The moon is down

by John Steinbeck

“Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn’t last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing. Can’t you understand that? Do you know what they are whispering behind doors?”

“I’m tired of people who have not been at war who know all about it.”

“People are getting together,” he said. “They don’t like to be conquered. Things are going to happen. You keep your eyes peeled, Annie. There’re going to be things for you to do.”

“That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world—how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.”

light in the daytime is a lonely thing.”

There is no law between you and us. This is war. Don’t you know you will have to kill all of us or we in time will kill all of you? You destroyed the law when you came in, and a new law took its place. Don’t you know that?”

“the one impossible job in the world, the one thing that can’t be done.” “And that is?” “To break man’s spirit permanently.”

“Alex, go, knowing that these men will have no rest, no rest at all until they are gone, or dead. You will make the people one. It’s a sad knowledge and little enough gift to you, but it is so. No rest at all.”

“A man of certain memories.”

The people of the conquered country settled in a slow, silent, waiting revenge.

Thus it came about that the conquerors grew afraid of the conquered and their nerves wore thin and they shot at shadows in the night.

The conquerors were under a terrible spiritual siege and everyone knew, conquered and conquerors, what would happen when the first crack appeared.

“Conquered and we’re afraid; conquered and we’re surrounded.”

“Maybe the Leader is crazy. Flies conquer the flypaper. Flies capture two hundred miles of new flypaper!”

“A time-minded people,” he said, “and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.”

“There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.”

‘If you think that by killing men you can prevent someone from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken.’

“Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.” He smiled apologetically. “You see, it is an easy thing to do, since the end for me is the same.”

“The people don’t like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir.”