Meanwhile, during the weeks that Hooker had been engaged in finding the
valley of the Ring, unbelievable things had happened in world politics.
In spite of the fact that Pax, having decreed the shifting of the Pole
and the transformation of Central Europe into the Arctic zone, had
refused further communication with mankind, all the nations--and none
more zealously than the German Republic--had proceeded immediately to
withdraw their armies within their own borders, and under the personal
supervision of a General Commission to destroy all their armaments and
munitions of war. The lyddite bombs, manufactured in vast quantities by
the Krupps for the Relay Gun and all other high explosives, were used to
demolish the fortresses upon every frontier of Europe. The contents of
every arsenal was loaded upon barges and sunk in mid-Atlantic. And every
form of military organization, rank, service, and even uniform, was
abolished throughout the world.
A coalition of nations was formed under a single general government,
known as the United States of Europe, which in coöperation with the
United States of North and South America, of Asia, and of Africa,
arranged for an annual world congress at The Hague, and which enforced
its decrees by means of an International Police. In effect all the
inhabitants of the globe came under a single control, as far as language
and geographical boundaries would permit. Each state enforced local
laws, but all were obedient to the higher law--the Law of
Humanity--which was uniform through the earth. If an individual offended
against the law of one nation, he was held to have offended against all,
and was dealt with as such. The international police needed no treaties
of extradition. The New York embezzler who fled to Nairobi was sent back
as a matter of course without delay.
Any man was free to go and live where he chose, to manufacture, buy, and
sell as he saw fit. And, because the fear and shadow of war were
removed, the nations grew rich beyond the imagination of men; great
hospitals and research laboratories, universities, schools, and
kindergartens, opera houses, theatres, and gardens of every sort sprang
up everywhere, paid for no one quite knew how. The nations ceased to
build dreadnoughts, and instead used the money to send great troops of
children with the teachers travelling over the world. It was against the
law to own or manufacture any weapon that could be used to take human
life. And because the nations had nothing to fear from one another, and
because there were no scheming diplomatists and bureaucrats to make a
living out of imaginary antagonisms, people forgot that they were French
or German or Russian or English, just as the people of the United States
of America had long before practically disregarded the fact that they
came from Ohio or Oregon or Connecticut or Nevada. Russians with weak
throats went to live in Italy as a matter of course, and Spaniards who
liked German cooking settled in Münich.
All this, of course, did not happen at once, but came about quite
naturally after the abolition of war. And after it had been done,
everybody wondered why it had not been done ten centuries before; and
people became so interested in destroying all the relics of that
despicable employment, warfare, that they almost forgot that the Man Who
Rocked the Earth had threatened that he would shift the axis of the
globe. So that when the day fixed by him came and everything remained
just as it always had been--and everybody still wore linen-mesh
underwear in Strassburg and flannels in Archangel--nobody thought very
much about it, or commented on the fact that the Flying Ring was no
longer to be seen. And the only real difference was that you could take
a P. & O. steamer at Marseilles and buy a through ticket to Tasili
Ahaggar--if you wanted to go there--and that the shores of the Sahara
became the Riviera of the world, crowded with health resorts and
watering-places--so that Pax had not lived in vain, nor Thornton, nor
Bill Hood, nor Bennie Hooker, nor any of them.
The whole thing is a matter of record, as it should be. The
deliberations of Conference No. 2 broke up in a hubbub, just as Von
Helmuth and Von Koenitz had intended, and the transcripts of their
discussions proved to be not of the slightest scientific value. But in
the files of the old War Department--now called the Department for the
Alleviation of Poverty and Human Suffering--can be read the messages
interchanged between The Dictator of Human Destiny and the President of
the United States, together with all the reports and observations
relating thereto, including Professor Hooker's Report to the Smithsonian
Institute of his journey to the valley of the Ring and what he found
there. Only the secret of the Ring--of thermic induction and atomic
disintegration--in short, of the Lavender Ray, is his by right of
discovery, or treasure trove, or what you will, and so is his patent on
Hooker's Space-Navigating Car, in which he afterward explored the solar
system and the uttermost regions of the sidereal ether. But that shall
be told hereafter.