Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

dead power of the dust would never fall into unfit hand:

The problem is as easy to state as the problem squaring the circle and

almost as impossible of a complishment. Both Manning and the President b lieved that

the United States must of necessity ke~ the power for the time being, until some

permane institution could be developed fit to retain it. The ha and was this:

Foreign policy is lodged jointly in ti hands of the President and the Congress. We

were fc tunate at the time in having a good President and adequate Congress, but

that was no guarantee for the future. We have had unfit Presidents and power-hungry

Congresses-oh, yes! Read the history of the Mexican War.

We were about to hand over to future governments of the United States the

power to turn the entire globe into an empire, our empire. And it was the sober

opinion of the President that our characteristic and beloved democratic culture

would not stand up under the temptation. Imperialism degrades both oppressor and

oppressed.

The President was determined that our sudden power should be used for the

absolute minimum of maintaining peace in the world-the simple purpose of outlawing

war and nothing else. It must not be used to protect American investments abroad, to

coerce trade agreements, for any purpose but the simple abolition of mass killing.

There is no science of sociology. Perhaps there will be, some day, when a

rigorous physics gives a finished science of colloidal chemistry and that leads in

Page 59

turn to a complete knowledge of biology, and from there to a definitive psychology.

After that we may begin to know something about sociology and politics. Sometime

around the year 5000 A. D., maybe-if the human race does not commit suicide before

then.

Until then, there is only horse sense and rule of thumb and observational

knowledge of probabilities. Manning and the President played by ear.

The treaties with Great Britain, Germany and the Eurasian Union, whereby we

assumed the responsibility for world peace and at the same time guaranteed the

contracting nations against our own misuse of power, were rushed through in the

period of relief and goodwill that immediately followed the termination of the

Four-Days War. We followed the precedents established by the Panama Canal treaties,

the Suez Canal agreements, and the Philippine Independence policy.

But the purpose underneath was to commit future governments of the United

States to an irrevocable benevolent policy.

The act to implement the treaties by creating tF Commission of World Safety

followed soon after, an Colonel Manning became Mr. Commissioner Mai ning.

Commissioners had a life tenure and the intei tion was to create a body with the

integrit permanence and freedom from outside pressure p0sessed by the Supreme Court

of the United State Since the treaties contemplated an eventual join trust,

commissioners need not be American citizensand the oath they took was to preserve

the peace of t1~ world.

There was trouble getting the clause past the Coi gress! Every other similar

oath had been to the Const tution of the United States.

Nevertheless the Commission was formed. It toc charge of world aircraft,

assumed jurisdiction over r~ dioactives, natural and artificial, and commenced tF

long slow task of building up the Peace Patrol.

Manning envisioned a corps of world policemen, a aristocracy which, through

selection and indoctrim tion, could be trusted with unlimited power over life of

every man, every woman, every child on the fa( of the globe. For the power would be

unlimited; ti precautions necessary to insure the unbeatab weapon from getting loose

in the world again made axiomatic that its custodians would wield power th~ is safe

only in the hands of Deity. There would be r one to guard those selfsame guardians.

Their o~ characters and the watch they kept on each oth would be all that stood

between the race and disaste For the first time in history, supreme political pow

was to be exerted with no possibility of checks an balances from the outside.

Manning took up the ta~ of perfecting it with a dragging subconscious convi tion

that it was too much for human nature.

The rest of the Commission was appointed sbowl the names being sent to the