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men who’ve learned nothing except to submit. We’ll call it ’to serve.’ We’ll

give out medals for service. You’ll fall over one another in a scramble to see

who can submit better and more. There will be no other distinction to seek. No

other form of personal achievement. Can you see Howard Roark in the picture? No?

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Then don’t waste time on foolish questions. Everything that can’t be ruled, must

go. And if freaks persist in being born occasionally, they will not survive

beyond their twelfth year. When their brain begins to function, it will feel the

pressure and it will explode. The pressure gauged to a vacuum. Do you know the

fate of deep-sea creatures brought out to sunlight? So much for future Roarks.

The rest of you will smile and obey. Have you noticed that the imbecile always

smiles? Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch

of thought. But we’ll have neither God nor thought. Only voting by smiles.

Automatic levers--all saying yes...Now if you were a little more

intelligent--like your ex-wife, for instance--you’d ask: What of us, the rulers?

What of me, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey? And I’d say, Yes, you’re right. I’ll

achieve no more than you will. I’ll have no purpose save to keep you contented.

To lie, to flatter you, to praise you, to inflate your vanity. To make speeches

about the people and the common good. Peter, my poor old friend, I’m the most

selfless man you’ve every known. I have less independence than you, whom I just

forced to sell your soul. You’ve used people at least for the sake of what you

could get from them for yourself. I want nothing for myself. I use people for

the sake of what I can do to them. It’s my only function and satisfaction. I

have no private purpose. I want power. I want my world of the future. Let all

live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and none enjoy.

Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There’s equality in stagnation. All

subjugated to the will of all. Universal slavery--without even the dignity of a

master. Slavery to slavery. A great circle--and a total equality. The world of

the future."

"Ellsworth...you’re..."

"Insane? Afraid to say it? There you sit and the world’s written all over you,

your last hope. Insane? Look around you. Pick up any newspaper and read the

headlines. Isn’t it coming? Isn’t it here? Every single thing I told you? Isn’t

Europe swallowed already and we’re stumbling on to follow? Everything I said is

contained in a single word--collectivism. And isn’t that the god of our century?

To act together. To think--together. To feel--together. To unite, to agree, to

obey. To obey, to serve, to sacrifice. Divide and conquer--first. But

then--unite and rule. We’ve discovered that one at last. Remember the Roman

Emperor who said he wished humanity had a single neck so he could cut it? People

have laughed at him for centuries. But we’ll have the last laugh. We’ve

accomplished what he couldn’t accomplish. We’ve taught men to unite. This makes

one neck ready for one leash. We found the magic word. Collectivism. Look at

Europe, you fool. Can’t you see past the guff and recognize the essence? One

country is dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the

collective is all. The individual held as evil, the mass--as God, No motive and

no virtue permitted--except that of service to the proletariat. That’s one

version. Here’s another. A country dedicated to the proposition that man has no

rights, that the State is all. The individual held as evil, the race--as God. No

motive and no virtue permitted--except that of service to the race. Am I raving

or is this the cold reality of two continents already? Watch the pincer

movement. If you’re sick of one version, we push you into the other. We get you

coming and going. We’ve closed the doors. We’ve fixed the coin.

Heads--collectivism, and tails--collectivism. Fight the doctrine which

slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual. Give

up your soul to a council--or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it

up, give it up. My technique, Peter. Offer poison as food and poison as

antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective. Give the

fools a choice, let them have their fun--but don’t forget the only purpose you

have to accomplish. Kill the individual. Kill man’s soul. The rest will follow

automatically. Observe the state of the world as of the present moment. Do you

still think I’m crazy, Peter?"

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Keating sat on the floor, his legs spread out. He lifted one hand and studied

his fingertips, then put it to his mouth and bit off a hangnail. But the

movement was deceptive; the man was reduced to a single sense, the sense of

hearing, and Toohey knew that no answer could be expected.

Keating waited obediently; it seemed to make no difference; the sounds had

stopped and it was now his function to wait until they started again.

Toohey put his hands on the arms of his chair, then lifted his palms, from the

wrists, and clasped the wood again, a little slap of resigned finality. He

pushed himself up to his feet.

"Thank you, Peter," he said gravely. "Honesty is a hard thing to eradicate. I

have made speeches to large audiences all my life. This was the speech I’ll

never have a chance to make."

Keating lifted his head. His voice had the quality of a down payment on terror;

it was not frightened, but it held the advance echoes of the next hour to come:

"Don’t go, Ellsworth."

Toohey stood over him, and laughed softly.

"That’s the answer, Peter. That’s my proof. You know me for what I am, you know

what I’ve done to you, you have no illusions of virtue left. But you can’t leave

me and you’ll never be able to leave me. You’ve obeyed me in the name of ideals.

You’ll go on obeying me without ideals. Because that’s all you’re good for

now....Good night, Peter."

15.

"THIS is a test case. What we think of it will determine what we are. In the

person of Howard Roark, we must crush the forces of selfishness and antisocial

individualism--the curse of our modern world--here shown to us in ultimate

consequences. As mentioned at the beginning of this column, the district

attorney now has in his possession a piece of evidence--we cannot disclose its

nature at this moment--which proves conclusively that Roark is guilty. We, the

people, shall now demand justice."

This appeared in "One Small Voice" on a morning late in May. Gail Wynand read it

in his car, driving home from the airport. He had flown to Chicago in a last

attempt to hold a national advertiser who had refused to renew a

three-million-dollar contract. Two days of skillful effort had failed; Wynand

lost the advertiser. Stepping off the plane in Newark, he picked up the New York

papers. His car was waiting to take him to his country house. Then he read "One

Small Voice."

He wondered for a moment what paper he held. He looked at the name on the top of

the page. But it was the Banner, and the column was there, in its proper place,

column one, first page, second section.

He leaned forward and told the chauffeur to drive to his office. He sat with the

page spread open on his lap, until the car stopped before the Banner Building.

He noticed it at once, when he entered the building. In the eyes of two

reporters who emerged from an elevator in the lobby; in the pose of the elevator

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man who fought a desire to turn and stare back at him; in the sudden immobility

of all the men in his anteroom, in the break of a typewriter’s clicking on the

desk of one secretary, in the lifted hand of another--he saw the waiting. Then

he knew that all the implications of the unbelievable were understood by

everyone on his paper.

He felt a first dim shock; because the waiting around him contained wonder in

anyone’s mind about the outcome of an issue between him and Ellsworth Toohey.

But he had no time to take notice of his own reactions. He had no attention to

spare for anything except a sense of tightness, a pressure against the bones of

his face, his teeth, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose--and he knew he must

press back against that, keep it down, hold it.

He greeted no one and walked into his office. Alvah Scarret sat slumped in a

chair before his desk. Scarret had a bandage of soiled white gauze on his

throat, and his cheeks were flushed. Wynand stopped in the middle of the room.

The people outside had felt relieved: Wynand’s face looked calm. Alvah Scarret

knew better.

"Gail, I wasn’t here," he gulped in a cracked whisper that was not a voice at

all. "I haven’t been here for two days. Laryngitis, Gail. Ask my doctor. I

wasn’t here. I just got out of bed, look at me, I’ve got a hundred and three,

fever, I mean, the doctor didn’t want me to, but I...to get up, I mean, Gail, I

wasn’t here, I wasn’t here!"

He could not be certain that Wynand heard. But Wynand let him finish, then

assumed the appearance of listening, as if the sounds were reaching him,

delayed. After a moment, Wynand asked:

"Who was on the copy desk?"

"It...it went through Alien and Falk."

"Fire Harding, Allen, Falk and Toohey. Buy off Harding’s contract. But not

Toohey’s. Have them all out of the building in fifteen minutes."

Harding was the managing editor; Falk, a copy reader; Alien, the slot man, head

of the copy desk; all had worked on the Banner for more than ten years. It was

as if Scarret had heard a news flash announcing the impeachment of a President,

the destruction of New York City by a meteor and the sinking of California into

the Pacific Ocean.

"Gail!" he screamed. "We can’t!"

"Get out of here."

Scarret got out.

Wynand pressed a switch on his desk and said in answer to the trembling voice of

the woman outside:

"Don’t admit anyone."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

He pressed a button and spoke to the circulation manager:

"Stop every copy on the street."

570

"Mr. Wynand, it’s too late! Most of them are..."

"Stop them."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

He wanted to put his head down on the desk, lie still and rest, only the form of

rest he needed did not exist, greater than sleep, greater than death, the rest

of having never lived. The wish was like a secret taunt against himself, because

he knew that the splitting pressure in his skull meant the opposite, an urge to

action, so strong that he felt paralyzed. He fumbled for some sheets of clean

paper, forgetting where he kept them. He had to write the editorial that would

explain and counteract. He had to hurry. He felt no right to any minute that

passed with the thing unwritten.

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while

his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who

heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution,

like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the

scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens

when a thought takes shape in words.

He heard the rumble, the vibration in the walls of his office, in the floor. The

presses were running off his afternoon paper, a small tabloid, the Clarion. He

smiled at the sound. His hand went faster, as if the sound were energy pumped

into his fingers.

He had dropped his usual editorial "we." He wrote: "...And if my readers or my

enemies wish to laugh at me over this incident, I shall accept it and consider

it the payment of a debt incurred. I have deserved it."

He thought: It’s the heart of this building, beating--what time is it?--do I

really hear it or is it my own heart?--once, a doctor put the ends of his

stethoscope into my ears and let me hear my own heartbeats--it sounded just like

this--he said I was a healthy animal and good for many years--for

many...years...

"I have foisted upon my readers a contemptible blackguard whose spiritual

stature is my only excuse. I had not reached a degree of contempt for society

such as would have permitted me to consider him dangerous. I am still holding on

to a respect for my fellow men sufficient to let me say that Ellsworth Toohey

cannot be a menace."

They say sound never dies, but travels on in space--what happens to a man’s

heartbeats?--so many of them in fifty-six years--could they be gathered again,

in some sort of condenser, and put to use once more? If they were re-broadcast,

would the result be the beating of those presses?

"But I have sponsored him under the masthead of my paper, and if public penance

is a strange, humiliating act to perform in our modern age, such is the

punishment I impose upon myself hereby."

Not fifty-six years of those soft little drops of sound a man never hears, each

single and final, not like a comma, but like a period, a long string of periods

on a page, gathered to feed those presses--not fifty-six, but thirty-one, the

other twenty-five went to make me ready--I was twenty-five when I raised the new

masthead over the door--Publishers don’t change the name of a paper--This one

does--The New York Banner--Gail Wynand’s Banner...

571

"I ask the forgiveness of every man who has ever read this paper."

A healthy animal--and that which comes from me is healthy--I must bring that

doctor here and have him listen to those presses--he’ll grin in his good, smug,

satisfied way, doctors like a specimen of perfect health occasionally, it’s rare

enough--I must give him a treat--the healthiest sound he ever heard--and he’ll

say the Banner is good for many years....

The door of his office opened and Ellsworth Toohey came in.

Wynand let him cross the room and approach the desk, without a gesture of

protest. Wynand thought that what he felt was curiosity--if curiosity could be