Goliah

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_ In 1924--to be precise, on the morning of January 3--the city of San
Francisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter,
which had been received by Walter Bassett and which had evidently
been written by some crank. Walter Bassett was the greatest captain
of industry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group that
controlled the nation in everything but name. As such, he was the
recipient of lucubrations from countless cranks; but this particular
lucubration was so different from the average ruck of similar letters
that, instead of putting it into the waste-basket, he had turned it
over to a reporter. It was signed "Goliah," and the superscription
gave his address as "Palgrave Island." The letter was as follows:

"MR. WALTER BASSETT,
"DEAR SIR:

"I am inviting you, with nine of your fellow-captains of industry, to
visit me here on my island for the purpose of considering plans for
the reconstruction of society upon a more rational basis. Up to the
present, social evolution has been a blind and aimless, blundering
thing. The time has come for a change. Man has risen from the
vitalized slime of the primeval sea to the mastery of matter; but he
has not yet mastered society. Man is to-day as much the slave to his
collective stupidity, as a hundred thousand generations ago he was a
slave to matter.

"There are two theoretical methods whereby man may become the master
of society, and make of society an intelligent and efficacious device
for the pursuit and capture of happiness and laughter. The first
theory advances the proposition that no government can be wiser or
better than the people that compose that government; that reform and
development must spring from the individual; that in so far as the
individuals become wiser and better, by that much will their
government become wiser and better; in short, that the majority of
individuals must become wiser and better, before their government
becomes wiser and better. The mob, the political convention, the
abysmal brutality and stupid ignorance of all concourses of people,
give the lie to this theory. In a mob the collective intelligence
and mercy is that of the least intelligent and most brutal members
that compose the mob. On the other hand, a thousand passengers will
surrender themselves to the wisdom and discretion of the captain,
when their ship is in a storm on the sea. In such matter, he is the
wisest and most experienced among them.

"The second theory advances the proposition that the majority of the
people are not pioneers, that they are weighted down by the inertia
of the established; that the government that is representative of
them represents only their feebleness, and futility, and brutishness;
that this blind thing called government is not the serf of their
wills, but that they are the serfs of it; in short, speaking always
of the great mass, that they do not make government, but that
government makes them, and that government is and has been a stupid
and awful monster, misbegotten of the glimmerings of intelligence
that come from the inertia-crushed mass.

"Personally, I incline to the second theory. Also, I am impatient.
For a hundred thousand generations, from the first social groups of
our savage forbears, government has remained a monster. To-day, the
inertia-crushed mass has less laughter in it than ever before. In
spite of man's mastery of matter, human suffering and misery and
degradation mar the fair world.

"Wherefore I have decided to step in and become captain of this
world-ship for a while. I have the intelligence and the wide vision
of the skilled expert. Also, I have the power. I shall be obeyed.
The men of all the world shall perform my bidding and make
governments so that they shall become laughter-producers. These
modelled governments I have in mind shall not make the people happy,
wise, and noble by decree; but they shall give opportunity for the
people to become happy, wise, and noble.

"I have spoken. I have invited you, and nine of your fellow-
captains, to confer with me. On March third the yacht Energon will
sail from San Francisco. You are requested to be on board the night
before. This is serious. The affairs of the world must be handled
for a time by a strong hand. Mine is that strong hand. If you fail
to obey my summons, you will die. Candidly, I do not expect that you
will obey. But your death for failure to obey will cause obedience
on the part of those I subsequently summon. You will have served a
purpose. And please remember that I have no unscientific
sentimentality about the value of human life. I carry always in the
background of my consciousness the innumerable billions of lives that
are to laugh and be happy in future aeons on the earth.

"Yours for the reconstruction of society,

"GOLIAH."

The publication of this letter did not cause even local amusement.
Men might have smiled to themselves as they read it, but it was so
palpably the handiwork of a crank that it did not merit discussion.
Interest did not arouse till next morning. An Associated Press
despatch to the Eastern states, followed by interviews by eager-nosed
reporters, had brought out the names of the other nine captains of
industry who had received similar letters, but who had not thought
the matter of sufficient importance to be made public. But the
interest aroused was mild, and it would have died out quickly had not
Gabberton cartooned a chronic presidential aspirant as "Goliah."
Then came the song that was sung hilariously from sea to sea, with
the refrain, "Goliah will catch you if you don't watch out."

The weeks passed and the incident was forgotten. Walter Bassett had
forgotten it likewise; but on the evening of February 22, he was
called to the telephone by the Collector of the Port. "I just wanted
to tell you," said the latter, "that the yacht Energon has arrived
and gone to anchor in the stream off Pier Seven."

What happened that night Walter Bassett has never divulged. But it
is known that he rode down in his auto to the water front, chartered
one of Crowley's launches, and was put aboard the strange yacht. It
is further known that when he returned to the shore, three hours
later, he immediately despatched a sheaf of telegrams to his nine
fellow-captains of industry who had received letters from Goliah.
These telegrams were similarly worded, and read: "The yacht Energon
has arrived. There is something in this. I advise you to come."

Bassett was laughed at for his pains. It was a huge laugh that went
up (for his telegrams had been made public), and the popular song on
Goliah revived and became more popular than ever. Goliah and Bassett
were cartooned and lampooned unmercifully, the former, as the Old Man
of the Sea, riding on the latter's neck. The laugh tittered and
rippled through clubs and social circles, was restrainedly merry in
the editorial columns, and broke out in loud guffaws in the comic
weeklies. There was a serious side as well, and Bassett's sanity was
gravely questioned by many, and especially by his business
associates.

Bassett had ever been a short-tempered man, and after he sent the
second sheaf of telegrams to his brother captains, and had been
laughed at again, he remained silent. In this second sheaf he had
said: "Come, I implore you. As you value your life, come." He
arranged all his business affairs for an absence, and on the night of
March 2 went on board the Energon. The latter, properly cleared,
sailed next morning. And next morning the newsboys in every city and
town were crying "Extra."

In the slang of the day, Goliah had delivered the goods. The nine
captains of industry who had failed to accept his invitation were
dead. A sort of violent disintegration of the tissues was the report
of the various autopsies held on the bodies of the slain
millionaires; yet the surgeons and physicians (the most highly
skilled in the land had participated) would not venture the opinion
that the men had been slain. Much less would they venture the
conclusion, "at the hands of parties unknown." It was all too
mysterious. They were stunned. Their scientific credulity broke
down. They had no warrant in the whole domain of science for
believing that an anonymous person on Palgrave Island had murdered
the poor gentlemen.

One thing was quickly learned, however; namely, that Palgrave Island
was no myth. It was charted and well known to all navigators, lying
on the line of 160 west longitude, right at its intersection by the
tenth parallel north latitude, and only a few miles away from Diana
Shoal. Like Midway and Fanning, Palgrave Island was isolated,
volcanic and coral in formation. Furthermore, it was uninhabited. A
survey ship, in 1887, had visited the place and reported the
existence of several springs and of a good harbour that was very
dangerous of approach. And that was all that was known of the tiny
speck of land that was soon to have focussed on it the awed attention
of the world.

Goliah remained silent till March 24. On the morning of that day,
the newspapers published his second letter, copies of which had been
received by the ten chief politicians of the United States--ten
leading men in the political world who were conventionally known as
"statesmen." The letter, with the same superscription as before, was
as follows:

"DEAR SIR:

"I have spoken in no uncertain tone. I must be obeyed. You may
consider this an invitation or a summons; but if you still wish to
tread this earth and laugh, you will be aboard the yacht Energon, in
San Francisco harbour, not later than the evening of April 5. It is
my wish and my will that you confer with me here on Palgrave Island
in the matter of reconstructing society upon some rational basis.

"Do not misunderstand me, when I tell you that I am one with a
theory. I want to see that theory work, and therefore I call upon
your cooperation. In this theory of mine, lives are but pawns; I
deal with quantities of lives. I am after laughter, and those that
stand in the way of laughter must perish. The game is big. There
are fifteen hundred million human lives to-day on the planet. What
is your single life against them? It is as naught, in my theory.
And remember that mine is the power. Remember that I am a scientist,
and that one life, or one million of lives, mean nothing to me as
arrayed against the countless billions of billions of the lives of
the generations to come. It is for their laughter that I seek to
reconstruct society now; and against them your own meagre little life
is a paltry thing indeed.

"Whoso has power can command his fellows. By virtue of that military
device known as the phalanx, Alexander conquered his bit of the
world. By virtue of that chemical device, gunpowder, Cortes with his
several hundred cut-throats conquered the empire of the Montezumas.
Now I am in possession of a device that is all my own. In the course
of a century not more than half a dozen fundamental discoveries or
inventions are made. I have made such an invention. The possession
of it gives me the mastery of the world. I shall use this invention,
not for commercial exploitation, but for the good of humanity. For
that purpose I want help--willing agents, obedient hands; and I am
strong enough to compel the service. I am taking the shortest way,
though I am in no hurry. I shall not clutter my speed with haste.

"The incentive of material gain developed man from the savage to the
semi-barbarian he is today. This incentive has been a useful device
for the development of the human; but it has now fulfilled its
function and is ready to be cast aside into the scrap-heap of
rudimentary vestiges such as gills in the throat and belief in the
divine right of kings. Of course you do not think so; but I do not
see that that will prevent you from aiding me to fling the
anachronism into the scrap-heap. For I tell you now that the time
has come when mere food and shelter and similar sordid things shall
be automatic, as free and easy and involuntary of access as the air.
I shall make them automatic, what of my discovery and the power that
discovery gives me. And with food and shelter automatic, the
incentive of material gain passes away from the world for ever. With
food and shelter automatic, the higher incentives will universally
obtain--the spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual incentives that
will tend to develop and make beautiful and noble body, mind, and
spirit. Then all the world will be dominated by happiness and
laughter. It will be the reign of universal laughter.

"Yours for that day,

"GOLIAH."

Still the world would not believe. The ten politicians were at
Washington, so that they did not have the opportunity of being
convinced that Bassett had had, and not one of them took the trouble
to journey out to San Francisco to make the opportunity. As for
Goliah, he was hailed by the newspapers as another Tom Lawson with a
panacea; and there were specialists in mental disease who, by
analysis of Goliah's letters, proved conclusively that he was a
lunatic.

The yacht Energon arrived in the harbour of San Francisco on the
afternoon of April 5, and Bassett came ashore. But the Energon did
not sail next day, for not one of the ten summoned politicians had
elected to make the journey to Palgrave Island. The newsboys,
however, called "Extra" that day in all the cities. The ten
politicians were dead. The yacht, lying peacefully at anchor in the
harbour, became the centre of excited interest. She was surrounded
by a flotilla of launches and rowboats, and many tugs and steamboats
ran excursions to her. While the rabble was firmly kept off, the
proper authorities and even reporters were permitted to board her.
The mayor of San Francisco and the chief of police reported that
nothing suspicious was to be seen upon her, and the port authorities
announced that her papers were correct and in order in every detail.
Many photographs and columns of descriptive matter were run in the
newspapers.

The crew was reported to be composed principally of Scandinavians--
fair-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, Norwegians afflicted with the
temperamental melancholy of their race, stolid Russian Finns, and a
slight sprinkling of Americans and English. It was noted that there
was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them. They seemed weighty
men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity. A sober
seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. They
appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by
some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman
hand. The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was
cartooned in the papers as "Gloomy Gus" (the pessimistic hero of the
comic supplement).

Some sea-captain recognized the Energon as the yacht Scud, once owned
by Merrivale of the New York Yacht Club. With this clue it was soon
ascertained that the Scud had disappeared several years before. The
agent who sold her reported the purchaser to be merely another agent,
a man he had seen neither before nor since. The yacht had been
reconstructed at Duffey's Shipyard in New Jersey. The change in her
name and registry occurred at that time and had been legally
executed. Then the Energon had disappeared in the shroud of mystery.

In the meantime, Bassett was going crazy--at least his friends and
business associates said so. He kept away from his vast business
enterprises and said that he must hold his hands until the other
masters of the world could join with him in the reconstruction of
society--proof indubitable that Goliah's bee had entered his bonnet.
To reporters he had little to say. He was not at liberty, he said,
to relate what he had seen on Palgrave Island; but he could assure
them that the matter was serious, the most serious thing that had
ever happened. His final word was that, the world was on the verge
of a turnover, for good or ill he did not know, but, one way or the
other, he was absolutely convinced that the turnover was coming. As
for business, business could go hang. He had seen things, he had,
and that was all there was to it.

There was a great telegraphing, during this period, between the local
Federal officials and the state and war departments at Washington. A
secret attempt was made late one afternoon to board the Energon and
place the captain under arrest--the Attorney-General having given the
opinion that the captain could be held for the murder of the ten
"statesmen." The government launch was seen to leave Meigg's Wharf
and steer for the Energon, and that was the last ever seen of the
launch and the men on board of it. The government tried to keep the
affair hushed up, but the cat was slipped out of the bag by the
families of the missing men, and the papers were filled with
monstrous versions of the affair.

The government now proceeded to extreme measures. The battleship
Alaska was ordered to capture the strange yacht, or, failing that, to
sink her. These were secret instructions; but thousands of eyes,
from the water front and from the shipping in the harbour, witnessed
what happened that afternoon. The battleship got under way and
steamed slowly toward the Energon. At half a mile distant the
battleship blew up--simply blew up, that was all, her shattered frame
sinking to the bottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and a few
survivors strewing the surface. Among the survivors was a young
lieutenant who had had charge of the wireless on board the Alaska.
The reporters got hold of him first, and he talked. No sooner had
the Alaska got under way, he said, than a message was received from
the Energon. It was in the international code, and it was a warning
to the Alaska to come no nearer than half a mile. He had sent the
message, through the speaking tube, immediately to the captain. He
did not know anything more, except that the Energon twice repeated
the message and that five minutes afterward the explosion occurred.
The captain of the Alaska had perished with his ship, and nothing
more was to be learned.

The Energon, however, promptly hoisted anchor and cleared out to sea.
A great clamour was raised by the papers; the government was charged
with cowardice and vacillation in its dealings with a mere pleasure
yacht and a lunatic who called himself "Goliah," and immediate and
decisive action was demanded. Also, a great cry went up about the
loss of life, especially the wanton killing of the ten "statesmen."
Goliah promptly replied. In fact, so prompt was his reply that the
experts in wireless telegraphy announced that, since it was
impossible to send wireless messages so great a distance, Goliah was
in their very midst and not on Palgrave Island. Goliah's letter was
delivered to the Associated Press by a messenger boy who had been
engaged on the street. The letter was as follows:

"What are a few paltry lives? In your insane wars you destroy
millions of lives and think nothing of it. In your fratricidal
commercial struggle you kill countless babes, women, and men, and you
triumphantly call the shambles 'individualism.' I call it anarchy.
I am going to put a stop to your wholesale destruction of human
beings. I want laughter, not slaughter. Those of you who stand in
the way of laughter will get slaughter.

"Your government is trying to delude you into believing that the
destruction of the Alaska was an accident. Know here and now that it
was by my orders that the Alaska was destroyed. In a few short
months, all battleships on all seas will be destroyed or flung to the
scrap-heap, and all nations shall disarm; fortresses shall be
dismantled, armies disbanded, and warfare shall cease from the earth.
Mine is the power. I am the will of God. The whole world shall be
in vassalage to me, but it shall be a vassalage of peace.

"I am

GOLIAH."

"Blow Palgrave Island out of the water!" was the head-line retort of
the newspapers. The government was of the same frame of mind, and
the assembling of the fleets began. Walter Bassett broke out in
ineffectual protest, but was swiftly silenced by the threat of a
lunacy commission. Goliah remained silent. Against Palgrave Island
five great fleets were hurled--the Asiatic Squadron, the South
Pacific Squadron, the North Pacific Squadron, the Caribbean Squadron,
and half of the North Atlantic Squadron, the two latter coming
through the Panama Canal.

"I have the honour to report that we sighted Palgrave Island on the
evening of April 29," ran the report of Captain Johnson, of the
battleship North Dakota, to the Secretary of the Navy. "The Asiatic
Squadron was delayed and did not arrive until the morning of April
30. A council of the admirals was held, and it was decided to attack
early next morning. The destroyer, Swift VII, crept in, unmolested,
and reported no warlike preparations on the island. It noted several
small merchant steamers in the harbour, and the existence of a small
village in a hopelessly exposed position that could be swept by our
fire.

"It had been decided that all the vessels should rush in, scattered,
upon the island, opening fire at three miles, and continuing to the
edge of the reef, there to retain loose formation and engage.
Palgrave Island repeatedly warned us, by wireless, in the
international code, to keep outside the ten-mile limit; but no heed
was paid to the warnings.

"The North Dakota did not take part in the movement of the morning of
May 1. This was due to a slight accident of the preceding night that
temporarily disabled her steering-gear. The morning of May 1 broke
clear and calm. There was a slight breeze from the south-west that
quickly died away. The North Dakota lay twelve miles off the island.
At the signal the squadrons charged in upon the island, from all
sides, at full speed. Our wireless receiver continued to tick off
warnings from the island. The ten-mile limit was passed, and nothing
happened. I watched through my glasses. At five miles nothing
happened; at four miles nothing happened; at three miles, the New
York, in the lead on our side of the island, opened fire. She fired
only one shot. Then she blew up. The rest of the vessels never
fired a shot. They began to blow up, everywhere, before our eyes.
Several swerved about and started back, but they failed to escape.
The destroyer, Dart XXX, nearly made the ten-mile limit when she blew
up. She was the last survivor. No harm came to the North Dakota,
and that night, the steering-gear being repaired, I gave orders to
sail for San Francisco."

To say that the United States was stunned is but to expose the
inadequacy of language. The whole world was stunned. It confronted
that blight of the human brain, the unprecedented. Human endeavour
was a jest, a monstrous futility, when a lunatic on a lonely island,
who owned a yacht and an exposed village, could destroy five of the
proudest fleets of Christendom. And how had he done it? Nobody
knew. The scientists lay down in the dust of the common road and
wailed and gibbered. They did not know. Military experts committed
suicide by scores. The mighty fabric of warfare they had fashioned
was a gossamer veil rent asunder by a miserable lunatic. It was too
much for their sanity. Mere human reason could not withstand the
shock. As the savage is crushed by the sleight-of-hand of the witch
doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliah. How did he
do it? It was the awful face of the Unknown upon which the world
gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of its
proudest achievements.

But all the world was not stunned. There was the invariable
exception--the Island Empire of Japan. Drunken with the wine of
success deep-quaffed, without superstition and without faith in aught
but its own ascendant star, laughing at the wreckage of science and
mad with pride of race, it went forth upon the way of war. America's
fleets had been destroyed. From the battlements of heaven the
multitudinous ancestral shades of Japan leaned down. The
opportunity, God-given, had come. The Mikado was in truth a brother
to the gods.

The war-monsters of Japan were loosed in mighty fleets. The
Philippines were gathered in as a child gathers a nosegay. It took
longer for the battleships to travel to Hawaii, to Panama, and to the
Pacific Coast. The United States was panic-stricken, and there arose
the powerful party of dishonourable peace. In the midst of the
clamour the Energon arrived in San Francisco Bay and Goliah spoke
once more. There was a little brush as the Energon came in, and a
few explosions of magazines occurred along the war-tunnelled hills as
the coast defences went to smash. Also, the blowing up of the
submarine mines in the Golden Gate made a remarkably fine display.
Goliah's message to the people of San Francisco, dated as usual from
Palgrave Island, was published in the papers. It ran:

"Peace? Peace be with you. You shall have peace. I have spoken to
this purpose before. And give you me peace. Leave my yacht Energon
alone. Commit one overt act against her and not one stone in San
Francisco shall stand upon another.

"To-morrow let all good citizens go out upon the hills that slope
down to the sea. Go with music and laughter and garlands. Make
festival for the new age that is dawning. Be like children upon your
hills, and witness the passing of war. Do not miss the opportunity.
It is your last chance to behold what henceforth you will be
compelled to seek in museums of antiquities.

"I promise you a merry day,

"GOLIAH."

The madness of magic was in the air. With the people it was as if
all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood. Order and
law had passed away from the universe; but the sun still shone, the
wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed--that was the amazing
thing about it. That water should continue to run downhill was a
miracle. All the stabilities of the human mind and human achievement
were crumbling. The one stable thing that remained was Goliah, a
madman on an island. And so it was that the whole population of San
Francisco went forth next day in colossal frolic upon the hills that
overlooked the sea. Brass bands and banners went forth, brewery
wagons and Sunday-school picnics--all the strange heterogeneous
groupings of swarming metropolitan life.

On the sea-rim rose the smoke from the funnels of a hundred hostile
vessels of war, all converging upon the helpless, undefended Golden
Gate. And not all undefended, for out through the Golden Gate moved
the Energon, a tiny toy of white, rolling like a straw in the stiff
sea on the bar where a strong ebb-tide ran in the teeth of the summer
sea-breeze. But the Japanese were cautious. Their thirty- and
forty-thousand-ton battleships slowed down half a dozen miles
offshore and manoeuvred in ponderous evolutions, while tiny scout-
boats (lean, six-funnelled destroyers) ran in, cutting blackly the
flashing sea like so many sharks. But, compared with the Energon,
they were leviathans. Compared with them, the Energon was as the
sword of the arch-angel Michael, and they the forerunners of the
hosts of hell.

But the flashing of the sword, the good people of San Francisco,
gathered on her hills, never saw. Mysterious, invisible, it cleaved
the air and smote the mightiest blows of combat the world had ever
witnessed. The good people of San Francisco saw little and
understood less. They saw only a million and a half tons of brine-
cleaving, thunder-flinging fabrics hurled skyward and smashed back in
ruin to sink into the sea. It was all over in five minutes.
Remained upon the wide expanse of sea only the Energon, rolling white
and toylike on the bar.

Goliah spoke to the Mikado and the Elder Statesmen. It was only an
ordinary cable message, despatched from San Francisco by the captain
of the Energon, but it was of sufficient moment to cause the
immediate withdrawal of Japan from the Philippines and of her
surviving fleets from the sea. Japan the sceptical was converted.
She had felt the weight of Goliah's arm. And meekly she obeyed when
Goliah commanded her to dismantle her war vessels and to turn the
metal into useful appliances for the arts of peace. In all the
ports, navy-yards, machine-shops, and foundries of Japan tens of
thousands of brown-skinned artisans converted the war-monsters into
myriads of useful things, such as ploughshares (Goliah insisted on
ploughshares), gasolene engines, bridge-trusses, telephone and
telegraph wires, steel rails, locomotives, and rolling stock for
railways. It was a world-penance for a world to see, and paltry
indeed it made appear that earlier penance, barefooted in the snow,
of an emperor to a pope for daring to squabble over temporal power.

Goliah's next summons was to the ten leading scientists of the United
States. This time there was no hesitancy in obeying. The savants
were ludicrously prompt, some of them waiting in San Francisco for
weeks so as not to miss the scheduled sailing-date. They departed on
the Energon on June 15; and while they were on the sea, on the way to
Palgrave Island, Goliah performed another spectacular feat. Germany
and France were preparing to fly at each other's throats. Goliah
commanded peace. They ignored the command, tacitly agreeing to fight
it out on land where it seemed safer for the belligerently inclined.
Goliah set the date of June 19 for the cessation of hostile
preparations. Both countries mobilized their armies on June 18, and
hurled them at the common frontier. And on June 19, Goliah struck.
All generals, war-secretaries, and jingo-leaders in the two countries
died on that day; and that day two vast armies, undirected, like
strayed sheep, walked over each other's frontiers and fraternized.
But the great German war lord had escaped--it was learned, afterward,
by hiding in the huge safe where were stored the secret archives of
his empire. And when he emerged he was a very penitent war lord, and
like the Mikado of Japan he was set to work beating his sword-blades
into ploughshares and pruning-hooks.

But in the escape of the German Emperor was discovered a great
significance. The scientists of the world plucked up courage, got
back their nerve. One thing was conclusively evident--Goliah's power
was not magic. Law still reigned in the universe. Goliah's power
had limitations, else had the German Emperor not escaped by secretly
hiding in a steel safe. Many learned articles on the subject
appeared in the magazines.

The ten scientists arrived back from Palgrave Island on July 6.
Heavy platoons of police protected them from the reporters. No, they
had not see Goliah, they said in the one official interview that was
vouchsafed; but they had talked with him, and they had seen things.
They were not permitted to state definitely all that they had seen
and heard, but they could say that the world was about to be
revolutionized. Goliah was in the possession of a tremendous
discovery that placed all the world at his mercy, and it was a good
thing for the world that Goliah was merciful. The ten scientists
proceeded directly to Washington on a special train, where, for days,
they were closeted with the heads of government, while the nation
hung breathless on the outcome.

But the outcome was a long time in arriving. From Washington the
President issued commands to the masters and leading figures of the
nation. Everything was secret. Day by day deputations of bankers,
railway lords, captains of industry, and Supreme Court justices
arrived; and when they arrived they remained. The weeks dragged on,
and then, on August 25, began the famous issuance of proclamations.
Congress and the Senate co-operated with the President in this, while
the Supreme Court justices gave their sanction and the money lords
and the captains of industry agreed. War was declared upon the
capitalist masters of the nation. Martial law was declared over the
whole United States. The supreme power was vested in the President.

In one day, child-labour in the whole country was abolished. It was
done by decree, and the United States was prepared with its army to
enforce its decrees. In the same day all women factory workers were
dismissed to their homes, and all the sweat-shops were closed. "But
we cannot make profits!" wailed the petty capitalists. "Fools!" was
the retort of Goliah. "As if the meaning of life were profits! Give
up your businesses and your profit-mongering." "But there is nobody
to buy our business!" they wailed. "Buy and sell--is that all the
meaning life has for you?" replied Goliah. "You have nothing to
sell. Turn over your little cut-throating, anarchistic businesses to
the government so that they may be rationally organized and
operated." And the next day, by decree, the government began taking
possession of all factories, shops, mines, ships, railroads, and
producing lands.

The nationalization of the means of production and distribution went
on apace. Here and there were sceptical capitalists of moment. They
were made prisoners and haled to Palgrave Island, and when they
returned they always acquiesced in what the government was doing. A
little later the journey to Palgrave Island became unnecessary. When
objection was made, the reply of the officials was "Goliah has
spoken"--which was another way of saying, "He must be obeyed."

The captains of industry became heads of departments. It was found
that civil engineers, for instance, worked just as well in government
employ as before, they had worked in private employ. It was found
that men of high executive ability could not violate their nature.
They could not escape exercising their executive ability, any more
than a crab could escape crawling or a bird could escape flying. And
so it was that all the splendid force of the men who had previously
worked for themselves was now put to work for the good of society.
The half-dozen great railway chiefs co-operated in the organizing of
a national system of railways that was amazingly efficacious. Never
again was there such a thing as a car shortage. These chiefs were
not the Wall Street railway magnates, but they were the men who
formerly had done the real work while in the employ of the Wall
Street magnates.

Wall Street was dead. There was no more buying and selling and
speculating. Nobody had anything to buy or sell. There was nothing
in which to speculate. "Put the stock gamblers to work," said
Goliah; "give those that are young, and that so desire, a chance to
learn useful trades." "Put the drummers, and salesmen, and
advertising agents, and real estate agents to work," said Goliah; and
by hundreds of thousands the erstwhile useless middlemen and
parasites went into useful occupations. The four hundred thousand
idle gentlemen of the country who had lived upon incomes were
likewise put to work. Then there were a lot of helpless men in high
places who were cleared out, the remarkable thing about this being
that they were cleared out by their own fellows. Of this class were
the professional politicians, whose wisdom and power consisted of
manipulating machine politics and of grafting. There was no longer
any graft. Since there were no private interests to purchase special
privileges, no bribes were offered to legislators, and legislators
for the first time legislated for the people. The result was that
men who were efficient, not in corruption, but in direction, found
their way into the legislatures.

With this rational organization of society amazing results were
brought about. The national day's work was eight hours, and yet
production increased. In spite of the great permanent improvements
and of the immense amount of energy consumed in systematizing the
competitive chaos of society, production doubled and tripled upon
itself. The standard of living increased, and still consumption
could not keep up with production. The maximum working age was
decreased to fifty years, to forty-nine years, and to forty-eight
years. The minimum working age went up from sixteen years to
eighteen years. The eight-hour day became a seven-hour day, and in a
few months the national working day was reduced to five hours.

In the meantime glimmerings were being caught, not of the identity of
Goliah, but of how he had worked and prepared for his assuming
control of the world. Little things leaked out, clues were followed
up, apparently unrelated things were pieced together. Strange
stories of blacks stolen from Africa were remembered, of Chinese and
Japanese contract coolies who had mysteriously disappeared, of lonely
South Sea Islands raided and their inhabitants carried away; stories
of yachts and merchant steamers, mysteriously purchased, that had
disappeared and the descriptions of which remotely tallied with the
crafts that had carried the Orientals and Africans and islanders
away. Where had Goliah got the sinews of war? was the question. And
the surmised answer was: By exploiting these stolen labourers. It
was they that lived in the exposed village on Palgrave Island. It
was the product of their toil that had purchased the yachts and
merchant steamers and enabled Goliah's agents to permeate society and
carry out his will. And what was the product of their toil that had
given Goliah the wealth necessary to realize his plans? Commercial
radium, the newspapers proclaimed; and radiyte, and radiosole, and
argatium, and argyte, and the mysterious golyte (that had proved so
valuable in metallurgy). These were the new compounds, discovered in
the first decade of the twentieth century, the commercial and
scientific use of which had become so enormous in the second decade.

The line of fruit boats that ran from Hawaii to San Francisco was
declared to be the property of Goliah. This was a surmise, for no
other owner could be discovered, and the agents who handled the
shipments of the fruit boats were only agents. Since no one else
owned the fruit boats, then Goliah must own them. The point of which
is: THAT IT LEAKED OUT THAT THE MAJOR PORTION of THE WORLD'S SUPPLY
IN THESE PRECIOUS COMPOUNDS WAS BROUGHT TO SAN FRANCISCO BY THOSE
VERY FRUIT BOATS. That the whole chain of surmise was correct was
proved in later years when Goliah's slaves were liberated and
honourably pensioned by the international government of the world.
It was at that time that the seal of secrecy was lifted from the lips
of his agents and higher emissaries, and those that chose revealed
much of the mystery of Goliah's organization and methods. His
destroying angels, however, remained for ever dumb. Who the men were
who went forth to the high places and killed at his bidding will be
unknown to the end of time--for kill they did, by means of that very
subtle and then-mysterious force that Goliah had discovered and named
"Energon."

But at that time Energon, the little giant that was destined to do
the work of the world, was unknown and undreamed of. Only Goliah
knew, and he kept his secret well. Even his agents, who were armed
with it, and who, in the case of the yacht Energon, destroyed a
mighty fleet of war-ships by exploding their magazines, knew not what
the subtle and potent force was, nor how it was manufactured. They
knew only one of its many uses, and in that one use they had been
instructed by Goliah. It is now well known that radium, and radiyte,
and radiosole, and all the other compounds, were by-products of the
manufacture of Energon by Goliah from the sunlight; but at that time
nobody knew what Energon was, and Goliah continued to awe and rule
the world.

One of the uses of Energon was in wireless telegraphy. It was by its
means that Goliah was able to communicate with his agents all over
the world. At that time the apparatus required by an agent was so
clumsy that it could not be packed in anything less than a fair-sized
steamer trunk. To-day, thanks to the improvements of Hendsoll, the
perfected apparatus can be carried in a coat pocket.

It was in December, 1924, that Goliah sent out his famous "Christmas
Letter," part of the text of which is here given:

"So far, while I have kept the rest of the nations from each other's
throats, I have devoted myself particularly to the United States.
Now I have not given to the people of the United States a rational
social organization. What I have done has been to compel them to
make that organization themselves. There is more laughter in the
United States these days, and there is more sense. Food and shelter
are no longer obtained by the anarchistic methods of so-called
individualism but are now wellnigh automatic. And the beauty of it
is that the people of the United States have achieved all this for
themselves. I did not achieve it for them. I repeat, they achieved
it for themselves. All that I did was to put the fear of death in
the hearts of the few that sat in the high places and obstructed the
coming of rationality and laughter. The fear of death made those in
the high places get out of the way, that was all, and gave the
intelligence of man a chance to realize itself socially.

"In the year that is to come I shall devote myself to the rest of the
world. I shall put the fear of death in the hearts of all that sit
in the high places in all the nations. And they will do as they have
done in the United States--get down out of the high places and give
the intelligence of man a chance for social rationality. All the
nations shall tread the path the United States is now on.

"And when all the nations are well along on that path, I shall have
something else for them. But first they must travel that path for
themselves. They must demonstrate that the intelligence of mankind
to-day, with the mechanical energy now at its disposal, is capable of
organizing society so that food and shelter be made automatic, labour
be reduced to a three-hour day, and joy and laughter be made
universal. And when that is accomplished, not by me but by the
intelligence of mankind, then I shall make a present to the world of
a new mechanical energy. This is my discovery. This Energon is
nothing more nor less than the cosmic energy that resides in the
solar rays. When it is harnessed by mankind it will do the work of
the world. There will be no more multitudes of miners slaving out
their lives in the bowels of the earth, no more sooty firemen and
greasy engineers. All may dress in white if they so will. The work
of life will have become play and young and old will be the children
of joy, and the business of living will become joy; and they will
compete, one with another, in achieving ethical concepts and
spiritual heights, in fashioning pictures and songs, and stories, in
statecraft and beauty craft, in the sweat and the endeavour of the
wrestler and the runner and the player of games--all will compete,
not for sordid coin and base material reward, but for the joy that
shall be theirs in the development and vigour of flesh and in the
development and keenness of spirit. All will be joy-smiths, and
their task shall be to beat out laughter from the ringing anvil of
life.

"And now one word for the immediate future. On New Year's Day all
nations shall disarm, all fortresses and war-ships shall be
dismantled, and all armies shall be disbanded.

GOLIAH."

On New Year's Day all the world disarmed. The millions of soldiers
and sailors and workmen in the standing armies, in the navies, and in
the countless arsenals, machine-shops, and factories for the
manufacture of war machinery, were dismissed to their homes. These
many millions of men, as well as their costly war machinery, had
hitherto been supported on the back of labour. They now went into
useful occupations, and the released labour giant heaved a mighty
sigh of relief. The policing of the world was left to the peace
officers and was purely social, whereas war had been distinctly anti-
social.

Ninety per cent. of the crimes against society had been crimes
against private property. With the passing of private property, at
least in the means of production, and with the organization of
industry that gave every man a chance, the crimes against private
property practically ceased. The police forces everywhere were
reduced repeatedly and again and again. Nearly all occasional and
habitual criminals ceased voluntarily from their depredations. There
was no longer any need for them to commit crime. They merely changed
with changing conditions. A smaller number of criminals was put into
hospitals and cured. And the remnant of the hopelessly criminal and
degenerate was segregated. And the courts in all countries were
likewise decreased in number again and again. Ninety-five per cent.
of all civil cases had been squabbles over property, conflicts of
property-rights, lawsuits, contests of wills, breaches of contract,
bankruptcies, etc. With the passing of private property, this
ninety-five per cent. of the cases that cluttered the courts also
passed. The courts became shadows, attenuated ghosts, rudimentary
vestiges of the anarchistic times that had preceded the coming of
Goliah.

The year 1925 was a lively year in the world's history. Goliah ruled
the world with a strong hand. Kings and emperors journeyed to
Palgrave Island, saw the wonders of Energon, and went away, with the
fear of death in their hearts, to abdicate thrones and crowns and
hereditary licenses. When Goliah spoke to politicians (so-called
"statesmen"), they obeyed . . . or died. He dictated universal
reforms, dissolved refractory parliaments, and to the great
conspiracy that was formed of mutinous money lords and captains of
industry he sent his destroying angels. "The time is past for
fooling," he told them. "You are anachronisms. You stand in the way
of humanity. To the scrap-heap with you." To those that protested,
and they were many, he said: "This is no time for logomachy. You
can argue for centuries. It is what you have done in the past. I
have no time for argument. Get out of the way."

With the exception of putting a stop to war, and of indicating the
broad general plan, Goliah did nothing. By putting the fear of death
into the hearts of those that sat in the high places and obstructed
progress, Goliah made the opportunity for the unshackled intelligence
of the best social thinkers of the world to exert itself. Goliah
left all the multitudinous details of reconstruction to these social
thinkers. He wanted them to prove that they were able to do it, and
they proved it. It was due to their initiative that the white plague
was stamped out from the world. It was due to them, and in spite of
a deal of protesting from the sentimentalists, that all the extreme
hereditary inefficients were segregated and denied marriage.

Goliah had nothing whatever to do with the instituting of the
colleges of invention. This idea originated practically
simultaneously in the minds of thousands of social thinkers. The
time was ripe for the realization of the idea, and everywhere arose
the splendid institutions of invention. For the first time the
ingenuity of man was loosed upon the problem of simplifying life,
instead of upon the making of money-earning devices. The affairs of
life, such as house-cleaning, dish and window-washing, dust-removing,
and scrubbing and clothes-washing, and all the endless sordid and
necessary details, were simplified by invention until they became
automatic. We of to-day cannot realize the barbarously filthy and
slavish lives of those that lived prior to 1925.

The international government of the world was another idea that
sprang simultaneously into the minds of thousands. The successful
realization of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it
was nothing to that received by the mildly protestant sociologists
and biologists when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of
Malthus. With leisure and joy in the world; with an immensely higher
standard of living; and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity
for recreation, development, and pursuit of beauty and nobility and
all the higher attributes, the birth-rate fell, and fell
astoundingly. People ceased breeding like cattle. And better than
that, it was immediately noticeable that a higher average of children
was being born. The doctrine of Malthus was knocked into a cocked
hat--or flung to the scrap-heap, as Goliah would have put it.

All that Goliah had predicted that the intelligence of mankind could
accomplish with the mechanical energy at its disposal, came to pass.
Human dissatisfaction practically disappeared. The elderly people
were the great grumblers; but when they were honourably pensioned by
society, as they passed the age limit for work, the great majority
ceased grumbling. They found themselves better off in their idle old
days under the new regime, enjoying vastly more pleasure and comforts
than they had in their busy and toilsome youth under the old regime.
The younger generation had easily adapted itself too the changed
order, and the very young had never known anything else. The sum of
human happiness had increased enormously. The world had become gay
and sane. Even the old fogies of professors of sociology, who had
opposed with might and main the coming of the new regime, made no
complaint. They were a score of times better remunerated than in the
old days, and they were not worked nearly so hard. Besides, they
were busy revising sociology and writing new text-books on the
subject. Here and there, it is true, there were atavisms, men who
yearned for the flesh-pots and cannibal-feasts of the old alleged
"individualism," creatures long of teeth and savage of claw who
wanted to prey upon their fellow-men; but they were looked upon as
diseased, and were treated in hospitals. A small remnant, however,
proved incurable, and was confined in asylums and denied marriage.
Thus there was no progeny to inherit their atavistic tendencies.

As the years went by, Goliah dropped out of the running of the world.
There was nothing for him to run. The world was running itself, and
doing it smoothly and beautifully. In 1937, Goliah made his long-
promised present of Energon to the world. He himself had devised a
thousand ways in which the little giant should do the work of the
world--all of which he made public at the same time. But instantly
the colleges of invention seized upon Energon and utilized it in a
hundred thousand additional ways. In fact, as Goliah confessed in
his letter of March 1938, the colleges of invention cleared up
several puzzling features of Energon that had baffled him during the
preceding years. With the introduction of the use of Energon the
two-hour work-day was cut down almost to nothing. As Goliah had
predicted, work indeed became play. And, so tremendous was man's
productive capacity, due to Energon and the rational social
utilization of it, that the humblest citizen enjoyed leisure and time
and opportunity for an immensely greater abundance of living than had
the most favoured under the old anarchistic system.

Nobody had ever seen Goliah, and all peoples began to clamour for
their saviour to appear. While the world did not minimize his
discovery of Energon, it was decided that greater than that was his
wide social vision. He was a superman, a scientific superman; and
the curiosity of the world to see him had become wellnigh unbearable.
It was in 1941, after much hesitancy on his part, that he finally
emerged from Palgrave Island. He arrived on June 6 in San Francisco,
and for the first time, since his retirement to Palgrave Island, the
world looked upon his face. And the world was disappointed. Its
imagination had been touched. An heroic figure had been made out of
Goliah. He was the man, or the demi-god, rather, who had turned the
planet over. The deeds of Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, and
Napoleon were as the play of babes alongside his colossal
achievements.

And ashore in San Francisco and through its streets stepped and rode
a little old man, sixty-five years of age, well preserved, with a
pink-and-white complexion and a bald spot on his head the size of an
apple. He was short-sighted and wore spectacles. But when the
spectacles were removed, his were quizzical blue eyes like a child's,
filled with mild wonder at the world. Also his eyes had a way of
twinkling, accompanied by a screwing up of the face, as if he laughed
at the huge joke he had played upon the world, trapping it, in spite
of itself, into happiness and laughter.

For a scientific superman and world tyrant, he had remarkable
weaknesses. He loved sweets, and was inordinately fond of salted
almonds and salted pecans, especially of the latter. He always
carried a paper bag of them in his pocket, and he had a way of saying
frequently that the chemism of his nature demanded such fare.
Perhaps his most astonishing failing was cats. He had an
ineradicable aversion to that domestic animal. It will be remembered
that he fainted dead away with sudden fright, while speaking in
Brotherhood Palace, when the janitor's cat walked out upon the stage
and brushed against his legs.

But no sooner had he revealed himself to the world than he was
identified. Old-time friends had no difficulty in recognizing him as
Percival Stultz, the German-American who, in 1898, had worked in the
Union Iron Works, and who, for two years at that time, had been
secretary of Branch 369 of the International Brotherhood of
Machinists. It was in 1901, then twenty-five years of age, that he
had taken special scientific courses at the University of California,
at the same time supporting himself by soliciting what was then known
as "life insurance." His records as a student are preserved in the
university museum, and they are unenviable. He is remembered by the
professors he sat under chiefly for his absent-mindedness.
Undoubtedly, even then, he was catching glimpses of the wide visions
that later were to be his.

His naming himself "Goliah" and shrouding himself in mystery was his
little joke, he later explained. As Goliah, or any other thing like
that, he said, he was able to touch the imagination of the world and
turn it over; but as Percival Stultz, wearing side-whiskers and
spectacles, and weighing one hundred and eighteen pounds, he would
have been unable to turn over a pecan--"not even a salted pecan."

But the world quickly got over its disappointment in his personal
appearance and antecedents. It knew him and revered him as the
master-mind of the ages; and it loved him for himself, for his
quizzical short-sighted eyes and the inimitable way in which he
screwed up his face when he laughed; it loved him for his simplicity
and comradeship and warm humanness, and for his fondness for salted
pecans and his aversion to cats. And to-day, in the wonder-city of
Asgard, rises in awful beauty that monument to him that dwarfs the
pyramids and all the monstrous blood-stained monuments of antiquity.
And on that monument, as all know, is inscribed in imperishable
bronze the prophecy and the fulfilment: "ALL WILL BE JOY-SMITHS, AND
THEIR TASK SHALL BE TO BEAT OUT LAUGHTER FROM THE RINGING ANVIL OF
LIFE."

[EDITORIAL NOTE.--This remarkable production is the work of Harry
Beckwith, a student in the Lowell High School of San Francisco, and
it is here reproduced chiefly because of the youth of its author.
Far be it from our policy to burden our readers with ancient history;
and when it is known that Harry Beckwith was only fifteen when the
fore-going was written, our motive will be understood. "Goliah" won
the Premier for high school composition in 2254, and last year Harry
Beckwith took advantage of the privilege earned, by electing to spend
six months in Asgard. The wealth of historical detail, the
atmosphere of the times, and the mature style of the composition are
especially noteworthy in one so young.] _

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