"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."

"What you say is true. But the non-combatants don't expect to be killed—not seriously. In the A.-B.-C. war if those bankers who were killed in the raid on Manhattan had expected to be bombed and gassed, there wouldn't have been any war. But they didn't. They thought the war would be fought far away by the professionals. No, the great mass of civilians never see war as anything personal to themselves, unless it is brought home to each one that he, John, will have to fight in person. That is why nations used to declare war so easily and then be forced to use conscription to fight the war. The country wants to go to war. Oh surely. 'John Brown's Body.' 'Make the World Safe for Democracy.' 'Britons never will be slaves.' But if the war is more than a skirmish you have to draft men to fight it. With all due respect to you, Diana, women were worse than men about it. It's always possible to get women stirred up to a war fever. Half of the men who do volunteer in a war instead of waiting to be conscripted, do so because some woman who thinks it's glorious and romantic is urging them or shaming them into it. In peace time women are emotional pacifists, but when the bands start to play, they are much more easily stampeded than men. What's on your mind, son? You look thoughtful."

"I was thinking of an organization that used to give me the cold shivers, the Gold Star Mothers. They were formed after the World War and a woman had to have had a son killed in the war to be eligible. They had meetings and officers and conventions and national presidents and so forth, just like a lodge. It made my flesh crawl."

Diana interposed. "But, Perry, I should think such an organization could be a powerful force for good."

"It could have been, but it wasn't. If they had devoted themselves to making another war impossible, it would have been fine. But it was just another lodge, just another woman's club. But let's get back to the subject. I'd rather forget it."

Cathcart resumed his discourse. "I haven't told you about the neatest feature of the amendment. As we have said, only those who could fight could vote. Those who voted to declare war automatically enlisted for the duration of the war. The ballot even told them where to report the next morning. Those who didn't vote were the next draft, and those who voted no the last draft."

Perry looked puzzled and slightly annoyed, "But that puts a premium on cowardice, doesn't it? If war is declared, they should all have to take the same chances. If I had my way, I would just reverse the scheme."

"Don't be hasty, Perry. Stop and think. Is it a premium on cowardice? Perhaps it is. But isn't it just as likely to be a premium on common judgment? Perhaps the war isn't worth fighting. I've studied history all my life and I can remember but two or three wars that seemed to me to be worth fighting, and I have my doubts about those. In any case, if a man takes the responsibility of voting to plunge a country into a situation that may destroy it and is bound to kill and maim a lot of its citizens, shouldn't he have to accept the consequences of his decision by being in the first line of fighting? There is a stern justice about it. Under this rule no man could cast a vote that would send a fellow human being out to face poisonous gas and shots and burning rays without being ready to stand alongside him and suffer the same fate."

"But see here, in a democratic country, we are all in the same boat. Why shouldn't everybody have to defend the country alike?"

"Your reasoning is sound, Perry, but it doesn't apply to the case. You have forgotten that if the United States is invaded, no referendum is necessary. To be exact if any part of the North American continent is invaded, or if a fleet approaches our home waters with evident hostile intent, Congress can act without consulting the people. The referendum applies to situations such as the First World War, or the Spanish-American War or the War of 1812 or the A.-B.-C War. As a matter of fact the President has ample power to act, even without consent of Congress, to repel invasion or to succor our nationals abroad. No, the purpose of this amendment is to permit the people to decide for themselves whether or not an incident or series of incidents constitutes sufficient reason for them to want to go outside our own country and fight someone else. Of course the munitions makers didn't like it nor a lot of the financiers and industrialists, but it was democratic and reasonable and the people voted it in anyhow, once they understood it. But the munitions makers fought it tooth and toenail and eventually cooked their own goose in the process."