"Well," I said, "tell me in a word what is the end at which you are aiming."
"I'm aiming," he said, "to create first in England, and afterwards all over the world, such an upheaval of the social order of things as took place in France at the time of the Great Revolution. But with this difference. The French Revolution was aimed at the aristocrat. You'll think me inconsistent, I fear, when I say that it is not with the aristocrat that I have my chief quarrel. I hold no brief for the aristocracy. Many of them—most of them, perhaps—are lazy, extravagant, self-indulgent, luxury-loving, selfish, and vicious, as I know to my cost. I don't blame them very much for that, any more than I blame the very poor for their want of cleanliness, their thriftlessness, their hand-to-mouth methods of living, and for seeking solace from the cold, the squalor, and the misery of their surroundings, in the warmth and light and companionship of the public-house. Both classes are to some extent the outcome of circumstances. The aristocracy have most of them their sense of noblesse oblige, and have the honour of a great name to keep up. On the whole, they do it tolerably well. They distribute largess generously, they entertain lavishly, they pay those who work for them fairly, and they treat those who work for them well. The aristocracy, it is true, has got, first, to give way, and, ultimately, to go, just as the monarchy has got to give way and to go before the advance of democracy.
"Do you know what King Edward—wise man! foreseeing man!—is reported to have said? I tell it to you as it was told to me. It may be true, or it may not. Personally, I believe it is, and it adds to the admiration to which, in spite of myself, I am compelled, for his wisdom and for his foresight. He is reported to have said, 'My grandson is likely to be the last King of England. The whole face of things is changing, not in this country only, but in Germany, Austria, Russia, in Europe, and all over the world. The monarchy will last my time. It may last my son's. Possibly it will last his son's time. I shall not be there to see. But those who are alive, when my grandson dies, may possibly see an end of the monarchy in England!'
"That is what King Edward is reported to have said, and whether he said it or did not say it, it is true. We are on the verge of a death struggle between the masses and the classes. Much will depend upon the side with which the great middle classes throw in their lot. If the middle classes decide for what we call the classes, the struggle will necessarily be prolonged. If the middle classes decide, as I believe they will, for the masses, the end will come soon, and with awful swiftness. One of the two—the masses or the classes—must go. Can you doubt for one moment which it will be? Even now the death-knell of the monarchy and the aristocracy is sounding. Already the day of democracy has dawned. King Labour is coming into his own.
"But the democracy of to-day doesn't see the real danger in front of it. It is so busy, abusing and striving to sweep away the monarchy and the aristocracy, that it doesn't see that it is playing into the hands of an infinitely greater danger—the plutocracy.
"As things stand now, King and Court and House of Lords are some sort of check upon the encroachments of the plutocracy. Sweep King and Court and House of Lords away, and the country will be at the mercy of the mere man of money. And what will the poor get out of him? Better a thousand times for the poor to be in the hands—be under the heels, if you like—of the monarchy and the aristocracy, than be given over, tied hand and foot, to the tender mercies of the mere money-grabber, with no name to uphold, no sense of chivalry to inspire, no conscience to control, no object in life, save to get and keep and grind out money from man, woman, and child. It is not the monarchy or the aristocracy who is the enemy of the people. It is your capitalist, your mill and factory owner, your middleman, your wholesale and retail merchants, your employers of labour. It is against him and all of his tribe that I would stir up a revolution in England which should make as clean a sweep of the lot of them as the French Revolution made of the aristocrat.
"Do I carry you with me thus far, Mr. Rissler? If not, it were idle to say more."
"You carry me completely," I replied, "But—forgive me asking—how is what you propose accomplishing to be done? Thus far you have dealt only in generalisations, but generalisations by themselves never yet brought about a revolution."
"You are absolutely right," he replied quickly. "In the ordinary way I should say it could not be done for another twenty, thirty, perhaps another hundred years. There is only one way; but there is a way. There is only one man who can do it; but there is such a man, as you yourself will admit when you hear his name."
He stopped, and for at least half a minute looked at me searchingly, as if uncertain how far he was justified in taking me into his confidence, but muttering to himself meanwhile, in language which, by the word or two I caught, I knew to be French. So close was his face to mine that I saw what at first I thought was my own face mirrored in his eyes. But, as I looked, the picture-face in his eyes became more definite, and I knew that the face I saw there was not mine. It was a face there was no mistaking; a face which every schoolboy, every child, would have recognised at sight.