Once & Future King 05 - The Book of Merlyn (15 page)

Merlyn stood up again.

"Yes, a fairly good one for a bird. The ants have a different form of nervous system, on the lines of the corpora striata."

"The second question deals with War. It has been suggested that we ought to abolish it, in one way or another, but nobody has given it the chance to speak for itself. Perhaps there is something to be said in favour of war. We would like to be told."

Merlyn put his hat on the floor and whispered to the badger, who, after scuttling off to his pile of agenda, returned, to the wonder of all, with the proper piece of paper.

"Sir, this question has been before the attention of the committee, who have ventured to draw up a list of Pros and Cons, which we are ready to recite." Merlyn cleared his throat, and announced in a loud voice: "PRO."

"In favour of war," explained the badger.

"Number One," said Merlyn. "War is one of the mainsprings of romance. Without war, there would be no Rolands, Maccabees, Lawrences or Hodsons of Hodson's Horse. There would be no Victoria Crosses. It is a stimulant to so-called virtues, such as courage and co-operation. In fact, war has moments of glory. It should also be noted that, without war, we should lose at least one half of our literature. Shakespeare is packed with it."

"Number Two. War is a way of keeping down the population, though it is a hideous and inefficient one. The same Shakespeare, who seems on the subject of war to have been in agreement with the Germans and with their raving apologist Nietzsche, says, in a scene which he is supposed to have written for Beaumont & Fletcher, that it heals with blood the earth when it is sick and cures the world of the pleurisy of people. Perhaps I may mention in parentheses, without irreverence, that the Bard seems to have been curiously insensitive on the subject of warfare. King Henry V is the most revolting play I know, as Henry himself is the most revolting character."

"Number Three. War does provide a vent for the pent-up ferocity of man, and, while man remains a savage, something of the sort seems to be needed. The committee finds from an examination of history that human cruelty will vent itself in one way, if it is denied another. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when war was a limited exercise confined to professional armies recruited from the criminal classes, the general mass of the population resorted to public executions, dental operations without anaesthetics, brutal sports and flogging their children. In the twentieth century, when war was extended to embrace the masses, hanging, hacking, cock-fighting and spanking went out of fashion."

"Number Four. The committee is at present occupied about a complicated investigation into the physical or psychological necessity. We do not feel that a report can be made at this stage with profit, but we think we have observed that war does answer a real need in man, perhaps connected with the ferocity mentioned in Article Three, but perhaps not. It has come to our notice that man becomes restless or dejected after a generation of Peace. The immortal if not omniscient Swan of Avon remarks that Peace seems to breed a disease, which, coming to a head in a sort of ulcer, bursts out into war. 'War,' he says, 'is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, which only breaks, shewing no outward cause why the man dies.* Under this interpretation, it is the peace which is regarded as a slow disease, while the bursting of the imposthume, the war, must be assumed to be beneficial rather than the reverse. The committee has suggested two ways in which Wealth and Peace might destroy the race, if war were prevented: by emasculating it, or by rendering it comatose through glandular troubles. On the subject of emasculation, it should be noted that wars double the birth-rate. The reason why women tolerate war is because it promotes virility in men."

"Number Five. Finally, there is the suggestion which would probably be made by every other animal on the face of this earth, except man, namely that war is an inestimable boon to creation as a whole, because it does offer some faint hope of exterminating the human race."

"CON," announced the magician: but the king prevented him.

"We know the objections," he said. "The idea that it is useful might be considered a little more. If there is some necessity for Might, why is the committee ready to stop it?"

"Sir, the committee is attempting to trace the physiological basis, possibly of a pituitary or adrenal origin. Possibly the human system requires periodical doses of adrenalin, in order to remain healthy. (The Japanese, as an instance of glandular activity, are said to eat large quantities offish, which, by charging their bodies with iodine, expands their thyroids and makes them touchy.) Until this matter has been properly investigated the subject remains vague, but the committee desires to point out that the physiological need could be supplied by other means. War, it has already been observed, is an inefficient way of keeping down the population: it may also be an inefficient way of stimulating the adrenal glands through fear."

"What other ways?"

"Under the Roman Empire, the experiment of offering bloody spectacles in the circus was attempted as a substitute. They provided the Purgation which Aristotle talks about, and some such alternative might be found efficient. Science, however, would suggest more radical cures. Either the glandular deficiency might be supplied by periodical injections of the whole population with adrenalin—or with whatever the deficiency may prove to be—or else some form of surgery might be found effective. Perhaps the root of war is removable, like the appendix."

"We were told that war is caused by National Property: now we are told that it is due to a gland."

"Sir, the two things may be related, though they may not be consequent upon one another. For instance, if wars were solely due to national property, we should expect them to continue without intermission so long as national property continued: that is, all the time. We find, however, that they are interrupted by frequent lulls, called Peace, It seems as if the human race becomes more and more comatose during these periods of truce, until, when what you may call the saturation-point of adrenalin deficiency has been reached, it seizes upon the first handy excuse for a good shot of fear-stimulant. The handy excuse is national property. Even if the wars are dolled up as religious ones, such as crusades against Saladin or the Albigensians or Montezuma, the basis remains the same. Nobody would have troubled to extend the benefits of Christianity to Montezuma, if his sandals had not been made of gold, and nobody would have thought the gold itself a sufficient temptation, if they had not been needing a dose of adrenalin." "You suggest an alternative like the circus, pending the investigation of your gland. Have you considered it?"

Archimedes giggled unexpectedly.

"Merlyn wants to have an international fair, Sir. He wants to have a lot of flip-flaps and giant wheels and scenic railways in a reservation, and they are all to be slightly dangerous, so as to kill perhaps one man in a hundred. Entrance is to be voluntary, for he says that the one unutterably wicked thing about a war is conscription. He says that people will go to the fair of their own freewill, through boredom or through adrenalin deficiency or whatever it is, and that they are likely to feel the need for it during their twenty-fifth, thirtieth, and forty-fifth years. It is to be made fashionable and glorious to go. Every visitor will get a commemorative medal, while those who go fifty times will get what he calls the D.S.O. or the V.C. for a hundred visits."

The magician looked ashamed and cracked his fingers.

"The suggestion," he said humbly, "was more to provide thought, than to be thought of."

"Certainly it does not seem a practical suggestion for the present year of grace. Are there no panaceas for war, which could be used in the meantime?"

"The committee has suggested an antidote which might have a temporary effect, like soda for an acid stomach. It would be of no use as a cure for the malady, though it might alleviate it. It might save a few million lives in a century."

"What is this antidote?"

"Sir, you will have noticed that the people who are responsible for the declaration and the higher conduct of wars do not tend to be the people who endure their extremes. At the battle of Bedegraine Your Majesty dealt with something of the same sort. The kings and the generals and the leaders of battles have a peculiar aptitude for not being killed in them. The committee has suggested that, after every war, all the officials on the losing side who held a higher rank than colonel ought to be executed out of hand, irrespective of their war-guilt. No doubt there would be a certain amount of injustice in this measure, but the consciousness that death was the certain result of losing a war would have a deterrent effect on those who help to promote and to regulate such engagements, and it might, by preventing a few wars, save millions of lives among the lower classes. Even a Fiihrer like Mordred might think twice about heading hostilities, if he knew that his own execution would be the result of being unlucky in them."

"It seems reasonable."

"It is less reasonable than it seems, partly because the responsibility for warfare does not lie wholly with the leaders. After all, a leader has to be chosen or accepted by those whom he leads. The hydra-headed multitudes are not so innocent as they like to pretend. They have given a mandate to their generals, and they must abide by the moral responsibility."

"Still, it would have the effect of making the leaders reluctant to be pushed into warfare by their followers, and even that would help."

"It would help. The difficulty would lie in persuading the leading classes to agree to such a convention in the first place. Also, I am afraid that you will find there is always a type of maniac, anxious for notoriety at any price, or even for martyrdom, who would accept the pomp of leadership with even greater alacrity because it was enhanced by melodramatic penalties. The kings of Irish mythology were compelled by their station to march in the forefront of the battle, which occasioned a frightful mortality among them, yet there never seems to have been a lack of kings or battles in the history of the Green Isle."

"What about this new-fangled Law," asked the goat suddenly, "which our king has been inventing? If individuals can be deterred from murder by fear of a death penalty, why cannot there be an international law, under which nations can be deterred from war by similar means? An aggressive nation might be kept at peace by the knowledge that, if it began a war, some international police force would sentence it to dispersal, by mass transportation to other countries for instance."

"There are two objections to that. First, you would be trying to cure the disease, not to prevent it. Second, we know from experience that the existence of a death penalty does not in fact abolish murder. It might, however, prove to be a temporary step in the right direction."

The old man folded his hands in his sleeves, like a Chinaman, and looked round the council table, doggedly, waiting for further questions. His eyes had begun to discharge their watch.

"He has been writing a book called the Ubellus Merlini, the Prophecies of Merlyn," continued Archimedes wickedly, when he saw that this subject had been concluded, "which he had intended to read aloud to Your Majesty, as soon as you arrived."

"We will hear a reading."

Merlyn wrung his hands.

"Sir," he said. "It is mere fortune-telling, only gypsy tricks. It had to be written because there was a good deal of fuss about it in the twelfth century, after which we are to lose sight of it until the twentieth. But, oh Sir, it is merely a parlour game—not worth Your Majesty's attention at present."

"Read me some part of it, none the less."

So the humiliated scientist, all of whose quips and quiddities had been knocked out of him in the last hour, fetched the burnt manuscript from the fender and handed round a collection of such slips as were still legible, as if it had been a parlour game in earnest. The animals read them out in turn, like mottos from crackers, and this is what they said:

"God will provide, the Dodo will remark."

"The Bear will cure his headache by cutting off his head—but it will leave him with a sore behind."

"The Lion will lie down with the Eagle, saying, At last all the animals are united! But the Devil will see the joke."

"The Stars which taught the Sun to rise must agree with him at noon—or vanish."

"A child standing in Broadway will cry, Look mother, there is a man!" "How long it takes to build Jerusalem, the spider will say, pausing exhausted at his web on the ground floor of the Empire State Building."

"Living-space leads to space for the coffin, observed the Beetle."

"Force makes force."

"Wars of community, county, country, creed, continent, colour. After that the hand of God, if not before."

"Imitation (???????) before action will save mankind."

"The Elk died because it grew its horns too big."

"No collision with the moon was required to exterminate the Mammoth."

"The destiny of all species is extinction as such, fortunately for them."

There was a pause after the last motto, while the listeners thought them over.

"What is the meaning of the one with the Greek word?"

"Sir, a part of its meaning, but only a small part, is that the one hope for our human race must lie in education without coercion. Confucius has it that:

In order to propagate virtue to the world, one must first rule one's country. In order to rule one's country, one must first rule one's family. In order to rule one's family, one must first regulate one's body by moral training. In order to regulate one's body, one must first regulate one's mind. In order to regulate the mind, one must first be sincere in one's intentions. In order to be sincere in one's intentions, one must first increase one's knowledge."

"I see."

"Have the rest any relevant meaning?" added the king.

"None whatever."

"One further question before we rise. You have said that politics are out of order, but they seem so closely tied to the question of warfare that they must be faced to some extent. At an earlier stage you claimed to be a capitalist. Are you sure of these views?"