It was that holiday feeling, coming after the bad time they had been through under the old system--a holiday feeling which even the chiefs, stimulated by bribes, could not control--which did the mischief; for it came inopportunely just at the time when, five thousand miles away, civilization had become imperilled by causes with which the Puto-Congo natives had nothing whatever to do. If civilization was so imperilled all the better for them. It was all very unfortunate: for while the fact that civilization was at war did not make civilization more valuable to the natives of Puto-Congo, it did make the natives and their trade-produce very much more valuable to civilization. Quite half-a-dozen things which they had unwillingly produced under forced labour in the past--rubber was one--had now become military necessities. It was no longer a mere question of profits for shareholders--civilization itself was at stake. Production had suddenly to be brought back to the thirty per cent standard; and that holiday feeling, so natural but so untimely in its incidence, was badly in the way. And so powers were given (which are not usually given to commercial concerns--though sometimes taken) and under government authority--a good deal at the instigation of Mr. Trimblerigg--the Puto-Congo Combine became exalted and enlarged into the Imperial Chartered Ray River Territory Company, which was in fact a provisional government with powers of enlistment civil and military, of life and death, and the making and administration of whatever laws might be deemed necessary in an emergency. Endowed with these high powers, the Directors at home, with every intention to use them circumspectly and in moderation, instructed their commissioners accordingly. But when the commissioners got to work they found, in the face of ‘that holiday feeling,’ that moderation did not deliver the goods. And since the goods had to be delivered, lest the world should be lost to democracy, they took advantage of the censorship which had been established against the promulgation of news unfavourable to the moral character of their own side, and took the necessary and effective means to deliver them. And when the profits once more began to rise, these did not go to the shareholders but to the Government as a form of war-tribute, and that, of course, made it morally all right--for the ten per cent shareholders at any rate--since they knew nothing about it. And thus, for three or four years, Puto-Congo natives did their bit, losing their own lives at an ever-increasing death-rate, and saving democracy which they did not understand, for that other side of the world which they did not know. They got no war-medals for it and no promotion; nor were any reports of those particular casualties printed in the papers. Enough that the holiday feeling went off, and the goods were delivered. Over the rest, war-conditions and war-legislation drew a veil, and nothing was said.