His concluding sentences roused his crowd to a pitch of wild enthusiasm.
"In the Old World, from which your fathers and mothers fled in search of freedom, men enslaved their fellow-men by becoming lords, dukes or kings, murdering or poisoning their way to a castle or a throne. The methods of your modern masters are more subtle and successful. You vote to make them your masters, and still imagine that you are free.
"Freedom belongs to him who would be free. And at last the masses of the people are becoming restless, not so much because they lack leisure and luxury, but because they have nothing to live for.
"Millions ask the question: Is life worth living?
"Because they have begun to ask it, they will never cease until they have made it worth living.
"A deep, half-confused consciousness of the injustice of life has begun to clutch our throats. We begin to curse both church and state, thank God, at last! Statesmen must hear or die. Property must respond or strengthen its bolts and bars and there's no room on the door for another bolt. The church that has no answer to this cry is dead already."
A cheer like the roar of an angry sea swept the crowd. Again and again it rose and fell, increasing in volume as its contagious spirit set fire to the restless minds of the thousands who had packed the Square but could not hear the man who was voicing their faith.
In the deep roar of their cheers there was no sodden despair. As Stuart looked into the faces of the crowd he saw no trace of the degeneracy and loss of elemental manhood which makes the sight of an European mob loathsome and hopeless. These men were still men, the might of freemen in their souls and good right arms.
Where had such crowds met before? Somewhere he had seen them in body or in spirit. Was it in the streets of Paris before the French Revolution sent those long lines of death carts rumbling over her pavements to the guillotine?
"Who is that fellow, Jim," Nan asked.