Chapter II: Part 2

Now the Servers were one of a group of small nations, heretofore referred to as the Bally-Khan States, and they had a powerful friend and protector in the politically far more important nation of the RUSH-NOTS. The Rush-Nots were named for the slowness of their national progress. For many centuries there had been among the Nazarrano nations a pronounced prejudice against the Heebrons, notwithstanding the fact that NAZARRO Himself had been a Heebron and had followed the Heebron faith. Heebrons were unscrupulously persecuted, robbed, tortured, murdered, their possessions frequently confiscated, and they were permitted to dwell only in special sections set aside for them. These criminal proceedings had long ago been abolished in all the other Nazarrano countries, but the Rush-Nots continued to indulge in these sordid amusements of the long-forgotten past. In all other Nazarrano countries, moreover, the power of the ruler had been limited by giving his subjects a share in determining the laws that govern them. Among the Rush-Nots the ruler still had absolute power over his subjects as the rulers in other countries had had in the long-forgotten past. So you can easily understand that in matters of progress and social improvement they rushed not. Nevertheless, by means of bloodshed, the Rush-Nots had acquired a goodly proportion of the crust of Mars. So the Rush-Nots, being friends of the Bally-Khan nations to which group the Servers belonged, parleyed with the Austrich-ans and told them to treat the Servers more politely, and threatened that otherwise they would be compelled to direct their engines of destruction very impolitely against the Austrich-ans.

We have stated before that Brittia was desirous of permanent peace. So, indeed, were the Rush-Nots, because they, too, had obtained more than their due proportion of Martian territory. So, too, were the previously mentioned Frank-Aulians or Fringe, who in fact had entered into an intimate bond of friendship with the Rush-Nots. The Brits therefore, to all appearances, did their best by means of dip-low-macy to avoid the threatening war. But the Austrich-ans hurriedly commenced to make war preparations; and when the Rush-Nots saw this, they followed suit.

Whether or not the Austrich-ans had acted all this time with the secret approval of the great WILMOSTASH, or the Two-Ton explosive-manufacturers, may forever be a question fit for debate. Yet so much is certain that, at this momentous stage of the international quarrel, WILMOSTASH peremptorily told the Rush-Nots to turn their destructive apparatus back from the Austrich-an borders, so that Austricha might do to the Servers whatever served the Austrich-an-Two-Tonian interests best. The Rush-Nots told the mighty WILMOSTASH to go to Halifax, a sort of meeting-place where it is always hot to suffocation.

Did the Two-Tons thereupon at once attack the Rush-Nots? No, they Did-not. Aware that the Fringe were an important factor in various anti-Two-Tonian protective alliances, they anticipated that the Fringe would beyond question actively side with the Rush-Nots. As a consequence, you might have expected the Two-Tons to start a vigorous campaign against the Rush-Nots, meanwhile heavily guarding their borders against invasion by the Fringe. And in case the Fringe would subsequently have grown too gay, the Two-Tons might then justly have handled them in accordance with the rules dominating such international pastimes. As their quarrel was with the Rush-Nots, this of course would to all appearances have been the logical plan to follow. Yet, even this plainly outlined course the Two-Tons Did-not take. Under the impression that the Rush-Not armies are heavy and slow, and that the Fringe are light and quick as lightning; convinced moreover that their chances of victory lay in offensive action, and that a defensive attitude might imperil their cause, the Two-Tons decided, before assailing the Rush-Nots, first to attack the Fringe.

In explanation of the odd-sounding name of the latter nation, let me state that the Frank-Aulians or Fringe are named for the frankness with which they own and exhibit their vices as well as their virtues. Aulians is sometimes spelled Owlians and evidently refers to the fact that many of their great men are known to have been night-owls. The shorter name Fringe is applied to them on account of their artistic inclinations. Although they have contributed a goodly share to Martian science, philosophy and the industries, their most pronounced characteristic is that they are so eminently fond of profuse decoration. They decorate their homes, their theatres, their churches, and their minds. Thus they have decorated the Nazarrano-Darviniano form of civilization with a harmoniously colored fringe of politeness, a bit fuzzy, quite a bit inclined toward dip-low-matic deceit, but, all in all, rather artistic.

When the Two-Tons had decided to attack the Fringe, did they cross that part of their border that leads directly into the Fringe territory? No, they Did-not. By George, king of the Brits, I am almost inclined hereafter to call the Two-Tons the Did-Nots! Instead of this, they decided to run their destructive engines across two small and perfectly nootril countries, one known as Luxury-burgh, and the other inhabited by a valiant little nation whose name is fast going down in Martian history as the BELL-GIANTS. Their country contains all sorts of beautiful old buildings and churches renowned all over Mars for their marvelous bells and chimes; and small as be their number, they are, nevertheless, known as the Giants, because in case of need they are willing to undertake gigantic tasks, from which many another small nation would shrink in fear. Accordingly, the Bell-Giants obstructed the passage of the Two-Tons, and undertook a struggle in which they were bound to be defeated.

And here comes a typical instance of Brit deep-low-macy. Because the maniacal envy of nation toward nation had become unbearable even to the deluded Martians, the nations had signed certain agreements for the protection of what was called the buffer-countries, territories whose neutrality was to be respected in case the bigger nations would ever go to war. The Two-Tons had signed this agreement, and so had the Brits. Now after the Brits had endeavored to prevent the war, they published the letters and telegrams which they had exchanged for that purpose with the various foreign dip-low-mats. From this correspondence it appears that the Two-Tons had made an inquiry to find out whether the Brits would look on unmoved or whether they would take a hand in the upheaval, in case the Two-Tons were to start the international cataclasm. In reply, the Brits carefully controlled their muscles and said, they were not at all certain what they would do. May-be they were at first indeed undecided. But then one of the Brit dip-low-mats asked one of the medal-bearing chesty Two-Tons whether Two-Tonia would agree not to annex any part of the Fringe territory. The Two-Ton replied that Two-Tonia would positively refrain from any such glaring violation of the Nazarrano precepts. Whereupon the Brit, who in the meantime had telegraphed to his government, returned to the weighty Two-Ton to ask whether his promise also held good for the Fringe _colonies_. The Two-Ton smilingly remarked that even NAZARRO Himself could not expect the virtue of the Two-Tons to carry them so far as to stoop to so absurd a self-abnegation. And as the Brits were not anxious to have a colonial competitor with habits so deep-digging as those of the Two-Tons, the Brits undoubtedly made up their minds then and there not to look on unmoved. So when the Two-Tons started to cross the territory of the Bell-Giants and forced them to a hopeless self-defense, the Brits rose in ire and made a noisy hallabaloo about the violation of the neutrality treaty, and used this as an excuse to join the opponents of the Two-Tons. Thus once again, they hid their selfishness behind a rather transparent veneer of noble indignation and ideals.

And now the war is on, and an insensate pandemonium reigns in the countries which we once looked upon as civilized. An amount of energy is being wasted that, if properly applied, could have led to the realization of many a wonderful social ideal, many a hope long cherished by humanity in vain. An amount of wealth is being squandered on destruction which, applied in conjunction with this vast amount of energy, could have built castles of education beyond our present dreams, institutes of mind-broadening influence upon all the suffering human race. An amount of blood and life is being sacrificed, compared to which the human sacrifices to the gods of yore dwindle into utter insignificance. And all this for the vain-glory that some one nation might harvest, by wantonly destroying the pride of existence, the happiness, the strength, the life-blood of another. What the outcome of this blind folly will be, no one, alas, as yet can tell.

Here came once more a pause of silence, and the Martian philosopher thereupon entrusted to Professor FANSEE some further personal confidences. The country I live in, he said, was discovered by an enterprising traveler for whom many statues have been erected and who is therefore popularly referred to as COLUMN-BUST. When he discovered our country he exclaimed “Eureka!” which means in one of the dead Martian languages: I have found it. As a result of this exclamation, my country was called AM-EUREKA. I may say with pride, and with a humane lack of prejudice entirely uninfluenced by the usual nationality-mania, that my country is one of the few on Mars in which petty jealousy and malice against other nations is totally unknown. Although the Nazarrano and Darviniano faiths form a mechanical mixture among us just as among other civilized nations, yet the Heebron and Nazarrano precepts are beyond all else dear to us; not so much for their supposedly divine origin, but far more so for their humane and beneficent character. We are not double-faced, either nationally or internationally. In the conduct of business as well as in our international relations we are broadminded. When we say we are in favor of permanent peace, we mean what we say, without hiding any selfish motives. When we say we are, if need be, ready to fight for a noble cause, there is nothing in our minds except this noble cause, and we have no by-thoughts to hide.

Now I was born on that hemisphere on which the struggle is now going on, and to which we in Am-Eureka, owing to our strictly neutral principles, nowadays refer as YOUR-ROPE. Am-Eureka became my country by adoption; and in Your-Rope I had frequented artistic circles from which I imbibed exceedingly lofty ideals, such as Art for Art’s sake, Science for the sake of Science, the preference of other aims to money-hunting, and so on. And not finding similar ideals catered to in my adopted country, I personally had always considered the inhabitants of Your-Rope as on a plane of civilization far higher than that reached in Am-Eureka.

The drama at present being played in that hemisphere of so-called high ideals has absolutely changed this point of view. The simple precepts of NAZARRO and of the earlier Heebron teachers are the best that the Martians can desire for their guidance. The brotherhood of nations and the peaceable attitude of man toward man no matter on what part of Mars he happens to have been born, is an ideal at least as inspiring as Art for Art’s sake. The high flying and loudly proclaimed ideals of Your-Rope are not the ideals of humanity at large. They are fitted for but a small class of men who by these ideals are inspired toward producing things of wonderful beauty, highly idealistic, but utterly superfluous to human comfort and welfare. The peace-ideal of the Am-Eurekans, unobtrusive, subconsciously active in their heart and every-day actions, not claiming a sky-reaching mental superiority, is not only fit for all Martians, young and old, high and low, able and unable, hence also for those engaged in the production of useful things needed in every-day life, but it is moreover an ideal which would benefit all civilized countries and aid the further development of science, industry, and mental as well as physical civilization.

Here the Martian philosopher seemed to have been interrupted. A few minutes elapsed before the Zee-rays continued to do their interesting work. My assistant remarks, he subsequently said, that Am-Eureka itself but recently might have gone to war with a neighboring country called MAKE-SICK-O, and that the Am-Eurekans actually sent a fleet to WE’RE-ON-A-CRUISE. And indeed, such things may sometimes be necessary. But our behavior in We’re-on-a-Cruise is typical of the difference between Am-Eurekan and Your-Ropean warfare. When we Am-Eurekans entered We’re-on-a-Cruise, there were snipers there who shot at us from windows and housetops. One must expect these things on a campaign of invasion. The private citizens naturally are your enemies as much as are the uniformed soldiers. So, what did we do? We shot back at them whenever it was unavoidable. Whenever possible, we arrested them. We further saw to it that all citizens surrendered all weapons in their possession. This work done, we started to improve the sanitary conditions of the town. We made the town more comfortable to live in than it had ever been under Make-sickan rule. On the other hand, it is said of the Two-Tons that they conquered among others a town called Low-Vein situated in the territory of the Bell-Giants. Quite naturally they found snipers there. Did they meet the situation as humanely as we had done? No, they Did-not. So passionately enraged were they, on the contrary, at this inevitable discovery, that they burned, shelled, and destroyed the larger part of the town and its inhabitants; and a town this in which the very buildings were treasures of mediaeval art. After this, further sanitary improvements were almost wholly superfluous.

No, even though circumstances may have compelled us to send that fleet, even though similar circumstances may again compel us to similar acts, and even though we may thus find ourselves some day engaged in bloody war with some other nation, in our minds and in our breasts we bear no malice toward either the Make-sickans or any other nation on all our vast planet. We might fight, but the fight having been fought, we would gladly shake hands, and feel sincerely sorry that we had been drawn into a nasty quarrel. And this, without dip-low-macy, without manipulation of the facial muscles, wholeheartedly, as befits a good sport.

Separated as we are, by an expansive ocean, from the main seat of nationality-mania, we look on unprejudiced, pitying deeply the Martians who are forced to suffer by its fearful consequences, and doing what we can to stay at least the starvation that might follow in the struggle’s dreadful wake.

Nor do we take sides in this horrible calamity. Why call one madman a fool and jolly the other madman by telling him that he is right? We, on this side of the rocking pond, do not care a rap whether the Brits, the Two-Tons, or any other nation attains to world-supremacy, provided that, this supremacy reached, they shall not assume an overbearing attitude or dictate to us how we are to conduct our business. We Am-Eurekans do not aspire at supremacy. Our institutions are founded on equality; and, indeed, equality and supremacy cannot easily be made to harmonize. All we aspire to attain is what a clean-minded and healthful development of our resources and intelligence may bring us in the natural course of events. All we advise other nations is to be wise enough not maliciously to interfere with this development.

Did the Two-Tons believe the Brits were maliciously interfering with their natural growth? Then they should have gone straight for the Brits, without starting a campaign against the Fringe or the Rush-Nots, and without a destructive passage through a small country that never had been accused of malicious interference. Were the Brits under the impression that their natural development was maliciously interfered with by the Two-Tons? Then they should have settled their quarrel openly and directly with the Two-Tons, without waiting deep-low-matically for a “noble” excuse that they all along expected to be furnished them. We Am-Eurekans believe in a fair fight when a fight cannot be avoided; stripped and without gloves if need be; but no hitting below the belt.

When the war broke out, we in Am-Eureka noticed that the actual hostilities had been started by the Two-Tons. We noticed that, instead of limiting their activities to assailing the nation they were about to attack, they forced their way through other countries, one of these being the land of the Bell-Giants, against the Bell-Giants’ clearly expressed desire to the contrary. The Bell-Giants were defending naught but their right to keep aloof from the mad struggle; and when, owing to the narrow limits of their territory and resources, they were defeated, their fields devastated and their towns destroyed, we naturally sympathized with the Bell-Giants in their pitiable plight. There are Two-Tons who migrated to my adopted country but who are still in close sympathy with the Two-Tonian nationality-mania, and who saw in this attitude on our part the evidence of ill-will against Two-Tonia. Yet before these grim events no sign of any such ill-will or hatred had ever been detected. Nor will it be possible to detect any after the struggle for supremacy shall have come to an end. We in Am-Eureka love justice, and justice necessarily involves a deep-seated consideration for the rights of others, and a systematic avoidance of any passionate violence, especially of violence in the wrong direction. But the Two-Tons may be at ease. Our sympathies are not with the backward Rush-Nots or with the deep-low-matic Brits, either. Were they to indulge in unjust acts, we would detest these acts as definitely in them as in any other Martians. Only, while we may disapprove of an act of injustice in any nation, that does not mean that we bear malice toward the nation as such, nor that we fail to appreciate whatever virtue or wisdom that nation may possess.

After thus having described the attitude of his own country, the Martian philosopher declared that this was in reality not the main purpose of his reflections. What he wished to emphasize was, he said, that the whole deplorable conflict could have been avoided if only the Martian nations had taken measures to cure, at least in part, the nationality-mania that at any time is likely blindly to arouse their destructive passions. To you, he said, at the distance at which you see our planet, all of our globe must make the impression of an insane asylum, where nationality-mania and nationalized megalomania are the two mental aberrations most prominently prevalent. But in reality, he assured us, these people are not insane. They are simply deluded, carried away by a wrong and intensely harmful conception of honor and of Martian greatness.

My most intense hope is, continued the Martian philosopher, that by proper mental training we may be enabled to re-direct their quasi-noble impulses into better and more constructive channels. As I contemplate the struggling armies, I see their banners raised high above the surging regiments. But I see the national colors dimmed with powder-smoke and the dust of the battle, so that now the banners look all alike to me; and over the smutty surface of every one of them, I see the word FOLLY glaring in the vivid red of warm young blood. How much better will it be to see in the near future the same banners, the national marks of distinction dimmed by factory smoke and the dust of the quarries, and to see written on all of them in letters of gold: FOR THE FEDERATION AND WELL-BEING OF HUMANITY; PEACE AND GOOD-WILL TO ALL MEN OF ALL NATIONS.

At this moment Professor FANSEE bethought himself of a question that he had all along intended to put to the Martian philosopher, but that had so far been crowded out by the Martian’s interesting narrative. “For what purpose,” he finally asked, “did you Martians construct those straight-lined canals that cross your planet?” Came from the Martian the counter-question: “What canals?” “Well,” replied Professor FANSEE, somewhat taken aback, “we on earth notice straight lines across your globe every spring, and we reached the conclusion that they are canals used to guide the water when it rushes down from the thawing ice-fields at the poles.” “Ah,” said the Martian, “this is extremely interesting. Straight lines you say? Let me think a moment. Oh, yes, they are....”

Here a strange thing occurred. We heard a few clicks of a nature to suggest that the apparatus had suddenly gone out of order. The Professor looked over some of the details of the machinery, but found nothing wrong. Then, of a sudden, the Martian communications were resumed. With a speed as if our distant philosopher had suddenly turned into a maniac, his message was now rushing in.

One of the nations involved in this miserable cataclasm, known as the Chopper-Knees, it said, has at the last moment invented an engine of destruction excelling all others in deadliness. It consists of an enormous thin metal globe, to which a device is attached that causes it to fly up in the air to a considerable height. The device is timed; so that, when it has reached a certain height and has drifted in a certain direction, it suddenly comes to a standstill, and by its own dead weight falls with increasing speed toward the soil. The horror of it is that upon reaching the surface it explodes, and spreads a thick cloud of smoke, of such a nature that by powerful electrical action it gathers unto itself various materials from the atmosphere and from the soil, with the result that the cloud, instead of diminishing, grows ever thicker and vaster. The cloud kills all life it comes in contact with, and it is feared that it may encircle the whole planet. It is guaranteed to kill every forest and every animal that lives in the forest, to kill every living creature in the water whose surface it touches. It is guaranteed to kill every flower, every grassblade, every thistle; to kill the ass who is eating the thistle as a much desired delicacy, as well as the flies that pester his bushy hide; and as a minor effect, it will also kill the followers of NAZARRO who, according to the legend, once rode through the streets of Jairoosolom on his patient back. As I have erected my apparatus on the highest promontory of the planet Mars, just as you probably have done at your end, I shall be the last to be attacked by the deadly fumes. Already do I see the cloud fill the valley below me. I see it rising, rising!...

And then, as if in the despair of his agony he were addressing a world already laid waste, and a race already wiped out, a few additional sentences reached us from the depth of space: Abandon your petty jealousies, your tricky international schemes and your malice. Form a friendly federation by which everyone of you will benefit. Establish international courts of justice and of honor. Do away with your national armies and navies, and use their remnants as international guardians of the peace. Give up your futile efforts to be guided by blind Nature in the treatment of your fellowmen. Morality, whether considered from an international or a national point of view, is a set of rules of wholesome living, founded on the requirements of an ever further developing social organization. It does not refer merely to a respectable limitation of sex-life. It embraces good-will, loyalty, justice, fairness, the absence of all underhand thoughts and methods, and the total lack of malicious intent. Many of these laws have been lucidly compiled in the Nazarrano manuscripts. Enthrone ye then, therefore, once more, if not NAZARRO’S divinity, then at least such of His precepts as are practicable and beneficent for men of all faiths and for men of no faith, for the human race at large!... Thus alone shall ye thrive without unnecessary disturbances, social upheavals, industrial calamities, wanton slaughter, and without the despicable arousal of savage passions!

The Martian admonition ceased. And then I saw Professor FANSEE grow deadly pale; and as he reeled as if about to swoon, he whispered: “I feel as if my mind were giving way. That voice, that solemn message, did it come from space, or did it come to me from the heaps of the dead and dying that I seem to see dispersed on the battlefields of Belgium, France, and Poland? Was this the voice of departing spirits dying on our fair earth itself?” “Since we left for these vast fields of ice,” he said to me with a sickly smile, “many things may have happened!”

And then he swooned indeed, and it took fully six hours to bring him back to consciousness. From then on it was evident that he was suffering from some mysterious disease, of which he died two weeks later. Had the electrical cloud that enveloped Mars, entering the communicating-apparatus, anything to do with this mysterious functional disturbance? My own knowledge of medicine is limited, and we had no physician with us. His remains were buried in the ice of the South Pole. The problem may never fully be answered.

And now, while I am preparing this narrative for publication, as yet far away from civilization and ignorant of recent events, I wonder whether the malicious nationality-mania, that dreadful mental aberration to which the Martian philosopher referred, could ever have developed to the same extent among civilized humanity on earth, arraying Christian nation against Christian nation! I wonder, in case this malady hereafter ever threatened to become acute, whether it could not easily be cured by a wise and systematic application of calm commonsense.

May all good men stand together to eradicate this evil!

FINIS

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.