He heard the door open and several men, headed by the Magistrate, entered the room silently, and without a glance at the prisoners. Durant heard their quiet footsteps but did not raise his head. Then he heard Christian exclaim in a muffled voice: “Look! It isn’t possible.”
Durant blinked. The Magistrate was on the dais, the flags moving behind him. Then men who had accompanied him were seating themselves at the table, all about the prisoners, and facing the Magistrate. Durant looked at them, and it was like gazing at the dead, for he had believed them dead. There was his father, younger and stronger than he had been in Durant’s memory, and there was Father Vincent Martin, who had allegedly been executed for insisting upon teaching children their ancient religion, and there was Professor Alan Williamson, who, three days before his “death,” had dared to read the proscribed Constitution of the United States to his graduating class at Columbia University, and there was Dr. Herbert Vogelsang who had been taken into custody at Yeshiva College for reciting the Declaration of Independence in full to his students.
“Papa! Father Martin!” whispered Durant hoarsely. But they did not speak to him, though he half started from his seat. They only regarded the Magistrate intently and waited for his first words.
Christian, too, had recognized old friends and relatives among those twelve men, men whom he had believed dead. He said nothing, but tears began to roll down his cheeks, and then he sobbed aloud. He touched Durant’s shoulder, and pointed. All the men wore the insignia of the Minute Men on their sober black coats, a small gleaming flag in blue and white enamel. And then Christian pointed to the Magistrate, who also wore the insignia.
The Magistrate looked down at them all gravely, slightly smiling. He included Durant and Christian in that long, slow glance, and then he finally looked only at them. He was Arthur Carlson, the murderous officer of the tyrants who had captured America, but he was also Arthur Carlson with the blue and white flag of the Minute Men pinned like a heroic medal on his chest.
“Durant, Christian,” he said, and his voice was strong and firm. “We who are about to die salute you, who are also about to die. Perhaps we shall not die tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even next year. But we shall die. There is not a man here in this room who is not a brave man, an American, but he shall die. For America. You two have shown yourselves worthy to be in this company. Had you not been worthy, you would have been shot with those eight friends of yours, who did not have the final fortitude to face death without betraying comrades. They were good men, honest men, American men. But they were not, at the last, Minute Men.”
Durant and Christian could only regard him with amazement, though Christian nodded once or twice as if confirming something to himself.
The Magistrate turned, then approached the Stars and Stripes. He knelt and reverently kissed the flag. He got to his feet, stood before the flag of the Minute Men of America. Every man stood up with one movement, and Christian helped Durant to rise. The Magistrate saluted the blue and white flag, and each man saluted also, even the Guard at the door, in his uniform. Then the Magistrate approached the edge of the dais again, and all sat down, still watching him in silence. There he stood, his hateful uniform redeemed by the insignia on his coat, and his face became hard and brilliant under the strong light above it.
“We are desperate men in a desperate cause,” he said. “There can be no squeamishness or terror or selfishness in us. That is why we kill the weak, who would betray us and our enslaved country, and why we sift out the heroic men and bring them to us. We dare not do otherwise, for we have only one goal—the saving of America. We are, each and every one of us, the Devil’s Advocates, for each one of us must wear the uniform of the murderers and in their name oppress, oppress and oppress, until the people can no longer endure us and must kill us and remove their chains. There is no hope for us, either from our enemies or our friends. There is no promise of life for us, for we shall be killed by enemy or friend. We have only our knowledge that America shall be free, and we shall die in the freeing of her.”
It seemed to Durant that there was only one voice in the world, and that was the voice of Arthur Carlson. He could hear himself panting, and he swallowed painfully.
“You, Durant, and you, Christian, shall have other names from this night henceforth, and you shall forget your old names and your families, and these men who are with us tonight. Neither of you shall see each other again, except by accident, and you must not recognize each other. Not one man in this room knows what the other man is doing and he shall not know. You two will be given your orders tonight, but you will not know where the other is sent. I offer you nothing but your duty. Hope for nothing but your country. Live and die for nothing but your country.”
His eyes sparkled like blue fire as he watched the two men sternly. “The uniform of The Democracy is the uniform you will wear to the day of your death. You will die in it. You will be buried in it, either by The Democracy, or by your friends. There will be no honor for you in life, and no honor for you in your graves. For we, the very heart of the Minute Men, must forget you as you will forget us. America, when she is free, will remember you with loathing and hatred, and that will be good. For in the remembering of all of us she will, perhaps, never again permit herself to be chained.
“I know where each of you is, and where you will be, but no other knows except one man in Washington, who is my father and the best friend of the President. Prepare, then, for your death. For there is no escape for any of us.”
Durant stood up, and Christian stood beside him. The men about the table did not turn to look at them, but the Magistrate waited, and for an instant, only an instant, his eyes were compassionate.
“Our children. Our wives,” said Durant.
“They are safe. They have already been taken to safety,” said the Magistrate. “Within a few days they will be thousands of miles away from this city, and will have other names. You must forget them.”
Durant thought of his dream. It had not been a dream at all! Maria had been with him for a brief moment. She knew he was not dead. He turned dumbly to Christian, and Christian smiled and nodded. “Yes,” said Christian.
Durant looked at his father, at his old friends, but he saw only their grave profiles. They were with him in this room; they could not speak to him and he knew he could not speak to them. He and Christian sat down again, and waited.
“From this night on you are the trusted servants, officers and magistrates of The Democracy,” said Arthur Carlson. “Wherever you are sent, you will have your orders to oppress and suppress, to torment and to destroy. Exceed your orders, out of excess of zeal! Drive the people over whom you will have authority to distraction and complete despair. Have no mercy, because upon your mercilessness depends the freedom of America. When the people finally arise, out of new courage or new wretchedness, your work will be done, and you shall die.”
The Magistrate stopped speaking, and the silence in the room became intense. He stood on the very edge of the platform, and now it was as if he gathered up and into himself every personality and fused it into one single purpose, one dedication. Each man looked at him as at a hypnotist. There was no vivid color about him, except for his eyes, full of blue power and profound and steady concentration. Yet, there was nothing of the fanatic about him, no trace of the evil which is in fanaticism, and which had reduced almost all the earth to slavery. Durant and Christian knew that here was a man who had no future, and had given his life without question or doubt to his country. They were aware that he had renounced marriage and children for himself. They now understood that he had done this for faith, as the saints had renounced the world for their faith, also.
I have done what I could, thought Durant, but what I’ve done is nothing to what he has done all the years of his life. I’ve had some comfort and love but he has had nothing. No, I am wrong. He has had, and has, everything. He is like a priest, who has turned away from the world for a greater love and a greater dedic
ation. How many men are there like him, in America? If there are only a hundred, it might be enough! He has chosen us to help him, because he believes in us. He’s called us to his faith, and we dare not be less than what he trusts us to be. He hasn’t a single doubt that America can be saved, even in this desperate hour, even in this prison. Yet I doubted. I’m not fit to be one of those who serve him.
Durant looked at that pale and aristocratic face, at those eyes, at that quiet intensity of mouth and shoulders and body, and felt humble and worthless.
Arthur Carlson spoke again, and now only to Durant and Christian.
“You never knew what freedom was and can be,” he said. “You were born when America had already lost a great part of her freedom. You were born into the age of tyrants, and what you know of liberty and justice and all the old American virtues is only hearsay, from your parents and from a few teachers. But I was sixteen, before the first terror manifested itself in America, for I was born in 1917. So I had almost sixteen years of experience in a free, responsible and glorious climate. Peace had not been banished as a way of life, and man had dignity. I breathed the air of freedom, and so I am much richer than you.”
He gazed down at them with compassion and sadness. “You do not know what that means, for you were born into slavery, and have lived in slavery. Perhaps, in many ways, you are better than I. For, in slavery, and never having known liberty, you still dreamed of it, worked for it, and pledged your lives for it. Yes, you are better than I, better than your relatives and your friends who sit about you tonight. We are working for a world we once knew; you are working for a world you hope to create. We draw upon the past; you draw upon the future. We feel humble before you, for we’ve had what we have had, and you have had nothing. Your courage and faith, then, are founded in a great dream, and dreams are the very substance of life.
“Your teachers have told you much about America, of her freedom, and then her slavery. You will hear no more of it, for you shall be alone after this night. So I must tell you what I know of America as she was before 1933, and what she became. I hope it will sustain you. I know it will.
“Before 1933 America had lived by the code of freedom of the individual, the dignity of the individual, the self-responsibility of the individual. She became, by this code, powerful, rich and strong. Consequently, she aroused the hatred, not only of the rest of the half-free and half-slave world, but of the men in America, herself, who wished to dominate the country. It is not possible to dominate and destroy a nation while she has strength and self-respect, and is at peace. It was necessary, then to destroy these things. More than in the outside world, itself, there were men in America who saw they must do this if they were to succeed as despots.
“It was done with Machiavellian villainy and intellect. In 1932 a war-fearing people elected a man to the Presidency who, a few years later, earnestly assured them there would be no further war. Before this event, there was no body of the people who believed themselves to be ‘common men’ or underprivileged. Every man believed, and he had full reason to believe, that by his own efforts, courage and hope and work, he might succeed in raising himself to a higher position. But in 1933 he was defamed, and became despicable, for he accepted the shameful name of the Common Man, and lent himself to its cult.
“The Common Man was defined as all those who are unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled ‘labor.’ Thus, for the first time, a huge and artificial class was created as an instrument of the potential despots. They watched the walls rise about them, and they called them ‘security.’ They listened to labor leaders, who were part of the plot against them, and they became arrogant, hating, envious and demanding. The free men beyond the walls were anathema to them, and following their masters like stampeding animals, they set out to destroy. It was necessary to destroy these men—the middle-class—because their very existence was a danger to the tyrants. So the middle-class, over two decades, were systematically hounded, badgered, threatened, and finally taxed out of existence. They were called ‘traitors’ and ‘subversives,’ for, to the last, they refused to become slaves.”
Durant and Christian listened with absorption. They had heard this story before, but when the Magistrate spoke of it again it was with such quiet and bitter vehemence and eloquence that it seemed a new and dreadful tale.
“You know, you young men, what finally happened to the middle-class. The press, already enslaved and degraded to the position of mouthpiece for the murderers, demanded that the remnants of the proud and stubborn middle-class be ‘punished’ as traitors for daring to raise up their voices against the endless wars, the punitive taxation, the constant violating of the Constitution.
“But long before this final act of murder was done, America was already slave. After the first two deliberate wars of this century, which had not completely ruined the world, a plot was laid for the ultimate tragedy. Communist Russia had been exhausted by the second World War, and upon her all the hopes of despots and tyrants had been laid. So American Presidents lent her billions of the American peoples’ money, directly and indirectly, fed her, armed her, encouraged her, until she was strong enough to ‘fight,’ and thus create another World War. The tryants of Russia and America well knew what they were doing. So began a calculated era of declared and undeclared wars, of complete confusion, of plotted ruin. In the name of ‘liberty’ and ‘security’ America was deprived of all liberty and security, her best died on a multitude of battlefields. It was no accident that the strongest, the youngest, the most intelligent, the better-bred, the best-educated, were forced into monster armies. Their murder had been cleverly arranged, so that there would remain in America only the stupid, the weak, the eager-to-be-slaves, the inferior, the old, the tired, the hopeless, and the debased, who would give no trouble and who had either lost the dream of liberty or had never heard of it.
“However, the superior obstinately insisted upon being born. It was necessary, then, to arrange to destroy them in every generation, or even every few years. So, we raised up potential enemies, armed them and encouraged them, and then fought them. This you, young as you are, know.”
The Magistrate’s voice remained level and quiet, yet in some mysterious way it was also passionate, filled with hatred and contempt and rage.
“But still the superior are born, here and there. Not very many, and in diminishing quantities. On them we must set our faith. We must have teachers for them; we must seek them out; we must encourage them. We must discipline them and threaten them, until all traces of fear are gone from them and they are willing, themselves, to teach and fight. You, Durant, and you, Christian, are only two of these.”
Am I? thought Durant, remembering his thoughts while being driven up Fifth Avenue. Do I deserve to have him believe this of me?
He looked at the Magistrate, and the Magistrate smiled at him kindly. “Yes, Durant,” he said. “You are one of us.”
He waited a few minutes and then resumed: “The extremely wealthy were not persecuted or eliminated by Washington, for the despots knew that these hated liberty for all as much as they did. They were lightly taxed, if at all, for their help was needed in the universal conspiracy. Neither in Russia nor America was any hand lifted against them, but their assistance was sought, and it was given.
“Now we come to another privileged segment of all populations: the rich farmers.
“I was twenty-nine when I visited prostrated Europe in 1946, after the second World War. In every country I was told the same foul story. The people of the cities, especially the middle-class, were starving. The peasant, who has been known all through history for his avarice and greed and suspicion and mercilessness, had not suffered notably from wars. In fact, he had become rich, by deliberately withholding his produce and then charging enormous prices for it. The desperate poured from the cities to the countryside, carrying in their hands and upon their backs their few last treasures. They even withdrew the gold from their teeth, and women gave up their wedding rings. They bartered all thi
s for bread, for a little meat, for milk for their starving children. A loaf of black bread for a diamond; a jug of milk for a set of silver; the organs of farm animals for a treasured ring; strips of leather for a priceless masterpiece. Yes, the European peasants grew fat and rich and strong through their greed.
“The potential tyrants of America saw this and understood it. Therefore began a shameless campaign to coddle and pamper the American farmer. The farmer, then, lent himself enthusiastically to the enslavement of the whole country, accepting bounties from the purse of the American people, and devotedly voting for the tyrants who had been his benefactors. The independence and pride of the American rustic had once been the sturdy backbone of America. But he willingly surrendered these for the sake of bribery, in the evil days of the twentieth century, and he joined with his masters in the oppression of the rest of the people. He is, today, extremely potent, because upon his production depends the existence of the military power which now rules America.
“We have a third privileged class in America: the managerial and supervisory technicians, some of whom were formerly the guiding geniuses of industry and commerce. Three decades or so ago, many of these men recognized the advancing menace of governmental control, which called itself ‘the Welfare State’ and other euphemistic names, such as various ‘Deals.’ They attempted to warn the people in the public press, at their own expense, but the people scoffed, or did not read. Later, these heroic men were liquidated for their refusal to cooperate in the plan for the industrial slavery of the workers, but those who cynically did cooperate kept considerable of their wealth and their privileges. They are, as you know, operating in the Department of MASTS, that is, the Managerial and Supervisory Technicians, who are responsible only to the Military for their programs. The MASTS are also in full control of all inventions and patents.