Page:When It Was Dark.djvu/318

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298
When it Was Dark

being shaken with horrors — horrors growing daily, and that seemed as if the end would be unutterable night.

How the wind shrieked and wailed!

Εγω Ιωσηφ ὁ ἀπο Αριμαθειας.

The words were written in fire on his mind!

The wind was shrieking louder and louder.

The Atlantic boomed in one continuous burst of sound.

He looked once more at the leading article in the paper.

It was that article which was long afterwards remembered as the "Simple Statement" article.

The writer had spoken the thought that was by this time trembling for utterance on the lips and in the brains of all Englishmen — the thought which had never been so squarely faced, so frankly stated before.

Here and there passages started out more vividly than the rest. The words seemed to start out and stab him.


· · · · ·

"— So much for India, where, sprung from the same Cause, the indications are impossible to mistake.

"Let us now turn to the Anglo-Saxon sprung communities other than these Islands.

"In America we find a wave of lawlessness and fierce riot passing over the country, such as it has never known before.

"The Irishmen and Italians, who throng the congested quarters of the great cities, are robbing and murdering Protestants and Jews. The United States Legislature is paralysed between the necessity of keeping order and the impossibility of resolution in the face of this tremendous bouleversement of belief.

"From Australia the foremost prelate of the great