Adventure, June 1911 — page 156: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

342 Outside, the men and women, coming both from Charing Cross and from West- = minster, slew and slew. Every now and then a rush of the wolves—these that were not driven into the building or killed—swept them off their legs. The men and women closed up again and still slaughtered. I can see one little fair-haired woman now, smit- ing and smiting and smiting. She was a mistress from my old school, and she had always been such a gentle little thing; but the wolves had killed her child. They killed the heap on top of us, throw- ing them aside as they slew them and smit- ing the next. We rose red with the slaugh- ter, and a man, also red, held out his hand to the Chief Physician—a stout, panting, disheveled old Jew man, who seemed to be directing everybody. “You are the Chief Physician,” he said, “‘aren’t your ‘They showed me your photo. Iam Abrahams; I came at your call.” They stood there, forgetting every one but themselves, and talked, while the others went into the War Office to finish the last of the wolves. They would have slain the human wolves, too, I think, if any had been left; but there were none. They knew the Chief Power only by her dress. The Power of the World told how he had come with a handful of men, at the Chief Physician’s summons. If England did not rise to support him he must die, he knew. “Werun that risk every day,” he said, “and I believed in England.” His belief had been justified. ‘The people had gone over to him everywhere, as soon as they knew what Mrs. Ashbury intended; and though hun- dreds of thousands of sleepers had been poisoned under her orders—her tools mostly believing that they were merely using the sleeping injection—he had been in time to stop most of the slaughter. About thirty thousand of the first batch of sleepers had already roused and joined him. He was clearing away the wolves and seeking Mrs. Ashbury and the remains of her Government—who, it seemed, had not heard of his arrival—‘‘to clear them away, too.” But their fellow-wolves had done it for him. “We are saved,” he declared, “if we can get through the next few days. We have. to draft the people to their homes without — losing trace of them, and to get the food sup- plies distributed to them. We must work, work, work! Nothing like work!” said the Adventure stout, disheveled, big old Jew man, who looked like a butcher. -I had expected a noble patriarch, and I felt disappointed in him—then. NowI know that he is greater than all the rest. Mr. Raynor and I had said little all the time, only. held hands tightly and looked into each other’s eyes. ‘You are mine,” he said. ‘‘Dear—I do not know your name, but you are mine.” “It is Elsie,” I told him. “Yes. I am yours.” And then the Chief Physician touched the arm of the Power of the World. ‘Here are two of our best,” he said. “They will work.” The Power of the World held out his hands to us, and smiled; and then he seemed no longer an old Jew, and something more than a man. “You are doing the best work in the world,” he told us; ‘just loving! Never leave off, my dears!” That was his text and the battle-cry that led us through the struggle of the next fort- night. ‘For the love of those who sleep!” he urged, when some grumbled at our priva- tions. “For the love of those who suffered to save you!” he told those who woke, when their weakened bodies halted at their labors —for we worked till we dropped in those days. “For the love of your old leader!” he pleaded, when even we who were round him thought his counsels too hard, His last words as Power of the World:-—iz- the speech by which he restored the old rulers and resigned all power and place— were the same. “The best work in the world,” he said, “is the work thatall can do—just to love one another. I have done only that. But if you think you owe anything to me, who owe everything to my faithful followers; if you think that the waking of the world is due in ‘any part to my efforts, make it a world of love and good-fellowship—a world that was worth making! And so, because all the world loved him, every country all over the earth passed one great law of peace and fellowship and good- will; and, to mark the fact that the days of war and strife were over, the calendar of the years was started afresh; and I, Elsie Ray- nor, formerly Anderson, wife of George Raynor, Secretary of the Traffic Reorganiza- tion Board, write this account in Year One of the Awakening. Go JOO ANG <SEiG@