"We are all socialists, every man of us!" called another voice from the crowd.
"Then you are all liars and cheats, every man of you!" cried Uncle Ernst. "You lied when you signed your names to what you knew you would not and could not keep! You have cheated me every day and every hour that you worked for me, when you knew that I would not tolerate in my house or my yards any one who is pledged to your insane principles; but that I would drive them out of my house or my yard as I do now all of you that stand there!"
A sullen murmur sounded through the crowd, and some single loud threatening shouts were heard. Uncle Ernst sprang with one bound straight in front of the knot of men.
"Be off with you!" he thundered; "be off with you at once!"
The foremost fell back upon those who stood behind them. Evidently no one had courage to proceed to action. They gave way gradually; the knot began to separate.
"Be at the office in half an hour to be paid off!"
The men were gone and the overseer with them. Uncle Ernst turned to Reinhold.
"There is a specimen for you of your fine Prussian discipline, which impressed you so greatly during the war; there is an instance of the last new German truth and honesty as it is learned in Bismarck's school."
"But uncle, excuse me, what has Bismarck to do with all this?"
"What has he to do with it?" Uncle Ernst stood still. "What has he to do with it? Who was it who gave the rule that might came before right? Or, if he did not say it, who gave such effect to it in his actions that the accursed maxim has become the leading principle with men nowadays, on which they regulate their conduct--both active and passive? Who has taught our good simple folk how a man may live in perpetual conflict with those whom it has chosen as its representatives, and grasp at his objects over the heads of these representatives?--how an army of followers may be created, and a docile party say 'Amen' to everything, or say anything else that is needed to attain these objects? Did you not hear what was said about the army of workers? That is no longer the mad dream of some crack-brained enthusiast. It is a reality, which is increasing threateningly as an avalanche, and which will sooner or later precipitate itself in wild destruction upon us all. Who can blame them? Might is stronger than right! And so the revolution is declared en permanence, and war between every man and his neighbour. For the present he has conquered--he thinks he has conquered--and glories in his victory and in the imperial crown which he has won for his master, and which he has taken from the shelf, where another laid it who would not take it from the hands of the people!--from the hands of the people of those days--a good, true, faithful people, whose most sacred dream was this crown! Ask them if they still believe! Ask them what they think of the crown by the grace of God! Ask them what they dream of now!"