“You referred to Peter Dreyer, but we are none of us great martyrs; we are everyday, ordinary men, and there’s where our work lies. Haven’t the thousands who have suffered and died in silence a still greater claim to be followed? They have gone down peacefully for the sake of the development, and have the strongest right to demand our belief in a peaceable development. It is just we that come from the lowest stratum who must preserve the historic development; never has any movement had so long and sad a previous history as ours! Suffering and want have taught us to accept the leadership, when the good has justice done to it; and you want to throw the whole thing overboard by an act of violence.”
They listened to him in silence now. He had caught their minds, but it was not knowledge they absorbed. At present they looked most like weary people who are told that they still have a long way to go. But he _would_ get them through!
“Comrades!” he cried earnestly, “perhaps we who are here shall not live to see the new, but it’s through us that it’ll some day become reality. Providence has stopped at us, and has appointed us to fight for it. Is that not an honor? Look! we come right from the bottom of everything— entirely naked; the old doesn’t hang about our clothes, for we haven’t any; we can clothe ourselves in the new. The old God, with His thousands of priests as a defence against injustice, we do not know; the moral of war we have never understood—we who have always been its victims. We believe in the Good, because we know that without the victory of goodness there will be no future. Our mind is light and can receive the light; we will lift up our little country and show that it has a mission on the earth. We who are little ourselves will show how the little ones keep up and assert themselves by the principle of goodness. We wish no harm to any one, therefore the good is on our side. Nothing can in the long run keep us down! And now go home! Your wives and children are perhaps anxious on your account.”
They stood for a moment as though still listening, and then dispersed in silence.
When Pelle sprang down from the cart, Morten came up and held out his hand. “You are strong, Pelle!” he said quietly.