Page 4 of 9
More Books
|
By noon, almost without striking a blow, every dynamite cruiser and
warship on the eastern coast had been seized and manned by the
Terrorists. To the dismay of the authorities, it was found that more
than half the army and navy, officers and men alike, had obeyed the
mysterious summons that had gone throughout the land the night before;
and matters reached a climax when, as the clocks of Washington were
striking twelve, the President himself was arrested in the White House.
All the streets of Washington were in the hands of the Terrorists, and
at one o'clock Tremayne, after posting guards at all the approaches,
entered the Senate, and in the name of Natas proclaimed the Constitution
of the United States null and void, and the Government dissolved.
Then with a copy of the Constitution in his hand he proceeded to the
steps of the Capitol, and, in the presence of a vast throng of the armed
members of the American Section he proclaimed the Federation of the
English-speaking races of the world, in virtue of their bonds of kindred
blood and speech and common interests; and amidst a scene of the wildest
enthusiasm called upon all who owned those bonds to forget the
artificial divisions that had separated them into hostile nations and
communities, and to follow the leadership of the Brotherhood to the
conquest of the earth.
Then in a few strong and simple phrases he exposed the subservience of
the Government to the capitalist Ring, and described the inhuman compact
that it had entered into with the arch-enemies of national freedom and
personal liberty to crush the motherland of the Anglo-Saxon nations, and
for the sake of sordid gain to rivet the fetters of oppression upon the
limbs of the race which for a thousand Years had stood in the forefront
of the battle for freedom.
|