“I said that the mob had begun to burn defectives. But the Council changed that. The word ‘productivity’ was the new fetish, and, seeing that the murder of half the population would decrease the output, the Council resolved to imprison defectives in the workshops for life instead. But even this did not work. In 1999 Boss Rose became alarmed at the depopulation caused by the universal terror. Men denounced their brothers for small rewards, and wives their husbands, when they grew tired of them. Men and women were crossing the North Sea in tiny skiffs, or perishing in the waves, flying into the glens of Scotland, organizing in bands and living a hunted life within the forests that had begun to cover the country. Boss Rose issued an amnesty decree. Defectives who returned and were able to produce a hektone and a quarter monthly were not to be proscribed. I returned to Britain and secured employment in the Strangers’ Bureau, which had just been established, a post for which my education and experiences abroad qualified me. “Ten years ago Boss Rose fell under an assassin’s dagger. The Council, under the influence of Sanson, issued a decree that no faith was to be kept with defectives. Sanson, then supreme behind the mask of Lembken, began to harry the people. It was then he introduced his system of mating under Council supervision.” “It is abominable!” I cried. “Yet, like all our institutions, it has its roots far back in the past,” said David, “and only needed the abandonment of the Christian ethic to spring full-fledged into existence. The Prophet Wells foreshadowed it, as did also Ellen Key; and on this point the followers of Galton joined the Socialist government in a concerted attack upon monogamy. This, in fact, has been the crux of the old battle between Socialism and the Church: on the one hand the old ideal of the family as the unit of society, and marriage an indissoluble bond; on the other the individual, free from responsibility and seeking his own fancied freedom. Even in the Prophet’s time America had practically abandoned monogamy, while the anti-social propaganda was being secretly carried on by the teaching of what was called sex hygiene in the schools. When the churches compromised with divorce, Protestantism finally collapsed, and flung half the civilized world back into paganism.” “It was said that the children—” I began.