But General O'Reilly was unruffled. "I'm an American, myself," he said, smiling, "although proud indeed of my Irish blood. And the Irish Irish will have to speak for themselves, although I venture to say you'll find them a sporting people indeed. But that's not quite the point, is it? 'Twas you yourself, sir, who praised the Golden Judge so highly. And you've seen today what fine sportsmen the Chinese are. The point is, are the Indians a sporting people?"
"Of course we're a sporting people!" Nehru glared.
"Then I take it you'd be willing, assuming Pakistan agrees, of course, but I'm told they're a very sporting people, to—" The general tossed the coin again, absent-mindedly.
"All right!" Nehru grated. "If they agree, so do we!"
It took a month before Pakistan could agree, and all the arrangements be made for the Toss on Kashmir. But in that month, the world had other things to think about. Chiang Kai Shek accepted his gambling loss without a murmur and removed his troops from Quemoy and Matsu, the American Seventh Fleet helping, the Communists not interfering. All civilians on the islands who wished to go to Formosa were taken there.
Washington said little officially, but in the corridors of the Pentagon, Congress and the White House, the sighs of relief reached gale force. General O'Reilly received a confidential and personal message from the Army Chief of Staff that made him pink with pleasure.
"May get that third star after all," he told his wife that night. "And not too long to wait, maybe."
But, above all, the month was filled with clamor from Ireland. Her Majesty's Government in Whitehall had immediately issued a communiqué which took a glacial view of the "puerile" proposal to toss for Northern Ireland. It was the timing of this communiqué, rather than its contents, that proved a tactical error. It had come too quickly, and Irishmen, both north and south, resented it.
As a Belfast newspaper wrote tartly: "Irishmen on both sides of the line are quite able to decide such matters for themselves, without the motherly interference of London."