Page:The council of seven.djvu/253

 fiery. Behind everything was its fixed aim that the many should bleed for the few. Lip service to democracy was a profitable and delightfully simple game; the many, of its very nature, is easy to gull. Not having learned to think for itself, the word of its newspapers is taken for gospel. And should trouble arise, a dole from the pocket of somebody else can be relied on as a rule to repair the mischief.

So great was the power of "the machine," when it came into play, that to the people of most experience it was very doubtful indeed whether it was humanly possible to defeat "the Ring." The U. P. propaganda was subtle and it was all-pervading. Its subscribers were reckoned by the million, and, in return for countless benefits, for the most part quite illusory, a modified code of trade-union regulations was imposed upon its members. Some genius of Universe Building had devised a Roll of Good Citizenship. A certificate on vellum was granted to all the world and his wife, to whom in return for divers pledges, "the due observance of which could not fail to be of immense value to the State," divers privileges were offered.

The art of creating public opinion had been raised to a pitch unknown in the history of mankind. This half-baked Democracy of the "movie" and the cheap journal had an intellectual life wholly dependent upon catchwords, of which its mentors had a never-failing supply. None the less, the corps of registered and scientifically organized subscribers to the U. P. was a