Gambling -- Fiction; Political fiction; Science fiction, American; Short stories
He took it to Cairo, where Britain and Greece tossed for Cyprus. Greece
won, and at once offered Britain all the bases she wanted there, and
granted special extraterritorial status to all British colonels,
knights' widows and former governors of the Punjab living in retirement
on the island.
He got his third star just before he flew down to Rio de Janiero for the
toss that finally settled the nagging quarrel between Britain and
Argentina as to who owned the Falkland Islands. Britain won.
He took it to The Hague in Holland for the toss about the Saar. The Saar
had remained a European sore point despite a series of Franco-German
"settlements" which never seemed to settle anything. Germany won the
toss, and immediately, of her own free will, granted the French equal
commercial rights.
The Saar toss had two odd results. The first was purely personal for
General O'Reilly, but he never forgot it. One day, driving through The
Hague, his official car passed a huge dignified building, which his
chauffeur explained was the World Court. With a strange feeling, the
general noticed a solemn old man in black, staring bleakly out the
window. He realized suddenly it was probably a judge, and that the
golden coin in his pocket had turned this costly mechanism into an
anachronism. Nobody used the World Court any more now.
The other result of the Saar toss was, from the viewpoint of world
jurisprudence, far more important. It transformed the Golden Judge from
a mere tradition into an established legal institution, in this manner:
France and Germany had been unable to agree whether the Saar was really
_tossable_--a term that soon entered dictionaries--and had appealed to
the United Nations to decide. A temporary or _ad hoc_ United Nations
commission had been named to settle this point and, after due
deliberation, had pronounced the Saar tossable.
Technically, this "Saar Commission" should have then dissolved itself.
Instead, in the way of parliamentary institutions, it lingered on and
soon became the accepted body to decide on tossability. And,
illogically, it was forever afterwards still called the "Saar
Commission."
Whenever, anywhere in the world, some international dispute reached
stalemate, it became commonplace for some delegate to rise and say: "Mr.
Chairman, I move the question be referred to the Saar Commission."
In due course, the Saar Commission would then give its solemn judgment
as to whether or not the dispute should be put to the arbitrament of the
Golden Judge. If so, General O'Reilly would board a plane, and be off.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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