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 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. Something around the year 5,000 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 the Commission of World
Safety followed soon after, and Colonel Manning became Mr. Commissioner
Manning. Commissioners had a life tenure and the intention was to create a
body with the integrity, permanence and freedom from outside pressure
possessed by the supreme court of the United States. Since the treaties
contemplated an eventual joint trust, commissioners need not be American
citizens—and the oath they took was to preserve the peace of the world.
There was trouble getting that clause past the Congress! Every other
similar oath had been to the Constitution of the United States.
Nevertheless the Commission was formed. It took charge of world aircraft,
assumed jurisdiction over radio-actives, natural and artificial, and
commenced the long slow task of building up the Peace Patrol.
Manning envisioned a corps of world policemen, an aristocracy which through
selection and indoctrination, could be trusted with unlimited power over
the life of every man, every woman, every child on the face of the globe.
For the power would be unlimited, the precautions necessary to insure the
unbeatable weapon from getting loose in the world again made it axiomatic
that its custodians would wield power that is safe only in the hands of
Deity. There would be no one to guard those self same guardians. Their own
characters and the watch they kept on each other would be all that stood
between the race and disaster.
For the first time in history, supreme political power was to be exerted
with no possibility of checks and balances from the outside. Manning took
up the task of perfecting it was a dragging subconscious conviction that it
was too much for human nature.
The rest of the Commission was appointed slowly, the names being sent to
the Senate after long joint consideration by the President and Manning. The
director of the Red Cross, an obscure little professor of history from
Switzerland, Dr. Igor Rimski who had developed the Karst-Obre technique
independently and whom the A. P. F. had discovered in prison after the
dusting of Moscow—those three were the only foreigners. The rest of the
list is well known.
Ridpath and his staff were of necessity the original technical crew of the
Commission; United States Army and Navy pilots its first patrolmen. Not all
of the pilots available were needed; their records were searched, their
habits and associates investigated, their mental processes and emotional
attitudes examined by the best psychological research methods
available—which weren’t good enough. Their final acceptance for the Patrol
depended on two personal interviews, one with Manning, one with the
President.
Manning told me that he depended more on the President’s feeling for
character than he did on all the association and reaction tests the
psychologists could think up. “It’s like the nose of a bloodhound,” he
said. “In his forty years of practical politics he has seen more phonies
than you and I will ever see and each one was trying to sell him something.
He can tell one in the dark.”
The long-distance plan included the schools for the indoctrination of cadet