L.P.M. : The End of the Great WarBarney, J. Stewart (John Stewart)
Science
L.P.M. : The End of the Great War
Barney, J. Stewart (John Stewart)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Lawrence, accepting the position of Room Clerk, took great pride and
pleasure in seeing that everyone was properly installed. This was not,
however, his official position, as Edestone had turned over to him the
task of answering the great volume of communications that he had
received from amateurs, fanatics, ladies, and criminals, and it devolved
upon him to answer these and also to provide for the entertainment of
the representatives of the Anarchists, Socialists, Organized Labour, and
Suffragettes.
To the Anarchists, in answer to their inquiries as to where they were
now to obtain their explosives with which to continue their campaigns in
the future, and without the use of which they could secure for their
arguments no attention, he made no reply.
To the Socialists, he said that the best that he could do for them was
to provide an overflow meeting at the foot of the stairs; the Emperor of
Germany had refused to sit down with the traitors, as he called them,
and for once Edestone agreed with the Imperial contention. There,
Lawrence assured them, their point of view would be given serious
consideration; in fact, he himself expected to have the great honour
of addressing them and the Prohibitionists, the Anti-Vivisectionists,
the Cubists, the Futurists, the Post-Impressionists, and the Reds.
To Organized Labour, Edestone wrote that he would represent their
cause. Descended as he was from a long line of honest labouring men, who
had succeeded without the assistance of an organization of lazy and
inefficient ones combined under dishonest leaders, he assured them that
he would insist upon their rights, and that under the new regime,
honesty, efficiency, and sense of responsibility to those who employed
them would be recognized and rewarded in a manner beyond their wildest
dreams. This could not, however, be accomplished, he said, except by
forcing the dishonest, lazy, and inefficient into their rightful
position, that of a worthless by-product in this great world of
recognition of true merit.
To the Suffragettes, Lawrence extended a most cordial invitation, but
stipulated that no representative would be received who had not borne
and raised twelve children, or were willing to appear at the meeting
without their hats, with hair cropped close to the head.
The date selected by Edestone was the Fourth day of July; the place, in
order to offend no one, was the beautiful valley of St. Nicholas in the
neutral country of the Swiss, and the Little Peace Maker, painted and
polished, was floating about twenty-five feet from the ground. About
one-quarter of her length from her stern, leading from an opening in her
bottom, ran a great flight of stairs which rested on a platform at their
foot. This was constructed in a manner similar to the cradle upon which
she was seen to rest by the King of England and his Cabinet. In this
manner she was connected with the earth but absolutely insulated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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