"Then your Majesty's humane intervention," I said, "was not
entirely--well, fattening?"
"The fortune of war," said the King, gravely, looking over my head to
signify that the interview was at an end; and I retired from the Presence
on hands and feet, as is the etiquette in that country.
As soon as I was out of hearing I threw a stone in the direction of the
palace and said: "I never in my life heard of such a cold-blooded
scoundrel!"
In conversation with the King's Prime Minister, the famous Grumsquutzy, I
asked him how it was that Ug, being a great military power, was apparently
without soldiers.
"Sir," he replied, courteously shaking his fist under my nose in sign of
amity, "know that when Ug needs soldiers she enlists them. At the end of
the war they are put to death."
"Visible embodiment of a great nation's wisdom," I said, "far be it from
me to doubt the expediency of that military method; but merely as a matter
of economy would it not be better to keep an army in time of peace than to
be compelled to create one in time of war?"
"Ug is rich," he replied; "we do not have to consider matters of economy.
There is among our people a strong and instinctive distrust of a standing
army."
"What are they afraid of," I asked--what do they fear that it will do?"
"It is not what the army may do," answered the great man, "but what it may
prevent others from doing. You must know that we have in this land a thing
known as Industrial Discontent.
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