“What! what!” exclaimed the King, jerking himself up to a sitting posture. “Surely you don’t mean that? I thought that no war would be possible without the permission of your Council. Surely you would not allow the nations of the world to go to war with each other again, and repeat all the horrors that happened a hundred and thirty years ago?” “Your Majesty forgets that when we renounced the control of the world six years ago we gave back to the nations the right of making war upon each other, although we hardly believed that they would be foolish enough and wicked enough to exercise it. That, however, is beside the question, because war is now inevitable, and, what is even more important, the Council of Aeria is unhappily powerless to prevent it.” “Eh! what is that?” exclaimed the King, this time rising to his feet and facing Alan with an air of petulant reproach. “Powerless to prevent it? You, with all your fleets of air-ships and submarine vessels? You, who have called yourselves the masters of the world for nearly a century and a half--you cannot stop war?” “We cannot do so, your Majesty,” said Alan, also rising to his feet, “simply because I regret to say that we no longer possess the undisputed empire of the air, and therefore, in a measure at least, we have lost the command of the world. “As for the responsibility which your words impute to us, I must tell you at once that it does not exist. The rulers of the world, and yourself among them, voluntarily and with full knowledge accepted perfect freedom, and therefore the individual responsibility that is inseparable from it. You knew that from the time we resigned the world-throne you were free to make war upon each other, on land and by sea. “It is your fault and not ours that you are now so defenceless that you have cause to fear the war against which you ask us to protect you. You have known for nearly four years that the Sultan of Islam has been creating armies and fleets, and diligently training millions of his subjects in that art of war which we hoped was to be forgotten for ever among men. “Did you suppose, you Kings and Princes of the Anglo-Saxon Federation, that Khalid the Magnificent, a man of boundless ambition, was creating these armies and fleets simply to play with them? Could you not see that nothing but some dream of world-wide conquest could be inspiring him to do this, and do you need to be told that the realms of Christendom offered him the only possible area of conquest in the world?