mplicity
of attitude and openness of mind; and in this atmosphere of moral
renascence, there was little attempt to get negotiable advantages out of
resistance to the new order. Human beings are foolish enough no doubt,
but few have stopped to haggle in a fire-escape. The council had its
way with them. The band of 'patriots' who seized the laboratories and
arsenal just outside Osaka and tried to rouse Japan to revolt against
inclusion in the Republic of Mankind, found they had miscalculated the
national pride and met the swift vengeance of their own countrymen. That
fight in the arsenal was a vivid incident in this closing chapter of the
history of war. To the last the 'patriots' were undecided whether, in
the event of a defeat, they would explode their supply of atomic bombs
or not. They were fighting with swords outside the iridium doors,
and the moderates of their number were at bay and on the verge of
destruction, only ten, indeed, remained unwounded, when the republicans
burst in to the rescue....

Section 6

One single monarch held out against the general acquiescence in the new
rule, and that was that strange survival of mediaevalism, the 'Slavic
Fox,' the King of the Balkans. He debated and delayed his submissions.
He showed an extraordinary combination of cunning and temerity in his
evasion of the repeated summonses from Brissago. He affected ill-health
and a great preoccupation with his new official mistress, for his
semi-barbaric court was arranged on the best romantic models. His
tactics were ably seconded by Doctor Pestovitch, his chief minister.
Failing to establish his claims to complete independence, King Ferdinand
Charles annoyed the conference by a proposal to be treated as a
protected state. Finally he professed an unconvincing submission, and
put a mass of obstacles in the way of the transfer of his national
officials to the new government. In these things he was enthusiastically
supported by his subjects, still for the most part an illiterate
peasantry, passionately if confusedly patriotic, and so far with no
practical knowledge of the effect of atomic bombs. More particularly he
retained control of all the Balkan aeroplanes.

For once the extreme naivete of Leblanc seems to have been mitigated by
duplicity. He went on with the general pacification of the world as if
the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he announced
the disbandment of the force of aeroplanes that hitherto gua