Our coming world
Date: 2024-01-05T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Utopias

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Title: Our coming world

Author: Alfred Charles Michaud

Release date: January 5, 2024 [eBook #72638]

Language: English

Original publication: Philadelphia: World Publication Press

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Tim Lindell, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR COMING WORLD ***

Our
Coming World
by

A.C. MICHAUD

THE WORLD PUBLICATION PRESS

P.O. BOX 2077 · PHILADELPHIA 3, PA.

Copyright 1951

By A.C. Michaud

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

"Astronomers say the earth is constantly swelling and contracting. They call this 'breathing.' Those aren't breaths—those are sighs."[1]

The great mental suffering which the Nazis created in me with their murder factories, their atrocious robbing and sadistic killing of defenseless innocents, and their unprecedented merciless wars against guiltless nations, spontaneously prompted me to write this book.

I am not writing it for personal gain, neither have I an ax to grind. It is a message to humanity, purely a labor of love, hoping to finish and have it ready before I die.

Since the beginning of the last half century, I was a part of our economic system as a small financial speculator, investor, business man, executive, and employer. Experienced success, failure, profits, and losses, have traveled a great deal and always have been a keen observer and reader.

I am not trying to set myself up as an authority on world subjects and affairs, but I feel qualified by my experiences to help humanity. Have no personal prejudice, nor feel inimical to the present way of life, and economic and political powers of our country. My aim is to show mankind, in my own way, and with humility, its defective economic system of living.

Mankind has been looking forward for the millennium, when there will be peace, and security on earth. For a long time I have with undue anxiety been deeply reflecting to find out and analyze the fundamental principle contributing to our world turmoil. Have arrived at the cause, and maybe at the solution, in my following treatise.

Am not superstitious nor ultrareligious, but most of my inspiration in the writing of this book came from impulses given to me by some power other than my own. I seem to have been impelled by a supernatural intervention.

Many another author before me has tried to show humanity the error of its ways. But even that does not deter me from trying to make clear to mankind my conception of how unjust has been our way of living.

Mankind as a whole would be humane if it were not for the false system that our ancestors have created and planted in our world.

Man with his intelligence has two personalities. He is by nature on one side humane, helpful, unselfish and self sacrificing, interested in the welfare of his kind. On the other side, because of our economic system, he has become in many ways a selfish, cruel, and a predatory animal.

I am going to picture as clearly as possible existing faults of our way of living and am suggesting an imaginary remedy. I am fully convinced that it is not only a workable plan, but it is the only solution and antidote we have.

My objective is to help bring about, by my humble efforts, a gradual evolution, believing it possible to work toward a sane and balanced economic life without creating social unrest or strife.

My most sincere gratitude to Mrs. Dorothy Alger of Reno, Nevada, in the scrupulous, good workmanlike manner she typed and retyped my manuscript.

CHAPTER I

Our Coming World

On my daily afternoon strolls on West Riverside Drive Parkway, between 85th and 87th Streets in New York, I noticed a young man about thirty years old sitting alone, always on the same bench, for long periods looking up into the sky or fumbling in his brief case and reading his diary and papers. Most of the time he seemed to me to be in a disconsolate mood.

I sat down beside him, but his manner did not encourage conversation. Every day afterward I sat down on the bench near him and finally, with a great deal of tact, I began to talk to him. He gradually seemed to gain confidence in me. After a couple of weeks of daily meetings I felt by his actions that he was looking forward to my presence each day.

One day, seeming to feel somewhat communicative he apologized for his former rudeness and said, "My name is Fred Balmore. I'm reticent but it isn't because I don't like to talk to strangers. On the contrary, I would only be too glad to tell anyone my story who would help and believe me. My parents, my lifelong friends, the National Geographic Society, everyone hearing or reading my story seem to think I am insane. But somehow, I feel you'll understand.

"My parents had me examined by alienists and I was confined for a short time in an insane asylum in an effort to cure my—," the young man hesitated for a moment, "what they called my delusions. I am sure if I tell you my story, you'll have a hard time believing me too.

"I have inherited a large amount of money. The executors of my grandfather's estate stopped my allowance because they think I'm not mentally responsible. I am anxious to purchase an aeroplane, but my pilot's license has been revoked. I went to a government airfield and, without permission, jumped into one of the bombers standing idle; before I had a chance to take it off the ground, I was caught, forcibly removed, and sent to an insane asylum."

I asked him why he had been so rash and he answered, "When you hear my story, you will understand my purpose.

"By the way, my superior in the air corps also has the idea I am insane. He believes we cracked up somewhere and that I in some manner was saved, and so reported it to the War Department, who officially notified families of my crew members of their death."

His intelligent conversation and calm demeanor convinced me of his sanity. He was obviously anxious to explain and justify his actions to me. As a writer I was naturally interested. I encouraged him to tell his strange story which follows.

"Before entering the army I had just graduated from a well-known eastern college, with a degree in journalism. I became very adept in taking down notes and lectures in shorthand. This was to be a great help to me afterward.

"I am a Lieutenant in the air force, and was the pilot of one of our latest and largest B-29 bombers—never mind its number. The government might not want me to tell my story but my conscience is clear. I feel free to tell you what happened to me, as there are no military secrets involved. You say you are an author. I am sure you will be very much interested and perhaps you will write and publish my story."

Taking from his brief case a bulky typewritten diary he gave it to me to read. That evening I settled into a comfortable chair with no inkling of what this diary would mean to me. This is what I read:

On a day known to only a few, I was ordered to prepare my ship for flight early the following morning. Ten educated boys of excellent background had been chosen for my crew. Each was able to speak another language beside English. Their families had come from various European countries. I, with my crew, was to take this ship, fly it over the Pacific, deliver it to the command on one of our airfields in Japan and wait there for further instructions. I was given a supply of silver dollars and five dollar gold pieces to use, if by accident we should land in Asia among the Asiatic tribes.

Early on the appointed day, fully equipped with oxygen tanks, breathing pressure suits and ammunition, with our guns ready for action and our instruments, including the secret mechanism in our radio transmitter in good order, we took off. We flew fast, upward to the highest possible altitude of the stratosphere, to make a speedy passage across.

After flying rapidly and smoothly for some time, when we were at about the middle of the Pacific, we suddenly felt our ship was being pulled higher and higher from the earth into and above the atmosphere. Our altimeter without reason was fast rising. We could not understand why such a phenomenon.

Looking up, we perceived an immensely large plane of a very strange design, nearly twenty times larger than our own. Hovering in the distance right over us, it covered us like a large, dark cloud.

Too far away to get any help, and thinking that this was a new kind of enemy plane, we, according to orders, destroyed certain secret mechanisms including our high frequency radio transmitter. Then, we used all the force of our powerful motors in an attempt at a nose dive. But even with the strong gravitational pull of the earth, we could not shake ourselves loose from the upward attraction. I ordered our guns manned to shoot it out. But a loud voice called out to us to desist, that this was not an enemy plane. At the same time, all our motors and instruments stopped, and we ourselves became as if paralyzed.

We were fully conscious. We could hear, talk, think, see. We could feel our ship was gradually being pulled up to this plane, and finally absorbed into her through a large opening in her belly. Our plane was anchored within. Then a voice, calling me by rank and name in perfect English, told me that our captors were going to free our bodies from the paralyzing rays and that we would suffer no aftereffects. We immediately regained our power of motion. The same voice ordered us to come out of our plane as it was going to be cleansed and thoroughly disinfected. We were to disrobe entirely and enter into their body cleansing room. We had no alternative but to follow the voice's instructions. We put our clothes into what seemed to be disinfecting closets, and went into a steam room where we were sprayed with a disinfecting shower. After a thorough bath and cleansing each one of us was given by an attendant a full set of under- and over-garments of styles comparable to the ancient Roman or Greek; two pieces of underwear, a soft silky, loose fitting sleeveless undershirt, and above knee length drawers; clinging socks of the same material up to the middle of calf; shoes, leather laced Roman style up to middle of calf. One loose over-garment, similar to a very soft linen material, like a Roman tunica, open at the neck, girded at the waist, reaching to the knees, with above elbow sleeves. Another over-garment was similar to the Roman dalmatica; it was a soft rayon fabric, open at the neck, reaching to just below the knees, with wide elbow sleeves; ornamented with one inch purple or lavender bands around its neck, sleeves and bottom edges; with a belt at the waist.

All garments and shoes were fastened with detachable buttons. The attendant told us they were heat and fresh air dispenser atomic batteries. They supplied the exact required degree of necessary body air conditioning in all kinds of weather. The fibrous materials of these garments were not only fresh air and heat radiation conductors, but were also fire-proof.

Our attendant also gave us a one inch lavender ribbon for our heads. He showed us how to wear it, as he did, tied with a small knot at the back. Some of the boys were smiling a little; I think the attendant sensed their amusement. "You look quite handsome now," he joked.

He told us all clothing was worn only once. The same applied to household linens. Clothing and linens were worn, then sent back to the factory to be crushed into pulp and made over again. "We don't consider laundries sanitary," he said.

Over-garments like the stolla, tunica and the dalmatica were worn for one week, or less; when soiled, they were also fabricated over again. But all garments, new or worn, were sun rayed and disinfected every day before being worn. Our own clothes, which by this time were also disinfected and sun-ray sterilized, were stored away, excepting my log book papers, diary books and shorthand notebooks. Our clothes were to be given to us when we returned to earth. We were relieved at the time to learn our stay was to be only temporary.

After dressing, he again assured us that our captors were friendly and that we must not be afraid; they had a motive for their actions which they would fully explain to our satisfaction. Later we consulted among ourselves and decided that since we were entirely at the mercy of these strange men, we had no choice but to obey.

He then guided us into an antechamber where he told us to leave our firearms, parachutes, breathing suits, and other accoutrements. Then mentioned us to follow him. He assured us our property would be held safely and returned to us. The attendant puzzled me by anticipating my wish in suggesting that I take out my pencil and notebook from the disinfector and take them along so that I could take down notes on what took place. Then, with great ceremony, he ushered us into a large, high ceilinged, beautifully decorated sunlit room, where about fifty men were seated, all dressed in Roman style. They wore their hair cut short, with a mass of short, wavy curls around the ears, bound around with a one inch lavender ribbon. They were all clean shaven, with hair parted on the right or left side. Facing us at the far end of the room, standing near a large desk, was their leader, who wore a distinctive over-garment called the toga; a loose, long, sleeveless wrapper, gracefully thrown over the left shoulder and arm, girdled around the waist, decorated at the edges with a filet of gold. He also wore a one inch wide gold filet ribbon around his head. With great courtesy he bowed low to us and greeted each of us by our full name.

"We welcome you to our ship," he began, "even though you may be unwilling guests at this moment. But after you have heard our reasons for capturing you, and see what we want to show you, you will only be too glad that we took these means to get you here.

"We are Martians from the planet Mars, which is today about fifty-eight million miles away from your earth. Since this is the day of the year when our two worlds are the closest together, we planned to use it in some way to contact you. We wanted to land on your globe and deliver our message, but its invincible gravitational attraction is so powerful that once we landed, we could not, under any circumstances, overcome and detach ourselves from it. Therefore, we have brought you into our orbit, and we shall now explain our reasons.

"On Mars we received all your radio waves. We heard all the languages used on your earth. But try as we would, we were not able to send our radio waves to your earth. There is a strange, strong interference. Your earth has a protective shell of electrically charged gases, some sixty miles thick, clinging to it. This shell seriously disturbs the travels of our radio waves in your atmosphere. It prevented us from making communications. That is one of the reasons we captured your plane; we wished to analyze your radio transmitter and find the metal or element which would help us pierce through.

"We knew about your orders to destroy your secret mechanisms and transmitter; we would have deterred you, but you were too quick for us. Even this action does not discourage us. We shall capture another plane in the same way we have captured yours—or perhaps you will help us to obtain a transmitter, after you understand our purpose. We aim to send radio messages to your Earth people. After you gentlemen have seen the way we live, you may help us by becoming friendly ambassadors to your own people.

"We are now taking you to our planet to show you our way of life. You may stay with us as long as you like—see everything, learn everything." Then the speaker turned to me with a smile, "You were perplexed when our attendant told you to take along your pencil and notebook; he read your thoughts and anticipated your wish.

"I want to warn you, that we have a sixth sense, the faculty of reading, receiving, and transmitting thought waves, even over long distances. This faculty is very highly developed in us. You people of the Earth also possess it, but in a limited subconscious and dormant state; you may develop it in the future. We can read your thoughts, and we ask that you please try your best to control them so as not to offend us. We have long ago, through training, learned to control our thoughts and minds, the guiding spirits of our actions.

"You will be surprised to learn how great our knowledge is of Earth people. Each language is clear to us, because we read the thoughts of your inhabitants. Our television cabinets are so perfect that we can see everywhere on earth. We clearly hear all that is being said. Through constant evolution, we have developed in ourselves an acute mental receptive faculty of hypermnesis, extraordinary power of quick mental absorption, and a sharp lasting memory. It is very easy for us to learn any of your languages.

"We would certainly like to send you television pictures showing how we live, but television receives the same interference as our radio waves. You are surprised at the natural forces we command, no doubt. We'll try to explain. As a pilot you have studied astronomy. You know that our planet—

'Mars is the most interesting object in the heavens for your scientists, because it is the one and only world where they appear to have found direct evidence of life and because some astronomers have held the opinion that it provides evidence for the existence on it of intelligent beings.'[2]

'Our planet revolves in an orbit, that is outside the orbit of the earth, its mean distance from the sun being a little more than one and one-half times that of the earth.'[3]

'The distance of Mars from the sun varies by more than twenty-six million miles. It requires a period of a little short of two years for Mars to complete one revolution in its orbit.'[4]

'The diameter of Mars is about 4,215 miles, only a little more than half that of the earth. Its weight is rather more than one-tenth of the weight of the earth.'[5]

'The rotation period is about twenty-four hours, thirty-seven and one-half minutes.'[6]

'Length of the Martian year is 687 days.'[7]

'Our seasons are nearly twice as long as yours.'

'They found that the vast extent of our continent was furrowed upon every side by a network of numerous lines or fine stripes.'[8]

'That traversed the planet for long distances in regular lines and extended for thousands of miles; the breadth of some may be as great as one or two hundred miles; of others, not more than twenty miles.'[9]

'The channels intersected one another at all possible angles:[10]

and these channels were truly great furrows or depressions in the surface of the Planet, destined for the passage of water.[11] Some of these channels run straight and double paralleling others with absolute geometrical precision, as if they were the work of rule or compass.'[12]

'They found that many of the canals converged to dusky patches at their junctions, the so-called oasis, and passed from one oasis to another in an absolutely unswerving direction,[13] proving that they have pumping systems, on a scale far surpassing any of the works of man, and this in itself, presupposes an advanced type of intelligence.'[14]

"This is a description of our planet; you will see for yourselves that your astronomers were right in their surmise.

"Since you Earth people discovered radio, we receive your world space echo waves within three minutes. Our thought reading and our remote reading faculty control and our television are so powerful that we can see and read from here, your books, newspapers and periodicals. We know what is in your concrete and steel safes. We pierce through your earth's surface within your deepest caves and mines. To our consternation we see a terrible picture of Earth man's treatment of his fellow human beings. Frequently his selfishness and ruthless brutality lead to pestilence, famine and destruction. He seems to be heading toward the extinction of the little civilization he has gained.

"Our women and children are not allowed to see some of your horrible scenes. We are certainly very happy on our planet Mars; we are grateful we do not have to struggle through the ordeals of the men on earth. We feel it is not necessary for you to continue so.

"Since what is happening on your earth has become intolerable to us, we have decided on action. We see only total annihilation for your good people if the others are allowed to continue in their present behavior patterns. You now are able to understand our objectives are not aggressive but humanitarian. We would like to act as advisors to those people of earth who are capable of change, feel the need of change but are at a loss where to start.

"But, you must be hungry. We have an insulated room, adjoining this one. Here no one can read your thoughts or hear your conversation. That is where we hold our own secret conferences, there you may adjourn for an hour for food, refreshment, and consultation among yourselves. When you have finished, I will be waiting for you."

I had been taking down his comments. I knew then I was entering into a new world.

We were led into an adjoining room of about 30′ by 60′, where a table was placed and set for us. In front of each of our eleven chairs was a place card with the name of each of us. An attendant served us all kinds of tasty foods from heavy, solid gold and silver tureens and platters. Food and service were of the best. When we had finished our excellent meal, the attendant told us that he was leaving, and that we could shut the door and safely converse among ourselves.

You can imagine our feelings. Our senses were overcome. It was unbelievable.

Our conference was brief. Confident that for the time being we were the friendly guest-prisoners of these strange people of another planet, we decided to conduct ourselves as correctly as possible and to gain information which might benefit our own people.

When we opened the door, the attendant, who was waiting for us, led us back to the assembly room. All the men present rose from their chairs and greeted us as we passed, with deep bows. We again stood in front of their leader. He also bowed, and begged us to sit down, and said, "I hope you gentlemen have confidence in us now, and believe in our sincerity, and fully understand the purpose of our action."

Addressing himself to me, he continued, "I am aware that you wish to ask me many questions. I know them as I read your thoughts; I shall endeavor to anticipate a few of them.

"You are surprised that our airship which is traveling so fast, or rather I should say falling or being attracted towards our planet Mars, is going so smoothly that it seems as if we were motionless. As a matter of fact, we are traveling at the rate of 20,000 miles per minute in the ether of vacuum of space where all atmosphere is totally absent. We are in a void without air pressure or friction. Our speed has no effect on our motion nor does it cause damage to our ship. Flying time from your atmosphere to ours is nearly forty-eight hours. We expect to land on Mars tomorrow night.

"You are also wondering at our appearance. Because we have the reputation among you of being warlike, you Earth people were led to think that we were of abnormal physical size. You are surprised to find us not very much unlike yourselves in looks and stature. What is your opinion of our appearance?"

After carefully looking the men over and contrasting them with ourselves, who were considered on Earth as good athletic and handsome fellows, I answered him. "Frankly," I said, "Your men are as like us as our high bred champion race horses in their prime are like the nags that pull our junk wagons. The other difference between us seems to be, the extramuscular development of your shoulders and arms plus an apparently longer arm reach than we have."

I had to give them credit for their white clear skin, their regular features, their vigor, and their erect posture. Their proud, but frank and gentle appearance exuded powerful heavenly personality. There were among them many men with deep sky-blue and grass-green skin, colored men, who also were the same fine specimens of manhood.

Then their leader answered, "There is nothing superhuman or supernatural about us. We as yet have not reached perfection. From what we have observed of Earth men, I would say we are more healthy, virile, better developed physically, also mentally. I mean no offense, our intellectual force is much more advanced than Earth men. But you still have a chance eventually to reach our development, if you will only seize the opportunity."

"You will notice among us Martians something else which will surprise you. Look us over. How old do you think he is?" the leader asked, pointing to their youngest, an erect young man.

"Why," I replied, "I should say about 25 years old."

They all laughed.

"No," he said. "This one, who is our youngest, is now 100 Earth years old. You will notice that none of us have any gray hair, wrinkles, or false teeth; those few of us with false teeth acquired them by accidentally breaking their own. None of us use eye glasses or hearing aids. There are no bald-headed men on Mars. Our old people reach the age of 150 Martian years or 300 Earth years.

"Our women, even those past middle age, retain their natural color texture, youthful figures, velvety skin and texture of their soft, youthful hair.

"Due to our planet's distance from the sun, our seasons and years are double yours. Our minimum life span, according to natural phenomenon is 200 Earth years. Because of our careful way of life, we have extended it to 300 years. Since Earth is so near to the sun, your year and seasons are half the length of ours; the hypothesis is that your minimum life span should be at least 100 to 150 Earth years, providing you lead a natural life, similar to ours.

"Your perverted actions and corrupt standards of living diminished your life span to nearly half of what it should be. Your habits have made your bodies fertile ground for diseases which deprive you of vitality, consume your life, and, by transmission, attack your progeny. Thus large numbers of you are destroyed within half, or less, of your allotted period of life.

"Our long life has evolved from thousands of years of constant improvement in our way of living. Some of the causes for our prolonged youth and vigor are freedom from fear, no worry and no misery. Our entire life is based on the principles of love, peace, and common brotherhood. By periodic physical and dental examinations of everyone and proper treatment afterwards, we are constantly preventing as well as curing injuries and diseases. These examinations and treatments are compulsory and take place weekly or more often, as the cases demand. We are also encouraged to participate in healthy exercise daily. Since we understand its importance, we have real enjoyment of our own participating in games and other forms of exercise.

"Hundreds of thousands of years ago, before the invention of flying machines, our ancestors felt that they should be able to train themselves to fly like birds. They started intensive arm and shoulder exercise to develop a very swift whole arm movement, similar to that of birds. Since water swimming could easily be learned by special arm and leg movements, there was no reason why they couldn't adapt themselves to fly in the air with arm-attached wings. It took many generations of training muscle and bone before they could overcome the disadvantage of weight and lack of bird body buoyancy; however, they succeeded in mastering flying. That is why we have longer arms and more muscular and bone development of our shoulders and arms than you Earth men.

"Health exercises, health rays, diets, and body massages, have kept us young looking, healthy, and vigorous and have kept our body weight very near to normal even in the aged. We prohibit the use of habit-forming foods, tobacco, drugs, and beverages other than low alcoholic beers and wines in limited quantities. Too many of you on Earth carry to extremes a commonplace habit, until it becomes a menace to your health."

I was disappointed at the ban on smoking because we had plenty of cigarettes and were craving a smoke. He immediately understood and said, "We will put no restrictions upon your desire to smoke as long as your cigarettes last. We do not smoke because we do not allow contamination of our fresh air with smoke, no matter how harmless. Self-control is a nerve and emotion tonic and exercise; smoking is a nerve stimulator and pacifier, and dulling them. In time a craving for the stimulant is created, contributing gradually to their weakening. It is a strong habit-forming pastime. We do not need it as we have no nerve tension.

"We lead a well regulated life. Our bodies and nerves get the full rest they require nightly. All our activities cease at 9:00 p.m. and everyone must be in bed by 11:00 p.m. week days. Naturally, exceptions are made for doctors, hospital personnel and workers in necessary utilities."

It was getting late; the meeting broke up. All the Martians present began mingling among us, trying to put us at our ease. After we had been served with refreshments, they began to leave. We were left nearly alone with their leader. He said kindly, "You gentlemen must be tired. Our attendant will lead you to your sleeping quarters." Then he bowed to me and said, "Good night." When I offered to shake hands, he politely refused, remarking, "We do not shake hands; it is not customary with us nor is it sanitary. Hand holding and fondling is done only within our intimate family circle. I am glad to know that Earth people are gradually adopting a practice which is old among us and universal—that of using the self-opening door, thereby doing away with unsanitary door handles."

We went outside and up a stairway to our sleeping quarters. Our attendant assured us that the beds and bedding were sun health rayed and sterilized, a daily precaution practiced everywhere. New night garments, as well as underclothing for our next day's use were laid out for us on chairs. The bed linens and night garments were as white as ours, but softer, and they felt like pure silk. The attendant then pulled out metal beds and springs with mattresses, pillows, and blankets from a wall closet. The mattresses and pillows were of a spongy rubber substance, and felt soft and comfortable.

After making our beds and placing pitchers of water for us on a small table, the attendant wished us a good night's sleep. Before retiring I wrote in my diary, in detail about what happened to us that day.

After a good night's sleep, we awoke, eager to see what the new day would bring. The attendant brought in the clothes allotted to us, pressed and ready for wear. A hot and cold, scented, sterilized water shower gave us an exhilarating body cleansing. We dressed and were led into a breakfast room, where it was ready for us. Afterward, we were taken on a tour of their ship. Some of us took the opportunity of looking out through space, admiring the grand sights of the universe and pointing out many known stars, even a tiny one far away, our own former home, the Earth.

I went, notebook in hand, with their leader, to look over the intricate instruments and machinery, and the general construction of their immense airship. The ship was now falling fast, attracted by the gravitational pull of the planet Mars. It seemed to me motionless. Her pilot told me that when we were about a million miles away from Mars, he would put a brake on her speed and come to a dead stop before he slowly entered her stratosphere. "Then I will put our motors to work when we travel in our atmosphere, you will feel nearly the same motion that you do in your own planes."

When I asked him what kind of gas he used, he answered, "We use atomic energy; some machines and motors use ocean-wave electric energy, others use concentrated sun-ray energy. We use no gas, oil, or coal, even though we have them in great abundance. Their fumes, gases, and smoke would pollute our fresh air. Furthermore, coal mining is hazardous and we do not want to endanger the lives of our potential miners."

This is only the beginning, the first chapter of my strange story which I wrote on my return. There are a great many details I would like to give you; but since I want to finish as quickly as possible, I am omitting description and details of minor matters. Tomorrow I will give you my second chapter, a bird's-eye view of a city on Mars.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Nevada State Journal, Editorial, January 26, 1946.

[2] LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS, H. Spencer Jones, Macmillan Co., 1940, N.Y., p. 200.

[3] Ibid., p. 200.

[4] Ibid., p. 200.

[5] Ibid., p. 200.

[6] Ibid., p. 204.

[7] Ibid., p. 213.

[8] Ibid., p. 207.

[9] Ibid., p. 208.

[10] Ibid., p. 208.

[11] Ibid., pp. 208-9.

[12] Ibid., p. 210.

[13] Ibid., pp. 217-18.

[14] Ibid., p. 218.

CHAPTER II

The Landing

The next day, at the same hour, I found the Lieutenant sitting in the hot sun on the same bench. I asked him if he would like to walk a couple of blocks further, where it was not so sunny.

"No," he said, "this spot reminds me of a certain parkway in Amboria, a city on Mars, where I used to sit with the most beautiful girl in the Universe. Of course, this place can hardly compare in natural beauty with the one there." Then he stopped talking, and by his rapt expression I judged he was recalling pleasant memories.

My presence had no effect on his concentration; he was, for the time being, in another world. After about fifteen minutes he became conscious of his environment. Opening and rubbing his eyes, he said,

"I am very sorry I stopped talking so abruptly. I suddenly felt as though I were in Amboria again, and Xora was encouraging me to have patience, and not to despair, because she loved me. The realization that I am doomed to remain here on this Earth is bitter; however, I still have hope that Xora and her grandfather will someday rescue me.

"That hope keeps me eternally watching the skies. With their power of thought reading, I am sure that they can locate me here; otherwise I would become insane." Taking a picture from his pocket of a beautiful young girl, with the inscription on the bottom "To Fred from your Xora," he handed it to me. Her beauty was angelic.

The picture was an odd disc of some strange metal or composition, about six inches in diameter and a quarter inch thick. One face of it showed a moving picture of our lieutenant reclining under a tree with her, or promenading, the other side showed the loving facial expressions of the beautiful girl.

By pressing the center spot of the disc, I heard her melodious voice giving him loving messages of encouragement and hope. It was a concentrated record. And took a long time to play it. Fred seemed to be in a state of deep enchantment.

He said, "This picture reminds me constantly that what has happened to me was no dream.

"I am sure I can go back to Amboria, if I can get possession of a plane; but I am known at all airfields, and no one would lend me a plane, or even let me be a passenger. I can't buy one, as my money is tied up. I don't know what to do. I know how to communicate with the Martians by radio, but I would rather wait until I am able to complete all arrangements. They cannot talk to me until I get within reach of their radio waves by airplane."

To solve this problem, I suggested the following:

"If you will give me the complete story of your experiences and grant me permission to publish it, I will lend you enough money to purchase an airplane and transmitter. There is just one condition; the story be worthwhile enough to interest a publisher; the royalties then may cover the loan."

My offer gave him new hope. His face brightened. With youthful enthusiasm he grasped my hand, exclaiming, "Then you do believe that my story is true and that I am sane!" I answered, "Of course I do." This inspired him with greater confidence, and he said, "Now to continue my story." Then he handed me another typewritten chapter.

That evening, I continued to read his adventures. I was no longer skeptical.

The Martian airship was fast nearing its destination. In the late afternoon when we reached their stratosphere, I began to feel the delicate motion of the ship and the vibration of its motors. Her fast and silent driving power got her into their atmosphere, as their pilot told me it would, without any shock or collision. The large size of the ship helped her to ride out the air pockets more easily and smoothly than our planes. My friends and I did not suffer so much from air sickness, as we used to on our own ships on Earth.

Alongside, above, and below us there was a heavy traffic of planes of all sizes, shapes, and strange designs, flying safely in the air space, criss-crossing each other with the utmost freedom, at different altitudes, and in different directions. We were signaled by uniformed, specially designed planes. These planes, the pilot explained, were directors of air traffic, like our street traffic policemen.

Another thing attracted my attention. All their planes and air ships, both large and small, had a mast jutting from the nose, giving them a resemblance to swordfish. I asked the pilot the purpose of the masts. "They are fog-dispelling masts," he answered. "They shoot out long waves which dispel fogs, and also purify the atmosphere by killing bacteria within their reach. We have them everywhere on Mars. We exterminate all bacteria before they cause diseases in human beings, domestic animals, and in necessary vegetation."

Their leader now came along and told me that they expected to land that evening. "Just as soon as we get beneath the clouds, we shall be above a great water, and you will see one of our oceans."

We were now over the ocean, a large body of dark-blue, turbulent water with many freight ships, going in all directions. They had no smoke-stacks but freight center masts, with one of them sticking out from the bows. I asked the leader about them. He explained, "There are no smoke-stacks, for, as you have already learned, we do not use oil, coal, or gas; that front mast has the same function as the mast on the airship, to dispel fog and kill bacteria. These ships are used for heavy freight transportation between continents. They are thoroughly seaworthy and unsinkable.

"Since the population of our planet is much greater than yours, our production must be greater. Each of our continents has different climate, soil, and natural resources; each produces different necessities. We try to intensify such production at its source in order to produce in equal amount for the consumption of all of us. Nature often does not help us to produce the full quota of our requirements; we then store surpluses in times of plenty to provide for times of scarcity. We equally ration among our races our products and manufactures.

"There is little waste or spoilage in harvesting and distribution, and very little handling. At harvest time or during emergency industrial shortages of help, we call for volunteers. Even our highest Sun-Rank members volunteer. We invariably get more help than we need.

"We manufacture articles at the source of their raw materials, thus saving labor, transportation, distribution and time."

Pointing to what seemed a small island in the middle of the ocean, he said, "This spot is one of our anchored, ocean way stations which we have every thousand square miles, on all our seas. They are used for supply bases, way stations for planes and ships' repair shops, traveler stop-offs, fish canning and storage, and submarine bases. No, not as you are thinking—battleships; our subs are very large peace freight ships.

"The waters as well as the floors of our seas are very fertile and have, along with fish and shell foods, an inexhaustible supply of all kinds of cereals, vegetables, fruits, plus sea forest; there are also minerals and valuable chemicals for industrial and medical uses and for fertilizing purposes. Our submarines, besides being used for transporting these natural elements of the deep, are also used as dredges, planters, cultivators, harvesters, and sawing mills on the floors of three-quarters of our seas and oceans, where pressure is not so strong. Our sea fruits, vegetables, and cereals which we harvest are not only very tasty, but nutritious; the woods we obtain from the trees are some of our best: hard, pliable and resilient. The waters protect them from fires. No doubt your seas also have an abundant supply of all these."

Far away on the horizon we could see a long shore line, with large buildings at equal distances from each other. "These buildings, which you see," the leader pointed out, "are big dams. They are on all our shores, spaced at one hundred mile intervals, and are about ten times larger than your biggest dam. They are built to withstand the constant battering of the most powerful waves. Natural wave forces also create our electric light power and energy. Large filters, distilling, sterilizing, and refining plants extract from the sea water salt and other ingredients for our use, the water is then fresh and palatable for our consumption. This water is stored in immense reservoirs and pumped into our homes and to our hot water plants. The hot water and steam in turn are pumped wherever needed. We also use for power, heat, and other purposes powerful volcanic steam from wells drilled deep into the crust of our planet. We don't have to entirely depend on precipitation for our fresh water supply, like you Earth people do, during your frequent drought periods, which create famines for your inhabitants, and the destruction of your vegetations. Neither do we have to create cloud rains, as we have more than enough water for all our necessities. We even have secondary large fresh water reservoirs in our former deserts which have become productive. Our powerful pumps and our permanent automatic systems of cold water sprinklers and hot water and air pipes keep all our croplands, orchards, and in fact all our cultivations fully supplied, and thermostatically heat protected against frosts, snow storms, and freeze-ups.

"The waters of all our fresh water lakes, large and small rivers, and springs are carefully guarded against pollution. They are always fit, and safe for human consumption. We also have many dams on our rivers. We use the abundant forces of nature at our command, of more than is sufficient for our needs, even if Mars' population were doubled.

"Mother Nature is very generous in her abundant and unlimited gifts. We have harnessed only a few of them. Every day we discover new and better elements. From time to time our mode of life improves through their adaptation and reconstruction. Thus we are kept busy creating new occupations and abandoning some of the old and useless ones."

We were speedily nearing land. They flew low, circling around to give us a bird's-eye view of a great stretch of suburban and city habitations, I would say ten times larger than New York City and its surroundings.

It was a vast area of both natural and artificial gardens landscaped between two wide crystal-clear water rivers, where a large number of ships of all sizes were sailing. This land between the rivers was divided into equal sections within which were square, circular, and other kinds of geometrically shaped courts enclosed with beautiful buildings of diversified types. Some were similar to our Gothic, French, and Italian renaissance; others similar to our Spanish patios and magnificent oriental constructions but including their own predominating gorgeous designs and architectures. All these were fitted into a design most pleasing to the eye. Strange and beautiful, not like the monotony of our architecture with its few variations.

To my pleasant surprise, I saw no sewer polluted, and unsanitary river waters, no mobile traffic, no autos, busses, trolleys, or other moving vehicles. I saw no signs, electric posts, parking meters, water hydrants, telephone wiring, wash lines or vent pipes. There was a total absence of unsightly billboards which clutter up our highways and boulevards.

The air space above roofs was devoid of all obstructions, with the exception of the colored and very visible radio and fog-dispelling, air-purifying, and bacteria-killing masts, which I readily recognized. It was becoming dark as we were nearing our landing. I could see a great number of small luminous bodies, traveling above the surface in different directions, which looked like and reminded me of fireflies. I found out afterwards they were Martians, flying like birds, with large wing attachments on their arms, and red lights on their heads.

We were now approaching one of their large airports outside the city, across one of their rivers, where we were ordered to land and to wheel the ship into a very large building. Nobody was there to meet us because all of us including the Martians, were under strict quarantine.

We again had to undergo the cleansing and disinfecting, but this time more intensified. Their health inspectors and medical specialists began to take all kinds of careful tests to be sure we did not bring in any diseases or that we did not carry any dangerous microbes. We remained here for three days.

On the last day, after again being thoroughly examined, we were given a clean bill of health. Our airship leader, who, I was told, was a first-degree Sun-Rank member, an important dignitary, and who, I could see, was given honorable recognition and homage by everyone, appointed himself my host. He said the rest of our boys were also being taken as guests by other fellow Martian travelers.

Again cautioning every one of us to try his utmost to control his thoughts, he led me to his private plane. We left the airport for his home. He gave me a parachute and fastened on his arms a pair of folded large snow shoes.

"These are flying wings," he said. "I am putting them on in case of accident. Before we reach my home I want to tell you something that may please you. The medical reports about you and your friends are very satisfactory. After a few months with us, if you follow our health habits, we expect you to become just as healthy and vigorous as any one of our young Martians. But you will never acquire our sixth sense of thought reading and transmission, or our bird-flying motions. But by following our way of living, your life span will be extended far beyond Earth standards, even if it does not reach our span of 300 years.

"Our head examiner said it was safe for us to take you to our homes. If you men desire, you may remain indefinitely among us, and look for wives among our girls. You all are able to rear families of healthy Martians. But after consulting with members of our council, they said that if you decided to remain on Mars, you would first have to deserve and earn the Martian citizenship. They decided if you will help me in my plans for your Earth people you will be elected to honorable citizenship of Mars.

"We are, as you notice, flying very slowly. My home is in the suburbs of the city, near by, about 500 miles distant. My wife and my fourth-generation granddaughter, together with other members of our household are waiting to receive you. I am sure they will find you a welcome guest. I also wish to tell you that we have learned your English language. Every one will be able to converse freely with you. You will feel quite at home. It would be wise if you men learned our Martian language so that you could mingle with other Martians."

While we were flying, I was constantly looking above and below us at the innumerable, beautiful airships of all kinds, designs, and sizes flying in all directions.

Glancing below I was astounded to see a garden of Eden with angel figures winging their way over an oasis of blended color. While he had been talking, my companion was preparing to land on his own landing platform. Attendants were on hand to assist us from the plane. A woman of dignity and beauty and a charming young girl were awaiting our arrival. They seemed from another world. No marks of care and anxiety on their faces. They looked to me like the angels I remembered from childhood on Christmas cards. They were dressed in flowing Roman stolas, that appeared to be of very fine linen, falling to their feet, fastened at the shoulders and upper arms by ornamented atomic battery buttons. They wore beautiful bracelets on their arms. Their stolas, girdled at the waist, were semi-décolleté reflecting their healthy, white skin. Two ribbons running over the shoulders crossed themselves in front and back to reach the girdle belt. On the sides under the arms, the gowns were ornamented and fell in a cascade effect into folds, open from the knees down and trailing on the ground at the back.

Their hair was dressed with wavy small curls in front from ear to ear. In the back it fell in beautiful waves.

The older woman wore an inch wide gold fillet band encircling her head.

They welcomed us in a most friendly manner. Introducing his wife to me as Lady Sylvia Banard and the young lady as Miss Xora Savona, he took hold of his wife's arm, indicating that I do the same with Miss Savona. We followed them into their sumptuous dining room for dinner.

The conversation centered on his adventure to Earth and back again, while all the members of the party kept watching me. I especially noticed the friendly, slightly curious side glances of Xora. Evidently these girls on Mars had some of the nice traits of our girls. At least they were feminine enough to be curious. I had difficulty keeping my mind on the conversation but I remembered my manners and tried to join in. After dinner we went into their library, and I remained until I was left alone with Sun-Rank Banard.

One thought was in my mind, which he knew, but he let me question him. "May I ask an important, but perhaps a personal question without offending?"

"I know your question. There is no offense. Ask it."

"You told me that Miss Xora Savona is your grandchild of the fourth generation, so I presume you are over one hundred Earth years old. You and Lady Banard and other Martians of your age look so youthful that, no doubt, you are still virile. How do you people control the overpopulation of Mars?"

He answered, "We limit, and control our birth rate, preventing its overpopulation. Our method of control is very simple. Whereas in many parts of your Earth, with all your preventives, aborti-facients, and your criminal dangerous abortion operations, your population is increasing to a dangerous point of saturation, creating scarcity, undernourishment, famine, and starvation. Chaos will soon overtake you, unless you control these over-birth rates. By our process we control not only the number of coming children, but their sex as well. We can maintain an even balance in sex and also prevent the unfortunates who are not fit to have children from having them. Even with our large population, our planet is as yet hardly half populated. If it were fully populated, our production of all necessities of life would still be more than ample for our needs. In one year, we can produce enough for three years. We always have a generous surplus of everything, because our storage facilities are perfect, and we have no waste.

"We protect our lands against dust storms and other causes of erosion. We do not allow their abandonment; we do not allow any waste. All our soils are constantly analyzed and suitably fertilized to prevent a lack of necessary elements. This treatment results in plants of above-average food value, and of a balanced mineral nutrition, a combination promoting good health.

"The drying up of marshlands and other wastelands plus the perfect irrigation of our deserts has helped us considerably to increase our production, and to almost exterminate pestilent insects.

"Lands not in active production are forested or put to rich grazing use. Our permanent large pumping, drenching, and sprinkling system, with our large sprinkler planes, are used to irrigate our deserts, and other lands suffering from drought and rain scarcity. It is also used in putting out forest fires started either by sun rays or combustion.

"We draw the waters from our great number of immense reserve storage reservoirs, which are directly diverted to them from the run-offs of heavy river water flows. Saving us from overflowing rivers, flood control, levee construction, inundation damage, and disasters, at the same time increasing generating power of our dams. We have an efficient drainage system for our tropical crops in rain-soaked lands, excess waters of which also flow into these reservoirs. Sun rays are available to treat our vegetation, when necessary.

"We limit and regulate agricultural production all over Mars. We have always an overabundance, because we have also completely reclaimed, irrigated, and fertilized our arid areas, distant from our surface water and reservoir supply, by mapping and using their underground water resources; we have converted them into rich productive farm lands. We have also mastered our jungle lands and made them all very productive.

"You are reluctant to ask me a few more questions you feel I may be sensitive about answering. You are puzzled about a fourth generation. Since our generation is thirty Earth years, I would have to be about 150 years old to have a fourth generation grandchild. I am now 175 years old, and Xora is now twenty-six Earth years old, which makes her my fourth generation grandchild. Xora has been appointed as your guide; she will take you tomorrow to her home, where you will meet her family and friends. You will be free to mingle among and closely observe us. You will find out for yourself that we have high standards and happy life.

"'Regnant populi.' The people rule, with a political regime really 'of the people, by the people, and for the people,' through their short term elected representatives; a truly democratic form of government, as defined by your Webster's Dictionary, 'Democracy: Government by the people collectively by elected representatives; political, or social equality,' united for common interests, rights and privileges, in political, economic, and social equality. We have strong doctrines of individual freedom, 'Lalus populi suprema est lex,' the welfare of the people is the supreme law.

"Our government officials are elected for two or five years, depending upon location and departments. They are not allowed to succeed themselves. Dictatorship is non-existent nor would it be tolerated. We have no ruling class. We are ruled by the people. We have no secrecy in our government, nor in our political parties, no party cliques and party discipline. Important decisions are voted for, or against, by all our citizens.

"You are curious and want to know if all Martians live in the same splendor and style as I do. No, they do not. We have ten grades and ten Sun-Rank degrees. Between every grade and every degree there are ten points to be earned. Every one of us must earn all ten points for promotion into the next degree.

"Promotion into the honorable Sun-Ranks is obtained only if we have achieved something outstanding, such as an improvement or invention, a scientific discovery, a disease prevention and cure. These higher advancements are voted upon and approved by our supreme house of council, and are given to us after judgment has been passed by impartial judges of all races from different parts of our planet.

"The type of living quarters of members in the Sun-Rank degrees depends on the degree. The members not only are honored for their attainment, but the higher ranking members are given, for their lifetime or for as long as they desire, mansions in both summer and winter resorts. They have large yachts and planes assigned to them and enjoy comforts and luxuries. They all have their duties to perform during their hours of employment. There is no ostentation in their way of life; for their entertainment, they attend the same theatres and halls as the lowest grade degree members. Stalls, boxes, and the best orchestra seats are always first reserved for the aged, and the next for rank members. Some of them prefer to occupy seats in the balcony with their lower degree families and friends.

"Many of our highest rank members prefer to remain in their old homes where they began as citizens. Many others go back to them if they are still available. Rank members are not envied. Respect and desire to emulate them spur all of us on.

"I have only reached my Sun-Rank first degree very recently. None of my children have as yet reached my rank. They and their children can visit me for a short time, but it would not be ethical for me to keep them, nor would any of them want to remain in our home permanently.

"The children of our Sun-Rank members, at their maturity, revert to the living standards of our lowest grade degree members.

"Now it's getting late, and no doubt you are bewildered and tired." To an attendant, who suddenly appeared, he said, "Please lead Lieutenant Balmore to his sleeping chamber. Good night."

CHAPTER III

Amboria the Paradise

When we met next day, he handed me his third chapter.

The next morning after breakfast en famille, Xora led me outside and into a hangar, where a few planes of different sizes were standing. She went to a corner closet where there was an assortment of what I would call large, light weight snow shoes. They had two parts, hinged together and pliable, similar to those I saw in Sun-Rank Banard's plane. They were covered by a thin fabric with clasps on one surface and were of different colors to blend with her garments. She fastened them tightly on both her arms, and flapping them like bird wings, she swiftly lifted herself off the ground. She flew around gracefully showing me all kinds of tricks. When she came down, Xora told me that it was too bad I did not know how to bird-fly, but that we could take her small tandem.

She picked up a few small contraptions which I helped her carry outside. The piece I carried seemed to be a double seat of a swing with attachable back and legs and with metal ropes. I thought she was going to hang it somewhere and do some swinging; but no, she next hooked on two flat oval pieces like oars or wings. She also screwed onto it tightly a small propeller smokeless jet engine. When the legs were lowered, it became a double bench seat. She sat down on one end and asked me to sit down beside her, carefully fastening her wings on her arms. When she gave me a bundle to strap on (she afterwards told me it was a parachute), I obeyed, puzzled. She covered our knees with a blanket and touched a button near the engine. To my great astonishment, we both were lifted slowly off the ground.

Laughing at my surprise, she explained, "This is my old portable tandem plane. It can travel 500 miles an hour. I can control its speed, and bring it to a dead stop on any surface. It's driven by perpetual atomic energy. First, we'll go sight-seeing above the city, and then we'll land on the roof of my home in the city. I want you to meet my parents and my sister and brother."

As I sat beside her, the pleasant scent of her hair, the nearness and warmth of her body, and the occasional light touch of her hands thrilled me so much that I almost lost control of myself. I told myself I was acting like a school boy, instead of a grown man. By the faint color in her cheeks she showed she was aware of my predicament. "You are so lovely," I said, "that all these other marvels seem secondary. How do you expect me to concentrate on them? By the way, isn't there a Martian boy who will be jealous of the time you are spending with me?"

She hesitated a minute before she answered. "Not seriously," she finally said. "Of course I have friends, but as yet I haven't made any decision."

My heart gave an extra thump. Then there was hope for me. I asked her if she wanted to marry a man of high rank or of low rank. She answered, "Nowadays very few young men reach the rank degrees, but many of my friends are hoping to marry such. But I first want one whom I love. He must be noble, lovable, intelligent, ambitious and capable of achieving honor by an outstanding action of which I may be proud."

Our talk and thoughts had so confused Xora that she was forgetting to apply her flying rules. We were dodging and barely escaping collisions with planes which seemed suddenly to be cluttering the sky. A small plane came alongside us. The occupant was in uniform, which I recognized as an air policeman's. Recognizing Xora, he cautioned her and indicated that she was out of her flying altitude. She immediately followed the instructions he gave. After he had left, she told me he was a schoolmate of hers and was now serving his first year in the general army of service, of which all policemen were members.

"He certainly went against the rules by not giving me a summons. I suppose he was being considerate of you as an Earth visitor to Mars."

During this time, I had been almost unaware of the city below. Xora now called my attention to the view. She said the city had been constructed five years before. It looked more like a large park than a city. There were no streets, but wide park lanes, criss-crossing each other. There was a large round lake in the center, surrounded by beautiful buildings.

Carefully kept lawns, gardens, and buildings covered all the surface space. The roof tops were pleasant to see with no unsightly water tanks, chimneys, signs, wiring, smoke, and junk. There were no broken-down hulks of unoccupied buildings, no dirty, drab, or sooty walls, no fire escapes. The flat or slanting roofs were all covered with well kept verdure and flower beds.

There were courts of different shapes, five or six clustered together, surrounded by green markings like a hedge, with a very visible letter in the Martian calligraphy within a center flowerbed denoting, I suppose, its number and location.

Along the rivers, busy waterways with freight ships and pleasure yachts, were clean flat beaches. On the Amboria city side of the river, on the edge and over part of the river on the extreme southern end, many large buildings covered a space equivalent to about two hundred and fifty New York city blocks. I asked Xora what these large buildings were.

She answered, "They are our general stores."

"Why so large?" I wanted to know.

"They are the only stores we have for our city," she explained. "They have the capacity to daily receive, unload, and store the contents of one thousand large freight airplanes landing on their roofs, two hundred fifty large freight ships, two hundred fifty freight submarines, all sailing under and unloading inside the buildings, and two hundred fifty long freight trains. If necessary, they can double this capacity."

"You mean to say," I asked her, "that these stores not only store away, but also distribute everything needed for every individual? Is your city population large?"

"Yes," she replied. "I will take you through one of the buildings on the next shopping day when the people in our section are allowed to shop. That will be Monday.

"The city is divided into six zones, and the inhabitants of each zone are allowed to shop only on their appointed day. The stores are never overcrowded."

"If you shop only one day a week," I interrupted, "then you must order for the whole week in advance."

"Oh, yes, we must submit our list a week in advance."

"Suppose you haven't the time or you are sick?"

"Then, I order either by telephone or by mail from the catalogue, or I can leave my list at our commissary department."

"You just told me you have only one set of stores. Then you also have commissary departments?"

"Our commissary department," she said, "is only the distributing point where we get our daily food and beverages. We don't have to shop for them in the large, center stores."

We now came above a round court fringed around by private homes. Slowly descending, we landed on the roof of one of the houses, where Xora's family, who were expecting us, were waiting to receive us.

Xora introduced me to her mother, father, young sister and brother. All welcomed me with cordiality. There is no need for me to describe them. Nature had been kind to them.

As I was following them down to their living room, her father said, "Lieutenant Balmore, you must feel strange landing so suddenly on our planet, but we are your friends, and we will try our utmost to make you feel at home.

"Of course, since everything on Mars is unfamiliar to you, you must be anxious to see everything. Let me begin by showing you our home. It is large enough for our family and for guests. It is fully insulated; weather, water, fire, germ, and insect proof, outside and inside. We use concentrated sun rays for heat and light, and atomic energy for power and cooking. It is air conditioned. We get the desired temperature and humidity in all seasons; the inside temperature thermostat is set by our health officer, who does not allow too cold or over-heated living quarters. The house is thoroughly dust proof. The electronic dust catcher and dirt remover cleans our walls, floors, ceilings, and even our furniture, and frees the air of all foreign articles.

"Each room is fully exposed at different times of the day to full sunlight. Sun-ray health lamps are always operating in every room and within the air conditioning unit to destroy all microbes that happen to evade our other guards. These lamps are in every living, work and office room.

"The comforts of our home equal those in all the homes of our citizens from the first to the tenth grade degree. All the furniture, furnishings, clothes, even paper are fire-proof. By our process we fire-proof 100% all inflammable materials, including even the thickest of lumber. We take no risk of destruction by fire. We do not need a fire department, nor firemen. We do not allow conditions to exist to which Earth people are accustomed. I find that in your Brick and Clay Record Magazine, February 1947 issue:

"Last year you built in the United States a half million permanent homes, but at the same time 400,000 were burned down or damaged, and this situation is going to get worse. You are building tinder boxes and firetraps at the greatest rate in your history and with the encouragement of your government. And this is in the face of some of the worst fire disasters you have ever known.

"Your fire losses last year were up 30%. They cost 11,000 lives. They wasted $500,000,000. You burned to death 3,000 children in their homes. Yet your Federal Government is encouraging, even subsidizing the building of homes, virtually every part of which above the ground, including the interior wall finish, is combustible. When fire hits such homes they will burn so fast the occupants won't have time to save themselves, let alone the home."[15]

"New York (AP)—Fire losses in the United States reached an appalling all time high of $700,000,000 this year."[16]

He led me through their living room, bedrooms, library, fumigating and disinfecting closets, toilet and shower closets without bathtubs. When I asked him about the tubs, he said bathtubs were not used on Mars, as they were unsanitary and unsafe.

We then went into their spacious dining room, where Mrs. Savona was arranging the table. "I have arranged to serve luncheon in privacy here; this room is thought transmission proof, so we can freely talk. I want you to be comfortable. Our guest room is ready for you. You can occupy it as long as you are on this planet. Mr. Savona and Xora will keep you busy showing you around. In a few days you will find your way by yourself, and you will be able to locate and visit your fellow Earth men."

Passing through the dining room, we went into the kitchen, which had all kinds of improved machines to help make kitchen work more efficient and pleasant. Walls, floors, and ceilings were of glossy white. But there was no sink. I asked about it.

"In our small homes we did away with that drudgery and servants long ago. Our dishes and silverware are cleaned at our central dishwashing department."

He led me to a closet with a continuous moving escalator dumb-waiter. "After our meal we place our dishes, silverware, and glassware, all of which have our name and number, on trays going down. When they reach the bottom, they automatically land on a conveyor belt which takes them directly to the central dishwashing and sterilizing machine; they come back, clean and sanitary, the same way."

"What do you do with your garbage and rubbish?"

He took hold of the knob of a small door in the wall beside the dumb waiter.

"Oh," I said, "that's your incinerator."

"No," he replied, "we do not burn such valuable materials. We put our garbage into paper bags, seal it, and throw it into this opening. It reaches a garbage car which takes it to a large factory where it is turned into fertilizer. Our rubbish is wrapped up and sent down the dumb-waiter. The belt conveyor takes it to the assorting room, and again by belt conveyors for long distances to our factories. Very little is wasted.

"The kitchen in our home is seldom used. Underneath the court there is a large central kitchen, where any housewife can have her dinner cooked. She either just brings her raw food to the chef, or gives him directions over the phone, telling him for how many people and the time to be served. If the chef needs raw foods, he sends to the commissary department.

"The commissary department supplies foods and beverages to all the residents of a community of five or more courts. It is also an ordering and receiving station from our main depots, which you have seen from the air. Daily supplies are shipped from the depot by our underground freight cars. Emergency shipments are made by messenger planes."

"Does the commissary department ever run short of supplies because of an unusual demand?" I asked.

"If it does, it can then requisition from another nearby department," he answered. "If people are inclined to be gluttonous, and it happens at times, even here, we ration them. That situation doesn't arise frequently, however, and when it does, we study the individual to find out what causes this unhealthy habit and help him to eliminate it. Individuals are very quickly cured from such an unhealthy inclination.

"In the court along the kitchen, there is a public dining room where each family has a permanently reserved table. Menus are made up daily, by competent dietitians, who offer nourishing dishes adapted to the special needs of age, activity, and physical condition of the individual. When we wish a specially cooked dinner, we must notify our chef about the change of our menu. Sometimes my wife cooks a special dinner herself, in one of the small kitchenettes adjoining this large kitchen. It is only when we have special company that we dine in our homes."

Mrs. Savona announced luncheon. A metal cooker on the table did the roasting right in front of us by electronic high frequency short wave radio. The heat generated in the food cooked it in seconds. It was so wonderfully flavored and tasty that I enjoyed several helpings. I complimented my hostess on her good cooking, asking her if all housewives on Mars were such good cooks.

"Oh, yes, and some are better. A great many are specialists in the different branches of culinary arts. But we all stress a wholesome diet. All our girls must take courses in home economics as well as in practical nursing, pediatrics, and at what you call baby sitting; they are frequently called to care for children when their parents go out. We all get, in our court, a week's turn to work and help in our kitchen. Kitchens in every court are operated by the residents, other residents operate our dining rooms; but it is all done under the supervision of our chef and head waiter.

"We live in what you earth people would call a community style. Every community has five or six courts, as you must have seen from the air, laid out in cluster near each other. The young couples like ourselves who bring up families and who need more rooms occupy single homes or two family homes. The four-story apartment houses, which surround the larger courts, are occupied by people who have already raised their families and who need less space.

"Every community has its preliminary school, hospital, and with provisions for one bed for every twenty persons and one physician for every fifty adults or twenty-five couples and their families in the community. There are also a drug store, theatre, moving picture and television house, gymnasium, dance hall, for the young boys and girls, social clubs for the young and the aged, music band, skating rink during the winter, and indoor and outdoor playgrounds for the very young children. Of course, there is constant intermingling, between those living in adjoining and other communities.

"We also have our own court of justice presided over by a conciliator chosen from our retired aged residents every year. This court settles our personal disputes. If we wish, we can call in an outside impartial arbitrator. We also have in this city a superior court of appeal, presided over by ten retired, aged Martians who are elected by all our city residents for a four year term. Anyone can appeal his case and get a hearing. Our court, comparable to your Supreme Court, is also located in Amboria."

Mrs. Savona addressed Xora. "Do not forget that after the next two weeks you will take your turn as nurse's aide in the hospital. You had better make the most of your time now in showing around our Earth guest."

Luncheon over, Xora suggested taking a walk. "It's a favorite diversion of ours," she said. "You can more readily observe our ground surface while we are strolling."

We went into a spacious outside court with trees, and close cut lawns. She led me out of the court through an opening in a beautifully trimmed hedge which she told me surrounded the five or six courts forming their community. Beyond the hedge, running east and west, one hundred fifty feet away, was another hedge. The space between was a street without sidewalks. Along the hedges on both sides were lines of beautifully shaped shade trees, at equal distances from each other, carefully pruned to allow shade as well as sunshine and beauty. There were comfortable benches under them. Parallel to both hedges were two twenty-five foot strips of beautiful green lawns in lieu of sidewalks. Between these strips were two twenty-five foot pathways, paved with a cork or ocean tree lumber surface, easy and resilient to walk on. In the center and between these pathways was a fifty foot wide full length flower bed with passages every 200 feet leading to fountains and statues in the midst of the flower beds. Happy couples, both young and old, strolled arm in arm or sat on the comfortable benches. The sweet scents of beautiful flowers, the freshness of vegetation, and the pleasant chirping of birds were unspoiled by traffic, and industrial noises. At the end of these hedges, we came to a very wide cross street or avenue, lined with pruned and beautifully shaped shade trees. It seemed as if every street had its own style of trees.

I asked Xora, "I noticed from the air the absence of vehicles on your streets, and I see none now; don't you use your streets even for deliveries?"

"No, all our traffic for deliveries and collections is done underground. To avoid accidents, individuals are forbidden to drive vehicles on the streets or to walk in our subways. Nor are children allowed to ride bicycles on the surface as they do on earth. We have no streets, as you call them. We call them parkways, and they are used exclusively for our pedestrians, who can walk, rest, and cross in perfect safety, even in the dark."

"Then you have no street accidents, and even an unattended blind man can safely at any time cross your parkways in any part of your city?"

"Yes," she answered, "providing he knows directions and carries a blind man's feeling compass."

It was a relief to cross safely without trying to find traffic lights, or stopping to look both ways for approaching automobiles. My precautions in crossing remained with me for some time, to the merriment of Martians with whom I happened to be walking. However, back here in New York I have almost been run over several times because of my forgetfulness. I did not see a street policeman there of any kind; a fact which impressed me then, and occurred to me later. What a relief not to have to run across streets dodging automobiles and fire engines! The indescribable pleasure of children playing and the birds twittering added to my feeling. I was in a land of enchantment.

In the center of the crossroads was an attractive pavilion with awnings all around it, and with dainty little umbrella tables outside. Many people were sitting around the tables with refreshments. Xora led me to a vacant one where a courteous attendant seated us and gave us a menu with a list of all kinds of ice creams, drinks, fruits, cakes, and dainty candies. My companion gave the order, after translating the menu for me. Everyone enjoyed these simple refreshments in a happy orderly manner. No barkeepers, with their noisy customers guzzling alcoholic drinks, no disgusting drunkards, no promiscuous petting, no attempt at pick-ups, no vulgarity, and no high class "Cafe Society."

In a very comfortable corner spot, there were about five vacant tables decorated with pennants on top of the umbrella poles. I asked Xora why these tables were vacant. She said they were reserved for the over-aged and high ranking members and their immediate families. So were the best seats in all public assemblies. Others had to take seats according to their rank and grade degree. Her family had to take balcony seats, because neither of her parents had as yet reached higher than the fifth grade.

Bowls of beautiful fresh, conserved, and dried fruits and nuts of many varieties were placed on our table. Xora said they were not the best of their kind. The choicest food from the commissary and the best articles from the general stores were first allotted to the crippled, the disabled, the sick, the aged, and the high ranking members and their families.

Momentarily forgetting what her grandfather had told me, I reached into my pocket for some gold pieces to pay for the refreshments. She started to laugh and said there was no payment.

"In that event," I said, "I can sit here all day and gorge these, and go to other pavilions when the supply here is low."

"You can do that," she said, "but you will soon become satiated and you will not take advantage of such privilege. It's only the small children who are tempted to partake of more than is good for them. They are not served without their parents, and they are taught restraint. These pavilions are at every crossing and are supplied continually by one of the four adjoining communities for a week each in their turn. Each community tries to outdo the other in quality and service, so as to attract more guests. Pavilions and benches on all our streets contribute a great deal to our social intermingling, especially during the afternoon teas."

"To whom are all these refreshments charged? There must be an enormous supply consumed daily."

"They are charged against the account of public supply," she answered.

"Is there no payment for anything you get here?"

"No! It certainly looks very droll to us when we observe your payments, your nuisance taxes and all other taxes and licenses you impose on your citizens.

"Think of your federal, state, county, and city taxes, your licenses, assessments, permits, and tariffs. How about your large army of salespeople, cashiers, bookkeepers, examiners, accountants, and others? Cash registers and office machinery and other derivative occupations pertaining to your money handling, including your assessors, collectors and other employees, all wasting their time in these your boundless non-productive occupations."

For a minute I didn't answer. Then I commented, "your street cleaners certainly keep your streets in perfect condition. I see no dust, rubbish, leaves, or papers flying around."

"Of course not," she answered in an offended manner. "We have no street cleaners, no garbage collectors who, like your Earth ones, collect rubbish and openly spill it into their wagons, fouling the air of the whole street for the passersby. Our volunteer gardeners prune our trees and shrubberies, cut and trim our hedges and lawns, and plant and keep our flower beds. They have up-to-date tools and machinery, as well as strong vacuum pumps to take up the dust, and dead leaves from lawns and walks. The leaves are used for fertilizer. They take great pride in their work, and each group tries to outdo the other in keeping the parkways and streets clean and beautiful. In the winter time we have no snow, ice accumulations, or slippery walks, because they all are provided with hot water pipes below the surface."

"I have not seen a foot policeman anywhere. Don't you have them, or need them?"

"We do not need them," she replied, "with the exception of a few as directors of air traffic, and one in every court of justice. Neither do we have or tolerate your tyrannical secret police, or investigating agents. Have you noticed that we have no locks on our doors or latches on our windows? No one possesses anything that someone else would take away or could not obtain himself. We have nothing of such value that it has to be hidden under lock and keys, put into safes or safe deposit boxes, or protected by burglar alarms."

"I am surprised," I told her, "that I haven't seen any people of another race on your walks or in your pavilion. There were many blue and green Martians on your grandfather's flight ship. Would you serve any of them at this pavilion?"

She answered with astonishment, "Why not? They would receive the same service you had."

"Do they live in separate quarters in this city?"

"Oh, no, they don't live among us. But those that visit us, or are tourists or members of our council, reside here temporarily with us. They, with their families, occupy some of the best suites in our largest and best hotels, where travelers and tourists from other cities and continents of all races reside while in Amboria. They mingle freely with us, without discrimination, mainly in the center of the city. When we visit there, you will see many of them."

"You mean that only the people of the white race are permanent residents of this city?"

"You seem surprised. You're probably judging us by Earth standards. There, even good citizens supposedly, calling themselves Christians, practice forms of discrimination. They have no tolerance of other religious faiths; no tolerance of racial groups. Even in social life, clubs and other organizations by gentleman's agreement exclude certain races and creeds. In business a man's ability counts less than his social connections. This to us seems unfair."

"But how can you eliminate such castes," I asked. "You have your principles of democracy," she answered. "If your people would follow them, even follow the principles of their religious creeds sincerely, intolerance, injustices, and bigotry would soon vanish.

"I have learned in school the history of Earth through moving pictures taken from our television. We've used television for thousands of years. We actually see what has happened and what is now happening on your Earth. We have no white supremacy. Our white race has never wanted to enslave, exploit or govern our other races. We have no underprivileged groups of our own or any race. We have found it best for every race to permanently occupy and reside within the continent and climate where nature originally planted it and to have its own territory and sphere of influence. It takes all our races combined to amicably govern the inhabitants of our planet; we cooperate with each other, and compete in our achievements, for the benefit of us all. All our continents and races are amicably and completely interdependent.

"Scientists, inventors, students, and teachers of one race often attend universities of other races to learn of their new discoveries and improved methods and mechanics. Ideas, information, and even machines are freely exchanged between our races. We equally share with other continents and races those natural, mineral, and other products, that we have, and they need. They do the same with us. We even ration among us the scarce products. Unlike your greedy nations, we do not forcibly grab or extort from other continents.

"Each race has its own schools of all types, cultural, professional and trade.

"There is equal representation in our Supreme Government Council. The President of our Council, or of Mars, can be either male or female and of any race. In fact, quite often our President is not of the white race.

"Our other races are just as careful and as proud to maintain their purity of race as we are. Our laws in that respect are very strict all over Mars. All of us up to the tenth grade degree, including adult children of Sun-Rank members, on this globe have the same standard of living, and we are happy together; difference in race is no problem to us."

"I certainly am impressed," I answered, "you people certainly solved that problem easily. You have done away with intolerance, and all the grievances of discrimination. Tell me more about your governing class."

"We have no class or racial distinction, no titled nobility, no high and low castes of society, no dollar aristocracies, no so-called upper classes, and no retired rich idlers nor jobless poor ones.

"We have one governing upper class, our aged citizens. They have the intelligence and wisdom that come from maturity and experience. They act on committees of conciliation and arbitration between workers, foremen and executives. If their physical and mental abilities show a natural decline with age, they apply and are elected to the more easy government and municipal offices, according to their capabilities. Our factories have separate apprentice craft training and finishing school shops, where productive speed is non-existent. The shops are staffed by our qualified aged, as teachers. Skilled aged workers are frequently used for precision work.

"By this method, we are able to keep our older people busy and contented. They give us the best of their experience as long as they feel able to do so. They keep their self-respect as useful citizens.

"They are our government elected executives, and officials. They are selected and nominated by their parties, and elected by the people, as an honor, and as a duty. But only of those who have not reached the Sun-Rank degrees. Sun-Rank degree members do not and are not allowed to occupy these offices. A government office with us in an honorary position without any extra emoluments. Whereas on your earth very often loyal party members and those who liberally contribute to its political campaigns reach and get lucrative offices, and favors."

"How about political parties?" I asked.

"In every one of our races we have sometimes as many as five political parties, although we don't make a career of politics. Government executives and officials are not allowed to influence or bring pressure in favor of or against candidates.

"Because of our system, we don't need homes for the aged, where every day some of the inmates die, and where they talk of death and plan and prepare for it years in advance. We give them a full life. They do not sit around stagnating. They are carefully watched by our medical department. Our aim is to have them live the longest possible time and not get tired of it. Thus, most of them live longer than they would otherwise, and die in harness. Our love and respect for them intensify our desire to have our aged parents, relations, and all others live their full life span. They are no burden to us, and we have nothing to gain by their early death. We are not like some of you on Earth, eagerly looking forward to their demise to inherit their fortune. All soft jobs, as you call them, such as employment bureaus, government and municipal libraries, museums, and other public offices are exclusively directed and staffed by them. These appointments are made on a merit basis only. To the contrary, in your country; so many high and low positions are filled from the ranks of the politically faithful.

"We on Mars are wondering why your government has created what you call the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance, through your Social Security Boards, for your old people; and then provide them with such a small pension. Not only are the old people neglected, it seems to us, but money which could help them is lavishly spent on sumptuous Social Security Board offices staffed by young, and high salaried officials."

By this time my mind was alert. I listened even more carefully as she summed up her argument.

"We know you have many healthy, self-respecting, sagacious old people who would fill all those positions better and, I dare say, more efficiently. At the same time, while thus employed, they would save your Social Security Board a great deal in old age security payments."

We were thus absorbed in our conversation at the pavilion. Now she arose and asked me if I were ready to take a brisk ten mile walk to the center of the city. "We all walk at least five or ten miles a day, rain or shine."

I was surprised. "Don't you find taking such long walks harmful to your feet?"

"Oh, no," she said, "on the contrary, it makes them stronger. It's exhilarating and invigorating to walk and breathe fresh air. We enjoy our walks because our shoes are comfortable and soft inside, and do not deform our feet. They are made to order from lasts of perfect molds of our feet and fit their functional requirements in motion. In fact, with few exceptions, all our garments are and must be soft and loose, so as not to create pressure, or friction to our skin. We believe in plenty of exercise. Our women do not need, or use your corsets and your other body torturing contraptions.

"While we walk, I shall try my best to explain to you the layout of our city. This city, between its east and west rivers, is a little more than twenty-five terrestrial miles wide. Let us call the pathways running east and west, streets, and those running north and south, avenues. They run parallel and at equal distances from each other. All our communities cover equal surface space, a square fifteen hundred by fifteen hundred terrestrial feet or 2,250,000 square feet. All the communities except those adjoining the center oval are bordered into exact squares by hedges, even though the buildings within may be laid out in different shapes, so as to make the entire plan symmetrical and harmonious.

"In the exact center of the city we have a large oval running north and south. This oval is about five miles wide at the center and narrows down at both ends to less than a mile; its full length is twenty miles. The center part is the active spot. I know what you are thinking—factories, office buildings, business houses. Oh, no. A few of our manufacturing plants are across the rivers, but all of them are located on our planet nearest to their natural sources of production, as you already have been told."

We were so intent in our conversation that I was surprised when she told me that we had reached the center. I have seldom on earth covered such a distance in such a short time. I did not feel tired; it was a pleasure to walk on the resilient pavements.

We were at the edge of a large lake where a great many people were resting, sitting alongside or rowing in all kinds of boats. Rainbow-colored fishes, of sizes up to 18 inches, freely and fearlessly and swiftly glided in the water among all kinds of beautiful swimming birds.

Xora pointed to an island in the center of the lake with a very large pavilion. "Our Symphony Orchestra plays there in the late afternoon tea period, and after dinner in the evening. This lake-shore is very popular with our people. Others in their homes or sick in hospitals hear it over their radios.

"There are three large artificial lakes here. The round center one is the largest. The two oval ones at each end are both larger than your New York Central Park. In the winter time they are covered with young and old people skating and playing ice games. All about the edges of this center are located our libraries, museums, opera houses, theatres, hotels, stadiums, universities, theological seminary, dance halls, and public buildings, as well as the stately building of our Supreme Council of the Planet Mars."

"Where are your temples of worship, and to what kind of religion do you people profess?"

"Our temples for religious services are located in this city within this center. In our monotheistic religion we are not like you on Earth with your many religious faiths which cause disruptions."

So I said, "I recall reading an article by Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in which he said we must face the fact that religion has helped make the world a mess. Fosdick is a well-known writer and thinker. He said that religious differences and prejudices set man against man. Instead of unifying mankind, religion seems to divide it."[17]

"That's very true," Xora replied. "And at the same time your Earth babel of over 2,500 languages divide your people too. Here in Mars with a universal language and a universal deity we can come close to the ideal of man understanding man."

"What kind of athletic games do you people indulge in?" I asked.

"Now coming back to this center; at both ends and middle sides of it, we have large stadiums, each seating one hundred thousand persons. We have games like your football, baseball, basketball, tennis, running, figure skating, hockey. We also have our own body flying stunts, for physical upbuilding and enjoyment. Large exhibitions, performances, and circuses often take place here, but with no brutal, hazardous and dangerous feats, such as your boxing, wrestling, high trapeze swinging, wire rope walking, rodeos, bull fighting, or wild animal training spectacles.

"Now, during our summer or early fall, it is not so crowded here. This is our vacation and traveling period. Many people frequent the seashores and the river beaches on both sides of Amboria."

I asked her, "Do you allow swimming in those rivers with all your city sewers flushing into them?"

"Oh, no," she replied. "We are allowed to swim only in ocean or river waters, where there are constant water changes, and not in rivers where waters are used for drinking, and not, as you Earth people do, in swimming pools. Moreover, our city sewers from toilets, and dishwashing machines do not run into our rivers; they are too valuable to be wasted. The sewerage is run or pumped to large reservoirs with our garbage. The solid matter is taken out and reprocessed into fertilizers, and the liquids are pumped to fertilize our deserts and other lands that need it.

"The clean rain water washing down from roofs of buildings through our rain spouts goes into another sewer line which spills it far out into the ocean; the rain water from our streets is absorbed by the soil of our lawns. We do not allow the pollution of our fresh river drinking waters or our ocean beaches. Not like on your Earth where many drinking water sources are simply open sewers, with one town drinking sewage from the next upriver town. One of the worst offenders is New York. It empties millions of gallons of inadequately treated sewage into the harbor each day, consequently it makes swimming at nearby beaches risky.

"Neither do we allow the pollution of our fresh air, as you Earth people do with your sewage, gases permeating the air on your streets and through roof vent pipes. These gases are absorbed by our vacuum pumps and made use of either as fertilizers or as other elements.

"We have read how you Earth people are made ill from poisonous fumes that permeate the air in all your manufacturing cities. Los Angeles with its smog is one of the worst offenders. We know that chimney soot definitely produces cancer and that asthmatics' hearts give out because they can scarcely breathe when the air is thick with smog."

I asked her, "Don't the workers at these sewer pumps and fertilizing plants feel a strong aversion for their work?"

"On the contrary," she answered, "for these services we have a long waiting list of applicants from our most brilliant young volunteers. Some of them have made very meritorious achievements, and a few have reached our rank degrees. A youth is disgraced and ostracized by our girls who does not put in his full volunteer year working diligently at what you Earth people call the lowest menial occupations.

"The youth who does the most menial work is the one we admire the most, and the one we consider most honorable. Why should it be menial, when after all, it is a mutual human service? We give to each other, to the healthy and to the sick, service for their comforts. Would you call the duties of mothers, nurses or physicians menial?

"We are shocked and amazed to see on your Earth so many of your young, healthy, robust, energetic young men who without pride or shame are engaged in many non-productive occupations as well as in some which are detrimental to the rest of you. Our youths, in fact all our workers, would indignantly spurn such employments.

"Nor would any of our youths marry a young lady who did not put in her volunteer year as practical, probation, and aid nurse in our hospitals.

"All these menial duties are done only by our young; these menial duties are not so unpleasant as you may think. With our improvements in automatic machinery, pumps, and vacuum cleaners, there is little direct handling. Sanitary gloves and breathing masks are worn when working at malodorous duties; thereby we are completely protected from dirt and contamination."

All this conversation was certainly amazing to me. Finally, however, Xora returned to explaining the city's plan to me.

"Let us go back to our city plan, I want to explain to you so that you will be able soon to get around by yourself and find your Earth friends.

"This oval, which, as you know, we call the center, divides our city from north to south in half, with one part east of it, and the other part west of it. The street number system is similar to yours in part of New York. It is in Martian and not in your roman or arabic numbers. Communities along the center east start with No. 1, First Street. First Street begins at the most southern point near the ocean and runs north, and all the other streets are parallel to it. Buildings around the center are numbered, beginning at the southern end with No. 1, Center Street East and No. 1, Center Street West, and going northward on both sides.

"I have another surprise for you. For the last thousand years, our forebears have anticipated that we would be able to carry off a number of Earth men to our planet. Whenever they started to travel in airplanes through the stratosphere. That is the reason we planned this city when it was recently constructed, in this simple pattern. When the Earth men came, we thought they could find their way about more easily. We do not need such careful marking places for we are like some of your animals, birds and fish. Your homing pigeon can find its home from long distances; so can your fish, and often your dog, cat, and horse. They have an acute development of the sense of direction, and so have we. From land, sea, or in the air, we can easily find our way and destination. When we are back home, you will no doubt receive letters from your friends with their addresses. Would you be able to find them now?"

"Of course I could, quite easily, when I have mastered your number system; but if they live at distant points, I will have to travel. Will you at first take me until I can find my own way?"

"Yes, I shall be happy to," she replied. "In the meantime, I want you to know that my father has made an application for a license for you. You will soon be called to our traffic bureau and instructed how to operate our planes, and about our traffic rules. When you have mastered both, you may select your plane and travel about by yourself. For short distances, we either walk or use underground conveyances. Now we will ride back to my home by underground.

"Our subway transits cover most of our city, going north and south and east and west; every community has its stop-offs, both for freight and for passenger trains."

We were by now on the same street as the community court. We went down the escalator at the corner to the passenger train platform. In place of a ticket window, a trestle, or a coin deposit slot, I saw a very pleasingly decorated space with comfortable seats, an attendant who was very anxious to make us comfortable, and clean comfort stations, which we could safely use without the fear of being bludgeoned and robbed. The train soon arrived; the conductor with courtesy led us to two individual seats similar to those in our Pullman cars. Each seat had a little stand or table upon which were the latest magazines and newspapers. But we were interested in our conversation, and paid no attention to the news of the day.

Xora showed me a daily bulletin printed by her community. She told me that every zone in every city has its own daily newspaper and radio station. I examined it with interest. The east side of this city was divided into three zones, and so was the west side. There were also general dailies for every race on the planet covering all of the globe news or intercontinental happenings without any display, classified or other advertisements.

"We have full liberty of the press, radio, pictures and television," Xora said. "Our government has no right to censor them unless for unmoral causes. Otherwise their freedom is inviolable. We are at liberty to think, talk, broadcast, write about, and criticize our government executives, or our political, and economic defects, from the highest to the lowest, and state our opinions without reservation.

"We give and accept criticism in a friendly spirit, but we are very careful not to make libelous statements."

We had now reached our community, and the conductor signaled for a stop. He led us out to a platform near their commissary department, a very large store with food and beverage of every kind displayed on white monel shelves. Inside the spic and span interiors were attendants busy taking care of their customers.

I again said, "During my short visit here I cannot help but observe everywhere the unusual cleanliness in your homes, on your walks, in your station, and on your subway cars, and in the neat appearance of all your people, both young and old. It seems to be an inborn habit of you people of Mars. How did it begin?"

"Thousands of years back, our ancestors inaugurated these exacting rules by strictly enforcing them first by educational methods. We learn them through our boards of education in childhood and later, through our boards of health, who enforce them by regular inspections of our homes, offices, and factories, and punishing us by demoting us a point or more, according to infractions. So now it has, as you said, become a natural habit with us."

Then Xora said to me, "This experience today has no doubt been a very exciting adventure for you. You had better retire to your room for relaxation and meditation."

I agreed that I was indeed astonished at what I had heard and seen of the ways and conditions of Martian life.

She answered that this was only the beginning. "Grandfather wishes to see you again one day this week, and you will be amazed at what he has to show and tell you."

"It is certainly wonderful, wonderful beyond conception," was all I could answer. From the bird's-eye and surface views I have seen of the city, I could judge that its planners certainly had done a good job in its layout. Let me say again, it was beautiful beyond comparison. It would take me too long to give an adequate description that would do it justice.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Brick & Clay Magazine, Feb. 1947 issue, p. 29.

[16] Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 30, 1947.

[17] Reprinted by special permission from the April Ladies' Home Journal, copyright 1947, The Curtis Publishing Co., p. 40 and p. 113.

CHAPTER IV

Old Age Dependents

For more than a month the Lieutenant was absent from his parkway bench, but he corresponded with me from different cities. One day, after his return, I met him by appointment at the usual place. I found him dejected.

Greeting me, he said, "I am sorry for this delay. I tried to persuade my local board to change my classification. I wanted to get back into the service, but they refused me. I went to Washington. There I am classified as harmless but incurably insane, and my request was refused.

"Since then I have been traveling from city to city, observing our manner of living from a different perspective. Prior to my trip to Mars, my attitude toward the misery of life here was the same as that of all us Earth people, apathetic, or calloused, stone-hearted. I looked upon misery without pity, accepting it as a matter of course and feeling fortunate that I was better off. I am now intensely suffering an extreme living change contrast reaction, of our world against the one on Mars, and I can't adapt myself to our conditions.

"I cannot help comparing our shameful existence here with the happy way of living on Mars. I am sad and miserable when I see and read here everywhere, every day, of the unhappy existence of our fellow man." Then he handed me his diary with the notes he had entered while roaming around in our eastern cities.

"One day on the sidewalk of a busy shopping district, in front of a large store in one of the cities, a legless man sitting on a platform about six inches above the sidewalk level was propelling himself with one hand and holding a rope leading to a small monkey with the other. He was trying to sell shoelaces and pencils, which he carried in a cigar box on his platform. Passersby were handing their contribution to the monkey without taking his merchandise.

"In another shopping district, an armless man carried a small showcase with notions strapped over his neck and about his shoulders, with a sign calling attention to his infirmity and asking the public to purchase from him.

"In the coldest and stormiest days and nights, on slippery icy streets, shivering women with their babies, and old men and women, some blind, others so weak they could scarcely walk, were trying to sell newspapers or other articles. Or they were playing an antiquated musical instrument. There was always the small tin cup for contributions.

"In my ramblings, I purposely entered into conversation with many of these unfortunates. At 3:00 A.M., on a very dark, cold morning I had an occasion to pick up an old charwoman who had slipped on the icy pavement. When I asked her why she was out so early, she said that she worked nights in a bank, cleaning and scrubbing. She lives with a widowed daughter who works during the day. She takes care of her children and also contributes to the upkeep of the home from her meager earnings. She told me that most charwomen are old; and they, with the old men, are the all-night army doing the cleaning and scrubbing in banks, business houses, offices, and factory buildings. They are all only too glad to get and keep these jobs.

"An hour later, I met at a corner a bent, very old newspaper vendor. After buying a paper, I asked him why he was out so early on the street. He told me that he had the concession to sell early morning newspapers on that corner. Many of his customers were either night workers going home, or early workers going to their jobs.

"Arriving in this city that same evening, I saw near the New York Central Station, an old man, shabbily dressed in a light-weight, torn overcoat, shivering as he looked into a restaurant window as if he were hungry and hadn't the price of a meal. Stepping to his side, I invited him to join me as my guest for dinner. He weakly refused; but I prevailed upon him, and he reluctantly walked in with me arm in arm. I assured him that it would give me great pleasure to have his company.

"He was cultured and expressed himself with intelligence. I told him I was just adventuring, trying to gain friendship with men of his wisdom and long experience in order to learn their reactions to our way of life."

He said, "I have my own philosophy with strong opinions. I may offend you by intensely criticizing conditions!"

I begged him to go ahead, for I wanted to hear his philosophy. He said, "From the time we take on family responsibilities, we all fear two afflictions. One is the future breaking up of our intimate family after our children have left us. The other is our fear of old age, want, and dependence.

"You, our children, before your birth fed from your mother's body. You were born through her life and death struggles. You were nursed from her breasts until at times she felt faint. You kept her awake at night and gave her no rest during the day. She mothered you, nourished you, and nursed you day and night during your sicknesses. Watching over you like a guardian angel, she gave you her mother love, affection, and protection.

"You took all the necessities, and even the luxuries your father offered you, always desiring more, never questioning how difficult it was to provide them. He worked willingly day and night to give you happiness. He gave you his full love, and protection. He sacrificed his rest and pleasures to guard over you. He provided you with tennis courts, and when he could, automobiles. He never denied you education or necessities. When he could, he gave you greater luxuries. He surrounded you with servants, nursemaids, and governesses. For your enjoyment, he gave you the most expensive toys, ponies, and all your heart's desires. For your social contacts and for your health, he sent you for entire summers to the seashore, farm, or mountains.

"Some of us parents have done a great deal for you, others less. Nevertheless, most of us gave all we could afford. We may have been a bit severe at times in disciplining you, but it was for your own good. Your happiness and security always came first.

"The natural law of reproduction is inexorable, and among animals the parental feeling is not so developed as it is among human beings. Just as soon as animal offspring are physically able to shift for themselves, they are abandoned. But it is not so among us intelligently developed human beings.

"You cannot hide behind the saying that since you did not ask us to bring you into the world, we are not your responsibility; therefore, you are released from any moral obligation to us. No, you are accountable to us, and you should justly return the love, affection, and protection that we bestowed upon you.

"We did not abandon you. Instead, you left us against our inward wishes to start your own family. You know we greatly miss your presence, your voice, and news from you and yours. Our parental love for you is just as keen now as when you were babies; we are just as anxious now for your welfare as we always were, even though you no longer live with us. It is now so easy and cheap to keep close contact with us, through rapid transportation, telephone, telegraph, and mail. We want to hear often from you some of you neglect to answer our letters, causing us worry and sleepless nights of suffering. When some of you do answer, you just get your secretary to typewrite a letter for you. We appreciate more the shortest of letters in your own handwriting.

"I am not criticizing you, sir, or my own children, or any specific children. I am blaming in general those who are guilty of neglecting their parents. Furthermore, I am giving you not only my reactions, but also those of many other parents I know.

"Have you ever missed a lost pet dog? How much more do we miss you, our own children?

"Now that we are separated, alone, and old, we need you more than ever to cheer us up before our end. It's a pity that the saying 'out of sight out of mind' is true with many of our children.

"The other affliction, the apprehension of want and dependence, is still worse for us. Through family responsibility and other circumstances beyond our control, most of us could not protect ourselves against old age dependence by purchasing an annuity or saving enough money for the 'rainy day.' No one knows the misery of this affliction until he has experienced it; and no one knows the bitter feeling of ingratitude, and disillusion better than the helpless aged.

"Many of those who have outlived their usefulness have no one to help them. With the petty old age pensions we cannot afford medical and personal care. Indifferently or apprehensive, we await death.

"As soon as age begins to gray our hair and line our faces, we are shelved; doors to employment are closed to us, even though we are healthy and efficient. When infirmity sets in, we seem to become a burden to some of our children, who quarrel among themselves, trying to shift the burden of our support. It is still worse when we elect to live with some of our children. We are treated like burdensome stepchildren. Whatever we say or don't say, or do or don't do is wrong; the dog may tear up the house, for he is cute and is petted and lovingly cared for.

"Many old people whose children do not want them or are unable to help them, or who have no family, become the dregs of humanity and must starve or commit suicide. You can find their bodies in the morgues and on dissecting tables in medical colleges.

"You are probably unaware of the misery of old age dependents. I can tell you of cases of old parents criminally neglected by their well-to-do children, many of whom you will find in flophouses and slum districts of all large cities.

"For the past many years, one of our New York newspapers three weeks before Christmas has appealed for help for hundreds of the neediest cases. It exposes to the public the pathetic problems of sickness and death among people of all ages. Just go on the rounds with a social worker if you wish to witness the inhumanity of man to man.

"I'm going to tell you something I saw many years ago. A man, deeply charitable, stood at a spot near Madison Square and Fifth Avenue in New York every night. There he auctioned off the services of the many unfortunates. He was always surrounded by them, as well as by a group of onlookers. He stood these victims, one at a time, on a box which he called 'the block.' It was pitiful to see them standing there, either flushed and embarrassed, or with tears running down their cheeks. He then called for bids.

"'What am I offered for this person? Who will give him ten cents? Twenty-five cents? Fifty cents? Do you have a job for him?' Sometimes he gave the history of the person with sufficient verification to substantiate his information. There were always offers of money, dropped in a glass on the block by the bystanders, many of whom themselves were in tears. Many of the unfortunates found jobs there. After the contributions had been made, the speaker counted the money in the presence of the auctioned persons and gave each its equivalent in tickets worth fifty cents each. These tickets could be used to procure beds and meals at specified hotels and restaurants. He kept up this procedure night after night, until the last member of his flock was taken care of.

"I well remember one man he put on the block. A bedraggled old drunkard, wearing oversized garments, torn and patched. He said, 'Look at this poor man. He looks like an alley cat, doesn't he? Just as if children threw snowballs at him during the day, and as if he rummaged through garbage cans at night.'"

My friend paused for a minute in his reminiscences. He was evidently lost in thought. I had been listening to him with both pity and a feeling of shame. He evidently had had no opportunity to talk to anyone for a long time. I could understand his need to unburden himself and determined to listen to the end without interrupting him. Finally he began to speak again, at first slowly, and then with passion and force. "You, who are now guiding our destiny, look about you in this busy hive of a city and in our entire country at the benefits we have bestowed upon you everywhere, on land and sea, under and above land and sea. The beautiful edifices, libraries, homes, department stores, office buildings and theatres; the transportation and distributive systems; ships, submarines, subways, busses, automobiles, airplanes and trains, the creative and destructive inventions; radio, television, radar, atomic bomb, moving picture; penicillin, and other new curatives and the thousand discoveries and achievements. All these are for your benefit, so that you young people can live and enjoy a more healthy and longer life.

"I can't say that the system of life we inherited and pass on to you is good. It isn't. But under the circumstances, we have done much better for you than our parents did for us; and we hope that you will do even better for your children.

"A great many of us were stunted by lack of play time in our youth; our education was neglected for necessary labor; but we carefully guarded you and gave you amusements, and sports for your normal physical, intellectual and spiritual development. We were the taxpayers who maintained the city, state, and federal governments. Many of us died in the terrific pressure and struggle of realizing our aims. A great many of us passed away in middle age; many of us are in insane asylums; and those few of us that survived, are now becoming helpless, disabled, and infirm, secundum naturam. The ravages of nature and time take many of us early and take a large toll of us over the age of sixty-five. Our span of life after sixty-five is very short. We die very rapidly; therefore, our cost and responsibility to you are not large or long lasting.

"Your duty is to make us happy and comfortable for the few days or years left to us, if not for love then at least out of gratitude. We don't want you to have to appear in foro conscientiae, before the tribunal of conscience, to justify your actions and to try to attain a future peace of mind.

"An elaborate funeral with flowers, or your lamentations at our death means nothing to us. But your love, kindness, and generosity to us while we are alive are most important. We want to die feeling you will have no cause for remorse over your treatment of us.

"Many of you have accumulated or will inherit large fortunes directly or indirectly due to our hard work and sacrifices, you accept the fat of the land as your due and for your own pleasure, without even gratitude to those few that still live who helped to make your fortune. Your indifference to our condition is one of the crimes of the ages. We don't want your charity or money."

At this point I interrupted the old man with a question, "Aren't you too critical and too severe in your denunciation of children?"

"No, not when I speak of those whom the shoe fits. However, I am not condemning all children; and in justice to a great many of them, I have heard of and seen many good children who have taken care of their old parents. A recent war hero who was given $15,000 by a magazine for his story immediately placed it as a trust fund for his mother. I know of others who have helped to finance an income property purchase to help a father. Others have ruined their future lives and their opportunities by being saddled with the burden of supporting their parents and families. Talented children have abandoned their education and training at an early age to go to work to help support their parents or to contribute to the upkeep of younger brothers and sisters. Many of them have been forced to remain old maids and bachelors on account of their parents.

"Society in the long-run loses in this antiquated practice of shifting the burden of responsibility to young shoulders. To my mind, the support of old people is a social problem that should be taken care of by social security boards. Help and protection from these boards would rehabilitate families made destitute by the burden. Society as a whole would greatly benefit by creating new trained members and workers. Society owes all of us a moral obligation and a just debt. It should give us compensation, not charity. We ignorant human beings, up to now, have not made any concerted effort to solve our problem. Yes, a beginning has been made, but it is inadequate.

"Society has created the federal old age and survivors insurance operated by the United States government through the Social Security Board. This means that those few will have something to live on who have reached the age of sixty-five and are helpless. This is a step forward, but an insufficient one, for the payments allotted are only enough to pay the rent of the poorest living quarters. They still keep us in dependence. Does society or Congress think that the starvation stipend we are privileged to receive, twenty to sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents per month, is enough, when according to the present poor man's standard of living, the minimum living cost is eighteen dollars per week per person? Many of us self-respecting old persons are still able to do some kind of work; but because of our age, we are lucky if we find any. When offered hard, menial, night, graveyard hour services, we accept them rather than live on the starvation Social Security allowances or depend on some of our children or on charity.

"Old people should be guaranteed freedom from want and dependence. With every worker in this country contributing to Social Security, and only a small percentage of dependents reaching the qualifying age of sixty-five, the accumulation of unearned premiums must be enormous. This surplus should be used to increase the allowances to dependents. Instead, the government flagrantly uses the major part of this earmarked money for other purposes.

"All contributions made by us and employers from our weekly wages for Social Security according to the Brookings Institute report have accumulated and used as follows:"

"The Brookings report says these tremendous sums for security programs ultimately would have to come annually from new taxation, regardless of the monthly payroll taxes. The proof of this was given in a Senate speech by Sen. John L. McClennan (D., Ark.). He revealed that $38,250,000,000 belonging to the present Old Age, Unemployment, Railroad Retirement, and other such trust funds financed by direct payroll tax, had been dissipated by the government on a hundred and one other spending projects."[18]

"Furthermore, the law should be changed in regard to this $50.00 per month earnings. It should be at least $75.00 per month. In other words, an aged person earning $75.00 per month should forfeit the Social Security pension for the period of his employment.

"Social Security should also provide for the crippled, disabled, blind, and other handicapped individuals of all ages;—widows and orphans—should be provided with a reasonable, self-supporting pension. Furthermore, Social Security should develop into an annuity insurance for everyone. The amount of payments should be in ratio to the premiums turned in by the policy holder.

"Workmen's Compensation Insurance should be transferred to Social Security, and unscrupulous doctors, lawyers, Workmen Compensation Insurance Companies, undertakers, and other parasites, should not be allowed to consume the major part of the insurance paid to the worker who is injured at work.

"Workmen Compensation Insurance Companies, voluntary health agencies, charitable hospitals, clinics, and welfare services should be completely abolished. Contributions to them should be legally forbidden. The contributors to these charitable institutions then could transfer their financial aid in the form of an extra tax to Social Security. The work done now by these charitable activities should be solely handled by Social Security, not as charity, but as a right due us. Once and for all, we would do away with a deplorable, ancient custom, the curse of charity which nobody willingly wants. A large part of voluntary contributions goes for other purposes than to benefit the beneficiaries.

"All these should come directly under a new system—The Federal Social Protection and Security Board.

"Your observation of our miseries and destitution should be a warning to you. Your generation may become the victim of your own neglect and folly. You have no guarantee that circumstances (may God forbid) will not become worse for you, and you do not know how your children will treat you.

"I am appealing to all of you to make a concerted effort to have Congress change the Social Security Act so that it will perform what its name means, and let it become a real security for us, for you, and for your future generations. Fiat justitia ruat caelum (let justice be done though the heavens fall)."

"Then you are interested only in the aged and the disabled?" I asked him. He answered, "not at all. We will not have economic safety and stability until society once and for all seriously starts war against unemployment, want, and charity.

"The trend nowadays is charged with danger. I dare say, our young men who have come back from the wars may not be as meek as those who came back from the last war to face unemployment, street corner apple selling and poverty. Our veterans today justly demand employment, the chance to marry, and the right to a decent livelihood for themselves, their families, and their parents.

"In my opinion, our large country is still in its infancy; it has as yet not reached twenty-five per cent of the zenith of its possible development. With progress in air travel and transportation distribution, a renaissance of unprecedented prosperity is near and can quickly be accelerated. We cannot attain this prosperity so long as we do extravagant things, at public expense.

"Let our government instead take over all private, state, or federal unproductive lands, whether it is fertile, arid or marsh. Statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Agriculture Economics on federal rural lands, on page 7, shows that the federal lands, swamps and marshes are 3,000,000 acres, barren and brush land 40,000,000 acres, non-forested range land 234,000,000 acres, crop land 4,000,000 acres; that does not include 177,000,000 acres of forest land, nor does it include the territory of Alaska. It does not include non-productive state and private lands.

"Let the government start a large scale federal and state works project to improve these lands, so that they will not only be made productive but also accessible.

"Let it start an era of colonization, by generously financing on easy terms all young couples or idle families. Homesteads should be granted to them under competent supervision. These steps will help to develop happy, independent, prosperous families, as well as ultimately enrich, and increase prosperity in the entire nation.

"As we braced ourselves to win the second World war, so can we muster our resources if we wish, to do away with the outdated system of want and charity. Coute qui coute (cost what it may). The reason I am repeating the words want and charity so often is that I want to strongly impress upon your mind the seriousness of my argument. Whether the job is done by my plan or any other plan, we can and must make an end to these conditions.

"Unemployment compensation payments, enough for a livelihood, should be made and continued until everyone has a living wage job. If necessary, our government should keep up large public works of constructive improvement all over the nation."

Writing down his name and address and giving it to me, he said, "I want to thank you for your treat. I can tell you more of my ideas, but it would keep us here for many more hours. It is getting late and I have to be on my way. If you can write me, I will be glad to meet you again and continue our discussion."

I put a five dollar bill in his hand, but with tears in his eyes, he proudly returned it. "I must have bored you with my lengthy discourse," he apologized.

I answered, "On the contrary, I have learned a great deal, and I thank you for all the information and suggestions." We shook hands, and said good night.

"His conversation gave me more cause for my sadness; I was distressed to hear of the neglect of our aged people. I felt ashamed of our mistreatments to the disabled, crippled, and blind.

"During the slow traffic hours in the New York subways, on the sidewalks, and on this parkway I have closely observed many middle-aged people with their deformed bodies, swollen legs, and flabby, loose-skinned masks of faces. All of them in youth must have had natural beauty. All over the country, inside and outside of bars and saloons, in slums, in parks, and in alleys, you will find many aged, middle-aged and even young people who are listless.

"It is unbelievable and shameful that in this country, in our age, with our phenomenally abundant resources, such conditions should exist.

"There has been famine in India where hundreds and thousands have died from starvation, and millions of innocent, defenseless Jewish victims have been exterminated in sadistic orgies. What an existence we are creating for ourselves and our children. The future generations will surely pay. The sins of the fathers once more will be visited on the children."

Every time he handed me one of his chapters, he followed my reading from his own copy, because many times I would ask questions or start a discussion. I was wishing that I too should have been present on Mars. He sensed a certain amount of skepticism that was forming in my mind, and kept on hoping and assuring me that another opportunity would present itself for a trip to Mars and that I should accompany him. "You'll see for yourself," he said.

At about this time, he gave vent to his pent-up anger and said, "All this makes me sick at heart; my soul and mind are filled with disgust and fear that I am the offspring of an ugly lot of beasts. I don't want to remain on Earth.

"Millions of our youths have gone to war, and have sacrificed themselves in one form or another, to make this world a better one. I hope that they may not only end these problems, but may succeed in changing the economic life of all of us. If not, they have fought and died in vain.

"Then, oh, God, Who has given us intelligence which we misuse to fashion a chain forged with links of gold, which has us so securely bound and enslaved—far better take away from us that priceless wisdom which we do not know how to value. Efface it from our minds, so that we revert to our former primitive state until our present system of life can be entirely forgotten, and until we become entirely purified from our crimes. Then, and only then, instill in us a pure civilization, so that the cursed money system will be no more."

All this he spoke with a strange vehemence and uncontrolled emotion. He burst out in a loud, passionate sobbing. It took him some time to compose himself; then he said, "I cannot help my feelings. I am now not so inured to seeing poverty and want as you all are, or as I was before.

"You must excuse my agitation; it certainly delays the finishing of my story to you. We had better postpone it until tomorrow, when I hope I will be more calm."

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Reno Shopping News, Mar. 16, 1950, by Geo. S. Benson, President Harding College, Searcy, Ark.

CHAPTER V

The Bee Hive

When I met the Lieutenant the following day, he smiled somberly.

"My emotional outburst yesterday was a relief to me," he said, "but I would have preferred having it in privacy. Since I am now calm I have here a typewritten copy of the narrative of what happened to me at Amboria, the city on Mars.

"I don't want to take up your time in giving you a detailed description of my room. I will leave it to your own imagination that it was more beautifully decorated and comfortable than any we Earth people can conceive.

"I was in a daze, pleasantly exhilarated by my strong feeling for Xora, and utterly bewildered by the wonderful experiences and new ways of living."

Several sheets of paper on a small table attracted my attention. It was a message in English from Sun-Rank Banard, saying that my crew members and I could present ourselves any day that week to the airport for instruction in flying and traffic rules. There was also on the table what seemed to be a large Ingersoll pocket watch lying on a couple of sheets of paper. Picking the watch up, I saw another message, which stated that the instrument was made especially for our use on Mars, but that, like their radios, it could not penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. The front dial had about a hundred consecutively numbered lines, with a needle attached to the center. After tuning in, by pointing the needle at the number I had looked up in a directory lying there, I could contact and speak to any person I chose. Listed in the directory were not only the names of my new acquaintances on Mars, but those of my fellow crew members, my Earth friends as well. In the center of the dial was a very much smaller dial which gave the exact time. By tuning in to the weather bureau, I could learn of the weather conditions twenty-four hours in advance. The message also informed me that as I increased the number of my acquaintances, I could remove the present dial and put on one of the few additional dials lying on the table. After tuning in and dialing the number, by unscrewing the back cover and placing it to my ear, and talking into the back of the instrument, I could hear and speak to the person, no matter where he might be, unless a red light on the instrument indicated that he was busy talking to someone else. While talking, I could look at the instrument and see clearly, not only the person, but even all his facial expressions.

I could keep the instrument in my pocket when I was awake; and if someone wished to speak to me, the instrument would inflate and deflate with a throbbing movement, which I could feel immediately.

Upon retiring, I could hang it on a convenient hanger attached to the headboard over my bed; if someone wished to call me, then it would awaken me by flashing a bright red light. If I set it at a certain time, it would ring like an alarm clock.

Taking advantage of this inter-communicating pocket radio-telephone, or what we here might call a walkie-talkie, I talked for quite a while with my fellow crew members. I learned that they, like myself, were having strange and satisfying experiences. They were so enthusiastic, that they all desired to remain permanently on Mars. As soon as possible, they wished to go to school to learn the Martian language and calligraphy. They voiced a strong desire to introduce similar living conditions on Earth. We agreed that we should at the earliest opportunity consult with Sun-Rank Banard.

After my lengthy conversations with my friends, I sat down on the chaise longue to meditate upon the significant happenings. Reclining abstractedly for some time, I then fell asleep.

The bright morning sunlight and the light blinking in the instrument woke me. Placing it to my ear, I was greeted by the pleasant voice and face of Sun-Rank Banard.

"Last night when you spoke to your friends, you all expressed a strong wish to consult me. That wish registered on my mind so definitely that I could not help at the time from reading your thoughts, which greatly pleased me. I will communicate with your friends and arrange to have a plane fly all of you over here to my home today. After dinner we can take counsel together as to the best means for attaining our objective."

That night after dinner we gathered in Sun-Rank Banard's library, and addressing our radio operator, he said, "Mr. Galoway, I understand you are anxious to make some suggestions. I am very much interested in hearing them."

"Sun-Rank Banard, may I have the privilege to present some of my ideas, with many of which we Earth men are in accord? If you agree with them, we would like your advice, and help. Contrary to what Field Marshal Allenby said, 'We earth dwellers are prisoners on our planet; there is no way out,' destiny, through you, has given us a way out. Against our will you took us away from there; we want to assure you now of our gratitude. We thank you Martians for the privilege granted us to remain among you. During the short time we have been here, we have found your living conditions unparalleled. We all intend to take advantage of our good fortune and become citizens of Mars. We wish to make our lifelong home here and to form close family unions. If you take us back to earth, we would not want to remain there; for we do not want to bring forth our children in the cauldron of the Earth's inferno. However, we have blood ties there, people who are very dear to us. For the sake of our relatives and their future generations, and the sake of Earth's humanity as a whole, we shall devote ourselves to creating, if we can, a better future world for them. But we need your help.

"Since we speak fluently, between us here, in ten different languages, we can be of great help to proselytize from here the people who form the majority of Earth's population. Or, if you can arrange to let each one of us separately parachute down to Earth, into the country where our language is spoken, we can start our work of acquainting them with your system of life. But, after a reasonable period, after sowing the seeds, we hope that you will arrange to take us back. That is, providing we are in good health. If, God forbid, any one of us become contaminated with an incurable Earth disease, then he should be left on Earth.

"Since childhood I have always had radio transmitters. I have always tinkered with them, and made them myself. I have worked at them in all phases of the industry. I cannot only make them, but also operate them. I can instruct my fellow Earth men here and also you Martians, if you will give me the chance in one of your radio factories. Perhaps I can succeed in making a radio that will penetrate through the atmosphere of Earth and reach its inhabitants. We then can start a campaign of broadcasting messages to our fellow men on Earth."

Sun-Rank Banard responded with enthusiasm, "Mr. Galoway, I am most happy to know your plans and intentions. I shall have you flown tomorrow to our radio factory and laboratory, where you can conduct researches with our scientists. You will be provided with all our materials and facilities. I sincerely hope you prove more successful than we have been.

"A week from today we can have another conference. I hope by that time you will have succeeded in your endeavors. Now, gentlemen, it is getting late. The airplane will fly you all back to your homes. Good night."

Next morning after breakfast Xora came in and reminded me that she was ready to take me along to their general stores and show me their method of distribution. I asked her, "Are you going to do your shopping, while we are there?"

"No," she said, "We don't shop, buy, or sell on Mars. We are given supplies; we obtain them. We do not go shopping, as you Earth people do, merely to look at displays. We go only when we need and are entitled to obtain an article.

"My tandem plane is all ready," she continued.

We then got into it and took to the air. I sat close to her, my body alive with the sense of her beauty.

Then she said, "Our chief guide at the administration building of the ORDDB, our Ordering, Receiving, Distributing and Directory Bureau, has learned your language, and he is anxiously looking forward to showing you around."

We were now approaching two beautiful buildings, both wide and high. We landed near them on a plane parking ground. These two buildings, side by side, were situated at the southern point of the oval lake, exactly in the middle of the city's width, running east and west.

Walking to one of the many doors of one of them, I noticed that the people were all going in one direction only. On the doors were signs in the Martian language which read For Entrance Only; the exit doors were on the opposite side of the building. "That is a rule in all large public buildings in Mars," Xora explained.

In an office on the main floor, Xora introduced me to Mr. Amony, their head guide, who had been awaiting me. He led us into one of their large ground floor catalogue rooms, which was similar to the catalogue room on the third floor of the New York Public Library, but much larger. Two walls were lined with files in alphabetical order. He showed me how to use the files, which gave pictures and information concerning all the articles carried by the stores and instructions on how to obtain them. These catalogues were the only medium of advertising the stores had. Newspapers, magazines, mail, radio or airplanes were never used for advertising purposes.

Each of these buildings, square in shape, covered Earth men's measurements of eleven hundred by eleven hundred lineal feet. In the middle court you could place, side by side, two libraries the size of the New York 42nd Street Public Library Buildings. Each had sixty catalogue rooms on the ground floor. Each room measured one hundred by sixty feet. The hallways on the four sides were fifty feet wide and on every side were escalators, twenty-five feet wide and separated by hand rails every five feet. The people on Mars used only moving stairways and no elevators. To reach higher floors quickly, twenty passenger helicopters were used outside. These constantly operated up and down to and from every floor landing to ground floor.

There were plane landings on each side on every floor and on the roofs of buildings higher than five floors. Beside the moving stairways in these buildings, and in all other large buildings, alongside the moving stairways were two elevator shafts, one used solely for up traffic, the other for down. They were each large enough to hold one of our freight cars, for they measured sixty feet by ten feet.

Used exclusively for freight, these elevators were only platforms supported by wheels eighteen inches in diameter. They also had gear wheels on each corner and on the middle of each side. Running up and down the walls of these shafts were six full-length geared metal beams. When a platform was in the shaft, the gear wheels closely fitted into the cogs or gears of the shaft beams and the platform gear wheels operated either up or down. Weather conditions in re to expansion and contraction did not loosen or tighten the hold that these gear wheels had on the beams. Strong springs helped to keep the hold constant.

These platforms were not attached to or supported by cables. They were not permanent inside fixtures of the shaft; many elevators could operate at the same time in one shaft, as many as there were floors. Automatically, they traveled in the shaft at a certain distance from each other so that they could not collide. When one of them reached its given floor, the whole line of elevators stopped in the shaft until this one vacated it. The shaft floor doors opened and released three rails from the floor into the shaft to support the elevator, while it released itself from the beams, gears. The elevator then rolled on its flat wheels onto the rails and then onto the floor. When the rails snapped back into position, the doors closed, and the other elevators in the shaft continued on their way to their floors.

Now the released elevator with its load propelled itself to the place of unloading. On the floor of this elevator were four movable belts. They were used for loading (pulling on) and unloading (pushing off) a full load, four units, when all four belts operated, or a half load, two units, when two belts operated; or a quarter load, one unit, when one belt operated. One unit was the equivalent of the minimum size of a load of heavy merchandise that we handle.

When this elevator reached the place of unloading, it hooked onto the permanent loading platform against the wall, eighteen inches from the floor. These permanent platforms had metal movable belts for loading and unloading and when the elevator was hooked to one of them, the belts on both moved into action. The elevator belts pushed off while the platform belts pulled on the load. These loading and unloading belts were on all the freight cars, loading platforms, and on every deck, on both sides, of our air and sea freight ships.

The same process took place when the elevators were being loaded, but in reverse; the belts on the permanent platform pushed off and belts on the elevator pulled on the load at the same time. The elevator then was on its way to the down-going elevator shaft. When it got up to the shaft, the doors automatically slid open; all the down-going elevator platforms stopped; the rails to support the elevator shot into the shaft, and the elevator propelled itself into the shaft, firmly gripping with its gear wheels into the cogs of the beams. Then the floor rails pulled back, the shaft doors closed, and all elevators in that shaft started down. The destination of these platforms varied; some of them unloaded onto freight ships, some onto long distance railroad cars, and some, propelled at great speed, acted as railway cars on the rails of the city and suburban freight subways, and often went long distances to their final destinations.

All these operations were done efficiently and by remote control, by a person sitting at a switch desk, thousands of miles away.

After his long description of how the elevators worked, Mr. Amony led us to their main waiting room on the ground floor in the middle court, which, he explained, had an open roof during the summer season and was protected by skylights during the winters. We sat down and an attendant quickly served us refreshments. This room was nearly filled with people waiting to meet their friends. As we ate, Mr. Amony gave us more information.

"This building is a sample of the hundred stores that run in a row on our southern water front from east to west for twenty-five miles. These two buildings, with fifty stories each, have fifty separate office suites on each floor, totaling two thousand five hundred suites per building. In this building, fifty store buildings from here west, are operated and controlled; in our sister building the fifty buildings from here east are operated."

Leading us to the escalator, he said, "Let us go up and see one of the offices in action." In the office we visited, there was a personnel of five; a chief and four assistants. They had complete operating charge of an entire storage floor in a store building. Each one of them was responsible for one-quarter space of it. They not only were supposed to be experts in the special merchandise handled on that floor, but they also had to do the ordering from the production point and the inspecting of materials. They had to keep a full supply of stock at all times.

Seated at their desks with an assortment of business machines, including a television set, they could clearly see the floor under their control. From their seats, they operated heavily loaded elevator platforms to the appointed portions of their floor. Loading and unloading, taking up and storing, and taking out units of merchandise to near or distant destinations were done by them.

One operation attracted my particular attention. A large freight ship was being unloaded under a store building. I could very clearly see it on the television. The ship had just anchored directly beneath the elevator shafts, following the orders of the clerk by whom we were standing. A removable metal frame was being put together by the ship's crew to fit into the up-going shaft, through the hatch, and right down to the bottom of the hold.

Meanwhile, the clerk was manipulating an empty elevator platform in the down-going shaft to the ship's deck. When the frame had been securely placed in the up-going shaft, he guided the elevator into it and down to the bottom of the ship. Then, propelling it out, from this frame to a large loader of four units on the platform within the ship, he skillfully loaded it on the elevator. The loaded elevator he now moved back into the temporary frame, up the elevator shaft, and on to its floor. He neatly unloaded it at its appointed place. All that maneuvering was accomplished quickly without hitch or man power by buttons and two-inch levers on the desk. The clerk certainly had complete control of his elevator platforms.

I could not help calling out, "Bravo! Bravo!"

At the adjoining desk another clerk was loading an underground subway freight car and speeding it to its distant destination.

Addressing myself to Mr. Amony, I asked, "These clerks seem to have great responsibility. Do they have the authority to give their orders to the producers or factories supplying the merchandise under their control?"

"Of course," he answered. "Not only that, but the manager at the factory has that floor where his goods are kept constantly under his vision; therefore, he knows when the floor is under or overstocked. After daily consultation, he and the clerks here on duty manage to keep the supply sufficient. Samples of the merchandise in these units are always mailed to this office for inspection before the merchandise is shipped. We have only one factory for every individual article, with its branches on all our continents. They work together and compete with each other to produce the best of a single material thing or article allotted them. Executives for our industries are appointed solely for their experience, and efficiency, and not through political or other influences. It is the same in personnel.

"This system of remote control, with few exceptions, is used by us on vehicles, locomotives, passenger airplanes, and machines doing heavy duty work, such as those you would call bulldozers, plows, or other farm machinery. In fact, we use it for almost all laborious work and engineering projects, on stationary and mobile engines, and on machinery used on dry land, marshes, and on the fertile floors of the sea."

Addressing Xora, he said, "Let us give our visitor a look into one of our mechanical factories across the river. I will meet you outside factory No. 100 in half an hour."

We landed in a large open parking ground where Mr. Amony was waiting for us. As he guided us into a large building, he said, "I am surprised you Earth men don't go in for similar manufacturing and improvements and reforms. They have the idea, which we hope will soon be also in operation. Look!" Meeting our sight was a

"Factory as clean, spacious, and continuously operating as hydro-electric plant. The production floor is barren of men. Only a few engineers, technicians, and operators walk about on a balcony above, before a great wall of master control panels, inserting and checking records, watching and adjusting batteries of control instruments. All else is automatic. Raw materials flow in by conveyor, move through automatic inspection units, fabricating machines, sub-assembly and assembly lines, all controlled from the master panels, and arrive at the automatic packaging machines a finished product."[19]

"We have machines that see better than eyes, calculate more reliably than brains, communicate faster and farther than the voice, record more accurately than memory, and act faster and better than hands. These devices are not subject to any human limitations. They do not mind working around the clock. They never feel hunger or fatigue. They are always satisfied with working conditions."[20]

Now Xora interrupted, "I need a garment which is in the store building of No. 1 east. Let us go there."

I found this store impressive. Mr. Amony explained that the other ninety-nine stores were of similar size, but carried different articles. They received, stored, delivered, and distributed all foods and merchandise and other necessities and luxuries for all the inhabitants of Amboria.

These buildings were sixty stories high. The first ten stories in each of these hundred buildings were used for shopping, display, individual ordering, and disposing of merchandise to shoppers. Each floor had its own exclusive kind of merchandise.

Going up the moving stairway to the first floor, we landed in front of a slowly moving, large, circular inside platform twenty-five feet wide, which went on the floor around the full size of the building. On both sides of this platform were plush rope rails with many openings and provided with comfortable seats. An attendant at each opening helped people off and on.

Alongside this moving platform was a stationary floor of twenty-five feet in width for walkers. We sat on a seat for three on the moving platform, and were taken around to see the beautiful displays on dummies and on beautiful living models. Each side of the floor showed its own special variety of displays. My feeling was that the ladies on Mars were no different from ours insofar as feminine finery was concerned.

From the moving platform to the show cases was a ten foot stationary floor, where the distributors and recipients were sitting on comfortable seats and were being shown different articles and negotiating transfers. As we were nearing a special display, Xora left us sitting, and lightly stepped off the platform. During her absence, Mr. Amony gave me some information.

"The attendants in our merchandising department are called merchandise distributors, not salespeople. We have no high pressure employees. Our distributive system is more simple than yours, which I have seen through television. We do not advertise. We have no bargain sales or substituting. Our attendants are courteous. The people they serve give them courtesy in return.

"We try not to strain the patience of our distributors. We provide comfortable seats for them. Your salespeople spend hours on their feet. The high pressure selling methods induce nervous tension and fatigue. They become old before their time.

"After the day's work is over, our distributors are not worried whether they have sold the day's quota or have made a commission. They are not afraid of losing their jobs or having their salaries reduced, because of a shortage in merchandise. We have no shoplifters or detectives in our stores."

By this time Xora had returned from her shopping. We thanked Mr. Amony for his kind services and departed. As we approached the plane parking ground, I suggested that we fly to the center lake, as I wanted very much to hear the symphony orchestra which was playing about this time. At the same time, I took her hand and held it firmly but very tenderly. She blushed deeply, but her return pressure gave me my answer.

"Oh, yes," she said, "We can spend some time there and have our afternoon tea." Hand in hand, we again took to the air. Soon we landed in a secluded portion of the center parkway, near the center lake.

We were served tea with a large assortment of dainty little sandwiches, cakes, fruits, and candies. The sweet soft music permeating the air exalted me, and we were both wrapped in the exultation of our newly found love.

My deep love for her made me more happy than I had ever been in my life. I could hardly express what I wanted to say. But she seemed to understand. She listened attentively, and when I started stammering, she pressed my hand to encourage me. I was astonished that such a wonderful girl could have any interest in a blundering person like me. When I had finished, she answered, "I love you, too; I loved you the first time I saw you on Mars.

"You must know that I watched you in our television when grandfather took possession of your plane," she continued, "and I greatly admired your actions and the way you carried yourself. It wasn't hard to grow to love you.

"You must understand that we have no sympathy with many of the conditions on earth. I was deeply impressed when Grandfather told me about the conference he had with you and your Earth friends, and of the plan you boys have made. The news has been broadcast all over Mars. Your success or even a partial one will be an outstanding feat of our time.

"We all hope that our sincere admiration for you boys shall be an inspiration for your success. We shall encourage you and take great pride in your work. Even though you don't succeed fully, but only plant among your people the seed of the way we live our life, I will be just as proud of your achievement."

We spent the whole afternoon, until late in the evening, telling each other of our love, and planning and hoping for our future.

We were in a deep embrace when her mother called her on the inter-communicating instrument to come home.

That was the most momentous day of my life.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Reprinted from the Nov. 1946 issue of Fortune Magazine. Machines Without Men by E.W. Leaver and J.J. Brown, by special permission from Editors, p. 165.

[20] Ibid., p. 204.

CHAPTER VI

Auri Sacra Fames

"The accursed thirst for Gold"

A week after our first meeting, we again met in Sun-Rank Banard's library. Addressing Mr. Galoway, he said, "I am very sorry to hear that you have failed to find the missing element for the proposed radio transmitter. You certainly tried hard enough. But don't let this discourage us. In a conference with several of our Supreme Council members, we decided that it might be a good plan to take Lieutenant Balmore back to Earth and let him parachute down right over his home. He can disseminate the experiences he has had on our planet and, at the same time, acquire an airplane with the best high frequency radio transmitter. Then he can contact us on our airship at a prearranged time and place.

"Before he leaves, it may be a good idea to take down in shorthand notes and memorize a convincing lecture with illustrations which may succeed in influencing and possibly converting terrestrial men to our way. I am now going to show you television and moving pictures of some of the gruesome happenings on Earth. I may find it necessary to offend many of your people on Earth by exposing their grim way of living and I will even have to exhort them; but I feel that my method may be the best way to arouse serious attention. You will have to steel yourselves against not only what I am going to tell you but what you will see with your own eyes of the horrible ordeal on Earth in both past and at present. These pictures were shown only to a few Martians. I certainly would like to show them to your Earth peoples, or at least to your ruling class. Your economic system is so strongly entrenched that I doubt your living generations can or will even try to take advantage of my findings or counsel. I will have made a start if the coming ones will benefit. Our combined talks, and suggestions will be recorded and translated into each of your different languages. When the occasion arises, you may reach your people in your own language.

"It will be important for each one of you to be able to give the history of your adventures, the details of your landing experience. Vividly contrast our way of living on Mars with the way of living on Earth; then you may in your own way tell them of the lecture I shall give you now.

"We have found that human beings here and on your Earth have potentially the same physical and mental caliber. Nature implanted in all of us the primitive instincts of selfishness, acquisitiveness, and brutality. By some good fortune our primordial ancestors on Mars started to cast off and definitely curb these instincts and aversions by good judgment, reason and repression, and have forcibly continued to do so until evolution has eliminated our undesirable traits.

"Our early progenitors ingrafted in us high ideals, thus developing in us a high mentality; fortunately we have not inherited your instinct to desire wealth and power for individual self. We, like yourselves, require good health, love, happiness, good nourishment, warm and fashionable clothing, sanitary, and comfortable homes, safety against want and old age, dependence, medical care, luxuries, and honors.

"On our globe we have intensified the production of natural resources from our lands, seas, and air until now we can produce more than we actually need. Every Martian gets his necessities free as a matter of right and his expensive luxuries and honors according to the merit of his achievements.

"Your forefathers, even though they were groping for the best way of life, through ignorance, gradually drifted into the path of least resistance. From time immemorial you have always desired the acquisition of more wealth than you needed, to give you power over your fellow man.

"We on Mars have been objective observers of your sick economic system. We have carefully studied its functions. Although I do not pretend to be an expert, I have consulted with our own experts, and feel myself qualified to make suggestions. From the analysis we have made, we call it moneyism which is the root of your economic evils. Your whole existence centers around your desire for money, and you are handicapped in that you must have money to live even a comparatively normal existence.

"In nature, only living matter is productive. But contrary to natural law, you have created money, interest and reproductivity into an unnatural body, that has elements of the corrupt.

"I am not going into the detailed dogmas of your economists, nor will I define them and their functions; but I will try to give you a summary of the history of money, past and present.

"Money started in your ancient times, as a barter system.

"Beginning by gradual evolution in your stone age, you started with living money like cattle, slaves, next came shells, colored fancy stones, stone axes, and tools. Then your earth man discovered iron ore, mining and smelting. At that time iron was scarce and became the most valuable metal of the time. You forged it into lance points, arrow points; then into axes, knives, swords, arm and leg bracelets, using these articles as a medium of exchange.

"You afterward discovered silver, gold, other metals, and precious stones. With your innate craving for self decoration, you forged golden crowns, medals, belts, arm and leg bracelets for your leaders or kings; and then earrings, necklace, finger, and nose rings, and arm and ankle bracelets for your sweethearts, wives, and daughters. Thus, the more scarce and rare the metals, the more valuable they became, starting the medium of barter and exchange in metal bullion and coins.

"You find an account in your Bible.

'In Genesis XX, 15, "And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before thee; dwell where it pleaseth thee." 16, And unto Sarah he said, "Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold it is for thee a covering of the eyes to all that are with thee, and to all others. Thus she was reproved."'

"The American Indians and white settlers used wampum as money. Tobacco government warehouse deposit certificates were also used as money.

"In some of your Southern Pacific Islands your cannibal tribes used compressed human heads and skulls to purchase their wives; in Africa ivory elephant tusks were used and others of you have used a great many other mediums of exchange.

"Mr. Norman Angell, one of your economists, in his book, The Story of Money, gives a clear description of the uses of money. He says it is used

"As a medium of exchange, a measure of value, a standard of deferred payment, and as a store of value."[21]

"Mr. Victor L. Clark, one of your authors, in his book What is Money, says that

"It is something with which we can buy goods and services."[22]

He further writes:

"In the 16th century, 'a new aspect of credit appeared.'[23]

"deposit banking developed out of an ancient custom of leaving money in safe keeping with responsible merchants."[24]

"In the 16th century banking by check system was started in Amsterdam by large Dutch Banking Companies, bringing into existence your present system of moneyism. Later, London goldsmiths began to create bank money by issuing receipts or other paper instruments originating out of money in bullion of copper, silver and gold by weight deposited with them, or loaned out by them, on which they paid out or received interest.

"This practice of saving and getting interest on money started your moneyism system, gradually developing into your present stupendous one which holds in its power every one of you on Earth.

"Where the profit angle is concerned, you seem to forget and not to adhere to traditional and religious custom and laws.

"It may be unknown by many of you, that the receiving or charging of interest, was, and still is condemned in most of your religious scriptures, as immoral, illegal, and sinful.

"During your Roman era, and even for some time afterwards among your world nations interest charging was severely punished as a crime.

"Interest charging, contrary to your religious precepts, is now not only legal, but justified, and is the fundamental principle of your moneyism.

"Every one of your nations and states legally permits a different standard level of interest plus premiums, commissions, and other charges. In some of them it has reached high usury proportions.

"Land and commercial moneyism, in existence for so long, brought on your money and industrial financiering. Inasmuch as you gentlemen come from the United States of America, the foremost financial country of your world, we had better concentrate on it.

"Don't let us confuse your money system with your form of government, or political economy with your political science. They are two different, and distinct entities.

"Your founding fathers certainly originated a sound form of government. You can be proud of your constitution, your three branches of government, your bill of rights. We on Mars feel it is the best government on your earth, outside of your economic system, in many ways similar to ours. As your traditional and very ancient custom for the benefit and protection of your citizens and for the purpose of withholding its control from greedy, monopolistic or dishonest individuals, as well as guarantee its uniform value, your government was compelled then, as it is duty bound now, to assume the many responsible and most important money functions, as well as create, promulgate, and enforce its laws, developing the following bureaus and departments. The bureaus of the mint, engraving, the office of the treasurer, register of the treasury, controller of currency, the farm loan bureau and the federal reserve system.

"Thus Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve, are the fountain heads of your money and moneyism; your banks, its multiplex reproduction incubators, and foster parents reproducing it with lightning rapidity, through interest, compound interest, dividends, bonuses, premiums, commissions, dues, rents, and profits. Your commercial and investment banks and your trust companies receive, pay out, finance foreign credits, underwrite and distribute new securities, and buy government and state bonds. There are more than 14,855 establishments, with arteries in more than 20,000 large business savings and investments. National and state banks and trust companies are located in all your large and small cities. Many of them are members of the Federal Reserve Banks. Your 300 large life insurance companies and all other lesser ones, your great number of private bankers, your financial investment, loan, and mortgage companies, your pawn and stock brokers, and your many other financiers control the loans of money. They loan it on stocks, bonds, notes, commercial paper, collateral securities, on contracts of future deliveries of all staple commodities, imports, exports, real estate mortgages; to nearly all of your industrial, commercial houses and utility companies, transportation, shipping, your farms, your business, your home, your furniture, your food, your automobiles, trucks, your jewelry, your clothes, your tools, your wages, and anything you possess of value. Even on your false teeth. That money loaned to you is derived from your savings, dues, and premiums.

"Bonus and other charges and loans to you are as high as the companies can get. Some of them ask the highest usurious rates allowed by your different legal state rates, and other charges are added—as much as they can milk out of you. Note that:

"The civic agencies conducting the Dallas, Texas loan shark fight found that interest as high as 1,131.4%, over 3% per day, was charged gullible victims. The lowest interest rate was 120% per annum, and the average 271.68%."[25]

"Money circulation and interest are the most expensive operations in your moneyism. Mr. Norman Angell in his book Story of Money calls it 'Velocity Circulation.'[26] Money travels rapidly from hand to hand, from one pocketbook to another, from bank to bank, to borrower or drawer, in constant circulation.

"Has any one of your economists calculated how many times an active one-dollar multiplies itself in a year from the time it is first issued from the Treasury? How much does it earn in interest, compound interest, commissions, bonuses, dividends, and profit gain from constantly being shifted from person to person, bank to bank, and loan to loan? Or how many times does the actively circulated dollar change hands per day, month, or year? Your World Almanac, 1950, page 716, gives the deposits for the year 1949 as one hundred and fifty-five billion dollars, and on page 715, money in circulation for 1948 of $28,224,000,000. Every one of these dollars must have earned quite a lot in interest and must have multiplied itself many times on its rapid velocity circulation.

"How about your floating currency, in safe deposit vaults, pocketbooks, pockets, or hidden away underneath mattresses and in hundreds of nooks? How much of it is in the hands of foreign holders all over the world? And in their banks going through the same interest-earning and loaning-out processes?

"For your convenience in receiving, withdrawing, and checking out your money and for other services that your bank performs for you, you are being charged in many ways. The banks do not allow your money to lie idle. It must work and earn interest and other charges over and over.

"Other powers in your moneyism are your Stock Exchanges and Boards of Trade. Security trading has developed and perfected these Stock Exchanges to the point where they are the main financial markets in your United States as well as in all other financial centers of your world. They are the mediums to help keep securities at all times in a liquid and convertible state; they are the main avenues where buyers and sellers can always transact a purchase, or sale of stocks and bonds. The Boards of Trade are the mediums or markets for transacting purchases and sales of your staple commodities like wheat, corn, cotton, eggs, butter, coffee, and other staples.

"The New York Stock Exchange with its 1,375 broker members and members of your other exchanges and Boards of Trade in New York and other cities are the agencies of purchases and sales from client to client for cash or on margin for your stocks, bonds, and future staple agricultural commodities. These brokers also do a sort of banking business with their money and profits, and with money they borrow on call from banks at 1% and 2% interest and charge their customers 6%. They trade not only for their clients, but also among themselves.

"The next power in your moneyism is rent: Payment for the use and occupancy of property owned by another party as landlord. It is another form of interest on invested money. Rent is nothing else but a gain or interest on money. The rents paid for your homes, apartments, shops, offices, business houses, farms, and equipment, must be an enormous expense for you.

"Profit, another form of interest, is an expensive process of your money system. The Romans had a saying, Caveat Emptor, 'Let the buyer beware.' History shows that your industrial, and commercial business, and services have always been based on hard bargaining. The desire for more money gain was and is so deeply impregnated in you that it has blunted and broken down your ethical standards. You have always tried to get the most gain for the least value. Some sellers take advantage by overcharging, underweighing, substitutions. Others, through their open and secret control of combinations, and cartels create price fixing pools. Some manufacturers, retailers, contractors, and producers monopolize and create a scarcity and a demand. The consumer through necessity is compelled to purchase from them, or from cut-throat grey and black markets.

"Your World Almanac of 1950, page 652, gives for 1945 as many as 250,881 manufacturing establishments, with wholesale value of manufacturing at $74,425,825,000 on page 656 for 1948, and retail sales at $130,000,000,000. Whatever you purchase has also an added cost by billions of dollars for advertising, from your biggest article down to your match or piece of chewing gum.

"Your credit sales and charge accounts have not only increased the cost of your purchases, but have intensified the demand for luxuries you do not need or can't afford. You buy these things on the installment plan, even if you have to pay more, plus interest, to carry your account.

"Commissions, and fee payments on your purchases, sales, and rental collections to stock, bond, real estate, and commodity brokers plus your attorneys' fees is another enormous and excessive drain on your resources.

"The economic financial incubuses you have created now control your lives, from the day of your conception, until long after your death. With your money they directly control your most essential industries; and indirectly hold ownership through their loans, and mortgages, of your business, your homes, farms, stock, lands. They are on the Board of Directors, guiding the policy and controlling all your financial institutions and your most profitable enterprises taking most of the profit for themselves by devious methods. To hide and not openly show their large earnings, they often by subterfuge, declare and cut 'melons' to their stockholders by exchanging three, four or more shares of the same company for every one of their shares. By this artifice, they endeavor to show a smaller dividend as well as make the new issue of shares of a lower value, for manipulative and trading purposes. They also continuously increase their capitalizations or lower their par value sometimes for the same purpose.

"They even control your new discoveries, and inventions, which they get possession of, for mere pittances. They often suppress some of them to suit their convenience. Through their financial power they directly and indirectly control and influence the political status of your land. They control operations of agriculture, commerce, industry, transportation, utilities, shipping and all kinds of intercommunication, your wineries, breweries, distilleries, and your tobacco industries, from the smallest business to your largest enterprise. Ultimately restricting your opportunities for economic advancement.

"All these are interrelated: your Banks, Trust Companies, Business Banks, Savings Banks, Financial Companies, Loan Companies, Life and other Insurance Companies, Stock Companies and Exchanges, Boards of Trade, and other exchanges. Stock brokers, real estate brokers, pawn brokers, with numerous branches covering the best locations in the United States, occupy many buildings and establishments, and send their private wires over every section of your nation and foreign countries. All of them are maintained at your expense through your large deposit reservoir and your earnings.

"Your moneyism has weakened you mentally, physically, and morally and has created in you an unquenchable desire for their acquisition; from your poorest to purchase his bare necessities to your richest to get richer, bringing on deficit spending, mounting debts, increasing taxes, incessant relief and unemployment payments. All these with no end in sight.

"Everywhere, everyone among you always has a demand, and you create the demand for more and more money. You always have need for more of it, for more financing, and there never seems to be enough of it. But it is only your few who seem to get it and hold it."

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Story of Money, Norman Angell, Garden City, Publ. Co., 1929. p. 72.

[22] What is Money, Victor L. Clark, Houghton Mifflin Co., p. 2.

[23] Ibid., p. 23.

[24] Ibid., p. 24.

[25] The Family Circle Inc., June 28, 1946, V. 28, No. 26, pp. 10-11, by W.W. Wheatley.

[26] The Story of Money, Norman Angell, Garden City Publ., 1929, p. 381.

CHAPTER VII

Octopus Colossus

Sun-Rank Banard remarked, "It's time for lunch, so let's adjourn to the thought transmission-proof dining room. Our women folk are away visiting, so we will be by ourselves, and we can informally and freely converse."

During the meal we carried on an animated and pleasant conversation in which Sun-Rank Banard very often joined. The gist of it was mainly, at our earth men's lack of impression and perception of earth conditions.

Our boys were astonished at the detailed information the Martians had on our earth life. One said that he had never clearly thought through its economic ills. He had merely accepted them. Although he had heard and studied many of these points, they are beginning to now take on a new significance. Another remarked that the observers seem to be more impressed and are more retentive to what takes place, than those who are within the actual performance of the scenes of our life's functions.

Sun-Rank Banard said, "Now let's go back and continue the lecture.

"Nature on your earth has destined and caused man to come into existence, and has provided him with parents to protect him during his helpless infancy and childhood. During his growth, development, and maturity, it endowed him with a mentality higher than that of other animals. But in spite of his intelligence, he is often more cruel than predatory jungle beasts, especially to his fellow men.

"Creation is prolific even prodigal in its overabundance of production for your necessities and can produce and supply the needs of a population more than twice your number, providing you all will work; but many of you, for a life of ease, use this God-given intelligence especially for acquisition, storing and hoarding as a means of power over your fellow man.

"During the Stone Age, your each tribe lived together in caves adjoining each other for protection, primitively tilling the soil, and grazing your cattle around your habitations.

"It was then the survival of brute force. The bully domineered and became the leader of his tribe, acquiring for himself the most wives and food and the best shelter. The next best he bestowed upon his gang.

"For defensive and offensive weapons against predatory animals and tribes, you used stones and stone axes. Brute force gradually lost its power when the more progressive one of the tribe became adept and dexterous with his stone throwing sling, his lance, and his bows and arrows. He then succeeded to the leadership.

"As your numbers increased, you expanded your land holdings. This continued from generation to generation; from squatters you graduated according to your own laws of possession until the time came when you were encroaching on the lands of your neighboring tribes, starting your process of forceful aggression and acquisition. With the Iron Age started the evolution of your civilization, with sharp iron-pointed lances, arrows, and axes, leading to the barbarous Middle Ages.

"Laws of property ownership, and barter of land, slaves, cattle, furs, clothes, utensils, ornaments, food, and offensive and defensive weapons marked the beginning of this era. In its constant evolution, property ownership law was continually and mercilessly improved according to your standards, with the utter enslavement of weaker tribes, and races who were a good source for procuring slaves and extracting tribute.

"In the further property development during succeeding centuries your ancestors continually improved, and increased their property power so that now it is the dominant factor controlling the very life and destiny of every one of you.

"You have defined and legalized property as everything on your earth capable and possible of being possessed, and owned, including intangibles. It even includes the waters of your rivers, your seas, and the atmosphere over your earth surface, and you seem to be disputing the ownership of the clouds. Sunshine and air, for the time being, are still free and cannot be owned and claimed.

"Your Webster's Dictionary defines property as a thing owned, exclusive right of possession.

"Your Amendments to your United States Constitution, Article V, also gives assent to property. They say, 'Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.'

"You have created it into and described it as wealth, or money. You have advanced it from stage to stage and perfected and increased its power to make it a fluid currency system without which no one can obtain or purchase the necessities of life. You have outlawed compulsory slavery, for a better system which compels you to voluntarily hire yourself out.

"Those in power, to protect themselves, helped to pass strong laws for property control. Not content with the ownership of basic raw materials, real estate, financial affairs, transportation, utilities, and food production and distribution, they systematically entered into every sphere of industrial manufacturing—commercial fields, transportation, shipping, in fact every necessity of your life's existence—through individual ownership, partnership, companies, corporations, holding companies, national and international cartels, and chain company stores.

"To supply the labor they need in their enterprises, most of you, through necessity, hire yourselves out to them either individually or through union contracts.

"Their accumulative hoarding, cartel, and pool forming to control, monopolize, and corner industry are such that you are forced to purchase your necessities from them only, at the highest profit. Thus you pay for products, which, without your labor, could not have been created into value. Your ownership and lack of ownership of property, wealth, and power are the main contributive causes for 98% of the laws you make and have on your statute books.

"Your controlling class who largely contribute to political campaigns influence your ruling class through political parties who openly or secretly help to elect some of their representatives to your Congress, or appoint former directors, and attorneys as members of important key cabinet and diplomatic offices. Their numerous inside and outside lobbyists and subservient newspapers influence the passing and suppression of laws. They even volunteer as advisers to your administrations. Most of your professional politicians 'kowtow' and are servile to them.

"There is always great agitation going on in regard to labor. Next to war, it is the most important problem to your government and most exciting discussions and newspaper headliners.

"Your moneyism and labor struggles are an old, festering sore. These struggles are the general cause of your poverty and destitution. Your system is such that you have no cure in sight. No matter how successful you may be in your unionized demands for more remuneration, prices and values are bound to spiral upward, increasing your living cost in proportion. You are infallibly moving in a vicious circle which tends for the rich to get richer. Many among you are born with pronounced natural aptitudes; some of you have strongly developed these aptitudes and inclinations and constantly use your full mentality and energy for accumulation and hoarding for your own use. But you also use this proficiency especially to gain power through the need of others. The school boy with the accumulative instinct will spend most of his time training himself to become an expert marble shooter in order to win those of his schoolmates. Even though they should find his full bag of marbles and divide them amongst themselves, or should he voluntarily give them the marbles, there is no question that he is bound to always win them back again.

"It is the same with your money and wealth; their division among all of you would not heal your economic diseases, because it would be only a question of a short time before most of you would lose yours to the shrewd and crafty ones among you; very possibly to the same ones who held them before.

"Money, which you developed as the medium of exchange to facilitate accumulation, store of value, and property transfer, grew into the agency of tribute or usury power, progressively expanding to an extent comparable to that of an enormous, monster Octopus Colossus, covering and holding your entire earth within its grasp. Each of his tentacles is a symbol representing your economic and other ills. Each one of them multiplies into clusters or parasites. They are submissive and especially amenable in the hands of those of you who are adept, and know how to manipulate them. With the connivance and at the direction of these operators, they hold humanity in bondage. Continually searching, they reach every corner, nook, and cranny within the innermost recesses of your homes. You have no hiding place or escape from them. They produce and contribute to all your ills and control every act of your life.

"'On the one side, man is so heroic and so noble, and on the other side so base and so cruel,' Mark Twain once said. Time again many of your economists have tried to extricate you; they have wrestled with these tentacles and, like the old tribal medicine men, recommended cutting each one off, but like the nine heads of Hydra, each one of these tentacles on being cut off becomes two. These economists, by their other nostrums, try to convince you they have found a cure; each one of them has his own theory. Your libraries are full of their books.

"Time and again many of you have tried to find a way to save yourselves, but have been betrayed by your corrupt leaders, who, through selfish motives, have led you deeper into the quagmire of the dangerous morass they create for you. They and theirs may some day also become the victims.

"One of these tentacles spreads and disseminates the infectious polio and other deadly diseases by distributing from person to person your disease-carrying, paper money and metal coins. It takes them out from the foulest and dirtiest parts and places of some of the unbathed, drunken, and diseased bodies of your living and dead persons. This money passes along from person to person and merchant to merchant, handled constantly by your food handlers, held by your children in their hands and even in their mouths.

"Another tentacle taints you with pride, arrogance, contempt, insatiable greed, covetousness, and lust. It brings in its wake envy, jealousy, hatred, and malice, followed by the most atrocious crimes. It breeds temptation, suspicion, dishonesty, ingratitude, and corruption, vitiates your entire morale. It was directly and indirectly the cause of 1,361,593 known crimes in the United States, ranging from murder to petty larceny for the year 1943. It is responsible for physical, mental, and organic disorders of diseases among 95% of your population. It is the cause of separations, divorces, and even of serious misunderstandings between parents and children, brothers and sisters.

"Still another one of them coiling about you incites and forms in you a strong magnetic desire to pursue wealth, even by the most unfair or illegal means and methods, destroying in you your finer human feelings. It brings out in you the primitive instinct to plot the undoing of your fellow man to gain his property. It not only distorts your good resolutions, but in many of your individuals and nations, it creates greed to the point that a promise, a contract, or a treaty, no matter how inviolable, is with impunity cancelled or broken.

"How many of you can conscientiously plead innocent to your own selves that you at no time illegally or immorally benefited from your fellow man? Many of you boast how smart you are in cheating your friend.

"Desire for money has blunted your moral views to the point that many of you do not know or do not want to know what a moral sin may be. It has created among you many flatterers, and hypocrites. Many of you join ultra-exclusive clubs, orders, lodges, and other similar organizations solely for this purpose. Some of you even choose your religions with these motives.

"For money, you even subdue your natural love instinct. The craving for money makes many of you desire, and some of you execute the death of your nearest and dearest relatives or friends, in order to enable you to inherit his property or to cash in on his life insurance policy.

"Those of you who have developed in yourselves the habit of thriftiness are very gullible. You deposit your savings in banks, for interest earnings and safety. A great many of you have lost your life's savings through dishonest mismanagement of these banks, or other mediums of savings.

"You who are called the general public; farmer, professional man, small businessman, white collar worker, laborer, widow, orphan, old person; those who pinched penny by penny to accumulate a little nest egg, those who mortgaged your homes, those who saved it at extreme sacrifices, denying yourselves certain luxuries or necessities, to the point of avarice—you have listened to the evil persuasion of high pressure. You have read the enticing overstatements in your newspapers, financial papers, and company reports, you have listened to professional tipsters, financial wizards, or your bank's financial expert and adviser offering you a lifetime opportunity to purchase investments supposed to pay good interest and dividends. Or you have diligently read your stockbrokers' pamphlets and daily sheets. You have watched stock and bond fluctuations on ticker or boards in their sumptuous board rooms. You have been enticed into high finance, stock exchanges, boards of trade, and commodities—all of them types of gambling producing revenue. It is a wonderful system to fleece you of your savings. Your big financiers with their executives, whom you helped to elect with your proxies, have a permanent stranglehold on all your basic industries. They always aim to have you 'the public,' invest your money into their companies and corporations, in fact, become majority holders of their securities. It's with your money that they finance them. They are satisfied to be the insiders with control and management holding a minority of stock. Presumptuously, these executives not only pay themselves from $50,000 to $600,000 and over, yearly salaries, but some of them also have the impudence to get themselves voted large yearly lifetime retirement pensions. They are past masters in creating and influencing a demand for their stock among you, declaring and increasing interests and dividends, manipulating the stock markets to create an artificial boom, and spreading news of a bull market. They load you with the supposed gilt-edged investments at high prices from their portfolios, that they are gradually emptying. After they have sold their securities to you and have entirely emptied their strongboxes of them, these philanthropists sell you more on 'short' sales of shares they don't possess. Thus they make you the 'holder of the bag.'

"Then they start their bearish news and decrease and even pass interest and dividends, bringing on a depression, forcing you to sell at a sacrifice. They wipe out your margin and your collateral bank loans; then they gradually purchase the shares back again at bargain prices.

"They are very discriminating. They do not purchase back securities of those enterprises which by their mismanagement they wrecked. They are sure of getting control of them again for a song during reorganization. Thus, you are left with many valueless stock and bond certificates and with a complete loss of your savings. Every ten or fifteen years they use the same scheme to plunder and to again entrap you, adding new dupes each time. Your stock market collapse of 1929 was not a natural phenomenon, but a man-made concerted crime. With their old tactics of surreptitiously bidding for stocks, they created a boom and a demand for the securities, until every one of you got the stock-buying fever and craze. No one of you was immune—the street sweeper, dishwasher, bellboy, all were becoming rich, pyramiding your stock holdings, and your paper profits were increasing from day to day. Then the time came when the financiers generously unloaded the last of their securities on you, as well as sold you more on short sales. They then stopped bidding for stocks, taking out the props from under the market and letting it decline through its own momentum.

"The market was like a large overflowing lake with a weak dam. It burst and created a flood overwhelming your whole house of cards in your financial world. It was followed by the most drastic panicky drive against all commodities and industrial production prices. The crash brought on ruin by closing weak banks, building and loan companies, and financial houses. It wiped out the savings of millions of people through bankruptcies and foreclosures of an unprecedented panic. The result was a large world wide depression which lasted for years.

"And when you, the public, had finished throwing over securities at the bottom of market prices, who purchased them? Why, those who originally sold them to you.

"Not content to rig the stock markets, they also trade and corner in futures of your most staple commodities. Again, the 'public' is inveigled, and again you are made the losers, not only in the gambling losses but also in the increase of your costs of bread, meats, sugar, coffee, and other necessities.

"These people are more treacherous to each other than wolves. They would just as soon ruin their own set as not. Their financial activities according to your laws are not only legal, but very respectable.

"They are among the most respected of your world. They belong and are the leaders of not only your most exclusive clubs, and societies, but are the top members of your so-called high class social world, and live in the utmost luxury and affluence.

"The Octopus has other mediums in which his tentacles excel. To exploit from you enormous profits, he craftily and mercilessly by seductive propaganda, and intensive methods of advertising, subverted and succeeded in turning 90% of your Earth population toward habits of indulgence, greatly contributing to your extensive organic diseases, and early deaths.

"Your federal, state and city governments attempt to enforce laws but are powerless against organized crime, because so many of your citizens prefer criminal activity for its easy money. They control gambling, narcotic drug sales and other illegal vices in lucrative territories by their strong-arm methods or corruption.

"Many of you are deeply impregnated with the gambling and venture habit. Octopus Colossus has invented many more avenues through which you can give vent to this habit, other tempting pastimes, sports, and devices to attract your earnings and bets, be they ever so small.

"Gambling is legally forbidden (except on your stock exchanges and boards of trades); in most of your national states; in spite of that, it is actively carried on in all its forms as you all know everywhere; powerful gangsters reach and ever entice from the poorest and their children. They also live in affluence and luxury and travel around in expensive bullet-proof automobiles, and live in electrically guarded and protected mansions.

"At your well known gambling dens of Monte Carlo, many spend the last moments of their lives sitting in despair on the suicide bench before jumping over the high cliff.

"Reno, Nevada, called "The Biggest Little City in the World," the divorce capital of your country, has legal gambling of all kinds and is wide open twenty-four hours a day. Gamblers two lines deep stand around dice tables and roulette wheels, play at twenty-one card tables, and bet on horse races. Many mechanical gambling devices and card games are constantly busy, mostly on the receiving end.

"Here you can discern your extreme human weakness; in spite of the many humorous warning posters in one of its most sumptuous gambling houses, your rich and even your poor take gambling chances.

"Rich society men and women, business and professional men, low and high paid workingmen and women, housewives, mechanics, laborers and lumber camp workers, cowboys, old miners, Indians, Chinese, and Africans—men and women of all ages, social security and state welfare recipients in all kinds of attire, elbow each other as they stand or sit alongside each other around these tables, gambling most of their pay, savings, and pensions away. There are no limits on the bets, from a nickel up to a thousand dollars. Gambling palaces, night clubs, and saloons, all with gambling paraphernalia, seem to occupy most of the largest and best stores and buildings in the business section as well as in other commercial zones all over the state.

"Most restaurants, retail food stores, and drug stores have gambling devices of some kind. Outside of mining, gambling may be the largest paying industry for the whole state and its population. The federal government, the state, county, and city governments of Nevada derive, directly and indirectly, large taxes and license revenues from these games of chance in every one of its cities and villages. If you Earth people must indulge in that pastime, we here feel that it's very commendable for these authorities to tax them.

"The gambling system in Nevada is praiseworthy, because it's in the open and legal, whereas in all your other states, gambling is operated clandestinely and on much larger scale, where they are thriving on their pay-offs. They either buy protection from, or are in cahoots with, politicians, officials, or police helping to greatly corrupt government. Large numbers of visitors pour into Reno from adjoining and distant states for divorces and gambling purposes."

Washington, April 22, (UP)—Sen. Estes Kefauver, D., Tenn., said today that the annual gambling "take" in the United States is reliably estimated at $20,000,000,000.

Kefauver, in his weekly radio address to Tennessee, did not give the source of his figure. But he said it amounts to nearly one-half this country's budget. Crime and gambling have grown to such proportions that a congressional investigation has become a "matter of urgent necessity," he said. Kefauver is the author of a resolution to hold such an inquiry—a resolution now pending before the Senate.

"We ought to cut out the cancer when gambling and crime reach the point of endangering our system of government," he said.[27]

"These gambling losses do not include the billions lost on the stock exchanges, and boards of trade.

"Your Octopus derives his blood soaked profits, from your poison habits, as follows:

"The saloon and liquor lounge is your poor man's heaviest burden. It not only takes away and robs him and his family of his meager earnings, but it wrecks his health and turns him into either a criminal or a drunkard. Every dime or dollar they extract from you means one nursing bottle less for your babies, less food and medicine for your families.

"Thus come need and destitution. The saloon is one of the chief causes of poverty and degeneracy, crime, insanity, and suicides. It is both directly and indirectly the cause of the killing and injury of many people.

"You may know from your own experience that after drinking a very small quantity of an alcoholic beverage, you have an obnoxious breath. Nature biologically did not intend alcohol for human consumption. It is an unhealthy digestive irritant, stimulant, and narcotic.

"Seemingly many people from top to the bottom of your social strata have fallen for the wiles of John Barleycorn and his side-kicks. At sumptuous social functions and at the parties of the poor, alcohol is freely consumed. It is served in the homes, cocktail lounges, night clubs, cafes, and the cheapest corner bars. No home of the well-to-do is fashionable unless it has the latest push wagon liquor service or a permanent, small, drinking mixing bar. Alcohol drinking seems to be the fad. The serving of alcoholic beverages is supposedly a sign of hospitality.

"Afternoon and early evening cocktail hours are an important event to patronize cocktail lounges and bars. Both sexes guzzle liquor and make new acquaintances. Women and men companions of all ages, mothers who are neglecting their children and homes, mothers with their daughters, youths, businessmen, brokers, politicians, and clubmen mingle with idlers, gamblers, bookmakers, policy operators, and narcotic distributors, and other human vultures. All are fashionably attired with assumed social graces and smooth voices. The smoky and noisy atmosphere is drowned by music.

"The same kinds of crowds frequent the night clubs with sensually contorted dancing and floor shows until early morning. That's where some of you take your daughters, sweethearts, and wives, and you think you are having a good time. That's where your daughters and sons from adolescence to maturity go with their dates or to pick up dates. They think it very smart. That's where they acquire pernicious habits.

"Look or walk into any of the great numbers of night clubs, high class hotel cocktail lounges, or neighborhood saloons and you will see daughters, sweethearts, wives, mothers, or sisters, of your friends and perchance your own, sitting on stools around the bar or in booths, close to known or unknown male companions. A man may take a girl out for just a little moonlight spin in his waiting automobile and even perhaps in a call house, a wayside cabin or in his bachelor apartment.

"In some of the sumptuous ladies' restrooms in the finest of these places brothel and call house madams sometimes recruit their new inmates.

"These are the fathers and mothers of your future generations. Half of your population in the near future may be prison, insane asylum, or hospital inmates, and a great many of the rest may be atrocious supermen of Hitler's type of moron.

"The best your federal, state, county and city governments can do is to tax alcohol and liquor to the limit, which they commendably do.

"No wonder that

"On December 10, 1945, at Miami Beach, Florida, Edgar Hoover, Chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, bluntly warned the nation's police chiefs that the United States is headed for a major crime wave, with juveniles taking the lead in an era of 'Bloody' postwar lawlessness.

"Here, at the convention of the nation's police chiefs, Hoover revealed statistics showing an amazing increase in arrests of bobby-sox girls of 18 and under. Hoover asserted that one out of every twenty-three Americans had been criminally fingerprinted by the F.B.I., whose files, he said, contain records of 6,000,000 such persons. He cited figures showing that persons under twenty-one commit 15% of all murders, 36% of the robberies, 30% of all rapists, 34% of thieves, 26% of the arsonists, and 62% of all car thieves.

"Hoover said arrest of bobby-sox girls under eighteen jumped 198% since 1939, while arrests for boys in the same age group increased 48% for homicide, 70% for rape, 72% for assault, 55% for auto thefts, and 101% for drunkenness and drunken driving.

"Lawlessness has taken on such proportions as to even startle the imagination," he said.

"In Miami Beach, December 11, 1945, President Truman in a personal message called on the nation's police officials to organize a country wide crime prevention drive aimed at the roots of juvenile delinquency. Mr. Truman said in the message read to more than 700 delegates to the International Association of Chiefs of Police Convention that he looked upon the rise of juvenile delinquency as perhaps the most alarming problem faced by law enforcement officers.

"Americans cannot afford to regard that problem passively or to postpone the action necessary to its solution," the President said. "I am convinced that the active cooperation of all welfare, religious and social agencies, civic leaders, businessmen and citizens in the broad national crime prevention program directed at the roots of the evil is the path to be followed and without delay."[28]

"Mr. Edgar Hoover, chief of your Federal Bureau of Investigation, and your President Harry Truman know full well one of the main reasons for these conditions; but with liquor and alcohol traffic protected by the 21st Amendment to your Constitution, with the strong financial interest in the manufacturing and distribution of alcohol, and with the strong propaganda which strengthens the desire for the existence of these conditions, their hands as heads of Government and Investigation Bureau are tied and powerless. They and your Congress would greatly hesitate to try to do away with this evil, if doing so would close those industries with their large numbers of workers out of work and bring back prohibition conditions.

"Man's poison habits are often the cause of an innocent person losing his life or being disabled through the recklessness of the moderate or social drinker.

"Your Congress should at least pass, as soon as possible, a Federal law completely outlawing the drinking of alcoholic liquor, no matter how moderate, to anyone who has a driver's license for motor cars, buses, aeroplanes, or any other rapidly moving vehicle and make it a crime punishable with strict and heavy penalties. Driver's licenses should be issued by the Federal government only, after a thorough examination.

"Tobacco is another avenue where your Octopus gains nearly four billion dollars per year.

"If you smoke a pack a day, you inhale 400 milligrams of nicotine a week."

Said Dr. J.L. Myers of Kansas City, "Nicotine irritates the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract. Tobacco tar injures those membranes."

"Non-smokers, in four years at Yale and at Amherst, grew more in height and weight and lung capacity than did their smoking colleagues."

Knute Rockne was definite: "Tobacco slows the reflexes, and any advertising which says it helps an athlete is falsehood and fraud."

Habitual smokers have a 50 percent higher incidence of palpitation of the heart than non-smokers. There is evidence that heart disease is more prevalent among smokers than among non-smokers.

It is generally agreed that cancer of the mouth, tongue and lips is unduly prevalent among smokers.[29]

"Study fire statistics from your fire insurance companies. They will show you that most fires you have are started by smokers.

"One of the more sinister activities of the Octopus lies in relation to drugs.

"The drug habit, as I understand, has been acquired by many on your earth through your purchase and use of many cheap, unsuspected mild patent medicines, or through your doctor's prescriptions for medical purposes, or through the narcotic drug traffic by your gangsters, with the connivance of some of your unscrupulous politicians. The Octopus's slimy tentacles here surpass themselves. Once the habit takes hold of its victim it is very hard to free him of it, and he becomes enslaved to its use. Unless he gets his daily dose, his overpowering desire and need for it become acute. In that state he will commit any crime to obtain the drug to alleviate his acute hunger.

"Some of your doctors, nurses, medicine manufacturers, mostly your gangsters are to blame. Those who, against human decency and law, deliberately induce those tendencies are reprehensible human hyenas. There is nothing so monstrous as the extreme lust and selfishness of some of you who grind out profits through the suffering of your fellow man. Through neglect or by design you turn him into a lifelong addict so that you can live in affluent luxury and security. There is no conscience guilt, compassion, nor pity, in your soul for him and his babies; but inexorable retribution is bound to seek you out and have vengeance against you and yours in your future progeny.

"Your intensive money-craving tends to cause you, when you are ill, to hazard your health by delaying medical examination, by trying to cure yourself with home remedies or patent medicines, very often risking your health and life by postponement. For the lack of funds, you are often at great disadvantage by not being able to procure competent medical attention.

"Politics and certain politicians give the Octopus another stronghold.

"Earth—Man by instinct is not wicked, he is molded by environment and force of circumstances. Beset with the stress of uncertainties and insecurity of life. And with vicissitudes of selfishness, greed, temptations, desires for riches and power. Contributive to the breaking down in some of you of love, honor, chastity, character, honesty, respect, ethics and morality.

"Your lack of our sense of thought reading, and under your present moneyism system of life the best form of your earth government cannot guard itself against isolated cases of weak, unscrupulous, and treacherous persons.

"Some of your opportunists, amateur and professional politicians, with the lust for wealth and easy money, seek and secure high offices, and permanent soft jobs in your Government. Few hirelings of crooked political bosses and machines reach high places in Government, or attain them through political campaign work, contributions, fixed elections, and dishonest political maneuvers.

"Some few do not hesitate while in public office, through inside information and political maneuvers, to influence and benefit through a rise or decline of stocks, bonds, commodities, and real estate. They use it to speculate on the commodity markets tending to increase food costs. They obtain high salaries, Government offices, and other positions for their near and distant inexperienced relatives and friends, and get kick-backs on their salaries.

"Few of them have procured their nominations and elections by paying for them in advance or by promising future favors. They get your vote by promises that very often are not kept. Some officials sometimes have been tempted to accept bribes. Dishonest ones demand them openly or by subterfuge. In return, they help individuals or organizations to operate unlawfully. Some, in Government office, have helped to contribute to crimes of the worst exploitation, and extortion, against your nationals, or other nations.

"Your money packs the potentiality of the greatest power force and medium for most all your evils and is a constant strong tempting magnet staining with its putrid stigma of corruption, some of your low and high pillars of your temples of justice, law, righteousness, and benevolence, since historical times they have shaken its foundation and toppled over the weak edifice you call civilization.

"No matter how impregnable your officials may be, their jobs are difficult. There are always a few who sooner or later are tempted by economic necessity or desire for social betterment to advance themselves at the expense of their principles. The men resisting must have the integrity of flint. It is unfortunate that the weak ones by their action break down the good done by the strong. In your three branches of government we find that the officials of the upper strata, except for a few isolated instances, have kept their records clean.

"Your world history shows that dictatorship, unjust political, or government ruling power nearly always caused political violence and the early death of most of your leaders through revolutions, assassinations, overwork, and extreme tension.

"Even your religions are not immune from its contamination. Your money greed Octopus through his enticement has unlawfully violated and corrupted your most sacred religious commandments and sacraments.

"Disrupting and weakening your safety protection is another function of your Octopus.

"Property caused you to surround with guards all your government departments and bureaus, and all your business establishments and industry, from the largest to the smallest. Your office, your home, in fact, every building at immense costs is provided with all safeguards, contrivances, and precautions.

"Your legislative departments everywhere have passed innumerable stringent laws and created law enforcement departments of all kinds. You have built your so-called impregnable safes, safe deposit vaults, and burglar alarms. You have developed intricate and costly systems of business protective methods; and services and guards of all kinds to check and counter check every deal, item, and number of articles, down to the last penny or article of the lowest value.

"You have insurance of all kinds against loss and fraud; real estate title insurance, indemnity bonds, postal insurances. With all these precautions, you are still vulnerable to loss through your most trusted partners or employees, through your competitor, through unforeseen circumstances, through dishonest and crafty speculative plots against you by individuals, gangsters, or through a rapacious dictator, through plundering governments, or through predatory national wars.

"The double latches on your windows or the double locks on your doors do not always protect you. Day or night, awake or asleep, through all the regions on your Earth, you are prey to the most atrocious crimes. Alive or dead, your body is in jeopardy. Alive, you are in danger of being blackmailed, kidnapped, or waylaid openly or from ambush. Some will kill you for a few pennies or for your clothes; in a rooming house in England, persons were murdered in order that their bodies might be sold to dissecting rooms; and ghouls may desecrate your grave to sell your body.

"The overwhelming temptation for the possession of money, wealth, affluence and power is so great that all your laws, and enforcement agencies are powerless against your criminal elements, with venal tendencies in some members of your police departments, and in certain members of large political organizations, one of them is reported to be dominated by an underworld leader, and whose friends are appointed to official positions, when a court witness can be intimidated or murdered, when the services of a murderer can be ordered or bought, as per a statement to your senate crime committee that there exists an underworld nationwide Murder, Inc., when some of your law enforcement officers, some of their superiors and some politicians associate with and are friends and partners of criminals, when gangsters who not only contribute to and are active in political campaigns buy protection, and carry open shooting and bombing wars on the crowded streets of your cities in the daytime, and when your most secret government and arms information is easily obtained by other nations through your traitors and their spies, you certainly have no law enforcing security."

"Washington, (AP)—F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover said today that crimes in 1946 broke all records for the past decade. Every 5.7 minutes, there was a case of murder, manslaughter, rape, or assault to kill."

"Major crimes in all categories throughout the country totaled 1,685,203 last year, an increase of 119,622 over 1945, he said in a report. He noted this meant an average of one such crime every 18.7 seconds."[30]

"Moscow, Ida., July 20 (UP)—A serious crime is being committed in the United States every 18.7 seconds, Paul Shine, assistant F.B.I. agent in charge at Butte, Mont., told Law Enforcement Institute delegates today at the University of Idaho, here."

"Shine added that each day 36 persons are slain, 150 robberies take place and 1,032 burglaries are committed."[31]

"What about the numbers of hushed up, unknown and secret crimes?

"Your overcrowded prisons where you confine your adults and very often in the same cells mixed with your juvenile offenders are breeding places not only for many hardened criminals and murderers but also habitual sex depraved fiends. Many of them become habitual drug addicts, induced by their fellow prisoners, or by some of their guards who sell the drugs.

"There is no need for me to detail all crimes and offenses for material gain; where your Octopus excels in his violent and constant aggressiveness. Your newspapers every day, everywhere give you innumerable, criminal deeds and happenings.

"You men may have been wondering why I have again gone into such detail to sketch briefly some of the ills of the world in which you have lived. You may feel that we Martians should consider the case hopeless. But the contrary is true. Because there have been and are many leaders of integrity and high principles in your midst, we feel they should be commended and given the support of greater numbers of your citizens. The paths of virtue, kindness and tolerance should be made more attractive than the paths of dishonesty, vice and crime. Much of the energy of your people is dissipated in activities of the Octopus that destroy not only themselves, but those near them and around them. We here in Mars believe that there are not enough of your citizens awake and aware of what is happening. Many of those living in palaces, beautiful suburbs, or in the quiet villages are not aware of the crowded living quarters, the poverty and the ignorance of many of their fellow citizens who live in the slums where fresh air and sunshine are lacking, and sanitary conditions are most primitive, where your poor are crowded in dark, filthy small living quarters, where large families with many sick and diseased adults, children and animal pets live together, communicating diseases to each other. These families barely have enough for necessities, causing malnutrition, and desperation. There is no privacy in their home life; parents and small and adolescent children of both sexes live together in small apartments, in tenement houses, cabins, and shacks, where families, and vice dens are neighbors.

"Narrow, filthy yards are full of wash lines; streets and sidewalks are crowded on both sides with pushcarts loaded with fish, fruits, and vegetables and smelly eatables; gutters reek with rotting garbage, but the poor man's club, the saloon, is at every corner, which gets most of his earnings.

"This is fertile soil where crime and vice are born and flourish, where venereal diseases are rampant, and where many of their daughters and wives are forced or enticed to become drunkards and prostitutes. Vice, disease and crime wave epidemics that begin in these slums, spreads quickly to and within your own neighborhood and you are not immune from its contamination, suffering or falling its victim.

"Your money is the primary and only cause which creates some of your greedy and hard driving executives and employers, disloyal, distrustful, malicious, and wastefulness in some employees, false friends, extreme envy, dangerous, and criminal covetousness, undue influence, bribery, corruption, extortion, and brings into existence among some of your so-called educated, ruling and leader classes prejudices to an irrational influence and selfishness; in their social intercourses, class struggles and human exploitation resulting in all the evils of your world. From your infancy your cruel taskmasters inculcated and built up in you a deeply rooted man-made system like a quagmire into which you sink deeper and deeper.

"You are completely under the spell of your Octopus. You yield to its will and influence. Your reason, intelligence, will, conscience, emotions, in fact, even your soul is directed by its grasping tentacles. He is the Godfather of 'Mammon' the Demon you worship, above mother love, children's love, parent love, mate and brother love.

"Unless you drive these money changers out of your temple, chaos, terror, forced slavery, annihilation of most of your humanity, complete destruction of your present culture, inventions, and discoveries, all that you have built and created will become rubble, and deeply buried and earth covered. The few left of you will revert to the primitive status of your primordial life.

"Indications point that the Octopus now even in his own stronghold, there is the beginning of decay, but he is still all powerful, and full of fight.

"My mental vision discerns beyond the distant horizon, after the storm a rainbow, a ray of hope, with symptoms of a gradual change in his fundamental functions."

Addressing himself to me, Sun-Rank Banard said, "Now Lieutenant Balmore, I want to let you know that the President of our planet is to tender you a farewell dinner before your departure.

"Among those invited will be the highest dignitaries, of all races of Mars; they will include the President, his cabinet members, supreme court judges, congressional leaders, representatives of some professional and craft academies, including some of our top scientists, and some of our highest Sun Rank members, and not forgetting also myself.

"They all look forward and are very desirous to meet and make the acquaintance of men of their sister planet. You and your friends may be called on and are expected to speak; especially on matters pertaining to Earth conditions.

"We are aware that certain members of your crew were active in Germany before and during the last War. Being that we all know in detail of all the atrocious happenings, we would prefer that they would recount them to us.

"You will be advised of the exact date."

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Nevada State Journal, April 23, 1950.

[28] Reno Evening Gazette, November 14, 1947.

[29] Page 1, Reader's Digest, January 1950 issue. "How Harmful Are Cigarettes," by Roger William Riis.

[30] Reno Evening Gazette, March 10, 1947.

[31] Nevada State Journal, July 21, 1949.

CHAPTER VIII

False Civilization

Quos Deus vult perders dementat prius.
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Sun-Rank Banard asked me if it would be convenient for us to make an all around planet tour of visits to their different continents and races. They all would like to welcome you before your departure.

We not only accepted the invitations for the tour but three of us also volunteered to speak at the presidential banquet, so I handed in their names to Sun-Rank Banard.

Next morning early we boarded our excursion plane for the first itinerary of our tour. After landing at a large airport of another beautiful large city, we were welcomed by their greeting committee, with their band playing our national anthem, and our other triumphal marching songs; while we were marching in a file to their large stadium.

Big crowds on both sides of our route and a great many body flyers overhead, all noisily welcomed and respectfully saluted us.

Their decorated large stadium was packed to capacity of over one hundred thousand persons. With the band leading us all around inside the arena, we were greeted with loud cheering and sprinkled with beautiful flowers, and all of them in their Martian language, wishing me Bon Voyage, with my safe and quick return.

After marching around a couple of times, we were led to a large outstandingly decorated front lower seating box, where we were received in a most friendly and cordial manner by their dignitaries who asked us to sit among them.

They then started their very interesting athletic games, and body flying stunts.

All that day and until we boarded our airship, they outdid themselves to entertain, to make us comfortable, and to show us around.

It took us a whole week with many stops to circle the globe; we were treated, and received everywhere with the greatest honor and acclaim. We arrived back in Amboria in time to bathe, rest, and get ourselves ready for the evening banquet appointment.

Sun-Rank Banard with about a dozen of high rank officials arrived in a large plane to escort us to the Presidential home.

The grandeur of the building, without a single guard, and the marvelous outside, and inside decorations of that sumptuous palace, as well as its large magnificent banquet hall and table service with the richly dressed large assembly of notables was a beautiful and unforgettable sight.

When we were announced they all stood up and gave us a cheer, and the band started to play our national anthem in which they all joined in its singing. To us it was a very impressive and grandiose feeling. We were led to the head table on the dais, and each one of us was seated between the most important of their citizens. My seat was between their president and their vice-president.

Their food was excellent, all this splendor, inspiring in us a profound admiration, it would take me too long to give details. After the last course was served, Sun Rank Banard as toastmaster announced the President as their first speaker. In a long eloquent speech, he not only said that we were welcome as permanent inhabitants of Mars, but also gave me his, and all Martians good parting wishes with the hope of my success and return.

The toastmaster then announced that the guest speakers of the evening will be some members of my crew who will give an account of some of their experiences in Germany.

He then introduced Mr. Louis Richards, a former history professor on Earth.

"Honorable President, ladies and gentlemen of Mars. I am overwhelmed, I never dreamed that there were human beings on the other planets, and I certainly never expected to be present on your globe speaking to such a distinguished assembly of Martians.

"It is an outstanding feeling of honor to be the first earthman chosen to address you. At this meeting and this banquet, it may not be a pleasant subject to vividly present the suffering, misery and cruelty on our planet.

"But being that we all here have a holy mission to fulfill, to save all us earthmen in spite of ourselves, we are going to tell you only a small part of what has occurred. The few of us here, earthmen, who were sightseers of atrocious happenings on our planet, will recount to you what took place.

"With the development on earth of sciences, physical strength gradually became nullified so that skill, invention, and treachery became uppermost in national diplomacy, battles, and wars with some of our earth's nations.

"Since time immemorial we earthmen with our inherent and uncontrollable addiction lusted to possess our neighbor's property by robbing, killing, conquering, enslaving, and even eating him. In our constant raids, bloody conquests, and feuds between families, tribes, and classes, and aggressions between nations up to the present time, there have been criminal and selfish conflicts, 'an endless circle of force, retaliation, violence and war.'[32]

"Exploration brought on our imperialism. In territorial aggrandizement we conquered and exterminated large numbers of native populations, and cruelly ruled, and exploited them.

"Our craving for power and imperialism has led us to the most cruel wars, in which the flower of our youth has been killed or injured on the battlefields.

"Since recorded history, there has been a long gruesome record of billions of our men in their prime who lost their lives on the fields of battle, and the most vigorous and virile of our young men were slaughtered and maimed. Both victors and vanquished were the losers.

"Our theory of the survival of the strongest is deceptive, for it applies only to our wild and domestic animals.

"The weak, sick, feeble-minded, unfit, and old men left at home, plus some of the crippled soldiers who returned were and are to a great extent our progenitors. No wonder one of our senate committees got the following reports:"

Washington, Aug. 26, 1946. (UP) The Army's top psychiatrist told a Senate Committee yesterday, Gen. William C. Menninger, chief of the War Department's Psychiatric Division, declared that—

1. Psychoneurosis was the basis for 43 per cent of the Army's medical discharges. There were 300,000 men discharged for 'neuropsychiatric reasons.'

2. Another 130,000 men were let out because of inadaptability or ineptness, which, Menninger said, is 'another way of indicating that personality factors did not permit them to fit into a job in the army.'

Washington, Sept. 19, 1945 (AP)—Major General Louis B. Hershey, selective service director, disclosed today that:

Of boys nineteen and twenty years of age, 40 per cent were found to have beginning sclerosis, or hardening of these organs. Of those twenty-one to thirty years of age, 45 per cent had beginning hardening of the liver, and 57.5 per cent had beginning hardening of the kidneys. In the same age group, 40 per cent had confirmed hardening of the kidneys, while only 10 per cent revealed both liver and kidneys normal.

These findings, not on sick men, but on those who passed every test and were considered perfectly well, reveal an important cause of low vitality.

Among the young women who applied for admission to the Women's Army Corps, there was similar disability. Each year we lose many more persons from preventable and premature deaths than we lost in battle or from war injuries during the entire war.[33]

"Above are the fathers and mothers of our future generations. To our money lust we can attribute the following shameful conditions:

"Before the war, one American in 13 or 14 had either a sick mind or a defective one. Now one in ten has crumbled. Not all will be hospitalized. But doctors estimate that one American in 20 now alive will spend some time in a mental hospital before he dies. That means seven million Americans in mental hospitals—or headed there!

"We have today more sick and defective minds than there were soldiers killed in all our wars from the Revolution through World War II. More than half of all beds in all hospitals—whether equipped to handle them or not—are occupied by sick minds. Yet, for every sick mind in a hospital, there are 18 or 19 out of the hospital but who need psychiatric care. Every staff doctor in state hospitals has, on the average, 240 patients to care for. In the south central states, the average number of patients to each staff doctor is 346.

"The fact is that it is our youth which is cracking up. Out of every 1000 young men called up by the draft, 178 were rejected as mentally diseased or defective.

"Looking ahead, the psychiatrist foresees, only 20 years hence, some 16,500 senile insane and imbeciles pouring into the state hospitals every year."[34]

"Noah Webster, the lexicographer, must have been mistaken in defining the word civilization as a 'reclamation from a savage state as being cultured and refined.' He should have described it as a most horrible, shocking, and brutal state.

"'They must have been men because they killed each other and must have been civilized because they did it frightfully'—said Voltaire.

"Our ancestors, the savage aborigines, men of the Middle Ages, and even Nero, seem to us to have been barbarous. They were saints compared to our present brutal kind. They would have been shocked had they foreseen our present cruelty, in our modern, so-called civilized age.

"Our civilized age culture brought about the age of scientific killings by some of our earth so-called civilized governments, by gas asphyxiation on the battlefields, sinkings by submarines of non-combatant ships whose innocent passengers floundered and drowned in the troughs of the high seas, and without warning the bombardment of open cities with the extermination of their blameless inhabitants.

"Having seen the perfect life on your planet, we feel a sense of shame, guilt, and disgrace in the conduct of our fellow earth men. It never seriously occurred to us that money lust was the primary cause of our misfortunes. We never gave it a thought that we could live without it.

"Thanking you for the opportunity of letting me talk to you. You will now hear from our following speakers of terrible happenings on our planet."

The toastmaster then announced Mr. David Levy as the second earthman speaker.

"Honorable President and Vice-President and distinguished Martian representatives. If it wasn't that we are all here, trying to find ways and means to help my fellow earthmen, I would feel ashamed to relate what I am going to, but under the circumstances I feel it honorable. I am a German-Jewish refugee, a member of a suffering earth sect. I was in Germany before the war, and also a member of a contingent of American troops in the start of its invasion.

"In spite of all our earthman's good religious teachings and commandments, we have always been afflicted with superstition and bigotry, until it has become a complex. Our apparently groundless dislike of our fellow man leads us to regard him with antipathy, enmity, and even hatred for imaginary grievances. We get prejudiced against him because he may be of a different nation, language, religion, or color; or because he may not eat the same foods or wear the same kinds of clothes; or because he may wear long hair or beard; or because he may not follow our customs and manners. We take offense against him for his abstinence, envy him for his sober progressive industry, or become jealous of him for his studious qualities and professional knowledge and success.

"Against these minorities and nations we first give vent to our vengeance, by baiting him with the utmost cruelty to acquire his land, property and wealth.

"A tragedy of a large remnant of my ancestors occurred in the year 70, when Titus of Rome conquered the agricultural nation of Israel, taking them all away from Palestine to captivity in Italy. They were not allowed to continue in the pursuit of their chosen agricultural occupation, but were sold as slaves. On the fall of Rome they seem to have been freed, and they wandered among all Christian countries of Europe. Wherever they went, they were not allowed to purchase land to follow their old occupation of farming and cultivation or to join the labor guilds; they were forced to become money changers, lenders, traders, or tax collectors.

"For long ages nearly all the great Christian religious bodies condemned the charging of interest on loans; therefore, some of their kings and feudal lords compelled the wanderers to become money lenders, using them by subterfuge as instruments to hold other lords in their power and to extort money from their people, and then taking the major portions of collections away from the money lenders. Other lords forcibly used them as tax collectors, all this starting, creating, and intensifying hatred and enmity against all of them everywhere.

"Defenseless strangers, wanderers with a different religion, language, and customs, they always were the scapegoats. They were then cruelly subjected to contempt, injustices, tortures, and massacres. In 1492, they were subjected to atrocious tortures by the Spanish Inquisition.

"Attila as King of Germany was called the 'Scourge of God,' and the Germans were noted for their fierceness and destruction in their ruthless plundering and destroying what was venerable of Rome. Attila and his bands, no matter how merciless, were generous and gentle to their victims compared to the draconian cruelties of their descendants, a modern, so-called civilized and cultured people who took pleasure in inflicting, in their civilized manner, the most outrageous and atrocious criminal deeds on millions of defenseless and innocent people. In the late 1920's Hitler, and his Nazi cohorts started his propaganda.

"He (Hitler) saw in anti-semitism the principle and only means of securing political power for himself and party; thus he achieved his purpose by the most formidable and unscrupulous campaign accompanied by the most ruthless violence and barbarity in the annals of history that the world has ever seen.

"Having thus found anti-semitism an extremely valuable instrument for easily securing wealth and political power in Germany, Hitler resolved to utilize it for the same in fomenting it in foreign countries too.[35]

"The Nazis vilified the Jews as the cause not only of local political discontent and economic distress, but of all the world's major troubles.[36]

"In few countries has there been such an intimate bond between the Jew-baiting rabble and sedition as in the United States. The activities of the German American Bund and the numerous fascist groups, plus the recent tendencies of some political figures toward the use of anti-semitism to discredit arguments and policies which they opposed are all too well known to the American Public."[37]

"President Von Hindenburg of Germany died on August 2, 1934. Hitler, the paranoid demagogue, immediately seized control. In 1935 the Nürnberg laws relating to race and citizenship were enacted. By the last of these measures, citizenship was denied to Jews and they were cast to be the first sacrifice to our War God. The Nazis first passed stringent laws that no one take, send, or ship money or valuables of any kind out of the country. Then they notified their minority elements to get out of Germany. The rich Jews, compelled to leave, had to give them all their valuable possessions, and flee their native land.

"In 1938, with the annexation of Austria, the German government started to round up in Germany and Austria all Jewish males from fifteen years old to the aged, and held them for ransom in concentration camps. In these camps, they were forced to swallow every day strong cathartic pills; many of these inmates after a few days died on the latrines of these camps from these medicines and from daily brutal beatings. Those that had money or could raise it to buy themselves out were allowed to leave the country.

"At the Buchenwald Camp, the old, the young, and the weak had to join the others early every morning at stone quarrying, cutting out, lifting, and moving heavy stones under the lashes of brutal foremen. Late in the evening, exhausted from overwork, they were welcomed by brutes on both sides of the gates with whips, who unmercifully beat them over their faces and bodies. Relatives were not allowed to visit them. Many of them committed suicide by taking hold of charged high tension wires surrounding the camp.

"They all had a chance to leave the country, even those in the camps. But most European nations, in fact most of our national governments, all over the world, heartlessly closed their eyes, ears, and their consciences, to the most extreme human exigency of the times; they closed their frontiers and doors on them, denying them inviolable asylum, with the exception of a certain few, restricting them to their quota numbers.

"Our Earth nations remained neutral, have the citizens of these nations raised any concerted general protest of indignation? Not even the many members of our so-called humane or animal-rescue leagues made any howls about it, as they certainly would have, had the Germans inflicted on their hogs such 'cultured' tortures before the kill.

"During the American Revolutionary War, Haym Solomon, a Jew, gave his fortune to help save its independence, but many supposedly good American Christians tried their utmost to prevent the saving of defenseless babies and children.

"The American Legion, The Daughters of the American Revolution, and various labor unions, the majority of whose members were Christians, passed resolutions to keep the door closed. Congressmen, thinking of votes, not of lives, were unwilling to liberalize the immigration policy. A group calling itself 'The Christian Mothers' carried on a national campaign to prevent the bringing of Jewish children to this country. As a consequence children who might have been saved by some display of Christian charity died in concentration camps, in gas chambers, in crematories.[38]

"The German war against Poland enormously increased the number of these unfortunates from the conquered countries. Within nine months Germany had closed tight all borders upon every one of them, even the richest; and after taking away all their property, were turned into a national wholesale human charnel slaughter house, where they were methodically put in death traps in their camps, including all women and children. World nations refused to harbor them, so the Nazis massacred them.

"Approximately a half million of the best looking young daughters, wives, and mothers from the ages of 14 to 25, the flower of the most beautiful Jewish women, were first selected and forcibly taken from their homes to be compulsorily incarcerated in brothels. Those that survived at the end of their usefulness, diseased and weakened, were driven to their final doom and deliverance into the gas houses.

"Some of them by some luck succeeded in boarding a crowded refugee ship about to sail secretly away. They stopped at every port, but were refused landing. Many jumped overboard; but the others, by a coup-de-grace to end their misery, were all drowned when at last the wandering ship, as fate and treachery would have it, was sunk or blown up by a treacherous party, in the Port of Haifa.

"All this was a very unpleasant narrative; it's sad but true. I hope that you Martians will find a way to convert our earthmen to your perfect pure and honorable way of life.

"I want to thank you for the opportunity and honor you bestowed on me."

The toastmaster then introduced Mr. Hans Schulberger.

"Honorable President, Vice-President and most prominent citizens of Mars. I am Austrian born, was planted as a member of the Hitler SS Corps to spy on them. I was present at their abominable cruelties and I will give you an eye picture of some that took place at all the concentration camps, with their charnel houses, gas houses, live steam cells, human fat rendering trenches, execution chambers, and torture instruments, where the Nazis practiced all kinds of tortures and cruel medical experiments, tests, and exterminated six million Jewish men, women, and children, plus millions upon millions of Poles, Russians, and military prisoners of all our nations. Our newspapers' detailed reports of many of the most gruesome massacres, will be found as follows:

New York Times, August 7, 1945

Nuremberg, Sept. 17, 1945. Report by Col. J.N. Backhouse

Nuremberg, Germany, Sept. 22, 1945 (UP) by Ronald Clark

Nuremberg, Germany, Sept. 24, 1945 (UP) by Charles Wighton

Nuremberg, Germany, Octo. 1, 1945 (UP)

Dachau, Germany, Nov. 17, 1945 (UP) by N.L. Kandler

Nuremberg, Germany, Dec. 13, 1945 (UP) by Clinton B. Canger

Nuremberg, Germany, Dec. 14, 1945 (UP) by Clinton B. Canger

Nuremberg, Germany, Jan. 11, 1946 (UP)

Nuremberg, Germany, Jan. 14, 1946 (UP)

Dachau, Germany, May 13, 1946 (UP)

"I will now tell you the mildest case of their cruelty that I saw, which has been reported—

By Ann Stringer, UP Staff Correspondent, Nuremberg, January 2, 1946 (UP)—

There was no screaming or weeping. A little child cooed with delight. A couple watched him with tears in their eyes. Another boy, 10 years old, fought back his tears while his father talked to him soothingly and softly.

Then they all went to death the same way—naked, piled body against body, the old and the young together. Undignified a death as their persecutors tried to make it, the victims gave it their own dignity.

"That was a pogrom. That was how the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews, as told in an affidavit submitted to the war crimes tribunal by the American prosecution today.

"The testimony came from Hermann Freiderich Graebe, former manager of a Ukraine construction firm who now works in the United States. Graebe saw the pogrom in Rowno, in the Ukraine, in July, 1942, and again in Dubno in October the same year.

"It was at Dubno that the Germans piled the victims into a mass grave, then machine-gunned them, Graebe said in his affidavits. He swore that 1,500 persons were killed daily.

"The people got off the trucks and undressed upon the orders of an SS man carrying a riding or dog whip," he said. "They had to put down their clothes in piles, sorted according to shoes, top clothing and under clothing.

"I saw a heap of shoes totaling about 800 to 1000.

"Without screaming or weeping these people undressed and stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said their farewells and waited for the SS man who stood near a pit thirty meters long and three meters deep.

"During 15 minutes I heard no complaint or plea for mercy. I watched a family, a man and woman both about fifty, their children about one, eight and ten, and two grown daughters, twenty to twenty-four.

"The old woman with snow-white hair was holding the year-old child in her arms, sighing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. A couple watched with tears in their eyes.

"The father was holding the hand of the boy about ten, speaking to him softly as the boy fought his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked the boy's head and explained something.

"In a tremendous grave other people were closely wedged together, lying on top of each other. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some were still moving. They lifted arms or turned heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was already two-thirds filled—I estimated it contained about 1,000 people.

"An SS man sat on the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into it. He had a tommy-gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.

"The naked people went down into the pit and climbed over the heads of people lying there to the place where the SS man directed them. Then I heard a series of shots ... the next batch was already approaching."

At Rowno, Graebe watched the liquidization of the ghetto: "I saw dozens of corpses of all ages and sexes in the streets," he said. "At the corner of a house lay a baby less than a year old with its skull crushed. Blood and brains were spattered over the house wall.

"I noticed a farm cart with two horses. Dead people with stiff limbs lay on the cart; their legs and arms projecting over the sideboard."[39]

Nevada State Journal, May 14, 1946. "We saw the notorious concentration camp at Dachau and we saw many of the others. It was like descending into a pit of inconceivable horror. There were the torture chambers and suffocation rooms. There were the great yawning furnaces, each bearing a neat sign in German giving its capacity of human bodies and working hours. There were the dog kennels and the execution blocks.

"Perhaps the grisliest sight of all was the long row of huge boxes piled to the top with gold fillings taken from the mouths of uncounted victims who met death at the hands of the Nazis. On each box was the official stamp of the Reich Bank.[40]

"Hitler and company were not only the most atrocious murderers, but also the most audacious thieves. German workmen were paying him weekly installments which were deducted for years from their wages for a 'Volkswagen,' a people's car, which they never received.

"All the foregone is not pleasant to hear. It shook my complacency, but it was necessary for me to disclose these facts to you in their nakedness with these terrible pictures as a warning.

"Our cruel, ignorant, and superstitious animal instinct combined with our grasping money lust is the cause of it all. This greed will be our eventual undoing. We always at all times hate somebody, and give vent to our savageness in many different ways, such as burning old women as witches at the stake, picking on weaker nations for plunder and war, and visiting hatred, pogroms, insults, indignities, and injustices on our minorities. It has been a constant round of wronging and injuring others.

"Who could have predicted or believe fifteen years ago less then a generation, in an era of our so-called civilization and Christianity, that such atrocious inhumanity could take place?"

WHO IS GUILTY OF NAZI CRIMES?

"I have a high respect for the profession to which I belong, and the reporting done by American and British correspondents during this war, whether on the air or in the press represents a high mark in journalism.

"Now these American correspondents, who are not engaged in spreading atrocity stories, give detailed reports of the most cold-blooded mass murder in human history. This is not the first time that American correspondents have told the world what was going on. They told of the mass murders being committed in Germany, in 1933, and the world did not listen.

"Members of the British House of Commons or the American Congress, visited Nuremberg party rallies, sought audiences with Adolf Hitler and came home to brag about them. A former American President visited Hermann Goering, as did many American businessmen. They visited him and some thought we could do business with the Nazis very nicely.

"No country severed relations with the Nazi government because it was composed of murderers. The Nazi murders were merely internal affairs and there were plenty of apologists for the persecutions of the Jews. But the apologists of the persecutions are in some measure guilty of what happened in Lublin.

"To many persons Marshal Petain is still an elegant old gentleman and touching figure. Yet his government knew what it was doing when it rounded up, first German refugees, and later anti-Nazi French Jews and delivered them to the gestapo. The mass murderers presented a list and the Vichy government delivered the list. Can their hands be altogether washed of the blood spilled in Lublin?

"And how about the countries that barred their frontiers, when these people, for 10 full years, before and during the war, were trying to escape from doom? Ships full of them floated like flying Dutchmen in an oceanic void, and no harbor would receive them.

"The guilt lies also with those who actively collaborated with the crimes without endorsing them, washing their hands of blood and publicly whitewashing the criminals.

"Every individual bears a responsibility for the whole of mankind. Human civilization is based on the recognition of that responsibility. The moment anyone denies this responsibility he makes himself an accomplice of humanity's crimes."[41]

"We can't lull ourself to the idea that we now are immune from subversive order. We cannot feel sure and depend upon it that we are safe anywhere from money, wealth, and power grasping gangsters. Some of them get into high places of government. Germany was considered Christian, a highly educated, and cultured country; yet a gang of berserk criminals calling themselves supermen banded together to control the government, first taking the property and wealth away from their defenseless innocent Jewish minority and killing them, then subjugating their supine people. Other despotic gangsters with their strong-arm torturing secret gangster police are now in control of governments of some of our nations and are holding its peoples in bondage, and in forced slave labor. The perfidy and hypocrisy of those in government power of some of our nations has become so aggravated, that humane benevolence, and justice have become a sham and completely vanished.

"With our new death-dealing, destructive armaments and our annihilating atomic power, how can we tell when some cruel gang dictatorship government may enslave us, our children, and our coming generations? Our people who may read this, what assurance and security have they that a similar sinister, or worse fate and calamity will not befall them, and maybe sooner than they expect? It happened and is now occurring in certain countries of our world, we have many subversives who eagerly are waiting for the opportunity to overthrow, head, and control our government.

"Since you brought us to your planet, we have been pleasantly amazed by your wonderful way of life, which we have seen, closely observed, and studied from all its angles. We now have learned, and know the real cause of our earth's misruled moneyism life system.

"Now, gentlemen, we have given you a summary of our earth troubles and showed you their causes and abuses. I am sure no one can dispute the facts. I hope they are convincing enough.

"There is no need for me to emphasize, and I agree with Sun-Rank Banard, that our money, and exploitation systems are the real, contributive motives of our ills. They are festering cancers, eating away the vitals of the civilization we are vainly trying to build. I want to thank you for the opportunity you gave me to tell you what I have seen, hoping that you Martians will help save us from the miserable life condition on our earth."

All Martians present were unnerved and some in tears, and in a state of stupefaction. At the finish of the banquet they all greeted us in a most friendly manner.

Sun-Rank Banard, approaching me, said, "One of our inter-planetary airships is ready to take you back to your planet Earth. We all here wish you Bon Voyage and good luck, and just signal us by wishing, whenever you want to return here, and we will be glad to bring you back again."

FOOTNOTES:

[32] By President Harry Truman, Dec. 5, 1950.

[33] Health Magazine, Sept., 1946, pp. 26 and 27, by Geo. K. Abbott, M.D.

[34] The Pageant Magazine, Sept. 1946.

[35] The Contemporary Jewish Record, December, 1941, Israel Cohen, p. 626.

[36] Ibid., p. 627.

[37] Ibid., p. 631.

[38] An address by Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein, Dec. 23, 1947.

[39] San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 1946.

[40] Merry Go Round, Drew Pearson, August 25, 1945.

[41] San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 4, 1944, by Dorothy Thompson.

CHAPTER IX

Another Trip to Mars

In an important letter to me from Lieutenant Balmore from San Francisco, he wrote—

When I left you some time ago, I made a trip to the West coast. In the veterans hospitals I contacted many disabled veterans who had just returned from the battle fields in Korea. I had known many of them in the old days. I told them in detail about my experiences in Mars. I told them of my plan to take a group of them back with me to Mars to verify my experiences. Of course they were skeptical at first. But after I had presented my cause more clearly they were convinced there might be something to my plan. Most of them had nothing to lose. Because of their own contact with war and their own ruined lives, they were keen to save their children from the same fate, once and for all. "But where will you get a plane to contact the Martian Airship?" they asked.

I begged them to give me ten days time; I felt confident I could procure a plane by some means or other. We have set the day and hour to meet the Martian airship in the stratosphere. Thus far I have been making plans in utmost secrecy, but I am afraid I shall now fail unless you agree to help me. Could you use your influence to help us get this plane? You have been my friend and believed in me. You offered any assistance possible. Here is your chance, not only to help me, but also join us on the trip.

I immediately took the next airliner to the West coast to consult the Lieutenant and his friends. On my arrival I learned that one of my best friends, an influential Congressman, happened to be there at the time. I contacted him and after a long conference, he decided for us to make a hurried trip to Washington. That night we left for the Capital. At the same time the Congressman arranged our appointment with the President for the next day.

At the secret conference the President, although not entirely convinced, agreed to help us. It was decided the congressman and I would make the trip to Mars. We returned to San Francisco quickly. The congressman made arrangements for a large government bomber to leave the Hamilton Army Airbase on the appointed day; he interceded for Lieutenant Balmore with the proper authorities. The Lieutenant regained his pilot's license. However, for some unexplained reason, the government ordered the removal of the secret high-frequency mechanism from the radio transmitter of our plane.

For ten days Lieutenant Balmore concentrated in an effort to produce impulses of magnetic thought waves, strong enough to reach Sun-Rank Banard's mind and impress upon him the urgency to meet us at the appointed time and place. The fear that he would fail nearly wrecked him. I was not relieved from my anxiety, until, on the appointed day when our plane went up into high altitude, and spotted the Martian airship.

The President after a closed conference with his cabinet members, leaders of congress, and representatives of the United and Associated Press, planned for them to follow us in another plane. They wished to take pictures of this epoch making inter-planetary human contact. They had a good opportunity to observe and photograph our plane being absorbed in the Martian airship, and its instant speedy disappearance into space.

On the trip, and on our landing on Mars, and after our quarantine period, we were all overjoyed to meet and make the acquaintance of Lieutenant Balmore's former crew, some of whom were friends of our fellow passenger veterans. They introduced us to their Martian girl friends and to many prominent Martians who gave us a royal welcome, and made us comfortable in one of their most sumptuous hotels. During our two weeks stay on the planet, we were not only welcomed to all their continents by all their races like conquering heroes, but we also attended continuous conferences with Sun-Rank Banard and other important Martian personages. We made careful, exhaustive observations and critical explorations of the planet. We checked in detail their ways of living and system of government.

During our explorative travels, the Lieutenant found many chances to rest and to be with Xora.

The Congressman, after our first dinner, was puzzled. He did not fully grasp their way of life. He was amazed at an occurrence which took place in their dining room.

The Congressman had taken along with him some gold coins, intending to verify Lieutenant Balmore's statement that the Martians do not use money. Finding the head attendant alone after dinner, he complimented him on his service and put in his hand a few gold pieces. The butler with the utmost courtesy returned the money to him and said, "I want to assure you that your satisfaction with the way I rendered my services to the family and to you is in itself a reward."

The congressman turning around to me said, "So Balmore was telling the truth. I wouldn't have believed there was a servant who didn't have his hand out."

After the dinner, Sun-Rank Banard took over. I am going to give you briefly the summary of a very interesting discourse delivered to us by Sun-Rank Banard, which I took down in notes.

"Mr. Congressman, I can follow the state of your mind, you are bewildered. Let me answer one of your thoughts, and then I will explain what is uppermost in your mind.

"You were first wondering at our having no servant problem. We have no servants and no such problems; all our house attendants feel it an honor to do their duties as experts in their calling.

"There is no master or servant feeling on Mars. The attendants of homes, and workers of factories and shops have the right to be transferred if they are not happy or satisfied in their jobs. A transfer seldom happens; but if it does, it is always done in a generous manner and friendly spirit. Servants get the same food here as we do, and entertain their friends here with the same food and services that we get. In my grade days, I also had the honor of performing similar service to a high ranking member.

"Furthermore, our head attendant acted very tactfully, because it is dishonorable and offensive for us to receive any material thing as a reward for service. It lowers us to the servile standard. If merited, the reward or gift which is appreciated and looked for is an honorable promotion in points to a higher degree. In fact, there are no gifts given to anyone, except children."

The Congressman then replied, "First, from what I have observed of your ways of life, it looks to me as if you Martians live a regimented existence; we earth people have liberty, and are free. I want to be frank with you. I am somewhat confused. Do you use no money at all on your planet? How do you measure value and what medium of exchange have you? That same butler, or your cook, how does he measure the value of his labor and service? And how do you measure it and what do you give them in exchange? You Martians must have some medium of exchange to give your people, a strong incentive to do good, honest work and service, to excel, to improve, to research, and to invent so that they can benefit and better their conditions of life.

"They must need enough money to insure their future independence and to protect them and their families in their old age. With what do you purchase necessities and luxuries? We on Earth get the intensive desire to earn, and accumulate money or capital. This desire is a strong driving power which incites us to do good work or service, to invent new and necessary improvements, and to make scientific discoveries. We do all this for gain and profit in moneys and capital, which we save, invest on interest, in property, or in other profitable or risky enterprises, and even speculate with on the future development or increase in value of our investment. We even gamble on chances to win. Most of us try to gain honestly and legitimately, but a great many of us attain gains otherwise. We are like squirrels with their animal instinct for putting away for a rainy day.

"I am also curious to know, what kind of a life system you people had in the remote past, and by what process was it developed to its present standard?"

Sun-Rank Banard answered, "After I get through giving, and showing you an account of our life now, I will answer your last question. Let's look at this question of money first. The squirrels and other animals have the right instinct, and we here have copied them. They, in time of plenty, reserve and store away food. But this is food necessary for their body consumption, not gold, silver, copper, or paper money for which they have no use. They cannot eat or cover themselves with it. Neither do they defy the laws of nature, like the few of you on Earth, who control and monopolize your natural resources and productions to the exclusion of the rest of you.

"Not all people on earth get benefits from hard work. Not always does the inventor gain from his invention. Many of those that have reached affluence, got there through inheritance, influence, politics, or dishonesty. Their ambition seems to be to acquire wealth with which to exploit and enslave their fellow men, by selfishly planning and controlling, in rigid forced patterns, your managed economy.

"Humanity, and even certain animals on our planet, and on your earth have more or less a development of emotional urges to surpass, outdo, and excel each other.

"On your earth a great many of you use these impulses, and sagacity to gamble on your money chances to win it away by fair or foul means from each other. Whereas on Mars this impelling instinct is spent in athletic games, studies, employment, endeavors, creative faculty, inventions and researches solely for our mutual benefits.

"But that is not answering your question. You will be surprised at the intensive driving force and zeal our citizens have for work which will improve living for all of us. They are our guiding principles and spirits.

"Our people respect themselves and respect others. Our workers feel they are part and have a share of something big. They are filled with the idea of making their part of this planet the most progressive anywhere. Each person depends on the best efforts of the other fellow in order to do the best himself.

"Our chief altruistic desires are for achievements and conveniences, to serve, to create universal justice and equality, to better the lives of all our humanity on Mars and to make their lives happier, contented, and more independent.

"We have no special panacea to preserve our mental force, physical vigor and long life. Our intensive life-saving health-giving medical research and new discoveries and the regulated and hygienic life we impose on ourselves. The rules are made by our health authorities and guided by them. They start before our progeniture, even before the meeting, marriage, or mating of our parents. The future of our race is a most important matter to our administration and to all Martians.

"During the adolescence of our youths and maidens they are carefully watched. They constantly undergo strict physical and mental examinations and tests. They are allowed to marry only when they have reached their prime of vigor and progeniture and are free from inherited mental and physical ills. During this period they undergo special physical exercise and treatments. They must pass satisfactory physical and mental examinations to prove their fitness before they are allowed to choose their mates and become parents of our children. We practice our latest sciences of euthenics for the advancement of our races, to prevent transmission by inheritance, or otherwise, of mental and physical diseases.

"We guard the progeny of our children as you do a pedigreed herd of cattle or an apple orchard. You choose the best and healthiest seeds, and as the trees grow, you prune them and prevent them from flowering and producing until the trees are developed, and strong. Such unions are allowed only when their ages differ no more than ten years from each other. We let natural sexual desire between young couples have its course only on the recommendation of our medical authorities.

"When they have such feelings, either she or he, without shame or disgrace, tell their parents before they enter into a marriage union. If they are found insufficiently developed either mentally or physically, they are kept separate and are given special physical training, and medicines to overcome such passions until they become matured.

"They always have genuine mutual desire, esteem, and love for each other. On your earth many of you marry for financial gain, or for social and family advancement. That does not happen on Mars.

"When they file their intentions to marry (they must be of the same race) they take special courses in family relationships and home making. These courses not only teach them how to conduct their future general intercourse harmoniously, but also teach them how to be good mothers and fathers.

"We want only children of young couples who are in their prime. Couples with the best physical and mental health who can transmit to their offspring their youthful energy and power. All others are prohibited from procreating. Under these conditions we bring into our world mentally and physically healthy and sturdy future citizens of Mars. We encourage early marriages, thus eliminating the hunger aroused by the mating instinct. Celibacy is a disgrace among us, with the exception of the very aged.

"From the time of conception until the birth of her child, the mother is carefully taken care of by our medical authorities. She must lead a quiet secluded life without any excitement and must take special treatments and foods so as to build up in herself and her unborn child good health and a balanced nervous system.

"From their natal day, we watch carefully the development of these children. Through their infancy, they are nourished at their mothers' breasts. They receive her love and affection in a tranquil home. Children are brought up in a quiet and harmonious home, where no fear, tension, or excitement is instilled in them.

"Qualified medical inspectors make frequent visits to these homes; where there is any suspicion of conditions prevailing which may be injurious to the child, that child is taken away to our infant institution, where it gets the best care. In our schools, we allow no high pressure cramming and straining of mind, nerves, and sight. Children are slowly and carefully taught the subjects easiest for them to absorb, and for which they have an aptitude.

"Expert tutors, specialists in different subjects, are assigned to help them in studies which may be difficult for them. We know the dangers of overloading the young developing mind. Some minds develop sooner than others. Nature has a way of its own, in that respect. Our educational facilities are there to help but not force. It is not always the earliest proficiency which is the best.

"As the child grows up, we train him with tact and love; under no circumstances do we allow any feeling of inferiority, fear, or hate to develop. Teachers are coalescent with our students. Fear does not enter into our school curriculum. We give the students, student government. They learn from the start, self control and obedience and the rudiments of governing.

"In this way, thousands of years ago we succeeded in divesting ourselves of the primitive animal fighting instinct. We have strenuously discouraged the spirit of combativeness. We do not have nor will we allow any offensive or defensive exercises, exhibitions, or contests such as your brutal boxing and wrestling shows. We do not have any offensive or defensive instruments, arms, or weapons, since we have no need to master anyone among us. The spirit of combativeness is totally absent in our exercises; we do not train ourselves in your sciences of offense and defense. Violence of any kind is unknown.

"We are brought up in a healthy, pleasant environment, by affectionate parents who inculcate in us the feelings of serenity, happiness, and reverence for old age, and who guide us toward chastity, patience, politeness and obedience to superiors. Our parents and teachers train us in human relationship, how to become likable personalities, so we can get along with our fellow beings. Our teachers stress friendship, unselfishness, honor and loyalty. Our strict health regime keeps us healthy and free from irritability. As a result, we live in a spirit of unselfishness, loving and helping each other in the highest degree of brotherhood.

"The science of human relationship referred to by your late President Roosevelt, in a speech written before he died, but never delivered, was long ago mastered by us. In school we take courses in human relations. Our frequent attendance to lectures by our eminent psychologists has helped to develop in us the most harmonious connubial and social intercourse.

"We have no teen age problems because of our carefully planned childhoods. I have heard about your places of correction for adolescent children. To us it seems an indictment of your method of child training. The parents rather than the children should be punished. Our visitors from your earth have been telling us many things about your youth problem. They were much impressed with our lack of such problems. A Martian cannot visualize adolescents as murderers, robbers, committers of petty crime. Your habit-forming drugs and stimulants no doubt help to increase your juvenile delinquency. I was amazed to hear from one of you that statistics show your seventeen-year-olds come into trouble with the law more than any other age group.

"We do not coddle our youths; their bodies and strength are developed with careful and continual exercise and under strict discipline. We force no square pegs in round holes, nor round pegs in square holes. After their periods of education our young boys and girls are examined by experts from the professional and crafts academies, who take great pains to discover their natural talents and aptitudes so that they can not only be of great service to us but a satisfaction to themselves. We help them pass through training necessary to perfect them in their chosen careers. We try to develop their ingenuity.

"Every profession or craft is controlled by an academy for each race. The members of these academies are the governing powers and judges of promotion and demotion. They honestly promote and reward only those who are justly deserving. No one among us would want to be treated otherwise. Whereas some of your own best known colleges of learning will take poor students who are proficient in football or other sports.

"Up until the age of thirty Earth years we are still minors in our educational period; after that our boys and girls must volunteer into the general army of service. This service includes menial jobs, such as working as farm hands, laborers, servants. It also covers all general labor, such as city cleaning, dishwashing, rubbish assorting, fertilizer and garbage handling. The girls must do the menial work in hospitals as nurses' assistants or aides. All boys and girls, gain their points according to their willingness to excel in their work during their testing period. Almost all of them are fired with enthusiasm and have a strong incentive to do good work. After a year they become first grade degree citizens of Mars; then they go back to their chosen or original trades or professions as apprentices.

"All of us on Mars go through the same routine. We are supposed to have graduated from all grade schools, educational, trade, agricultural, and professional—and colleges of the highest learning; but not from postgraduate courses, which we continually take after we have already chosen our future vocations.

"Every grade degree has its honorary emblems, which we wear as a badge of honor to denote our standing.

"Coming back to my discourse on the army of volunteers, I failed to explain that until we pass our period of services, we are still at home with our parents. But when we graduate from this service army, we are given the privilege to select our future home in any locality or community available among our own race. If we are married, we occupy our home immediately; if not it is reserved for us for a limited time until we marry.

"We file our requisitions for the available furniture and furnishings of the style we like best, for all necessities and even for certain luxuries, all of which contribute to our life of comfort and contentment."

"And all that without paying for it in money?" asked the congressman.

"Yes," Sun-Rank Banard replied. The receiver is a citizen of Mars and he is entitled to it.

"Every Martian from the day of his birth is issued ration books which are renewable. As his requirements increase, he gets additional books for his general necessities; but his constant requirements he gets as a matter of right without ration book points. Sometimes, but very seldom, certain scarce foods and drinks are rationed for a short time.

"From our first grade degree on, we get two Martian months of vacation each year, either all at one time, or one month each half-year. We wait our turn, and then we may go wherever we choose with our families. We may go to camps, to mountains, or seashore resorts. Or we may go on tours to other continents or other sections of our globe by plane or ship. On these we also receive all comforts and services free.

"These and other privileges are temporarily denied anyone who infringes upon our laws and rules. With all the good life we enjoy on our planet, we find isolated cases reverting to primitive instincts; but because of our thought reading sixth sense, we catch them before their offenses become serious. These characteristics by training, and evolution are gradually disappearing.

"After starting in as apprentices, we are promoted point by point from one grade degree to another, as we merit advancement. We are compensated not only by being promoted to advanced positions in our vocations, but also by receiving honorary degrees.

"Unemployment is unknown among us, even though our population is large. All of us, even our aged, put in our full four hours of work and service daily, and our disabled and crippled also put in their full employment time into suitable trained occupations. We on Mars go in for specialization. For instance, in agriculture, we have specialists in orange groves who raise oranges only. It is the same in the production of every different kind of fruit, vegetable, tree, animal, or fowl.

"Of those in the medical profession, more than two percent of us are doctors of medicine. There are many more specialists. For every fifty, or less, adult Martians, or for 25 couples and their families, we have one general practitioner and one nurse. If we feel that more are needed, we increase the number of medical students as required.

"These general practitioners are responsible for the prevention of sickness, and for their cure. They can always call to their assistance specialists.

"In the dental and other body-curing professions we have no less than one doctor for every two hundred of our inhabitants with the same responsibilities as the general practitioners. I understand you have one to every 800 persons in the United States, the highest rate of any Earth nation.

"We have specialization in industries and in professions. Our system tends to make each one of us expert in his line, so that we not only improve the quality but also increase the quantity of production and services. Earth men, unlike us, cannot produce so many experts because nearly half of your population are wasting their time either in non-essential work, 'easy' jobs, or living at the expense of others.

"On our planet everyone, from the day he graduates from our schools to the time he becomes infirm and helpless, keeps fully occupied.

"Old cities, which I remember, have been totally destroyed and reconstructed nearly every generation, or sooner. This constant installation of new and improved living appliances and the changes in our general way of life have created for us a bee-hive of energy, industry and activity in creating better and safer patterns of living. Our young or aged like on your earth do not listlessly hang around homes, barrooms, or streets, dying before their time from the lack of physical and mental activity. We all aim toward a more or less creative and realizable goal, whose advancement contributes to our social good.

"Should it become irksome or monotonous for a person to do the same thing all the time, as in many instances it does, he or she may take theoretical and practical courses in other endeavors under the tutelage of our expert aged. Many of us remain all our lives in the same professions and crafts. Our work is not wearisome, because we put in but four hours a day, and have plenty of time for study, music, recreations, pleasures, rest, and religious worship. The poorest worker of our first grade is better compensated and is happier than your richest man. Please contrast these two; and I leave it to you to make your own judgment.

"Let us take at first the parvenu of your earth, who may have been poor and undernourished at one time. He works all day and part of the night under terrific high pressure, always scheming, worrying that someone will steal his invention, trade, or customers, or get his contracts cancelled or broken. He is under constant fear and excitement and spends sleepless nights. He is even tempted to commit unethical or even criminal acts to succeed.

"Due to his hard work, nervous tension and emotional stress, he may become an insomniac, drug, alcohol, coffee, or tobacco addict. These habits are contributive factors to digestive stomach troubles, high blood pressure, irritableness, heart diseases, cancer, and early death.

"When he has acquired his ill gotten gains, he worries how to keep them. He is afraid for his very life; many of your rich people are afraid to sleep alone at night. He surrounds himself with all kinds of safeguards and bodyguards. Why, a great many of them are afraid of their own immediate families! His old age is not secure. It would take me too long to tell you how our lowest grade members or first grade degree members live. When you see them in our city life you will agree that your richest man would immediately change places with one of them.

"We are one nation of many races. We have one constitution; and we have one set of fundamental laws and rules for all inhabitants of our entire globe. There are no separate laws and rules and property laws, like those in your different states, counties, and cities. We have no complex money value fluctuations like yours, which often affect adversely your own economic and social welfare, as well as create chaotic conditions. We have only one government, one house of council, which changes every four years.

"Every citizen is the full responsibility of all of us, and he is of the utmost value to us. Every able-bodied person on Mars is answerable for the welfare of each one of us.

"I hope I have made myself clear. You will see, hear, and learn more about our way and mode of our lives when you start to mingle with our citizens.

"Gentlemen, we have a very important congressional meeting this afternoon. Before your departure, it may be a very interesting legislative procedure on another planet for you to witness. I have reserved a special section of seats for you.

"Let's now adjourn for lunch, and I will continue my lecture after dinner tonight."

That evening Sun-Rank Banard continued as follows:

"You Earth people make and use your most important researches and discoveries, only in times of danger and stress. But we have developed and intensified our esprit de corps so that at all times, we have the enthusiasm and ambition to compete with each other in inventions, scientific researches, and discoveries. We take intense pride in our work and join in competition with an eager spirit. After our invigorating night's sleep, we are in the prime of our physical and mental health, without worry, and in a serene, peaceful state of mind; we start with a happy spirit our daily occupations.

"We do not allow any possibly injurious games, shows, or occupations. Our people are not allowed to work at any machine or industry where there is a hazard to health, or a possibility of injury. No machine is adopted until it has been absolutely injury proofed. We have safeguarded them 100%. We are reasonably sure that every person in his employment has the utmost in safety and healthy surroundings.

"Our aim is to enforce, and do our utmost, to keep us all in the best of health, to guard, and preserve life. We prevent, and it's unlawful for us to take any chances of possible accidental injury or death, in all our labors, sports, and in our general ways of life.

"The industrial disabilities and deaths for your own nation, for the year 1943, according to your Congressional Statistical Abstract 1944-45 was 2,414,000 disabilities and 20,100 permanent incapacities and deaths.

"We have no slow-ups, nor do we allow high pressure work in our productions and industries. There is perfect harmony between workers, foremen, and executives, who do and must rate high in human relationships. Only the best of work is tolerated. With very few exceptions, and only in most extreme emergencies or important researches, do we allow more than four hours a day employment, and if necessary, we arrange it into four shifts. Neither do we allow anyone in an occupation which might excite or create in him tension.

"You Earth people try your utmost to continually increase the quantity of your individual worker's production through his own energy and by always adding and inventing new labor-saving methods and devices and machinery. By this method you can do away with the services of many workers and hire one to do the labor of many. At the same time, you have a terrific waste on account of a considerable number of constant labor turnovers.

"You offer a premium on high pressure mass production and increase pay for overtime hours. Thus you use up your worker as you do a machine; and I dare say you are more careful of the latter. After your workers have given you their best energy and become weakened, they are thrown out on the junk pile.

"Even though he may be in the prime of his post-youthful age, he cannot secure employment in the calling in which he is experienced. Your greedy industries demand only youth in its prime of energy; young men who can stand the grind.

"If we find that an occupation is a little too strenuous for one person, we divide it between two or more. Our machinery and inventions are used solely for the convenience of our workers—to make it easier, safer, and more comfortable for them. We would rather destroy and rebuild and improve this entire city than allow it to remain a jeopardy to even one person; whereas you Earth men are constantly threatened by the hazards of your daily existence. There are no sinecures among us; all of us are dependent on each other, but no individual is economically dependent on any one of us for necessities, luxuries or security. That kind of dependence is non-existent.

"Your words, money, investment, interest, cost, pay, price, salary, wages, taxes, debts, profits, rebates, charity, rich, poor, bankruptcy, etc., are not in our vocabulary or our dictionary.

"As part of our careful judgment and planning, we have made a strict enumeration of inhabitants of our globe, listing in detail sex, age, occupation, and daily births and deaths. Our census bureaus and other departments have developed techniques which enable them to give us complete, separate census lists and keep us informed daily as to the exact number of our living population, their ages, and their full requirements.

"By preparing careful and detailed budgets for all necessities with generous allowances to cover all possible exigencies and by relying upon our knowledge of regulated scientific cultivation of industrial manufacturing concentration, of conservation and preservation, and of nearly perfect and unwasteful arteries of transportation and distribution, we have not only solved production and equalized distribution, but we have also succeeded in overcoming and proving your old law of supply and demand. A false principle founded mainly on your artificial manipulation of cornering your markets, partly due to your neglect of preparing and offsetting against potential calamitous weather losses of crops and other commodities.

"In sciences and discoveries we are away far advanced of you Earthmen; and with all that we only scratched the crust surface of nature's infinite mysteries. Every once and a while we unravel new ones, making marvelous improved changes in our mode of life. For those of us who want an extended longevity our scientists expect soon to disclose a medium to lengthen our life span to 500 or 1000 years.

"You have made great progress in your sciences, chemistry, physics, therapeutics, biology, mechanics, and others.

"You also made great strides in your political sciences, in doing away with your titles, feudal lord systems, kings, and in your form of government; but you greatly, and criminally retrogress in your political economy.

"Your economic system looks to us to be on the same primitive level as in the many large regions of your earth where farmers are still scratching your earth surface with wooden plows, reap with the sickle, thresh with hand flails, and where your modern methods of tillage, irrigation, fertilizing, crop rotation, and seed selection are unknown or not used.

"Your moneyism with its constant devaluations, foreign exchange panics, oppressive custom duties, and tariffs on imports and exports, creating economic disruption, with different standards of life, is one of the main causes for the prevention of free trade and unity between your nations. As a result you have your wars, booms, and panics, your inflations and deflations, your prosperity and depressions, your overproduction and underproduction, your progressions and stagnations. Your abounding lands go to waste. Your lack of reclamation, drainage, and irrigation, your unfertilized, overcultivated, overgrazed lands; poverty, and famine among some of your nations with abundance in others. Hunger, misery and sickness in some and great wealth, affluence and plenty with others, within your same nation, city, street, block, and even apartment houses, where an assistant janitor with his family live in the basement in poverty. All without concrete plans, regulations, restraints, and control; resulting in your confused and chaotic economy.

"The perplexing languages, religions, customs and ideologies between the people of your nations, are incentives to enmity, turmoil, revolutions, and wars. Even now black clouds of dissensions and differences in your ideologies are looming on your horizon, seriously dividing the nations of your globe into two different camps and menacing your world peace. Perhaps another terrible explosive world war is in the offing.

"Our efforts have united us with our utmost zeal and devotion to loftier ideals and higher principles, and is the fundamental force that sustains, creates, constructs, and accelerates the continual perfection of the elements necessary to our harmonious, contented and happy life. All we have, all productions, possessions, or wealth, we create and labor for from our lands, seas, and air resources, are owned for the common use and free enjoyment of all of us, just as the air, sunlight, and sunshine on Earth are for the common use of all your Earthmen.

"The mediums of profit or force to spur us to work harder are non-existent. Our motto is solely to serve, and not to profit. One hundred per cent of our working time, labor, energy and production is solely and directly used and spent for our progress, construction, sanitation, cure and prevention of diseases, pleasures, amusements, and in all avenues to lengthen and make our lives more democratic in its true, and full sense. We are more comfortable, healthier, safer, better and happier. I dare say more than 90% of your working time, directly and indirectly, is used for the creation of offensive, defensive, destructive and killing instruments. Thank God that our teen age boys do not have to army drill and train as they do on your high school playgrounds and surrounding streets and we do not have to send them into gory battles to either get killed or become paraplegics.

"We are of our own free will controlled to our way of life, and have great potentiality of advancement, and attainment to an equal realization of our aims.

"I hope I have proven to you that our way of what you call regimented life is of our own choice and free will, and far superior and better than yours. It gives us real liberty, freedom and happiness.

"Your gigantic bonded Federal public debts to the amount of $252,292,247,513.[42]

"Burdened with payments on account of your many wars.

"Veterans administration reports that pensions and benefits are still being paid yearly to veterans' heirs and dependents of war veterans, as the aftermath of the Mexican War of 1846. The Civil War of 1865. Wars with the Indian tribes, war with Spain of 1898. World War 1 and 2 amount to $1,788,883,344.[43]

"These do not include your states, counties, cities and private indebtedness with your extra load of interest payments on all of them.

"Regimented and enslaved economically by octopus monopolies created by your moneyism.

"With different kinds of national dictatorial and corruptive governments, with their organized forces of secret police, with their innumerable disgraceful prisons, insane asylums, and horrible concentration and slave working camps.

"Your compulsory military drafts, trainings, services, savage gory battles, and extermination. Life on your planet is so very hazardous, you have no safety.

"In general your sanitary systems are disgraceful. You criminally expose your people to typhoid, dysentery, infantile paralysis, and gastroenteritis from your sewer polluted drinking and bathing waters; and with your poisonous drugs, alcohol, tobacco and other unhealthful foods and habits.

"You are not by any means a free lance, from your economic struggles, and you will never have democracy, as it is truly defined, as long as you tolerate moneyism, but you love these conditions, and call that freedom?"

The Congressman then interrupted, "Although I am convinced by what I have seen, heard, and learned that the ways of life on your planet are superior to ours, yet your system would not be constitutional in the United States. An amendment to our constitution to conform to your ways may not prove successful. Not only our members of Congress, but also all members of our state legislatures would have to be persuaded that your way of life is the best. It would be very hard to get them to agree to your way of distributing the products of industry, for they would say that impartial distribution of the difference of ability among individuals in industry and earning capacity is unjust. They all strictly believe in our system of private enterprise and ownership of property."

Sun-Rank Banard answered, "I beg to correct them. We do not advocate the equal distribution of the products of industry regardless of the difference of ability, earning capacity, and deserved recompense of the individual. On the contrary, we reward only the deserving, intelligent, able individual worker and the real inventor or discoverer. Only they merit the benefits from their work; however, on Earth the industrialists, the entrepreneurs, and the financiers wrongly receive most of the credit. Very seldom, and only by hard struggles does your hard worker or your real inventor reap riches from his endeavors, regardless of the ability, inventiveness, industry, and earning capacity of your individual. It is the shrewd manipulator, the promoter, the wealthy, who first take advantage of circumstances to promote their own interests; who first seize, finance, and control your most profitable and basic natural elements, or the most desirable and lucrative enterprises, discoveries and inventions.

"On our planet the worker goes directly to our academy or laboratory to submit his ideas, if they have any merits, he gets full cooperation in working on them. There is no limit on the material, labor cost, and resources that are expended to help the individual to put through and perfect his ideas.

"No matter how small or large an article may be, if it proves a hazardous or injurious one to any one of us, it is discarded. When a dangerous invention or discovery seems necessary for our welfare, our scientists can always improve upon it until all danger is removed and is made safe. In that way the safety and well-being of us all is promoted.

"The inventor is not only honorably advanced but handsomely compensated; and he, his wife, during their life and his children, until their voting age especially benefit from his work.

"There is a separate research laboratory for every activity and in its many ramifications. In these large laboratories our experienced scientists are constantly working on investigations, tests, and researches for the advancement of mechanics, engineering, chemistry, physics, atomics and medicine. Everyone on Mars benefits from their improvements. We fully develop any invention or discovery even though it may minimize or eliminate the usefulness of an already established industry. We harness all our natural forces and elements which are perpetual and useful—sun rays, sea waves, river flows, waterfalls, hot springs, etc.,—for our needs.

"We are not concerned about catering to and appeasing any special interests. In discussing this point with one of you, he gave me the following reference:"

Natural Gas vs. John L. Lewis

It has now been more than a year since this column suggested that the only way to counteract John L. Lewis was to convert our two war-built, government-owned pipelines to natural gas. In the interim not a single move toward conversion has been made. In the interim also millions of cubic feet of Texas and Louisiana natural gas have gone up in smoke and will never be recovered. Most people don't realize that this is one of our most valuable natural resources. Nevertheless, much of it is either burned up in Texas as waste gas, or allowed to escape. At some Texas oil wells, a constant blaze is kept going, night and day, in order to burn off surplus gas.

Reason for the government's failure to convert the Big Inch and Little Inch pipelines to gas is not entirely red tape, nor the secret opposition of John L. Lewis. Vigorously pulling wires to keep the pipelines away from natural gas are the railroads and the coal operators. They are Lewis' secret allies.

Illustrative of this wire-pulling is a natural gas pipeline only ten miles from Washington, D.C., which brings gas from West Virginia. Originally constructed to feed the nation's capital, the coal industry and the railroads blocked the entrance of natural gas into Washington. They were bringing in coal which the gas company then converted into expensive artificial gas.

So for ten years West Virginia natural gas flowed to within sight of the nation's capital but was never permitted to come into the city. Only during the war was this finally changed. Now the West Virginia pipeline has been tapped, and Washington, at long last, is using cheap natural gas.[44]

"I dare say that many of such natural resources, inventions, and discoveries which would have endangered the existence of some of your industries, must have been bought up and suppressed by the few controlling them. All this babel by your economists to the effect that your world cannot exist without money and that you would lose your freedom, or live at a great cost of freedom—to all this I ask, 'What freedom?' Yes, your money systems would lose the freedom to exploit you. It is none other than your economic system which is the sole creative force causing your chaotic vortex to continuously rotate around its money hub.

"Now coming back to your last question.

"You wanted to know what kind of a life system we had in the remote past, and by what process we developed it to our present way of living?

"Our recorded history goes back to nearly 50 thousand years. We then didn't as yet have our thought reading sixth sense, it developed in us by a gradual, natural, and strong mind will process and evolution.

"Mind thought is a brain electrical wave effort. You Earth people experience it between yourselves very often when you think and express the same idea thought and expression between yourselves at the same time.

"Proving that thought and mind transmission from one person to another is in existence with you people, but only in a subconscious state. We were then in the same condition as you earth people, a conglomeration of tribes and nations with different languages, religions, and customs, similar property ownership, money systems, and weaknesses.

"The intelligent ancestors of our different nations got together and tried to find out ways and means to save themselves and their people from their economic troubles. They found out that the major social programs they wanted to inaugurate would be of prohibitive cost to each nation.

"And to finance it would not only add a terrific financial burden increasing the cause of our ills. They arrived at a conception that selfish, greedy, cruel, and evil human nature can only be changed, improved, and perfected, by doing away with our pernicious systems then in existence. To attain the object they started a most practical plan to first entirely eradicate the main cause of their misfortunes, their money systems. Their aim was to make a change, without causing a sudden upheaval all over the planet. So they planned at first to make an experimental test. They selected a large landed sparsely settled state in one of our nations for the trial.

"Its national government then published a proclamation in that state of its intentions to take effect on a certain date, with the promise that its citizens would be indemnified if the experiment should prove inoperative.

"It then started its preliminary function for the change. First, it stored away for the inhabitants of that state provisions, such as foods, medicines, clothes, furniture, furnishings and other necessities for a one year supply, but excluding all poison habit forming non-essential supplies.

"Ration books for all necessities were furnished to all of them. Government guaranteed different ration books were also furnished them whose points were good for interstate and international travels, telephone, telegraph and post office communication.

"Then it devalued and took away all moneys, currency and negotiable papers from their banks and citizens, and a law was passed in its legislature that all mediums of money exchange, purchase and sales was prohibited and unlawful, thus closing down all their banks, gambling houses, breweries, distilleries, saloons, bars, liquor shops, and all other non-productive and unethical industries. Distribution was concentrated so that excess food markets, stores and factories were also shut down. Everybody had to abandon non-productive labor, and professions.

"The state administration took charge and supervision of all these functions. All unemployed workers plus some of the former idlers were advised to volunteer into productive occupations, industries and crafts.

"It was a most marvelous successful enterprising experiment of the age. From a small populated state, with millions of unproductive acres of barren and brush lands, the inhabitants who were sustaining themselves mostly from non-essential, and unethical industries, suddenly developed into an extremely booming, progressive bee-hive, so that the drones who were employed in non-productive occupations, with its idlers, the former half of its population, and including a large influx of a great many idlers from other states, were all feverishly working overtime at its extensive productive projects in sanitation, housing, agriculture, forestry, reclamation, public works and industrials.

"In an oversupply of labor, working hours were shortened and during periods of undersupply, hours were lengthened. Overproductions were shipped on a barter system to other states as an exchange for articles that they didn't have.

"They were all to remain living in their present homes until new and better standard of living quarters were built ready for their occupancy.

"They also voluntarily deposited with the government all their jewelry for safe keeping, so they would not be able to use them for a medium of exchange during the transformation.

"After a certain time the pattern of life of the citizens of this state turned out to be a very workable plan. All were actively employed in productive work and happy to know that they were doing it to reach and realize a beneficial goal. Knowing the purpose, and importance of this experiment, they tried in every way to make it successful.

"Even our wealthy gladly made sacrifices, and were happy to join and know, that at last, they and their future generations would live in peace, in comfort, in complete security, and without fear.

"Other states and nations soon started to join and emulate this system until it was finally adopted by all of our nations. The metamorphosis, from our former economic system, to our present one was smoothly accomplished without any hitch. All Mars' nations then united and entirely suppressed the political entity of every one of their nations, merging all of them, even their religions and languages, into a single one for the entire planet of Mars. Our old way of life was changed to our present one by a gradual development. They put in execution the following bill of rights. We are to promote, defend and guard human rights, dignity and safety of the person. We are to have full liberty of political speech and assembly. We are to have equal rights, and opportunities in our economic and political fields. We are to have an equal standard of life with economic security (barring those of us of higher degrees) without want, fear, privation, or exploitation. We are to be provided with all our life's substances. We are to be free from an oppressive government rule. Our aim is, and will be, continual social progress and expansion for a higher standard of life. We are to have the right of individual petition and appeal to the highest government executive, council, and court of justice. We do not and will not have race, and sex intolerance and discrimination.

"Our government continually and gradually put in operation constructive plans and improvements.

"It took long years with constant changes to bring it up to our present standard of life. We now celebrate 'Emancipation Day' every year to commemorate that event. It's our most important holiday.

"Our two planets are nearly identical and men-inhabited, both are greatly blessed by nature. We Martians by our combined efforts, unselfish, and perfect living methods have helped in creating it into a paradise. Whereas you Earthmen by your selfish, greedy, corruptive, filthy, and cruel ways and systems of life are defiling its God-given bounties.

"Life on your earth is a terrible ordeal, after a most devastating world war with all its ills, your nations are in dispute, holding up your world peace, over possessions, reparations, booty, loot, material gains, imperialistic aims, different ideologies, and aggressive wars. Within your nations there is a lack of social control, insecurity, instability, at all times the unknown, unpredictable, chaotic conditions, serious strikes, disputes and greed, constant mounting cost of living, inflations, increasing taxations, all of which halt reconversion, tend to bring on increasing armaments, aggressions, wars, fear depressions, famine, and miseries among the population of your Earth, endangering the existence of your nations.

"Your five big nations have made an effort through their United Nations assembly to remedy some of these situations. But the plan is too new. The policy has not been definitely determined. To date there has been a great deal of talk but little action. Selfishness in your human nature here again deeply asserts itself, fifty-five of your nations laid down conditions against aggressions, but when it came to fight it, only a few joined to help, and only with small military tokens.

"I believe for their own safety, that your powerful, and influential leaders and people of your nation should get together without delay, and initiate a movement to help your government to start a broad, liberal and humane living system experiment similar to our way of life, in one of its least inhabited state, territory, or island, and broadcast the fact to all the peoples of your world.

"That test with the promise that should it prove successful it will gradually adopt it for your whole nation. This should create a salutary effect on the peoples of your earth to counteract and turn them against the cruel and corrupt principles in existence, and advocated by some of your dictatorship government nations."

New Delhi, India, Dec. 26, 1950 (AP)—Prime Minister Nehru said today the struggle between communism and democracy will be decided, not on the field of battle. Nehru declared that in the final analysis the people might discard both communism and democracy for some "intermediary or other methods."

He added that the ultimate test lies, not in accumulation of a private fortune, but in raising the standards of the people.[45]

"I leave it to your own good judgment to contrast our happy existence with yours, where your moneyism causes and creates violent emotions and convulsions in your political, social, economic, and religious life.

"It has impregnated in you an animal desire for selfish ownership, greed and power, bringing on mass destruction and killing between you. Since time immemorial you have without restraint constantly intensified, and developed them."

"You are infiltrated and surrounded by fanatic enemy zealots. When some of your own government officials traitorously betray your top secrets to enemy nations."

"You are now in a critical period. Constant fear and apprehension are beclouding all of you on your earth and at great speed and violence you propel yourself to extinction. You are all sitting on an inferno. Can't you read the handwriting on the wall?"

"You hide your head in the sand, like an ostrich, and refuse to face the facts. But your situation is serious enough that you should by all means be aware of the disaster that may overtake you.

"You are now in an Asiatic hot war, it may soon develop into a sizzling one. Before the holocaust breaks loose, you can still save the world by proving to suffering humanity that you are starting a new social-economic movement experiment, for it's benefit.

"A change on your earth to our way, is about due, must it come through bloodshed?

"Different forms of governments, ideologies, and systems of life are spreading like wildfire over your continents of Europe and Asia: starting in it's wake your world's aggressions, and a terrific race for all kinds of human destructive armaments.

"Inimical armies are facing each other, in close physical proximity; don't you realize that at sometime a commander in his cups, may strike a spark that will engulf your whole world in a conflagration? Must you have a social upheaval and a human exterminating war before you realize what's good for you?

"You have no other alternative, you must as soon as possible root out and outlaw your money systems, or face continual ferocious armed conflicts, and your eventual inevitable doom."

"In the event of another war, win or lose, you are bound to lose, if your nation wins it will have a tremendous additional war cost burden; if it loses, those left of you will be burdened with an oppressive police regime with its consequent tortured confessions, purges, slavery and fear.

"In spite of your apathy and blind pertinacious reluctance to hearken to logical counsel, evolution will ultimately save you. Inexorable nature has a way of its own; as the fishes of your waters fight against all strong currents and tides to reach their spawning grounds, and the birds of your sky fight against storms and winds to reach their nesting grounds, so will your humanity infallibly follow its natural dictates and instincts to drive and overcome your false civilizations and all your man-made seemingly invincible obstacles."

When Sun-Rank Banard concluded his lecture, it left all of us facing a gloomy aspect, we were thoughtful for a few minutes. It took time for his remarks to penetrate. One doesn't change one's ideas, learned since childhood, in a few moments. But most of us realized the truth of his remarks, and on the way out, our conversations with each other proved that he had presented his points fairly convincingly and very logically.

We quickly made our farewells and prepared to depart. I shall long remember my Martian friends, their sincere hospitality, and the delight they took in offering their best to us. I hated to leave Lieutenant Balmore. We had come a long way together since that chance meeting on the park bench. I realized I might never see him again since it was his and his crew's intentions to remain permanently on Mars.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] World Almanac, 1949, p. 268.

[43] Editorial, Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 16, 1949.

[44] Nevada State Journal, Nov. 23, 1946, Merry-Go-Round, by Drew Pearson.

[45] Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 26, 1950.

CHAPTER X

Nonproducers

After a very friendly parting with all our friends, we embarked on the Martian airship and were on our way to earth. We at once made a visit to our own plane which we found in perfect condition.

We were speedily getting nearer to earth and of course, during these two days we continually had very important conferences with Sun-Rank Banard.

He prepared a friendly message of greeting from the Martians, to be delivered to our President.

Forty-eight hours after a last friendly parting with the Martians we embarked in our own plane and were cut loose from their ship. A few of our veterans were experienced air pilots, who operated it.

Since some of them had to return to their hospitals on the west coast for medical attention, Sun-Rank Banard agreed to let our plane out over the stratosphere so that we could land on the west coast of the United States.

It took us a little time to land at Hamilton Air Field. In the meantime the Congressman wired our President of our safe arrival, and requested an appointment so as to report to him all what happened to us, as well as to deliver to him the Martian message.

The President then called for a full secret cabinet meeting, and invited certain congressional leaders, as well as a few of the most prominent scientists. He wired us to report and also to bring along with us all of those who came back from the Martian trip.

We landed on our own planet and after our veterans were given their medical treatments at the hospital, we all again re-embarked on a flight to Washington for the President's engagement.

Finally the great day arrived. Foreign diplomats, United Nations delegates, Supreme Court judges, party leaders, many others and senators, congressmen, labor union presidents, industrialists—all were cooling their heels in the lobby of the President's office, impatiently waiting to see him. The appointments with some had been delayed for more than three hours, and with others postponed, an unheard-of occurrence.

It was a most important conference the President was having with a few scientists, congressmen, and those of us who had returned from Mars. Even the Washington columnists couldn't fathom what was going on. Except to those who were attending the meeting it has been kept a complete secret.

Here is what was taking place. After the Congressman delivered to the President the Martian message and gave him a general report, one of the companions, who recently served in the American army in Korea, began giving the President his own account of the adventures and experiences on the planet Mars, picturing the life of the Martians. He made an appeal to the President as follows:

"Starting in the seventeenth century, the ancestors of the great many living here, for numerous reasons left their home countries to establish themselves in new lands. Then they had good opportunities to emigrate to a newly discovered continent. Now, our earth has been entirely explored and there are no more new lands to emigrate to, except to the planet Mars, from which we just returned. We asked the Martians to grant us the privilege of permanently remaining on their planet, but they refused; first, they want us to clean our own house, and second, they are chary of introducing other new problems to their population.

"We would like to have you, if our plan meets with your approval, to ask congress to pass a law allocating to us four adjoining islands in the temperate zone of the Pacific where we fought our battles, or in some other territory, where we can colonize and experiment in living under a different economic system, similar to the one on Mars.

"We are seeking a solution, a possible change of conditions, without conflicts.

"At first, we would like to be helped by lend-lease from our government through the veterans bureau as per the allotments of our bill of rights. Then we would ask that the islands or territory be put under the protection but not under the rule of our government. Our new system of life may not prove to be 100% successful in a world where existence is interdependent, but we believe that a start in this direction should, within a reasonable length of time, show good results. We may even have to operate for awhile by bartering our products to obtain others from other parts of the earth. And of course the intercommunication, and shipments from and to our islands, of post offices, of telephone, telegraph, and even radio may have to be done with foreign exchange, but it would be handled solely by our post offices until gradually discontinued.

"These islands would be peopled by selected intelligent young families of our four different races. Each race would live separately and exclusively on its own island, but all would be federated under our same constitution and laws. The pioneers would have to be in good standing and of good mental and physical condition who are to start a new way of life. We propose to carefully investigate and select each applicant and try him out; if he proves to be willing, ambitious and cooperative, he will become one of our citizens. If not, he will be shipped back.

"These pioneers must include many of our disabled and crippled war veterans of proven integrity, to occupy positions of government administratives, and if capable, of faculty members in our new universities and schools; so that the strong ones can work at construction. No other people will be allowed to immigrate there, and visitors will be limited to a certain number and for a definite length of time.

"Upon landing on these islands, we would first need shelter for both ourselves and the domestic animals. We intend also to bring with us prefabricated metal houses which may be easily and quickly erected. These homes will be used by our first contingent and their domestic animals. After that we propose to build them ourselves of stone and concrete.

"It will be our irrevocable aim and principle to have absolutely fire-proof living quarters for man and beast.

"It is our intention to leave our families here until we have developed suitable shelters and conveniences for them. We propose to land in groups, to start reclamation, to clear the land, to dry up marshes, to survey and divide the islands into farming homestead tracts. We shall plan homes for a population of sixty thousand on each island within a few years.

"For those who prefer to live in communities or small towns, we have preliminary plans for a Model City to accommodate a population of about thirty thousand, to be located if possible across a river not wider than 150 feet. Each family will get free, one of our constructed furnished, air-conditioned and fireproofed homes. The houses will be built so that additional bedrooms may easily be attached and furnished with the latest mechanical and electrical fixtures and appliances.

"The house will be on a seventy-five foot (front) by one hundred fifty-foot-plot, the front facing a twenty-foot deep lawn alongside a six-foot concrete walk. Beyond the walk will be a forty-foot landscaped parkway between rows of nicely pruned trees, with flower beds and a children's playground. Opposite will be another concrete walk, lawn and house, so that the houses will be ninety-two feet apart, with lawns and flower beds also on the side of buildings. Block lengths will be fifteen hundred feet, with a width of four hundred and forty-two feet. There will be twenty houses on each side of a parkway in a block.

"In the rear of these houses there will be enough space for a small garden patch, a small helicopter, airplane landing area, a small fireproofed chicken coop, and a garage for a jeep station wagon. These spaces will face a fifty-foot back street fenced on both sides and sunken ten feet below the surface. The sunken back streets will be used only for mobile traffic, with underpasses and tunnels every two blocks or three thousand feet apart for turning and reaching parallel streets.

"All sewer lines, gas lines, hot and cold water lines, telephone, electric, and steam conduits will be located in these back or alley streets, supplying utilities from the rear into the homes. All automobile, bicycle, bus, truck, and horse traffic will not be allowed on the surface. All pedestrians will be able to walk and cross everywhere on the surface streets or parkways within the city limits, with their eyes closed, in perfect safety.

"All deliveries will be made from the rear. Our motto will be utmost safety. No one will obtain a driver's or a pilot's license before he has been proven trustworthy; his training will be severe and his skill thorough, before he is licensed. No leniency will be permitted in our safety rulings. Speed travel will be strictly controlled.

"The city will be formed like a large square, with residential homes on all four comers and sides. It will contain four zones, and each zone will be divided into three districts. Each zone will have its own hospital, churches, community houses, and schools. Within the exact center along both sides of the river, we expect to locate our public parks, artificial lakes and waterfalls; artistic bridges will span the river at every street. There will be parks, where we will congregate for rest and to hear our symphony orchestra, and facilities for all city activities. All large buildings will have roof landing fields for helicopters, with auto parking garages under their surface.

"Manufacturing, mechanical shops, plants for electrical and other utilities, and all other craft shops will be located outside the city limits.

"In our survey for a small city of thirty thousand, we find that for the good care and health of our inhabitants we will make provisions for at least one permanent hospital bed for fifty of our people, or six hundred hospital beds for the city. At least six hundred medical doctors, an equal number of nurses, one hundred fifty dentists, fifty chiropodists, and fifty optometrists will be required in the city, and additional ones will be needed by our rural population.

"In a western city of the same size, there are now only about forty-seven physicians, twenty-two dentists, four chiropodists, ten optometrists, and but two hospitals with a total of two hundred beds in both of them.

"We do not approve of the wantonly extravagant and wasteful methods now used by owners of industrial and commercial enterprises, their innumerable competitive undertakings in the same lines.

"We propose to considerably save on them by concentrating our industries and not multiplying them in competition with each other. We believe in the economy of large size establishments, saving us valuable time, and abundance of material, and considerable labor.

"We propose to have four large markets, each to be located in the center nearest its zone, and every one of us in our district will be allowed only two specified days per week to do our shopping.

"There are to be two very large department stores. Two large pharmacies will take care of prescriptions, and medicines. Two bakeries, five cleaning and dyeing establishments, five laundries, two lumber yards—all large establishments—and only five accountants and five attorneys will be allowed. Milk and dairy products will be delivered to homes. Theatres will have sufficient seating capacity so that everyone can see two shows per week. We shall receive all necessary supplies free but we will be restricted through our ration books.

"In contrast, consider in the Western city above mentioned of thirty thousand population. There are one hundred and forty-one attorneys, twenty-four accountants, twenty cleaning and dyeing establishments, fifteen laundries, ten lumber yards, nineteen druggists, seven department stores, eight bakeries, nine men's clothing stores, fifteen dress shops, twelve shoe shops, and twelve furniture stores. We no doubt will save a great deal in labor, handling, delivery, and materials by concentrating our stores to the minimum, at the same time provide a better service.

"At first we will do away entirely with the non-productive professions, and occupations as well as considerably reduce the semi-productive ones. We will create and increase necessary and productive callings so that every one, including idlers and aged (excepting the infirm) shall always be employed. Let me explain what I mean by non-productive or non-essential jobs.

"One of the fundamental causes of our troubles is that nearly fifty percent of our young and vigorous active workers are doing non-essential work; not only in unnecessary jobs but in the many branches of necessary ones. We propose to do away with the unnecessary jobs and concentrate on the needful ones, thus furthering our well being and adding to the advantages of the requisite productive ones. I will list herewith, in consecutive order, some of the non-productive, non-essential, and dispensible jobs and service to which I have reference.

"No. I—Non-productive services: We will have no use for a fire department, fire escapes, fire alarm systems, fire insurance and fire underwriters of all kinds; thus avoiding the services of firemen, labor and materials of fire houses, fire trucks, and all supplies and labor of fire insurance companies, while having complete safety in our waking and sleeping hours.

"No. II—Since we are not going to own property directly or use money, we will entirely dispense with innumerable non-productive services connected with money. In these alone you can conjecture about how many of those directly and indirectly employed can be shifted to productive employments to great numbers of professions, crafts and trades running into the hundreds.

"No. III—We are going to have one language on our islands. There is a great waste of time, labor, energy, and materials in having so many different languages on our earth.

"A universal language would doubtless save us more than the cost of all our earth wars, and maybe it would help to keep them away.

"We will not need or use the economic waste to advertise or push any product. All of us realize the enormous amount of time and energy spent in advertising. It is not always the quality but most often the publicity which sells a product. Much labor and materials are being used and wasted in this boundless non-productive service.

"No. IV—We will have no gambling of any kind, or alcohol, dispensing with gambling houses and devices, no breweries, distilleries, bars, saloons, night clubs and their equipment and supplies. In fact, we will do away with all unethical, unprincipled, and immoral business and their workers.

"I can give you a list three times as large, but I do not wish to take up your valuable time.

"Can you roughly estimate the great percentage of our inhabitants that are employed in all the above dispensible and non-productive wasteful services? It must certainly be very large. The amount of materials used and wasted is enormous. If all of them could be shifted into productive labor and services and these materials used for the benefit of mankind, what a beautiful world we would have."

The president asked, "What will you do with the excess workers that you expect to save from all these side-line and unproductive employments?"

"Why there are hundreds of professions, crafts, and trades that need them. We need a great many more doctors, dentists, nurses, architects, engineers of all kinds, draftsmen, teachers, chemists, and all kinds of laboratory research men, many reclamation and highway workers, and workers in crafts and trades. We need a great many farmers, farm laborers, farming implement makers, construction workers, concrete and cement workers for homes, buildings, bridges, machine tool workers, tinsmiths, iron and steel workers, electricians, telephone mechanics, steamfitters, plumbers, airplane and parachute makers and mechanics, railroad and transportation workers, roofers, radio, refrigeration and air conditioning mechanics, fireproofing and insulation workers, shoemakers, tailors, dressmakers, milliners, hat makers, and hundreds of other workers that we can keep busy provided that we always try to construct, improve, and expand, to produce and build, and to better the conditions, convenience, and comfort of us all."

"Do I understand that you will obtain all this without paying for it and that all of you will live on the same standard, regardless of the better workmanship and ability of others of you?" The President questioned, "And how will you compensate those of you who excel in their endeavors, and others of you who may invent an important mechanical improvement, discover the cure for a disease, or contrive some chemical development which will save labor and materials. In other words, what incentive will any of you have to excel?"

"I was expecting that question. First, as I have mentioned before, every one of us will get our house, our food, and all of life's necessities absolutely free; second, we will copy the system of the Martians. We will have ten lower degrees and ten higher ones. The higher ones we will call rank degrees. There will be ten points between one degree and another and we will be gradually and honorably promoted or demoted by points the same as we were in the army. Those who have made a discovery, an invention or a needful improvement and those who have done meritorious service will receive for life a better, larger, and more comfortable home in the suburbs outside the city, with certain luxuries such as a better and larger plane and luxurious pleasure automobiles. They will have the services of attendants in their homes; first production and best quality of all our necessities, and many other compensations and honors that our authorities will decree. On the other hand, we will demote and punish any one who, through malicious intent, will not obey our laws and regulations or will not comport himself honorably according to our rules.

"We and many others of our returned soldiers and sailors who have just served and fought in the bloodiest of world battles, and we, with our buddies, who sacrificed themselves on the battlefields, were the instruments in this most atrocious war. The victims of inhuman hellish, cruel warfare, we experienced and endured the ordeals of the greatest sufferings that human flesh and fortitude can stand in battles.

"We fought on the blood-soaked decks and gun-turreted floors of battleships, in the fuselage, cockpit, bellies, and wings of flying fortresses, inside hot, cramped, fire-and-cannon belching tanks, in the putrified trenches and shell and fox holes of battle scarred beaches, on the sides of most inaccessible steep mountain precipices, and on deserts and in jungles where we lay day and night in putrid mud, water, and scum. We faced blinding, blazing sun, terrific heat, torrential rains, and body-freezing snow blizzards. We suffered from frost bites, lack of sleep, hunger, and thirst, surrounded by dirt and bitten by insects, vermin, and reptiles during the agonies of our painful wounds. We constantly heard the anguishing, pleading and moaning of men lying wounded on No Man's Land. Before our very eyes, our buddies and brothers and best friends were shot and torn asunder. Others had their eyes gouged out and hanging over their cheeks. Many of our paratroopers were used as clay pigeons and by mistake shot down by our own soldiers. At any moment we were expecting to meet their fate. Many of our buddies were destroyed like a puff of smoke, whose only remains and memories are the star medals worn by their mothers.

"We were like a pack of maddened wolves with the strength, daring, and fearlessness of lunatics. With diabolical fury, we darted and bounded wildly and fearlessly into No Man's Land in the face of the greatest danger.

"Timid ones became heroes without knowing it. The weakest ones killed with their bare hands. It was indescribable! All of us became filthy, cruel, inhuman beasts, with fierce irrational emotions and the sole urge to kill, kill, and kill our enemy. We fought to the death with no quarter asked or given. Most of us were mumbling our prayers or the names of our beloved. It is really a miracle that those of us who came out alive from this vertex of blood and slaughter are again normal and human.

"Closing his eyes, kneeling, passionately weeping, and vehemently imploring, he exclaims—In my mind's eye I see passing in front of me, the lost souls, images of dead soldiers, some of the countless billions of them who died on the battlefields of our earth.

"Their spirits are joining and inspiring me in this solemn entreaty for you to help us, so that their sacrifices shall not have been in vain. Standing up, he continued:

"What of the great many of us who survived, but who are maimed, crippled, invalidated, disfigured and shell shocked for life? The terrible pictures of our battle sufferings recur to us very often in our dreams. Through our torments, tortures, and ordeals, we have learned in the hardest way the contributive whys and causes of wars and inhumanity.

"Labor and capital struggles, strikes, unemployment, racial hatred, and misery are becoming burdensome and unbearable to the majority of us in this world. In our military life, in the army, in our company, and on the battlefields, we lived unselfishly as brothers and buddies. We loved each other, judged each other on our merits, and forgave each other our frailties and weaknesses.

"Now that we have re-entered civilian life, it is irksome to us to adjust ourselves and face an existence of selfishness, where the main object in life is personal interest, regardless of those others. Nature has endowed us with intelligence; on account of it we are humane, helpful, unselfish, and self-sacrificing for the welfare of our kind. Our ancestors have planted on us a money system, a most heartless, dangerous, tempting, criminally corrupting, degrading, and depraving medium without which we cannot obtain our necessities.

"In the last war we who endured agonies were used as tools for gaining victory in war for a part of humanity. Now, we are anxious to be used as implements for gaining universal salvation for all humanity. By our test and peaceful experiment which we ask you to allow, we hope to exemplify the new order which will achieve universal and lasting peace by destroying the real causes and incentives for crime and for all cruel wars with its wanton disregard of human life, and thereby save humanity.

"On our planet, in three successive progressive changes, with each consecutive variation, we increased and intensified our armed war conflict cruelties against each other.

"First, the stone age, then the iron age and now we have with us, appalling atomic, gas and bacterial warfare. Help us to once and for all make an end to them. 'Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis'—The times are changed, and we are changed with them. You as the head of a leading world nation by such an act, example, and pattern to humanity, you will the sooner bring about the brotherhood of all men, and world security. A showdown is getting nearer, help us to forestall it.

"Please! Please! Mr. President, grant us these four islands for world experimental stations and laboratories, now so indispensable. Let them and us be the testing grounds and mediums in a new and better plan and ways of human conduct, relationship, intercourse, culture, and an economic system for the unlimited benefit of all mankind."

The President said, "I would suggest that you have our Congressmen here with the one that visited Mars who has observed their mode of life, present a Bill to Congress so that it be passed. I will sign it, and good luck to you!"

"We all hope that Congress will pass this Bill, and if our experiment of improved new economic ideas prove satisfactory, adjoining islands and peoples may join us, extending our influence. Then the United States will gain world leadership, and other nations will imitate us. Therefore you and Congress will gain eternal honor, and fame in history and posterity, as the saviors of humanity, and the time may come, I hope, when there will be a gradual peaceable absorption of all earth's inhabitants to our way without undue pressure or strife that one world government will come into being, and a new life and the emancipation of all will bring happiness in 'Our Coming World.'"

About two weeks after our return, a mysterious package attached to a small parachute of a strange design and fabric was seen floating down from the skies at La Guardia airfield. In it were found letters written on strange paper, enclosed in unstamped matching envelopes. One of them was addressed to me from Lieutenant Balmore; eleven other letters were addressed to his and his crew members' parents.

There was also a portfolio crammed with money, jewelry, and papers. Included were the last wills and testaments and transfer of properties of the crew, appointing me as executor and providing directions for turning over as soon as possible moneys and valuables and all their earthly possessions to their respective families. In his letter Lieutenant Balmore described his happy marriage with his beloved Xora, as well as the marriages of his crew members with beautiful Martian maidens of their choice, performed in one grand ceremony.

As another expression of his gratitude he writes: "Our opportune acquaintance, with our trips to Mars, was a very auspicious event, not only for us but with our efforts and your book a momentous opportunity to promote the deliverance of my former fellow Earthmen. My crew members join me in not only being very thankful, but also greatly obligated for the sincere faith you had in me, and it is due to your wholehearted support, that we are now the happiest men in the universe."

He enclosed a copy of announcements of large front page headlines which were in all Martian newspapers as follows:

"A Red Letter Day on Mars"

"Today took place the unprecedented, extraordinary occurrence marking the beginning of a new and momentous era. Eleven Earth youths were married to eleven of our maidens. These couples were joined in a grand nuptial ceremony at one wedding attended by all the high dignitaries of our planet."

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Table of Contents

- Our Coming World

- Preface

- CHAPTER I

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER II

- CHAPTER III

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER IV

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER V

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER VI

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER VII

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER VIII

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER IX

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER X

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE