Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/232

182 under our present social conditions? You know perfectly well that no one will profit by them but the members of the privileged class. They will be class balloons. Citizen Lafargue was right when he said that the scientists, Volta, Galvani, Ampère, Oersted, and the others, had only invented electricity so that the capitalists could force women to work at night. Here we have an ingenious application of economic materialism and a useful warning. Who knows what plot international capitalism will mature in the lofty solitude of the night when a fleet of airships are able to give each other a meeting-place there?

"No, indeed, we are not going to be deceived; we are not going to compromise ourselves. Since they desire schism, let them have it. We will found the group of Revolutionary Aëronauts, in other words, of aëronauts who will wait until the Revolution is accomplished before they invent balloons. Science would prostitute itself if it allowed a ray of glory to light up the last days of bourgeois society. We will leave to others the shame of this prostitution."

In spite of this tirade, the poor little scorned and excommunicated balloon was enduring the final onslaught of a wind-wave more violent than the others, before arriving at the end that the humble and glorious will of man had set for it. By a supreme effort it overcame, and as it began to descend with a precise, slow, and measured