Part 4

“If you do,” said Ultimus quietly, “I shall blow you in pieces. I know how the Fattish Empire treated my father, and, but for your kindly thoughts of my mother, I would send you to join the ships which I am only too happy to have destroyed if such a disaster can cause any genuine commotion in Bondon. I will further caution you to be careful what you say, as I am unaccustomed to society other than that of the wise Siebenhaar, and already feel my soul filled with dislike and contempt for you. This island is my island by inheritance, it is moving by my will and I shall allow you to stay on it just as long as you are useful to me.”

Rear-Admiral Bich saw the strength of Ultimus’ position and was silent until Siebenhaar asked him for news of civilisation, when he expressed surprise that they had not heard of the war.

“War?” said Siebenhaar. “Are they still at that game? Why, we were told that the Fattero-Fattish war was to be the last.”

“That,” replied the Admiral, “was a mere skirmish. There are six or seven nations at war with Fatterland.”

“Alas! my poor country!” cried the philosopher. “I knew how it would be. Their infernal greed and conceit, their confusion of mind, their slothfulness, their desire for discipline, their liking for monuments and display, their want of tact, all these defects needed but success for them to grow into active vice and plunge them into disaster. To any nation a period of successful peace is fatal. The employment of commercial cunning unredeemed by any other exercise of the mind is, after a time, unutterably boring, and the most obvious relief from it is found in the ideal of a nation in arms. Now that is a barren ideal. To train men for so stupid and brutal a trade as the soldier’s is to increase the already excessive amount of stupidity and brutality in the world. To maintain large bodies of stupid and brutal men in arms is in the end to be forced to find an excuse for using them. Human nature, I fear, is incurably pugnacious and destructive. I have had to amend many of my more optimistic opinions concerning the human race since I have had the privilege of watching the development of our young friend yonder. He is normal, healthy and intelligent, and acquainted with all the resources of civilisation, physical and mental. There is hardly a practical discovery of modern science that I have not placed at his disposal for his use and amusement, but these do not satisfy him. He is not exposed to the nervous pressure to which in our crowded modern states I used to ascribe outbreaks of hostility. No. In the absence of an enemy he must declare war upon his own handiwork, upon the elements, upon the very earth itself.”

“Before you go any further,” said the Rear-Admiral, “I should like something to eat, and I should like to explain that on our side in the war is the right. The Fatters have behaved like savages. They have burned cities, murdered old men and children, raped women and committed every outrage.”

“I have seen something of warfare myself,” said Siebenhaar. “It is a bestial occupation. When a man has become accustomed to slaughter by license, what is there to make him stop at minor offences such as theft, rape, and wounding? Soldiers who are unchaste in peace do not become chaste when war is declared. In a friendly country the women consent. In a hostile country some of them protest, generally because they are panic-stricken and in terror of worse happening to them.”

“This war,” said the Rear-Admiral, “is holy.”

“I am a Fatter,” replied Siebenhaar, “and the Fatters have been taught for generations that all war is holy and sanctifies all that is done in its name.”

“We,” said the Fattishman, “fight like gentlemen.”

“And,” retorted the philosopher, “like gentlemen you burn and rape and pillage.”

“Your conversation,” said Ultimus, “has interested me extremely. I am filled with a burning desire to see civilisation, war, soldiers, and, above all, women. We will go to the centre of civilisation, and if I do not like it I shall blow it in pieces.”

“Two can play at that game,” said Bich. “We have explosives too.”

For answer, Ultimus reached out and pressed two wires together. There was a rumble, a crash, a thud, and hundreds of tons of rock were torn away from the side of the mountain and hurled into the air to fall, miles away, into the sea.

IV: WAR AND WOMEN

As a sailor, Charles Bich, though middle-aged, liked nothing better than to talk about women. He was sentimental about them, but at the same time sensually appreciative of their beauty. To such an extent did he inflame the young man’s imagination that Siebenhaar had to protest.

“It is a shame,” he cried, “that the son of such a father should be polluted with the obsessions of civilised men.”

With the air of leaving no more to be said, Ultimus remarked:

“I like them.”

“So do all unintelligent men,” replied Siebenhaar, “and they are driven mad by them and hope against hope for the day when all restraint will be removed. This is another potent factor in the production of war. Women are not to the same degree subject to these terrible obsessions, but they do regret their limited opportunities in the organised society of peace. Further, in times of war they like to think that men are fighting for them, and they love to be regaled with stories of violence and outrage, especially those who have been entirely chaste, and have no hope of anything else.”

The Rear-Admiral blushed.

“When we fight,” he said, “we fight for our country, our King, our Empire, for the all-red map of the world.”

“These,” replied Siebenhaar, “are words. Country, King, Empire, are protective ideas. What you love and what you defend is your mode of living, which you have adopted partly because you have a prejudice in favour of it, partly because you like it better than any other you can conceive. Your living consists in eating, drinking, consorting with women, and rearing any family you may produce. Everything else is introduced merely to disguise any unpleasantness there may be in the exercise of those functions. For the most part they are lies, illusions, hallucinations, obsessions, which you find convenient to cloak your unimportance. As a naval officer you justify the absurd occupation by which you procure your livelihood. My young friend here is under no such painful necessity and I wish him to be spared all mental confusion.”

“Personally,” interrupted Ultimus, “I do not wish to be influenced by either of you. You, sir,” addressing Siebenhaar, “have given me all the knowledge and wisdom you have stored up in your adventurous life, and you, sir, have out of your life of duty, given me a new interest in the two things, war and women, which have hitherto been denied me. I am much obliged to you, and, if you don’t mind we will continue the erection of the wireless installation we began yesterday, because I am anxious to establish communication with the world as soon as possible.”

Ultimus and Bich retired to the top of the mountain leaving Siebenhaar sadly tracing on the sands a rough caricature of a woman. So horrible was it to him that he could not finish it and obliterated it with his foot.

V: WIRELESS

Every day brought messages from the world. The Fattish had made a glorious retreat of sixty miles. The Waltzians were offering a glorious resistance to the Grossians. With the help of God the Fatters had gloriously evacuated their trenches on the west, and heroically withdrawn from a river on the east. With assistance from above the Fattish navy had swept the Fatter flag from the seven seas. The Bilgians had been nobly extinguished, though their flag was still flying and their King ruled over a flooded country. Hundreds of thousands of men were killed, wounded, and lost. From country to country General congratulated General, Admirals sent their applause to Field-Marshals, Statesmen exchanged bravos, and monarchs thanked each other and God for timely assistance.

Rear-Admiral Bich said: “Isn’t it glorious--glorious?”

“At present,” replied Ultimus, “I am so confused that I can make nothing of it. Why are they all so pleased with themselves? Do they like to think of thousands of men dying?”

“They have died for their country. They are heroes.”

“I don’t see that. I cannot imagine myself going out of my way to die for my island, and Fatland is also an island.”

“Ah!” said the Rear-Admiral. “But there are no women on your island, no little ones, no homes.”

“There is Siebenhaar who has been father and mother to me, master and instructor.”

“Well! Suppose you saw men designing to murder Siebenhaar, would you not raise a hand to defend him?”

“Not if I saw there was not the remotest chance of saving him. But that is nonsense. No one would want to murder Siebenhaar.”

“I don’t know about that. There are times when he is so exasperating that I hardly dare answer for myself.”

“That is absurd,” replied Ultimus. “You know that I should destroy you at once if you did anything to Siebenhaar. The case might be different if you were in such a position that there would be consequences. But why deal with hypothesis when you are confronted with facts?”

The simple sailor was no hand at an argument, and just at that moment there came the news of the loss of a Fattish fleet after an encounter with the Fatters, with an account of the heroic death of the Commander, Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Bich.

Unfortunately the island was not yet in a position to transmit messages and the unhappy Bich had to rest inactive, crushed with the burden of the news of his own death and his inability to contradict it.

“You see,” said Ultimus, “you _have_ died for your country, you are a hero, and you do not like it at all.”

VI: BICH IS OBSTINATE

The point was argued for many days. Bich would not withdraw from his assertion that it was glorious to die for his country, but at the same time he could not disguise his distress at having done so.

“If I had died,” he said, “it would have been glorious.”

“Only in the eyes of your countrymen,” said Siebenhaar. “You already have that, and if you had died you would not have known anything about it.”

“There is a heaven above,” cried Bich.

“Which you could never have entered. Has not Heaven enjoined you not to kill and not to resist evil?”

“In the service of my country!”

“What does heaven know of your country? Heaven is eternal. Its laws are for eternity. Your country, your Empire are mere temporary arrangements for the convenience of a few millions of men and women who wish to profit by the labours of people less fortunate than themselves. You are therefore contending that it is glorious to die for a man’s material advantage, or, in other words, for political and financial vested interests.”

“I am prepared at any moment to die for my country.”

“You _have_ died.”

“I have not.”

“You have died and been given the glory attaching to such death.”

“That is what I cannot bear.”

“Then,” said Ultimus, “I will give you a root which will procure you a perfectly painless death. I see that you do not mind dying for your country so long as you do not know about it.”

“And that,” put in Siebenhaar, “is where he is consistent. He is like all the men of his time and condition; he does not mind living, in fact he quite likes it, so long as he knows nothing about it and is not called upon to realise what he is doing. When he is faced with the consequences of such insensibility he is so appalled that he welcomes the idea of death, if he can find some excuse for it. Therefore he has invented a myth called his country and proposes to die for that. According to his prejudices it is cowardly to draw a fire-arm upon himself, but it is right and brave to place himself in the line of some one else’s fire. Such a condition of imbecility is extremely infectious. It sweeps through crowds of men like a disease through cattle. But, as men are indomitably hopeful, they do not destroy each other, as you, Ultimus, might suppose. No, they wait until they can discover another crowd of men in the same lamentable condition, and fall upon them in the hope of a victory which shall restore their self-conceit and once more blind them to the appalling consequences of their own ill-doing. And here, at last, we do touch upon one of the prime causes of war. Superficially it looks as though the immediate cause was this, that the governors of States make such a mess of the affairs with which they are entrusted and reduce their people to so lamentable a condition that they must seek war as an outlet, and to give the male populace as soldiers the food which they have made it impossible for them to earn as workers. There is also the consideration that a large proportion of the male populace will be removed from all possibility of making trouble. That is an interesting but a superficial view which attaches more blame to the rich than they deserve. No. A more profound analysis gives us the result I have previously indicated, that wars are invariably due to moral epidemics. And, since the human race will always be subject to them, there will always be war.”

Ultimus had withdrawn at the beginning of the discussion. Having no knowledge of men in herds, he could not follow the line of Siebenhaar’s argument. He returned now to say that he had obliterated another battle. On this the Rear-Admiral was excited and wished to know what ships he had seen and what flag they were flying.

“I do not know,” replied Ultimus, “but there were nine ships attacking three and that struck me as so unfair that I decided to make an end of it.”

“But they may have been Fattish ships! Have you no regard for human life?”

Said Ultimus:

“There was no sign of anything human. They looked like flies on the water. When I see three scorpions attacking a smaller insect I always kill the scorpions for their cowardice and the insect for having called down their anger upon itself.”

Rear-Admiral Bich drew himself up to his full height and said:

“As a Christian I protest. As an officer and a gentleman I must ask you to put me ashore at the first opportunity. They may be Fattish ships which you have destroyed. My King and country need me.”

“Come, come,” interposed Siebenhaar, “your King and country are probably doing very well without you. They have an immense geographical advantage which only the blind jealousy of the Fatters makes it impossible for them to admit. You are already a hero; poems have in all probability been written to your memory. You had better stay with us. It will be much more amusing to see what effect Ultimus has on civilisation than to plunge back into the fever which has seized it.”

The Rear-Admiral looked scornful and very proud and said:

“Herr Siebenhaar, on our previous acquaintance only the protection of the late heroic Mr. Samways prevented me from denouncing you as a Fatter spy. I have not forgotten.”

“What,” asked Ultimus, “is a spy?”

“Spies,” replied Siebenhaar, “are corrupt and useless people who are sent out to frighten a hostile nation by making them think that the enemy knows more about them than they do themselves. They are only used when the desire for war is very strong. They exercise a paralysing effect upon the civil population and deliver them up to the guidance of their own military authorities. They are like microbes which carry the war fever from one country to another. I regret that Sir Charles should have so small an opinion of my intelligence as to think that my country would make so trivial a use of me.”

“I can’t stand all this talk,” muttered the Rear-Admiral, and he went away and all night long paced up and down the sands on the other side of the island, imagining that he was once more serving his King and country on his own quarter-deck.

VII: PLANS

In secret the indomitable servant of his country made himself a boat, a coracle of palm branches and mud, and when, a week later, they came in sight of land and Ultimus put in close to have a good look at it and the little white city built by the mouth of a river, he put off in it without so much as saying good-bye or thank you for the hospitality he had received.

“He will come back,” said Siebenhaar; “he will come and try to annex the island. No Fattish officer can resist an island and the Fattish have been known to waste thousands of lives in order to add a bare rock or a pestilential swamp to their Empire. It is an amiable lunacy which my unhappy race, who cannot appreciate their geographical disadvantage, are trying to emulate. What is the news of the war to-day?”

“The official reports all agree in saying that there is no further development. Every capable man in every country is now bearing arms. All other activity is at a standstill. Stern measures have had to be taken by the various governments to stop the emigration of pregnant women to the peaceful countries on the other side of the world.”

“Ah!” said Siebenhaar, “I thought that would happen, I thought the women would revolt as soon as war ceased to be an excitement and became a trade.”

“Some of the Governments,” added Ultimus, “are paying women over forty-five years of age to go.”

Siebenhaar chuckled.

“It is time we interfered, Ultimus. When they lose their sense of humour so far as that, it is time for action. We will go to Fatland. Where are we now?”

“Off the coast of Africa.”

“We will lie out to sea until we have prepared the island against all dangers. First of all we will blow up the harbour. Then we will mine the shores all round. We will prepare the rocks on the tops of the mountains for missiles and we will lay in a great stock of your new transmissible explosive. We will then block the mouth of the great Fattish river, and we shall see what we shall see. An intelligent use of explosives should be able to counteract and if necessary to crush the fatuous use of them that is now being made. We will try persuasion, threats, and violence in that order to stop the war, and if then we cannot succeed we will abandon the human race altogether and return to our own Southern Seas.”

“You forget,” expostulated Ultimus, “that I was drawn here out of curiosity as to something else besides the war, and that is, woman.”

“A man,” said Siebenhaar, “bears a grudge against woman for his birth; he is a fool to burden himself with others against her.”

“As I imagine them,” replied the young man wistfully, “they are beautiful.”

“Lord, Lord,” cried Siebenhaar, “if only a young man would be content with his imaginings.”

VIII: IN FATTISH WATERS

The island moved proudly up the Fattish channel, until they came within sight of the land on either side of it. Here was drawn up a great array of ships like those which had been destroyed in the Southern Seas. On the foremost of the ships were hoisted a number of little flags which Siebenhaar interpreted as saying:

“Good morning. Welcome home.”

Now, the fragmentary message recorded by the wireless gave the clue to the purport of this signal. There had been a great rally of the Fattish Empire, one colony had sent sacks of flour, another black currants, another black men, another brown sugar; all came to the aid of the motherland in her need, all forgot their grievances and vowed that they never would be slaves. In the face of such a demonstration no doubt as to whether the Fattish empire really existed could survive. Men who would not admit black, brown, or yellow men to their clubs welcomed them to their trenches. Such unity, such loyalty, such brotherhood, must lead to victory. But victory was slow in coming and it was becoming difficult to maintain interest in the war, when, suddenly, there burst upon the Fattish public the news that the lost island was responding to the call and even now coming to place its unique powers of motion at the service of the Emperor-King. The miraculous had happened. Once more it was obvious that the right was on the Fattish side. Once more the streets of Bondon were thronged as on the eve of the declaration of war. The map of the world with the red blot made by George Samways was taken down and copies of it were sold for the Imperial relief fund. It was supposed that George Samways, the only hero of the last war, was on the island and had induced it to return to the fold. His downfall was forgotten, his heroism remembered.

Ultimus stopped the island and entered into communication by wireless with the Fattish fleet.

“Is that Samways Island?”

“Yes.”

“Is George Samways aboard?”

“No. His son and his friend, Siebenhaar.”

“What nationality is Siebenhaar?”

“Fatter.”

“He must be taken prisoner.”

“Nonsense. He is an ex-engineer, now a philosopher.”

“Fatter philosophers are writing the most scurrilous abuse of the Fattish.”

“Siebenhaar has been for the last twenty years on the island.”

“Tell him to change his name before landing, or he will have to register.”

“We have no intention of landing.”

“We did not get your last message correctly.”

“We have no intention of landing.”

“Don’t understand. May we send a deputation?”

Ultimus replied:

“I will receive one Cabinet Minister and the most beautiful woman in Fatland. I shall be in the mouth of the river by two o’clock. You had better move your ships and be very careful of the backwash. I understand that the shores of the channel are strewn with wrecks.”

Frantic messages then passed between the ships and the Admiralty in Bondon. It would be extremely awkward to have the island in the river, blocking the channels to the port, but the public were thinking of nothing but the island, and, in default of George Samways, were quite prepared to take his son to be their darling. There must not be a hint anywhere of the possibility of the island’s being, after all, disloyal. The Fattish had been very reticent about their relations with God, whereas the Fatters had claimed him as their ally. The Fattish had been favored with miracles, even as the Children of Israel. It was decided to retain the miracle in the face of all risks and Mr. Samways was promised that a Cabinet Minister accompanied by the most beautiful woman in Fatland should call at four o’clock on the following day.

The fleet turned and steamed away out of sight.

IX: AN AFTERNOON CALL

The acknowledged most beautiful woman in Fatland was none other than Arabella’s sister. She was fifty-three, but had managed to preserve her reputation by the discreet publication of her connection with illustrious men. She had one rival for the honour of the visit to the island, a lovely creature, a brilliant singer of popular ballads, who, during the crisis, had carried all before her and swept hundreds of young men into the army with her famous ditty: “Won’t I kiss you when you come back home?” However, her claims were disposed of by Arabella’s sister astutely pointing out that she was the aunt of the young man on the island, and therefore, if necessary, could be alone with him in perfect propriety.

In a motor launch she came out with the Lord High Chief of the Admiralty in full-dress uniform.

No sooner did she set eyes on Ultimus than she burst into tears and cried that he was the living image of Arabella. She kissed him and he drew back outraged and cried:

“Don’t do that again.”

Siebenhaar explained:

“Your nephew, madam, has never seen a woman before and is naturally alarmed. Your voice must sound strangely to his ears and your costume, if you will forgive me, leaves room for considerable doubt as to the normality of your anatomy. I think it would be as well if you made no attempt to reassure him, but allowed him to look at you and to grow accustomed to you while I engage your companion in conversation.”

With that he turned to the Lord High Chief and said:

“You can imagine that I am astounded to return after a long absence to find civilisation plunged once more in the barbarism of war. Surely no single one of the combatants has anything to gain by it.”

“The war, sir, was not of our seeking.”