Under these circumstances, the unprejudiced observer would naturally expect the nations to form some sort of an alliance or federation for mutual protection, and with a view to a sensible combination of interests. Yet so short-sighted have been the evidently narrow-minded Martians until now, that they have utterly failed to take any such step. Nay, instead of cooperating with each other, the nations actually antagonize one another with blind stupidity. Small-minded jealousies and hatreds, expressing themselves especially in a peculiar international science which the Martians call dip-low-macy, keep the nations aloof from one another, and make sworn hereditary enemies of nations that should entertain naught but friendly and cooperative relations. Even those nations which have acquired the same faith, the same hopes, the same aspirations, continue to lead their isolated national existence, carefully nursing their mutual petty hatreds and malice against other nationalities. Inasmuch as pretty nearly all the Martian nations seem to be afflicted with this malicious nationality-mania, the planet Mars, as seen from the earth, inevitably makes the impression of one vast lunatic asylum, nationality-mania being the dreadful malady from which the Mars-bound patients are unfortunately suffering. Their minds seem to be as much in a whirl as is the rolling planet which they inhabit. This most unfortunate mental disease even disrupts and destroys the much vaunted bonds of a common religious faith. On the planet Mars, aside from the Nazarranos, another religious sect flourishes, founded by a prophet whose name, as far as we could decipher, was MOE HAMID. This MOE HAMID strictly prohibited the use of the mussel as an article of nourishment. And by the law of contradiction or by the irony of fate, the sect has ever since been known as the Musselmen. Now these Musselmen, although dispersed among different nationalities, have really formed a sort of brotherhood founded on their faith. Whenever a holy war is declared in earnest, all Musselmen stand together. That the members of this sect should refer to the Nazarrano-Darvinianos as dogs, may be deplorably one-sided, but can readily be understood. At any rate the Musselmen are known to stick together. Among the Darvinized Nazarranos, however, cooperative brotherhood is totally lacking. One of the Nazarrano-Darviniano nations looks upon another such nation as a contemptible pack of dogs; one nation considers the other to be an aggregate of low barbarians; and every single nation among them envies all the others any political power or industrial prosperity which by long-continued effort they may have attained.