“Extrav’gance? In the life of actool men an’ women? It don’t exist. Well, anyway, that’s my top-note before the _day-bakkle_. There’s an interval while the Great World-Wave is gatherin’ to sweep aside the Children of Presumption. Nothin’ eventuates for a while. The Machine of Virg’nised Civ’lisation functions by its own stored energy. And then, sir--_then_ the World-Wave crashes down on the White as it crashed on the Red Skin! (All this while old Rum-in-the-Cup is growin’ more an’ more dom’nant, as I told you.) But now, owin’ to the artificialised mentality of the victims and the immune pop’lation, its effects are Cataclysmic. ‘The Alcohol Appeal, held back for five Generations, wakes like a Cyclone.’ That’s the Horror I’m stressin’. And Europe, and Asia, and the Ghetto exploit America--cold. ‘A Virg’nised People let go all holts, and part with their All.’ It is no longer a Dom’nation--but an Obsession. Then a _Po_-ssession! Then come the Levelled Bay’nets of Europe. Why so? Because the liquor’s peddled out, sir, under armed European guards to the elderly, pleadin’ American Whites who pass over their title-deeds--their businesses, fact’ries, canals, sky-scrapers, town-lots, farms, little happy-lookin’ homes--everything--for it. You can see ’em wadin’ into the ocean, from Oyster Bay to Palm Beach, under great flarin’ sunsets of National Decay, to get at the stuff sooner. And Europe’s got ’em by the gullet--peddlin’ out the cases, or a single bottle at a time, to each accordin’ to his need--under the Levelled Bay’nets of Europe.” “But why lay all the responsibility on Europe?” I broke in. “Surely some progressive American Liquor Trust would have been in the game from the first?” “Sure! But the Appeal is National, and there are some things, sir, that the American People will _not_ stand for. It was Europe or nothing. Otherwise, I could not have stressed the effect of the Levelled Bay’nets of Europe. You see those bay’nets keepin’ order in the vast cathedrals of the new religions--the broken whisky bottles round the altar--the Priest himself, old and virg’nised, pleadin’ and prayin’ with his flock till, in the zeenith of his agony an’ his denunciations, he too falls an’ wallows with the rest of ’em! Extrav’gant? No! Logic. An’ so it spreads, from West to East, from East to West up to the dividin’ line where the European and the Asiatic Liquor Trust has parcelled out the Land o’ Presumption. No paltry rum-peddlin’ at tradin’-posts _this_ time, but mile-long electric freight-trains, surgin’ and swoopin’ from San Francisco an’ Boston with their seven thousand ton of alcohol, till they meet head-on at the Liquor Line, an’ you see the little American People fawnin’ an’ pleadin’ round their big wheels an’ tryin’ to slip in under the Levelled Bay’nets of Europe to handle and touch the stuff, even if they can’t drink it. It’s horrible--horrible! ‘The Wages of Sin!’ ‘The Death of the She-Dom’nated Sons of Presumption!’”