"So be it!" Nehru said calmly, shaking hands with the Governor-General
of Pakistan.
"Well, general," Nehru said, turning to O'Reilly with a smile, "are you
satisfied now? I think we've proved we're a sporting people. So have the
Chinese, and the Jews and the Arabs. But what about your own folk, the
Irish? From what I read, their sporting qualities seem to be highly
overrated. I'd say they'd never gamble but on a sure thing."
The general's face went red at the insult, and so, a day later, did the
collective face of all Irishmen, North and South. For a while there was
aghast silence from the Emerald Isle, a silence sullen and embarrassed.
And then a great rumbling roar of indignation.
"Mr. Speaker!" cried a member of the Dail in Dublin. "Are the Irish
people, who honor great gamblers only a little less than great poets,
to be outdone by dark-skinned heathen? Mr. Speaker, I say _no_!"
The following morning, the government of Eire formally offered to toss
for the Six Lost Counties and, if the coin fell contrary, to say no more
about them forever. Belfast agreed that same afternoon, and the whole
island went wild with excitement. Hardly any Irishman failed to place
some kind of side bet on the outcome, and stakes were laid that day that
would be spoken of with prideful awe for generations to come.
The remark of a Limerick drayman was widely quoted. "There's not a man
of us here," he commented in the course of a game of darts at the Sword
and Shamrock, "but would toss a coin for his grandmother's head, and
well ye know it. So after all the blatherin' and yowrin', why not have a
go for the Six Counties, and let the coin decide it now and foriver,
once and for all, win or lose?"
The British Government surrendered with grace, and offered to play host
to the toss in London, as a neutral place. They soon learned, with
burning ears, that the last place on earth any Irishman considered
neutral was London.
As a matter of course, General O'Reilly was invited to preside, using
the Golden Judge. Like most Irishmen in America, he had long sung of and
sighed for the Auld Sod, while carefully avoiding going there, even for
a visit.
He now realized his error. He was received as one of Ireland's most
glorious sons. He was set upon by thousands, perhaps hundreds of
thousands, of proud O'Reillys--there were O'Reillys from the bogs and
O'Reillys from the great houses, O'Reillys in tophats and O'Reillys in
tam o' shanter. He was assured, and came near believing it, that in both
looks and wisdom, he was the spitting image of the Great O'Reilly, one
of the many last rightful Kings of Ireland. A minstrel composed a lay
about him, "The Golden Judge of Ireland"; he was smothered in shamrock,
and could have swum in the gifts of potheen. Secretly he much preferred
Scotch whisky to Irish, but the swarming O'Reillys made the disposal of
the potheen no very great problem.
* * * * *
The actual toss took place in a small railroad station, hastily cleaned
up, on the railway line between Dublin and Belfast. Impartial surveyors
had certified it as being exactly astraddle the frontier.
Amid a deathlike hush, with a high sense of history in his heart,
General O'Reilly flipped the Golden Judge high in the air.
Eire won. The Six Counties were no longer lost, and there was little
enough work done in Ireland for a fortnight. Eire instantly and
magnanimously granted to her new north all the points that had been
fought over so bitterly for so many years. For the northerners, to their
surprise, life went on exactly as before, except for different postage
stamps, and a changed heading on their income-tax returns, which were
considerably lower. For the first time in many years, there were no
brickbats thrown if a man felt the need, on a summer night, to sing
"God Save the Queen."
General O'Reilly flew away from Ireland with a mist in his eyes and a
great glow in his heart. In a shaven second, he had achieved the thing
for which long and gallant generations of earlier O'Reillys had fought
bloodily and in vain. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if his nervous
right hand that day had shown any subconscious partisanship, but
rejected the thing as impossible. If the toss for the Six Counties was,
in a way, the crowning peak of General O'Reilly's career, it was by no
means the end of it. Both he and his coin were fast becoming settled
tradition. He continued his normal military career, but with the tacit
understanding he would have a few days' leave of absence whenever the
Golden Judge was needed.
He took it to Stockholm for the toss that settled the old and bitter
fishing controversy between Britain and Iceland. Britain won.
He took it to Cairo, where Britain and Greece tossed for Cyprus. Greece
won, and at once offered Britain all the bases she wanted there, and
granted special extraterritorial status to all British colonels,
knights' widows and former governors of the Punjab living in retirement
on the island.
He got his third star just before he flew down to Rio de Janiero for the
toss that finally settled the nagging quarrel between Britain and
Argentina as to who owned the Falkland Islands. Britain won.
He took it to The Hague in Holland for the toss about the Saar. The Saar
had remained a European sore point despite a series of Franco-German
"settlements" which never seemed to settle anything. Germany won the
toss, and immediately, of her own free will, granted the French equal
commercial rights.
The Saar toss had two odd results. The first was purely personal for
General O'Reilly, but he never forgot it. One day, driving through The
Hague, his official car passed a huge dignified building, which his
chauffeur explained was the World Court. With a strange feeling, the
general noticed a solemn old man in black, staring bleakly out the
window. He realized suddenly it was probably a judge, and that the
golden coin in his pocket had turned this costly mechanism into an
anachronism. Nobody used the World Court any more now.
The other result of the Saar toss was, from the viewpoint of world
jurisprudence, far more important. It transformed the Golden Judge from
a mere tradition into an established legal institution, in this manner:
France and Germany had been unable to agree whether the Saar was really
_tossable_--a term that soon entered dictionaries--and had appealed to
the United Nations to decide. A temporary or _ad hoc_ United Nations
commission had been named to settle this point and, after due
deliberation, had pronounced the Saar tossable.
Technically, this "Saar Commission" should have then dissolved itself.
Instead, in the way of parliamentary institutions, it lingered on and
soon became the accepted body to decide on tossability. And,
illogically, it was forever afterwards still called the "Saar
Commission."
Whenever, anywhere in the world, some international dispute reached
stalemate, it became commonplace for some delegate to rise and say: "Mr.
Chairman, I move the question be referred to the Saar Commission."
In due course, the Saar Commission would then give its solemn judgment
as to whether or not the dispute should be put to the arbitrament of the
Golden Judge. If so, General O'Reilly would board a plane, and be off.
Once the Saar Commission had its say, no nation ever dared refuse to put
a dispute to the hazard of the coin. Whereas nations yawned at being
called "warmongers" or "imperialists" or "aggressors" or "international
bandits," none could stand being called "bad sportsmen" or "poor
losers." So many nations had accepted the verdict of the Golden Judge,
that it became increasingly more difficult, not to say impossible, for a
given nation to admit it was less sporting than the others.
* * * * *
However, not all disputes were held tossable, to the disappointment of
some people who had too quickly believed the Golden Judge would bring
immediate Utopia, the end of all quarreling forever. Gradually the Saar
Commission evolved certain criteria:
1. A dispute was not tossable if it might give great populations and
great nations over into systems of government they abhorred; it was
tossable only if the population involved had no very great bias one way
or the other.
2. A tossable dispute was one in which justice lay on both sides, evenly
balanced.
3. Tossing was clearly indicated where both sides ardently wished a
settlement, but where neither side was willing to cede an inch, for fear
of losing "face."
Thus the Saar Commission pronounced untossable the proposal by the
Soviet Union to have the Golden Judge decide whether or not America
should abandon all her overseas bases. It also turned down the
suggestion of an American senator that Russia and the United States
should toss for Soviet withdrawal from all Eastern Europe. It denied the
appeal of an idealistic Dane who wanted a toss to decide whether Germany
should be all Communist or all-Western. It likewise rejected a Swiss
proposal that Chiang Kai Shek and Chou En-Lai should toss again, this
time for Formosa itself.
In passing, it is of interest to note that only once did Soviet Russia
agree to toss. It was in the matter of her old dispute with Persia over
caviar fishing rights in the Caspian Sea. Persia won but, to the
consternation of the world, Russia refused to abide by the outcome. It
was the first and only time that the decision of the Golden Judge was
not obeyed, and it had startling repercussions.
All over the world, fellow-travelers abandoned the Soviet cause. They
had been able to find some excuses, however tortuous, for Russian
purges, forced confessions, concentration camps and aggressions, but
they turned away, shocked and saddened, from a nation that openly
welshed on a bet.
There were strong reactions within Russia itself,
although the convulsions were largely screened from Western eyes.
However, an unprecedented number of Russians fled across the Iron
Curtain, seeking asylum in the West. They said gloomily they could no
longer support a regime that reneged on its fair gambling losses, and
protested fiercely this was not the true soul of Russia.
In a gallant effort to recoup face for Russian sportsmanship, many of
these refugees grimly began playing almost non-stop games of "Russian
roulette," which gives the player a five-to-one chance of living. Some
extreme chauvinists proudly reduced the odds to three-to-one by
inserting two bullets, and a former Red Army major named Tolbunin even
used three. His _tour de force_ was widely admired, although not
repeated, and Tolbunin himself was given a magnificent funeral.
Yet, except for the Caspian caviar toss, the Golden Judge was obeyed as
unquestioningly as the Voice from Sinai, and perhaps more so. And if it
could be used only in what some called "minor" disputes, it was
surprising to see, once these were settled, how really few "major" ones
remained. It is impossible here, of course, to list more than a few of
General O'Reilly's tosses, but he flew to nearly every spot on earth, a
beloved world figure.
He flew to Ethiopia--and caught malaria there--to settle an old quarrel
between that country and the Sudan over a one-square-mile Sudanese
enclave named Gambela, well inside Ethiopia. A relic of the times when
Britain controlled the Sudan, Gambela had long been a thorn in the side
of the Conquering Lion of Judah. Although the Negus lost, he accepted
the verdict as uncomplainingly as earlier disputants, some three
thousand years before, had once accepted the awards of his putative
ancestor, King Solomon.
General O'Reilly ended a tiny but poisonous quarrel of many years'
standing as to whether British Honduras should become a part of the
Republic of Honduras. Britain won.
* * * * *
In an epic tour in 1973 that left the world gasping with admiration,
General O'Reilly spread lasting balm on many sores in the Middle East.
The Golden Judge settled--in favor of Pakistan--her friction with
Afghanistan over the long-disputed Pathan territory. Saudi Arabia won
from Britain two small and completely worthless oases on the undefined
border between Saudi Arabia and Trucial Oman. These oases had, over the
years, produced many hot and vain notes, and desultory shooting, but the
Lord of Saudi Arabia was subsequently much disappointed that they never
produced oil. He was further dismayed when the Golden Judge awarded to
Iraq a "neutral zone" between the two countries, on which they had never
been able to agree, and this zone did, in fact, produce tremendous
amounts of oil. However, he complained only to Allah.
Syria and Turkey resorted to the toss to decide about the Sanjak of
Alexandretta (Iskanderun) which Turkey had been given by France back in
the Thirties, when France ran Syria. Turkey won. Damascus sighed but
smiled, and reopened diplomatic relations with Ankara that had been
severed for more than twenty years.
But on a golden January day in 1975, in Malaga, Spain, General
O'Reilly's aide-de-camp noticed that his chief seemed strangely
preoccupied. The occasion was a toss between Sweden and Finland as to
the possession of four large rocks lying in the sea at the head of the
Gulf of Bothnia, just off the Finno-Swedish frontier. These rocks, just
south of the Arctic circle, contained no population other than sea
gulls, but had been warmly claimed by both nations for years. And since
the weather in Scandinavia in January is miserable, the Finns and Swedes
had sagely decided to hold the toss in Malaga, which was as far south as
they could go and still be in Europe.
In public, General O'Reilly was himself--charming, dependable, cheerful.
He carried out the toss as gracefully as he had all the others, and he
made a winning speech at the banquet given by the Finns that night to
celebrate their acquisition of the four sub-Arctic rocks.
But the A.D.C. was not deluded and later, on the flight back to
Washington, he observed that General O'Reilly was unusually abstracted
and pensive, lost in thought. But since a major does not ask a
lieutenant general about such matters, he kept silent.
The fact was that the general had now reached sixty-five, and in the
American Army, sixty-five is retirement age. As the ocean fled away
under the racing plane, he was remembering a scene the week before in
the office of the Army Chief of Staff.
"It's up to you, Terry," the Chief of Staff had said. "You know
perfectly well that the President is willing, even eager, to keep you on
past the retirement age. You're a big man in the world now. You can stay
on the active list as long as you want. If necessary, he'll ask a
special law, and there won't be one vote against it."
Then the general remembered his wife: "You've done enough, darling. It's
time we had a real permanent home for once in our lives. That garden for
me, those Aberdeen Angus for you--remember? You've traveled too much;
you've never really gotten over that malaria. Darling, you need a rest.
You've earned it."
The general gazed out the plane window, trying to make up his mind. Then
suddenly he chuckled. The A.D.C. saw him pull a leather case out of
his pocket and watched, puzzled, as a golden coin spun briefly in the
air.
The general caught it on the back of his left hand, covering it with
his right. Then he removed the right, looked at it.
He chuckled again.
* * * * *
When General O'Reilly retired the following week, the President asked
Congress for a fourth star for him and, in a special message, listed in
glowing terms the services he had rendered to America and the world. The
bill passed without a murmur, and Terence Patrick O'Reilly became at
last a full general.
Messages poured in from nearly every country in the world, from dozens
of presidents and premiers, and the handful of remaining kings. Along
with them came hundreds of gifts. They included a carved elephant tusk
from Nepal, a Royal Copenhagen dinner service for twenty-four from the
Kingdom of Denmark, a one-rupee note from a ten-year-old girl in Bombay
and--a gesture that excited much speculation--a case of caviar from the
Kremlin.
The Department of Defense announced that General O'Reilly had become the
most decorated soldier ever to wear American uniform. In every toss,
each of the rival sides had awarded him some kind of decoration. When he
wore full-dress uniform, the ribbons solidly covered both sides of his
tunic, and he was nearly strangled with various stars and orders that
dangled from ribbons around his neck.
"He retired just in time," his wife told her daughter-in-law one day at
tea. "There's not another square inch left for another ribbon."
General O'Reilly presented the Golden Judge to the United Nations, and
the King of Saudi Arabia proved his sportsmanship by having a
theft-proof case made for it of solid crystal, so that it could be on
public display. It was soon as visited and cherished as the Magna Carta
and the Liberty Bell. A night and day guard stood watch over it.
Yet it was far from a useless relic. Often the crystal case was empty,
and this meant it was seeing service somewhere in the world, in the
hands of a Swedish general who had finally been chosen by the United
Nations to succeed Terence O'Reilly.
In his final press interview, General O'Reilly unburdened himself of
some thoughts which--refined--have passed into international
jurisprudence under the name of O'Reilly's Law.
"For thousands of years," the general said thoughtfully, "mankind has
been making all kinds of commandments and laws and prohibitions and
contracts and treaties--and broken them all when the mood suited them.
Perhaps it's a sad thing to say, but so far nothing's ever been invented
that men will really live up to more than the terms of a bet. With very,
very few exceptions, a man--or a nation--will respect a bet when he
won't respect any other damned thing on earth!"