The Revolution took on largely the character of religion. We worshipped
at the shrine of the Revolution, which was the shrine of liberty. It was
the divine flashing through us. Men and women devoted their lives to
the Cause, and new-born babes were sealed to it as of old they had been
sealed to the service of God. We were lovers of Humanity.



CHAPTER XVII

THE SCARLET LIVERY


With the destruction of the Granger states, the Grangers in Congress
disappeared. They were being tried for high treason, and their places
were taken by the creatures of the Iron Heel. The socialists were in a
pitiful minority, and they knew that their end was near. Congress and
the Senate were empty pretences, farces. Public questions were gravely
debated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality all
that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to the
mandates of the Oligarchy.

Ernest was in the thick of the fight when the end came. It was in the
debate on the bill to assist the unemployed. The hard times of the
preceding year had thrust great masses of the proletariat beneath the
starvation line, and the continued and wide-reaching disorder had but
sunk them deeper. Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs
and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.* We called these
wretched people the people of the abyss,** and it was to alleviate their