The Gland Stealers

by Bertram Gayton

So the last stronghold of my long line of objections was razed to the ground, and the discussion of this momentous fight against death drew to a close. Was there ever a madder and more useless scheme than this wretched monkey hunting for the aged? Like most young men of this generation, I had very little respect for mere age. Everywhere one turned one saw old men in charge of the world—men of fifty and upwards. They monopolized all the best positions in the Government, in business, in literature, in law, on town councils, in the Civil Service, and in the army. They kept out the young and ambitious by sneering at their inexperience and hot-headedness; they scoffed at their love affairs; they even tried to arrange their marriages; and—most iniquitous of all—they arranged wars in which the young fought and died through the folly and greed of their forebears.

If only one could reduce the life span instead of lengthening it—bring it down to fifty, say! If only one could speed up life by removing the brake of the ancient, the doddering and the incapable, who hung on to their jobs to the eternal detriment of the young! If only one could make life fuller and quicker—instead of emptier and slower . . .

Was it right for me to sacrifice the men of my own generation in this manner? Was it dignified? Was it noble?

I thought the matter out carefully. And in the end I came to the conclusion that it simply did not matter. After all, the most Gran'pa and I could hope to do was to save a few hundred of the old criminals. If we caught all the gorillas in the whole of Africa, it would be no more than a mere drop in the ocean. At the Continental spas alone what does one see? The middle-aged, the old and ancient, crawling about in useless thousands. . . . All the monkeys in the world couldn't save more than a tenth per cent. of them.

And yet the thing might grow. There were other animals, perhaps, which might contribute. Already, the goat provided valuable thyroid extracts. Why not still others? Suppose the system was extended, and thousands of animals were bred solely for their glandular possibilities! In the course of a lifetime one man probably consumes dozens of sheep, oxen and pigs, and yet in some mysterious way arrangements have been made for a constant supply of these beasts. Why then should provision not be made for, say, a couple of pairs of glands per life. If man wants a commodity he usually gets it—sooner or later. He wanted tame dog, and he got it. To-day, there must be millions of them on the earth. Science might be clever enough some day to breed special gland-bearing animals, whose prime function would be the salvation of the aged. It might take generations or centuries to accomplish the miracle, but ultimately . . .

The thought staggered me—and I returned to my monkeys. If we didn't start the business someone else would.

And so, at last, I gave way.

"To blazes with the Civil Service. . . ." I thought. "Why should I moulder in an office when there are so many more interesting places in the world?"

I found a map of Africa and discovered Gaboon and its principal port of Libreville. It might have looked an outlandish spot, but at any rate it looked exciting. I liked the shape of the river mouth; the country to the east; the proximity of the Equator, which ran only a few miles to the south; and the way the great blue sea spread out to the west.

I found Walfisch Bay and the Kalahari. And then I looked at the tiny patch of dirt which we call England. I thought of the tedious train journey from north to south of this island, and I measured the distance on the same scale map of Africa. As I did so the immensity of our task suddenly smote me in all its glory. It was uncanny to think that all those thousands of miles away lay the great African jungles; that at this precise moment, while I was peacefully smoking my pipe in Richmond, there was another land in which the gorilla and the chimpanzee roamed and fought and died; and that presently we should commence invading their fastnesses and enlisting their services in aid of the aged and decrepit of our own race.