“Here everything is fairly satisfactory; but outside, in the wide world!” And he indicated a heap of newspapers and letters lying before him on the table.
While glancing through these messages from the outside world, John Toker had been spending a couple of uncomfortable hours. Very bad tidings had come. Not only the alarmist predictions which emanate from those parties that always have on tap announcements of an unavoidable war with this, that, or the other neighboring State; but also positive proofs that in various places, in circles that had the necessary power in their hands, the intention prevailed to deliver the blow. In more than one center of discord, little flames were rising and might easily break out into a destructive conflagration. The press was not lacking in writers who were working with poker and bellows for this end so desirable to them for many reasons. Fortunately there were not lacking, among either rulers or statesmen, those who were using their best endeavors to stamp out the dangerous embers; who hesitated about drawing the sword even when they were provoked—but the decision finally lies, after all, with the aggressive and not with the opposing portion.
Not only from the papers, but also from private sources, Toker had received the intimation that dangerous dissensions were likely to break out. He was in friendly relationship with powerful circles in various countries, and he got wind of much that was going on behind the scenes in politics. Thus it had been conveyed to him that day that one country, whose chief ruler was thoroughly opposed to war, had a large military party working with all its might, in order that an insignificant question at issue should be made the cause for an ultimatum. This party desired to march right in. It found that the moment was favorable. The victory would be easily won; glory and laurels might be obtained; internal dangers fermenting might thus be obviated; and in spite of the opposition of the monarch they were plotting to aggravate the friction in order that the “marching in” might be plausible.
However, that is not the proper word: what the war-lovers in question had in mind was not “marching in,” but “flying in.” In all countries the air-fleets had attained considerable proportions, but just at this time this particular State had made a remarkable advance. Moreover, a new invention in the domain of aviation had been recently made and was kept a great secret, and a new explosive had been introduced. With this, the enemy could be annihilated and the world confounded. The admiral of the air-fleet was all on fire to enrich the military history of the world with a hitherto unheard-of battle and victory. John A. Toker felt a quite peculiar horror at this form of the modern, ultra-modern art of war; not only because he expected the most terrible destruction from it; but also his æsthetic and moral feelings were revolted by seeing hell carried even into the regions of the skies.
Still other catastrophes were looming on the horizon: bread riots; economic crises; terrorism from below by assassination and incendiarism; terrorism from above by executions; ... and for those who looked far ahead, a general break-up; civilization buried under ruins. Can this be the end and goal of mankind’s lofty aspirations?
Toker felt like one who has brought a wonderfully beautiful garden, situated at the foot of a mountain, to a high state of cultivation, and suddenly notices that the mountain has begun to smoke.
“Every comparison limps” is a correct expression: the lameness in this figure is, that the destruction streaming from the fiery depths of the volcano is the work of incomprehensible, uncontrollable powers of nature, while in these eruptions treasured as “historical,” men themselves have fabricated the lava, and, thanks to their crater-deep idiocy, use it for their own destruction.
Yet not all the news that had been brought to Toker’s notice, and lay there in a great pile, was bad: there were also some encouraging items. If one attentively listens in every quarter, one can hear the subdued regular rumble of the great loom, where the genius of Progress is weaving stitch by stitch the web of Unity which is bound ultimately to bring together the whole civilized world. Toker’s alarm grew out of the fact that the all-reigning spirit of growth is often interrupted and set back by the spirit of destruction, which by fits and starts exercises its harmful calling and in some places undoes what seems on the fairest path of development.
“Well, Gwen, what amusing thing have you to tell me?”
“Amusing? I wanted a serious talk with you, papa.”