THE DEVIL'S MOTOR-CAR.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVII, Issue 50, 20 December 1910, Page 1

THE DEVIL'S MOTOR-CAR.

ADVENTURES OF THE EVIL ONE! MARIE COEELLFS ALLEGORY. Miss Marie Corolli has written a prosepoem of an extraordinary character, in which she describes the adventures of the Evil One, who, at the steering wheel of a diabolical motor-car, rides furiously over the world, crushing mankind beneath his grinding-wheel. Here (writes the 'Daily Chronicle') is her description of the Fiend:— "He who stood within the Car, steering it straight onward, was clothed in black and crowned with fire; large batlike wings flared out on either side of him in woven webs of sinoko and flame, and his face was white as bleached bono. Like glowing embers his eyes burned in their immense sockets, shedding terrific glances .through the star-strewn space —and on his thin lips there was a frozen shadow of a smile more cruel than hate, more deadly than despair." As he drives on fast and furiously, with grinding thunderous wheels, and with a stench and muffled roar, he sings a song of horrid hate against mankind, of frightful irony against its follies and vices, of terrific denunciation and appalling threats : "On, on, over all beauty, all tenderness, all truth I ride—l, the A anger and Destroyer, the Torturer of Souls <- e Ti A n Ch " enemy of God! The Kingdom oi fcLell grows wide and deep—praise be to Man who makes it! I count up all my growing possessions in the cv<rbreedmg spawn of human 'nst and avarice—l breathe and live and rejoice in the poison vapors of human Selfishness! The men of these latter days are my food and sustenance, the woaun my choice morsels, my dainty delicatjs!" i To men of wealth, to men gre»dv for gold, the Fiend yells in derisive rage • Build with it, buy with, q,imhh with it, sell your souls and bodies frr it. ... Feed and fatten yourselves with | the lusts of auimalism till tlio cancer-of sin makes oi you a putrefaction and an eyesore in the sight of the sun!" To the vicious, the greedy, the vaiu he otters a devilish invitation in lani guage which is rather shocking : "Come ye blown and bursting windbags of world's conceit and vain pretension ! Come ye greedy maws of gluttony—ye human pottles of drink--yo wolves of vice! Come ye shameless women of lusts and lies and vanities!" Tho Devil, like Miss Mario- Corelli, has no mercy for the newspaper press The richness of "his language, the vtry depth of his hell, are reserved lor newspaper editors and journalists. In fact he utters the most flagrant libels against fourth Estate:—

Roll out your columns of vaporous notoriety, y 6 printing presses o; : tho world -spread wide the fame of tho Anarchist and Courtesan— mock and revile the spirits of the wiso and fue noise abroad the name of the Murderer and treat tho Poet with derison-mo flattery to the rich and scorn to \he humble, teach nothing but tho wit of lying, add venom to the tonguo of scan--8 Up tho graves of the groat, and kill tho reputations of tho Iruve and pure!" Tearing through space the diabolical motorist who eets a bad oxamnlo to an age of speed destroys everything en his wild night ride, and the phantoms of his victims cling to the bloody wheels of his chariot. The innocent, rhe wise and the brave suffer destruction wth those guilty of tho foul crim-s of aviation and motoring. Not even the Churches are spared, because they also according to the Devil and Miss Corolli! are ; guilty. They are "pretenders of holiness and thieves of virtue." All perish. No little one is saved, and after the annihilation of mankind the Devil gives his congratulations to Gid ; that the fair world has been cleansed of ! "a pigmy race":— "Gradually, gently, and by faint dei grees, a glimmer of pale gold divided the darkness with the wavering rise of dawn—a cool wind parted tho air into sweet breaths of fragrance—an 1 m tho centre of the awful dtill.ites i scarlet sun rose slowly, fixing the red seal of God on the closed history of I he wot Id!" Miss Marie Corelli's extraordinary allegory, full of bitterness, of rago ui;d fury against the evils of tiie modem world, is so cruel that its lesson is lost in exaggeration. The world 'e not quite sq bad! Even a motorist is not l-eces-sarily a monster, and an aeroplane te not the winged chariot of vice.