RECORD OF THE SESSION OF THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC COMMAND

Eustata, 6th Vulpioz, Year XX of the Republic

Present:
Citizen Henscher, Chairman of the Committee
Citizen Schmeck, Commander of the Department of Public Health
Citizen Mausen, Commander of the Department of Public Agriculture
Citizen Strachen, Commander of the Department of Public Crafts and Industry
Citizen Zpener, Commander of the Department of Public Defence
Citizen Drace, Commander of the Department of Public Interior, Police, and Communications
Citizen Gausper, Commander of the Department of Public Science
Citizen Ladau, Commander of the Department of Public Education
Citizen Bile, Commander of the Department of Public Constructions, Mines, Forests and Waters
Citizen Zauber, Commander of the Department of Public Finances and the Treasury
Citizen Cvibler, Member without Department
Citizen Freve, Member without Department

Continuation of the Session at the Seventh Republican Hour and the Fourth Republican Minute[1]
Presidency: Citizen Henscher.

Henscher (striking the presidential bell for order): Citizens, the enemy’s assault obliges us to labor with doubled vigilance and energy. I declare the continuation of the sitting of the Committee of Public Command, and I record that the Committee is present in its entirety. I censure those Citizens who arrived four minutes late: for the Republic demands of us all our time, all our strength, our whole existence. The order of the day presents three communications arrived from the isle of Alvald. Before proceeding thereto, let the Commanders declare whether they have urgent questions to lay before the Committee.

Strachen: The urgent question, Citizens, is the same each day. All harbours are blockaded by the Tyrant’s fleets; trade with the archipelagos is strangled; saltpeter cannot be imported, while the Army clamours for powder. Innumerable workshops stand idle, compelled to yield to the manufacture of bread and bayonets. What we produce, the enemy annihilates from the skies. The People demand meat and soap.

Zpener: The coalition of Despotism possesses four times the number of war-balloons as the Republic—excluding even the fleets of the Archkingdom, which has not yet openly entered the war. As yet we cannot prevent their aerial bombardments. Still, our Constitution-defender balloons—single-use, but cheap, bearing light loads—are a great step for the nation’s safety, as we have seen in this very hour.

Cvibler: The question is—how long have we? The situation is grievous.

Zpener: On the battlefield, the Republic cannot be vanquished, if the decisive engagement were today. Should another invasion be attempted, the People will rise as one. No enemy force can overcome a whole Nation, where every individual Citizen is engaged in the national struggle. Yet there is one adversary which can defeat us: Hunger. And unless we act, Hunger will indeed conquer. Hunger of men, and hunger of muskets. For neither bread, nor meat, nor powder exists without limit. The Tyrant knows this, and makes it the cornerstone of his strategy.

Drace: Can we truly say that every Citizen of Guntreland is a soldier of the Republic? Even now, enemy spies corrupt the hungry with their accursed gold; the king thus commands a thousand secret slaves within our ranks. And forget not: from their aerial ships counterfeit tokens rain each day, which the unlearned Citizen cannot distinguish from the true. This is disaster for the People’s economy.

Zauber: We labour night and day to prevent falsification; yet whatever token we make, the enemy forges with ease. It is said the Tildeland king has proclaimed amnesty to every counterfeiter, on condition that he labour for the ruin of our currency—and rewards them with riches. Only one remedy exists: to annihilate the enemy’s balloons before their false token reaches the ground.

Gausper: That is impossible, for, as we have declared, they possess far more balloons than we.

Mausen: The State’s reserves of provisions are near their end. The Republic under blockade cannot endure more than half a year before Citizens begin to devour one another.

Schmeck: Then perhaps we should view it on the bright side: at least none would fear being eaten by werewolves thereafter. But I fear the People may sooner deliver themselves, body and soul, to the mercy of tyrants, in exchange for bread.

Henscher: With spies and forged money we must deal mercilessly; so speak the decrees of the National Assembly, the strongest shield of the People. As for werewolves—they are Citizens like all others. Tell me, is it not possible that a whole rich and fertile continent might yield food sufficient for every Citizen—if the Army can defend it from the Enemy’s aerial fire?

Strachen: Hypothetically it is possible, if powder sufficed. Defence by explosive balloons, our only hope against this inequality of numbers, devours powder in mountains. Even all the saltpeter of the Brelsing mines may not suffice. We have ordered our scientists to search every cellar, stable, rubbish-heap, every crumbling wall—for each ounce of nitre may spell the difference between Liberty and ruin.

Henscher: Should the powder fail, the whole Republic shall bare bayonets and await the enemy’s descent. The Nation of Guntreland has sworn: to live free, or to die!

Strachen: But bayonets pointed at the sky will not defend us from bombs and falling powder-kegs. Nor are aerial raids alone the cause of famine. Merchants, speculators, hoard grain, inflate prices. Butchers close their shops; queues grow endless. Soon the same fate awaits the bakeries and the stalls of vegetables. To prevent starvation, we must decree maximum prices on essentials, and ration cards—compulsory in every shop—for bread, meat, soap. And punishment of exile for those who hoard, and for those whose goods rot while Citizens starve.

Schmeck: Masden and his Masdenists will never assent. The “Free Market,” as they style it, they place above the very Constitution. The majority of Representatives are wealthy industrialists, artisans, landowners: they will see in this an attack on their property. They would sooner destroy the Committee than accept it.

Henscher: Nothing can be placed above the Constitution itself. If the tyrants and their plunderers triumph, then Masden’s formulas of “market” and “property” will vanish like chaff in the storm.

Cvibler: They say the Invisible Hand will distribute goods optimally.

Henscher: In the presence of the Visible Hand—the blockade, the bombs—their Invisible Hand shows little dexterity!

Freve: If we do not ensure bread for each Citizen, Hrebs will do it in our stead.

Schmeck: And Masden will not suffer that idly. Let Masden and Hrebs devour one another.

Freve: That is civil war! And how long then before the coalition subjugates us? We may exchange these armchairs for the Tyrant’s wheels.

Schmeck: No need for civil war. Let us propose Citizen Strachen’s plan to the Assembly. If Masden rejects it, the hungry People will see him as enemy, not us.

Cvibler: Or they may see the Assembly itself as their enemy.

Freve: And overturn it, placing Hrebs in power—over our corpses.

Henscher: Coalition outside, treason within! Citizens, seize the sword! Let the proposal be sent to the Assembly: maximum prices on bread, grain, soap! (rings the presidential bell)

Schmeck: As a sign of assent, I exclaim: Hurrah!

Cvibler: The Hrebsists have proposed that bakeries henceforth produce only one type of loaf: Republican Bread, for all Citizens. It is a simple white bread, without savour.

Henscher: Such a decree would extinguish all traditional bakeries, famed for their peculiar specialties. The day such law is passed will be a day of mourning in Guntreland.

Cvibler: From such opposition, what else can one expect?

Schmeck: Moreover, health demands not only white bread but also black. Their proposal means the whole economy reduced to one loaf, one musket, one soap-bar! Equality, yes—but starvation of the spirit.

Cvibler: Yet life cannot be forever sustained on bread and liberty alone.

Strachen: In old times, each province of Guntreland was famed for some exquisite craft, some luxury. Hrebs demands all luxury abolished, as in Bautia. Bread, arms, medicine: nothing more.

Henscher: To extinguish the proud manufactures of Guntreland is a crime against the Nation’s greatness! Does Liberty ever shine brighter, than when the hall of this very Committee is illuminated by these glass candelabra—masterworks of Vorena artisans—envied by the world?

Schmeck: Moreover, the manufacturers of luxury goods—wealthy and influential in their districts—would rise in fierce opposition, together with the multitude of their employees. The entire western Guntreland subsists upon the glass of Vorena. We would have insurrection throughout whole provinces.

Henscher: Is there no means to smuggle revolutionary writings onto the enemy continents, so that the citizens of those lands, once illumined by the radiant truth of the Republic which scatters all the lies of tyranny, may overthrow despotism and proclaim Republics?

Schmeck: The secret police of Tildeland and of Bautia, as well as of most Neuland cantons, watch eagerly to prevent the circulation of any writings inclined toward Republicanism, and they punish with severity all who dare to read, to print, or to distribute them. Beyond this… In Sigisland, Erzroyalism is so deeply rooted in the hearts of the people that loyalty to the Crown outweighs by far the very principle of universal suffrage. There each man feels as though he bore upon his own head the crown of the whole world, merely because he is subject of the Archkingdom; and though before the reform there were some who once murmured against the privileges of the higher estates, scarce a Sigislander will rise against the despotism of him whose crown he esteems also as his own. In Bautia, men are from the cradle taught only to obey commands; they would scarce comprehend what is meant by so much as the word “Republic.” Hederven, for its part, possesses already a republic—such as befits it: a republic of merchants and coin, where popular sovereignty, if once obtained, would be sold at once to him who proffers the heaviest purse of gold…

Henscher: We must not despair. Have we not ordered from Citizen Gaulus the great canvas of the Waves of the Year Fourteenth, where the shattered wrecks of Ferdinand’s fleet remind us—never lose faith in ultimate victory! Let us proceed to the order of the day.

Drace: I read the first declaration. The committees and subsidiaries of the Hrebsist faction send their formal protest against the Regional Commander. They claim he has annihilated honest citizens who took part in the burning of royalist castles.

Schmeck: The burning of castles that no longer defended themselves! After the royalist commander had surrendered the island, after the Republic had already secured full dominion over Alvald! The exploits of the Hrebsists are not conquests, but vandalism and massacre.

Henscher: Citizen Kunze enjoys the full support of this Committee. He has carried out the laws of the National Assembly, which safeguard the property of the Republic. Laws must weigh equally upon every citizen; he who violates them does not deserve to live. If these men were true citizens, they ought to thank Citizen Kunze for having annihilated them!

Cvibler: Excellent! I propose that the reply of Citizen Henscher be printed and circulated as a model of Republican morality!

(Henscher rings the presidential bell.)

Freve: I concur!

Drace: The branches of the Club of the Friends of Virtue and the Republic upon Alvald likewise have sent their declaration. They demand measures against the superstitions of the populace. In certain villages, the people fled into the forests upon hearing that the Republican detachments contained more werewolves than the forests themselves. At the solemn registration of friendship throughout the island, fewer than a hundred citizens declared friendship with werewolves; and as for the vampires, who number scarcely a hundred in all, they contracted friendships only among themselves. The people preferred the exile decreed for those without friends rather than join with beings they deemed monsters, even when it came to statutory friendships among those whom no one else had chosen.

Gausper: One cannot expect the consciousness of the people to be transformed in a single day by decrees and proclamations. By the laws of the Republic, each citizen stands guarantor for the obligations of his friends, serves in the same unit with them, and, should he fall, it is his friends who rear his children. Thus, friendship is among the most sacred ties of Republicanism.

Cvibler: Precisely! And would any of you entrust your children to one whose favorite drink is the blood of a dying man, whose choicest delicacy is the human heart and liver, who at every full moon transforms into a ravening wolf?

Schmeck: Indeed! I confess, I sorely miss a fresh and savory human heart! They say the heart of a Bautian is the finest and freshest, for he hardly uses it at all. Should the Committee dispatch me to Estana, I would be compelled to stop at the House of Honesty and pluck forth the hearts of some captured Bautians, to taste their sweetness! And oh, how many troubles I cause this Committee, good fellow-citizens, when we sit at the full moon and I take on the form of a wolf, so that afterward my chair is covered with fur from my shedding! And you cannot always know whether my howling means “Hoorah!” or “Boo!”

Henscher: (rings the bell with force) The mind of the people is steeped in superstition, in corrupt habits and slavish imitation. But the acts of Republican authority are the voice of pure Reason and of Virtue! Reality must be brought into accord with the Constitution and the Law!

Drace: Yet by law every citizen has the right to choose his own friends.

Henscher: True it is! But he also has the right to be freed from superstition, error, and false appearances which render the freedom of his will a hollow illusion. I propose that there be issued in every municipality of Alvald a proclamation declaring that neither werewolves nor vampires possess any natural or supernatural compulsion to slay men—save the natural duty incumbent on all good citizens, namely, to slay the enemies of the Republic—and that by the Constitution, the spreading of such superstitions shall be punished with exile. The preamble of the Constitution does not hang upon this wall to fill the void left by the tyrant’s portrait—it hangs there that we may be guided by it in every moment!

Schmeck: Such a law must hold sway throughout the whole territory of the Republic! Superstition already hampers us sorely in vaccination, for ignorant men refuse to have themselves and their children inoculated, believing that the vaccine contains a serum to render their flesh more palatable to werewolves. The spreading of such calumnies must be punished with annihilation, and refusal of vaccination itself must be punished likewise! To omit vaccination is to risk epidemics that, under present conditions, may spell death to the Republic itself!

Henscher: Hoorah! I am in full accord, Citizen! Let both proposals be drafted at once!

Drace: But will it not risk insurrection to decree such severe penalties for mere rumor-mongering? Masden has said in his party, if the main cause of refusal of vaccination is the fact that it is connected in the minds of the people with the Health Commander, who is a werewolf—would not Citizen Schmeck, for the salvation of the Republic and of vaccination, assume another office where his race would present less of a stumbling-block?

(Chairman Henscher interrupts him with loud ringing of the bell.)

Schmeck: And to what office? Shall I be made a forester, perhaps? I have healed unnumbered citizens and consecrated my entire life to the medical vocation!

Henscher: Rumors are at times more deadly than bullets, above all when we know into whose hands they play! Should we yield to superstition and corrupt social habits, the Revolution itself would be stripped of its very purpose!

Cvibler: Wolf Schmeck must all the more remain the Health Commander, precisely because some would exclude him on account of being a werewolf!

Henscher. It matters not whether he be werewolf, vampire, or classical human—what matters are his qualifications and his uncompromising Republican virtue! Look upon the painting of the defenders of the Republic upon the wall: behold there all three races united in the defense of Liberty! That is a Constitutional principle from which we shall not deviate! I denounce the utterance of Citizen Masden! Beyond the moral imperative of equality among all beings endowed with Reason—which is sufficient unto itself—let us recall as well the immense benefits the Republic reaps from having these citizens on her side. Now, let us return to the Order of the Day. Read on, Citizen! And upon all the motions presented, we shall vote immediately thereafter!

(Minutes recorded faithfully from his notes by Citizen Ladau, People’s Representative and Member of the Committee.)

[1] According to the Republican calendar decimal counting of time during the day has been implemented, so every day had ten republican hours, every hour a hundred republican minutes, and every republican minute a hundred republican seconds