“Pardon me, if for a moment I speak as an old man to his grandchildren. I ask to be forgiven if I am jealous of the furious and romantic years just coming on, jealous for the farther future, and for its vindication. The immediate years, I know, will fill our cups with sorrow whether we live or die. But I ask of you one Spartan thing, beyond fighting ten years—if ten years be necessary to subdue mad Singapore. Remember not only the virtues but the follies of your mothers, the Amazons, and your fathers, the Horseshoe Brotherhood, who rode side by side and fought so nobly thirty years ago. I can speak of this because I can say without flinching that our Japanese men and women Samurai went through the same glories and follies, with them in the same battle line. Forever after, they have lived in that war on that battle line. Do not go on perpetually climbing into office because you can recount military history, as many of our Samurai have done, drowning out the man or woman who wants to speak of matters thirty years ahead and plan such a thing as your Fair or University. No war ushers in the perfect state. The great wars are not all fought with the sword. To speak in the Christian phrase, remember that every yesterday is but a box of costly spikenard to be broken on the feet of Holy Tomorrow. Though you fight ten wars, let yesterday be your enemy. Otherwise you fight but as the nations that died before Confucius, and Mencius.”
July 18:—The same group as on the 14th of July are around the library table of St. Friend with the addition of the gigantic Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, who is among us as though he were in his boyhood again, being as he says, “Back home, after so long.” The idolizing friendship of the Japanese and his private secretary but provoke him to franker monologues and a greater disposition to sprawl about with his hair mussed up and his head on one side like an eagle acting the robin. He has his arm around his son, as though he would push him in amongst us. As the evening progresses, in reply to some quite pointed questions from the Japanese, on behalf of his brother and himself, who want to act upon the information, discreetly but definitely, Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, bawls out a confession:—
“First, let me say that no man ever held office in the world, who was actually capable of running more than a village of ten thousand inhabitants. All men who have been higher in apparent rank than village mayors, have simply made shift: rattled about in their big chairs as they could. The courageous man, knowing this, respects, but does not fear or revere the alleged great. They all get the respect from me due to a good mayor, and no more. No man should run for a great office without expecting to make a botch of his administration. I dream of something definite and quite selfish. I want to have my turn as President of the World Government. This proclamation may be too much American style for the stomachs of my Japanese friends here present. But no one was ever elected dog catcher, coroner, governor, senator, or president, in this United States, who did not first nominate himself. As a matter of fact I know of no American politician who was ever urged to run by his most admiring friend. I must keep my American political habits if I am to feel at home in this contest and to retain even the American vote. All this is by the way. I hope it is not too mysterious to a Japanese.
“To continue as to my views around and about this office. A man may serve but one term at best. We Michaels are a long lived set, and I am hoping at the end of this war to have strength for one term.
“It is a long journey to the nomination past all other possible national or international ambitions; for instance, in my case, past an ambition to forge a thousand Michael blades.
“I admit I am an old man, and I know the ironies, or at least some of them, if I win. Whoever is President of the World or mayor of a small town is predestined to be overthrown by the ten most envious and vigorous young men who want his place.”
And now the eagle begins to flame in the face of Michael and he speaks most earnestly: “I can only hope that some of the envious will be from Springfield’s freshman chivalry. I love the hate of young men and young women when it is high and keeps them driving forward to unseat the older generation in tournaments over noble issues. And whoever replaces me at the World Capitol, either in the legislature or the supreme chair, I hope to have made my bungling record there of such a sort, my foe, equally human, will be obliged to do his noblest to unseat me. But the sword of the Michaels has not been called the Avanel sword by divine accident alone, and at the end of my turn, ten years hence, or so, I am willing to be driven out of the supreme-chair by a Boone, of Springfield, particularly if it is a girl, and particularly if she is named Avanel.” Which ending is of course but gallant nonsense. But I venture, from my dark corner to interrupt severely:—“The world would have a princess, not a president. It would simply be the reiteration of monarchy and idolatry from of old time.”
But no one seems to hear me. My voice comes from too far away.
July 21:—Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, is talking with the two Japanese and myself in Tom Strong’s Lunch Room, and, with most elaborate and knightly deference to the extremely contrasting race character of our guests, and is giving his theory of what he calls:—“The New Springfield Race.” And his tone of voice is most diplomatically ingratiating, as he touches on matters alien to Japanese thought.
“Just as the sea is naturally the world’s buffer state, and in area far greater than the total of all the continents, with the happy circumstance that the World Government is supported by a sea revenue, in this same way and no other way, institutions like the University Fair lie between all great enemies and factions of Springfield, a sea of separation, cooling, and reconciliation.