Farewell, Martha Quest

From time to time, people in crowds feel impelled to express feelings of one sort or another by marching in company along roads to some goal, carrying devices and banners: the Crusaders (to stretch time a little) of course, had no other means of locomotion but their own feet, or horses. But feelings about the use of nuclear energy for destruction were not expressed by rushing across continents in express trains, or circling the globe in jets, or even by driving an automobile across countries, but by putting one foot after another across earth. Strange that. Suppose none of these people had read about those earlier Marches, the Crusades? Or about the pilgrimages to holy places, on foot, across landscapes? Would they, we, still be putting one foot before the other across earth to say: Down With … or Ban the … or More Money for … Well, yes, it seems more than likely. To move from one point to another on one’s feet, as a means of expressing communal feeling about something or other seems basic.

From The Four-Gated City, Doris Lessing, 1970.