Page:The council of seven.djvu/184

 *tures who know themselves impotent to deal with the marvelous physical forces now controlled by the western mind. For months, through the agency of your terrible engine the Universal Press, you have been inciting your Government to shatter Peking. For months, to this end you have been organizing public opinion by means of false news and distorted facts. Once the die is cast the yellow and black races are powerless to cope with the airships, the poison gases, the high explosives, the dread magics the civilization of the West is able to hurl upon them. Not a month ago you caused to be wiped out of existence, by means of bombs rained from the clouds, a native village in the heart of Africa. Not a year ago a similar thing occurred in Afghanistan in Upper India."

"You would hold me responsible for that?"

"Indirectly—yes. Or to look nearer home, consider the case of Ireland."

"The example is not altogether well chosen," Saul Hartz spoke with a scorn he did not try to conceal. "If your precious Society will condescend to read our newspapers, it will see that we are committed to a policy of conciliation."

"Ireland and her affairs have long been a political cat's-paw for the Newspaper Ring, the secret power which sways the destinies of mankind."

"Cheap generalizations," said Saul Hartz, contemptuously.

"The Society does not share your view. By the light