“How much damage was done?”
“The damage was practically complete. The water works were destroyed along with the power stations. The skyscrapers were almost completely wrecked. Incendiary fires were started throughout the city. It was remarkably efficient, for warfare, as explosives were not thrown around at random but carefully placed to do maximum damage. It is believed that the helicopters made two or three trips. The weather made the whole thing possible, of course, particularly the gas attack that completed the job.”
“How was that?”
“After the attackers had apparently exhausted their supplies of high explosives, they systematically patrolled the island, remaining always in the clouds and dropped gas containers. They must have returned to their floating bases time and again for they kept this up for thirty-six hours.”
“You speak as if they had no opposition.”
“There was opposition, surely, but consider—You are a pilot. How would you attack an enemy ship in a cloudbank. ”
“I couldn’t.”
“That’s the answer. They destroyed Manhattan and nearly eighty per cent of its population. Although it wasn’t conclusive, hardly more than an exhibition of frightfulness, it lead indirectly to the end of the war.”
“Why was that?”
“Five out of six of the heads of the leading international banks were killed in the raid on Manhattan, not to mention the destruction of a large part of the records of the financial dealings that had started the trouble. And of course hundreds of the small fry in the banking racket. With the ring leaders gone Congress listened to the people of the country who had never wanted a war in the first place. An armistice was declared in 2004 February. The terms of the peace included moratoria on international obligations which was a polite word for cancellation, and established a Pan-American export-import bank to provide for resumption of trade on what amounted to a cash and carry basis.”
“Anything else?”
“That was about all. The destruction of Manhattan was checked off against the raids on Rio and Buenos Aires. But the most important result was the twenty-seventh amendment.”
“That’s the war referendum amendment, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Did the records tell you how it works?”
“Well, I gathered that it was an arrangement whereby the people had to vote on it before war could be declared.”
“That is true as far it goes. In effect the amendment states that, except in case of invasion of the United States, Congress shall not have the power to declare war without submitting the matter to a referendum. The article sketches out briefly the machinery for holding the referendum and sets a time limit in which to accomplish it. But the most amusing feature is the provision saying who shall vote in the matter.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“No, only those persons vote who are eligible for military duty.”
“Aren’t women permitted to vote?”
“Yes and no. If the current laws make women eligible for combat duty, they vote. If not, they don’t vote.”
Perry whistled. “I’ll bet that caused an uproar .”
Cathcart grinned as if savoring the joke. “It certainly did. Militant feminists screamed and frothed at the mouth. Then it was pointed out to them that the proposed amendment made no mention of sex and that they could, if they chose, make women eligible by including them for military service in the implementing bill.”
“But that isn’t practical.”
“On the contrary. As a matter of fact the law did include women for a number of years. Women can be used in the place of men in practically all military positions. Not as effectively in many of them, but they have been used many times. Your military history should have told you that.”
“I guess you’re right. Yes, I’d forgotten the Battalion of Death. And they make very good pilots of course.”
“At the present time a limited class of women are eligible for service and would consequently vote on a war question.”
“But see here. It seems to me that it is unfair to leave it in the hands of those who are eligible to go into the service. If there is any one thing I’ve learned from history I’ve studied today it is that war affects everybody in the country, that it can kill off an entire population. Why we knew that even in my day.”
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