"
Colonel Woodburn cut in. "You couldn't do that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your
system. And if you attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that kind
of thing, it might bring the climax sooner than you expected. Your
commercialized society has built its house on the sands. It will have to
go. But I should be sorry if it went before its time."
"You are righdt, sir," said Lindau. "It would be a bity. I hobe it will
last till it feelss its rottenness, like Herodt. Boat, when its hour
gomes, when it trope to bieces with the veight off its own
gorrubtion--what then?"
"It's not to be supposed that a system of things like this can drop to
pieces of its own accord, like the old Republic of Venice," said the
colonel. "But when the last vestige of commercial society is gone, then
we can begin to build anew; and we shall build upon the central idea,
not of the false liberty you now worship, but of responsibility
--responsibility. The enlightened, the moneyed, the cultivated class shall
be responsible to the central authority--emperor, duke, president; the
name does not matter--for the national expense and the national defence,
and it shall be responsible to the working-classes of all kinds for homes
and lands and implements, and the opportunity to labor at all times.
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