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IN one of Edgar Allen Poe’s tales he recounts how a little group of wrecked seafarers on a water-logged vessel, at the last extremity of starvation, are suddenly made delirious with joy at seeing a sail approaching them. As she came near them she seemed to be managed strangely and unseamanly as though she were scarcely steered at all, but come near she did, and their joy was too great for them to think much of this anomaly. At last they saw the seamen on board of her, and noted one in the bows especially who seemed to be looking at them with great curiosity, nodding also as though encouraging them to have patience, and smiling at them constantly, showing while he did so a set 2 of very white teeth, and apparently so anxious for their safety that he did not notice that the red cap that he had on his head was falling into the water.
All of a sudden, as the vessel neared them, and while their hearts were leaping with joy at their now certain deliverance, an inconceivable and horrible stench was wafted to them across the waters, and presently to their horror and misery they saw that this was a ship of the dead, the bowing man was a tottering corpse, his red cap a piece of his flesh torn from him by a sea-fowl; his amicable smile was caused by his jaws, denuded of the flesh, showing his white teeth set in a perpetual grin. So passed the ship of the dead into the landless ocean, leaving the poor wretches to their despair.
To us Socialists this Ship of the Dead is an image of the civilisation of our epoch, as the cast-away mariners are of the hopes of the humanity entangled in it. The cheerfully bowing man, whose signs of