Speaking of dip-low-macy, the Brits are great adepts at this low-dipping effort. It should be known that in this peculiar Martian pursuit the facial muscles are not permitted to betray the schemes that are hatching in the brain. You think and mean one thing, you say and appear to mean something else. The heavy bulk of brain that burdens the Two-Tons prevents these scientific people from dissimulating their mental activity. They are forced by nature to be blunt and candid, except when they have caused some calamity and foxily try to throw the blame on somebody else, as curiously may be shown by subsequent events. But the brains of the Brits are not quite so heavy. By means of rowing, swimming, football, polo, golf, tennis, cricket and other strenuous outdoor sports, they have acquired perfect control over their muscles. Especially is this ability apparent in their clever manipulation of the muscles of the face.
At frequent occasions the Brits have covered their angling activities with a veneer of apparently noble purposes, so beautifully polished you could almost use the veneer as a curved looking-glass. For instance, when they were spreading their own nationality all over the hilly surface of good old Mars, their facial expression was extremely innocent and noble while pretending merely to be spreading the Nazarrano faith. While they did do their share toward Nazarrizing the globe on which they live, they did not, in accordance with the Nazarrano precepts, look for their reward in heaven, but they sold their virtues for cash and took their reward by force of arms and dip-low-macy right on Mars itself. Their plan was very simple. They would send a missionary to spread the faith; subsequently they would send him plenty of assistants. Then they would start trading, always looking out—as tradesmen should—for their own interests. This inevitably led to disagreement with the natives. And as the engines of destruction used by the unobtrusive natives had not reached as high a phase of physical civilization as had those of the Brits, all the latter had to do at this phase of the game was to send some of their own little destruction-machines to the nation involved, and, after a little fighting, to make the territory their own. They would then start to colonize to clinch the one-sided deal.
To the development of science and industry they also have contributed a very important share. But as they believed in Culture and failed to develop that national unity brought about by the Two-Ton Kooltoor, their scientific and industrial buildings have never as yet been combined into one great edifice, such as so skilfully erected in Two-Tonia. It is possible that the greater development of animal spirits among the Brits versus the greater mental momentum of the Two-Tons had something to do with this difference in type of growth. It is possible that it was simply due to the fact that the minds of the great Brit thinkers and scientists had developed in one direction, while those among the Two-Tons had developed in a very different direction. Yet there can be but little doubt but that one of the most important causes of this divergency is to be found in the circumstance that the Two-Tons started to build their unified nation at a time when the sciences had reached a high state of advancement, and after a new philosophic sect had arisen among the Two-Tons, who were popularly known as the Social-Mists, and who laid particular stress on the advantages of cooperation; while, on the contrary, the foundation of the Brit institutions had been laid during a period, when the development of modern science had not given even its first signs of life.
In regard to the science of dip-low-macy, previously referred to, it may here be stated that this facial endeavor is by no means limited to the Brits alone. It seems that this quasi-scientific deception is practised with similar skill by other Martian nations. And even allowing for the deplorable fact that most of these nations are suffering from a pitiable mental malady, it still is astounding to the terrestrial onlooker that this ability to manipulate the facial muscles is among the Martians regarded as a highly meritorious attainment. Many dignitaries of the Nazarrano corporation occupy high places of honor on the strength of it. Nay, among most of the Martian nations even the making and the interpretation of the country’s laws is almost exclusively entrusted to those who excel in this deceitful pursuit. For the attainment to high political office it seems to be an absolutely essential accomplishment. Our Martian informer expressed the fervent belief that, were it not for this irrational and habitual deception, much of the petty malice between nation and nation could have been avoided or allayed.
We have heretofore found occasion to mention that the national activity of the Brits covered a period of some three hundred years, while that of the Two-Tons was limited to a span of forty years. This apparent difference in national duration is due to the fact that for many years up to the year 11 E.D. (1871 E.N.) the Two-Tons had been divided into a number of small principalities, each leading a semi-national existence of its own. In the year mentioned, after a destruction-chief by the name of MOULD-KEY had conquered the Frank-Aulians popularly known as the Fringe, a Two-Ton leader called BEES’MARK, because he left the mark of a very busy bee upon Two-Tonia, united the principalities into one great Two-Ton empire. Two chiefs reigned for a short time over the new-born nation, and then were succeeded by another ruler, a man of strenuous activity, bearing the high-sounding name of WILMOSTASH. This man seems to have had a prominent influence on the Two-Tonian growth; and the Two-Tons are convinced that their natural development is in essence due to the tireless efforts of this ruler, whose facial adornments indeed reach up toward the distant heavens.
The industrial preparations among the Two-Ton principalities previous to their federation, were now by the Two-Tons regarded as of but little consequence. Especially the younger generations saw naught but the growth of the united nation since the year 11 E.D. (1871 E.N.). And when they realized that they occupied an industrial position on the planet Mars at least as important as that of any other nation, they were impressed with the idea that in three, four decades they had accomplished what had taken other nations three, four centuries to reach. This impression could not but vastly increase their national pride, so that the nationality-mania, so common among the deluded Martians, was in Two-Tonia brought to an acute phase, overshadowing in depth and seriousness the similar mental malady prevalent among other nations.
As a consequence, as they gradually attained their important industrial position, they aspired at a political position of similar importance. But being—as a consequence of their brain-weight—less nimble and more blunt than many of the other races, they frequently assumed in the counsel of nations a high-toned attitude which the others looked upon as arrogant, and by force of which they frequently attempted to dictate the final decisions on international problems.
Had the nations not been deluded by their antagonistic and ever suspicious nationality-mania, they would have reasoned with the Two-Tons, they would have endeavored better to understand their ideals and their motives, and they might have learned much from them, just as the Two-Tons themselves in earlier years had learned a great deal from the others. But as a consequence of the deplorable Martian delusion, this attitude on the part of the Two-Tons had the effect of emphasizing all the more the malice that one nation bore another, and even resulted in a combination of the ill-will of various otherwise mutually unfriendly nations, in aggregate directed against the Two-Tons. As the neighboring nations watched with anxiety the profuse production of the militaristic explosive in the Two-Tonian empire, and as they scented an imminent danger of an explosion, they—by means of combinations and alliances—commenced to take measures to protect themselves against the Two-Tonian aggression which, they thought, was bound sooner or later to change from a merely mental attitude into a series of acts of physical violence. Among the nations so combined, special mention should be made of the FRANK-AULIANS or FRINGE, who, besides watching with suspicion the growing militaristic activity of their neighbor, were moreover animated by their desire to obtain redress for the damage done them in 1871 E.N., when they lost the territories of All-Sass and Low-Rain to the Two-Tons. Indeed, though this desire—at first vehemently proclaimed—had largely diminished in fervor as time wore on, still it was one of the undercurrents conscientiously to be taken into account in the judgment one might attempt to pass upon later developments. In the anti-Two-Tonian protective combinations, the Fringe no doubt figured prominently.
It is characteristic of the primitive condition of Martian civilization that a nation’s political influence is determined, not by the wisdom it displays in international counsel, but by the size of the territory it controls, and partly, therefore, by the extent of its colonies. Now, during three long centuries various nations had explored the oceans and snapped up all the territories fit for colonization; and owing to the successful angling of the Brits, many of these colonies had in the end fallen into their hands. Next in colonial possessions came the Fringe, and another nation known as the Whole-landers also controlled considerable outlying territory. But as all these nations had been engaged in this accumulation-process for so long a span of time, the Two-Tons, when they commenced to search for similar far-off fields of expansion, found but little left over. And not being as perfect in dip-low-matic attainments as other nations, the Two-Tons, as other nations had feared all along, came to the conclusion that the only way in which they could attain to the same type of political influence, was by force of arms, in other words, by a free and very inconsiderate use of their national explosive on other nations’ territories. I am here tempted to call attention to the marked influence which political conditions exert over the mental activity of a nation’s philosophic authors.
This temptation is so great that I shall overcome my reluctance, and reveal what our Martian communicant secretly confided to Professor FANSEE one memorable night, when both were looking for relaxation from the strain of their protracted labor. On this indeed very rare occasion our Martian philosopher confided to Professor FANSEE some of his own personal earlier experiences. From these it appeared that the Martian—I picture him in my imagination as a tall, lean man with a long white beard—had originally been a fervent follower of the faith of NAZARRO, and that afterwards he had been converted to Darvinianoism. And so profoundly had the Darviniano conclusions obtained a hold on his mentality, that he finally refused to look upon the Heebron and Nazarrano manuscripts as in any way authoritative in regard to what did and what did not constitute morality. With my deeper understanding of Nature, he then had said to himself, let me go back to her, and Nature herself shall teach me the laws of proper conduct. But when he had commenced conscientiously to observe the methods of Nature with this purpose in view, he soon discovered that the conduct of Nature as a whole greatly differs from the conduct deemed just and proper by the Martians. He found that Nature may at any time produce an upheaval of the soil, by which libraries, printing-presses, art museums, temples, churches, factories, institutes of industry and learning, would in a few hours be wantonly destroyed, without the slightest discrimination between the criminal and the virtuous, between things evil and things beneficial to the Martians. In this then, he mused, we cannot follow Nature.