The Iron Heel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 324 pages of information about The Iron Heel.

The Iron Heel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 324 pages of information about The Iron Heel.
* The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard, though he cooperated, of course, with the European leaders.  The capture and secret execution of Everhard was the great event of the spring of 1932 A.D.  Yet so thoroughly had he prepared for the revolt, that his fellow-conspirators were able, with little confusion or delay, to carry out his plans.  It was after Everhard’s execution that his wife went to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the Sonoma Hills of California.

Small wonder that I am restless.  I think, and think, and I cannot cease from thinking.  I have been in the thick of life so long that I am oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear from dwelling upon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon to burst forth.  In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I can see, as I have seen in the past,* all the marring and mangling of the sweet, beautiful flesh, and the souls torn with violence from proud bodies and hurled to God.  Thus do we poor humans attain our ends, striving through carnage and destruction to bring lasting peace and happiness upon the earth.

     * Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.

And then I am lonely.  When I do not think of what is to come, I think of what has been and is no more—­my Eagle, beating with tireless wings the void, soaring toward what was ever his sun, the flaming ideal of human freedom.  I cannot sit idly by and wait the great event that is his making, though he is not here to see.  He devoted all the years of his manhood to it, and for it he gave his life.  It is his handiwork.  He made it.*

* With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out that Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned the Second Revolt.  And we to-day, looking back across the centuries, can safely say that even had he lived, the Second Revolt would not have been less calamitous in its outcome than it was.

And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write of my husband.  There is much light that I alone of all persons living can throw upon his character, and so noble a character cannot be blazoned forth too brightly.  His was a great soul, and, when my love grows unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not here to witness to-morrow’s dawn.  We cannot fail.  He has built too stoutly and too surely for that.  Woe to the Iron Heel!  Soon shall it be thrust back from off prostrate humanity.  When the word goes forth, the labor hosts of all the world shall rise.  There has been nothing like it in the history of the world.  The solidarity of labor is assured, and for the first time will there be an international revolution wide as the world is wide.*

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Project Gutenberg
The Iron Heel from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.