"Exactly," struck in Mr. Villele. "There are the soldier ants, and the slave ants, and the official ants, and the egg-producing ants. We ought to call Meccania the Super-Insect-State, eh?" "Yes; the land of the Super-Insects," said Johnson. "No person in Meccania, certainly no child, is ever looked upon as an 'end in itself'; he is simply one of a community of ants." "Of course," I said, "to be quite fair, we cannot consider anybody strictly as an end in himself, even in Luniland." "Theoretically that is so," replied Johnson, "but in practice it makes all the difference in the world whether you regard a man as an individual soul, or as a cell in an organism or a wheel in a machine." "Why do you Lunilanders and Francarians, if I may ask such a large question, allow yourselves to be influenced at all by what is done in Meccania? There is so little intercourse between the countries that it hardly seems worth while having any at all," I said. "Because in both countries there are still many people who regard the Meccanians not as Super-Insects, but as human beings," answered Johnson. "And there is always, too, the ultimate possibility of conflict. If they were on another planet it would not matter, providing they could invent no means of communicating with us. In itself Meccanian education is of little interest, except, of course, as education in the insect world might be interesting, or perhaps as a branch of pedagogical pathology or psychological pathology." "In effect," interrupted Mr. Villele, "it all comes back to what Mr. Johnson was saying a few nights ago, that the key to the whole polity of Meccania is military power. Meccanian education is merely a means to that end, just as the Time Department, and every other institution--and the absence of certain other institutions like the Press, for example--is. The Super-State is the grand instrument of Militarism." "Is it not possible," I said, "that the real key to the Super-State is the desire of the ruling classes to keep themselves in power?" "But the two things go together," answered Villele. "The Meccanian maxim is that 'The State must be strong within in order to be strong without.'" "And is not that true doctrine?" I said, wondering how they would answer the argument. "To a certain extent," answered Johnson cautiously. "But where are their enemies? Why should they want all this 'Super-Strength'?" "They say they are surrounded by unfriendly nations," I replied. "So they are," answered Villele, "but they have done their best to make them unfriendly. If you knock a man down, and trample on him, and rob him into the bargain, you can hardly expect him to be a friendly neighbour next day." "We started by talking about education," I remarked, "but we have very soon got into a discussion about Militarism--somehow we seem to get to that no matter what point we start from."