“True, these things were after your day. While Japan and China were organizing Asia, Germany and France united into one state, crushed Russia and England, and having founded the United States of Europe conquered the Americas.” “It was then that New York was destroyed?” I said faintly, feeling my head go round. “New York and every city, every village, on the continent, Bogardus, was razed to the ground. During this period the population of America and Europe was of course decimated. That was a war.” “And after that?” “Ten years later, in 1994, came the real World War; the teeming manpower of Asia against the laboratories of Germano-France. Again history repeated itself. The great discoveries of Europe’s scientists, particularly the perfecting of electronic energy and the destructive Z-rays with which a hundred aeroplanes were able to destroy all forms of life, wiped out in seven days the menace of Cathay forever.” “How frightful!” “Bogardus, like all men you are a sentimentalist,” said Acquilla calmly. “You are for little wars, but you stop at pursuing your ideas to a logical conclusion. To end war, a world calamity was necessary to destroy the cause of all war.” “I don’t comprehend--” “Really? In your day, your men philosophers and economists never perceived the obstacle to the establishment of a final scientific civilization.” I put my hand to my head and said slowly: “I haven’t the slightest idea, unless it can be the conflict of nationalities.” “Much deeper than that.” “What then?” “Over-population, and its concentration in the cities, that and nothing else.” “The idea is interesting,” I said, meditating. “Over-population has been the source of all wars and all poverty since men began to congregate in social bodies. The rise of the metropolis has been the doom of the nation. Consider Babylon, Sardanapolis, Rome, Alexandria, London, and New York. But no man perceived that, or at least if he did perceive it, had the courage to advocate the depopulation of the world. That was the first great advance of the feminine state.” “What an extraordinary idea!” “All your political failures were due to your obsession of exalting the mass over the individual. What an insensate appetite you had for population! What a horrible negation of human life it was! What a society of vermin your great cities must have been! Democracy, Socialism, Communism; each was an inevitable step forced upon you by your distention of the mass. And the science you boasted of! And your age of efficiency! Did you ever have, as we have, a yearly world survey as to the adjustment of population to that progress of mechanics which continually eliminates human labor?” “I have no answer,” I replied dumfounded. “It all seems so simple as you state it. Though,” I added, lighting up, “I do seem to remember some serious suggestion that science should take a holiday!”