The Story of the Last Trump § 1 "After this war," said Wilkins, "after its revelation of horrors and waste and destruction, it is impossible that people will tolerate any longer that system of diplomacy and armaments and national aggression that has brought this catastrophe upon mankind. This is the war that will end war." "Osborn," said Boon, "Osborn." "But after all the world has seen----!" "The world doesn't see," said Boon.... Boon's story of the Last Trump may well come after this to terminate my book. It has been by no means an easy task to assemble the various portions of this manuscript. It is written almost entirely in pencil, and sometimes the writing is so bad as to be almost illegible. But here at last it is, as complete, I think, as Boon meant it to be. It is his epitaph upon his dream of the Mind of the Race. § 2 The Story of the Last Trump The story of the Last Trump begins in Heaven and it ends in all sorts of places round about the world.... Heaven, you must know, is a kindly place, and the blessed ones do not go on for ever singing Alleluia, whatever you may have been told. For they too are finite creatures, and must be fed with their eternity in little bits, as one feeds a chick or a child. So that there are mornings and changes and freshness, there is time to condition their lives. And the children are still children, gravely eager about their playing and ready always for new things; just children they are, but blessèd as you see them in the pictures beneath the careless feet of the Lord God. And one of these blessèd children routing about in an attic--for Heaven is, of course, full of the most heavenly attics, seeing that it has children--came upon a number of instruments stored away, and laid its little chubby hands upon them.... Now indeed I cannot tell what these instruments were, for to do so would be to invade mysteries.... But one I may tell of, and that was a great brazen trumpet which the Lord God had made when He made the world--for the Lord God finishes all His jobs--to blow when the time for our Judgement came round. And He had made it and left it; there it was, and everything was settled exactly as the Doctrine of Predestination declares. And this blessèd child conceived one of those unaccountable passions of childhood for its smoothness and brassiness, and he played with it and tried to blow it, and trailed it about with him out of the attic into the gay and golden streets, and, after many fitful wanderings, to those celestial battlements of crystal of which you have doubtless read. And there the blessed child fell to counting the stars, and forgot all about the Trumpet beside him until a flourish of his elbow sent it over.... Down fell the trump, spinning as it fell, and for a day or so, which seemed but moments in heaven, the blessed child watched its fall until it was a glittering little speck of brightness.... When it looked a second time the trump was gone....