Стивен Ликок
Frenzied Fiction
“Don’t you remember,” I asked, “the apple orchards and the quiet groves of trees that used to line Broadway long ago?”
“Groves!” he said. “I’ll show you a grove, a coconut grove”—here he winked over his wineglass in a senile fashion—“that has apple-trees beaten from here to Honolulu.” Thus he babbled on.
All through our meal his talk continued: of cabarets and dances, or fox-trots and midnight suppers, of blondes and brunettes, “peaches” and “dreams,” and all the while his eye roved incessantly among the tables, resting on the women with a bold stare. At times he would indicate and point out for me some of what he called the “representative people” present.
“Notice that man at the second table,” he would whisper across to me. “He’s worth all the way to ten millions: made it in Government contracts; they tried to send him to the penitentiary last fall but they can’t get him—he’s too smart for them! I’ll introduce you to him presently. See the man with him? That’s his lawyer, biggest crook in America, they say; we’ll meet him after dinner.” Then he would suddenly break off and exclaim: “Egad, sir, there’s a fine bunch of them,” as another bevy of girls came trooping out upon the stage.
“I wonder,” I murmured, “if there is nothing left of him but this? Has all the fine old spirit gone? Is it all drowned out in wine and suffocated in the foul atmosphere of luxury?”
Then suddenly I looked up at my companion, and I saw to my surprise that his whole face and manner had altered. His hand was clenched tight on the edge of the table. His eyes looked before him—through and beyond the riotous crowd all about him—into vacancy, into the far past, back into memories that I thought forgotten. His face had altered. The senile, leering look was gone, and in its place the firm-set face of the Knickerbocker of a century ago.
He was speaking in a strange voice, deep and strong.
“Listen,” he said, “listen. Do you hear it—there—far out at sea—ships’ guns—listen—they’re calling for help—ships’ guns—far out at sea!” He had clasped me by the arm. “Quick, to the Battery, they’ll need every man to-night, they’ll—”
Then he sank back into his chair. His look changed again. The vision died out of his eyes.
“What was I saying?” he asked. “Ah, yes, this old brandy, a very special brand. They keep it for me here, a dollar a glass. They know me here,” he added in his fatuous way. “All the waiters know me. The headwaiter always knows me the minute I come into the room—keeps a chair for me. Now try this brandy and then presently we’ll move on and see what’s doing at some of the shows.”
But somehow, in spite of himself, my companion seemed to be unable to bring himself fully back into the consciousness of the scene before him. The far-away look still lingered in his eyes.
Presently he turned and spoke to me in a low, confidential tone.
“Was I talking to myself a moment ago?” he asked. “Yes? Ah, I feared I was. Do you know—I don’t mind telling it to you—lately I’ve had a strange, queer feeling that comes over me at times, as if something were happening—something, I don’t know what. I suppose,” he continued, with a false attempt at resuming his fatuous manner, “I’m going the pace a little too hard, eh! Makes one fanciful. But the fact is, at times”—he spoke gravely again—“I feel as if there were something happening, something coming.”
“Knickerbocker,” I said earnestly, “Father Knickerbocker, don’t you know that something is happening, that this very evening as we are sitting here in all this riot, the President of the United States is to come before Congress on the most solemn mission that ever—”
But my speech fell unheeded. Knickerbocker had picked up his glass again and was leering over it at a bevy of girls dancing upon the stage.
“Look at that girl,” he interrupted quickly, “the one dancing at the end. What do you think of her, eh? Some peach!”
Knickerbocker broke off suddenly. For at this moment our ears caught the sound of a noise, a distant tumult, as it were, far down the street and growing nearer. The old man had drawn himself erect in his seat, his hand to his ear, listening as he caught the sound.
“Out on the Broad Way,” he said, instinctively calling it by its ancient name as if a flood of memories were upon him. “Do you hear it? Listen—listen—what is it? I’ve heard that sound before—I’ve heard every sound on the Broad Way these two centuries back—what is it? I seem to know it!”
The sound and tumult as of running feet and of many voices crying came louder from the street. The people at the tables had turned in their seats to listen. The music of the orchestra had stopped. The waiters had thrown back the heavy curtains from the windows and the people were crowding to them to look out into the street. Knickerbocker had risen in his place, his eyes looked toward the windows, but his gaze was fixed on vacancy as with one who sees a vision passing.
“I know the sound,” he cried. “I see it all again. Look, can’t you see them? It’s Massachusetts soldiers marching South to the war—can’t you hear the beating of the drums and the shrill calling of the fife—the regiments from the North, the first to come. I saw them pass, here where we are sitting, sixty years ago—”
Knickerbocker paused a moment, his hand still extended in the air, and then with a great light upon his face he cried:
“I know it now! I know what it meant, the feeling that has haunted me—the sounds I kept hearing—the guns of the ships at sea and the voices calling in distress! I know now. It means, sir, it means—”
But as he spoke a great cry came up from the street and burst in at the doors and windows, echoing in a single word:
WAR! WAR! The message of the President is for WAR!
“War!” cried Father Knickerbocker, rising to his full height, stern and majestic and shouting in a stentorian tone that echoed through the great room. “War! War! To your places, every one of you! Be done with your idle luxury! Out with the glare of your lights! Begone you painted women and worthless men! To your places every man of you! To the Battery! Man the guns! Stand to it, every one of you for the defence of America—for our New York, New York—”
Then, with the sound “New York, New York” still echoing in my ears I woke up. The vision of my dream was gone. I was still on the seat of the car where I had dozed asleep, the book upon my knee. The train had arrived at the depot and the porters were calling into the doorway of the car: “New York! New York!”
All about me was the stir and hubbub of the great depot. But loud over all it was heard the call of the newsboys crying “WAR! WAR! The President’s message is for WAR! Late extra! WAR! WAR!”
And I knew that a great nation had cast aside the bonds of sloth and luxury, and was girding itself to join in the fight for the free democracy of all mankind.
III. The Prophet in Our Midst
The Eminent Authority looked around at the little group of us seated about him at the club. He was telling us, or beginning to tell us, about the outcome of the war. It was a thing we wanted to know. We were listening attentively. We felt that we were “getting something.”
“I doubt very much,” he said, “whether Downing Street realizes the enormous power which the Quai d’Orsay has over the Yildiz Kiosk.”
“So do I,” I said, “what is it?”
But he hardly noticed the interruption.
“You’ve got to remember,” he went on, “that, from the point of view of the Yildiz, the Wilhelmstrasse is just a thing of yesterday.”
“Quite so,” I said.
“Of course,” he added, “the Ballplatz is quite different.”
“Altogether different,” I admitted.
“And mind you,” he said, “the Ballplatz itself can be largely moved from the Quirinal through the Vatican.”
“Why of course it can,” I agreed, with as much relief in my tone as I could put into it. After all, what simpler way of moving the Ballplatz than that?
The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and looked round at us through his spectacles.
It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the answering, because it was I who had brought him there and invited the other men to meet him. “He’s coming round at five,” I had said, “do come and have a cup of tea and meet him. He knows more about the European situation and the probable solution than any other man living.” Naturally they came gladly. They wanted to know—as everybody wants to know—how the war will end. They were just ordinary plain men like myself.
I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps disappointed. They would have liked, just as I would, to ask a few plain questions, such as, can the Italians knock the stuff out of the Austrians? Are the Rumanians getting licked or not? How many submarines has Germany got, anyway? Such questions, in fact, as we are accustomed to put up to one another every day at lunch and to answer out of the morning paper. As it was, we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
No one spoke. The silence began to be even a little uncomfortable. It was broken by my friend Rapley, who is in wholesale hardware and who has all the intellectual bravery that goes with it. He asked the Authority straight out the question that we all wanted to put.
“Just what do you mean by the Ballplatz? What is the Ballplatz?”
The Authority smiled an engaging smile.
“Precisely,” he said, “I see your drift exactly. You say what is the Ballplatz? I reply quite frankly that it is almost impossible to answer. Probably one could best define it as the driving power behind the Ausgleich.”
“I see,” said Rapley.
“Though the plain fact is that ever since the Herzegovinian embroglio the Ballplatz is little more than a counterpoise to the Wilhelmstrasse.”
“Ah!” said Rapley.
“Indeed, as everybody knows, the whole relationship of the Ballplatz with the Nevski Prospekt has emanated from the Wilhelmstrasse.”
This was a thing which personally I had not known. But I said nothing. Neither did the other men. They continued smoking, looking as innocent as they could.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” said the Authority, “when I speak of the Nevski Prospekt. I am not referring in any way to the Tsarskoe Selo.”
“No, no,” we all agreed.
“No doubt there were, as we see it plainly now, under currents in all directions from the Tsarskoe Selo.”
We all seemed to suggest by our attitude that these undercurrents were sucking at our very feet.
“But the Tsarskoe Selo,” said the Authority, “is now definitely eliminated.”
We were glad of that; we shifted our feet back into attitudes of ease.
I felt that it was time to ask a leading question.
“Do you think,” I said, “that Germany will be broken up by the war?”
“You mean Germany in what sense? Are you thinking of Preuszenthum? Are you referring to Junkerismus?”
“No,” I said, quite truthfully, “neither of them.”
“Ah,” said the Authority, “I see; you mean Germany as a Souverantat embodied in a Reichsland.”
“That’s it,” I said.
“Then it’s rather hard,” said the Eminent Authority, “to answer your question in plain terms. But I’ll try. One thing, of course, is absolutely certain, Mittel-Europa goes overboard.”
“It does, eh?”
“Oh, yes, absolutely. This is the end of Mittel-Europa. I mean to say—here we’ve had Mittel-Europa, that is, the Mittel-Europa idea, as a sort of fantasmus in front of Teutonism ever since Koniggratz.”
The Authority looked all round us in that searching way he had. We all tried to look like men seeing a fantasmus and disgusted at it.
“So you see,” he went on, “Mittel-Europa is done with.”
“I suppose it is,” I said. I didn’t know just whether to speak with regret or not. I heard Rapley murmur, “I guess so.”
“And there is not a doubt,” continued the Authority, “that when Mittel-Europa goes, Grossdeutschthum goes with it.”
“Oh, sure to,” we all murmured.
“Well, then, there you are—what is the result for Germany—why the thing’s as plain as a pikestaff—in fact you’re driven to it by the sheer logic of the situation—there is only one outcome—”
The Authority was speaking very deliberately. He even paused at this point and lighted a cigarette, while we all listened breathlessly. We felt that we had got the thing to a focus at last.
“Only one outcome—a Staatenbund.”
“Great heavens,” I said, “not a Staatenbund!”
“Undoubtedly,” said the Authority, puffing quietly at his cigarette, as if personally he wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the Staatenbund if he could, “that’s the end of it, a Staatenbund. In other words, we are back where we were before the Vienna Congress!”
At this he chuckled heartily to himself: so the rest of us laughed too: the thing was too absurd. But the Authority, who was a man of nice distinctions and genuinely anxious to instruct us, was evidently afraid that he had overstated things a little.
“Mind you,” he said, “there’ll be something left—certainly the Zollverein and either the Ausgleich or something very like it.”
All of the men gave a sort of sigh of relief. It was certainly something to have at least a sort of resemblance or appearance of the Ausgleich among us. We felt that we were getting on. One could see that a number of the men were on the brink of asking questions.
“What about Rumania,” asked Nelles—he is a banker and interested in government bonds—“is this the end of it?”
“No,” said the Authority, “it’s not the end of Rumania, but it is the end of Rumanian Irridentismus.”
That settled Nelles.
“What about the Turks?” asked Rapley.
“The Turks, or rather, I suppose it would be more proper to say, the Osmanli, as that is no doubt what you mean?” Rapley nodded. “Well, speaking personally, I should say that there’s no difficulty in a permanent settlement in that quarter. If I were drawing up the terms of a treaty of peace meant to be really lasting I should lay down three absolute bases; the rest needn’t matter”—the Authority paused a moment and then proceeded to count off the three conditions of peace on his fingers—“These would be, first, the evacuation of the Sandjak; second, an international guarantee for the Capitulations; and third, for internal matters, an arrangement along the lines of the original firman of Midhat Pasha.”
A murmur of complete satisfaction went round the group.
“I don’t say,” continued the Eminent Authority, “that there wouldn’t be other minor matters to adjust; but they would be a mere detail. You ask me, for instance, for a milice, or at least a gendarmerie, in the Albanian hinterland; very good, I grant it you at once. You retain, if you like, you abolish the Cypriotic suzerainty of the Porte—all right. These are matters of indifference.”
We all assumed a look of utter indifference.
“But what about the Dardanelles? Would you have them fixed so that ships could go through, or not?” asked Rapley.
He is a plain man, not easily put down and liking a plain answer. He got it.
“The Dardanelles,” said the Authority, “could easily be denationalized under a quadrilateral guarantee to be made a pars materia of the pactum foederis.”
“That ought to hold them,” I murmured.
The Authority felt now that he had pretty well settled the map of Europe. He rose and shook hands with us all around very cordially. We did not try to detain him. We felt that time like his was too valuable to be wasted on things like us.
“Well, I tell you,” said Rapley, as we settled back into our chairs when the Great Authority had gone, “my own opinion, boys, is that the United States and England can trim Germany and Austria any day in the week and twice on Sunday.”
After which somebody else said:
“I wonder how many of these submarines Germany has, anyway?”
And then we drifted back into the humbler kind of war talk that we have been carrying on for three years.
But later, as we walked home together, Rapley said to me:
“That fellow threw a lot of light on things in Europe, didn’t he?”
And I answered:
“Yes.”
What liars we all are!
IV. Personal Adventures in the Spirit World
I do not write what follows with the expectation of convincing or converting anybody. We Spiritualists, or Spiritists—we call ourselves both, or either—never ask anybody to believe us. If they do, well and good. If not, all right. Our attitude simply is that facts are facts. There they are; believe them or not as you like. As I said the other night, in conversation with Aristotle and John Bunyan and George Washington and a few others, why should anybody believe us? Aristotle, I recollect, said that all that he wished was that everybody should know how happy he was; and Washington said that for his part, if people only knew how bright and beautiful it all was where he was, they would willingly, indeed gladly, pay the mere dollar—itself only a nominal fee—that it cost to talk to him. Bunyan, I remember, added that he himself was quite happy.
But, as I say, I never ask anybody to believe me; the more so as I was once an absolute sceptic myself. As I see it now, I was prejudiced. The mere fact that spiritual seances and the services of a medium involved the payment of money condemned the whole thing in my eyes. I did not realize, as I do now, that these medii, like anybody else, have got to live; otherwise they would die and become spirits.
Nor would I now place these disclosures before the public eyes were if not that I think that in the present crisis they will prove of value to the Allied cause.
But let me begin at the beginning. My own conversion to spiritualism came about, like that of so many others, through the more or less casual remark of a Friend.
Noticing me one day gloomy and depressed, this Friend remarked to me:
“Have you any belief in Spiritualism?”
Had it come from anyone else, I should have turned the question aside with a sneer. But it so happens that I owe a great deal of gratitude to this particular Friend. It was he who, at a time when I was so afflicted with rheumatism that I could scarcely leap five feet into the air without pain, said to me one day quite casually: “Have you ever tried pyro for your rheumatism?” One month later I could leap ten feet in the air—had I been able to—without the slightest malaise. The same man, I may add, hearing me one day exclaiming to myself: “Oh, if there were anything that would remove the stains from my clothes!” said to me very simply and quietly: “Have you ever washed them in luxo?” It was he, too, who, noticing a haggard look on my face after breakfast one morning, inquired immediately what I had been eating for breakfast; after which, with a simplicity and directness which I shall never forget, he said: “Why not eat humpo?”
Nor can I ever forget my feeling on another occasion when, hearing me exclaim aloud: “Oh, if there were only something invented for removing the proteins and amygdaloids from a carbonized diet and leaving only the pure nitrogenous life-giving elements!” seized my hand in his, and said in a voice thrilled with emotion: “There is! It has!”
The reader will understand, therefore, that a question, or query, from such a Friend was not to be put lightly aside. When he asked if I believed in Spiritualism I answered with perfect courtesy:
“To be quite frank, I do not.”
There was silence between us for a time, and then my Friend said:
“Have you ever given it a trial?”
I paused a moment, as the idea was a novel one.
“No,” I answered, “to be quite candid, I have not.”
Neither of us spoke for perhaps twenty minutes after this, when my Friend said:
“Have you anything against it?”
I thought awhile and then I said:
“Yes, I have.”
My Friend remained silent for perhaps half an hour. Then he asked:
“What?”
I meditated for some time. Then I said:
“This—it seems to me that the whole thing is done for money. How utterly unnatural it is to call up the dead—one’s great-grandfather, let us say—and pay money for talking to him.”
“Precisely,” said my Friend without a moment’s pause. “I thought so. Now suppose I could bring you into contact with the spirit world through a medium, or through different medii, without there being any question of money, other than a merely nominal fee, the money being, as it were, left out of count, and regarded as only, so to speak, nominal, something given merely pro forma and ad interim. Under these circumstances, will you try the experiment?”
I rose and took my Friend’s hand.
“My dear fellow,” I said, “I not only will, but I shall.”
From this conversation dated my connection with Spiritualism, which has since opened for me a new world.
It would be out of place for me to indicate the particular address or the particular methods employed by the agency to which my Friend introduced me. I am anxious to avoid anything approaching a commercial tinge in what I write. Moreover, their advertisement can be seen along with many others—all, I am sure, just as honourable and just as trustworthy—in the columns of any daily newspaper. As everybody knows, many methods are employed. The tapping of a table, the movement of a ouija board, or the voice of a trance medium, are only a few among the many devices by which the spirits now enter into communication with us. But in my own case the method used was not only simplicity itself, but was so framed as to carry with it the proof of its own genuineness. One had merely to speak into the receiver of a telephone, and the voice of the spirit was heard through the transmitter as in an ordinary telephone conversation.
It was only natural, after the scoffing remark that I had made, that I should begin with my great-grandfather. Nor can I ever forget the peculiar thrill that went through me when I was informed by the head of the agency that a tracer was being sent out for Great-grandfather to call him to the phone.
Great-grandfather—let me do him this justice—was prompt. He was there in three minutes. Whatever his line of business was in the spirit world—and I was never able to learn it—he must have left it immediately and hurried to the telephone. Whatever later dissatisfaction I may have had with Great-grandfather, let me state it fairly and honestly, he is at least a punctual man. Every time I called he came right away without delay. Let those who are inclined to cavil at the methods of the Spiritualists reflect how impossible it would be to secure such punctuality on anything but a basis of absolute honesty.
In my first conversation with Great-grandfather, I found myself so absurdly nervous at the thought of the vast gulf of space and time across which we were speaking that I perhaps framed my questions somewhat too crudely.
“How are you, great-grandfather?” I asked.
His voice came back to me as distinctly as if he were in the next room:
“I am happy, very happy. Please tell everybody that I am happy.”
“Great-grandfather,” I said. “I will. I’ll see that everybody knows it. Where are you, great-grandfather?”
“Here,” he answered, “beyond.”
“Beyond what?”
“Here on the other side.”
“Side of which?” I asked.
“Of the great vastness,” he answered. “The other end of the Illimitable.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, “that’s where you are.”
We were silent for some time. It is amazing how difficult it is to find things to talk about with one’s great-grandfather. For the life of me I could think of nothing better than:
“What sort of weather have you been having?”
“There is no weather here,” said Great-grandfather. “It’s all bright and beautiful all the time.”
“You mean bright sunshine?” I said.
“There is no sun here,” said Great-grandfather.
“Then how do you mean—” I began.
But at this moment the head of the agency tapped me on the shoulder to remind me that the two minutes’ conversation for which I had deposited, as a nominal fee, five dollars, had expired. The agency was courteous enough to inform me that for five dollars more Great-grandfather would talk another two minutes.
But I thought it preferable to stop for the moment.
Now I do not wish to say a word against my own great-grandfather. Yet in the conversations which followed on successive days I found him—how shall I put it?—unsatisfactory. He had been, when on this side—to use the term we Spiritualists prefer—a singularly able man, an English judge; so at least I have always been given to understand. But somehow Great-grandfather’s brain, on the other side, seemed to have got badly damaged. My own theory is that, living always in the bright sunshine, he had got sunstroke. But I may wrong him. Perhaps it was locomotor ataxy that he had. That he was very, very happy where he was is beyond all doubt. He said so at every conversation. But I have noticed that feeble-minded people are often happy. He said, too, that he was glad to be where he was; and on the whole I felt glad that he was too. Once or twice I thought that possibly Great-grandfather felt so happy because he had been drinking: his voice, even across the great gulf, seemed somehow to suggest it. But on being questioned he told me that where he was there was no drink and no thirst, because it was all so bright and beautiful. I asked him if he meant that it was “bone-dry” like Kansas, or whether the rich could still get it? But he didn’t answer.
Our intercourse ended in a quarrel. No doubt it was my fault. But it did seem to me that Great-grandfather, who had been one of the greatest English lawyers of his day, might have handed out an opinion.
The matter came up thus: I had had an argument—it was in the middle of last winter—with some men at my club about the legal interpretation of the Adamson Law. The dispute grew bitter.
“I’m right,” I said, “and I’ll prove it if you give me time to consult the authorities.”
“Consult your great-grandfather!” sneered one of the men.
“All right,” I said, “I will.”
I walked straight across the room to the telephone and called up the agency.
“Give me my great-grandfather,” I said. “I want him right away.”
He was there. Good, punctual old soul, I’ll say that for him. He was there.
“Great-grandfather,” I said, “I’m in a discussion here about the constitutionality of the Adamson Law, involving the power of Congress under the Constitution. Now, you remember the Constitution when they made it. Is the law all right?”
There was silence.
“How does it stand, great-grandfather?” I said. “Will it hold water?”
Then he spoke.
“Over here,” he said, “there are no laws, no members of Congress and no Adamsons; it’s all bright and beautiful and—”
“Great-grandfather,” I said, as I hung up the receiver in disgust, “you are a Mutt!”
I never spoke to him again. Yet I feel sorry for him, feeble old soul, flitting about in the Illimitable, and always so punctual to hurry to the telephone, so happy, so feeble-witted and courteous; a better man, perhaps, take it all in all, than he was in life; lonely, too, it may be, out there in the Vastness. Yet I never called him up again. He is happy. Let him stay.
Indeed, my acquaintance with the spirit world might have ended at that point but for the good offices, once more, of my Friend.
“You find your great-grandfather a little slow, a little dull?” he said. “Well, then, if you want brains, power, energy, why not call up some of the spirits of the great men, some of the leading men, for instance, of your great-grandfather’s time?”
“You’ve said it!” I exclaimed. “I’ll call up Napoleon Bonaparte.”
I hurried to the agency.
“Is it possible,” I asked, “for me to call up the Emperor Napoleon and talk to him?”
Possible? Certainly. It appeared that nothing was easier. In the case of Napoleon Bonaparte the nominal fee had to be ten dollars in place of five; but it seemed to me that, if Great-grandfather cost five, Napoleon Bonaparte at ten was cheapness itself.
“Will it take long to get him?” I asked anxiously.
“We’ll send out a tracer for him right away,” they said.
Like Great-grandfather, Napoleon was punctual. That I will say for him. If in any way I think less of Napoleon Bonaparte now than I did, let me at least admit that a more punctual, obliging, willing man I never talked with.
He came in two minutes.
“He’s on the line now,” they said.
I took up the receiver, trembling.
“Hello!” I called. “Est-ce que c’est l’Empereur Napoleon a qui j’ai l’honneur de parler?”
“How’s that?” said Napoleon.
“Je demande si je suis en communication avec l’Empereur Napoleon—”
“Oh,” said Napoleon, “that’s all right; speak English.”
“What!” I said in surprise. “You know English? I always thought you couldn’t speak a word of it.”
He was silent for a minute. Then he said:
“I picked it up over here. It’s all right. Go right ahead.”
“Well,” I continued, “I’ve always admired you so much, your wonderful brain and genius, that I felt I wanted to speak to you and ask you how you are.”
“Happy,” said Napoleon, “very happy.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s fine! And how is it out there? All bright and beautiful, eh?”
“Very beautiful,” said the Emperor.
“And just where are you?” I continued. “Somewhere out in the Unspeakable, I suppose, eh?”
“Yes,” he answered, “out here beyond.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Pretty happy, eh?”
“Very happy,” said Napoleon. “Tell everybody how happy I am.”
“I know,” I answered. “I’ll tell them all. But just now I’ve a particular thing to ask. We’ve got a big war on, pretty well the whole world in it, and I thought perhaps a few pointers from a man like you—”
But at this point the attendant touched me on the shoulder. “Your time is up,” he said.
I was about to offer to pay at once for two minutes more when a better idea struck me. Talk with Napoleon? I’d do better than that. I’d call a whole War Council of great spirits, lay the war crisis before them and get the biggest brains that the world ever produced to work on how to win the war.
Who should I have? Let me see! Napoleon himself, of course. I’d bring him back. And for the sea business, the submarine problem, I’d have Nelson. George Washington, naturally, for the American end; for politics, say, good old Ben Franklin, the wisest old head that ever walked on American legs, and witty too; yes, Franklin certainly, if only for his wit to keep the council from getting gloomy; Lincoln—honest old Abe—him certainly I must have. Those and perhaps a few others.
I reckoned that a consultation at ten dollars apiece with spirits of that class was cheap to the verge of the ludicrous. Their advice ought to be worth millions—yes, billions—to the cause.
