organization was permeated with the agents of the Iron Heel. It was
warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot
and counterplot. And behind all, ever menacing, was death, violent and
terrible. Men and women disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades.
We saw them to-day. To-morrow they were gone; we never saw them again,
and we knew that they had died.

There was no trust, no confidence anywhere. The man who plotted beside
us, for all we knew, might be an agent of the Iron Heel. We mined the
organization of the Iron Heel with our secret agents, and the Iron Heel
countermined with its secret agents inside its own organization. And
it was the same with our organization. And despite the absence of
confidence and trust we were compelled to base our every effort on
confidence and trust. Often were we betrayed. Men were weak. The Iron
Heel could offer money, leisure, the joys and pleasures that waited
in the repose of the wonder cities. We could offer nothing but the
satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal. As for the rest, the
wages of those who were loyal were unceasing peril, torture, and death.

Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness we were compelled to
make the only other reward that was within our power. It was the reward
of death. Out of necessity we had to punish our traitors. For every man
who betrayed us, from one to a dozen faithful avengers were loosed upon
his heels. We might fail to carry out our decrees against our enemies,
such as the Pococks, for instance; but the one thing we could not afford
to fail in was the punishment of our own traitors. Comrades turned
traitor by permission, in order to win to the wonder cities and there
execute our sentences on the real traitors. In fact, so terrible did
we make ourselves, that it became a greater peril to betray us than to
remain loyal to us.