City of Endless Night
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Milo Hastings >> City of Endless Night
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The thought proved the harbinger of the reality, for Dr. Zimmerman
himself now entered. He was accompanied by Col. Hellar of the
Information Staff, a man of about Zimmern's age. Col. Hellar bore
himself with a gracious dignity; his face was sad, yet there gleamed
from his eye a kindly humor.
Marguerite, after exchanging a few pleasantries with Col. Hellar and
myself, tenderly kissed the old doctor on the forehead, and slipped out.
"You shall see much of her," said Zimmern, "she is the heart and fire of
our little group, the force that holds us together. But tonight I asked
her not to remain"--the old doctor's eyes twinkled with merriment,--"for
a young man cannot get acquainted with a beautiful woman and with ideas
at the same time."
~6~
"And now," said Zimmern, after we had finished our dinner, "I want Col.
Hellar to tell you more of the workings of the Information Service."
"It is a very complex system," began Hellar. "It is old. Its history
goes back to the First World War, when the military censorship began by
suppressing information thought to be dangerous and circulating
fictitious reports for patriotic purposes. Now all is much more
elaborately organized; we provide that every child be taught only the
things that it is decided he needs to know, and nothing more. Have you
seen the bulletins and picture screens in the quarters for the workers?"
"Yes," I replied, "but the lines were all in old German type."
"And that," said Hellar, "is all that the workers and soldiers can read.
The modern type could be taught them in a few days, but we see to it
that they have no opportunity to learn it. As it is now, should they
find or steal a forbidden book, they cannot read it."
"But is it not true," I asked, "that at one time the German workers were
most thoroughly educated?"
"It is true," said Hellar, "and because of that universal education
Germany was defeated in the First World War. The English contaminated
the soldiers by flooding the trenches with democratic literature dropped
from airplanes. Then came the Bolshevist regime in Russia with its
passion for revolutionary propaganda. The working men and soldiers read
this disloyal literature and they forced the abdication of William the
Great. It was because of this that his great grandson, when the House of
Hohenzollern was restored to the throne, decided to curtail universal
education.
"But while William III curtailed general education he increased the
specialized education and established the Information Staff to supervise
the dissemination of all knowledge."
"It is an atrocious system," broke in Zimmern, "but if we had not
abolished the family, curtailed knowledge and bred soldiers and
workers from special non-intellectual strains this sunless world of
ours could not have endured."
"Quite so," said Hellar, "whether we approve of it or not certainly
there was no other way to accomplish the end sought. By no other plan
could German isolation have been maintained."
"But why was isolation deemed desirable?" I enquired.
"Because," said Zimmern, "it was that or extermination. Even now we who
wish to put an end to this isolation, we few who want to see the world
as our ancestors saw it, know that the price may be annihilation."
"So," repeated Hellar, "so annihilation for Germany, but better so--and
yet I go on as Director of Information; Dr. Zimmern goes on as Chief
Eugenist; and you go on seeking to increase the food supply, and so we
all go on as part of the diabolic system, because as individuals we
cannot destroy it, but must go on or be destroyed by it. We have riches
here and privileges. We keep the labourers subdued below us, Royalty
enthroned above us, and the World State at bay about us, all by this
science and system which only we few intellectuals understand and which
we keep going because we can not stop it without being destroyed by
the effort."
"But we shall stop it," declared Zimmern, "we must stop it--with
Armstadt's help we can stop it. You and I, Hellar, are mere cogs; if we
break others can take our places, but Armstadt has power. What he knows
no one else knows. He has power. We have only weakness because others
can take our place. And because he has power let us help him find
a way."
"It seems to me," I said, "that the way must be by education. More men
must think as we do."
"But they can not think," replied Hellar, "they have nothing to
think with."
"But the books," I said, "there is power in knowledge."
"But," said Hellar, "the labourer can not read the forbidden book and
the intellectual will not, for if he did he would be afraid to talk
about it, and what a man can not talk about he rarely cares to read. The
love or hatred of knowledge is a matter of training. It was only last
week that I was visiting a boy's school in order to study the effect of
a new reader of which complaint had been made that it failed
sufficiently to exalt the virtue of obedience. I was talking with the
teacher while the boys assembled in the morning. We heard a great
commotion and a mob of boys came in dragging one of their companions who
had a bruised face and torn clothing. "Master, he had a forbidden book,"
they shouted, and the foremost held out the tattered volume as if it
were loathsome poison. It proved to be a text on cellulose spinning.
Where the culprit had found it we could not discover but he was sent to
the school prison and the other boys were given favours for
apprehending him."
"But how is it," I asked, "that books are not written by free-minded
authors and secretly printed and circulated?"
At this question my companions smiled. "You chemists forget," said
Hellar, "that it takes printing presses to make books. There is no press
in all Berlin except in the shops of the Information Staff. Every paper,
every book, and every picture originates and is printed there. Every
news and book distributor must get his stock from us and knows that he
must have only in his possession that which bears the imprint for his
level. That is why we have no public libraries and no trade in
second-hand books.
"In early life I favoured this system, but in time the foolishness of
the thing came to perplex, then to annoy, and finally to disgust me. But
I wanted the money and honour that promotion brought and so I have won
to my position and power; with my right hand I uphold the system and
with my left hand I seek to pull out the props on which it rests. For
twenty years now I have nursed the secret traffic in books and risked my
life many times thereby, yet my successes have been few and scattered.
Every time the auditors check my stock and accounts I tremble in fear,
for embezzling books is more dangerous than embezzling credit at
the bank."
"But who," I asked, "write the books?"
"For the technical books it is not hard to find authors," explained
Hellar, "for any man well schooled in his work can write of it. But the
task of getting the more general books written is not so easy. For then
it is not so much a question of the author knowing the things of which
he writes but of knowing what the various groups are to be permitted
to know.
"That writing is done exclusively by especially trained workers of the
Information Service. I myself began as such a writer and studied long
under the older masters. The school of scientific lying, I called it,
but strange to say I used to enjoy such work and did it remarkably well.
As recognition of my ability I was commissioned to write the book 'God's
Anointed.' Through His Majesty's approval of my work I now owe my
position on the Staff.
"His Majesty," continued Hellar, "was only twenty-six years of age when
he came to the throne, but he decided at once that a new religious book
should be written in which he would be proclaimed as 'God's Anointed
ruler of the World.'
"I had never before spoken with the high members of the Royal House, and
I was trembling with eagerness and fear as I was ushered into His
Majesty's presence. The Emperor sat at his great black table; before him
was an old book. He turned to me and said, 'Have you ever heard of the
Christian Bible?'
"My Chief had informed me that the new book was to be based on the old
Bible that the Christians had received from the Hebrews. So I said,
'Yes, Your Majesty, I am familiar with many of its words.'
"He looked at me with a gloating suspicion. 'Ah, ha,' he said, 'then
there is something amiss in the Information Service--you are in the
third rank of your service and the Bible is permitted only to the
first rank.'
"I saw that my statement unless modified would result in an embarrassing
investigation. 'I have never read the Christian Bible,' I said, 'but my
mother must have read it for when as a child I visited her she quoted to
me long passages from the Bible.'
"His Majesty smiled in a pleased fashion. 'That is it,' he said, 'women
are essentially religious by nature, because they are trusting and
obedient. It was a mistake to attempt to stamp out religion. It is the
doctrine of obedience. Therefore I shall revive religion, but it shall
be a religion of obedience to the House of Hohenzollern. The God of the
Hebrews declared them to be his chosen people. But they proved a servile
and mercenary race. They traded their swords for shekels and became a
byword and a hissing among the nations--and they were scattered to the
four corners of the earth. I shall revive that God. And this time he
shall chose more wisely, for the Germans shall be his people. The idea
is not mine. William the Great had that idea, but the revolution swept
it away. It shall be revived. We shall have a new Bible, based upon the
old one, a third dispensation, to replace the work of Moses and Jesus.
And I too shall be a lawgiver--I shall speak the word of God.'"
Hellar paused; a smile crept over his face. Then he laughed softly and
to himself--but Dr. Zimmern only shook his head sadly.
"Yes, I wrote the book," continued Hellar. "It required four years, for
His Majesty was very critical, and did much revising. I had a long
argument with him over the question of retaining Hell. I was bitterly
opposed to it and represented to His Majesty that no religion had ever
thrived on fear of punishment without a corresponding hope of reward.
'If you are to have no Heaven,' I insisted, 'then you must have
no Hell.'
"'But we do not need Heaven,' argued His Majesty, 'Heaven is
superfluous. It is an insult to my reign. Is it not enough that a man is
a German, and may serve the House of Hohenzollern?'
"'Then why,' I asked, 'do you need a Hell?' I should have been shot for
that but His Majesty did not see the implication. He replied coolly:
"'We must have a Hell because there is one way that my subjects can
escape me. It is a sin of our race that the Eugenics Office should have
bred out--but they have failed. It is an inborn sin for it is chiefly
committed by our children before they come to comprehend the glory of
being German. How else, if you do not have a Hell in your religion, can
you check suicide?'
"Of course there was logic in his contention and so I gave in and made
the Children's Hell. It is a gruesome doctrine, that a child who kills
himself does not really die. It is the one thing in the whole book that
makes me feel most intellectually unclean for writing it. But I wrote it
and when the book was finished and His Majesty had signed the
manuscript, for the first time in over a century we printed a bible on a
German press. The press where the first run was made we named 'Old
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