Читать книгу Winnowed Wisdom - Stephen Leacock - Страница 11

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From everything which I read in the press, I feel certain that it is coming. There doesn't seem the slightest doubt about it. It may not come for a month and it might be a year in coming, but there is no doubt the Next War is already looming in sight. I have gathered together all the documents that prove it--interviews and discussions with the leading men concerned in it, who simply must know what they are talking about. Let me lay some of them before the reader and he can see for himself, on the very best authority, the situation that confronts us:

Document No. 1

The Alignment in the Next War

New York, July 25: Colonel The Honourable Fizzle Bangspark of the British General Army Staff, who arrived in New York on the Megalomania, expressed his views to the representatives of the press on the prospects of the Next War. The Colonel is confident that in the Next War, which he thinks may begin at any time, it is most likely the alignment will be that of Great Britain, France, and the United States against Germany and Russia.

But he may think it equally likely that it may be fought as between Great Britain, Russia, and Germany against France, the United States, and Portugal. Colonel Bangspark states, however, that though the war is certain the exact alignment of the nations will be very difficult to foresee.

He thinks it possible that England and Switzerland, if they get a good opportunity, may unite against France and Scotland. But it is altogether likely that in a war of magnitude, such as Colonel Bangspark hopes to see, the United States and China will insist on coming in, either on one side or the other. "If they do," continued Colonel Bankspark, "it will be hard to keep them out."

The distinguished officer considers it difficult to say what part Japan will play in the Next War, but he is sure that it will get into it somewhere. When asked about the part that would be played by the races of Africa in the coming conflict, Colonel Bangspark expressed a certain amount of doubt. "It is hard to say," he stated, "whether they can get in in time. They number of course a great many millions, but the question really turns on whether they have had a training sufficient to let them in. As yet their armies would be hardly destructive enough, and it would be very poor policy to let them in if they do not turn out to be deadly enough when they get in.

"The black," said the colonel, "is a good fellow and I like him. If he were put under first class European officers, he might prove fairly murderous. But I am not as yet prepared to say that we can make a profitable use of him in the Next War."

Asked if the Chinese would play a large part in the coming struggle, the distinguished officer again hesitated. "The Chinaman," he claims, "has not yet had enough contact with European civilizations. The Chinaman is by nature a pacifist and it will be hard to get him away from the idea of peace."

Asked finally if the South Sea Islanders would be in the struggle, Colonel Bangspark spoke warmly and emphatically in their favor. "They will be in it from the start," he said. "I know the Polynesians well, having helped to organize native troops in the Marquesas Islands where I was quartered at Popo Popo for two years, and in the Friendly Islands and in the Society Islands and in the Paradise Group, where I was the first man to introduce gunpowder.

"The Marquesas Islander," the colonel went on, "is a splendid fellow. In many ways he is ahead of us Europeans. His work with the blowpipe and the poison dart antedates the use of poison in European warfare and compares favorably with the best work of our scientific colleges."

When questioned as to which side the Marquesas Islanders would come in on, the colonel stated that he did not regard that as a matter of prime importance. He was convinced, however, that a place would be found for them and he hoped to see them in the front trenches (on one side or the other) on the first day.

Colonel Bangspark expressed himself as delighted with all that he has seen on this side of the water. He says that he was immensely pleased with the powder works on the Hudson, and though he had not yet seen the powder works on the Potomac, he was convinced that they were just as delightful.

The colonel, whose sojourn in our country is to last for some weeks, will shortly leave New York to visit the powder works at South Chicago. He is accompanied on his journey by his wife and little daughter, both of whom he expects will be blown up in the Next War.

Document No. 2

The Peril From The Air

New York, July 25: General de Rochambeau-Lafayette, Director-in-Chief of the French Aerial forces, was interviewed yesterday at the Ritzmore Hotel as to the prospects of world peace. The General, whose full name is the Marquis de Rochambeau-Lafayette de Liancourt de la Rochefoucauld, belongs to the old noblesse of France, and is a cultivated French gentleman of the old school. He is himself a veteran of seven wars and is decorated with the croix militaire, the croix de guerre, the nom de plume, and the cri de Paris.

The Next War will, the count thinks, be opened, if not preceded, by the bombing of New York from the air. The hotels, which the count considers comfortable and luxurious above anything in Europe, will probably be blown up on the first day. The Metropolitan Museum of Art which General de Rochambeau visited yesterday and which he regards as equal to anything in the south of France, would undoubtedly afford an admirable target for a bomb.

The general expressed his unbounded astonishment at the size and beauty of the Pennsylvania and the Grand Central stations. Both, he said, would be blown up immediately. No air squadron could afford to neglect them.

"And your great mercantile houses," the count continued enthusiastically, "are admirable. Combining as they do, a wide superficies with an outline sufficiently a pic to make it an excellent point de mire, they could undoubtedly be lifted into the air at one bombing."

Document No. 3

The Coming Conflict On The Sea

New York, July 25: Admirable Breezy, who represents the jolliest type of the hearty British sailor and who makes a delightful impression everywhere, is of the opinion that the Next War will be fought not only on land but on the sea and in the sky and also under the sea.

"It will be fought all over the shop," said the Admirable, "but I do trust that the navy will have its fair share." The big battleship, he says, is after all the great arm of defense. "We are carrying guns now forty feet long and with an effective range of twenty-five miles." "Give me a gun ten feet longer," said the Admirable, "and I will stand off New York and knock down your bally city for you."

He offered further, if given a gun sixty feet long, to reach Philadelphia, and that if he were given the right gun platform he could perhaps hit Pittsburgh.

"I don't despair even of Chicago," said the Admirable. "We are moving forward in naval gunnery every year. It is merely a matter of size, length, and range. I could almost promise you that in ten years I could have a smack at St. Louis and Omaha. Canada, unfortunately, will mostly be on our side; otherwise, one might have had a bang at Winnipeg."

Admirable Breezy said that while he was warmly in favor of peace, he felt that a sea war between England and the United States would certainly make for good fellowship and mutual understanding between the two navies. "We don't know one another," he complained, "and under present circumstances I don't see how we can. But if our fellows could have a smack at your fellows, it would make for a good understanding of all round."

The Admiral is to speak in Carnegie Hall tonight on "What England Owes to the United States." A large attendance (of financial men) is expected.

Document No. 4

The New Chemical Terror

New York, July 26: Professor Gottlos Schwefeldampf, the distinguished German chemist, who is at the head of the German Kriegschemiefabrik at Stinken in Bavaria, arrived in New York yesterday on the Hydrophobia and is at the Belmore Hotel. The professor, who is a man somewhat below middle stature, is extremely short-sighted, and is at present confined to his room from the effects of a fall down the elevator. He speaks with the greatest optimism on the prospects of chemical warfare.

He considers that it has a wonderful future before it. "In the last war," he declared, sitting up in bed as much as a rheumatic infliction of long standing enabled him to do, "we were only beginning. We have developed now a gas which will easily obliterate the population of a whole town. It is a gas which is particularly destructive in the case of children, but which gives also very promising results with adults."

The professor spoke to the members of the press of the efficiency of this new discovery. Half a pint of the gas let loose in the room, he said, would easily have annihilated the eight representatives of the press who were present with him. He regretted that unfortunately he had none of the gas in a condition for instant use.

"But we shall not rely alone on gas," continued Professor Schwefeldampf. "In the Next War we expect to make a generous use of poison. Our poison factories are developing methods whereby we can poison the crops in the ground a hundred miles away. If our present efforts reach a happy conclusion, we shall be able to poison the livestock of an entire country. I need not dilate," he said, "on the favorable results of this--"

The Professor was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing, after which he sank back so exhausted that the members of the press were unable to prod any more copy out of him and left.

There! That's about the picture, not a bit exaggerated, of where we are letting this poor old world drift to. Can we manage, my dear people, to do something to stir up a little brotherly love all round? We ought to do it even if we have to send hundreds of people to jail to get it. As for me, I intend to start towards it right away. The very next time I see on the street a Russian Bolshevik with black whiskers like an eclipse of the sun, I shall go right up to him and kiss him and say, "Come, Clarence, let us forget the past and begin again."