Human beings are foolish enough no doubt,
but few have stopped to haggle in a fire-escape. The council had its
way with them. The band of 'patriots' who seized the laboratories and
arsenal just outside Osaka and tried to rouse Japan to revolt against
inclusion in the Republic of Mankind, found they had miscalculated the
national pride and met the swift vengeance of their own countrymen. That
fight in the arsenal was a vivid incident in this closing chapter of the
history of war. To the last the 'patriots' were undecided whether, in
the event of a defeat, they would explode their supply of atomic bombs
or not. They were fighting with swords outside the iridium doors,
and the moderates of their number were at bay and on the verge of
destruction, only ten, indeed, remained unwounded, when the republicans
burst in to the rescue....
Section 6
One single monarch held out against the general acquiescence in the new
rule, and that was that strange survival of mediaevalism, the 'Slavic
Fox,' the King of the Balkans. He debated and delayed his submissions.
He showed an extraordinary combination of cunning and temerity in his
evasion of the repeated summonses from Brissago. He affected ill-health
and a great preoccupation with his new official mistress, for his
semi-barbaric court was arranged on the best romantic models.
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