“My father had already spent two years in prison, and was only released in time to die. But through him I knew that there were still some left who felt as we did. The idea of Liberty had been lost. Although the war had been over three years, everybody was still under martial law. The military professed that the country was in danger of a revolution. The newspapers preached the necessity for everybody to be organised to repair the ravages of the war. The socialists said the economic revolution, so long predicted, was accomplishing itself. For a few years we could make no headway. Then things began to settle down a little. The fever seemed to be spending itself. That was the moment when Prince Mechow became Chief Minister of the Interior. Some semblance of constitutional government was restored, and we began to hope for better things. We started a newspaper, and established societies in all the big towns. What we were out for was, first and foremost, political liberty. We had three or four brilliant writers and speakers. But the only papers that would take our articles were a few of the socialist papers which wrote leaders criticising our ideas as ‘unscientific,’ and the only people who came to our meetings were socialists who used them to speechify about the economic revolution. Then Mechow’s reforms began. All education was completely controlled. The Press was bought up, and gradually suppressed. The right of public meeting was curtailed, till it disappeared altogether. The censorship of printing was made complete. New regulations accumulated year by year, and month by month. The seven classes were established. And all the time the socialists went on prating about the economic revolution. Prince Mechow was doing their work, they said. All they would have to do would be to step into his place when he had completed it. A few hundreds of us, scattered in various parts of the country, tried to keep up the struggle. We got into prison several times, but nobody cared a straw for our ‘Luniland’ party, as they called it. I fell ill, and then I tried to go abroad for a rest. I was arrested for an alleged plot, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment and degradation to the Fifth Class! After that I was forbidden to communicate with my children, for fear of infecting them. As they grew up in their teens, even they grew to look on me as an eccentric. Need I say more? The time came when I had either to recant from all my convictions, or be treated as a person of unsound mind. I came here determined to hold out to the last. What I feared—and I think I feared nothing else—was that some of their diabolical medical experiments would undermine my will. Fortunately I was sent here, where after a time Dr. Weakling—who is at any rate not a scoundrel—has done his best to protect me. He represents a type we have in Meccania—perhaps the most common type of all—a man who conforms to the system because he finds himself in it and part of it, but who is not actively wicked, and who has some good nature left. He regards me and those like me as simple-minded fanatics who are harmless so long as we are only few in number.”
“So you think your cause is lost?” I said.
“No,” he said quickly, “our cause is not lost. It is Meccania that is lost.”
“But is there no hope even for Meccania?”
“There is no hope from within: hope can only come from without.”
“That is a hard saying. How can it come from without?”
“Fifty years ago our neighbours—not our enemies, our neighbours—fought for liberty: they set themselves free, but they did not set us free. They said they would make the world safe for democracy.”
“Well, did they not do so?” I asked.
He was quiet for a minute. “I wonder if they did,” he said. “I wonder if either Liberty or Democracy can be safe so long as there is a Super-State. If a tragedy like this can happen to one nation it can happen to the whole world. Meccania will never become free whilst the Meccanian Spirit remains alive; and Liberty will never be secure until the whole world is free.”