Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/642

 have not spoken of their having that before."

"No; I was not quite sure what it was. You see, I seemed to hear them continually talking about it as something very valuable—something that ought to fetch a long price; and I fancy it must be an article of commerce. In fact, from what I can glean, it seems that, when the competition between, for instance, the manufacturers of any given nation has become very keen, they begin to part with their 'consciences'—to put them up in the parcels of goods; give them away with a pound of tea, as it were. And I dreamed that certain of the nations—for example, one called 'Great Britain,' and others named 'Germany,' and 'America'—did a very large export trade in these articles. From this I conclude that the article must be a something to fall back upon when the natural resources of a nation—produce and industry—have given out. Let us take it, then, that 'conscience' is a highly prized article of commerce. Well, I say, I dreamed that they were always ready to sacrifice even this article to the soil: every one of them seemed eager to exchange the commodity for the smallest slice of earth; and nations would do anything to obtain an extra bit of the latter. In fact, there seemed to be a fairly definite standard of relative market value between blood, and earth, and conscience—perhaps a quart of the two former, mixed, for a square foot of the latter; or something of that kind.

"But about war. Gradually, I dreamed, the firearms became more and more destructive, while all the elements, and everything in existence, were pressed into the service of war; and so absorbed were my human beings in the perfecting of war that they invented a subsidiary state of affairs called 'Peace,' which, on referring to these creatures' dictionaries, I found to be 'An interval necessary to the effective preparation of war.' The nations were never altogether in their element during these intervals; and, of course, any protracted peace meant the gradual impoverishment of the soil for want of the fertiliser.

"Well, war seemed to grow ever more terrible; until it came to such a pass that a single human being could destroy a whole nation by simply pressing a small button with his finger. This rendered the thing too wholesale, for it was found that the supply of the fertiliser—(let us speak of it in future under this name, as it is so much less unpleasant)—began to exceed the requirements of the soil, and thus to be rather detrimental to production than otherwise. Then I fancied that all the nations that is, all that was left of them—solemnly consulted about the matter; and I heard talk of a mighty power not long discovered, and then being gradually brought to perfection; and I saw all the nations devote the ensuing interval of peace to destroying their great and complicated machineries of war, which had required so much thought and labour to produce. The enormous guns, with the great cracks in them which had resulted from firing them once to try them, were placed in museums, never more to be used; the great ships which had all, in the course of their regular business, run upon rocks, began to be visited by curious sightseers, who travelled to them on the flying machines which had been constructed as engines of war.

"Then I seemed to perceive, from the