England managed to crush her own proletarian revolution and to hold on to India, though she was brought to the verge of exhaustion.  Also, she was compelled to let her great colonies slip away from her.  So it was that the socialists succeeded in making Australia and New Zealand into cooperative commonwealths.  And it was for the same reason that Canada was lost to the mother country.  But Canada crushed her own socialist revolution, being aided in this by the Iron Heel.  At the same time, the Iron Heel helped Mexico and Cuba to put down revolt.  The result was that the Iron Heel was firmly established in the New World.  It had welded into one compact political mass the whole of North America from the Panama Canal to the Arctic Ocean.

And England, at the sacrifice of her great colonies, had succeeded only in retaining India.  But this was no more than temporary.  The struggle with Japan and the rest of Asia for India was merely delayed.  England was destined shortly to lose India, while behind that event loomed the struggle between a united Asia and the world.

And while all the world was torn with conflict, we of the United States were not placid and peaceful.  The defection of the great unions had prevented our proletarian revolt, but violence was everywhere.  In addition to the labor troubles, and the discontent of the farmers and of the remnant of the middle class, a religious revival had blazed up.  An offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists sprang into sudden prominence, proclaiming the end of the world.

“Confusion thrice confounded!” Ernest cried.  “How can we hope for solidarity with all these cross purposes and conflicts?”

And truly the religious revival assumed formidable proportions.  The people, what of their wretchedness, and of their disappointment in all things earthly, were ripe and eager for a heaven where industrial tyrants entered no more than camels passed through needle-eyes.  Wild-eyed itinerant preachers swarmed over the land; and despite the prohibition of the civil authorities, and the persecution for disobedience, the flames of religious frenzy were fanned by countless camp-meetings.

It was the last days, they claimed, the beginning of the end of the world.  The four winds had been loosed.  God had stirred the nations to strife.  It was a time of visions and miracles, while seers and prophetesses were legion.  The people ceased work by hundreds of thousands and fled to the mountains, there to await the imminent coming of God and the rising of the hundred and forty and four thousand to heaven.  But in the meantime God did not come, and they starved to death in great numbers.  In their desperation they ravaged the farms for food, and the consequent tumult and anarchy in the country districts but increased the woes of the poor expropriated farmers.