And then he swooned indeed, and it took fully six hours to bring him back to consciousness. From then on it was evident that he was suffering from some mysterious disease, of which he died two weeks later. Had the electrical cloud that enveloped Mars, entering the communicating-apparatus, anything to do with this mysterious functional disturbance? My own knowledge of medicine is limited, and we had no physician with us. His remains were buried in the ice of the South Pole. The problem may never fully be answered.
And now, while I am preparing this narrative for publication, as yet far away from civilization and ignorant of recent events, I wonder whether the malicious nationality-mania, that dreadful mental aberration to which the Martian philosopher referred, could ever have developed to the same extent among civilized humanity on earth, arraying Christian nation against Christian nation! I wonder, in case this malady hereafter ever threatened to become acute, whether it could not easily be cured by a wise and systematic application of calm commonsense.
May all good men stand together to eradicate this evil!
FINIS
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.