Some of the men, again, lay sprawling about on benches, merely looking
on and doing nothing--yet with a lively satisfaction in their faces.
They ought to have been in the fields or the workshops. And everywhere
among the men, looking on at the drill, sitting in the tents, walking
beside them, sitting with them on the benches, were the girls, dressed
and adorned after the bad old false style, in which the women pretended
to heighten and set off what they are pleased to call their charms by
garments fantastically cut, the immodest display of an arm or a neck,
hair curiously dressed and adorned, colored ribbons, flowers stuck in
their hats, and ornaments tied on wherever it was possible. And such
joy and pride in these silly decorations! No one would believe how
these girls looked at each other and themselves. But to think that
the poor silly men should have fallen into the nets thus clumsily
spread for them! And this, after all our demonstrations to show that
woman bears in every limb the mark of inferiority, so that contempt,
or at least pity, and not admiration at all, to say nothing of the
extraordinary foolish passion of Love, should be the feeling of man for
woman! However, at this moment I was naturally too much occupied with
my own danger to think of these things.
One thing, however, one could not avoid remarking. The Rebellion must
have spread with astonishing rapidity. It was no longer a company of
fifteen or sixteen men--it was a great Army that we saw. And there was
no longer any doubt possible as to the movement. The Past was restored.
In the faces of the young men and the girls, as we passed through them,
I remarked, sick with terror as I was, the old, old expression which I
hoped we had abolished forever--the eagerness, the unsatisfied desire,
and the Individualism. Yes--the Individualism. I saw on their faces,
plain to read, the newly-restored Rights of Property.
Why, as I walked through one of the groups, composed of men and women,
one of the men suddenly rushed forward and struck another in the face
with his fist.
"She's my girl!" he cried, hoarsely. "Touch her if you dare."
They closed round the pair and led them off.
"Going to fight it out," said one of our Guards.
To fight it out! What a Fall! To fight it out!--To call a woman--or
anything else--your own after all our teaching. And to fight it out!
And all this arrived at in three weeks!
These things I observed, I say, as one observes things in a dream, and
remembers afterwards.
My heart failed me altogether, and I nearly fainted, when we stopped at
a long tent before which floated a flag on a flagstaff.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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