The Once and Future King

Chapter IX

Later in the day a black ant came wandering over the new bridge: one of the wretched fuscae, a humble race who would only fight in self-defence. It was met by one of the scavengers and murdered.

The broadcasts changed after this news had been reported, as soon as it had been established by spies that the fusca nest had also its glass of syrup.

Mammy – mammy – mammy gave place to Antland, Antland Over All, while the stream of orders were discontinued in favour of lectures about war, patriotism and the economic situation. The fruity voice announced that their beloved country was being encircled by a horde of filthy fuscae – at which the wireless chorus sang

                          When fusca blood spurts from the knife,

                          Then everything is fine–

and it also explained that Ant the Father had ordained in his inscrutable wisdom that black pismires should always be the slaves of red ones. Their beloved country had no slaves at present, a disgraceful state of affairs which would have to be remedied if the master race were not to perish. A third statement was that the national property of Sanguinea was being threatened: their syrup was to be stolen, their domestic animals, the beetles, were to be kidnapped, and their communal stomach would be starved. The king listened to two of these talks carefully, so that he was able to remember them afterwards.

The first one was arranged as follows:

        a.    We are so numerous that we are starving.

        b.    Therefore we must not cut down our numbers but encourage large families in order to become still more numerous and starving.

        c.    When we are so numerous and starving as all that, obviously we have a right to take other people’s syrup. Besides, we shall by then have a numerous and starving army.

It was only after this logical train of thought had been put into practice, and the output of the nurseries trebled – Merlyn meanwhile giving them ample syrup daily for all their needs: for it has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so poor that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else – that the second type of lecture was commenced.

This is how the second kind went:

        a.    We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their syrup.

        b.    They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our syrup.

        c.    We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one.

        d.    They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one.

        e.    We must attack in self-defence.

        f.    They are attacking us by defending themselves.

        g.    If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow.

        h.    In any case we are not attacking them at all: we are offering them incalculable benefits.

After the second type of address, the religious services began. These dated, he discovered, from a fabulous past so ancient that he could scarcely find a date for it, in which the emmets had not yet settled down to socialism. They came from a time when ants were still like men, and terribly impressive some of them were.

A psalm at one of these services, beginning, if we allow for the difference of language, with the well-known words, ‘the earth is the Sword’s and all that therein is, the compass of the bomber and they that bomb therefrom,’ ended with the terrific conclusion: ‘Blow up your heads, O ye Gates, and be ye blown up, ye Everlasting Doors, that the King of Tories may come in. Who is the King of Tories? Even the Lord of Ghosts, He is the King of Tories.’

A strange feature was that the common ants were neither exalted by the songs nor interested by the lectures. They accepted them as matters of course. They were rituals to them, like the Mammy songs or the conversations about their beloved Leader. They did not regard these things as good or bad, exciting, rational or terrible: they did not regard them at all, but accepted them as Done.

Well, the time came for the slave war. All the preparations were in order, all the soldiers were drilled to the last ounce, all the walls of the nest carried patriotic slogans such as Stings or Syrup? or I Vow to Thee, my Smell, and the king was past hoping. He thought he had never been among such horrible creatures, unless it were at the time when he had lived among men, and he was beginning to sicken with disgust. The repetitive voices in his head, which he could not shut off: the absence of all privacy, under which others ate from his stomach while others again sang in his brain: the dreary blank which replaced feeling: the dearth of all but two values: the monotony more even than the callous wickedness: these had killed the joy of life which had been Merlyn’s gift at the beginning of the evening. He was as miserable again as he had been when the magician found him weeping at his papers, and now, when the Red Army marched to war at last, he suddenly faced about in the middle of the straw like an insane creature, ready to oppose their passage with his life.