anag_ and has existed, I was told, for centuries. Immediately after
every war, and before the returned army is put to death, the chieftains
who have held high command and their official head, the Minister of
National Displeasure, are conducted with much pomp to the public square of
Nabootka, the capital. Here all are stripped naked, deprived of their
sight with a hot iron and armed with a club each. They are then locked in
the square, which has an inclosing wall thirty _clowgebs_ high. A signal
is given and they begin to fight. At the end of three days the place is
entered and searched. If any of the dead bodies has an unbroken bone in it
the survivors are boiled in wine; if not they are smothered in butter.

Upon the advantages of this custom--which surely has not its like in the
whole world--I could get little light. One public official told me its
purpose was "peace among the victorious"; another said it was "for
gratification of the military instinct in high places," though if that is
so one is disposed to ask "What was the war for?" The Prime Minister,
profoundly learned in all things else, could not enlighten me, and the
commander-in-chief in the Wuggard war could only tell me, while on his way
to the public square, that it was "to vindicate the truth of history."

In all the wars in which Ug has engaged in historic times that with Wug
was the most destructive of life. Excepting among the comparatively few
troops that had the hygienic and preservative advantage of personal
collision with the enemy, the mortality was appalling. Regiments exposed
to the fatal conditions of camp life in their own country died like flies
in a frost. So pathetic were the pleas of the sufferers to be led against
the enemy and have a chance to live that none hearing them could forbear
to weep. Finally a considerable number of them went to the seat of war,
where they began an immediate attack upon a fortified city, for their
health; but the enemy's resistance was too brief materially to reduce the
death rate and the men were again in the hands of their officers. On their
return to Ug they were so few that the public executioners charged with
the duty of reducing the army to a peace footing were themselves made ill
by inactivity.

As to the navy, the war with Wug having shown the Uggard sailors to be
immortal, their government knows not how to get rid of them, and remains a
great sea power in spite of itself. I ventured to suggest musterin