Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/24

 METROPOLIS same clutch at the same second, at the same second. They have eyes, hut they are blind but for one thing, the scale of the manometer. They have ears, 'hut they are deaf but for one thing, the hiss of their machine. They watch and watch, having no thought but for one thing: should their watchfulness waver then the machine awakens from its feigned sleep and begins to race, racing itself to pieces. And the machine, having neither head nor brain, with the tension of its watchfulness, sucks and sucks out the brain from the paralysed skull of its watchman, and does not stay, and sucks, and does not stay until a being is hanging to the sucked-out skull, no longer a man and not yet a machine, pumped dry. hollowed out, used up. And the machine which has sucked out and gulped Gown the spinal marrow and brain of the man and has wiped out the hollows in his skull with the soft, long tongue of its soft, long hissing, the maching gleams in its silver-velvet radiance, anointed with oil, beautiful, infallibleBaal and Moloch, Huitzilopochtli and Durgha. And you, father, you press your fingers upon the little blue metal plate near your right hand, and your great glorious, dreadful city of Metropolis roars out, proclaiming that she is hungry for fresh human marrow and human brain and then the living food rolls on, like a stream, into the machine-rooms, which are like temples, and that, just used, is thrown up...." His voice failed him. He struck his fists violently together, and looked at Iris father. ·co • • • and they are all human beingsl" "Unfortunately. Yes." The father's voice sounded .to the son's ear as though he were speaking from behind seven closed doors. «That men are used up so rapidly at the machines, Freder, is no proof of the greed of the machine, but of the deficie)1cy of the 1)uman material. Man is the'product of change, Freder. A once-and-for-all being. If he is miscast he cannot be sent back to the melting-fumace. One is obliged to use him as he is. Whereby it has been statisticalIy proved that the powers of perfonnance of the non-intellectual worker lessen from month to month." Freder laughed. The laugh came so dry, so parched, J

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