—or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)

“It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The
ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first
time I began to realise an odd consequence of the social effort in
which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a
logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security
sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions
of life—the true civilising process that makes life more and more
secure—had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united
humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere
dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried
forward. And the harvest was what I saw!

“After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in
the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a
little department of the field of human disease, but, even so, it
spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture
and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate
perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number
to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and
animals—and how few they are—gradually by selective breeding; now a new
and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger
flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them
gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our
knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our
clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organised, and still
better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The
whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things
will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature. In the
end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and
vegetable life to suit our human needs.

“This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done
indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my machine had
leapt. The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi;
everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant
butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine
was attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any
contagious diseases during all my stay. And I shall have to tell you
later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been
profoundly affected by these changes.

“Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in
splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them
engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor
economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that
commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was
natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a
social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been met,
I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.

“But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the
change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the
cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom:
conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the
weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal
alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision.
And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein,
the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental
self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the
imminent dangers of the young. _Now_, where are these imminent dangers?
There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against connubial
jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts;
unnecessary things now, and things that make us uncomfortable, savage
survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life.

“I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of
intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my
belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the battle comes
Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had
used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it
lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.

“Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that
restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness. Even
in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to
survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and the
love of battle, for instance, are no great help—may even be
hindrances—to a civilised man. And in a state of physical balance and
security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out of
place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of war or
solitary violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to
require strength of constitution, no need of toil. For such a life,
what we should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are
indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they are, for the strong
would be fretted by an energy for which there was no outlet. No doubt
the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was the outcome of the last
surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind before it settled
down into perfect harmony with the conditions under which it lived—the
flourish of that triumph which began the last great peace. This has
ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to
eroticism, and then come languor and decay.

“Even this artistic impetus would at last die away—had almost died in
the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in
the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more.
Even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We are
kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and it seemed to me
that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last!

“As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple
explanation I had mastered the problem of the world—mastered the whole
secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they had devised
for the increase of population had succeeded too well, and their
numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. That would account
for the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my explanation, and plausible
enough—as most wrong theories are!

VII.
A Sudden Shock

“As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full
moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in
the north-east. The bright little figures ceased to move about below, a
noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the chill of the night. I
determined to descend and find where I could sleep.

“I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to the
figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing
distinct as the light of the rising moon grew brighter. I could see the
silver birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron bushes,
black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn. I looked at the
lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my complacency. ‘No,’ said I stoutly
to myself, ‘that was not the lawn.’

“But it _was_ the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was
towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to
me? But you cannot. The Time Machine was gone!

“At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing
my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world. The bare
thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I could feel it grip me
at the throat and stop my breathing. In another moment I was in a
passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope.
Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost no time in stanching the
blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and
chin. All the time I ran I was saying to myself: ‘They have moved it a
little, pushed it under the bushes out of the way.’ Nevertheless, I ran
with all my might. All the time, with the certainty that sometimes
comes with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance was folly, knew
instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach. My breath
came with pain. I suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill
crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am
not a young man. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in
leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and
none answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit
world.

“When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realised. Not a trace of
the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced the empty
space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round it furiously, as if
the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with
my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx, upon the
bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising
moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay.

“I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put
the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of their
physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed me: the
sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose intervention my
invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt assured: unless some
other age had produced its exact duplicate, the machine could not have
moved in time. The attachment of the levers—I will show you the method
later—prevented anyone from tampering with it in that way when they
were removed. It had moved, and was hid, only in space. But then, where
could it be?

“I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently
in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling
some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer. I
remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched
fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs.
Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went down to the
great building of stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and deserted. I
slipped on the uneven floor, and fell over one of the malachite tables,
almost breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty
curtains, of which I have told you.

“There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which,
perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. I have no
doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly
out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the splutter and
flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches. ‘Where is my
Time Machine?’ I began, bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon
them and shaking them up together. It must have been very queer to
them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely frightened. When I saw
them standing round me, it came into my head that I was doing as
foolish a thing as it was possible for me to do under the
circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation of fear. For,
reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that fear must be
forgotten.

“Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and knocking one of the people over
in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again, out
under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little feet
running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all I did as
the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected nature of my
loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind—a
strange animal in an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro,
screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memory of horrible
fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this
impossible place and that; of groping among moonlit ruins and touching
strange creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the ground
near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness, even anger at
the folly of leaving the machine having leaked away with my strength. I
had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when I woke again it was
full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping round me on the turf
within reach of my arm.

“I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I had
got there, and why I had such a profound sense of desertion and
despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain, reasonable
daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the face. I saw the
wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could reason with myself.
‘Suppose the worst?’ I said. ‘Suppose the machine altogether
lost—perhaps destroyed? It behoves me to be calm and patient, to learn
the way of the people, to get a clear idea of the method of my loss,
and the means of getting materials and tools; so that in the end,
perhaps, I may make another.’ That would be my only hope, a poor hope,
perhaps, but better than despair. And, after all, it was a beautiful
and curious world.

“But probably the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must be
calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and recover it by force or
cunning. And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked about me,
wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and travel-soiled.
The freshness of the morning made me desire an equal freshness. I had
exhausted my emotion. Indeed, as I went about my business, I found
myself wondering at my intense excitement overnight. I made a careful
examination of the ground about the little lawn. I wasted some time in
futile questionings, conveyed, as well as I was able, to such of the
little people as came by. They all failed to understand my gestures;
some were simply stolid, some thought it was a jest and laughed at me.
I had the hardest task in the world to keep my hands off their pretty
laughing faces. It was a foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of
fear and blind anger was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage
of my perplexity. The turf gave better counsel. I found a groove ripped
in it, about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of
my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.
There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow footprints
like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed my closer
attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said, of bronze.
It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep framed panels
on either side. I went and rapped at these. The pedestal was hollow.
Examining the panels with care I found them discontinuous with the
frames. There were no handles or keyholes, but possibly the panels, if
they were doors, as I supposed, opened from within. One thing was clear
enough to my mind. It took no very great mental effort to infer that my
Time Machine was inside that pedestal. But how it got there was a
different problem.

“I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes
and under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned smiling
to them, and beckoned them to me. They came, and then, pointing to the
bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open it. But at my
first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. I don’t know how to
convey their expression to you. Suppose you were to use a grossly
improper gesture to a delicate-minded woman—it is how she would look.
They went off as if they had received the last possible insult. I tried
a sweet-looking little chap in white next, with exactly the same
result. Somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed of myself. But, as you
know, I wanted the Time Machine, and I tried him once more. As he
turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of me. In three
strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round
the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the
horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.

“But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels.
I thought I heard something stir inside—to be explicit, I thought I
heard a sound like a chuckle—but I must have been mistaken. Then I got
a big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till I had flattened
a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in powdery
flakes. The delicate little people must have heard me hammering in
gusty outbreaks a mile away on either hand, but nothing came of it. I
saw a crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me. At last,
hot and tired, I sat down to watch the place. But I was too restless to
watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a
problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours—that is
another matter.

“I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes
towards the hill again. ‘Patience,’ said I to myself. ‘If you want your
machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they mean to take
your machine away, it’s little good your wrecking their bronze panels,
and if they don’t, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it.
To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is
hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways,
watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end
you will find clues to it all.’ Then suddenly the humour of the
situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in
study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of
anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most complicated and
the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at my
own expense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud.

“Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people
avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had something to
do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure
of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no concern and to
abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two
things got back to the old footing. I made what progress I could in the
language, and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there.
Either I missed some subtle point or their language was excessively
simple—almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs.
There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of
figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two
words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest
propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and
the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx, as much as possible
in a corner of memory, until my growing knowledge would lead me back to
them in a natural way. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand,
tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.

VIII.
Explanation

“So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant
richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw the same
abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and
style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same
blossom-laden trees and tree ferns. Here and there water shone like
silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so
faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature, which presently
attracted my attention, was the presence of certain circular wells,
several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth. One lay by the path
up the hill which I had followed during my first walk. Like the others,
it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a little
cupola from the rain. Sitting by the side of these wells, and peering
down into the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water, nor
could I start any reflection with a lighted match. But in all of them I
heard a certain sound: a thud—thud—thud, like the beating of some big
engine; and I discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady
current of air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper
into the throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was
at once sucked swiftly out of sight.

“After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers
standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was often
just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a
sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong
suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose
true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to
associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an
obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.

“And here I must admit that I learnt very little of drains and bells
and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in
this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias and coming times
which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail about building, and
social arrangements, and so forth. But while such details are easy
enough to obtain when the whole world is contained in one’s
imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid
such realities as I found here. Conceive the tale of London which a
negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back to his tribe! What
would he know of railway companies, of social movements, of telephone
and telegraph wires, of the Parcels Delivery Company, and postal orders
and the like? Yet we, at least, should be willing enough to explain
these things to him! And even of what he knew, how much could he make
his untravelled friend either apprehend or believe? Then, think how
narrow the gap between a negro and a white man of our own times, and
how wide the interval between myself and these of the Golden Age! I was
sensible of much which was unseen, and which contributed to my comfort;
but save for a general impression of automatic organisation, I fear I
can convey very little of the difference to your mind.

“In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of
crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me
that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere
beyond the range of my explorings. This, again, was a question I
deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely
defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a
further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm among
this people there were none.

“I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an
automatic civilisation and a decadent humanity did not long endure. Yet
I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The several big
palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls and
sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any
kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at
times need renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly
complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be made. And
the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency. There
were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They
spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in
making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I
could not see how things were kept going.

“Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, had
taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. _Why?_ For the
life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those
flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt—how shall I put it?
Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in
excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of
words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well, on the third
day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and Two
Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to me!

“That day, too, I made a friend—of a sort. It happened that, as I was
watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them
was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current
ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer.
It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these
creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to
rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their
eyes. When I realised this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and,
wading in at a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her
safe to land. A little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her round, and
I had the satisfaction of seeing she was all right before I left her. I
had got to such a low estimate of her kind that I did not expect any
gratitude from her. In that, however, I was wrong.

“This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman,
as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre from an
exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and presented me
with a big garland of flowers—evidently made for me and me alone. The
thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate.
At any rate I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. We
were soon seated together in a little stone arbour, engaged in
conversation, chiefly of smiles. The creature’s friendliness affected
me exactly as a child’s might have done. We passed each other flowers,
and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and
found that her name was Weena, which, though I don’t know what it
meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a
queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended—as I will tell you!

“She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She
tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about it
went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhausted and
calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of the world had
to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to
carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her was
very great, her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic,
and I think, altogether, I had as much trouble as comfort from her
devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I
thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me. Until
it was too late, I did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her
when I left her. Nor until it was too late did I clearly understand
what she was to me. For, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in
her weak, futile way that she cared for me, the little doll of a
creature presently gave my return to the neighbourhood of the White
Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and I would watch for her
tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill.

“It was from her, too, that I learnt that fear had not yet left the
world. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest
confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening
grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the
dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the
one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set
me thinking and observing. I discovered then, among other things, that
these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and
slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them
into a tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors, or one
sleeping alone within doors, after dark. Yet I was still such a
blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of
Weena’s distress, I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering
multitudes.

“It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me
triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including
the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm. But
my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have been the
night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I had been
restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea
anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps. I woke with a
start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed
out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless
and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour when things are just
creeping out of darkness, when everything is colourless and clear cut,
and yet unreal. I got up, and went down into the great hall, and so out
upon the flagstones in front of the palace. I thought I would make a
virtue of necessity, and see the sunrise.

“The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of
dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky black,
the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the
hill I thought I could see ghosts. Three several times, as I scanned
the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white,
ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the
ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body. They moved
hastily. I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they
vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct, you must
understand. I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning feeling
you may have known. I doubted my eyes.

“As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and
its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned the
view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were mere
creatures of the half-light. ‘They must have been ghosts,’ I said; ‘I
wonder whence they dated.’ For a queer notion of Grant Allen’s came
into my head, and amused me. If each generation die and leave ghosts,
he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with them. On that
theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred Thousand
Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four at once. But the
jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the
morning, until Weena’s rescue drove them out of my head. I associated
them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my
first passionate search for the Time Machine. But Weena was a pleasant
substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far
deadlier possession of my mind.

“I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of
this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was
hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that the sun
will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar with
such speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget that the
planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As
these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and
it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. Whatever the
reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know
it.

“Well, one very hot morning—my fourth, I think—as I was seeking shelter
from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I
slept and fed, there happened this strange thing. Clambering among
these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side
windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the
brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I
entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots
of colour swim before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes,
luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me
out of the darkness.

“The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my
hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to
turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity
appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I remembered that
strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I
advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and
ill-controlled. I put out my hand and touched something soft. At once
the eyes darted sideways, and something white ran past me. I turned
with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its
head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space
behind me. It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside,
and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of
ruined masonry.

“My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull
white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was
flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it went too
fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all
fours, or only with its forearms held very low. After an instant’s
pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I could not find it
at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon one
of those round well-like openings of which I have told you, half closed
by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could this Thing have
vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking down, I saw a
small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes which regarded me
steadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like a human
spider! It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first
time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder
down the shaft. Then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my
hand, going out as it dropped, and when I had lit another the little
monster had disappeared.

“I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for
some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I
had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man
had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct
animals: that my graceful children of the Upper World were not the sole
descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene,
nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the
ages.

“I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground
ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. And what, I
wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced
organisation? How was it related to the indolent serenity of the
beautiful Overworlders? And what was hidden down there, at the foot of
that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any
rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there I must descend for the
solution of my difficulties. And withal I was absolutely afraid to go!
As I hesitated, two of the beautiful upperworld people came running in
their amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued
the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran.

“They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned
pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form to
remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried to
frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly
distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my matches, and
I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about the well, and
again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning to go back to Weena,
and see what I could get from her. But my mind was already in
revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding to a
new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these wells, to the
ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a
hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time
Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion towards the solution
of the economic problem that had puzzled me.

“Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was
subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which made
me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a
long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there was the
bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark—the
white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes,
with that capacity for reflecting light, are common features of
nocturnal things—witness the owl and the cat. And last of all, that
evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward
flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head
while in the light—all reinforced the theory of an extreme
sensitiveness of the retina.

“Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
these tunnellings were the habitat of the New Race. The presence of
ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes—everywhere, in fact,
except along the river valley—showed how universal were its
ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this
artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the comfort of
the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible that I at once
accepted it, and went on to assume the _how_ of this splitting of the
human species. I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory;
though, for myself, I very soon felt that it fell far short of the
truth.

“At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear
as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely
temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer
was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque
enough to you—and wildly incredible!—and yet even now there are
existing circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to
utilise underground space for the less ornamental purposes of
civilisation; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for
instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there are
underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply.
Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry had
gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I mean that it had gone
deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories,
spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till, in the
end—! Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial
conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the
earth?

“Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people—due, no doubt, to the
increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between
them and the rude violence of the poor—is already leading to the
closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of
the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country
is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf—which is due
to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the
increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the
part of the rich—will make that exchange between class and class, that
promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of
our species along lines of social stratification, less and less
frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves,
pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the
Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of
their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay
rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and
if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such
of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would
die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would
become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as
happy in their way, as the Overworld people were to theirs. As it
seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed
naturally enough.

“The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape
in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and general
co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy,
armed with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the
industrial system of today. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph
over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man. This, I must
warn you, was my theory at the time. I had no convenient cicerone in
the pattern of the Utopian books. My explanation may be absolutely
wrong. I still think it is the most plausible one. But even on this
supposition the balanced civilisation that was at last attained must
have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay.
The too-perfect security of the Overworlders had led them to a slow
movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and
intelligence. That I could see clearly enough already. What had
happened to the Undergrounders I did not yet suspect; but, from what I
had seen of the Morlocks—that, by the bye, was the name by which these
creatures were called—I could imagine that the modification of the
human type was even far more profound than among the ‘Eloi,’ the
beautiful race that I already knew.

“Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time
Machine? For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if the
Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why
were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have said,
to question Weena about this Underworld, but here again I was
disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and
presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the topic
was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she
burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw
in that Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about
the Morlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs of her
human inheritance from Weena’s eyes. And very soon she was smiling and
clapping her hands, while I solemnly burnt a match.

IX.
The Morlocks

“It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up
the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a
peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the
half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in
spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the
touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic
influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began to
appreciate.

“The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little
disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once or twice I
had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite
reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the
little people were sleeping in the moonlight—that night Weena was among
them—and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even
then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its
last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these
unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin
that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both these
days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty. I
felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly
penetrating these mysteries of underground. Yet I could not face the
mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been different.
But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness
of the well appalled me. I don’t know if you will understand my
feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back.

“It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me
farther and farther afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the
south-westward towards the rising country that is now called Combe
Wood, I observed far-off, in the direction of nineteenth-century
Banstead, a vast green structure, different in character from any I had
hitherto seen. It was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins I
knew, and the façade had an Oriental look: the face of it having the
lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a
certain type of Chinese porcelain. This difference in aspect suggested
a difference in use, and I was minded to push on and explore. But the
day was growing late, and I had come upon the sight of the place after
a long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the adventure for
the following day, and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of
little Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my
curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a piece of
self-deception, to enable me to shirk, by another day, an experience I
dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of
time, and started out in the early morning towards a well near the
ruins of granite and aluminium.

“Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when
she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely
disconcerted. ‘Good-bye, little Weena,’ I said, kissing her; and then
putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet for the climbing
hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for I feared my courage
might leak away! At first she watched me in amazement. Then she gave a
most piteous cry, and running to me, she began to pull at me with her
little hands. I think her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I
shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was in
the throat of the well. I saw her agonised face over the parapet, and
smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks
to which I clung.

“I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The
descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the
sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature
much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and
fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the bars bent
suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness
beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience I
did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and back were presently
acutely painful, I went on clambering down the sheer descent with as
quick a motion as possible. Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a
small blue disc, in which a star was visible, while little Weena’s head
showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of a machine
below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disc
above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had
disappeared.

“I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up
the shaft again, and leave the Underworld alone. But even while I
turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. At last, with
intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a
slender loophole in the wall. Swinging myself in, I found it was the
aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and
rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I
was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this, the
unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air
was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.

“I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching
my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and,
hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar to
the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before
the light. Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable
darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are
the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they reflected the light in the
same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity,
and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But,
so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled
incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which
their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.

“I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently
different from that of the Overworld people; so that I was needs left
to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before exploration
was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, ‘You are in for it
now,’ and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of
machinery grow louder. Presently the walls fell away from me, and I
came to a large open space, and striking another match, saw that I had
entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into utter darkness
beyond the range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one
could see in the burning of a match.

“Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose
out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim
spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the bye, was
very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly-shed blood
was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of
white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate
were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large
animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw. It was all
very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene
figures lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to
come at me again! Then the match burnt down, and stung my fingers, and
fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness.

“I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for such an
experience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started
with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly
be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had come
without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke—at times I
missed tobacco frightfully!—even without enough matches. If only I had
thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Underworld
in a second, and examined it at leisure. But, as it was, I stood there
with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me
with—hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still
remained to me.

“I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark,
and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my
store of matches had run low. It had never occurred to me until that
moment that there was any need to economise them, and I had wasted
almost half the box in astonishing the Overworlders, to whom fire was a
novelty. Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark,
a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was
sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the
breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. I felt
the box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands
behind me plucking at my clothing. The sense of these unseen creatures
examining me was indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realisation of my
ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very
vividly in the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could. They
started away, and then I could feel them approaching me again. They
clutched at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I
shivered violently, and shouted again—rather discordantly. This time
they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing
noise as they came back at me. I will confess I was horribly
frightened. I determined to strike another match and escape under the
protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out the flicker with a
scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow
tunnel. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and
in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among
leaves, and pattering like the rain, as they hurried after me.

“In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no
mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another
light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how
nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great,
lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!—as they stared in their blindness and
bewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you: I retreated
again, and when my second match had ended, I struck my third. It had
almost burnt through when I reached the opening into the shaft. I lay
down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy.
Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my
feet were grasped from behind, and I was violently tugged backward. I
lit my last match … and it incontinently went out. But I had my hand on
the climbing bars now, and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from
the clutches of the Morlocks, and was speedily clambering up the shaft,
while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little
wretch who followed me for some way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a
trophy.

“That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty
feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty
in keeping my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle against
this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I felt all the
sensations of falling. At last, however, I got over the well-mouth
somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I
fell upon my face. Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of others among the
Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.

X.
When Night Came

“Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except
during my night’s anguish at the loss of the Time Machine, I had felt a
sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was staggered by
these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded by
the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown
forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an
altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks—a
something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I
had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was
with the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a
trap, whose enemy would come upon him soon.

“The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new
moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible
remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now such a very difficult
problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights might mean. The moon was
on the wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. And I
now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of
the little Upperworld people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul
villainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt
pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was all wrong. The Upperworld
people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks
their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The two
species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down
towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship. The
Eloi, like the Carlovignan kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful
futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance: since the
Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to
find the daylit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their
garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs,
perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service. They did it as
a standing horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals
in sport: because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on
the organism. But, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed.
The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago,
thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the
ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back—changed!
Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were
becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came into my head
the memory of the meat I had seen in the Underworld. It seemed odd how
it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it were by the current of my
meditations, but coming in almost like a question from outside. I tried
to recall the form of it. I had a vague sense of something familiar,
but I could not tell what it was at the time.

“Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their
mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of this age
of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not paralyse
and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself.
Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness
where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this
strange world with some of that confidence I had lost in realising to
what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt I could never sleep
again until my bed was secure from them. I shuddered with horror to
think how they must already have examined me.

“I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but
found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the
buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous
climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the
tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam
of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena
like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the hills towards the
south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but
it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first seen the place on a
moist afternoon when distances are deceptively diminished. In addition,
the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working through
the sole—they were comfortable old shoes I wore about indoors—so that I
was lame. And it was already long past sunset when I came in sight of
the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky.

“Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a
while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by the side of me,
occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers to stick in my
pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last she had
concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vases for floral
decoration. At least she utilised them for that purpose. And that
reminds me! In changing my jacket I found…”

_The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently
placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon
the little table. Then he resumed his narrative._

“As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the
hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to return to
the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant pinnacles of the
Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to make her understand
that we were seeking a refuge there from her Fear. You know that great
pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in
the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that
evening stillness. The sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few
horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, that night the
expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling calm my
senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel
the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see
through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither and
waiting for the dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would
receive my invasion of their burrows as a declaration of war. And why
had they taken my Time Machine?

“So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. The
clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after another came out.
The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena’s fears and her fatigue
grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed
her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck,
and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. So
we went down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I
almost walked into a little river. This I waded, and went up the
opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping houses, and by a
statue—a Faun, or some such figure, _minus_ the head. Here too were
acacias. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks, but it was yet
early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon rose were
still to come.

“From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and
black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to it, either
to the right or the left. Feeling tired—my feet, in particular, were
very sore—I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted, and
sat down upon the turf. I could no longer see the Palace of Green
Porcelain, and I was in doubt of my direction. I looked into the
thickness of the wood and thought of what it might hide. Under that
dense tangle of branches one would be out of sight of the stars. Even
were there no other lurking danger—a danger I did not care to let my
imagination loose upon—there would still be all the roots to stumble
over and the tree-boles to strike against. I was very tired, too, after
the excitements of the day; so I decided that I would not face it, but
would pass the night upon the open hill.

“Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in
my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The
hillside was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood there
came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars,
for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of friendly
comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from
the sky, however: that slow movement which is imperceptible in a
hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar
groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same
tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore. Southward (as I judged it)
was a very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more
splendid than our own green Sirius. And amid all these scintillating
points of light one bright planet shone kindly and steadily like the
face of an old friend.

“Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the
gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable
distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the
unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great
precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty
times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I
had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the activity, all
the traditions, the complex organisations, the nations, languages,
literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew him,
had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail creatures who
had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which I went
in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear that was between the two
species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear
knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too
horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white
and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought.

“Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I
could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could find signs
of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept very
clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at times. Then,
as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the
reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and
peaked and white. And close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing
it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then growing pink and warm. No
Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had seen none upon the hill that
night. And in the confidence of renewed day it almost seemed to me that
my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up and found my foot with the
loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under the heel; so I sat
down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away.

“I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and
pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith
to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and
dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in nature as
the night. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I
felt assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I
pitied this last feeble rill from the great flood of humanity. Clearly,
at some time in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks’ food had run
short. Possibly they had lived on rats and such-like vermin. Even now
man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he
was—far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no
deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men——! I tried to
look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less
human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four
thousand years ago. And the intelligence that would have made this
state of things a torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These
Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and
preyed upon—probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena
dancing at my side!

“Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon
me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man
had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his
fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the
fullness of time Necessity had come home to him. I even tried a
Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this
attitude of mind was impossible. However great their intellectual
degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim
my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and
their Fear.

“I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue.
My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself
such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity was
immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so
that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew,
would be more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to
arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the
White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram. I had a persuasion that if
I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me I should
discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not imagine the Morlocks
were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to bring
with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over in my mind I
pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our
dwelling.

XI.
The Palace of Green Porcelain

“I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about
noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass
remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had
fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon
a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I was
surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged
Wandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then—though I
never followed up the thought—of what might have happened, or might be
happening, to the living things in the sea.

“The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed
porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some
unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help
me to interpret this, but I only learnt that the bare idea of writing
had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I fancy, more
human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human.

“Within the big valves of the door—which were open and broken—we found,
instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows.
At the first glance I was reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was
thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was
shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange
and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of
a huge skeleton. I recognised by the oblique feet that it was some
extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and
the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place,
where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing
itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton
barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going
towards the side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and
clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of
our own time. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair
preservation of some of their contents.

“Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington!
Here, apparently, was the Palæontological Section, and a very splendid
array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of
decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the
extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its
force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness
at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of
the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or
threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances
been bodily removed—by the Morlocks, as I judged. The place was very
silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been
rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came,
as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside
me.

“And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an
intellectual age that I gave no thought to the possibilities it
presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a
little from my mind.

“To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain
had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palæontology; possibly
historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me, at least in
my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than
this spectacle of old-time geology in decay. Exploring, I found another
short gallery running transversely to the first. This appeared to be
devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind
running on gunpowder. But I could find no saltpetre; indeed, no
nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. Yet the
sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking. As for the
rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the
best preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist
in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel
to the first hall I had entered. Apparently this section had been
devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed out of
recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once
been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held
spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for
that, because I should have been glad to trace the patient
readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had been
attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but
singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle
from the end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from
the ceiling—many of them cracked and smashed—which suggested that
originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my
element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big
machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still
fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and
I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part
they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest
guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their
puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers that might be of
use against the Morlocks.

“Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she
startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should have
noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It may
be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was
built into the side of a hill.—ED.] The end I had come in at was quite
above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down
the length, the ground came up against these windows, until at last
there was a pit like the ‘area‘ of a London house before each, and only
a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling
about the machines, and had been too intent upon them to notice the
gradual diminution of the light, until Weena’s increasing apprehensions
drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a
thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that
the dust was less abundant and its surface less even. Further away
towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small
narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks
revived at that. I felt that I was wasting my time in this academic
examination of machinery. I called to mind that it was already far
advanced in the afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge,
and no means of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of
the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had
heard down the well.

“I took Weena’s hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and
turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a
signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my
hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted
in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of
the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute’s strain, and
I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged,
for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill
a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing
one’s own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any
humanity in the things. Only my disinclination to leave Weena, and a
persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder my Time
Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the
gallery and killing the brutes I heard.

“Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that
gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first
glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The
brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently
recognised as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since
dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here
and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the
tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have
moralised upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing
that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to
which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I
will confess that I thought chiefly of the _Philosophical Transactions_
and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.

“Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a
gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of
useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had collapsed,
this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every unbroken case.
And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases, I found a box of
matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good. They were
not even damp. I turned to Weena. ‘Dance,’ I cried to her in her own
tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we
feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting
of dust, to Weena’s huge delight, I solemnly performed a kind of
composite dance, whistling _The Land of the Leal_ as cheerfully as I
could. In part it was a modest _cancan_, in part a step dance, in part
a skirt dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original.
For I am naturally inventive, as you know.

“Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the
wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was
a most fortunate, thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far unlikelier
substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that by
chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at
first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But
the odour of camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay this
volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many
thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once
seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished
and become fossilised millions of years ago. I was about to throw it
away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burnt with a good
bright flame—was, in fact, an excellent candle—and I put it in my
pocket. I found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down
the bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I
had chanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.

“I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would
require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all
the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms,
and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I
could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against
the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The
most were masses of rust, but many were of some new metal, and still
fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder there may once have been had
rotted into dust. One corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps,
I thought, by an explosion among the specimens. In another place was a
vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phœnician, every
country on earth, I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible
impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South
America that particularly took my fancy.

“As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery
after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes
mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I
suddenly found myself near the model of a tin mine, and then by the
merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite
cartridges! I shouted ‘Eureka!’ and smashed the case with joy. Then
came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery, I
made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I did in waiting
five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came. Of course
the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from their presence. I
really believe that had they not been so, I should have rushed off
incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my
chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into non-existence.

“It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within
the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we rested and
refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our position.
Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had still
to be found. But that troubled me very little now. I had in my
possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against
the Morlocks—I had matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a
blaze were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do
would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In the
morning there was the getting of the Time Machine. Towards that, as
yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing knowledge, I
felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I had
refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the
other side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I
hoped to find my bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work.

XII.
In the Darkness

“We emerged from the Palace while the sun was still in part above the
horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next
morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods that had
stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as
possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the
protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any
sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such
litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated,
and besides Weena was tired. And I, also, began to suffer from
sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood.
Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the
darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that
should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. I had been
without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and
irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.

“While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against
their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and
long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious
approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across.
If we could get through it to the bare hillside, there, as it seemed to
me, was an altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my
matches and my camphor I could contrive to keep my path illuminated
through the woods. Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches
with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood; so, rather
reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my head that I would
amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover the
atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an
ingenious move for covering our retreat.

“I don’t know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be
in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun’s heat is
rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as
is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast
and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying
vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation,
but this rarely results in flame. In this decadence, too, the art of
fire-making had been forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went
licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to
Weena.

“She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have
cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up, and
in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood. For
a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently,
I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks the
blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was
creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed at that, and turned again
to the dark trees before me. It was very black, and Weena clung to me
convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the
darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead it was
simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us
here and there. I lit none of my matches because I had no hand free.
Upon my left arm I carried my little one, in my right hand I had my
iron bar.

“For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet,
the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the
throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a
pattering behind me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more
distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard
in the Underworld. There were evidently several of the Morlocks, and
they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at
my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena shivered violently, and
became quite still.

“It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did so,
and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness
about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar
cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too, were creeping
over my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched
and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks
in flight amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my
pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as the match should wane. Then
I looked at Weena. She was lying clutching my feet and quite
motionless, with her face to the ground. With a sudden fright I stooped
to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of camphor and
flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove back
the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood
behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!

“She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and
rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realisation. In
manœuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about several
times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my
path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of
Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly
what to do. I determined to build a fire and encamp where we were. I
put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily,
as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and
leaves. Here and there out of the darkness round me the Morlocks’ eyes
shone like carbuncles.

“The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so,
two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away.
One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I
felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of
dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of
camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry
was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival on the Time
Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. So, instead of casting
about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping up and dragging
down branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and
dry sticks, and could economise my camphor. Then I turned to where
Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive her, but
she lay like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself whether or not
she breathed.

“Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made
me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air.
My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very
weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a
slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and
open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon
me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for
the match-box, and—it had gone! Then they gripped and closed with me
again. In a moment I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my fire
had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul. The forest
seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by
the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible
in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt
as if I was in a monstrous spider’s web. I was overpowered, and went
down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I
did so my hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I
struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar
short, I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the
succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I
was free.

“The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting
came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined
to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my back to a
tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was full of the
stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices seemed to rise to
a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none
came within reach. I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came
hope. What if the Morlocks were afraid? And close on the heels of that
came a strange thing. The darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly
I began to see the Morlocks about me—three battered at my feet—and then
I recognised, with incredulous surprise, that the others were running,
in an incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away through
the wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish.
As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of
starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I understood
the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was growing now
into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks’ flight.

“Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the
black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It
was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for Weena, but
she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud
as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection.
My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks’ path. It was a
close race. Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I
ran that I was outflanked and had to strike off to the left. But at
last I emerged upon a small open space, and as I did so, a Morlock came
blundering towards me, and past me, and went on straight into the fire!

“And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of
all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as
day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock or
tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm
of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it,
completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hillside
were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and
blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment.
At first I did not realise their blindness, and struck furiously at
them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing
one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of
one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard
their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in
the glare, and I struck no more of them.

“Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting
loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one time
the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures would
presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the fight by
killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out
again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among
them and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was
gone.

“At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this
strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and
making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on
them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and through
the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to
another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three Morlocks came
blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows of my fists,
trembling as I did so.

“For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I
bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the
ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here
and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and
calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads
down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last, above
the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming masses of black
smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing
numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light of the day.

“I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was
plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot
describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate
to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved
to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I
contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in
the forest. From its summit I could now make out through a haze of
smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that I could get my
bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the remnant of these
damned souls still going hither and thither and moaning, as the day
grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on across
smoking ashes and among black stems that still pulsated internally with
fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time Machine. I walked slowly,
for I was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest
wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. It seemed an
overwhelming calamity. Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like
the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss. But that morning it left me
absolutely lonely again—terribly alone. I began to think of this house
of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came
a longing that was pain.

“But, as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky,
I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches.
The box must have leaked before it was lost.

XIII.
The Trap of the White Sphinx

“About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of yellow
metal from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival.
I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not
refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here was the same
beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces
and magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between its
fertile banks. The gay robes of the beautiful people moved hither and
thither among the trees. Some were bathing in exactly the place where I
had saved Weena, and that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain. And
like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the
Underworld. I understood now what all the beauty of the Overworld
people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of
the cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and
provided against no needs. And their end was the same.

“I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had
been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards
comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as
its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once,
life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich
had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his
life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no
unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet
had followed.

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is
the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly
in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never
appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is
no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only
those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety
of needs and dangers.

“So, as I see it, the Upperworld man had drifted towards his feeble
prettiness, and the Underworld to mere mechanical industry. But that
perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical
perfection—absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the feeding
of an Underworld, however it was effected, had become disjointed.
Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years,
came back again, and she began below. The Underworld being in contact
with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought
outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative,
if less of every other human character, than the Upper. And when other
meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden.
So I say I saw it in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two
Thousand Seven Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as
mortal wit could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and
as that I give it to you.

“After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and in
spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm
sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon my
theorising passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my own
hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and
refreshing sleep.

“I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being
caught napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on down
the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one hand, and
the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.

“And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal of
the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid down into
grooves.

“At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.

“Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of
this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So
here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the White
Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry
not to use it.

“A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal.
For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks.
Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the bronze
frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it had been
carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that the Morlocks
had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in their dim way to
grasp its purpose.

“Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere touch
of the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The bronze
panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang. I was in the
dark—trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I chuckled gleefully.

“I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards me.
Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on the
levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one little
thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light only on the
box.

“You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were close
upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them
with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine.
Then came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had simply to fight
against their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time
feel for the studs over which these fitted. One, indeed, they almost
got away from me. As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark
with my head—I could hear the Morlock’s skull ring—to recover it. It
was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think, this last
scramble.

“But at last the lever was fixed and pulled over. The clinging hands
slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found
myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.

XIV.
The Further Vision

“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with
time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle,
but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung
to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went,
and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to
find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands
of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions.
Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to
go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I
found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds
hand of a watch—into futurity.

“As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things.
The palpitating greyness grew darker; then—though I was still
travelling with prodigious velocity—the blinking succession of day and
night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and
grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The
alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the
passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through
centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight
only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky.
The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since
disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set—it simply rose and fell in
the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had
vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had
given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I
stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the
horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then
suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while
glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen
red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting
that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest
with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the
earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I
began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands
until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no
longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines
of a desolate beach grew visible.

“I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round.
The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out
of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars.
Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it
grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the
huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a
harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at
first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting
point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one
sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these
grow in a perpetual twilight.

“The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to
the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan
sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was
stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle
breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living.
And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick
incrustation of salt—pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of
oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast.
The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and
from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.

“Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing
like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky
and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of
its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly
upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what
I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me.
Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you
imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving
slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennæ, like
carters’ whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at
you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and
ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched
it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth
flickering and feeling as it moved.

“As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a
tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to
brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught
something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a
frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of
another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were
wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and
its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending
upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month
between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach,
and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them
seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the
foliated sheets of intense green.

“I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the
world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea,
the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the
uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air
that hurts one’s lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved
on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun—a little larger, a
little duller—the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same
crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and
the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a
vast new moon.

“So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a
thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth’s fate,
watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in
the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more
than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had
come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I
stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared,
and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens,
seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold
assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the
north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable
sky, and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white.
There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses
farther out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under
the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.

“I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A
certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the
machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green
slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow
sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the
beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank,
but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye
had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The
stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very
little.

“Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had
changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this
grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness
that was creeping over the day, and then I realised that an eclipse was
beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the
sun’s disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be the moon, but there is
much to incline me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of
an inner planet passing very near to the earth.

“The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts
from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in
number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond
these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to
convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of
sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the
background of our lives—all that was over. As the darkness thickened,
the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the
cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after
the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into
blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central
shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale
stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was
absolutely black.

“A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my
marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and
a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared
the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt
giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and
confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal—there was no
mistake now that it was a moving thing—against the red water of the
sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may
be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against
the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then
I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that
remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the
saddle.

XV.
The Time Traveller’s Return

“So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the
machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed,
the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater
freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows
of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and
passed, and others came. Presently, when the million dial was at zero,
I slackened speed. I began to recognise our own pretty and familiar
architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point, the
night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the
laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism
down.

“I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you
that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett
had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a
rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when she
traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to be the
exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened,
and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost, and
disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. Just
before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a
flash.

“Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar
laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got off
the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes
I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my old
workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and
the whole thing have been a dream.

“And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east corner
of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the north-west, against
the wall where you saw it. That gives you the exact distance from my
little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which the
Morlocks had carried my machine.

“For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through
the passage here, limping, because my heel was still painful, and
feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the _Pall Mall Gazette_ on the table by
the door. I found the date was indeed today, and looking at the
timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o’clock. I heard your voices
and the clatter of plates. I hesitated—I felt so sick and weak. Then I
sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. You know the
rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.

XVI.
After the Story

“I know,” he said, after a pause, “that all this will be absolutely
incredible to you, but to me the one incredible thing is that I am here
tonight in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and
telling you these strange adventures.” He looked at the Medical Man.
“No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy.
Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon
the destinies of our race, until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my
assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest.
And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?”

He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary
stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the
carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller’s face, and looked round
at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of colour swam
before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of
our host. The Editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar—the
sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The others, as far as I
remember, were motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh. “What a pity it is you’re not a writer
of stories!” he said, putting his hand on the Time Traveller’s
shoulder.

“You don’t believe it?”

“Well——”

“I thought not.”

The Time Traveller turned to us. “Where are the matches?” he said. He
lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. “To tell you the truth… I
hardly believe it myself….. And yet…”

His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon
the little table. Then he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and I
saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. “The
gynæceum’s odd,” he said. The Psychologist leant forward to see,
holding out his hand for a specimen.

“I’m hanged if it isn’t a quarter to one,” said the Journalist. “How
shall we get home?”

“Plenty of cabs at the station,” said the Psychologist.

“It’s a curious thing,” said the Medical Man; “but I certainly don’t
know the natural order of these flowers. May I have them?”

The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: “Certainly not.”

“Where did you really get them?” said the Medical Man.

The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who was
trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. “They were put into my
pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time.” He stared round the room.
“I’m damned if it isn’t all going. This room and you and the atmosphere
of every day is too much for my memory. Did I ever make a Time Machine,
or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all only a dream? They say life
is a dream, a precious poor dream at times—but I can’t stand another
that won’t fit. It’s madness. And where did the dream come from? … I
must look at that machine. If there is one!”

He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the
door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering light
of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew, a
thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz. Solid
to the touch—for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it—and with
brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon
the lower parts, and one rail bent awry.

The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand
along the damaged rail. “It’s all right now,” he said. “The story I
told you was true. I’m sorry to have brought you out here in the cold.”
He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we returned to the
smoking-room.

He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his coat.
The Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation,
told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I
remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good-night.

I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a “gaudy lie.” For
my own part I was unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so
fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I lay
awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go next day
and see the Time Traveller again. I was told he was in the laboratory,
and being on easy terms in the house, I went up to him. The laboratory,
however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the Time Machine and put
out my hand and touched the lever. At that the squat
substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. Its
instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of
the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle. I came back
through the corridor. The Time Traveller met me in the smoking-room. He
was coming from the house. He had a small camera under one arm and a
knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me, and gave me an
elbow to shake. “I’m frightfully busy,” said he, “with that thing in
there.”

“But is it not some hoax?” I said. “Do you really travel through time?”

“Really and truly I do.” And he looked frankly into my eyes. He
hesitated. His eye wandered about the room. “I only want half an hour,”
he said. “I know why you came, and it’s awfully good of you. There’s
some magazines here. If you’ll stop to lunch I’ll prove you this time
travelling up to the hilt, specimens and all. If you’ll forgive my
leaving you now?”

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words,
and he nodded and went on down the corridor. I heard the door of the
laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily paper.
What was he going to do before lunch-time? Then suddenly I was reminded
by an advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the
publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw that I could barely
save that engagement. I got up and went down the passage to tell the
Time Traveller.

As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation, oddly
truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled
round me as I opened the door, and from within came the sound of broken
glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was not there. I seemed
to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black
and brass for a moment—a figure so transparent that the bench behind
with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct; but this phantasm
vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine had gone. Save for a
subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was empty. A
pane of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had
happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange
thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened,
and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. “Has Mr. —— gone out
that way?” said I.

“No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him
here.”

At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed
on, waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps
still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring
with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime.
The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows
now, he has never returned.

Epilogue

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he
swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy
savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the
Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian
brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now—if I may use the
phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or
beside the lonely saline seas of the Triassic Age. Or did he go
forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but
with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems
solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part, cannot
think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory,
and mutual discord are indeed man’s culminating time! I say, for my own
part. He, I know—for the question had been discussed among us long
before the Time Machine was made—thought but cheerlessly of the
Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilisation
only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy
its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as
though it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank—is
a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his
story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white
flowers—shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that
even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness
still lived on in the heart of man.