CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE CAPTURE OF A CONTINENT.
Within an hour after the execution of Michael Roburoff the _Ithuriel_was winging her way back to Aeria, and at least two of her companywere anticipating their return to the valley with feelings verydifferent to those with which they had contemplated their departure.
When the last farewells and congratulations had been spoken, and theair-ship rose from the earth, Tremayne returned to the house tocommence forthwith the great task which now developed upon him; forin addition to being Chief of the Central Executive, he now assumedthe direct command of the American Section, which, after longconsideration, had been selected as the nucleus of the Federation ofthe English-speaking peoples of the world.
For a fortnight he worked almost night and day, attending to everydetail with the utmost care, and bringing into play all those rarepowers of mind which in the first instance had led Natas to selecthim as the visible head of the Executive. In this way the chiefconsequence of the love-madness of Roburoff had been to place at thehead of affairs in America the one man of all others most fitted bydescent and ability to carry out such a work, and to this fact itscomplete success must in a great measure be attributed.
So perfectly were his plans laid and executed, that right up to themoment when the signal was given and the plans became actions,American society went about its daily business without the remotestsuspicion that it was living on the slope of a slumbering volcanowhose fires were so soon to burst forth and finally consume thesocial fabric which, despite its splendid exterior, was inwardly asrotten as were the social fabrics of Rome and Byzantium on the eve oftheir fall.
On the 1st of October the cables brought the news of the fall of theQuadrilateral, the storming of Hamburg, and the retreat of theBritish forces on Antwerp. Four days later came the tidings of agreat battle under the walls of Antwerp, in which the British andGerman forces, outnumbered ten to one by the innumerable hosts of theLeague, had suffered a decisive defeat, which rendered it imperativefor them to fall back upon the Allied fleets in the Scheldt, and toleave the Netherlands to the mercy of the Tsar and his allies, whowere thus left undisputed masters of the continent of Europe.
This last and crowning victory had been achieved by exactly the samemeans which had accomplished all the other triumphs of the campaign,and therefore there will be no need to enter into any detaileddescription of it. Indeed, the fall of the Quadrilateral and thedefeat of the last army of the Alliance round Antwerp would have beenaccomplished much more easily and speedily than it had been but forthe fact that the weather, which had been fine up to the end of July,had suddenly broken, and a succession of violent storms and galesfrom the north and north-west had made it impossible for thewar-balloons to be brought into action with any degree ofeffectiveness.
During the last week of September the storms had ceased, and then thework of destruction began. Not even the hitherto impregnablefortresses of Tournay, Mons, Namur, and Liege had been able towithstand the assault from the air any better than the forts ofBerlin or the walls of Constantinople. A day's bombardment hadsufficed to reduce them to ruins, and, the chain once broken, thearmies of the League swept in wave after wave across the plains whichthey had guarded.
The loss of life had been unparalleled even in this the greatest ofall wars, for the British and Germans had fought with a doggedresolution which, but for the vastly superior numbers and theirresistible means of destruction employed against them, mustinfallibly have triumphed. As it was, it was only when valour hadachieved its last sacrifice, and further resistance became rathermadness than devotion, that the retreat was finally sounded in timeto embark the remnants of the armies of the Alliance on board thewarships. Happily at the very hour when this was being done theweather broke again, and the ships of the Allied fleets weretherefore able to make their way to sea through storm and darkness,unmolested by the war-balloons.
While the American press was teeming with columns of descriptiontelegraphed at enormous cost from the seat of war, and withabsolutely misleading articles as to the policy of the League and theattitude of studious neutrality that was to be observed by the UnitedStates Government, the dockyards, controlled directly and indirectlyby the American Ring, were working night and day putting thefinishing touches to the flotilla of dynamite cruisers and otherwar-vessels intended to carry out the plan revealed by MichaelRoburoff on board the _Ithuriel_, after he had been taken off the_Aurania_ in the Mid-Atlantic.
Briefly described, this was as follows:--Representative government inAmerica had by this time become a complete sham. The whole politicalmachinery and internal resources of the United States were nowvirtually at the command of a great Ring of capitalists who, throughthe medium of the huge monopolies which they controlled, and theenormous sums of money at their command, held the country in thehollow of their hand. These men were as totally devoid of all humanfeeling or public sentiment as it was possible for human beings tobe. They had grown rich in virtue of their contempt of everyprinciple of justice and mercy, and they had no other object in lifethan to still further increase their gigantic hoards of wealth, andto multiply the enormous powers which they already wielded. The thencondition of affairs in Europe had presented them with such anopportunity as no other combination of circumstances could have giventhem, and ignoring, as such wretches would naturally do, all ties ofblood and kindred speech, they had determined to take advantage ofthe situation to the utmost.
In the guise of the United States Government the Ring had concluded asecret treaty with the commanders of the League, in virtue of which,at a stipulated point in the struggle, America was to declare war onBritain, invade Canada by land, and send to sea an immense flotillaof swift dynamite cruisers of tremendously destructive power, whichhad been constructed openly in the Government dockyards, ostensiblyfor coast defence, and secretly in private yards belonging to thevarious Corporations composing the Ring.
This flotilla was to co-operate with the fleet of the League as soonas England had been invaded, and complete the blockade of the Britishports. Were this once accomplished nothing could save Britain fromstarvation into surrender, and the British Empire from disintegrationand partition between the Ring and the Commanders of the League, whowould then practically divide the mastery of the world among them.
On the night of the 4th of October the five words: "The hour and theman," went flying over the wires from Washington throughout thelength and breadth of the North American Continent. The next morninghalf the industries of the United States were paralysed; all thelines of communication by telegraph and rail between the east andwest were severed, the shore ends of the Atlantic cables were cut, nonewspapers appeared, and every dockyard on the eastern coast was inthe hands of the Terrorists.
To complete the stupor produced by this swift succession ofastounding events, when the sun rose an air-ship was seen floatinghigh in the air over the ten arsenals of the United States--that isto say, over Portsmouth, Charlestown, Brooklyn, League Island, NewLondon, Washington, Norfolk, Pensacola, Mare Island, and Port Royal,while two others held Chicago and St. Louis, the great railwaycentres for the west and south, at their mercy, and the _Ithuriel_,with a broad red flag flying from her stern, swept like a meteoralong the eastern coast from Maine to Florida.
To attempt to describe the condition of frenzied panic into which theinhabitants of the threatened cities, and even the whole of theEastern States were thrown by the events of that ever-memorablemorning, would be to essay an utterly hopeless task. From themillionaire in his palace to the outcasts who swarmed in the slums,not a man or a woman kept a cool head save those who were in thecouncils of the Terrorists. The blow had fallen with such stupefyingsuddenness that as far as America was concerned the Revolution waspractically accomplished before any one very well knew what hadhappened.
Out of the midst of an apparently peaceful and industrious populationfive millions of armed men had sprung in a single night. Factoriesand workshops had opened their doors, but none entered the
m; shipslay idle by the wharves, offices were deserted, and the great reelsof paper hung motionless beside the paralysed machines which shouldhave converted them into newspapers.
It was not a strike, for no mere trade organisation could haveaccomplished such a miracle. It was the force born of theaccumulation of twenty years of untiring labour striking one mightyblow which shattered the commercial fabric of a continent in a singleinstant. Those who had been clerks or labourers yesterday, patient,peaceful, and law-abiding, were to-day soldiers, armed anddisciplined, and obeying with automatic regularity the unheardcommand of some unknown chief.
This of itself would have been enough to throw the United States intoa panic; but, worse than all, the presence of the air-ships, holdingat their mercy the arsenals and the richest cities in the EasternStates, proved that tremendous and all as it was, this was only aphase of some vast and mysterious cataclysm which might as easilyinvolve the whole civilised world as it could overwhelm the UnitedStates of America.
By noon, almost without striking a blow, every dynamite cruiser andwarship on the eastern coast had been seized and manned by theTerrorists. To the dismay of the authorities, it was found that morethan half the army and navy, officers and men alike, had obeyed themysterious summons that had gone throughout the land the nightbefore; and matters reached a climax when, as the clocks ofWashington were striking twelve, the President himself was arrestedin the White House.
All the streets of Washington were in the hands of the Terrorists,and at one o'clock Tremayne, after posting guards at all theapproaches, entered the Senate, and in the name of Natas proclaimedthe Constitution of the United States null and void, and theGovernment dissolved.
Then with a copy of the Constitution in his hand he proceeded to thesteps of the Capitol, and, in the presence of a vast throng of thearmed members of the American Section, he proclaimed the Federationof the English-speaking races of the world, in virtue of their bondsof kindred blood and speech and common interests; and amidst a sceneof the wildest enthusiasm called upon all who owned those bonds toforget the artificial divisions that had separated them into hostilenations and communities, and to follow the leadership of theBrotherhood to the conquest of the earth.
Then in a few strong and simple phrases he exposed the subservienceof the Government to the capitalist Ring, and described the inhumancompact that it had entered into with the arch-enemies of nationalfreedom and personal liberty to crush the motherland of theAnglo-Saxon nations, and for the sake of sordid gain to rivet thefetters of oppression upon the limbs of the race which for a thousandyears had stood in the forefront of the battle for freedom.
As he concluded his appeal, one mighty shout of wrath and execrationrose up to heaven from a million throats. He waited until this diedaway into silence, then, raising the copy of the Constitution abovehis head, he cried in clear ringing tones--
"For a hundred and fifty years this has been boasted as the bulwarkof liberty, and used as the instrument of social and commercialoppression. The Republic of America has been governed, not bypatriots and statesmen, but by millionaires and their hired politicalpuppets. It is therefore a fraud and a sham, and deserves no longerto exist!"
So saying, he tore the paper into fragments and cast them into theair amidst a storm of cheers and volley after volley of musketry.While the enthusiasm was at its height the _Ithuriel_ suddenly sweptdownwards from the sky in full view of the mighty assemblage thatswarmed round the Capitol. She was greeted with a roar of wonderingwelcome, for her appearance was the fulfilment of a promise uponwhich the success of the Revolution in America had largely depended.
This was the promise, issued by Tremayne several days previouslythrough the commanders of the various divisions of the Section, thatas soon as the Anglo-Saxon Federation was proclaimed and accepted inAmerica, the whole Brotherhood throughout the world would fall intoline with it, and place its aerial navy at the disposal of itsleaders. Practically this was giving the empire of the world inexchange for a money-despotism, of which every one save themillionaires and their servants had become heartily sick.
There were few who in their hearts did not believe the Republic to bea colossal fraud, and therefore there were few who regretted it.
The _Ithuriel_ passed slowly over the heads of the wondering crowd,and came to a standstill alongside the steps on which Tremayne wasstanding. The crowd saw a man on her deck shake hands with Tremayneand give him a folded paper. Then the air-ship swept gracefullyupward again in a spiral curve until she hung motionless over thedome of the Capitol.
Amidst a silence born of breathless interest to know the import ofthis message from the sky, Tremayne opened the paper, glanced at itscontents, and handed it to the senior officer in command of thebrigades, who stood beside him. This man, a veteran who had growngrey in the service of the Brotherhood, advanced with the open paperin his hand, and read out in a loud voice--
Natas sends greeting to the Brotherhood in America. The work has been well done, and the reward of patient labour is at hand. This is to name Alan Tremayne, Chief of the Central Executive, first President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation throughout the world, and to invest him with the supreme authority for the ordering of its affairs. The aerial navy of the Brotherhood is placed at his disposal to co-operate with the armies and fleets of the Federation.
NATAS.
When the mighty shout of acclamation which greeted the reading ofthis commission had died away, Tremayne stepped forward again andspoke the few words that now remained to be said--
"I accept the office and all that it implies. The fate of the worldlies in our hands, and as we decide it so will the future lot ofhumanity be good or evil. The armies of the Franco-Slavonian Leagueare now masters of the continent of Europe, and are preparing for theinvasion of Britain. The first use that I shall make of the authoritynow vested in me will be to summon the Tsar in the name of theFederation to sheathe the sword at once, and relinquish his designson Britain. The moment that one of his soldiers sets foot on thesacred soil of our motherland I shall declare war upon him, and itshall be a war, not of conquest, but of extermination, and we willmake an end of tyranny on earth for ever.
"Now let those who are not on guard-duty go to their homes, andremember that they are now citizens of a greater realm than theUnited States, and endowed with more than national duties andresponsibilities. Let every man's person and property be respected,and let the penalty of all violence be death. Those who have plottedagainst the public welfare will be dealt with in due course, andyonder air-ship will be despatched with our message to the Tsar atsundown. Long live the Federation!"
Millions of throats took up the cry as the last words left his lipsuntil it rolled away from the Capitol in mighty waves of sound,flowing along the crowded streets and overrunning the utmost confinesof the capital.
Thus, without the loss of a hundred lives, and in a space of lessthan twelve hours, was the Revolution in America accomplished. Thetriumph of the Terrorists was as complete as it had been unexpected.Menaced by air and sea and land, the great centres of population madeno resistance, and, when they learnt the true object of theRevolution, wanted to make none. No one really believed in the lateGovernment, and every one in his soul hated and despised themillionaires.
There was no bond between them and their fellow-men but money, andthe moment that was snapped they were looked upon in their truenature as criminals and outcasts from the pale of humanity. Bysundown, when the _Ithuriel_ left for the seat of war, the members ofthe Ring and those of the late Government who refused to acknowledgethe Federation were lodged in prison, and news had been received fromMontreal that the simultaneous rising of the Canadian Section hadbeen completely successful, and that all the railways and arsenalsand ships of war were in the hands of the Terrorists, so completingthe capture of the North American continent.
The President of the Federation and his faithful subordinates went towork, without losing an hour, to reorganise as far as was necessaryt
he internal affairs of the continent of which they had so suddenlybecome the undisputed masters. There was some trouble with theBritish authorities in Canada, who, from mistaken motives of duty tothe mother country, at first refused to recognise the Federation.
The consequence of this was that Tremayne went north the next day andhad an interview with the Governor-General at Montreal. At the sametime he ordered six air-ships and twenty-five dynamite cruisers toblockade the St. Lawrence and the eastern ports. The Canadian PacificRailway and the telegraph lines to the west were already in the handsof the Terrorists, and a million men were under arms waiting hiscommands.
A very brief explanation, therefore, sufficed to show the Governorthat forcible resistance would not only be the purest madness, butthat it would also seriously interfere with the working of the greatscheme of Federation, the object of which was, not merely to placeBritain in the first place among the nations, but to make theAnglo-Saxon race the one dominant power in the whole world.
To all the Governor's objections on the score of loyalty to theBritish Crown, Tremayne, who heard him to the end withoutinterruption, simply replied in a tone that precluded all furtherargument--
"The day of states and empires, and therefore of loyalty tosovereigns, has gone by. The history of nations is the history ofintrigue, quarrelling, and bloodshed, and we are determined to put astop to warfare for good and all. We hold in our hands the only powerthat can thwart the designs of the League and avert an era of tyrannyand retrogression. That power we intend to use whether the BritishGovernment likes it or not.
"We shall save Britain, if necessary, in spite of her rulers. If theystand in the way, so much the worse for them. They will be calledupon to resign in favour of the Federation and its Executive withinthe next seven days. If they consent, the forces of the League willnever cross the Straits of Dover. If they refuse we shall allowBritain to taste the results of their choice, and then settle thematter in our own way."
The next day the Governor dissolved the Canadian Legislatures "underprotest," and retired into private life for the present. He felt thatit was no time to argue with a man who had millions of men behindhim, to say nothing of an aerial fleet which alone could reduceMontreal to ruins in twelve hours.
After arranging matters in Canada the President returned toWashington in the _Ariel_, which he had taken into his personalservice for the present, and set about disposing of the Ring andthose members of the late Government who were most deeply implicatedin the secret alliance with the leaders of the League. When the factsof this scheme were made public they raised such a storm of popularindignation, that if those responsible for it had been turned loosein the streets of Washington they would have been torn to pieces likevermin.
As it was, however, they were placed upon their trial before aCommission of seven members of the Inner Circle of the AmericanSection, presided over by the President. Their guilt was speedilyproved beyond the shadow of a doubt. Documents, memoranda, andtelegrams were produced by men who had seemed their most trustedservants, but had been in reality members of the Brotherhood told offto unearth their schemes.
Cyphers were translated which showed that they had practically soldthe resources of the country in advance to the Tsar and his allies,and that they were only waiting the signal to declare war withoutwarning and without cause upon Britain, blockade her ports, andstarve her into surrender and acceptance of any terms that thevictors might choose to impose. Last of all, the terms of the bargainbetween the League and the Ring were produced, signed by the latePresident and the Secretary of State, and countersigned by theRussian Minister at Washington.
The Court sat for three days, and reassembled on the fourth todeliver its verdict and sentence. Fifteen members of the lateGovernment, including the President, the Vice-President, and theSecretary of State, and twenty-four great capitalists composing theRing, were found guilty of giving and receiving bribes, directly andindirectly, and of betraying and conspiring to betray the confidenceof the American people in its elected representatives, and also ofconspiring to make war without due cause on a friendly Power forpurely commercial reasons.
At eleven o'clock on the morning of the 9th of October the Presidentof the Federation rose in the Senate House, amidst breathlesssilence, to pronounce the sentence of the Court.
"All the accused," he said, speaking in slow, deliberate tones, "havebeen proved guilty of such treason against their own race and thewelfare of humanity as no men ever were guilty of before in all thedisreputable history of state-craft. In view of the suffering andmisery to millions of individuals, and the irreparable injury to thecause of civilisation that would have resulted from the success oftheir schemes, it would be impossible for human wit to devise anypunishment which in itself would be adequate. The sentence of theCourt is the extreme penalty known to human justice--Death!"
A shudder passed through the vast assembly as he pronounced theominous word, and the accused, who but a few days before had lookedupon the world as their footstool, gazed with blanched faces andterror-stricken eyes upon each other. He paused for a moment, andlooked sternly upon them. Then he went on--
"But the Federation does not seek a punishment of revenge, but ofjustice; nor shall its first act of government be the shedding ofblood, however guilty. Therefore, as President I override thesentence of death, and instead condemn you, who have been provedguilty of this unspeakable crime, to confiscation of the wealth thatyou have acquired so unscrupulously and used so mercilessly, and toperpetual banishment with your wives and families, who have sharedthe profits of your infamous traffic.
"You will be at once conveyed to Kodiak Island, off the south coastof Alaska, and landed there. Once every six months you will bevisited by a steamer, which will supply you with the necessaries oflife, and the original penalty of death will be the immediatepunishment of any one of you who attempts to return to a world ofwhich you from this moment cease to be citizens."
The sentence was carried out without an hour's delay. The exiles,with their wives and families, were placed under a strong guard in aspecial train, which conveyed them from Washington _via_ St. Louis toSan Francisco, where they were transferred to a steamer which tookthem to the lonely and desolate island in the frozen North which wasto be their home for the rest of their lives. They were followed bythe execrations of a whole people and the regrets of none save themoney-worshippers who had respected them, not as men, but asincarnations of the purchasing power of wealth.
The huge fortunes which they had amassed, amounting in the aggregateto more than three hundred millions in English money, were placed inthe public treasury for the immediate purposes of the war which theFederation was about to wage for the empire of the world. All theirreal estate property was transferred to the various municipalities inwhich it was situated, and their rents devoted to the relief oftaxation, while the railways and other enterprises which they hadcontrolled were declared public property, and placed in the hands ofboards of management composed of their own officials.
Within a week everything was working as smoothly as though noRevolution had ever taken place. All officials whose honesty therewas no reason to suspect were retained in their offices, while thosewho were dismissed were replaced without any friction. All theaffairs of government were conducted upon purely business principles,just as though the country had been a huge commercial concern, savefor the fact that the chief object was efficiency and notprofit-making.
Money was abundantly plentiful, and the necessaries of life werecheaper than they had ever been before. Perhaps the principal reasonfor this happy state of affairs was the fact that law and politicshad suddenly ceased to be trades at which money could be made. Peoplewere amazed at the rapidity with which public business wastransacted.
The President and his Council had at one stroke abrogated every civiland criminal law known to the old Constitution, and proclaimed intheir place a simple, comprehensive code which was practicallyidentical with the Decalogue. To this a final clause was added,stating
that those who could not live without breaking any of theselaws would not be considered as fit to live in civilised society, andwould therefore be effectively removed from the companionship oftheir fellows.
While the internal affairs of the Federation in America were beingthus set in order, events had been moving rapidly in other parts ofthe world. The Tsar, the King of Italy, and General le Gallifet, whowas now Dictator of France in all but name, were masters of thecontinent of Europe. The Anglo-Teutonic Alliance was a thing of thepast. Germany, Austria, and Turkey were completely crushed, and theminor Powers had succumbed.
Britain, crippled by the terrible cost in ships and men of thevictory of the Nile, had evacuated the Mediterranean afterdismantling the fortifications of Gibraltar and Malta, and hadconcentrated the remains of her fleets in the home waters, to preparefor the invasion which was now inevitable as soon as fair winds andfine weather made it possible for the war-balloons of the League tocross the water and co-operate with the invading forces.
The Tsar, as had been expected, had not even deigned to reply toTremayne's summons to disarm, and so the last arrangements forbringing the forces of the Federation into action at the proper timewere pushed on with the utmost speed. The blockade of the Americanand Canadian coasts was rigidly maintained, and no vessels allowed toenter or leave any of the ports. All the warships of the League hadbeen withdrawn from the Atlantic, and the great ocean highwayremained unploughed by a single keel.
On the 10th of October the _Ithuriel_ had returned from her secondtrip to the West, with the refusal of the British Government torecognise the Federation as a duly constituted Power, or to have anydealings with its leaders. "Great Britain," the reply concluded,"will stand or fall alone; and even in the event of ultimate defeat,the King of England will prefer to make terms with the sovereignsopposed to him rather than with those whose acts have proved them tobe beyond the pale of the law of nations."
"Ah!" said Tremayne to Arnold, as he read the royal words, "thepolicy which lost the American Colonies for the sake of an idea stillrules at Westminster, it seems. But I'm not going to let the old Lionbe strangled in his den for all that.
"Natas was right when he said that Britain would have to pass throughthe fire before she would accept the Federation, and so I suppose shemust, more's the pity. Still, perhaps it will be all for the best inthe long run. You can't expect to root up a thousand-year-old oak aseasily as a mushroom that only came up the day before yesterday."
The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror Page 38
