The Darkest Hours - 18 Chilling Dystopias in One Edition. Samuel Butler
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this point Director Blobber woke up and proposed that we should retire to his study for a glass of spirits and a cigar. Madame Blobber left us, and for the next half-hour I did my best to keep Mr. Blobber awake. But it was evident he wanted to go to bed, and by half-past nine I left the house, without any desire to see either of my hosts again.
Two days later I received another invitation, this time to dine with an Under-Secretary of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I had not presented any letters of introduction to him. I could therefore only suspect that this invitation was in some way due to Mr. Kwang. I went, of course; but I could hardly help wondering what was in store for me. Under-Secretary Count Krafft belonged to one of the great families and wore the uniform of the Second Class, with a badge to indicate that he was now in the Civil Service, although of course he had served as an officer in the army. His wife was apparently dining elsewhere, for I saw no sign of her, and we dined tête-à-tête in a small apartment in his large mansion in the Second Quarter. He was much more a man of the world than the others I had met, and in his manners resembled the men of good family whom I had met in Luniland. After a short preliminary talk, about nothing in particular, he said he was sorry that he had not learnt of my presence in Mecco when I first arrived, particularly as I was a friend of Mr. Kwang.
“The applications from foreigners for permission to travel in Meccania,” he said, by way of apology, “are not very numerous, and they are always referred to me for my signature. Yours reached us from Luniland, and was regarded as that of a mere globe-trotter. It is a pity you did not give the name of your friend, Mr. Kwang, as a reference. We think very highly of Mr. Kwang, and I should be pleased to give special facilities to any of his friends. I don’t suppose you have been neglected,” he added; “our officials have instructions to pay attention to the comfort of all Foreign Observers, and I am sure we do more for them than any Government I am acquainted with.”
We were by this time about half-way through dinner, and under its influence I ventured upon a mild joke.
“You do everything for them,” I said, “except leave them alone.”
He took this in good part.
“You have been in Luniland,” he remarked, “where every one does what he pleases. When you have spent as long a time here you will appreciate the wisdom of our arrangements. No doubt it seems a little irksome at first, and perhaps rather dull, especially as you have seen only the mere routine aspects of the life of the lower and middle classes—I use the old-fashioned terms, you see. But how else would you arrange matters? We cannot invite all foreign visitors, indiscriminately, to take part in our higher social life, and it would not be fair to our own citizens to allow foreigners a greater liberty than we allow to ourselves.”
“So you put us in a strait-jacket,” I said, laughing, “because you have to put your whole nation in a strait-jacket.”
“Our whole nation in a strait-jacket,” he replied, with a smile. “So that is how it strikes you, is it?”
“Well, isn’t it so?” I said. “Your children are sorted out while they are at school, their play is turned into useful employment, their careers are decided for them; hardly any of them rise out of their original class. Then everybody is under the eye of the Time Department, everybody is inspected and looked after from the cradle to the grave. It is almost impossible to commit a real crime or to set up any independent institution. There is, you must admit, a certain want of freedom in your arrangements.”
“But of what people are you speaking?” said Count Krafft. “You seem to have confined your attention to the lower classes. For them, in all countries, something of a strait-jacket is needed surely. Certainly it is for ours. We know our own people. When they are properly drilled and led they do wonders, but left to themselves they have always relapsed into laziness and barbarism, or else have burst out into anarchy and revolutionary fury.”
“But what scope does your system allow for their energies?” I asked. “Every aspect of life seems confined by your meticulous regulations.”
“That is an illusion,” he replied. “You see, we are a highly intellectual people and it is quite natural for us to formulate regulations. Modern life is necessarily complex, and the chief difference between us and other nations is that we recognise the complexity and organise our activities accordingly. We are simply in advance of other nations, that is all. Take a simple thing like Railways. We organised our Railway system to suit our national purposes instead of leaving them to commercial enterprise. Take the Education of the people. The State took charge of it fifty years before other nations recognised its vital importance. Take the question of Public Health; even those States which prate about individual liberty have had to follow in our wake and organise the medical service. Besides, it is only by organising the activities of the lower classes that the State can maintain its supremacy.”
“I see,” I replied, “the strait-jacket is for the lower classes. I thought it was a garment worn by everybody.”
“The expression was yours,” he said, with an indulgent smile. “We certainly do not regard it as a strait-jacket.”
“That is perhaps because the ruling classes do not wear it,” I replied.
“We do not recognise any classes as ruling classes,” he said suavely. “It is an obsolete expression.”
“But I thought you liked to recognise facts and call things by their proper names,” I replied.
“Certainly we do,” he answered. “But which are the ruling classes? The Super-State is the supreme and only ruler in Meccania.”
“Even in a Super-State,” I said, “I should have thought, from what you have said, that some groups of persons really wielded the power of the State.”
“Under the crude organisation of most foreign States that is quite possible,” answered Count Krafft; “but the essence of the Super-State is that, in it, power cannot be exercised without authority, and only these persons are authorised through whom the Super-State chooses to express its will. It places everybody in such a position as enables him to render the greatest service to the State that he is capable of rendering. Consequently no fault can be found, by any class or section, with the power exercised by any other class or section; because they are merely the instruments of the State itself.”
“That sounds a very comfortable doctrine for those who happen to wield the power,” I said. “It leaves no room for any ‘opposition.’”
“The Super-State would not be the Super-State if it contained within it any opposition,” he replied. “You ought to read the speech of Prince Mechow on the Super-State as the final expression of the Meccanian spirit,” he went on. “Foreigners are apt to confuse the Super-State with an Autocracy. It is essentially different. In an autocracy of the crude, old-fashioned type, an exterior power is visible, and your talk of ruling classes would be appropriate there. In the Super-State all the functions are so organised that the whole body politic acts as one man. We educate the will of the component units in such a way that all conflicting impulses are eradicated. After all, that was the ideal of the Catholic Church. Prince Mechow applied the same principle when he reformed our Educational system. A good Meccanian would no more seek to violate the obligations laid upon him by the Super-State than a good Catholic would seek to commit deadly sin.”
“Then there is no room for a Free Press in the Super-State,” I remarked.
He saw my point and replied, “A ‘Free Press,’ as you call it, would be an anachronism. What necessity is there for it? Its function has disappeared. It only existed during a brief historical phase in the earlier development of the modern State. Our great Prince Bludiron was the first to perceive its inconsistency with the line of true development. Prince Mechow absorbed all the functions of the independent professions, and among them those of the journalists, who were always an element of weakness in the State.”
“But what, then, is the object of this complete Unity which, as far as I can make out, the Super-State seems always to be aiming at?” I asked.
“The object?” he replied, almost bored