26
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Despi~e
and disobey!" chanted the crowd, crying out their new
Rlogan.
To despise, he thought, checking himself as he was leading the
delegates in the chanting of the slogan, to despise is also to hate, and
therefore to be bound. Self-criticism had tricked him by consenting to
hi~
vanity.
"Now this is the duty that I charge you with," he cried, making
a final attempt at self-justification through rhetoric. "Be brave! Re–
member your responsibility not only toward your country but to–
ward the world! The world looks upon you as its only hope! You,
the enslaved, are the last of the free men, and knowing this, you shall
not fail in your effort to create the new society!''
It was the demonstration of the crowd rather than his own effort
that reassured him and put him at peace. He stood on the platform,
stern as before, but smiling inwardly. "It was a good speech," he
thought, and yet he did not think this, for to think would have been
to recreate the division in himself between inner and outer man. The
applause of the delegates, the singing of the girls, the high adoration
and the hope as they all looked up to
him,
told him that he was
one-at one with
his
own words and at one with the duty to which
he had called his countrymen.
But even as the demonstration was going on, amid the applause
and the singing and shouting, the surging forward in joy, shots were
fired which at first were lost in the noise of the crowd. Then men
began to fall and the shouts became screams. A panic broke out as
the riflemen on the hill fired down their volleys and as the cordon of
police began drawing in on
all
sides, also firing on the crowd. Simul–
taneously a troop of Indefatigables, carbines levelled, rushed onto
the platform, surrounded the party leaders and handcuffed them, each
selecting a man to himself. Satya's own Indefatigable closed the brace–
let on his wric:t. The leaders were all dragged to a van that had been
drawn up behind the platform, locked in and driven away.
The oppression had begun.
3.
THE THIRD ALTERNATIVE
Satya found himself in jail. But precisely where he was, he could
not be sure, for the entire journey which had lasted, he believed,
nearlv a week, had been made in the closed van. The party leaders,
shackled to one another, had been let out of the van and allowed to
