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The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth Book 3 Chapter 1 - The Altered World · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book three, Chapter one of the Food of the Gods
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  Speaker 1: and How I Came to Earth. This is the LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Alexey Tolander Davis, California. The Food of the Gods
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  Speaker 1: and How I Came to Earth by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Book three, The Harvest of the Food, Chapter one, The
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  Speaker 1: Altered World. One change played in its new fashion with
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  Speaker 1: the world for twenty years. To most men, the new
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  Speaker 1: things came little by little, and day by day, remarkably enough,
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  Speaker 1: but not so abruptly as to overwhelm. But to one
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  Speaker 1: man at least, the full accumulation of those two decades
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  Speaker 1: of the Food's work was to be revealed suddenly and
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  Speaker 1: amazingly in one day. For our purpose, it is convenient
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  Speaker 1: to take him for that one day, and to tell
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  Speaker 1: something of the things he saw. This man was a convict,
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  Speaker 1: a prisoner for life. His crime is no concern of ours,
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  Speaker 1: whom the law saw fit to pardon. After twenty years,
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  Speaker 1: one summer morning, this poor wretch who had left the
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  Speaker 1: world a young man of three and twenty found himself
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  Speaker 1: thrust out again from the gray simplicity of toil and
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  Speaker 1: discipline that had become his life into a dazzling freedom.
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  Speaker 1: They had put unaccustomed clothes upon him. His hair had
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  Speaker 1: been growing for some weeks, and he had parted it
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  Speaker 1: now for some days. And there he stood, in a
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  Speaker 1: sort of shabby and clumsy newness of body and mind,
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  Speaker 1: blinking with his eyes and blinking indeed with his soul,
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  Speaker 1: outside again, trying to realize one incredible thing, that, after
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  Speaker 1: all he was again for a little while in the
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  Speaker 1: world of life, and for all other incredible things, totally unprepared.
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  Speaker 1: He was so fortunate as to have a brother who
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  Speaker 1: cared enough further distant common memories to come and meet
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  Speaker 1: him and clasp his hand, a brother he had left,
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  Speaker 1: a little lad and who was now a bearded, prosperous
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  Speaker 1: man whose very eyes were unfamiliar. And together he and
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  Speaker 1: this stranger from his kindred came down into the town
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  Speaker 1: of Dover, saying little to one another, and feeling many things.
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  Speaker 1: They sat for a space in a public house, the
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  Speaker 1: one answering the questions of the other about this person.
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  Speaker 1: In that reviving queer old points of view, brushing aside
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  Speaker 1: endless new aspects and new perspectives, and that it was
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  Speaker 1: time to go to the station and take the London train.
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  Speaker 1: Their names and the personal things they had to talk
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  Speaker 1: of do not matter to our story, but only the
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  Speaker 1: changes in all the stranger that this poor returning soul
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  Speaker 1: found in the once familiar world. In Dover itself, he
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  Speaker 1: marked little except the goodness of beer from Pewter. Never
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  Speaker 1: before had there been such a draft beer, and it
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  Speaker 1: brought tears of gratitude to his eyes. Beer's as good
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  Speaker 1: as ever, said he, believing it infinitely better. It was
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  Speaker 1: only as the train rattled on past Folkestone that he
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  Speaker 1: could look out beyond his more immediate emotions to see
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  Speaker 1: what had happened to the world. He peered out of
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  Speaker 1: the window. It's sunny, he said, for the twelfth time.
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  Speaker 1: I couldn't have had better the weather. And then for
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  Speaker 1: the first time it dawned upon him that there were
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  Speaker 1: novel disproportions in the world. Lord's sakes, he cried, sitting
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  Speaker 1: up and looking animated for the first time. But them's
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  Speaker 1: mortal great thistles growing out there on the bank by
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  Speaker 1: that broom. If so they be thistles, or have I've
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  Speaker 1: been forgetten? But they were thistles, and what he took
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  Speaker 1: for tall bushes a broom was the new grass. And
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  Speaker 1: amidst these things, accompany of British soldiers, red coated as ever,
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  Speaker 1: was skirmishing in accordance with the directions of the drill
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  Speaker 1: book that had been partially revised after the Boer War.
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  Speaker 1: Then whack into a tunnel, and then into standing junction,
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  Speaker 1: which was now embedded in dark. Its lamps were all alight,
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  Speaker 1: and a great thicket of rhododendron that had crept out
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  Speaker 1: of some adjacent gardens and grown enormously up the valley.
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  Speaker 1: There was a train of trucks on the sandgate siding,
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  Speaker 1: piled high with rhododendron logs. And here was the returning
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  Speaker 1: citizen heard first of boom food as he sped out
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  Speaker 1: into a country again that seemed absolutely unchanged. The two
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  Speaker 1: brothers were hard at their explanations. The one was full
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  Speaker 1: of eager, dull questions. The other had never thought, had
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  Speaker 1: never troubled to see the things as a single fact,
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  Speaker 1: and he was elusive and difficult to follow. It's this here,
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  Speaker 1: boom food stuff, he said, touching his bottom rock of knowledge.
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  Speaker 1: Don't you know, haven't they told you? And even boom food?
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  Speaker 1: You know, boom food, all the elections about scientific sort
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  Speaker 1: of stuff, asn't no one ever told you? He thought
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  Speaker 1: prisoner made his brother a fearful duffer, not to know
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  Speaker 1: that they made wide shots at each other by way
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  Speaker 1: of question and answer. Between these scraps of talk were
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  Speaker 1: intervals of window gazing. At first, the man's interest in
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  Speaker 1: things was vague. In general. His imagination had been busy
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  Speaker 1: with what old so and so would say, how so
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  Speaker 1: and so would look, and how we would say to
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  Speaker 1: all and sundry, certain things that would present this putting
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  Speaker 1: away in a mitigated light. This boomfood came in at
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  Speaker 1: first as if it were a thing in an odd
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  Speaker 1: paragraph of the newspapers, then as a source of intellectual
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  Speaker 1: difficulty with his brother. But it came to him presently.
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  Speaker 1: The boom food was persistently coming in upon any topic
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  Speaker 1: he began. In those days, the world was a patchwork
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  Speaker 1: or transition, so that this great new fact came to
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  Speaker 1: him in a series of shocks. Of contrast, the process
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  Speaker 1: of change had not been uniform. It had spread from
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  Speaker 1: one set of distribution here and another set of there.
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  Speaker 1: The country was in patches, great areas where the food
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  Speaker 1: was still to come, in areas where it was already
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  Speaker 1: in the soil and in the air, sporadic and contagious.
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  Speaker 1: It was a bold new motif creeping in among ancient
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  Speaker 1: and venerable as. The contrast was very vivid. Indeed, along
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  Speaker 1: the line from Dover to London at that time, for
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  Speaker 1: a space they traversed just such a countryside as he
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  Speaker 1: had known since his childhood. The small oblongs of field hedge,
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  Speaker 1: lined of a size for pigmy horses to plow, the
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  Speaker 1: little roads three cart wits wide, the elms and oaks
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  Speaker 1: and poplars dotting these fields, about little thickets of willow
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  Speaker 1: beside the streams, ricks of hay no higher than a
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  Speaker 1: giant's knees, dolls, cages with diamond panes, brick fields, and
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  Speaker 1: straggling village streets, the larger houses of the petty grate,
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  Speaker 1: flower grown railway banks, garden set stations, and all the
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  Speaker 1: little things of the vanished nineteenth century, still holding out
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  Speaker 1: against immensity. Here and there would be a patch of
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  Speaker 1: wind sown, wind tattered giant thistle defying the axe, here
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  Speaker 1: and there a ten foot puff ball, or the ashen
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  Speaker 1: stems of some burnt out patch of monster grass. But
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  Speaker 1: that was all there was to hint at the coming
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  Speaker 1: of the food. For a couple of score of miles.
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  Speaker 1: There was nothing else to foreshadow in any way the
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  Speaker 1: strange bigness of the wheat, and over the weeds that
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  Speaker 1: were hidden from him not a dozen miles from his route,
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  Speaker 1: just over the hills in the cheesing Ibright Valley. And
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  Speaker 1: then presently the traces of the food will begin. The
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  Speaker 1: first striking thing was the great new viaduct at Tunbridge,
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  Speaker 1: where the swamp of the choked Medway due to a
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  Speaker 1: giant variety of chara began in those days. Then again
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  Speaker 1: the little country, and then as the petty, multitudinous immensity
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  Speaker 1: of London spread out under its haze, the traces of
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  Speaker 1: man's fight to keep out greatness became abundant and incessant.
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  Speaker 1: In that southeastern region of London. At that time, and
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  Speaker 1: all about where Cosser and his children lived, the food
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  Speaker 1: had become mysteriously insurgent. At a hundred points the little
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  Speaker 1: life went on amidst daily importance that only the deliberation
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  Speaker 1: of their increase. The slow parallel growth of usage to
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  Speaker 1: their presence had robbed of their warning. But this returning
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  Speaker 1: citysem peered out the sea for the first time the
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  Speaker 1: facts of the food, strange and predominant, scarred and blackened areas,
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  Speaker 1: big and sightly defenses, in preparations, barracks, and arsenals, that
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  Speaker 1: this subtle, persistent influence had forced into the life of men.
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  Speaker 1: Here on an ampler scale, the experience the first experimental
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  Speaker 1: farm had been repeated time and again. It had bit
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  Speaker 1: in the interior and accidental thingkings of life under foot
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  Speaker 1: and in waste places, irregularly and irrelevantly, that the coming
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  Speaker 1: of a new force and new issues had first declared itself.
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  Speaker 1: There were great, evil smelling yards and enclosures, where some
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  Speaker 1: invincible jungle of weed furnished fuel or of gigantic machinery.
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  Speaker 1: Little cockneys came to stare at this clangorous oiliness and
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  Speaker 1: tipped the men at sixpence. There were roads and tracks
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  Speaker 1: for big motors and vehicles, roads made of the innerwoven
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  Speaker 1: fibers of hypertrophied hemp. There were towers containing steam sirens
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  Speaker 1: that could yell at once and warn the world against
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  Speaker 1: any new insurgence of vermin or what was queerer, venerable
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  Speaker 1: church towers conspicuously fitted with a mechanical scream. There were
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  Speaker 1: little red painted refuge huts and garrison shelters, each with
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  Speaker 1: its three hundred yard rifle range, where the rifle one
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  Speaker 1: practiced daily with a soft nosed ammunition at targets in
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  Speaker 1: the shape of monstrous rats. Six times since the day
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  Speaker 1: of the Skinners there had been outbreaks of giant rats,
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  Speaker 1: each time from the southwest London sewers, and now they
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  Speaker 1: were as much an accepted fact there as tigers. In
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  Speaker 1: the Delta buy Calcutta. The man's brother had brought a
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  Speaker 1: paper in a heedless sort of way at Sandling, and
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  Speaker 1: at last this chance to catch the eye of the
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  Speaker 1: release man, he opened the unfamiliar sheets. They seemed to
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  Speaker 1: him to be smaller, more numerous, and different in time
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  Speaker 1: from the papers to ties before, and he found himself
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  Speaker 1: confronted with innumerable pictures about things so strange as to
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  Speaker 1: be uninteresting, and with tall columns of printed matter, whose headings,
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  Speaker 1: for the most part were as unmeeting as though they
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  Speaker 1: had been written in a foreign tongue. Great speech by
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  Speaker 1: mister cadahaan the boom food laws. Who's this here, cataham,
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  Speaker 1: he asked, in an attempt to make conversation. He's all right,
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  Speaker 1: said his brother, ah soort of politician. Eh going to
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  Speaker 1: turn out the government jolly well time he did, Ay reflected,
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  Speaker 1: I suppose all the lot I used to know, Chamberlain Rosebery,
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  Speaker 1: all that lot what his brother had. Grasped his wrists
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  Speaker 1: and pointed out the window. That's the cossers. The eyes
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  Speaker 1: of the release prisoner followed the finger's direction and saw
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  Speaker 1: my Thank God, he s cried for the first time,
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  Speaker 1: really overcome with amazement. The paper dropped into final forgottenness.
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  Speaker 1: Between his feet. Through the trees, he could see very distinctly,
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  Speaker 1: standing in an easy attitude, the legs wide apart, on
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  Speaker 1: the hand grasping a ball as if about to throw it,
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  Speaker 1: a gigantic human figure a good forty feet high. The
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  Speaker 1: figure glittered in the sunlight, cladded a suit of woven
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  Speaker 1: white metal and belted with a broad belt of steel.
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  Speaker 1: For a moment it focussed all attention, and then the
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  Speaker 1: eye was rested to another more distant giant who stood
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  Speaker 1: prepared to catch, and it became apparent that the whole
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  Speaker 1: area of that great bay in the hills just north
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  Speaker 1: of Seven Oaks had been scarred at gigantic ends. A
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  Speaker 1: hugely banked intrenchment overhung the chalk pit in which stood
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  Speaker 1: the house, a monstrous squat Egyptian shape that Cosser had
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  Speaker 1: built for his son's when the giant nursery had served
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  Speaker 1: its turn. And behind was a great dark shed that
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  Speaker 1: might have covered a cathedral, in which a spluttering incandescence
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  Speaker 1: came and went, and from out of which came a
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  Speaker 1: titanic hammering to beat upon the ear. Then the attention
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  Speaker 1: leapt back to the giant, as the great ball of
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  Speaker 1: iron brown timbers soared up out of his hand. The
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  Speaker 1: two men stood up and stared. The ball seemed as
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  Speaker 1: big as a cask. Caught, cried the man from prison,
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  Speaker 1: as a tree blotted out the thrower. The train looked
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  Speaker 1: on these things only for the fraction of a minute,
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  Speaker 1: and then passed behind trees into the Chiselhurst tunnel. My God,
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  Speaker 1: said the man from prison again, as the darkness closed
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  Speaker 1: about them. Why that chap was as high as a house.
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  Speaker 1: That's them, young Cossars, said his young brother, jerking his
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  Speaker 1: head elusively, what's all this trouble about? They emerged again
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  Speaker 1: to discover more siren surmounted towers, more red huts, and
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  Speaker 1: in the clustering villas of the outer suburbs, the art
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  Speaker 1: of bill sticking had lost nothing in the interval. And
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  Speaker 1: from countless tall hoardings, from house ends, from palings, and
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  Speaker 1: a hundred such points of vantage came the polychromatic appeals
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  Speaker 1: of the great Boomfood, Election Cadahan Boom Food, and Jack
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  Speaker 1: the Giant Killer, again and again and again, and monstrous
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  Speaker 1: caricatures and distortions a hundred variety, the misrepresentations of those
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  Speaker 1: great and shining figures. They had passed so nearly only
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  Speaker 1: a few minutes before two. It had been the purpose
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  Speaker 1: of the younger brother to do a very magnificent thing,
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  Speaker 1: to celebrate this return to life by a dinner at
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  Speaker 1: some restaurant of indisputable quality, a dinner that should be
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  Speaker 1: followed by all that glittering succession of impressions the music
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  Speaker 1: halls of those days were so capable of giving. It
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  Speaker 1: was a worthy plan to wipe off the more superficial
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  Speaker 1: states of the prison house by this display of free indulgence.
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  Speaker 1: But so far As the second item went, the plan
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  Speaker 1: was changed. The dinner stood. But there was a desire
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  Speaker 1: already more powerful than the appetite for shows, already more
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  Speaker 1: efficient in turning the man's mind away from his grave
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  Speaker 1: prepropossession with his past than any theater could be. And
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: that was an enormous curiosity and perplexity about this boom
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  Speaker 1: food and these boom children, this new portentous giantry that
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  Speaker 1: seemed to dominate the world. I am at the ang
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  Speaker 1: of them, he said. They disturbed me. His brother had
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  Speaker 1: that fitness of mind that even had set as eye
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  Speaker 1: a contemplated hospitality. It's your evening, dear old boy, he said.
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  Speaker 1: We'll try to get into the mass meeting at the
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: People's Palace. And at last the man from prison had
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  Speaker 1: the luck to fight himself, wedged into a packed multitude
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  Speaker 1: and staring from afar at a little brightly lit platform
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  Speaker 1: under an organ and a gallery, the organistsmen playing something
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  Speaker 1: that set boots tramping as the people swarmed in. But
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  Speaker 1: that was over now. Hardly had the man from prison
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  Speaker 1: settled in place and done his quarrel with an importunate
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: stranger that who elbowed before Cadahan came he walked out
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of a shadow towards the middle of the platform, the
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  Speaker 1: most insignificant little pigmy away there in the distance, a
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: little black figure with a pink dab for a face
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  Speaker 1: in profile, once saw his quite distinctive aquiline nose, A
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  Speaker 1: little figure that trailed after it, most inexplicitly a cheer.
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  Speaker 1: A cheer was that began away there and grew and
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: spread a little spluttering of voices about the platform at
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  Speaker 1: first that suddenly leaped up into a flame of sound
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  Speaker 1: and swept athwart the whole mass of humanity within the building.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And without how they cheered, hooray, hooray, knowing all those
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  Speaker 1: myriads cheered like the man from prison. The tears poured
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  Speaker 1: down its face, and he only stopped cheering at last
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  Speaker 1: because the thing had choked him. He must have been
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  Speaker 1: in prison as long as he before he could understand
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  Speaker 1: or even begin to understand, what it means to a
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: man to let his lungs go in a crowd. For
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  Speaker 1: for all that he did not even pretend to himself
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  Speaker 1: that he knew what all this emotion was about. Hooray,
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  Speaker 1: O God, hooray. And then a sort of silence Cataham
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: had decided to conspicuous patience, and subordinate and inaudible persons
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  Speaker 1: were saying and doing formal and insignificant things. It was
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: like hearing voices through the noise of leaves in spring. Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow,
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  Speaker 1: What did it matter? People in the audience talk to
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  Speaker 1: one another? Wow? The thing went on, Would that gray
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: headed duffer and never have done interrupting? Of course they
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: were interrupting, Wow wow wow wow Wa. But shall we
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: hear Cataham any better? Meanwhile, at any rate, there was
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Kataham to stare at, and one could stand and study
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the distant prospect of the great man's features. He was
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: easy to draw, was this man, And already the world
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: had him to study at leisure, on lamp chimneys and
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: children's plates, on anti boomfood metals and anti boom food flags,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: on the salvages of Catahan silks and cottons, and in
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the linings of good old English Catahan hats. He pervades
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: all the character of that time. One sees him as
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: a sailor standing to an old fashioned gun, a port
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: fired labeled new boom food laws in his hand, and
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: while the sea fallows that huge, ugly threatening monster boom food.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Or he is cap a pie in armour, Saint George's
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: cross and shield and helm, and a cowardly Titanic calavan,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: sitting amidst desecrations at the mouth of a horrid cave,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: declines his gauntlet of the new boomfood regulations. Or he
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: comes flying down as Perseus and rescues a chained and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: beautiful Andromeda, labeled distinctly about her belt as civilization from walling,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: waste of sea, monster bearing upon its various necks and claws, irreligion, trampling, egotism, mechanism, monstrosity,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and the like. But it was as Jack the Giant
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  Speaker 1: Killer that the popular imagination considered Cadaham most correctly cast.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And it was in the vein of his Jack the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Giant cails opposed that the man from prison enlarged that
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  Speaker 1: distant miniature. The wah wah wah wah came abruptly to
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  Speaker 1: an end. He's done, he's sitting down. Yes, no, yes,
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  Speaker 1: it's Cataham, Cataham, Cataham. And then came the cheers. It
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  Speaker 1: takes a multitude to make such a stillness, as followed
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: that disorder of cheering. A man alone in a wilderness.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: It's stillness of a sort, no doubt. But he hears
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  Speaker 1: himself breathe, he hears himself move, he hears all sorts
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  Speaker 1: of things. Here, the voice of Catahan was the one
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  Speaker 1: single thing heard, a thing very bright and clear, like
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a little light burning in a black velvet recess. Here, indeed,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: one heard him as though he spoke at one's elbow.
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  Speaker 1: It was stupendously affected to the man from prison, that
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: gesticulating little figure, in a halo of light and a
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: halo of rich and swaying sounds behind it, partially effaced
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: as it were, sat its supporters on the platform, and
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: in the foreground was a wide perspective of innumerable backs
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  Speaker 1: and profiles, a vast, multitudinous attention. That little figure seemed
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: to have absorbed the substance from them all. Katam's spoke
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: out of our ancient institutions. Eerier ear roared the crowd.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Ear ear, said the man from prison. He spoke of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: our ancient spirit of order and justice. Ere ear ear
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: roared the crowd, ear ear cried the man from prison,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: deeply moved. He spoke of the wisdom of our forefathers,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: of the slow growth of venerable institutions of moral and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: social traditions that fitted our English national characteristics. As the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: skin fits the hand, eer ear grow the man from
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: prison with tears of excitement on his cheeks. And now
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: all these things were to go into the melting pot, Yes,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: into the melting pot, because three men in London twenty
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: years ago had seen fit to make something indescribable in
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a bottle. All the order and sanctity of things cries
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: of no, no, Well, if it was not to be so,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: they must exert themselves. They must say goodbye to hesitation.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Here there came a gust of cheering. They must say
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: goodbye to hesitation and half measures. We are very gentlemen,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: said Cadahan, of nettles will become giant nettles. At first
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: there are no more than other nettles. Little plants that
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: affirm may grasp and wrench away. But if you lead them,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: if you leave them, they grow with such a power
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: of poisonous expansion. The last you must needs have axe
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: and rope, You must have danger to life and limb.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: He must needs have toil and distress. Men may be
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: killed in their felling. Man may be killed in their felling.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: There came a stir and interruption, and then the man
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: from prison heard Caadahan's voice again, ringing clear and strong,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: learn about boom food from broomfoot itself, and he paused,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: grasp your nettle before it is too late. He stopped
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and stood wiping his lips. A crystal, cried some one,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: a crystal. And then came that same straight and swift
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: growth to thunderous tumult, until the whole world seemed cheering.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: The man from prison came out of the hall at last,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: marvelously stirred, with that in his face that marks those
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: who have seen a vision. He knew, everyone knew. His
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: ideas were no longer vague. He'd come back to a
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: world in crisis, to the immediate decision of a stupendous issue.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: He must play his part in the great conflict like
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: a man, like a free, responsible man. The antagonism presented
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: itself a picture. On the one hand, those easy, gigantic
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: mail clad figures of the morning, one saw them now
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: in a different light. On the other, this little black clad,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: gesticulating creature under the limelight, that pigmy thing, with its
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: ordered flow, melodious persuasion, its little marvelously penetrating voice, John Cadahan,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Jack the giant Killer. They must all unite to grasp
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the nettle before it was too late. Three, the tallest
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and strongest and most regarded of all the children of
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: the food were the three sons of Cosser. The Molusseau
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: of land near seven Oaks, in which their boyhood passed
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: became so trenched, so dug out and twisted about, so
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: covered with sheds and huge working models, and all the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: player of their developing powers. It was like no other
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: place on earth, and long since it had become too
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: little for the things they sought to do. The oldest
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: son was a mighty schemer of wheeled engines. It made
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: himself a sort of giant bicycle that no road in
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the world had roomed for, no bridge could bear there.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: It stood a great thing of wheels and engines, capable
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: of two hundred and fifty miles an hour. Useless slave
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that now and then he would mount it, and fling
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: himself backwards and forwards across that cumbered work yard. He
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: had meant to go around the little world with it.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: He had made it with that intention, while he was
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: still no more than his dreaming boy. Now it spokes
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: for breasted, deep red like wounds wherever the enamel had
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: been shipped away. You must speak a road for it,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Sonny Cussard said, before you could do that. So one morning,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: about dawn, the young giant and his brothers had set
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: out to work to make a road about the world.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: They seemed to have had an inkling of opposition mimh pending,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and they'd worked with a remarkable vigor. The world had
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: discovered them soon enough, driving that road as straight as
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: a flight of a bullet towards the English Channel. Already
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: some miles of it, leveled and made and stamped hard.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: They had mid stopped before midday by a vast crowd
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: of excited people. Owners of land, land agents, local authorities, lawyers, policemen,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: soldiers even were making a road. The biggest boy had explained,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: make a road by all means, said the leading lawyer
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: on the ground. But please respect the rights of other people.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: He'd already infringed the private rights of twenty seven pride proprietors,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: let alone the special privileges and property of an urban
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: district board, nine parish councils, a county council, two gas
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: works and a railway company. Goodney, said the older boy, Cosser,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: you will have to stop it, But don't you want
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: a nice straight road in the place of all these
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: rotted and ruddy little lanes. I won't say it wouldn't
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: be advantageous, but it isn't to be done, said the
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: oldest Cosser boy, picking up his tools. Not in this way,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: said the lawyer, certainly, how is it to be done?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: The leading lawyer's answer had been complicated and vague. Cosser
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: had come down to see the mischief his children had
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: done and reproved them severely, and laughed enormously. Seemed to
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: be extremely happy over the affair. You boys must wait
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: a bit, he shouted up at them, before you can
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: do things like that. The lawyers told us we must
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: be gained by preparing a scheme and getting special powers,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of rot said it would take us years.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: We'll have a scheme before long, little boy cried Cosser,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: hands to his mouth as he shouted, derev vere for
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: a bit, you'd better play about and make models of
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the things you want to do. They did as he
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: told them, like obedient suns. But for all the other
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: costs our lads brooded little. It's all very well, said
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the second of the first. But I don't always want
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: to just play about and plan. I want to do
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: something real. You know. We didn't come into this world
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: so as strong as we are just to play about
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: in this messy little bit of ground, you know, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: take little walks and keep out of the towns. For
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: by that time they were forbidden all boroughs and urban districts.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Doing nothing's just wicked. Can't we just find out something
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: the little people want done and do it for them,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: just for the fun of doing it. Lots of them
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: having houses fit to live in, said the second boy.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Let's go and build him a house close up to
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: London that will hold heaps and heaps of them and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: never be so comfortable and nice. Let's make him a
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: nice little road to where all they all go and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: do business, nice straight little road, and make it all
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: as nice as nice. We'll make it all so clean
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and pretty that they won't any of them be able
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: to live grubby and beasley like most of them do. Now,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: water enough for them to wash with, We'll have you know.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: They're so dirty now that nine out of ten of
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: their houses, haven't even back them. They're filthy little skunks,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: you know, the ones that have baths, spit in salts
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: at the ones that haven't, instead of helping them to
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: get them and call them the great unwashed. You know,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: we'll all tell all that, and we'll make electricity, light
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: and cook and clean up for them, and all fancy
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: they make their women, women who are going to be mothers,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: crawl about and scrub floors. We could make it all beautifully.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: We could bank up out a valley in that range
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: of hills over there and make a nice reservoir, and
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: we could make a big place here to generate our
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: electricity and have it all simply lovely, couldn't we, brother?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: And then perhaps they let us do some other things. Yet,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: said the older blood. We could do it very nice
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: for them, then let's said the second brother. I don't mind,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: said the older brother, looked about for a handy tool,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and then led to another. Dreadful bother agitated multitudes were
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: at them in no time, telling them for a thousand
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: reasons to stop, turn them to stop for no reason
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: at all, Babbling, confused and varied multitudes. The place they
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: were building was too high. It couldn't possibly be safe.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It was ugly, It didn't fared with the letting of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: proper sides houses in the neighborhood. If ruined the tone
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: of the navy. It was unnighborly. It was contrary to
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the local building regulations and infringed the right of the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: local authority in a muttle bout with a minute expensive
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: electric supply of its own. It inter fit with the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: concerns of the local water company. Local government board clocks
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: roused themselves to judicial obstruction. The little lawyer turned up
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: again to represent about a dozen threatened interests. Local landowners
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: appeared in opposition. People with mysterious claims claimed to be
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: bought off at exorbitant rates. The trade unions of all
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: the building trades lifted up collective voices at a ring
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: of dealers in all sorts of building material became a bar.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Extraordinary associations of people with prophetic visions of esthetic horrors
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: rallied to protect the scenery of the place where they
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: would build the great house of the valley, where they
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: would bank up the water. These last people were absolutely
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the worst asses of the lot. The Coster boys considered
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: that beautiful house of the coster boys, was just like
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: a walking stick thrust into a wasp nest in no time.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I never did, said the oud boy. We can't go on,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: said the second brother. Rounden little beasts they are, said
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the third of the others. We can't do anything, even
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: when it's for their own comfort. Such a nice place
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: we'd have made for them, too. They seemed to spend
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: their siti little lives getting at each other's way, said
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the eldest boy. Rights and laws and regulations and rascalities.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: It's like he gave his spellikans. We anyhow, they'll have
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: to live in their grubby, dirty, silly little houses for
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: a bit longer. It's very evident we can't go on
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: with this and the cost of children left that great
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: house unfinished, a mere hole of foundations in the beginning
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: of a wall, and sulked back to their big enclosure.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: After a time, the hole was filled with water and
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: with stagnation, and weeds and vermin and the food that
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: the dropped there by the suns of cosser or blowing
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: thither as dust said growth going at its usual fashion.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Waterfalls came out over the country and did infinite havoc,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and one day if farmer caught his pigs drinking there,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and instantly, and with great presence of mind, for he
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: knew of the great hatog of opium slew them all.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And from that deep pole it was the mosquitos cane,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: quite terrible mosquitoes, whose only virtue was the suns of cosser.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: After being bidden for little could stand the thing no longer,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: but chose a moonlight night when law and order were abed,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: and drained the water clean away into the river by brook.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: But they left the big weeds, and the big water bowls,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of big undesirable things still living and
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: breeding on the site. They had chosen, the sight on
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: which the fair great house of the little people people
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: might have towered to heaven. Four they had been in
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the boyhood of the suns, but now there were nearly men,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and the chains had been tidening upon them, and tightening
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: with every year of growth. Each year they grew, and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the food spread, and great things multiplied. Each year the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: stress and tension rose. The food had been at first
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: for the great mass of mankind a distant marvel, and
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: now was coming home to every threshold and threatening, pressing
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: against and distorting the whole order of life. It blocked this,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: it overturned that. It changed natural products, and by changing
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: natural products it stopped employments and threw men out of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: work by the hundred thousands. It swept over boundaries and
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: turned the water trade into a world of cataclysms. No
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: wonder man can hated it. And since it is easier
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: to hate animate than inanimate things, animals more than plants,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and one's fellow men more completely than any animals. The
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: fear and trouble engendered by giant nettles and six foot
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: grass blades, awful insects, and tiger like vermin grew all
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: into one great power of detestation that aimed itself with
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: a simple directness at that scattered band of great human beings.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: The children of the food that hatred had become the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: central force in political affairs. The old party lines had
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: been traversed and effaced altogether under the insistence of these
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: newer issues and the conflict they now with the party
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: of the Temporizers, who were for putting little political men
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to control and regulate the food, and the Party of Reaction,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: for whom Cadahan spoke speaking always with the more sinister ambiguity,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: crystallizing his intention, first in one threatening phrase and then another.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Now that men must prune the bramble grows, now that
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: they must find a cure for elephantiasis, and at last,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: upon the eve of the election, that they must grasp
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the nettle. One day, the three sons of cost, who
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: were now no longer boys but men, sat among the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: masses of their feudal works and talked together. After their
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: fashion of all these things. They had been working all
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: day at one of a series of great and complicated
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: trenches their father had bid them make. And now was sunset,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: and they sat in the little garden space before the
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: great house and looked at the world, and rested until
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the little servants within should say their food was ready.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: You must figure these mighty forms, forty feet high. The
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: lease of them was reclining on a patch of turf
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: that would have seen a stubble of wreaths to a
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: common man. One sat up and chipped earth from his
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: huge boots with an iron girder he grasped in his hand.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: The second rested on his elbow. The third widowed a
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: pine tree into shape and made a smell of resin
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: in the air. They were clothed not in cloth, but
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: in under garments of woven rope and other outer clothes
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: who felt an aluminum wire. They were shaw with timber
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and iron, and the links and buttons and belts of
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: their clothing were all of plitted steel. The great single
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: storied house they lived in Egyptian in his massiveness, half
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: built of monstrous blocks of chalk and half eckskis from
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the living rock of the hill, had a front a
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: full hundred feet in height, and beyond the chimneys and wheels,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: the cranes and covers of their work sheds rose marvelously
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: against the sky. Through a circular window in the house
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: there was visible a spout from which some white hot
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: metal dripped and dripped in measure drops into a receptacle
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: or out of sight. The place was enclosed and rudely
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: fortified by monstrous banks of earth backed with steel, both
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: over the crest of the downs above and across the
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: dip of the valley. It needed something of common size
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: to mark the nature of the scale. The train that
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: came rattling from seven oaks athwart their vision, and presently
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: plunged into the tunnel out of their sight, looked by
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: contrast with them, like some small sized automatic toy. They
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: had made all the woods the sides of Victim out
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of bounds, said one, and moved the boars that was
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: out of Knockholt two miles and more this way. It
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: is at least they could do, said the youngest, after
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a pause. They are trying to take the wind out
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: of Cadahan's sails. It's not enough of that, and it
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: is almost too much for us, said the third. They
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: are cutting us off from brother Woodwood. Last time I
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: went to him, the d notices that crept a mile
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: in either way. The road to him along the downs
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: is no more than a narrow lane. The speaker thought,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: let us come to our brother Redwood. Why, said the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: eldest brother. The speaker backed a bow from his pine.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: He was like as though he wasn't awake. Yet he
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: seemed to listen to what I had to say, and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: he said something of love. The youngest tapped his girder
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: on the edge of his iron soul and laughed. Brother Woodwood,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: he said, has dreams. Neither spoke for a space. Then
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the eldest brother said, this cooping up and cooping up
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: grows more than I can bear. At last, I believe
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: they will draw a line round our boots and tell
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: us to live on that. The mother brother swept aside
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: a heap of pine boughs with one hand, and shifted
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: his attitude. What they do now is nothing to what
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: they would do when Cadahan has power. If he gets power,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: said the youngest brother, smiting the ground with his girder.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: As he will, said the eldest, staring at his feet.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: The mother brother ceased his lopping, and his eye went
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: to the great bags that shouldered them about. Then, brothers,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: he said, our youth will be able. And as Father
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Redwood said to us long ago, we must quit ourselves
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: like men. Yes, said the eldest brother, But what exactly
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: does that mean? Just what does it mean when that
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: day of trouble comes? He too, glanced at those rude,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: vast suggestions of intrenchment about them, looking not so much
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: at them as through them, and over the hills to
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the innumerable multitudes beyond. Something of the same sort came
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: into all their minds, a vision of little people coming
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: out to war in a flood. The little people inexhaustible, incessant, malignant,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: They are little, said the youngest brother. But they have
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: numbers beyond counting, like the sands of the sea. They
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: have arms, They have weapons even that our brothers in
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Sunderland have made besides brothers, except for vermin, except for
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: little accidents, for evil things, what have we seen of killing?
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I know, said the eldest brother. For all that we
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: are what we are. When the day of trouble comes,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: we must do the thing we have to do. He
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: closed his knife with a snap, the blade was the
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: length of a man, and used his new pine staff
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: to help himself rise. He stood up and turned towards
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the squat gray immensity of the house. The crimson of
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the Sun said, caught him as he rose, caught the
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: mail and clasps about his neck, and the woven metal
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: of his arms, And to the eyes of his brother,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: it seemed as though he was suddenly suffused with blood.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: As the young giant rose, a little black figure became
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: visible to him against that western incandescence. On the top
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: of the impactment that towered above the summit of the down.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: The black limbs waved in on gaily gestures. Something in
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the fling of the limbs suggested haste of the young
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: giant's mind. He waved his pine mast in reply, filled
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: the whole valley with his vast hello, threw a somethings
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: up to his brothers, and set off in twenty foot
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: stries to meet and help his father. Five. It chanced, too,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: that a young man who was not a giant was
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: delivering his soul about these sons of Cossar, just at
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the same time. He had come over the hills beyond
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: seven Oaks. He and his friend and he it was,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: did they talking in the hedges they came along. They
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: had heard a pitiful squealing and had intervened to rescue
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: three nestling tits from the attack of a couple of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: giant ants. That adventure, it was, had set him talking reactionary,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: he was saying, as they came within sight of the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Cosser and capmain. Who wouldn't be reactionary? Look at that
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: square of ground, that space of God's Earth that was
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: once sweet and fair, torn desecrated, disembowed, those sheds, that
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: great windwheel, that monstrous willed machine, those dikes. Look at
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: those three monsters squatting there, plotting some ugly devilment of earl.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Look Look at all the land His friend glanced at
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: his face. You've been listening to Catahan, he said, using
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: my eyes. Looking a little into the peace and order
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of the past, we leave behind this foul food is
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the last shape of the devil, still set as ever
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: upon the ruin of our world. Think what the world
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: must have been before our days. But it was still
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: when our mothers bore us. And see it now. Think
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: how these slopes once smiled under the golden harvest, How
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the hedges full of sweet little flowers parted the modest
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: portion of this man from that, how the ruddy farm
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: houses dotted the land, and the voice of the church
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: bells from yonder tower stilled the whole world each Sabbath
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: into Sabbath prayer. And now every year still more and
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: more of monstrous weeds, of monstrous firmin and these giants
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: growing all about us, straddling over us, blundering against all
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that is subtle and sacred in a world. Why here, look,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: he pointed, and his friend's eyes followed the lion of
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: his white finger, one of their footmarks. See it has
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: smashed itself three feet deep and more, a pitfall for
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: horse and rider, a trap to the unwary there is
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: a briar rose smashed to death. There is grass uprooted,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: and a teasel crushed aside, a farmer's drain pipe snapped,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: and the edge of the pathway broken down. Destruction. So
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: they are doing all over the world, all over the
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: order in decency. The world of men has made trampling
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: on all things. Reaction. What else but reaction? What do
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: you hope to do? Stop it? Cried the young man
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: from Oxford. Before it is too late. But it's not impossible,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: cried the young man from Oxford, with a jump in
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: his voice. We want the firm hand, We want the
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: subtle plan, the resolute mind. We've been mealy mouthed and
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: weak handed. We have trifled and temporized that the food
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: has grown and grown. Yet even now, he stopped for
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: a moment, This is the echo of Cadahan, said his friend.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Even now, even now, there is hope, abundant hope, if
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: only we make sure of what we want and what
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: we mean to destroy. The massive people are with us,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: much more with us than they were a few years ago.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: The laws with us, the constitution and order of society,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: the spirit of the established religions, the customs and habits
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: of bankind are with us and against the food. Why
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: should we temporize? Why should we lie? We hate it,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: we don't want it, Why then should we have it?
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Do you mean to just grizzle and obstruct passively and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: do nothing till the sands are out? He stopped short
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: and turned about. Look at that grove of nettles. There
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: in the midst of them are homes deserted, where once
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: clean families of simple men played out their honest lives.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: And there he swung round to where the young cossers
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: muttered to one another of the their wrongs. Look at them,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: and I know their father. A brute, a sort of
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: brute beast with the intolerant, loud voice, A creature who
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: has run amok in all our too merciful world for
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the last thirty years of more, an engineer. To him,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: all we hold dear and sacred is nothing. Nothing. The
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: splendid traditions of our race and land, and the noble institutions,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: the venerable order, the broad slow march from president to
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: president that has made our English people great and this
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: sunny island free. It is all an idle tale told
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and dumb with some clap trap about the future is
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: worth all these sacred things. The sort of man who
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: would run a tramway over his mother's grave if he
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: thought that was the cheapest line the tramway could take.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: And you think to temporize, to make some scheme of
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: compromise that will enable you to live in your way
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: while that that machinery lives in it. I tell you
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: what is hopeless. Hopeless as well as make treaties with
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: a tiger. They want things monstrous, We want them to
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: stay it in sweet is one thing or the other.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: But what can you do much all Stop the food.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: They are still scattered, these giants, still immature and disunited.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Chain them, gag them, muzzle them at any cost. Stop them.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: It is their wolde or ours. Stop the food. Shut
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: up these men who make it. Do anything to stop cosser.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: You don't seem to remember one generation. Only one generation
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: needs holding down. And then then we could leave these
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: mounds here, fill up their footsteps, take the ugly sirens
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: from our church towers, smash all our elephant guns, and
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: turn our faces again to the old order, the ripe,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: bold civilization for which the soul of man is fitted.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: It's a mighty effort for a mighty end. And if
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: we don't, don't you see the prospect, for as clear
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: as day, everywhere the giants will increase and multiply everywhere.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: They will make and scatter the food. The grass will
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: grow gigantic in our fields, the weeds in our hedges,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the vermin in the thickets, the rats and the drains,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: more and more and more. This is only a beginning.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: The insect world will rise on us, the plant world.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: The very fishes in the sea will swamp and drown
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: our ships. Tremendous growths will obscure and hide our houses,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: smother our churches, smash and destroy all the order of
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: our cities. And we shall account no more than a
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: feeble verbon. Under the heels of its new race. Mankind
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: will be swamped and drowned in things of its own beginning,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: and all for nothing, size mere size, enlargement, And da
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: capo or whady we go picking our way among the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: first beginnings of the coming time. Norway do is to say,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: how inconvenient to grumble and do nothing. No, he raised
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: his hand. Let them do the thing they have to do.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: So also will I I am for reaction unstinted and
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: fearless reaction unless you mean to take this food. Also,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: what else is there to do in all the world?
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: We have trifled in the middle ways too long? You
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: trifling in the middle ways? Is your habit, your circle
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: of existence, your space and time? So not I. I
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: am against the food with all my strength and purpose
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: against the food. He turned on his companion's grud of descent.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Where are you? It's a complicated business, oh Driftwood, said
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the young man from Oxman, very bitterly, with a fling
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: of all his limbs. The middle way is nothing. It
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: is one thing or the other. Eat or destroy, Eat
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: or destroy? What else is there to do? End of
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Book three, Chapter one of The Food of the Gods
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: and How It Came to Earth. Recording by alexey To Lander, Davis, California,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: www dot Alexytalander dot com.