NIGHT IN THE ARSENAL
It was now very cold, and, had I been alone, I should have suffered
intensely. She asked me if any plan had formed while I rested, and I
replied that I had thought of many things, but that it was always
difficult for me to make up my mind quickly, unless circumstances were
urgent. The night was still young. We could unbar the door, if we would,
but, if we were not attacked again, we could not open it. This was a
difficulty that spoilt almost any plan for aggressive action. If her
Leader could really swim the boiling tank in safety, the time might come
when she could release us, if we should still require it, but this was
not yet possible unless she could also unbar the place which captured
her.
“I have no doubt you are right,” her mind answered. “If we cannot open
the door, it is best to let others open it for us. If there be a way to
open it, we can see it in the morning. You see so badly at night that we
should find it a great disadvantage. But I have really little fear of
the Killers.
“If my Leader could release herself now, they would see her as she ran
toward us. There would be less than nothing gained if she entered, for
there would be no-one left outside who could open later, if a chance
should favour us. Let us think of other things while the night passes.
Are there any in your own land who could be as base as those who wait
their end in the killing-sheds?”
I answered frankly, “I think there are, though it is difficult to
explain, without making them appear even worse than they may really be.
It is in our natures to act independently of one another. Each has his
own store of food, and of the things his life requires. There are often
those who depend upon him, and for whom he cares more than for his own
life. If all the wealth we have were divided equally, even if we would
then work equally to maintain it, we should become restless and
dissatisfied. Adventure, risk, and chance, are essential to our
contentment.
“Then, we grow old and die very quickly, and it is our nature that we
can learn little except by our own experience, so that it is always a
world of children.
“Living the life we do, we feel that we cannot dwell together at all,
unless we can trust each other not to take the things which are ours. We
could not keep any social order without judges who could punish those
who transgress it. These judges, even though they might be merciful and
forgiving in their private life, may feel that they have no right to be
so when complaint is made by another.”
She answered, “It seems to me that I have sight of a very terrible
world, which you could easily alter if you would, but you have not
really answered my question. In the case of which I told you, it appears
to me that the real wrongs are two. First, that they had such laws that
one of their kind could be short of food, and debarred from the means by
which she might obtain it. Second, that those who had it should have
refused to share. The first seems to me to condemn the whole race which
endures such conditions, for themselves or their neighbours. The second
condemns alike the two who refused, and the judges who failed to see
that the real wrong was there, and not in the theft which followed. But
I cannot think quickly of these things. They are too strange, and too
far below the lives of any of the creatures that the ocean holds.”
I replied again, still trying to be fair to all, though my own thought
was hers, and with a more vivid bitterness, having been in actual
contact with the life from which she revolted.
“I agree with all that you think, but there is, with us, another
trouble, which you could hardly imagine. I do not know how the food
which you say you take, in your own way, once in every year, may be
obtained, nor with what effort, but I suppose that there is plenty for
all, and it has become evident to me from what you have told me of the
lives you lead, that you have abundant freedom and leisure, and that
whatever communal duties each individual may have, they are not very
onerous. Our conditions are very different. Life is maintained by the
constant toil of the majority of our race--a toil often burdened by very
adverse conditions, and numerous perils to health or life. Even so,
there may be times when food fails, and some must go short.
“You will see that it would be unfair if some, avoiding this toil,
should take by trickery or theft that which is won by the exertions of
others.”
“It seems to me,” she replied, “that to condone one baseness you suggest
another, which is even more despicable. It seems to me, also, that you
may require many to judge wrong, because you have few who can lead
rightly.
“I think that there are two ways of life which are good. There is the
higher way, which is ours, in which all are united; and there is the
lower way, of the shark or the shell-fish, of freedom and violence,
which only greater violence can destroy, and which nothing can bring
into slavery. But the vision which you give me is of a state which is
lower than either of these, of blind servitudes and oppressions, to
which you yield without willingness.
“The more you tell me, the more easily do I understand the sudden
violences and crafts of your mind, and the disorders through which you
think. But has there been none who has pointed out to you either the
road of freedom, or the road of concord? Are you content with a social
state as uncontrolled as the bodies in which you live so briefly? Have
you no law-makers whom you can reverence, and whom you can obey with
serenity?”
I answered, “In the country in which I live, we have invented a very
curious state, in which we believe that we ourselves make all laws, for
ourselves or each other. When I consider it, I know that it is not true,
but it is a fact of many consequences that we believe it to be so.
“You must allow for the fact that if, in any part of our world, there
should arise a trusted ruler--and there have been such, who have been
followed gladly by its best men, and who have made such laws that their
race has prospered and increased--he will probably have lived most of
his life before he gain his position, and his body will quickly decay,
and there will be none to succeed him.
“In my own land we had, at one time, a custom that the son of a ruler
should be a ruler after him, whether he were fit or not. Some of them
did good, or at least attempted to do so. Few of them did great harm.
They took more than their share of the good things of the land, and they
gave to their friends. They sometimes made war when their people would
have been content to remain at peace. They sometimes--but less
often--prevented war, when their people desired it.
“They interfered little with the personal freedom of their subjects, so
long as their own pleasures were gratified. For their own sakes they
liked to be popular. Few laws were made, and if such as there were
should be considered oppressive, the people would unite to insist that
they should be reduced or altered. When the king and his subjects
differed, it was always that they wanted less law, and there was
confusion, and sometimes violence, till they succeeded in their desire.
“They objected particularly to having their goods or money taken by
taxation, and their kings did not dare to tax them heavily. To enforce
many laws requires the employment of many men, and great expenditure of
treasure, from which a king gets no benefit. Had the king made many
laws, he would have had no money to administer them, even had he wished
to do so.
“But even so, men were not satisfied. There is an old tale with us of a
colony of frogs in a river, which had no king, and thinking that it
would increase their importance to have one, they petitioned their
Creator, and he, being kindly, showed them a dead log in the stream, and
told them that their king was there. But when they found that this king
was inactive, they complained again, and he, being angered at their
folly, gave them a stork, who chased and ate them as often as hunger
moved him. The tale says that they were no more pleased than before, but
that they complained in vain, for their Creator would hear them no
further. We, having tried kings of both qualities, the predatory and the
inactive, and being no more satisfied than the frogs, have devised an
imagination which has conquered those who conceived it. Even though we
recognise the incubus which is upon us, and that it is of our own
devising, we cannot hereby perceive any way to remove it.
“The fact is this. Our ancestors of a previous century, believing that
they had discovered a way to freedom, devised a plan by which the people
of each locality should choose one of their number, and these men,
meeting together, should have power to frame laws, and to make
impositions upon them. Every few years a new choice should be made, so
that they could replace any with whose actions they were dissatisfied.
“This procedure has now been followed for many years, with a variety of
unforeseen consequences, all of which I could not explain without a
previous understanding of the whole social order--or disorder--in which
it is rooted.
“But one sequel is simple. These men, being appointed to make laws, have
proceeded to do so for many years with uninterrupted diligence, and
there is no power to stop them.
“How can they be stopped, but by a law of their own making? And that is
the last law which they would consider.
“The result is that we are oppressed by a weight of laws, to which we
render a partial and bewildered obedience, aware that there are many of
which we have not even heard; and every year hundreds of thousands of
us, most of whom have no intention of law-breaking--are indeed nervously
anxious to avoid it--are insulted and plundered by the innumerable
officials through whom these laws are administered, and whom we toil to
support for our own undoing.”
I went on to show her pictures of the life from which I came, so that
she should realise the existence which was possible under such
conditions, where personal freedom had disappeared beyond anything which
our planet had previously known, or is ever likely to experience again;
where you might not even die in peace, except under the penalty that
your body would afterwards be seized and cut open, to ascertain how you
had contrived to do it.
Horror, pity, curiosity, disgust, contempt, and wonder chased themselves
across the surface of my companion’s mind as the nature of this life
became visualised before her. With these there was a satisfaction that I
had escaped, by whatever channel, from conditions of such barbarity, and
a certain admiration or respect for myself, such as we may feel for one
whom we recognise to have lived through some unusual tragedy, beyond the
common experience of mankind. Then there was a desire to see for herself
the strange and alien life which I showed her, and I knew that, were it
not an impossibility for her to enter a past to which she did not
belong, she would gladly have adventured it with me. I thought, with
curiosity, of how she would encounter such an existence, could I have
translated her to a mortal body and the conditions of life with which I
was myself familiar, and I had a moment’s doubt of one who, I felt, had
experienced only the pleasures of existence without its pain, but my
final thought was that the serenity of her mind was a spiritual quality
too fundamental for any servitude to subdue it.
She asked me whether our world had always lacked a leader to propose any
rule of life other than this state which lacked either individual
freedom or a rational mutuality, and I replied that there had been an
event of two millenniums earlier than my own life, which was commonly
regarded as a revelation from Heaven. Its Exponent had announced a
series of paradoxical aphorisms for the conduct of life, which were of
an unforgettable kind, and were still highly respected. If they were
obeyed, life would be fundamentally different, but the common opinion
was that they were quite impracticable. Each of these aphorisms
prescribed a line of conduct and foretold its result. It might seem
difficult to honour the Teacher, and reject His wisdom so absolutely.
But it was contrived very simply. The consequences which had been
ascribed to the course of life which He taught were allocated to a vague
existence which was to follow at a distant time, and in another sphere.
Meanwhile, if they were obeyed at all, it was regarded as an act of
self-sacrifice, no one supposing for a moment that the results which He
foretold would actually follow. I admitted that I knew of no
authenticated instance of anyone obeying these precepts with results
unsatisfactory to himself or others.
As the long night passed I went on, in response to a curiosity which
seemed insatiable in its desire of exploration, to describe many phases
of the social and economic chaos which we call civilisation, often
illuminating my own mind as I did so.
I noticed that she was particularly impressed by the precarious tenure
on which we hold the houses which our defective bodies require, and the
uncertainty of many of us in obtaining a regular and sufficient supply
of the very necessities of life itself and the consequent bitterness
with which we regard a stranger who lays hands on anything to which we
consider we have a prior claim.
Realising this, she began to understand how those among us of the baser
sort, who have more than sufficient for their own comfort, may yet
persecute any who attempt to share it, without incurring the contempt or
punishment of their fellows.
Joined to this bitter resentment at any private theft, I had to exhibit
the docility with which we allow ourselves to be robbed by legal
process, and the immunity and respect enjoyed by those who are the
instruments and beneficiaries of these extortions; and, as I showed it,
I had to realise the fantastic inequity with which these impositions are
levied, as, for instance, that a man who prefers salt shall pay less
than one who eats sugar, or that one who keeps a dog shall pay more than
one who keeps a pet of another species, or--an idea almost devilish in
its lunacy--that a man shall pay more heavily because he provides a
larger home, with the increase of young children who are dependent upon
him.
I reverted to the explanation that, while no king could have imposed
this burden of taxation upon us, we were bewildered by the belief that
it was of our own doing, and that this conviction acted as a
paralysis....
The shaft struck the wall sharply, and rebounded to the floor beside us.