James Howard Calisch

“ Think of this insensate chaos of low emotions, of this ceaseless courting of suffering, death and devastation among nations which should have formed a solid bond of friendship and mutual respect, and which, had they done so, might all have peaceably enjoyed all the wealth of the Universe. ”

“ Yet, if it is bad for the members of a family to treat one another without fair-minded loyalty, if it is morally despicable for any family to treat the neighboring families dishonorably and with malice or hidden unfair purposes, it is just as contemptible for that larger aggregate of Martians, called a nation, to treat any other nation unfairly or unscrupulously. ”

“ An amount of energy is being wasted that, if properly applied, could have led to the realization of many a wonderful social ideal, many a hope long cherished by humanity in vain. An amount of wealth is being squandered on destruction which, applied in conjunction with this vast amount of energy, could have built castles of education beyond our present dreams, institutes of mind-broadening influence upon all the suffering human race. ”

“ If any one nation was to survive by its power to conquer, that one nation must be the nation of the Two-Tonians. The Brits with their propensity toward territorial expansion had ruled the misty planet long enough. We, the Two-Tons, have a greater quantity of explosives than have the Brits. Our Kooltoor is far greater than their culture. The God of NAZARRO, no matter what precepts NAZARRO himself may have proclaimed, will take joy in seeing us conquer. ”

“ If life were to be ruled by this law, it would be absurd to devise remedies against epidemics. In that case, we should allow the disease to ravage the nation all it wants to. Nature would thus render the Martians a special favor by destroying those unfit to survive that particular disease. And after epidemic Number One had passed, we might allow some new epidemic to destroy all the survivors, even though among those killed by the first disease there might have been many who could successfully have survived epidemic Number Two, had they only still been alive to face it. ”

“ Do we seek to apply this much quoted law of survival to morality, we find to our dismay that not infrequently the unscrupulous thief and deceiver and the blunt bully grow and prosper, while the [Pg 34] honest and virtuous thinker, less tricky or less self-assertive, is the unfortunate and suffering underdog. Of course, if this law of survival were indeed to be applied to our international views, we could only praise and admire those who have acquired power: we certainly would have no good cause to hate them. ”

“ The simple precepts of NAZARRO and of the earlier Heebron teachers are the best that the Martians can desire for their guidance. The brotherhood of nations and the peaceable attitude of man toward man no matter on what part of Mars he happens to have been born, is an ideal at least as inspiring as Art for Art’s sake. The high flying and loudly proclaimed ideals of Your-Rope are not the ideals of humanity at large. ”

“ To you, he said, at the distance at which you see our planet, all of our globe must make the impression of an insane asylum, where nationality-mania and nationalized megalomania are the two mental aberrations most prominently prevalent. But in reality, he assured us, these people are not insane. They are simply deluded, carried away by a wrong and intensely harmful conception of honor and of Martian greatness. ”

“ Separate them from that ancient faith, and they are strong enough in themselves to remain standing, fastened deep into the rock of human experience, as efficient guide-posts on the road that leads through the labyrinth of life. ”

“ We shall soon discover that the Martian spoke in detail on this subject to Professor FANSEE, because it had an important bearing upon the further political events on Mars. And it may therefore be proper for me, also to quote to what conclusion the Martian philosopher came at the end of his revelations.
Would anyone think, he exclaimed, of trying to advocate the law of gravitation as a guide to proper conduct? No one would, because it would be utterly absurd. For no Martian can add one iota to its power or take away one iota from its everlasting activity by conscious effort. ”

“ But when he had commenced conscientiously to observe the methods of Nature with this purpose in view, he soon discovered that the conduct of Nature as a whole greatly differs from the conduct deemed just and proper by the Martians. He found that Nature may at any time produce an upheaval of the soil, by which libraries, printing-presses, art museums, temples, churches, factories, institutes of industry and learning, would in a few hours be wantonly destroyed, without the slightest discrimination between the criminal and the virtuous, between things evil and things beneficial to the Martians. ”

“ The horror of it is that upon reaching the surface it explodes, and spreads a thick cloud of smoke, of such a nature that by powerful electrical action it gathers unto itself various materials from the atmosphere and from the soil, with the result that the cloud, instead of diminishing, grows ever thicker and vaster. The cloud kills all life it comes in contact with, and it is feared that it may encircle the whole planet. It is guaranteed to kill every forest and every animal that lives in the forest, to kill every living creature in the water whose surface it touches. ”

“ Indeed, when the struggle came, even the Two-Ton division of the Social-Mist sect, advocates of international cooperation and peace, compounders of a cure for the dreadful nationality-mania, prophets of good-will to all nations, but among whom the nature-view nevertheless largely prevailed, suddenly lost their idealistic enthusiasm, and joined the ranks of the nationality-maniacs, in order to make use of the explosives under the command of the destruction-chiefs. ”

“ It is curious that this advocate of peace arose in a country that had arrived at a position of foremost political importance, so that by this nation no struggle for predominance with other nations was in the least desired. It is just as curious that in Two-Tonia, which was actually engaged in a mental struggle for supremacy, the rising philosophers were advocates of the sanctity of power and the primordial struggle for survival. ”

“ Does not the fact that an intelligent race has survived races of animals physically far more ferocious furnish proof positive of the influence of intelligence on the operation of the great law? No, had the Martian concluded, it furnishes no such proof whatever. An intelligent race has survived, not in consequence of the physical law of survival, but in opposition to it. It survived because it devised means of protection wherewith to oppose the indiscriminating physical forces by which survival had theretofore been determined. ”

“ Among those nationalities whose national pride stands in the way of an appreciation of the merits of other nations, the Two-Tons must be counted foremost. To them all other Nazarrano-Darviniano nations seem utterly worthless and absurdly inferior. For this reason they prefer occasional association or alliance with the Musselmen, although they are supposed to be praying to the Nazarrano God, placing meanwhile their faith in the Darviniano philosophy. Their contempt for other Nazarrano nations knows no limit. ”

“ Many dignitaries of the Nazarrano corporation occupy high places of honor on the strength of it. Nay, among most of the Martian nations even the making and the interpretation of the country’s laws is almost exclusively entrusted to those who excel in this deceitful pursuit. For the attainment to high political office it seems to be an absolutely essential accomplishment. Our Martian informer expressed the fervent belief that, were it not for this irrational and habitual deception, much of the petty malice between nation and nation could have been avoided or allayed. ”

“ Nay, instead of cooperating with each other, the nations actually antagonize one another with blind stupidity. Small-minded jealousies and hatreds, expressing themselves especially in a peculiar international science which the Martians call dip-low-macy, keep the nations aloof from one another, and make sworn hereditary enemies of nations that should entertain naught but friendly and cooperative relations. ”

“ It should be known that in this peculiar Martian pursuit the facial muscles are not permitted to betray the schemes that are hatching in the brain. You think and mean one thing, you say and appear to mean something else. The heavy bulk of brain that burdens the Two-Tons prevents these scientific people from dissimulating their mental activity. They are forced by nature to be blunt and candid, except when they have caused some calamity and foxily try to throw the blame on somebody else, as curiously may be shown by subsequent events. But the brains of the Brits are not quite so heavy. ”

“ Even those nations which have acquired the same faith, the same hopes, the same aspirations, continue to lead their isolated national existence, carefully nursing their mutual petty hatreds and malice against other nationalities. Inasmuch as pretty nearly all the Martian nations seem to be afflicted with this malicious nationality-mania, the planet Mars, as seen from the earth, inevitably makes the impression of one vast lunatic asylum, nationality-mania being the dreadful malady from which the Mars-bound [Pg 15] patients are unfortunately suffering. ”

“ The Two-Ton philosophers, he said, like himself profoundly impressed with the Darviniano faith, had commenced to look to the laws of Nature for moral guidance. And having started to dig in this direction, the momentum of their brain-weight prevented them from changing their course. Thus it came about that NEETCH-UR, a philosopher of note in Two-Tonia, utterly cast aside all Nazarrano precepts. [Pg 37] Why cure, protect or aid the weak? Let the strong survive as Nature naturally would let them. Will they be less intelligent? Blame Nature. ”

“ Separated as we are, by an expansive ocean, from the main seat of nationality-mania, we look on unprejudiced, pitying deeply the Martians who are forced to suffer by its fearful consequences, and doing what we can to stay at least the starvation that might follow in the struggle’s dreadful wake. ”

“ All we aspire to attain is what a clean-minded and healthful development of our resources and intelligence may bring us in the natural course of events. All we advise other nations is to be wise enough not maliciously to interfere with this development.
Did the Two-Tons believe the Brits were maliciously [Pg 56] interfering with their natural growth? Then they should have gone straight for the Brits, without starting a campaign against the Fringe or the Rush-Nots, and without a destructive passage through a small country that never had been accused of malicious interference. ”

“ There are Two-Tons who migrated to my adopted country but who are still in close sympathy with the Two-Tonian nationality-mania, and who saw in this attitude on our part the evidence of ill-will against Two-Tonia. Yet before these grim events no sign of any such ill-will or hatred had ever been detected. Nor will it be possible to detect any after the struggle for supremacy shall have come to an end. ”

“ Give up your futile efforts to be guided by blind Nature in the treatment of your fellowmen. Morality, whether considered from an international or a national point of view, is a set of rules of wholesome living, founded on the requirements of an ever further developing social organization. It does not refer merely to a respectable limitation of sex-life. It embraces good-will, loyalty, justice, fairness, the [Pg 62] absence of all underhand thoughts and methods, and the total lack of malicious intent. Many of these laws have been lucidly compiled in the Nazarrano manuscripts. ”

“ The Two-Tons excel many other nations in depth and scientific thoroughness. They have increased [Pg 18] their depth by digging very deep into any subject to which they devote their attention. That in their arguments in connection with the Darviniano philosophy, aside from empirical pursuits, they are apt to dig in the wrong direction, our Martian informer promised to demonstrate. Digging as deep as they do, one may easily understand, if they really start digging in the wrong direction, how very far from their philosophic object they are likely to wind up in the end. ”

“ But being—as a consequence of their brain-weight—less nimble and more blunt than many of the other races, they frequently assumed in the counsel of nations a high-toned attitude which the others looked upon as arrogant, and by force of which they frequently attempted to dictate the final decisions on international problems. ”

“ As a result of this exclamation, my country was called AM-EUREKA. I may say with pride, and with a humane lack of prejudice entirely uninfluenced by the usual nationality-mania, that my country is one of the few on Mars in which petty jealousy and malice against other nations is totally unknown. Although the Nazarrano and Darviniano faiths form a mechanical mixture among us just as among other civilized nations, yet the Heebron and Nazarrano precepts are beyond all else dear to us ”