Graham stopped at the first sentence, and, looking up, beheld a foolish trumpet face from which this was brayed.  This was the General Intelligence Machine.  For a space it seemed to be gathering breath, and a regular throbbing from its cylindrical body was audible.  Then it trumpeted “Galloop, Galloop,” and broke out again.

“Paris is now pacified.  All resistance is over.  Galloop!  The black police hold every position of importance in the city.  They fought with great bravery, singing songs written in praise of their ancestors by the poet Kipling.  Once or twice they got out of hand, and tortured and mutilated wounded and captured insurgents, men and women.  Moral—­don’t go rebelling.  Haha!  Galloop, Galloop!  They are lively fellows.  Lively brave fellows.  Let this be a lesson to the disorderly banderlog of this city.  Yah!  Banderlog!  Filth of the earth!  Galloop, Galloop!”

The voice ceased.  There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the crowd.  “Damned niggers.”  A man began to harangue near them.  “Is this the Master’s doing, brothers?  Is this the Master’s doing?”

“Black police!” said Graham.  “What is that?  You don’t mean—­”

Asano touched his arm and gave him a warning look, and forthwith another of these mechanisms screamed deafeningly and gave tongue in a shrill voice.  “Yahaha, Yahah, Yap!  Hear a live paper yelp!  Live paper.  Yaha!  Shocking outrage in Paris.  Yahahah!  The Parisians exasperated by the black police to the pitch of assassination.  Dreadful reprisals.  Savage times come again.  Blood!  Blood!  Yaha!” The nearer Babble Machine hooted stupendously, “Galloop, Galloop,” drowned the end of the sentence, and proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on the horrors of disorder.  “Law and order must be maintained,” said the nearer Babble Machine.

“But,” began Graham.

“Don’t ask questions here,” said Asano, “or you will be involved in an argument.”

“Then let us go on,” said Graham, “for I want to know more of this.”

As he and his companion pushed their way through the excited crowd that swarmed beneath these voices, towards the exit, Graham conceived more clearly the proportion and features of this room.  Altogether, great and small, there must have been nearly a thousand of these erections, piping, hooting, bawling and gabbling in that great space, each with its crowd of excited listeners, the majority of them men dressed in blue canvas.  There were all sizes of machines, from the little gossiping mechanisms that chuckled out mechanical sarcasm in odd corners, through a number of grades to such fifty-foot giants as that which had first hooted over Graham.

This place was unusually crowded, because of the intense public interest in the course of affairs in Paris.  Evidently the struggle had been much more savage than Ostrog had represented it.  All the mechanisms were discoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made the huge hive buzz with such phrases as “Lynched policemen,” “Women burnt alive,” “Fuzzy Wuzzy.”  “But does the Master allow such things?” asked a man near him.  “Is this the beginning of the Master’s rule?”