City of Endless Night

by Milo Hastings

Although my position as Director of the Protium Works had been more of an honour than an assignment of active duties, I made it my business to assume the maximum rather than the minimum of the functions of the office as I wished to learn more of the labour situation in Berlin, of which as yet I had no comprehensive understanding.

In a general way I understood that German labour differed not only in being eugenically created as a distinct breed, but that the labour group was also a very distinct caste economically and politically. The labourer, being denied access to the Level of Free Women, had no need for money or bank credit in any form. This seemed to me to reduce him to a condition of pure slavery--since he received no pay for his services other than the bare maintenance supplied by the state.

Because of this evidence of economic inferiority, I had at first supposed that labour was in every way an inferior caste. But in this I had been gravely mistaken, nor had I been able fully to comprehend my error until this brewing labour trouble revealed in concrete form the political superiority of labour. In my failure to comprehend the true state of affairs I had been a little stupid, for the political basis of German society is revealed to the seeing eye in the Hohenzollern eagle emblazoned on the red flag, the emblem of the rule of labour.

Historically I believe this belies the origin of the red flag for it was first used as the emblem of democratic socialism, a Nineteenth Century theory of a social order in which all social and economic classes were to be blended into a true democracy differing somewhat in its economic organization, but essentially the same politically as the true democracy which we have achieved in the World State. But with the Bolshevist régime in Russia after the First World War, the red flag was appropriated as the emblem of the political supremacy and rule of the proletariat or labour class.

I make these references to bygone history because they throw light on the peculiar status of the German Labour Caste, which is possessed of political superiority combined with social and economic inferiority. It was the Bolshevist brand of socialism that finally overran Germany in the era of loose and ineffective rule of the world by the League of Nations. Though I make no pretence of being an accurate authority on history, the League of Nations, if I remember rightly, was humanity's first timid conception of the World State. Rather weakly born, it was promptly emasculated by the rise in America of a political party founded on the ideas of a great national hero who had just died. The obstructionist policy of this party was inherent in its origin, for it was inspired and held together by the ideas of a dead man, whose followers could only repeat as their test of faith a phrase that has come down to us as an idiom--"What would He do?"

"He" being dead could do nothing, neither could he change his mind, but having left an indelible record of his ideas by the strenuous verbiage of his virile and inspiring rhetoric, there was no room for doubt. As in all political and religious faiths founded on the ideas of dead heroes, this made for solidarity and power and quite prevented any adaptation of the form of government to the needs of the world that had arisen since his demise.

I have digressed here from my theme of the political status of the German labour caste, but it is fascinating to trace things to their origin to find the links of the chain of cause and effect. So, if I have read my history aright, the emasculation of the League of Nations by the American obstructionists caused, or at least permitted the rise, and dominance of the Bolshevists in Twentieth-Century Germany. Had the Germans been democrats at heart the pendulum would have swung back as it did with other peoples, and been stayed at the point of equilibrium which we recognized as the stable mean of democracy.

But in the old days before the modern intermingling of the races it seems that there were certain tastes that had become instinctive in racial groups. Thus, just as the German stomach craved the rich flavour of sausage, so the German mind craved the dazzling show of Royal flummery. Had it not been for this the First World War could have never been, for the socialists of that time were bitterly opposed to war and Germany was the world's greatest stronghold of socialism, yet when their beloved imperial poser, William the Great, called for war the German socialists, with the exception of a few whom they afterwards murdered, went forth to war almost without protest.

When I first began to hear of the political rights of Labour, I went to my friend Hellar and asked for an explanation.

"Is not the chain of authority absolute," I asked, "up through the industrial organization direct to the Emperor and so to God himself?"