"We could see, at no distant day, nine-tenths of the workers of the world supplanted by the machine! We could see that new labor-saving machinery would mean a fearful catastrophe in the labor markets of the world. Think of it. We could see wonderful engines, put together by the hands of the workers in the factories, pushing out the useless laborer, pushing him out into the crowded avenues of unemployed. We could see this awful Frankenstein of machinery—a huge soulless metal monster, stalking through the world, bringing starvation, anarchy and destruction in its wake. 'It should not be—it must not be,' we said, and lots were drawn."
Then he stopped short and sat upon a bank at the roadside.
I watched him stare in thought at an ant creeping over a twig at his feet.
"Well?" I said.
He started and looked at me with lowered head. He peered at me beneath his long grey eyebrows and quietly whispered—"Diesel had to die."
"Then he was killed!" I said, starting up. I remembered he had mysteriously disappeared in October, 1913.
"Yes," he replied, "and it was my task."
He turned from me and looked across the peaceful Rhine. In the silence faint booms seemed to come from the western battlefield, but it may have been the throbbing of my brain. I looked at the man with his hard-set jaw and quivering lips.
I sat down again at his side, and for many minutes silently scratched lines upon the road.
Fully ten minutes passed, and he turned his face to me.