The Golden Judge

by Nathaniel Gordon

true sportsmen. We risked, and we lost.Let this be the end of it."

  Work began on the dams at last, without interference or protest. Not aword was ever written on paper, but it was the only agreement betweenthe two countries that was scrupulously kept by both sides.

  It was, of course, a wonderful story. The name of Terence O'Reilly swamsuddenly into the headlines, and his wife began keeping a scrapbook ofall the clippings. One among them was destined to be more potent inworld affairs than all the rest. It was a "profile" of General O'Reillypublished in a great American magazine, and it was notable for twothings.

  To begin with, it was the author of this profile who first gave the cointhe name by which it soon became so famous--the "Golden Judge."

  But it also contained a casual, seemingly insignificant remark byGeneral O'Reilly. When the interviewer had asked how he happened tothink of the coin-tossing idea, the general had grinned. "Why not?" hesaid. "Aren't the Irish the gamblingest people on earth?"

  And it was this innocent sentence, hardly noticed at the time, thatstarted the "Golden Judge" on its fantastic career, and kept it frombeing a mere nine-day wonder.

  For a Chinese Communist diplomat in Berne, Switzerland, happened to seeit and, one night at a dinner party, he said mockingly: "This stupidAmerican general in Jerusalem is obviously ignorant of the world.Otherwise, he would realize that no nation on earth loves gambling somuch as the Chinese. Anyone who knows the Orient will tell you this."

  This made good cocktail party talk, a thing desperately needed in Berne,and eventually reached the ears of an Associated Press correspondent. Hefiled a paragraph on it for a box story and, in the inevitable way ofthe press, a reporter in Jerusalem asked General O'Reilly for hiscomment.

  "Well," he said, "I've heard the Chinese are great gamblers indeed,although whether more so than the Irish I beg leave to doubt."

  Then his eyes twinkled. "Why don't they prove it? Why don't they toss acoin, say, for Quemoy and Matsu? The danged little places aren't worth anickel to either side, and well they both know it. But they'll neitherof them back down a hair, for losing face. I say, if they think they'rethe greatest gamblers on earth, let 'em prove it!"

  This sped into print, caused a world-wide stir, and brought GeneralO'Reilly a sizzling reprimand from the Department of the Army. He wasnot REPEAT NOT to express opinions about the value of allied territory.

  He read the reprimand ruefully, reminded himself that another greatIrish failing was too much talk--and said good-by to any hopes for athird star.

  * * * * *

  But this was before the black headlines from Formosa. With popping eyes,General O'Reilly read that the Chinese Nationalist Foreign Minister hadtaken up the challenge. He offered to toss a coin with the ChineseCommunists for Quemoy and Matsu!

  "I'll be jiggered!" the general breathed. "They'll fight abouteverything else, but be damned if they'll admit the Irish are biggergamblers than the Chinese! Now let's see what the Commies say."

  Peking was silent for two weeks. Then, in a broadcast from Radio Peking,Chou En-Lai made his reply.

  He agreed--but with conditions. He insisted on a neutral commission tosupervise the toss, half Communist members, half non-Communist. Worldobservers, weary of neutral commissions that never achieved anything,interpreted this as a delaying tactic and agreed the whole thing wouldfall through.

  "This is further proof," the Nationalist Foreign Minister commented withicy scorn, "that the Communists are no longer real Chinese. For anyChinese worthy of the name would not be afraid to risk the fall of thecoin."

  But Marx had not quite liquidated the gambling fever that runs strong inthe blood of any Chinese, be he ever so Communist.

  Stung, Chou En-Lai retorted: "We agree! Let the coin decide!"

  It was agreed that Prime Minister Nehru of India, as a neutral, shouldsupervise the matter, and that New Delhi would be the scene of theactual tossing. And Nehru thought it fitting to invite General O'Reilly,as the father of the whole thing, to bring the same "Golden Judge" toIndia, to be used again.

  The general came gladly, but declined to make the toss himself. "Mycountry is too closely involved in this matter," he explained, "andthere might be talk if an American made the toss."

  He suggested Nehru himself do it, and the Prime Minister agreed.

  The actual tossing was done in the great governmental palace, andCommunist China won. Chiang Kai Shek's delegate bowed impassively andsaid coolly that his government yielded without question to the goddessof chance.

  That night the Indian Prime Minister was host to a glittering officialbanquet to celebrate the ending of the "offshore island" crisis.

  "And we must lift our glasses," he said eloquently after dinner, "to theman who discovered this eminently sane method of settling quarrels--amethod so sensible, so fair that it is difficult to believe that in allthe world's long search for peace, it has not been discovered before. Igive you General O'Reilly!"

  The general rose to loud applause. He expressed his thanks modestly, anddisclaimed any merit except that of pure luck. Then he held up the"Golden Judge" itself, with a gleam in his eye.

  "I hope," he said, "that this coin will have still more work to do.Surely there are still disputed places in the world, where justice lieson both sides, where only 'face-saving' prevents a settlement. Andsurely it is better to resort to this coin than to force and war andbitter arguments that drag on year after year."

  "Hear! Hear!" Nehru cried, leading the applause. General O'Reilly stoodsmiling until it died away.

  "Places like Kashmir," he said clearly.

  There was a gasp of laughter, quickly hushed. Nehru's face was pale withanger; he was famous for his temper. And everyone knew how India andPakistan had quarreled for years over Kashmir, and that all the effortsof the United Nations had come to nothing so far.

  "I was delighted to hear Prime Minister Nehru say," General O'Reillywent on calmly, "how much he approved this method of settling olddisputes. And I should be very glad to help--with this." Smiling, hetossed the Golden Judge in the air and caught it again.

  Nehru could keep silent no longer. Like a skilled Oriental debater, hestruck back indirectly. "We thank General O'Reilly," he said acidly,"for his kind offer, but perhaps it should be first used by his ownpeople, the Irish, of whose gambling prowess he is so proud. Surely nobitterness has lasted longer than that between the Republic of Irelandand the 'Six Lost Counties' of Northern Ireland. Let the Irish use theGolden Judge themselves before they counsel it for others!"

  But General O'Reilly was unruffled. "I'm an American, myself," he said,smiling, "although proud indeed of my Irish blood. And the _Irish_ Irishwill have to speak for themselves, although I venture to say you'll findthem a sporting people indeed. But that's not quite the point, is it?'Twas you yourself, sir, who praised the Golden Judge so highly. Andyou've seen today what fine sportsmen the Chinese are. The point is, arethe _Indians_ a sporting people?"

  "Of course we're a sporting people!" Nehru glared.

  "Then I take it you'd be willing, assuming Pakistan agrees, of course,but I'm told they're a _very_ sporting people, to--" The general tossedthe coin again, absent-mindedly.

  "All right!" Nehru grated. "If they agree, so do we!"

  * * * * *

  It took a month before Pakistan could agree, and all the arrangements bemade for the Toss on Kashmir. But in that month, the world had otherthings to think about. Chiang Kai Shek accepted his gambling losswithout a murmur and removed his troops from Quemoy and Matsu, theAmerican Seventh Fleet helping, the Communists not interfering. Allcivilians on the islands who wished to go to Formosa were taken there.

  Washington said little officially, but in the corridors of thePentagon, Congress and the White House, the sighs of relief reached galeforce. General O'Reilly received a confidential and personal messagefrom the Army Chief of Staff that made him pink with pleasure.

  "May get that third star after all," he told his wife th
at night. "Andnot too long to wait, maybe."

  But, above all, the month was filled with clamor from Ireland. HerMajesty's Government in Whitehall had immediately issued a communiquewhich took a glacial view of the "puerile" proposal to toss for NorthernIreland. It was the timing of this communique, rather than its contents,that proved a tactical error. It had come too quickly, and Irishmen,both north and south, resented it.

  As a Belfast newspaper wrote tartly: "Irishmen on both sides of the lineare quite able to decide such matters for themselves, without themotherly interference of London."

  Dublin agreed in principle to toss, but the wrangling over conditionsand exceptions boiled up into the greatest inter-Irish quarreling oftwenty years. It was still raging when General O'Reilly flew into theVale of Kashmir with a broad smile and the Golden Judge.

  Again the great coin glittered high in the air while none other thanNehru himself called out, tensely: "Heads!"

  It fell "Tails."

  "So be it!" Nehru said calmly, shaking hands with the Governor-Generalof Pakistan.

  "Well, general," Nehru said, turning to O'Reilly with a smile, "are yousatisfied now? I think we've proved we're a sporting people. So have theChinese, and the Jews and the Arabs. But what about your own folk, theIrish? From what I read, their sporting qualities seem to be highlyoverrated. I'd say they'd never gamble but on a sure thing."

  The general's face went red at the insult, and so, a day later, did thecollective face of all Irishmen, North and South. For a while there wasaghast silence from the Emerald Isle, a silence sullen and embarrassed.And then a great rumbling roar of indignation.

  "Mr. Speaker!" cried a member of the Dail in Dublin. "Are the Irishpeople, who honor great gamblers only a little less than great poets,to be outdone by dark-skinned heathen? Mr. Speaker, I say _no_!"

  The following morning, the government of Eire formally offered to tossfor the Six Lost Counties and, if the coin fell contrary, to say no moreabout them forever. Belfast agreed that same afternoon, and the wholeisland went wild with excitement. Hardly any Irishman failed to placesome kind of side bet on the outcome, and stakes were laid that day thatwould be spoken of with prideful awe for generations to come.

  The remark of a Limerick drayman was widely quoted. "There's not a manof us here," he commented in the course of a game of darts at the Swordand Shamrock, "but would toss a coin for his grandmother's head, andwell ye know it. So after all the blatherin' and yowrin', why not have ago for the Six Counties, and let the coin decide it now and foriver,once and for all, win or lose?"

  The British Government surrendered with grace, and offered to play hostto the toss in London, as a neutral place. They soon learned, withburning ears, that the last place on earth any Irishman consideredneutral was London.

  As a matter of course, General O'Reilly was invited to preside, usingthe Golden Judge. Like most Irishmen in America, he had long sung of andsighed for the Auld Sod, while carefully avoiding going there, even fora visit.

  He now realized his error. He was received as one of Ireland's mostglorious sons. He was set upon by thousands, perhaps hundreds ofthousands, of proud O'Reillys--there were O'Reillys from the bogs andO'Reillys from the great houses, O'Reillys in tophats and O'Reillys intam o' shanter. He was assured, and came near believing it, that in bothlooks and wisdom, he was the spitting image of the Great O'Reilly, oneof the many last rightful Kings of Ireland. A minstrel composed a layabout him, "The Golden Judge of Ireland"; he was smothered in shamrock,and could have swum in the gifts of potheen. Secretly he much preferredScotch whisky to Irish, but the swarming O'Reillys made the disposal ofthe potheen no very great problem.

  * * * * *

  The actual toss took place in a small railroad station, hastily cleanedup, on the railway line between Dublin and Belfast. Impartial surveyorshad certified it as being exactly astraddle the frontier.

  Amid a deathlike hush, with a high sense of history in his heart,General O'Reilly flipped the Golden Judge high in the air.

  Eire won. The Six Counties were no longer lost, and there was littleenough work done in Ireland for a fortnight. Eire instantly andmagnanimously granted to her new north all the points that had beenfought over so bitterly for so many years. For the northerners, to theirsurprise, life went on exactly as before, except for different postagestamps, and a changed heading on their income-tax returns, which wereconsiderably lower. For the first time in many years, there were nobrickbats thrown if a man felt the need, on a summer night, to sing"God Save the Queen."

  General O'Reilly flew away from Ireland with a mist in his eyes and agreat glow in his heart. In a shaven second, he had achieved the thingfor which long and gallant generations of earlier O'Reillys had foughtbloodily and in vain. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if his nervousright hand that day had shown any subconscious partisanship, butrejected the thing as impossible. If the toss for the Six Counties was,in a way, the crowning peak of General O'Reilly's career, it was by nomeans the end of it. Both he and his coin were fast becoming settledtradition. He continued his normal military career, but with the tacitunderstanding he would have a few days' leave of absence whenever theGolden Judge was needed.

  He took it to Stockholm for the toss that settled the old and bitterfishing controversy between Britain and Iceland. Britain won.

  He took it to Cairo, where Britain and Greece tossed for Cyprus. Greecewon, and at once offered Britain all the bases she wanted there, andgranted special extraterritorial status to all British colonels,knights' widows and former governors of the Punjab living in retirementon the island.

  He got his third star just before he flew down to Rio de Janiero for thetoss that finally settled the nagging quarrel between Britain andArgentina as to who owned the Falkland Islands. Britain won.

  He took it to The Hague in Holland for the toss about the Saar. The Saarhad remained a European sore point despite a series of Franco-German"settlements" which never seemed to settle anything. Germany won thetoss, and immediately, of her own free will, granted the French equalcommercial rights.

  The Saar toss had two odd results. The first was purely personal forGeneral O'Reilly, but he never forgot it. One day, driving through TheHague, his official car passed a huge dignified building, which hischauffeur explained was the World Court. With a strange feeling, thegeneral noticed a solemn old man in black, staring bleakly out thewindow. He realized suddenly it was probably a judge, and that thegolden coin in his pocket had turned this costly mechanism into ananachronism. Nobody used the World Court any more now.

  The other result of the Saar toss was, from the viewpoint of worldjurisprudence, far more important. It transformed the Golden Judge froma mere tradition into an established legal institution, in this manner:

  France and Germany had been unable to agree whether the Saar was really_tossable_--a term that soon entered dictionaries--and had appealed tothe United Nations to decide. A temporary or _ad hoc_ United Nationscommission had been named to settle this point and, after duedeliberation, had pronounced the Saar tossable.

  Technically, this "Saar Commission" should have then dissolved itself.Instead, in the way of parliamentary institutions, it lingered on andsoon became the accepted body to decide on tossability. And,illogically, it was forever afterwards still called the "SaarCommission."

  Whenever, anywhere in the world, some international dispute reachedstalemate, it became commonplace for some delegate to rise and say: "Mr.Chairman, I move the question be referred to the Saar Commission."

  In due course, the Saar Commission would then give its solemn judgmentas to whether or not the dispute should be put to the arbitrament of theGolden Judge. If so, General O'Reilly would board a plane, and be off.

  Once the Saar Commission had its say, no nation ever dared refuse to puta dispute to the hazard of the coin. Whereas nations yawned at beingcalled "warmongers" or "imperialists" or "aggressors" or "internationalbandits," none could stand being called "bad sportsmen" or "poorlosers." So many n
ations had accepted the verdict of the Golden Judge,that it became increasingly more difficult, not to say impossible, for agiven nation to admit it was less sporting than the others.

  * * * * *

  However, not all disputes were held tossable, to the disappointment ofsome people who had too quickly believed the Golden Judge would bringimmediate Utopia, the end of all quarreling forever. Gradually the SaarCommission evolved certain criteria:

  1. A dispute was not tossable if it might give great populations andgreat nations over into systems of government they abhorred; it wastossable only if the population involved had no very great bias one wayor the other.

  2. A tossable dispute was one in which justice lay on both sides, evenlybalanced.

  3. Tossing was clearly indicated where both sides ardently wished asettlement, but where neither side was willing to cede an inch, for fearof losing "face."

  Thus the Saar Commission pronounced untossable the proposal by theSoviet Union to have the Golden Judge decide whether or not Americashould abandon all her overseas bases. It also turned down thesuggestion of an American senator that Russia and the United Statesshould toss for Soviet withdrawal from all Eastern Europe. It denied theappeal of an idealistic Dane who wanted a toss to decide whether Germanyshould be all Communist or