The task we set ourselves was threefold.  First, the weeding out from our circles of the secret agents of the Oligarchy.  Second, the organizing of the Fighting Groups, and outside of them, of the general secret organization of the Revolution.  And third, the introduction of our own secret agents into every branch of the Oligarchy—­into the labor castes and especially among the telegraphers and secretaries and clerks, into the army, the agents-provocateurs, and the slave-drivers.  It was slow work, and perilous, and often were our efforts rewarded with costly failures.

The Iron Heel had triumphed in open warfare, but we held our own in the new warfare, strange and awful and subterranean, that we instituted.  All was unseen, much was unguessed; the blind fought the blind; and yet through it all was order, purpose, control.  We permeated the entire organization of the Iron Heel with our agents, while our own organization was permeated with the agents of the Iron Heel.  It was warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot and counterplot.  And behind all, ever menacing, was death, violent and terrible.  Men and women disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades.  We saw them to-day.  To-morrow they were gone; we never saw them again, and we knew that they had died.

There was no trust, no confidence anywhere.  The man who plotted beside us, for all we knew, might be an agent of the Iron Heel.  We mined the organization of the Iron Heel with our secret agents, and the Iron Heel countermined with its secret agents inside its own organization.  And it was the same with our organization.  And despite the absence of confidence and trust we were compelled to base our every effort on confidence and trust.  Often were we betrayed.  Men were weak.  The Iron Heel could offer money, leisure, the joys and pleasures that waited in the repose of the wonder cities.  We could offer nothing but the satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal.  As for the rest, the wages of those who were loyal were unceasing peril, torture, and death.

Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness we were compelled to make the only other reward that was within our power.  It was the reward of death.  Out of necessity we had to punish our traitors.  For every man who betrayed us, from one to a dozen faithful avengers were loosed upon his heels.  We might fail to carry out our decrees against our enemies, such as the Pococks, for instance; but the one thing we could not afford to fail in was the punishment of our own traitors.  Comrades turned traitor by permission, in order to win to the wonder cities and there execute our sentences on the real traitors.  In fact, so terrible did we make ourselves, that it became a greater peril to betray us than to remain loyal to us.

The Revolution took on largely the character of religion.  We worshipped at the shrine of the Revolution, which was the shrine of liberty.  It was the divine flashing through us.  Men and women devoted their lives to the Cause, and new-born babes were sealed to it as of old they had been sealed to the service of God.  We were lovers of Humanity.