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.