“Well, but Keith! Who is it that’s free?”
“Nobody,” he said.
“I thought perhaps it was only poor people ... just because they were poor.”
“Well, Jenny.... That’s so. But when people needn’t do what they’re told they invent a system that turns them into slaves. They have a religion, or they run like the Gadarine swine into a fine old lather and pretend that everybody’s got to do the same for some reason or other. They call it the herd instinct, and all sorts of names. But there’s nobody who’s really free. Most of them don’t want to be. If they were free they wouldn’t know what to do. If their chains were off they’d fall down and die. They wouldn’t be happy if there wasn’t a system grinding them as much like each other as it can.”
“But why not? What’s the good of being alive at all if you’ve got to do everything whether you want to do it or not? It’s not sense!”
“It’s fact, though. From the king to the miner—all a part of a big complicated machine that’s grinding us slowly to bits, making us all more and more wretched.”
“But who makes it like that, Keith?” cried Jenny. “Who says it’s to be so?”
Keith laughed grimly.
“Don’t let’s talk about it,” he urged. “No good talking about it. The only thing to do is to fight it—get out of the machine ...”
“But there’s nowhere to go, is there?” asked Jenny. “I was thinking about it this evening. ‘They’ve’ got every bit of the earth. Wherever you go ‘they’re’ there ... with laws and police and things all ready for you. You’ve got to give in.”