_Another Trip to Mars_
In an important letter to me from Lieutenant Balmore from San
Francisco, he wrote--
When I left you some time ago, I made a trip to the West coast. In the
veterans hospitals I contacted many disabled veterans who had just
returned from the battle fields in Korea. I had known many of them
in the old days. I told them in detail about my experiences in Mars.
I told them of my plan to take a group of them back with me to Mars
to verify my experiences. Of course they were skeptical at first.
But after I had presented my cause more clearly they were convinced
there might be something to my plan. Most of them had nothing to lose.
Because of their own contact with war and their own ruined lives, they
were keen to save their children from the same fate, once and for all.
"But where will you get a plane to contact the Martian Airship?" they
asked.
I begged them to give me ten days time; I felt confident I could
procure a plane by some means or other. We have set the day and hour
to meet the Martian airship in the stratosphere. Thus far I have been
making plans in utmost secrecy, but I am afraid I shall now fail unless
you agree to help me. Could you use your influence to help us get this
plane? You have been my friend and believed in me. You offered any
assistance possible. Here is your chance, not only to help me, but also
join us on the trip.
I immediately took the next airliner to the West coast to consult the
Lieutenant and his friends. On my arrival I learned that one of my
best friends, an influential Congressman, happened to be there at the
time. I contacted him and after a long conference, he decided for us to
make a hurried trip to Washington. That night we left for the Capital.
At the same time the Congressman arranged our appointment with the
President for the next day.
At the secret conference the President, although not entirely
convinced, agreed to help us. It was decided the congressman and I
would make the trip to Mars. We returned to San Francisco quickly.
The congressman made arrangements for a large government bomber to
leave the Hamilton Army Airbase on the appointed day; he interceded
for Lieutenant Balmore with the proper authorities. The Lieutenant
regained his pilot's license. However, for some unexplained reason, the
government ordered the removal of the secret high-frequency mechanism
from the radio transmitter of our plane.
For ten days Lieutenant Balmore concentrated in an effort to produce
impulses of magnetic thought waves, strong enough to reach Sun-Rank
Banard's mind and impress upon him the urgency to meet us at the
appointed time and place. The fear that he would fail nearly wrecked
him. I was not relieved from my anxiety, until, on the appointed day
when our plane went up into high altitude, and spotted the Martian
airship.
The President after a closed conference with his cabinet members,
leaders of congress, and representatives of the United and Associated
Press, planned for them to follow us in another plane. They wished
to take pictures of this epoch making inter-planetary human contact.
They had a good opportunity to observe and photograph our plane being
absorbed in the Martian airship, and its instant speedy disappearance
into space.
On the trip, and on our landing on Mars, and after our quarantine
period, we were all overjoyed to meet and make the acquaintance of
Lieutenant Balmore's former crew, some of whom were friends of our
fellow passenger veterans. They introduced us to their Martian girl
friends and to many prominent Martians who gave us a royal welcome,
and made us comfortable in one of their most sumptuous hotels. During
our two weeks stay on the planet, we were not only welcomed to all
their continents by all their races like conquering heroes, but we
also attended continuous conferences with Sun-Rank Banard and other
important Martian personages. We made careful, exhaustive observations
and critical explorations of the planet. We checked in detail their
ways of living and system of government.
During our explorative travels, the Lieutenant found many chances to
rest and to be with Xora.
The Congressman, after our first dinner, was puzzled. He did not fully
grasp their way of life. He was amazed at an occurrence which took
place in their dining room.
The Congressman had taken along with him some gold coins, intending
to verify Lieutenant Balmore's statement that the Martians do not use
money. Finding the head attendant alone after dinner, he complimented
him on his service and put in his hand a few gold pieces. The butler
with the utmost courtesy returned the money to him and said, "I want to
assure you that your satisfaction with the way I rendered my services
to the family and to you is in itself a reward."
The congressman turning around to me said, "So Balmore was telling the
truth. I wouldn't have believed there was a servant who didn't have his
hand out."
After the dinner, Sun-Rank Banard took over. I am going to give you
briefly the summary of a very interesting discourse delivered to us by
Sun-Rank Banard, which I took down in notes.
"Mr. Congressman, I can follow the state of your mind, you are
bewildered. Let me answer one of your thoughts, and then I will explain
what is uppermost in your mind.
"You were first wondering at our having no servant problem. We have
no servants and no such problems; all our house attendants feel it an
honor to do their duties as experts in their calling.
"There is no master or servant feeling on Mars. The attendants of
homes, and workers of factories and shops have the right to be
transferred if they are not happy or satisfied in their jobs. A
transfer seldom happens; but if it does, it is always done in a
generous manner and friendly spirit. Servants get the same food here as
we do, and entertain their friends here with the same food and services
that we get. In my grade days, I also had the honor of performing
similar service to a high ranking member.
"Furthermore, our head attendant acted very tactfully, because it is
dishonorable and offensive for us to receive any material thing as a
reward for service. It lowers us to the servile standard. If merited,
the reward or gift which is appreciated and looked for is an honorable
promotion in points to a higher degree. In fact, there are no gifts
given to anyone, except children."
The Congressman then replied, "First, from what I have observed of
your ways of life, it looks to me as if you Martians live a regimented
existence; we earth people have liberty, and are free. I want to be
frank with you. I am somewhat confused. Do you use no money at all on
your planet? How do you measure value and what medium of exchange have
you? That same butler, or your cook, how does he measure the value
of his labor and service? And how do you measure it and what do you
give them in exchange? You Martians must have some medium of exchange
to give your people, a strong incentive to do good, honest work and
service, to excel, to improve, to research, and to invent so that they
can benefit and better their conditions of life.
"They must need enough money to insure their future independence and
to protect them and their families in their old age. With what do you
purchase necessities and luxuries? We on Earth get the intensive desire
to earn, and accumulate money or capital. This desire is a strong
driving power which incites us to do good work or service, to invent
new and necessary improvements, and to make scientific discoveries.
We do all this for gain and profit in moneys and capital, which we
save, invest on interest, in property, or in other profitable or risky
enterprises, and even speculate with on the future development or
increase in value of our investment. We even gamble on chances to win.
Most of us try to gain honestly and legitimately, but a great many of
us attain gains otherwise. We are like squirrels with their animal
instinct for putting away for a rainy day.
"I am also curious to know, what kind of a life system you people had
in the remote past, and by what process was it developed to its present
standard?"
Sun-Rank Banard answered, "After I get through giving, and showing you
an account of our life now, I will answer your last question. Let's
look at this question of money first. The squirrels and other animals
have the right instinct, and we here have copied them. They, in time
of plenty, reserve and store away food. But this is food necessary for
their body consumption, not gold, silver, copper, or paper money for
which they have no use. They cannot eat or cover themselves with it.
Neither do they defy the laws of nature, like the few of you on Earth,
who control and monopolize your natural resources and productions to
the exclusion of the rest of you.
"Not all people on earth get benefits from hard work. Not always does
the inventor gain from his invention. Many of those that have reached
affluence, got there through inheritance, influence, politics, or
dishonesty. Their ambition seems to be to acquire wealth with which
to exploit and enslave their fellow men, by selfishly planning and
controlling, in rigid forced patterns, your managed economy.
"Humanity, and even certain animals on our planet, and on your earth
have more or less a development of emotional urges to surpass, outdo,
and excel each other.
"On your earth a great many of you use these impulses, and sagacity
to gamble on your money chances to win it away by fair or foul means
from each other. Whereas on Mars this impelling instinct is spent in
athletic games, studies, employment, endeavors, creative faculty,
inventions and researches solely for our mutual benefits.
"But that is not answering your question. You will be surprised at
the intensive driving force and zeal our citizens have for work which
will improve living for all of us. They are our guiding principles and
spirits.
"Our people respect themselves and respect others. Our workers feel
they are part and have a share of something big. They are filled with
the idea of making their part of this planet the most progressive
anywhere. Each person depends on the best efforts of the other fellow
in order to do the best himself.
"Our chief altruistic desires are for achievements and conveniences, to
serve, to create universal justice and equality, to better the lives of
all our humanity on Mars and to make their lives happier, contented,
and more independent.
"We have no special panacea to preserve our mental force, physical
vigor and long life. Our intensive life-saving health-giving medical
research and new discoveries and the regulated and hygienic life we
impose on ourselves. The rules are made by our health authorities and
guided by them. They start before our progeniture, even before the
meeting, marriage, or mating of our parents. The future of our race is
a most important matter to our administration and to all Martians.
"During the adolescence of our youths and maidens they are carefully
watched. They constantly undergo strict physical and mental
examinations and tests. They are allowed to marry only when they
have reached their prime of vigor and progeniture and are free from
inherited mental and physical ills. During this period they undergo
special physical exercise and treatments. They must pass satisfactory
physical and mental examinations to prove their fitness before they are
allowed to choose their mates and become parents of our children. We
practice our latest sciences of euthenics for the advancement of our
races, to prevent transmission by inheritance, or otherwise, of mental
and physical diseases.
"We guard the progeny of our children as you do a pedigreed herd of
cattle or an apple orchard. You choose the best and healthiest seeds,
and as the trees grow, you prune them and prevent them from flowering
and producing until the trees are developed, and strong. Such unions
are allowed only when their ages differ no more than ten years from
each other. We let natural sexual desire between young couples have its
course only on the recommendation of our medical authorities.
"When they have such feelings, either she or he, without shame or
disgrace, tell their parents before they enter into a marriage
union. If they are found insufficiently developed either mentally or
physically, they are kept separate and are given special physical
training, and medicines to overcome such passions until they become
matured.
"They always have genuine mutual desire, esteem, and love for each
other. On your earth many of you marry for financial gain, or for
social and family advancement. That does not happen on Mars.
"When they file their intentions to marry (they must be of the same
race) they take special courses in family relationships and home
making. These courses not only teach them how to conduct their future
general intercourse harmoniously, but also teach them how to be good
mothers and fathers.
"We want only children of young couples who are in their prime. Couples
with the best physical and mental health who can transmit to their
offspring their youthful energy and power. All others are prohibited
from procreating. Under these conditions we bring into our world
mentally and physically healthy and sturdy future citizens of Mars. We
encourage early marriages, thus eliminating the hunger aroused by the
mating instinct. Celibacy is a disgrace among us, with the exception of
the very aged.
"From the time of conception until the birth of her child, the mother
is carefully taken care of by our medical authorities. She must lead
a quiet secluded life without any excitement and must take special
treatments and foods so as to build up in herself and her unborn child
good health and a balanced nervous system.
"From their natal day, we watch carefully the development of these
children. Through their infancy, they are nourished at their mothers'
breasts. They receive her love and affection in a tranquil home.
Children are brought up in a quiet and harmonious home, where no fear,
tension, or excitement is instilled in them.
"Qualified medical inspectors make frequent visits to these homes;
where there is any suspicion of conditions prevailing which may
be injurious to the child, that child is taken away to our infant
institution, where it gets the best care. In our schools, we allow
no high pressure cramming and straining of mind, nerves, and sight.
Children are slowly and carefully taught the subjects easiest for them
to absorb, and for which they have an aptitude.
"Expert tutors, specialists in different subjects, are assigned to help
them in studies which may be difficult for them. We know the dangers of
overloading the young developing mind. Some minds develop sooner than
others. Nature has a way of its own, in that respect. Our educational
facilities are there to help but not force. It is not always the
earliest proficiency which is the best.
"As the child grows up, we train him with tact and love; under no
circumstances do we allow any feeling of inferiority, fear, or hate to
develop. Teachers are coalescent with our students. Fear does not enter
into our school curriculum. We give the students, student government.
They learn from the start, self control and obedience and the rudiments
of governing.
"In this way, thousands of years ago we succeeded in divesting
ourselves of the primitive animal fighting instinct. We have
strenuously discouraged the spirit of combativeness. We do not have
nor will we allow any offensive or defensive exercises, exhibitions,
or contests such as your brutal boxing and wrestling shows. We do not
have any offensive or defensive instruments, arms, or weapons, since
we have no need to master anyone among us. The spirit of combativeness
is totally absent in our exercises; we do not train ourselves in your
sciences of offense and defense. Violence of any kind is unknown.
"We are brought up in a healthy, pleasant environment, by affectionate
parents who inculcate in us the feelings of serenity, happiness, and
reverence for old age, and who guide us toward chastity, patience,
politeness and obedience to superiors. Our parents and teachers train
us in human relationship, how to become likable personalities, so we
can get along with our fellow beings. Our teachers stress friendship,
unselfishness, honor and loyalty. Our strict health regime keeps us
healthy and free from irritability. As a result, we live in a spirit of
unselfishness, loving and helping each other in the highest degree of
brotherhood.
"The science of human relationship referred to by your late President
Roosevelt, in a speech written before he died, but never delivered, was
long ago mastered by us. In school we take courses in human relations.
Our frequent attendance to lectures by our eminent psychologists has
helped to develop in us the most harmonious connubial and social
intercourse.
"We have no teen age problems because of our carefully planned
childhoods. I have heard about your places of correction for adolescent
children. To us it seems an indictment of your method of child
training. The parents rather than the children should be punished.
Our visitors from your earth have been telling us many things about
your youth problem. They were much impressed with our lack of such
problems. A Martian cannot visualize adolescents as murderers, robbers,
committers of petty crime. Your habit-forming drugs and stimulants no
doubt help to increase your juvenile delinquency. I was amazed to hear
from one of you that statistics show your seventeen-year-olds come into
trouble with the law more than any other age group.
"We do not coddle our youths; their bodies and strength are developed
with careful and continual exercise and under strict discipline. We
force no square pegs in round holes, nor round pegs in square holes.
After their periods of education our young boys and girls are examined
by experts from the professional and crafts academies, who take great
pains to discover their natural talents and aptitudes so that they can
not only be of great service to us but a satisfaction to themselves.
We help them pass through training necessary to perfect them in their
chosen careers. We try to develop their ingenuity.
"Every profession or craft is controlled by an academy for each race.
The members of these academies are the governing powers and judges of
promotion and demotion. They honestly promote and reward only those
who are justly deserving. No one among us would want to be treated
otherwise. Whereas some of your own best known colleges of learning
will take poor students who are proficient in football or other sports.
"Up until the age of thirty Earth years we are still minors in our
educational period; after that our boys and girls must volunteer into
the general army of service. This service includes menial jobs, such
as working as farm hands, laborers, servants. It also covers all
general labor, such as city cleaning, dishwashing, rubbish assorting,
fertilizer and garbage handling. The girls must do the menial work
in hospitals as nurses' assistants or aides. All boys and girls,
gain their points according to their willingness to excel in their
work during their testing period. Almost all of them are fired with
enthusiasm and have a strong incentive to do good work. After a year
they become first grade degree citizens of Mars; then they go back to
their chosen or original trades or professions as apprentices.
"All of us on Mars go through the same routine. We are supposed to have
graduated from all grade schools, educational, trade, agricultural,
and professional--and colleges of the highest learning; but not from
postgraduate courses, which we continually take after we have already
chosen our future vocations.
"Every grade degree has its honorary emblems, which we wear as a badge
of honor to denote our standing.
"Coming back to my discourse on the army of volunteers, I failed to
explain that until we pass our period of services, we are still at
home with our parents. But when we graduate from this service army, we
are given the privilege to select our future home in any locality or
community available among our own race. If we are married, we occupy
our home immediately; if not it is reserved for us for a limited time
until we marry.
"We file our requisitions for the available furniture and furnishings
of the style we like best, for all necessities and even for certain
luxuries, all of which contribute to our life of comfort and
contentment."
"And all that without paying for it in money?" asked the congressman.
"Yes," Sun-Rank Banard replied. The receiver is a citizen of Mars and
he is entitled to it.
"Every Martian from the day of his birth is issued ration books which
are renewable. As his requirements increase, he gets additional books
for his general necessities; but his constant requirements he gets as a
matter of right without ration book points. Sometimes, but very seldom,
certain scarce foods and drinks are rationed for a short time.
"From our first grade degree on, we get two Martian months of vacation
each year, either all at one time, or one month each half-year. We wait
our turn, and then we may go wherever we choose with our families. We
may go to camps, to mountains, or seashore resorts. Or we may go on
tours to other continents or other sections of our globe by plane or
ship. On these we also receive all comforts and services free.
"These and other privileges are temporarily denied anyone who infringes
upon our laws and rules. With all the good life we enjoy on our planet,
we find isolated cases reverting to primitive instincts; but because of
our thought reading sixth sense, we catch them before their offenses
become serious. These characteristics by training, and evolution are
gradually disappearing.
"After starting in as apprentices, we are promoted point by point
from one grade degree to another, as we merit advancement. We are
compensated not only by being promoted to advanced positions in our
vocations, but also by receiving honorary degrees.
"Unemployment is unknown among us, even though our population is large.
All of us, even our aged, put in our full four hours of work and
service daily, and our disabled and crippled also put in their full
employment time into suitable trained occupations. We on Mars go in for
specialization. For instance, in agriculture, we have specialists in
orange groves who raise oranges only. It is the same in the production
of every different kind of fruit, vegetable, tree, animal, or fowl.
"Of those in the medical profession, more than two percent of us are
doctors of medicine. There are many more specialists. For every fifty,
or less, adult Martians, or for 25 couples and their families, we
have one general practitioner and one nurse. If we feel that more are
needed, we increase the number of medical students as required.
"These general practitioners are responsible for the prevention of
sickness, and for their cure. They can always call to their assistance
specialists.
"In the dental and other body-curing professions we have no less than
one doctor for every two hundred of our inhabitants with the same
responsibilities as the general practitioners. I understand you have
one to every 800 persons in the United States, the highest rate of any
Earth nation.
"We have specialization in industries and in professions. Our system
tends to make each one of us expert in his line, so that we not only
improve the quality but also increase the quantity of production and
services. Earth men, unlike us, cannot produce so many experts because
nearly half of your population are wasting their time either in
non-essential work, 'easy' jobs, or living at the expense of others.
"On our planet everyone, from the day he graduates from our schools to
the time he becomes infirm and helpless, keeps fully occupied.
"Old cities, which I remember, have been totally destroyed and
reconstructed nearly every generation, or sooner. This constant
installation of new and improved living appliances and the changes
in our general way of life have created for us a bee-hive of energy,
industry and activity in creating better and safer patterns of living.
Our young or aged like on your earth do not listlessly hang around
homes, barrooms, or streets, dying before their time from the lack of
physical and mental activity. We all aim toward a more or less creative
and realizable goal, whose advancement contributes to our social good.
"Should it become irksome or monotonous for a person to do the same
thing all the time, as in many instances it does, he or she may
take theoretical and practical courses in other endeavors under the
tutelage of our expert aged. Many of us remain all our lives in the
same professions and crafts. Our work is not wearisome, because we put
in but four hours a day, and have plenty of time for study, music,
recreations, pleasures, rest, and religious worship. The poorest worker
of our first grade is better compensated and is happier than your
richest man. Please contrast these two; and I leave it to you to make
your own judgment.
"Let us take at first the parvenu of your earth, who may have been poor
and undernourished at one time. He works all day and part of the night
under terrific high pressure, always scheming, worrying that someone
will steal his invention, trade, or customers, or get his contracts
cancelled or broken. He is under constant fear and excitement and
spends sleepless nights. He is even tempted to commit unethical or even
criminal acts to succeed.
"Due to his hard work, nervous tension and emotional stress, he may
become an insomniac, drug, alcohol, coffee, or tobacco addict. These
habits are contributive factors to digestive stomach troubles, high
blood pressure, irritableness, heart diseases, cancer, and early death.
"When he has acquired his ill gotten gains, he worries how to keep
them. He is afraid for his very life; many of your rich people are
afraid to sleep alone at night. He surrounds himself with all kinds
of safeguards and bodyguards. Why, a great many of them are afraid of
their own immediate families! His old age is not secure. It would take
me too long to tell you how our lowest grade members or first grade
degree members live. When you see them in our city life you will agree
that your richest man would immediately change places with one of them.
"We are one nation of many races. We have one constitution; and we
have one set of fundamental laws and rules for all inhabitants of our
entire globe. There are no separate laws and rules and property laws,
like those in your different states, counties, and cities. We have
no complex money value fluctuations like yours, which often affect
adversely your own economic and social welfare, as well as create
chaotic conditions. We have only one government, one house of council,
which changes every four years.
"Every citizen is the full responsibility of all of us, and he is of
the utmost value to us. Every able-bodied person on Mars is answerable
for the welfare of each one of us.
"I hope I have made myself clear. You will see, hear, and learn more
about our way and mode of our lives when you start to mingle with our
citizens.
"Gentlemen, we have a very important congressional meeting this
afternoon. Before your departure, it may be a very interesting
legislative procedure on another planet for you to witness. I have
reserved a special section of seats for you.
"Let's now adjourn for lunch, and I will continue my lecture after
dinner tonight."
That evening Sun-Rank Banard continued as follows:
"You Earth people make and use your most important researches and
discoveries, only in times of danger and stress. But we have developed
and intensified our _esprit de corps_ so that at all times, we have
the enthusiasm and ambition to compete with each other in inventions,
scientific researches, and discoveries. We take intense pride in
our work and join in competition with an eager spirit. After our
invigorating night's sleep, we are in the prime of our physical and
mental health, without worry, and in a serene, peaceful state of mind;
we start with a happy spirit our daily occupations.
"We do not allow any possibly injurious games, shows, or occupations.
Our people are not allowed to work at any machine or industry where
there is a hazard to health, or a possibility of injury. No machine
is adopted until it has been absolutely injury proofed. We have
safeguarded them 100%. We are reasonably sure that every person in his
employment has the utmost in safety and healthy surroundings.
"Our aim is to enforce, and do our utmost, to keep us all in the best
of health, to guard, and preserve life. We prevent, and it's unlawful
for us to take any chances of possible accidental injury or death, in
all our labors, sports, and in our general ways of life.
"The industrial disabilities and deaths for your own nation, for the
year 1943, according to your Congressional Statistical Abstract 1944-45
was 2,414,000 disabilities and 20,100 permanent incapacities and deaths.
"We have no slow-ups, nor do we allow high pressure work in our
productions and industries. There is perfect harmony between
workers, foremen, and executives, who do and must rate high in
human relationships. Only the best of work is tolerated. With very
few exceptions, and only in most extreme emergencies or important
researches, do we allow more than four hours a day employment, and if
necessary, we arrange it into four shifts. Neither do we allow anyone
in an occupation which might excite or create in him tension.
"You Earth people try your utmost to continually increase the quantity
of your individual worker's production through his own energy and by
always adding and inventing new labor-saving methods and devices and
machinery. By this method you can do away with the services of many
workers and hire one to do the labor of many. At the same time, you
have a terrific waste on account of a considerable number of constant
labor turnovers.
"You offer a premium on high pressure mass production and increase pay
for overtime hours. Thus you use up your worker as you do a machine;
and I dare say you are more careful of the latter. After your workers
have given you their best energy and become weakened, they are thrown
out on the junk pile.
"Even though he may be in the prime of his post-youthful age, he cannot
secure employment in the calling in which he is experienced. Your
greedy industries demand only youth in its prime of energy; young men
who can stand the grind.
"If we find that an occupation is a little too strenuous for one
person, we divide it between two or more. Our machinery and inventions
are used solely for the convenience of our workers--to make it easier,
safer, and more comfortable for them. We would rather destroy and
rebuild and improve this entire city than allow it to remain a jeopardy
to even one person; whereas you Earth men are constantly threatened
by the hazards of your daily existence. There are no sinecures among
us; all of us are dependent on each other, but no individual is
economically dependent on any one of us for necessities, luxuries or
security. That kind of dependence is non-existent.
"Your words, _money_, _investment_, _interest_, _cost_, _pay_, _price_,
_salary_, _wages_, _taxes_, _debts_, _profits_, _rebates_, _charity_,
_rich_, _poor_, _bankruptcy_, etc., are not in our vocabulary or our
dictionary.
"As part of our careful judgment and planning, we have made a strict
enumeration of inhabitants of our globe, listing in detail sex, age,
occupation, and daily births and deaths. Our census bureaus and other
departments have developed techniques which enable them to give us
complete, separate census lists and keep us informed daily as to the
exact number of our living population, their ages, and their full
requirements.
"By preparing careful and detailed budgets for all necessities with
generous allowances to cover all possible exigencies and by relying
upon our knowledge of regulated scientific cultivation of industrial
manufacturing concentration, of conservation and preservation, and
of nearly perfect and unwasteful arteries of transportation and
distribution, we have not only solved production and equalized
distribution, but we have also succeeded in overcoming and proving
your old law of supply and demand. A false principle founded mainly on
your artificial manipulation of cornering your markets, partly due to
your neglect of preparing and offsetting against potential calamitous
weather losses of crops and other commodities.
"In sciences and discoveries we are away far advanced of you Earthmen;
and with all that we only scratched the crust surface of nature's
infinite mysteries. Every once and a while we unravel new ones, making
marvelous improved changes in our mode of life. For those of us who
want an extended longevity our scientists expect soon to disclose a
medium to lengthen our life span to 500 or 1000 years.
"You have made great progress in your sciences, chemistry, physics,
therapeutics, biology, mechanics, and others.
"You also made great strides in your political sciences, in doing
away with your titles, feudal lord systems, kings, and in your form
of government; but you greatly, and criminally retrogress in your
political economy.
"Your economic system looks to us to be on the same primitive level
as in the many large regions of your earth where farmers are still
scratching your earth surface with wooden plows, reap with the sickle,
thresh with hand flails, and where your modern methods of tillage,
irrigation, fertilizing, crop rotation, and seed selection are unknown
or not used.
"Your moneyism with its constant devaluations, foreign exchange panics,
oppressive custom duties, and tariffs on imports and exports, creating
economic disruption, with different standards of life, is one of the
main causes for the prevention of free trade and unity between your
nations. As a result you have your wars, booms, and panics, your
inflations and deflations, your prosperity and depressions, your
overproduction and underproduction, your progressions and stagnations.
Your abounding lands go to waste. Your lack of reclamation, drainage,
and irrigation, your unfertilized, overcultivated, overgrazed lands;
poverty, and famine among some of your nations with abundance in
others. Hunger, misery and sickness in some and great wealth, affluence
and plenty with others, within your same nation, city, street, block,
and even apartment houses, where an assistant janitor with his
family live in the basement in poverty. All without concrete plans,
regulations, restraints, and control; resulting in your confused and
chaotic economy.
"The perplexing languages, religions, customs and ideologies between
the people of your nations, are incentives to enmity, turmoil,
revolutions, and wars. Even now black clouds of dissensions and
differences in your ideologies are looming on your horizon, seriously
dividing the nations of your globe into two different camps and
menacing your world peace. Perhaps another terrible explosive world war
is in the offing.
"Our efforts have united us with our utmost zeal and devotion to
loftier ideals and higher principles, and is the fundamental force that
sustains, creates, constructs, and accelerates the continual perfection
of the elements necessary to our harmonious, contented and happy life.
All we have, all productions, possessions, or wealth, we create and
labor for from our lands, seas, and air resources, are owned for the
common use and free enjoyment of all of us, just as the air, sunlight,
and sunshine on Earth are for the common use of all your Earthmen.
"The mediums of profit or force to spur us to work harder are
non-existent. Our motto is solely to serve, and not to profit. One
hundred per cent of our working time, labor, energy and production is
solely and directly used and spent for our progress, construction,
sanitation, cure and prevention of diseases, pleasures, amusements, and
in all avenues to lengthen and make our lives more democratic in its
true, and full sense. We are more comfortable, healthier, safer, better
and happier. I dare say more than 90% of your working time, directly
and indirectly, is used for the creation of offensive, defensive,
destructive and killing instruments. Thank God that our teen age boys
do not have to army drill and train as they do on your high school
playgrounds and surrounding streets and we do not have to send them
into gory battles to either get killed or become paraplegics.
"We are of our own free will controlled to our way of life, and
have great potentiality of advancement, and attainment to an equal
realization of our aims.
"I hope I have proven to you that our way of what you call regimented
life is of our own choice and free will, and far superior and better
than yours. It gives us real liberty, freedom and happiness.
"Your gigantic bonded Federal public debts to the amount of
$252,292,247,513.[42]
"Burdened with payments on account of your many wars.
"Veterans administration reports that pensions and benefits are still
being paid yearly to veterans' heirs and dependents of war veterans,
as the aftermath of the Mexican War of 1846. The Civil War of 1865.
Wars with the Indian tribes, war with Spain of 1898. World War 1 and 2
amount to $1,788,883,344.[43]
"These do not include your states, counties, cities and private
indebtedness with your extra load of interest payments on all of them.
"Regimented and enslaved economically by octopus monopolies created by
your moneyism.
"With different kinds of national dictatorial and corruptive
governments, with their organized forces of secret police, with
their innumerable disgraceful prisons, insane asylums, and horrible
concentration and slave working camps.
"Your compulsory military drafts, trainings, services, savage gory
battles, and extermination. Life on your planet is so very hazardous,
you have no safety.
"In general your sanitary systems are disgraceful. You criminally
expose your people to typhoid, dysentery, infantile paralysis, and
gastroenteritis from your sewer polluted drinking and bathing waters;
and with your poisonous drugs, alcohol, tobacco and other unhealthful
foods and habits.
"You are not by any means a free lance, from your economic struggles,
and you will never have democracy, as it is truly defined, as long as
you tolerate moneyism, but you love these conditions, and call that
freedom?"
The Congressman then interrupted, "Although I am convinced by what I
have seen, heard, and learned that the ways of life on your planet are
superior to ours, yet your system would not be constitutional in the
United States. An amendment to our constitution to conform to your ways
may not prove successful. Not only our members of Congress, but also
all members of our state legislatures would have to be persuaded that
your way of life is the best. It would be very hard to get them to
agree to your way of distributing the products of industry, for they
would say that impartial distribution of the difference of ability
among individuals in industry and earning capacity is unjust. They all
strictly believe in our system of private enterprise and ownership of
property."
Sun-Rank Banard answered, "I beg to correct them. We do not advocate
the equal distribution of the products of industry regardless of the
difference of ability, earning capacity, and deserved recompense
of the individual. On the contrary, we reward only the deserving,
intelligent, able individual worker and the real inventor or
discoverer. Only they merit the benefits from their work; however,
on Earth the industrialists, the entrepreneurs, and the financiers
wrongly receive most of the credit. Very seldom, and only by hard
struggles does your hard worker or your real inventor reap riches from
his endeavors, regardless of the ability, inventiveness, industry, and
earning capacity of your individual. It is the shrewd manipulator, the
promoter, the wealthy, who first take advantage of circumstances to
promote their own interests; who first seize, finance, and control your
most profitable and basic natural elements, or the most desirable and
lucrative enterprises, discoveries and inventions.
"On our planet the worker goes directly to our academy or laboratory
to submit his ideas, if they have any merits, he gets full cooperation
in working on them. There is no limit on the material, labor cost, and
resources that are expended to help the individual to put through and
perfect his ideas.
"No matter how small or large an article may be, if it proves a
hazardous or injurious one to any one of us, it is discarded. When
a dangerous invention or discovery seems necessary for our welfare,
our scientists can always improve upon it until all danger is removed
and is made safe. In that way the safety and well-being of us all is
promoted.
"The inventor is not only honorably advanced but handsomely
compensated; and he, his wife, during their life and his children,
until their voting age especially benefit from his work.
"There is a separate research laboratory for every activity and in
its many ramifications. In these large laboratories our experienced
scientists are constantly working on investigations, tests, and
researches for the advancement of mechanics, engineering, chemistry,
physics, atomics and medicine. Everyone on Mars benefits from their
improvements. We fully develop any invention or discovery even though
it may minimize or eliminate the usefulness of an already established
industry. We harness all our natural forces and elements which are
perpetual and useful--sun rays, sea waves, river flows, waterfalls,
hot springs, etc.,--for our needs.
"We are not concerned about catering to and appeasing any special
interests. In discussing this point with one of you, he gave me the
following reference:"
Natural Gas vs. John L. Lewis
It has now been more than a year since this column suggested that the
only way to counteract John L. Lewis was to convert our two war-built,
government-owned pipelines to natural gas. In the interim not a single
move toward conversion has been made. In the interim also millions of
cubic feet of Texas and Louisiana natural gas have gone up in smoke
and will never be recovered. Most people don't realize that this is
one of our most valuable natural resources. Nevertheless, much of it
is either burned up in Texas as waste gas, or allowed to escape. At
some Texas oil wells, a constant blaze is kept going, night and day,
in order to burn off surplus gas.
Reason for the government's failure to convert the Big Inch and
Little Inch pipelines to gas is not entirely red tape, nor the
secret opposition of John L. Lewis. Vigorously pulling wires to keep
the pipelines away from natural gas are the railroads and the coal
operators. They are Lewis' secret allies.
Illustrative of this wire-pulling is a natural gas pipeline only ten
miles from Washington, D.C., which brings gas from West Virginia.
Originally constructed to feed the nation's capital, the coal industry
and the railroads blocked the entrance of natural gas into Washington.
They were bringing in coal which the gas company then converted into
expensive artificial gas.
So for ten years West Virginia natural gas flowed to within sight of
the nation's capital but was never permitted to come into the city.
Only during the war was this finally changed. Now the West Virginia
pipeline has been tapped, and Washington, at long last, is using cheap
natural gas.[44]
"I dare say that many of such natural resources, inventions, and
discoveries which would have endangered the existence of some of
your industries, must have been bought up and suppressed by the few
controlling them. All this babel by your economists to the effect
that your world cannot exist without money and that you would lose
your freedom, or live at a great cost of freedom--to all this I ask,
'What freedom?' Yes, your money systems would lose the freedom to
exploit you. It is none other than your economic system which is the
sole creative force causing your chaotic vortex to continuously rotate
around its money hub.
"Now coming back to your last question.
"You wanted to know what kind of a life system we had in the remote
past, and by what process we developed it to our present way of living?
"Our recorded history goes back to nearly 50 thousand years. We then
didn't as yet have our thought reading sixth sense, it developed in us
by a gradual, natural, and strong mind will process and evolution.
"Mind thought is a brain electrical wave effort. You Earth people
experience it between yourselves very often when you think and express
the same idea thought and expression between yourselves at the same
time.
"Proving that thought and mind transmission from one person to another
is in existence with you people, but only in a subconscious state. We
were then in the same condition as you earth people, a conglomeration
of tribes and nations with different languages, religions, and customs,
similar property ownership, money systems, and weaknesses.
"The intelligent ancestors of our different nations got together and
tried to find out ways and means to save themselves and their people
from their economic troubles. They found out that the major social
programs they wanted to inaugurate would be of prohibitive cost to each
nation.
"And to finance it would not only add a terrific financial burden
increasing the cause of our ills. They arrived at a conception that
selfish, greedy, cruel, and evil human nature can only be changed,
improved, and perfected, by doing away with our pernicious systems then
in existence. To attain the object they started a most practical plan
to first entirely eradicate the main cause of their misfortunes, their
money systems. Their aim was to make a change, without causing a sudden
upheaval all over the planet. So they planned at first to make an
experimental test. They selected a large landed sparsely settled state
in one of our nations for the trial.
"Its national government then published a proclamation in that state
of its intentions to take effect on a certain date, with the promise
that its citizens would be indemnified if the experiment should prove
inoperative.
"It then started its preliminary function for the change. First, it
stored away for the inhabitants of that state provisions, such as
foods, medicines, clothes, furniture, furnishings and other necessities
for a one year supply, but excluding all poison habit forming
non-essential supplies.
"Ration books for all necessities were furnished to all of them.
Government guaranteed different ration books were also furnished them
whose points were good for interstate and international travels,
telephone, telegraph and post office communication.
"Then it devalued and took away all moneys, currency and negotiable
papers from their banks and citizens, and a law was passed in its
legislature that all mediums of money exchange, purchase and sales was
prohibited and unlawful, thus closing down all their banks, gambling
houses, breweries, distilleries, saloons, bars, liquor shops, and
all other non-productive and unethical industries. Distribution was
concentrated so that excess food markets, stores and factories were
also shut down. Everybody had to abandon non-productive labor, and
professions.
"The state administration took charge and supervision of all these
functions. All unemployed workers plus some of the former idlers were
advised to volunteer into productive occupations, industries and crafts.
"It was a most marvelous successful enterprising experiment of the age.
From a small populated state, with millions of unproductive acres of
barren and brush lands, the inhabitants who were sustaining themselves
mostly from non-essential, and unethical industries, suddenly developed
into an extremely booming, progressive bee-hive, so that the drones
who were employed in non-productive occupations, with its idlers, the
former half of its population, and including a large influx of a great
many idlers from other states, were all feverishly working overtime at
its extensive productive projects in sanitation, housing, agriculture,
forestry, reclamation, public works and industrials.
"In an oversupply of labor, working hours were shortened and during
periods of undersupply, hours were lengthened. Overproductions were
shipped on a barter system to other states as an exchange for articles
that they didn't have.
"They were all to remain living in their present homes until new and
better standard of living quarters were built ready for their occupancy.
"They also voluntarily deposited with the government all their jewelry
for safe keeping, so they would not be able to use them for a medium of
exchange during the transformation.
"After a certain time the pattern of life of the citizens of this state
turned out to be a very workable plan. All were actively employed in
productive work and happy to know that they were doing it to reach and
realize a beneficial goal. Knowing the purpose, and importance of this
experiment, they tried in every way to make it successful.
"Even our wealthy gladly made sacrifices, and were happy to join and
know, that at last, they and their future generations would live in
peace, in comfort, in complete security, and without fear.
"Other states and nations soon started to join and emulate this system
until it was finally adopted by all of our nations. The metamorphosis,
from our former economic system, to our present one was smoothly
accomplished without any hitch. All Mars' nations then united and
entirely suppressed the political entity of every one of their nations,
merging all of them, even their religions and languages, into a single
one for the entire planet of Mars. Our old way of life was changed to
our present one by a gradual development. They put in execution the
following bill of rights. We are to promote, defend and guard human
rights, dignity and safety of the person. We are to have full liberty
of political speech and assembly. We are to have equal rights, and
opportunities in our economic and political fields. We are to have an
equal standard of life with economic security (barring those of us of
higher degrees) without want, fear, privation, or exploitation. We
are to be provided with all our life's substances. We are to be free
from an oppressive government rule. Our aim is, and will be, continual
social progress and expansion for a higher standard of life. We are
to have the right of individual petition and appeal to the highest
government executive, council, and court of justice. We do not and will
not have race, and sex intolerance and discrimination.
"Our government continually and gradually put in operation constructive
plans and improvements.
"It took long years with constant changes to bring it up to our present
standard of life. We now celebrate 'Emancipation Day' every year to
commemorate that event. It's our most important holiday.
"Our two planets are nearly identical and men-inhabited, both are
greatly blessed by nature. We Martians by our combined efforts,
unselfish, and perfect living methods have helped in creating it into
a paradise. Whereas you Earthmen by your selfish, greedy, corruptive,
filthy, and cruel ways and systems of life are defiling its God-given
bounties.
"Life on your earth is a terrible ordeal, after a most devastating
world war with all its ills, your nations are in dispute, holding up
your world peace, over possessions, reparations, booty, loot, material
gains, imperialistic aims, different ideologies, and aggressive wars.
Within your nations there is a lack of social control, insecurity,
instability, at all times the unknown, unpredictable, chaotic
conditions, serious strikes, disputes and greed, constant mounting
cost of living, inflations, increasing taxations, all of which halt
reconversion, tend to bring on increasing armaments, aggressions, wars,
fear depressions, famine, and miseries among the population of your
Earth, endangering the existence of your nations.
"Your five big nations have made an effort through their United Nations
assembly to remedy some of these situations. But the plan is too new.
The policy has not been definitely determined. To date there has been a
great deal of talk but little action. Selfishness in your human nature
here again deeply asserts itself, fifty-five of your nations laid down
conditions against aggressions, but when it came to fight it, only a
few joined to help, and only with small military tokens.
"I believe for their own safety, that your powerful, and influential
leaders and people of your nation should get together without delay,
and initiate a movement to help your government to start a broad,
liberal and humane living system experiment similar to our way of
life, in one of its least inhabited state, territory, or island, and
broadcast the fact to all the peoples of your world.
"That test with the promise that should it prove successful it will
gradually adopt it for your whole nation. This should create a salutary
effect on the peoples of your earth to counteract and turn them against
the cruel and corrupt principles in existence, and advocated by some of
your dictatorship government nations."
New Delhi, India, Dec. 26, 1950 (AP)--Prime Minister Nehru said today
the struggle between communism and democracy will be decided, not
on the field of battle. Nehru declared that in the final analysis
the people might discard both communism and democracy for some
"intermediary or other methods."
He added that the ultimate test lies, not in accumulation of a private
fortune, but in raising the standards of the people.[45]
"I leave it to your own good judgment to contrast our happy existence
with yours, where your moneyism causes and creates violent emotions and
convulsions in your political, social, economic, and religious life.
"It has impregnated in you an animal desire for selfish ownership,
greed and power, bringing on mass destruction and killing between
you. Since time immemorial you have without restraint constantly
intensified, and developed them."
"You are infiltrated and surrounded by fanatic enemy zealots. When some
of your own government officials traitorously betray your top secrets
to enemy nations."
"You are now in a critical period. Constant fear and apprehension are
beclouding all of you on your earth and at great speed and violence you
propel yourself to extinction. You are all sitting on an inferno. Can't
you read the handwriting on the wall?"
"You hide your head in the sand, like an ostrich, and refuse to face
the facts. But your situation is serious enough that you should by all
means be aware of the disaster that may overtake you.
"You are now in an Asiatic hot war, it may soon develop into a
sizzling one. Before the holocaust breaks loose, you can still save
the world by proving to suffering humanity that you are starting a new
social-economic movement experiment, for it's benefit.
"A change on your earth to our way, is about due, must it come through
bloodshed?
"Different forms of governments, ideologies, and systems of life are
spreading like wildfire over your continents of Europe and Asia:
starting in it's wake your world's aggressions, and a terrific race for
all kinds of human destructive armaments.
"Inimical armies are facing each other, in close physical proximity;
don't you realize that at sometime a commander in his cups, may strike
a spark that will engulf your whole world in a conflagration? Must you
have a social upheaval and a human exterminating war before you realize
what's good for you?
"You have no other alternative, you must as soon as possible root
out and outlaw your money systems, or face continual ferocious armed
conflicts, and your eventual inevitable doom."
"In the event of another war, win or lose, you are bound to lose, if
your nation wins it will have a tremendous additional war cost burden;
if it loses, those left of you will be burdened with an oppressive
police regime with its consequent tortured confessions, purges, slavery
and fear.
"In spite of your apathy and blind pertinacious reluctance to hearken
to logical counsel, evolution will ultimately save you. Inexorable
nature has a way of its own; as the fishes of your waters fight against
all strong currents and tides to reach their spawning grounds, and the
birds of your sky fight against storms and winds to reach their nesting
grounds, so will your humanity infallibly follow its natural dictates
and instincts to drive and overcome your false civilizations and all
your man-made seemingly invincible obstacles."
When Sun-Rank Banard concluded his lecture, it left all of us facing a
gloomy aspect, we were thoughtful for a few minutes. It took time for
his remarks to penetrate. One doesn't change one's ideas, learned since
childhood, in a few moments. But most of us realized the truth of his
remarks, and on the way out, our conversations with each other proved
that he had presented his points fairly convincingly and very logically.
We quickly made our farewells and prepared to depart. I shall long
remember my Martian friends, their sincere hospitality, and the delight
they took in offering their best to us. I hated to leave Lieutenant
Balmore. We had come a long way together since that chance meeting on
the park bench. I realized I might never see him again since it was his
and his crew's intentions to remain permanently on Mars.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 42: World Almanac, 1949, p. 268.]
[Footnote 43: Editorial, _Reno Evening Gazette_, Feb. 16, 1949.]
[Footnote 44: _Nevada State Journal_, Nov. 23, 1946, Merry-Go-Round, by
Drew Pearson.]
[Footnote 45: _Reno Evening Gazette_, Dec. 26, 1950.]