“I’m not given to sentiment, but I dare say there are still a few folks who love each other in this world, — and it’s good to know of when they do. My sister” — he paused again, as if something stuck in his throat; “My sister loved her boy, — Jack. His death has driven her silly for the time — doctors say she will recover — that it’s only ‘shock.’ ‘Shock’ is answerable for a good many tragedies since the European war.”
Seaton moved impatiently, but said nothing,
“You’re a bit on the fidgets” — resumed Gwent, placidly— “You want me to come to business — and I will. May I smoke?”
His companion nodded, and he drew out his cigar-case, selecting from it a particularly fragrant Havana.
“You don’t do this sort of thing, or I’d offer you one,” — he said,— “Pity you don’t, it soothes the nerves. But I know your ‘fads’; you are too closely acquainted with the human organism to either smoke or drink. Well — every man to his own method! Now what you want me to do is this — to represent the force and meaning of a certain substance which you have discovered, to the government of the United States and induce them to purchase it. Is that so?”
“That is so!” and Roger Seaton fixed his eyes on Gwent’s hard, lantern-jawed face with a fiery intensity— “Remember, it’s not child’s play! Whoever takes what I can give, holds the mastery of the world! I offer it to the United States — but I would have preferred to offer it to Great Britain, being as I am, an Englishman. But the dilatory British men of science have snubbed me once — and I do not intend them to have the chance of doing it again. Briefly — I offer the United States the power to end wars, and all thought or possibility of war for ever. No Treaty of Versailles or any other treaty will ever be necessary. The only thing I ask in reward for my discovery is the government pledge to use it. That is, of course, should occasion arise. For my material needs, which are small, an allowance of a sum per annum as long as I live, will satisfy my ambition. The allowance may be as much or as little as is found convenient. The pledge to USE my discovery is the one all-important point — it must be a solemn, binding pledge — never to be broken.”
Gwent puffed slowly at his cigar.
“It’s a bit puzzling!” — he said— “When and where should it be used?”
Seaton stretched out a hand argumentatively.
“Now listen!” he said— “Suppose two nations quarrel — or rather, their governments and their press force them to quarrel — the United States (possessing my discovery) steps between and says— ‘Very well! The first move towards war — the first gun fired — means annihilation for one of you or both! We hold the power to do this!’”
Gwent drew his cigar from his lips.
“Annihilation!” he murmured— “Annihilation? For one or both!”
“Just so — absolute annihilation!” and Seaton smiled with a pleasant air of triumph— “A holocaust of microbes! The United States must let the whole world know of their ability to do this (without giving away my discovery). They must say to the nations ‘We will have no more wars. If innocent people are to be killed, they can be killed quite as easily in one way as another, and our way will cost nothing — neither ships nor ammunition nor guns.’ And, of course, the disputants will be given time to decide their own fate for themselves.”
Sam Gwent, holding his cigar between his fingers and looking meditatively at its glowing end, smiled shrewdly.
“All very well!” — he said— “But you forget money interests. Money interests always start a war — it isn’t nations that do it, it’s ‘companies.’ Your stuff won’t annihilate companies all over the globe. Governments are not likely to damage their own financial moves. Suppose the United States government agreed to your proposition and took the sole possession and proprietorship of your discovery, and gave you their written, signed and sealed pledge to use it, it doesn’t at all follow that they would not break that pledge at the first opportunity. In these days governments break promises as easily as eggshells. And there would be ample excuse for breaking the pledge to you — simply on the ground of inhumanity.”
“War is inhumanity” — said Seaton— “The use of my discovery would be no worse than war.”
“Granted! — but war makes money for certain sections of the community, — you must think of that!” and Gwent’s little shrewd eyes gleamed like bits of steel.— “Money! — money! Stores — food, clothing — transport — all these things in war mean fortunes to the contractors — while the wiping out of a nation in YOUR way would mean loss of money. Loss of life wouldn’t matter, — it never does really matter — not to governments! — but loss of money — ah, well! — that’s a very different and much more serious affair!”
A cynical smile twisted his features as he spoke, and Roger Seaton, standing opposite to him with his fine head well thrown back on his shoulders and his whole face alive with the power of thought, looked rather like a Viking expostulating with some refractory vassal.
“So you think the United States wouldn’t take my ‘discovery?’” he said— “Or — if they took it — couldn’t be trusted to keep a pledged word?”
Gwent shrugged his shoulders.
“Of course our government could be trusted as much as any other government in the world,” — he said— “Perhaps more. But it would exonerate itself for breaking even a pledged word which necessitated an inhuman act involving loss of money! See? War is an inhuman act, but it brings considerable gain to those who engineer it, — this makes all the difference between humanity and INhumanity!”
“Well! — you are a senator, and you ought to know!” replied Seaton— “And if your opinion is against my offer, I will not urge you to make it. But — as I live and stand here talking to you, you may bet every dollar you possess that if neither the United States nor any other government will accept the chance I give it of holding the nations like dogs in leash, I’ll hold them myself! I! One single unit of the overteeming millions! Yes, Mr. Senator Gwent, I swear it! I’ll be master of the world!”
CHAPTER XII
Gwent was silent. With methodical care he flicked off the burnt end of his cigar and watched it where it fell, as though it were something rare and curious. He wanted a few minutes to think. He gave a quick upward glance at the tall athletic figure above him, with its magnificent head and flashing eyes, — and the words “I’ll be master of the world” gave him an unpleasant thrill. One man on the planet with power to destroy nations seemed quite a fantastic idea — yet science made it actually possible! He bethought himself of a book he had lately read concerning radio-activity, in which he had been struck by the following passage— “Radio-activity is an explosion of great violence; the energy exerted is millions of times more powerful than the highest explosive substance yet made in our laboratories; one bomb loaded with such energy would be equal to millions of bombs of the same size and energy as used in the trenches. One’s mind stands aghast at the thought of what could be possible if such power were used for destructive purposes; a single aeroplane could carry sufficient to annihilate a whole army, or lay the biggest city in ruins with the death of all its inhabitants.” The writer of the book in question had stated that, so far, no means had been found of conserving and concentrating this tremendous force for such uses, — but Gwent, looking at Roger Seaton, said within himself— “He’s got it!” And this impression, urging itself strongly in on his brain, was sufficiently startling to give him a touch of what is called “nerves.”
After a considerably long pause he said, slowly— “Well, ‘master of the world’ is a pretty tall order! Now, look here, Seaton — you’re a plain, straight man, and so am I, as much as my business will let me. What are you after, anyway? What is your aim and end? You say you don’t want money — yet money is the chief goal of all men’s ambition. You don’t care for fame, though you could have it for the lifting of a finger, and I suppose you don’t want love—”
Seaton laughed heartily, pushing back with a ruf
fling hand the thick hair from his broad open brow.
“All three propositions are nil to me” — he said— “I suppose it is because I can have them for the asking! And what satisfaction is there in any one of them? A man only needs one dinner a day, a place to sleep in and ordinary clothes to wear — very little money is required for the actual necessaries of life — enough can be earned by any day-labourer. As for fame — whosoever reads the life of even one ‘famous’ man will never be such a fool as to wish for the capricious plaudits of a fool-public. And love! — love does not exist — not what I call love!”
“Oh! May I have your definition?”
“Why yes! — of course you may! Love, to my thinking, means complete harmony between two souls — like two notes that make a perfect chord. The man must feel that he can thoroughly trust and reverence the woman, — the woman must feel the same towards the man. And the sense of ‘reverence’ is perhaps the best and most binding quality. But nowadays what woman will you find worth reverence? — what man so free from drink and debauchery as to command it? The human beings of our day are often less respectable than the beasts! I can imagine love, — what it might be — what it should be — but till we have a very different and more spiritualised world, the thing is impossible.”
Again, Gwent was silent for some minutes. Then he said —
“Apparently the spirit of destructiveness is strong in you. As ‘master of the world’ — to quote your own words, I presume that in the event of a nation or nations deciding on war, you would give them a time-limit to consider and hold conference, with their allies — and then — if they were resolved to begin hostilities—”
“Then I could — and WOULD — wipe them off the face of the earth in twenty-four hours!” said Seaton, calmly— “From nations they should become mere dust-heaps! War makes its own dust-heaps, but with infinitely more cost and trouble — the way of exit I offer would be cheap in comparison!”
Gwent smiled a grim smile.
“Well, I come back to my former question” — he said— “Suppose the occasion arose, and you did all this, what pleasure to yourself do you foresee?”
“The pleasure of clearing the poor old earth of some of its pestilential microbes!” — answered Seaton, “Something of the same thankful satisfaction Sir Ronald Ross must have experienced when he discovered the mosquito-breeders of yellow fever and malaria, and caused them to be stamped out. The men who organise national disputes are a sort of mosquito, infecting their fellow-creatures with perverted mentality and disease, — they should be exterminated.”
“Why not begin with the newspaper offices?” suggested Gwent— “The purlieus of cheap journalism are the breeding-places of the human malaria-mosquito.”
“True! And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stamp them out,” here Seaton threw back his head with the challenging gesture which was characteristic of his temperament— “But what is called ‘the liberty of the press’(it should be called ‘the license of the press’) is more of an octopus than a mosquito. Cut off one tentacle, it grows another. It’s entirely octopus in character, too, — it only lives to fill its stomach.”
“Oh, come, come!” and Gwent’s little steely eyes sparkled— “It’s the ‘safe-guard of nations’ don’t you know? — it stands for honest free speech, truth, patriotism, justice—”
“Good God!” burst out Seaton, impatiently— “When it does, then the ‘new world’ about which men talk so much may get a beginning! ‘Honest free speech — truth!’ Why, modern journalism is one GREAT LIE advertised on hoardings from one end of the world to the other!”
“I agree!” said Gwent— “And there you have the root and cause of war! No need to exterminate nations with your destructive stuff, — you should get at the microbes who undermine the nations first. When you can do THAT, you will destroy the guilty and spare the innocent, — whereas your plan of withering a nation into a dust-heap involves the innocent along with the guilty.”
“War does that,” — said Seaton, curtly.
“It does. And your aim is to do away with all chance or possibility of war for ever. Good! But you need to attack the actual root of the evil.”
Seaton’s brow clouded into a frown.
“You’re a careful man, Gwent,” — he said— “And, in the main, you are right. I know as well as you do that the license of the press is the devil’s finger in the caldron of affairs, stirring up strife between nations that would probably be excellent friends and allies, if it were not for this ‘licensed’ mischief. But so long as the mob read the lies, so long will the liars flourish. And my argument is that if any two peoples are so brainless as to be led into war by their press, they are not fit to live — no more fit than the mosquitoes that once made Panama a graveyard.”
Gwent smoked leisurely, regarding his companion with unfeigned interest.
“Apparently you haven’t much respect for life?” he said.
“Not when it is diseased life — not when it is perverted life;” — returned Seaton— “Then it is mere deformity and encumbrance. For life itself in all its plenitude, health and beauty I have the deepest, most passionate respect. It is the outward ray or reflex of the image of God—”
“Stop there!” interrupted Gwent— “You believe in God?”
“I do, — most utterly! That is to say I believe in an all-pervading Mind originating and commanding the plan of the Universe. We talk of ‘ions’ and ‘electrons’ — but we are driven to confess that a Supreme Intelligence has the creation of electrons, and directs them as to the formation of all existing things. To that Mind — to that Intelligence — I submit my soul! And I do NOT believe that this Supreme Mind desires evil or sorrow, — we create disaster ourselves, and it is ourselves that must destroy it, We are given free-will — if we ‘will’ to create disease, we must equally ‘will’ to exterminate it by every means in our power.”
“I think I follow you” — said Gwent, slowly— “But now, as regards this Supreme Intelligence, I suppose you will admit that the plan of creation is a dual sort of scheme — that is to say ‘male and female created He them’?”
“Why, of course!” and Seaton smiled— “The question is superfluous!”
“I asked it,” went on Gwent— “because you seem to eliminate the female element from your life altogether. Therefore, so I take it, you are not at your full strength, either as a scientist or philosopher. You are a kind of eagle, trying to fly high on one wing. You’ll need the other! There, don’t look at me in that savage way! I’m merely making my own comments on your position, — you needn’t mind them. I want to get out of the tangle-up of things you have suggested. You fancy it would be easy to get the United States Government to purchase your discovery and pledge themselves to use it on occasion for the complete wiping out of a nation, — any nation — that decided to go to war, — and, failing their acceptance, or the acceptance of any government on these lines, you purpose doing the deed yourself. Well! — I can tell you straight away it’s no use my trying to negotiate such a business, The inhumanity of it is to palpable.”
“What of the inhumanity of war?” asked Seaton.
“That PAYS!” replied Gwent, with emphasis— “You don’t, or won’t, seem to recognise that blistering fact! The inhumanity of war pays everybody concerned in it except the fellows who fight to order. They are the ‘raw material.’ They get used up. YOUR business WOULDN’T ‘pay.’ And what won’t ‘pay’ is no good to anybody in this present sort of world.”
Seaton, still standing erect, bent his eyes on the lean hard features of his companion with eloquent scorn.
“So! Everything must be measured and tested by money!” he said— “And yet you senators talk of reform! — of a ‘new’ world! — of a higher code of conduct between man and man—”
“Yes, we talk” — interrupted Gwent— “But we don’t mean what we say! — we should never think of meaning it!”
“‘Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’” quoted Sea
ton with passionate emphasis.
“Just so! The Lord Christ said it two thousand years ago, and it’s true to-day! We haven’t improved!”
With an impatient movement, Seaton strode to the door of his hut and looked out at the wide sky, — then turned back again. Gwent watched him critically.
“After all,” he said, “It isn’t as if you wanted anything of anybody. Money is no object of yours. If it were I should advise your selling your discovery to Morgana Royal, — she’d buy it — and, I tell you what! — SHE’D USE IT!”
“Thanks!” and Seaton nodded curtly— “I can use it myself!”
“True!” And Gwent looked interestedly at his dwindling Havana— “You can!” There followed a pause during which Gwent thought of the strange predicament in which the world might find itself, under the scientific rule of one man who had it in his power to create a terrific catastrophe without even “showing his hand.” “Anyway, Seaton, you surely want to make something out of life for yourself, don’t you?”
“What IS there to be made out of it?” he asked.
“Well!-happiness — the physical pleasure of living—”
“I AM happy” — declared Seaton— “and I entirely appreciate the physical pleasure of living. But I should be happier and better pleased with life if I could rid the earth of some of its mischief, disease and sorrow—”
“How about leaving that to the Supreme Intelligence?” interposed Gwent.
“That’s just it! The Supreme Intelligence led me to the discovery I have made — and I feel that it has been given into my hands for a purpose. Gwent, I am positive that this same Supreme Intelligence expects his creature, Man, to help Him in the evolvement and work of the Universe! It is the only reasonable cause for Man’s existence. We must help, not hinder, the scheme of which we are a part. And wherever hindrance comes in we are bound to remove and destroy it!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 878
