And Matsukuo had said, testily: "Colonel, I will not permit a member of my staff to make a fool of himself in front of the Commanding Staff. Setting yourself up as someone superior to the Strategy Board is the most antisocial type of egocentrism imaginable. You were given the same education at the Academy as every other officer; what makes you think you are better than they? As time goes on, your automatic promotions will put you in a position to vote on such matters--provided you don't prejudice the Promotion Board against you by antisocial behavior. I hold you in the highest regard, colonel, and I will say nothing to the Promotion Board about this, but if you persist I will have to do my duty. Now, I don't want to hear any more about it. Is that clear?" It was. All MacMaine had to do was wait, and he'd automatically be promoted to the Commanding Staff, where he would have an equal vote with the others of his rank. One unit vote to begin with and an additional unit for every year thereafter. _It's a great system for running a peacetime social club, maybe_, MacMaine thought, _but it's no way to run a fighting force_. Maybe the Kerothi general was right. Maybe _homo sapiens_ just wasn't a race of fighters. They had been once. Mankind had fought its way to domination of Earth by battling every other form of life on the planet, from the smallest virus to the biggest carnivore. The fight against disease was still going on, as a matter of fact, and Man was still fighting the elemental fury of Earth's climate. But Man no longer fought with Man. Was that a bad thing? The discovery of atomic energy, two centuries before, had literally made war impossible, if the race was to survive. Small struggles bred bigger struggles--or so the reasoning went. Therefore, the society had unconsciously sought to eliminate the reasons for struggle. What bred the hatreds and jealousies among men? What caused one group to fight another? Society had decided that intolerance and hatred were caused by inequality. The jealousy of the inferior toward his superior; the scorn of the superior toward his inferior. The Have-not envies the Have, and the Have looks down upon the Have-not. Then let us eliminate the Have-not. Let us make sure that everyone is a Have. Raise the standard of living. Make sure that every human being has the necessities of life--food, clothing, shelter, proper medical care, and proper education. More, give them the luxuries, too--let no man be without anything that is poorer in quality or less in quantity than the possessions of any other. There was no longer any middle class simply because there were no other classes for it to be in the middle of. "The poor you will have always with you," Jesus of Nazareth had said. But, in a material sense, that was no longer true. The poor were gone--and so were the rich. But the poor in mind and the poor in spirit were still there--in ever-increasing numbers.