Olga Romanoff | Page 5

the members of the Council, the
splendid stature and regal dignity of Alan Arnold, the President,

stamped him as a born ruler of men, whose title rested upon something
higher than election or inheritance.
At the last stroke of twelve, the President rose in his place, and, in the
midst of an almost breathless silence, read the message of Natas to the
great congregation. This done, he laid the parchment down on the table
and, beginning from the outbreak of the world-war, rapidly and lucidly
sketched out the vast and beneficent changes in the government of
society that its issues had made possible.
He traced the marvellous development of the new civilisation, which,
in four generations, had raised men from a state of half-barbarous strife
and brutality to one of universal peace and prosperity; from inhuman
and unsparing competition to friendly co-operation in public, and
generous rivalry in private concerns, from horrible contrasts of wealth
and misery to a social state in which the removal of all unnatural
disabilities in the race of life had made them impossible.
He showed how, in the evil times which, as all men hoped, had been
left behind for ever, the strong and the unscrupulous ruthlessly
oppressed the weak and swindled the honest and the straightforward.
Now dishonesty was dishonourable in fact as well as in name; the game
of life was played fairly, and its prizes fell to all who could win them,
by native genius or earnest endeavour.
There were no inequalities, save those which Nature herself had
imposed upon all men from the beginning of time. There were no
tyrants and no slaves. That which a man's labour of hand or brain had
won was his, and no man might take toll of it. All useful work was held
in honour, and there was no other road to fame or fortune save that of
profitable service to humanity.
"This," said the President in conclusion, "is the splendid heritage that
we of the Supreme Council, which is now to cease to exist as such,
have received from our forefathers, who won it for us and for you on
the field of the world's Armageddon. We have preserved their traditions
intact, and obeyed their commands to the letter; and now the hour has
come for us, in obedience to the last of those commands, to resign our

authority and to hand over that heritage to you, the rulers of the
civilised world, to hold in trust for the peoples over whom you have
been appointed to reign.
"When I have done speaking I shall no longer be President of the
Senate, which for a hundred and twenty-five years has ruled the world
from pole to pole and east to west. You and your parliaments are
henceforth free to rule as you will. We shall take no further part in the
control of human affairs outside our domain, saving only in one
concern.
"In the days when our command was established, the only possible
basis of all rule was force, and our supremacy was based on the force
that we could bring to bear upon those who might have ventured to
oppose us or revolted against our rule. We commanded, and we will
still command, the air, and I should not be doing my duty, either to my
own people or to you, if I did not tell you that the Aerians not as the
world-rulers that they have been, but as the citizens of an independent
State, mean to keep that power in their own hands at all costs.
"The empire of earth and sea, saving only the valley of Aeria, is yours
to do with as you will. The empire of the air is ours,-- the heritage that
we have received from the genius of that ancestor of mine who first
conquered it.
"That we have not used it in the past to oppress you is the most perfect
guarantee that we shall not do so in the future, but let all the nations of
the earth clearly understand, that we shall accept any attempt to dispute
it with us as a declaration of war upon us, and that those who make that
attempt will either have to exterminate us or be exterminated
themselves. This is not a threat, but a solemn warning; and the
responsibility of once more bringing the curse of war and all its
attendant desolation upon the earth, will lie heavily upon those who
neglect it.
"A few more needful words and I have done. The message of the
Master, which I have read to you, contains a prophecy, as to the
fulfilment of which neither I nor any man here may speak with

certainty. It may be that he, with clearer eyes than ours, saw some
tremendous catastrophe impending over