IV: THE CHANGE
“About the tenth year of the second of the great wars,” he said, “there was a convulsion in the country. A young idealist appeared who with fiery and vulgar eloquence proclaimed that war was the triumph of the old over the young, to whom since the world began justice had never been done. The old, he said, were in the position of trustees who had betrayed their trust and instead of working for the benefit of the endless army of the young who came after them, devoted all their energies to robbing them of their birthright. To extricate themselves from the punishment which must otherwise have fallen on them they exploited the courage and love of adventure of the young and set them to destroy each other. So successful had they been in this device that they could count on using it at least once in every generation, and politicians knew that when they were at the end of their tether they could always procure a continuance of their offices and emoluments by declaring war. This had been the condition of civilised existence for so many thousands of years that it was generally accepted and the truth was never suspected until our young idealist arrived with honey on his lips for the young and gall and bitter invective for the old. He rushed up and down the country persuading young men on no condition to take up arms. ‘Government?’ he said. ‘What government do you need except such as will provide you with roads, railways, lighting, bread for the incapacitated, and drainage for all?’ I signed a manifesto against him too. His ignorance of economics was pitiful. In the end martial law was proclaimed and he was shot. The young men did not listen to him, but the young women did. Shooting him was a mistake. It gave his name the magic of martyrdom. By the thousand, women, old, young, and middle-aged, cherished his portrait in their bosoms, prayed to him in secret, vowed themselves to his cause, and remained chaste. Nunneries were founded in his name, but so potent was the spell of his martyrdom, so overwrought were the women of this country by the many crises through which we have passed, that amid all the temptations of life they were dedicated to his memory and preserved their virginity. They said if the country can find no better use for our sons than to send them to the slaughter and disablement, we will breed no sons. The Government was warned, but like all governments they could not see beyond the system by which they governed, and when at last they were convinced that something serious was happening, they could think of no other remedy than that of giving votes, i.e. a share in the system by which they enjoyed their positions. At first, to show their contempt for the Government, the women did not use their votes until the country was shown by an energetic and public-spirited woman that another war was in the making. An election was forced and the Government was defeated. At the conclusion of the second great war you may remember that Bondon was destroyed, and with it the Houses of Parliament and the Royal Palace. A new capital was chosen, but as Fatland was no longer the center of the world’s credit system, finance had lost its old power. A new type of politician had arisen, who, in order to win favour with the women, set himself to do all in his power to make government impossible. The enormous numerical superiority of the women made their leaders paramount in the land, though there was still officially a Cabinet and a House of Swells. On the third and last outbreak of hostilities the officials made their final despairing effort and declared war on Fatterland, but they had no army. They had been unable to rebuild their fleet as all the other countries had done. They were helpless. The Cabinet and the House of Swells, to set an example to the country, armed themselves and went to the front, taking with them the last ten thousand young men in the country. They never returned and the country was left populated solely by old men, cripples, and women, of whom a few thousand were pregnant. These were interned. A committee of influential women was formed and issued a decree that Fatland would henceforth have no share in male civilisation. Men had, to cut a long story short, made a mess of things, and women would now see what they could do. They began by abolishing property in land. The first, the only important thing was to feed the population. The State guaranteed to everybody food, housing, and clothes. Able-bodied women were to take charge of their male relatives and make them useful. Decent women, that is to say virgins, were to work on the land. All women guilty of childbirth were to be sent to work in the factories. I cannot remember all the laws made, for my memory has been impaired by my sufferings, but they were all dictated by an unreasoning and venomous hatred of men. We are little better than slaves. They laugh at us affectionately, but they despise and ignore our thoughts. They have defied every economic law, but astonishingly they continue to live.”
“Indeed,” said I, “the world goes on. The sun sets and will rise as it has done these millions of years, with change upon change, folly upon folly beneath it. We turn up the earth for the food we eat and so we live. Truly I think there is some wisdom in these women.”
The sun went down, a bell rang in the farmhouse, we shouldered our hoes and returned thither, each busy with his own thoughts.
V: THE HOMESTEAD
To my annoyance I found that the bell was not a summons to a meal, but to a meeting of the family of five women for a kind of a service. This consisted in reading aloud from the speeches of William Christmas, the idealist who had provoked this monstrous state of affairs. His portrait hung on the wall opposite the door, and I must confess that his face was singularly beautiful. The woman who had roused me from my bed read a passage beginning: “The tyranny of the old is due to their stupidity, which neither young men nor women have yet had the patience to break through.” And as she closed the book she said, “Thus spake William Christmas.” Whereupon the other women muttered, “of blessed memory, which endureth for ever and ever. Amen.” These women were plain and forbidding. Their eyes were fixed on the portrait with a dog-like subjection which I found most repulsive. They stood transfixed while the woman-farmer declaimed: “For guidance, William Christmas, spirit of woman incarnate, we look to thee in the morning and in the evening, in our goings out and our comings in, and woe to her who stumbles on the way of all flesh into the snares of men.” On that the five of them turned and glared sorrowfully at my old friend and me until I was hard put to it not to laugh. The meeting then came to an end, and we were told to prepare supper. We withdrew to the kitchen, and there Professor Baffin began to snigger, and when I asked him what amused him he said:
“The joke of it is that this Christmas, like all idealists, was as great a lecher as Julius Cæsar. It was his lechery made his position in the old order of society impossible.”
I laughed too, for I had begun dimly to understand the passion which moved these virgins in their chastity, and I was filled with a fierce hatred of the lot of them, and resolved as soon as possible to escape.
We cooked a meal of fish and eggs, and having laid the table we had to wait on the family. I was struck by the triviality of their discourse and the absence from it of any general argument. The five women twittered like sparrows in mid-winter and not once did they laugh. They talked of the condition of their beasts and their crops, and so earnest, so careful were they that I understood that it must be barren soil indeed that would resist their efforts. They were discussing what goods they would requisition from the district store in return for their contribution to the State granaries. I wondered if they had succeeded in abolishing money, and upon enquiry I found that they had. The Professor told me that they had abolished everything which before the change had made them dependent upon men and their pleasure.
“But why do you men stand it?” I cried.