The correct answer is: the foolishness of people.
Indeed, the passage is an example of dramatic irony. The narrator is describing a very disorderly crowd of very curious onlookers. The context is chapter four of the novel, which preceded the initial deadly attack of the Martians against humans.
The physical movement of “elbowing and jostling” one another foreshadows the very near attack that will soon commence. In this instance, such movement is one of a curious crowd that impatiently tries to get a better look at the cylinder. In the next instance it will be the movement of a crowd in panic, that runs frantically away from the heat ray that obliterates everything in its past.
The reason the author uses such dramatic irony is that the reader knows something the characters ignore.
