in the judgment one might attempt to pass upon later developments. In the anti-Two-Tonian protective combinations, the Fringe no doubt figured prominently. It is characteristic of the primitive condition of Martian civilization that a nation’s political influence is determined, not by the wisdom it displays in international counsel, but by the size of the territory it controls, and partly, therefore, by the extent of its colonies. Now, during three long centuries various nations had explored the oceans and snapped up all the territories fit for colonization; and owing to the successful angling of the Brits, many of these colonies had in the end fallen into their hands. Next in colonial possessions came the Fringe, and another nation known as the Whole-landers also controlled considerable outlying territory. But as all these nations had been engaged in this accumulation-process for so long a span of time, the Two-Tons, when they commenced to search for similar far-off fields of expansion, found but little left over. And not being as perfect in dip-low-matic attainments as other nations, the Two-Tons, as other nations had feared all along, came to the conclusion that the only way in which they could attain to the same type of political influence, was by force of arms, in other words, by a free and very inconsiderate use of their national explosive on other nations’ territories. I am here tempted to call attention to the marked influence which political conditions exert over the mental activity of a nation’s philosophic authors.