Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/645

 them with cloaks, and making them as comfortable as possible.

"I explored the field of battle early in the morning, and at first the thunder of the snoring so overpowered me that I felt quite dizzy and bewildered; but I became used to it. The sight was a very curious one: on all hands the field was littered with the victims of the battle, lying singly, or—where the fight had been most severe—in heaps. Some lay upon their backs, others upon their noses; some again were curled up into extraordinary attitudes, brought about by their struggles to keep awake. I was afterwards informed that a sharpshooter had effected an entrance into the tent of the general of the defeated army early in the battle and succeeded in putting him to sleep, this being one of the causes of that side's losing the day."

"Ah, yes. This all seems dreadful nonsense—dreadful!" remarked William, complacently. "May I ask by what extraordinary power one of your armies conquered the other in that way?"

"By means of hypnotism," replied James. "A power discovered and utilised by my human beings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—having also been discovered and utilised some five thousand years previously, and several times before that. It would be the power exercised by one mind over another, by superior force of will"

"Oh, yes! I think I recollect your saying that your human beings were to possess minds; though their doings, subsequently described, had caused me to forget it. But how beings like those, without mind enough to control their own actions with a decent amount of intelligence, could possibly control the minds of others—well! If, with only their own actions to control, they do anything more intelligent than eat, and kill each other, what kind of result would be arrived at when they had to look after the actions of others, too? I suppose your conquered nation would become the slaves of your conquering nation, eh?"

"Exactly. They would no longer have any will of their own."

"Hum! Well, seeing what your puppets are engaged in doing when they have a will of their own, that would be a change for the better, certainly. But, I say, James, look here, how about the Fertiliser? There would be no bloodshed, and the soil would become—"

"Oh," said James, "at this time artificial chemical fertilisers will be introduced."

"I see. But wouldn't your world very soon get overcrowded, so that it can't possibly support its inhabitants?"

"It would," said James. "That is the very consummation which my human beings would most desire and yearn for. In the later ages, in countries already too full to support their inhabitants, the greatest honour would be paid to those citizens bringing up the largest families, particularly when those families must inevitably be chargeable to the parish. In proportion to the increase of the birth-rate in such countries would be the wildness of the inhabitants' rejoicings."

"Why, first your human beings are mad to reduce their limited numbers by slaughter; and then, as soon as the world is getting over-populated, they are mad to increase their numbers to suffocation and starvation point!"

"Ye-es," said James. "I must confess they have strange ways."

"Strange w—! Well, that's putting it mildly. James, take my word for it, it's a remarkably good thing that these human beings of yours, and these worlds of yours, could never, by any possibility, exist!"