The point of the fable is this, that to the king, a lover of new garments, there come some tailors who promise to make him an extraordinary garment. The king hires the tailors, and they begin to sew, having informed him that the peculiarity of their garment is this, that he who is useless in his office cannot see the garments.
The courtiers come to see the work of the tailors, but they see nothing, as the tailors stick their needles into empty space. But, mindful of the condition, all the courtiers say that they see the garment, and they praise it. The king does the same. The time arrives for the procession, when the king is to appear in his new garment. The king undresses himself and puts on his new garments, that is, he remains naked, and goes naked through the city. But, mindful of the condition, no one dares to say that there are no garments, until a small child calls out, "Behold, he is naked!"
The same thing must happen with all those who from inertia hold offices which have long ago become useless, when the first man who is not interested (as the proverb has it, "One hand washes the other"), in concealing the uselessness of these institutions, will point out their uselessness and will naïvely call out, "But, good people, they have long ago ceased to be good for anything."
The condition of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, guns, dynamite, cannon, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, custom-houses, palaces, is indeed terrible; but neither fortresses, nor cannon, nor guns shoot themselves at any one, prisons do not themselves lock any one up, the gallows does not hang any one, the churches do not of themselves deceive any one, the custom-houses hold no one back, palaces and factories do not erect and maintain themselves, but everything is done by men. But when men understand that this ought not to be done, there will be none of these things.
Men are already beginning to understand this. If not all men understand it as yet, the leaders among men do, those after whom follow all other men. And what the leaders have once come to understand, they can never stop understanding, and what the leaders have come to understand, all other men not only can, but inevitably must understand.
Thus the prediction that the time will come when all men shall be instructed by God, shall stop warring, shall forge the swords into ploughshares and the spears into pruning-hooks, that is, translating into our language, when all the prisons, fortresses, barracks, palaces, churches, shall remain empty, and all the gallows, guns, cannon, shall remain unused, is no longer a dream, but a definite, new form of life, toward which humanity is moving with ever increasing rapidity.
But when shall this be?
Eighteen hundred years ago Christ answered this question by saying that the end of the present world, that is, of the pagan structure of the world, would come when the calamities of men should be increased to their farthest limit and at the same time the gospel of the kingdom of God, that is, the possibility of a new, violenceless structure of the world, should be preached in all the world (Matt. xxiv. 3-28).
"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, but my Father only" (Matt. xxiv. 36), is what Christ says, for it may come any time, at any moment, even when we do not expect it.