But the star chimes behind us are ringing new tunes and we are back in our city again, leaving Prince Siddartha to conquer what he will.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RETURN OF SENATOR JOSEPH BARTHOLDI MICHAEL FROM THE WORLD GOVERNMENT TO SPRINGFIELD. HIS CONVERSE OF HIGH IMPORT WITH A JAPANESE ELDER STATESMAN WHO IS A COMMISSIONER TO OUR WORLD’S FAIR.
July 14, 2018:—The regular session of the World Senate has ended, and all the talk in the coffee houses is of the imminent return of Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, namesake of the high dandy of one hundred years ago, himself a reversion to tribe still further, in that he is a replica of the Iron Gentleman, except that he has a hotter temper in old age, which makes him a most tigerish fighter in the World Senate.
Today, being the Iron Gentleman’s birthday, is a family festival with the Michaels and, in the very early morning, before there are any passers by, the leading representatives of the family are hand in hand in silence around the original forge of the Iron Gentleman, for a little while. The bellows is blowing and the fire is high and there is the beginning of a blade in the flame, for they remember that he has said: “I will return to you only in the leaping flame of the forge fire.” Then they repeat the Lord’s Prayer and disperse, before the town is awake, leaving, according to custom, one man to finish the blade, at his leisure:—in this case Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third.
St. Friend, the Giver of Bread, has told me that the Michaels in general have old fashioned Bible reading in their homes, with old hymns and family prayers, every morning or evening no matter what pet heresies may be running through the tribe. Not many of them accept the formally designed altars of Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, they have left here hammering a blade, unless they are direct fanatical converts to the Flower Religion.
This evening I find myself one of a party in the library of St. Friend. We have been given an uplifting welcome by the saint, and the Thibetan Boy. Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, the non-entity whose fortunes seem always thrust upon me, is of the party. Black Hawk Boone is there. Our special guest is Sake Shioya, one of the Elder Statemen of Japan, and in America because he is head of the Department of Asiatic Art in the World’s Fair of the University of Springfield. At home, when not in the Japanese Cabinet, he is professor Sake Shioya of the Doshisha University of Japan, and brother of Nataro Shioya, the leading Japanese representative in the Senate of the World Government.
For a lifetime the brothers have shouted through Japan: “We will strike off the head of the Singapore Snake with the Sword of the Samurai.” St. Friend passes round the cigars and, himself, sticks to his corncob pipe. Perhaps it is because we are under the portrait of Alexander Campbell our talk turns to religious controversy. St. Friend says: “The world over, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, used to hate each other to the point of slaughter, though all spoke the name of Abraham and several other patriarchs with the same reverence, and invoked Abraham’s tribal God. Now the Marxians of the world revere Marx and Hegel as these others did Abraham and Jehovah, but the only way to keep them from cutting each other’s throats is for the World Government to stand between them.”
“Indeed it is true,” confirms Shioya, “The Purple Flag Marxians of Japan, the Yellow Flag Marxians of China, the White Flags of Thibet, the Black Flags of Russia, the Red Flags of Central Europe, the Gray Flags of America, all conspire against one another, with at least five times five which is twenty-five hates, in all, to be mathematical. Yet they all read the same Marx to tatters. When the Yellow Flag Marxians of China agree among themselves sufficiently to fall upon the Purples of Japan, a thing we are momently expecting, the World Government will have a stern police duty, especially since both sides are being urged on by Singapore.”
Samiri Shioya, that austere old man, continues, saying that which he can more gracefully say than any of the rest of us: “Instead of a world of three classes, special privileged, middle class, and peasantry, as these Marxians think it to be, it is, from my brother’s standpoint and my own, a globe whose seas and continents are spread with fifty to one hundred antagonistic races, mutually repellent. These fifty to one hundred races dye thoroughly, with the dye of race-mysticism, any economic teaching they take up. So practical world statesmanship, from the Japanese standpoint and I am glad to say, from the standpoint of the fiery Michael also, has dealt with race. Our statesmen advocated the principle of one vote to every main tribe in the world and fractional votes in due proportion to the size of the small tribes, long before your Michael entered the Senate, and every speech he has made there to strengthen that doctrine has been cheered from end to end of Japan.”
July 15:—Senator Joseph Bartholdi Michael is here and has refused the conspicuous first place in the great sunset parade and drill held in his honor and has taken his place in the ranks with his son, and has demanded that the whole ceremony be in honor of the Star Spangled Banner and the International Flag. Those flags have been put up in special size and splendor, all over the town, even more than is the custom. And the borders of the parks around Camp Lincoln are one tremendous fleet of these banners. I find myself on the drill ground near the aged Japanese statesman. I am huddled on the side of the reviewing platform with the newspaper men, and we watch those strange Japanese eyes, and are amazed at his fiery enthusiasm for the International Flag. The reviewing platform is by the famous wrought-iron gates, hammered out by the Iron Gentleman and his three sons and three daughters.