by the time she arrived there, and so she breathed in several lungfuls
of the cleaner, purer stuff. It was a treat that she was grateful for.

"So what did Stinky McStink have to say?" President Schnozzle asked Ozma
upon her return.

"I did not get in to see Mr. McFoot," said Ozma sourly. "But I sure did
get a noseful of your immediate problem."

"Our immediate problem is the fact that a bunch of people with
stinky-feet are planning to attack and burn our village to the ground. I
am sorry, Your Majesty, but we are left with no other recourse but to go
to war with them and destroy them all before they do it to us. Surely
you can see that they are unreasonable and unkind and un-un--well, a
bunch of other words that start with 'un.' We can't allow them to
UN-ify us if we can help it, and we Sniffers are a proud people who will
not give in without a fight!"

"President Schnozzle," sighed Ozma. "I am not trying to belittle you or
your pride. I just don't think that resorting to violence is the way to
deal with any situation. It only leads to misery for both sides."

"Not if we win," replied the President.

"In times of war," said Lisa, "there are no winners." The hoot-owl had
stayed back with the four Lunechien animals at the Sniffer President's
modest home, and was also a little disappointed at Ozma's failure to
speak to the Stinkfoot leader. So much had been riding on this meeting.

But Ozma had not gotten in to see him, and the simple fact remained that
they were no closer to a solution than they had been before.

"Maybe we need those Saber-Toothed Light Bulbs right here," suggested
Nibbles. "Then the Stinkfoots would be too scared to start a fight."

"I doubt it," reasoned President Schnozzle. "I'm not even sure that any
Saber-Toothed Light Bulbs could handle the stinky smell of those
buzzards."

"Maybe not," said Hootsey. "But it is an idea. What if we were to scare
the Stinkfoots back into their own territory?"

"That may be possible," said Ozma. "It looked to me like they had no
problem of overpopulation. It was really just their desire to grow more
stinkweeds, and their incapability to do so in their soil."

"That's right!" said Lisa. "But no soil can go indefinitely growing the
same crop. Anyone who lives in the forest knows that! And even the
Munchkin farmers rotate their crops to keep their soil in balance."

"Rotate it?" scoffed the Sniffer President. "You mean like a phonograph
record on a turnta