第111章 CHAPTER THE SIXTH(19)

"If only they had light enough in their brains to show them how."It's such a plain job they have here too, a new city, the simplest industries, freedom from war, everything to make a good life for men, prosperity, glorious sunshine, a kind of happiness in the air.And mismanagement, fear, indulgence, jealousy, prejudice, stupidity, poison it all.A squabble about working on a Saturday afternoon, a squabble embittered by this universal shadow of miner's phthving for mankind, a new rule, a new conscience.It's no small job for all of us.There must be lifetimes of building up and lifetimes oristocrat must be loyal.So it has ever been, but a modern aristocrat must also be lucid; there it is that one has at once the demand for kingship and the repudiation of all existing states and kings.In this manner he had come to his idea of a great world republic that must replace the little warring kingdoms of the present, to the conception of an unseen kingship ruling the whole globe, to his King Invisible, who is the Lord of Truth and all sane loyalty."There,"he said, "is the link of our order, the new knighthood, the new aristocracy, that must at last rule the earth.There is our Prince.

He is in me, he is in you; he is latent in all mankind.I have worked this out and tried it and lived it, and I know that outwardly and inwardly this is the way a man must live, or else be a poor thing and a base one.On great occasions and small occasions I have failed myself a thousand times, but no failure lasts if your faith lasts.What I have learnt, what I have thought out and made sure, Iwant now to tell the world.Somehow I will tell it, as a book Isuppose, though I do not know if I shall ever be able to make a book.But I have away there in London or with me here all the masses of notes I have made in my search for the life that is worth while living....We who are self-appointed aristocrats, who are not ashamed of kingship, must speak to one another....

"We can have no organization because organizations corrupt....

"No recognition....

"But we can speak plainly...."

(As he talked his voice was for a space drowned by the jingle and voices of mounted police riding past the hotel.)"But on one side your aristocracy means revolution," said White.

"It becomes a political conspiracy."

"Manifestly.An open conspiracy.It denies the king upon the stamps and the flag upon the wall.It is the continual proclamation of the Republic of Mankind."15

The earlier phases of violence in the Rand outbreak in 1913 were manifest rather in the outskirts of Johannesburg than at the centre.

"Pulling out" was going on first at this mine and then that, there were riots in Benoni, attacks on strike breakers and the smashing up of a number of houses.It was not until July the 4th that, with the suppression of a public meeting in the market-place, Johannesburg itself became the storm centre.

Benham and White were present at this marketplace affair, a confused crowded occasion, in which a little leaven of active men stirred throisis that the masters were too incapable and too mean to prevent.

"Oh, God!" cried Benham, "when will men be princes and take hugh a large uncertain multitude of decently dressed onlookers.

The whole big square was astir, a swaying crowd of men.Aramshackle platform improvised upon a trolley struggled through the swarming straw hats to a street corner, and there was some speaking.

At first it seemed as though military men were using this platform, and then it was manifestly in possession of an excited knot of labour leaders with red rosettes.The military men had said their say and got down.They came close by Benham, pushing their way across the square."We've warned them," said one.A red flag, like some misunderstood remark at a tea-party, was fitfully visible and incomprehensible behind the platform.Somebody was either pitched or fell off the platform.One could hear nothing from the speakers except a minute bleating....

Then there were shouts that the police were charging.A number of mounted men trotted into the square.The crowd began a series of short rushes that opened lanes for the passage of the mounted police as they rode to and fro.These men trotted through the crowd, scattering knots of people.They carried pick-handles, but they did not seem to be hitting with them.It became clear that they aimed at the capture of the trolley.There was only a feeble struggle for the trolley; it was captured and hauled through the scattered spectators in the square to the protection of a small impassive body of regular cavalry at the opposite corner.Then quite a number of people seemed to be getting excited and fighting.They appeared to be vaguely fighting the foot-police, and the police seemed to be vaguely pushing through them and dispersing them.The roof of a little one-story shop became prominent as a centre of vigorous stone-throwing.

It was no sort of battle.Merely the normal inconsecutiveness of human affairs had become exaggerated and pugnacious.A meeting was being prevented, and the police engaged in the operation were being pelted or obstructed.Mostly people were just looking on.

"It amounts to nothing," said Benham."Even if they held a meeting, what could happen? Why does the Government try to stop it?"The drifting and charging and a little booing went on for some time.

Every now and then some one clambered to a point of vantage, began a speech and was pulled down by policemen.And at last across the confusion came an idea, like a wind across a pond.

The strikers were to go to the Power Station.