THE FLAG OF THE REPUBLIC
Official Journal of the Free and Virtuous Nation of Guntreland
9th Day of Felinose, Year XX of the Republic (excerpts)
FROM THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY — 8 Felinose
Presidency of Rezer
Masden. It pains me, truly, to behold in the conduct of the Republic acts which, even with the best intentions, cannot be named other than sheer folly. This morning Evrer’s paper sang paeans to strangers who have taken our citizenship in order to win release from prison, bedecking them with their own declarations of enthusiasm — declarations which bring tears of joy to the good Henscherites, who are filled with faith in the unity of mankind against tyranny. Even the official gazette printed an article lauding their Civic Oath, as if it were some great triumph of the Republic that had cast thousands of enemy soldiers out of their ranks and transplanted them into ours. Alas, these were men already discarded by their former armies; though they now wear the Guntrelandic uniform and hold Guntrelandic passports, their hearts must remain Tildelandic — their parents, wives and children are still in Tildeland; their towns and villages are those in which they grew, their homes still bind them.
My honoured colleagues, who style themselves friends not merely of virtue and the Republic but even of the animal republic — whose citizens they so often invoke — I would remind them of the Cat, which above all loves its own territory: let them, when they look upon a cat, consider also the Tildelanders, who have no less reason than the cat to love the soil where their time was spent, more than that other soil which a few words were able to make theirs only to fling open a prison door. Doubtless, if not all then the great number among them intend, when first favourable occasion presents itself, to desert to the enemy; or perchance to stab us in the back in a most decisive hour — an act they may deem necessary to prove their fealty to their old side — and for that we cannot, perhaps, greatly blame them…
The President tolled the bell and interrupted Citizen Masden’s speech.
President. I warn you, Citizen Masden: it is not constitutional thus to speak of our fellow-citizens who have taken the Civic Oath. All citizens of the Republic of Guntreland are equal in rights, duties, and dignity; among them there must reign fraternity, not suspicion!
Masden. My intent is not to speak ill of those who have taken the oath — for that has been done, and they have been made our brothers — and if reality must submit to the Constitution (though in nature, as you know, the contrary is more often the case — save where we speak of that Constitution which Nature herself composes) then I, too, will bend my private feelings toward these men to the fact that they are now my brothers, one blood and one flesh…
Schmeck. — Even seasoned with the same spices! — (general laughter)
Masden. I ask the Commander of the Health Department, Citizen non-Doctor Schmeck, to maintain decorum and not to interrupt me, least of all with cannibal jests which fill our citizens with unease, distrust of the Republic’s health system, and, in the last resort, distrust of the Republic itself. — (Cries of “Boo to Masden!” and “Boo to Schmeck!”) — These remarks are, I repeat, the emanation of his personal character, not his race. — (Shouts of “Hurrah!” and “Well said!” from Masden’s club and neutral benches) — My purpose is not to censure our new fellow-citizens, for their citizenship is irrevocable by the Constitution, except by the commission of some deed deserving expulsion from the body politic — as that institution is prettily termed in Henscherite-Schmeckite jargon. What is done must be respected; and if thereby we receive a knife in the Republic’s back, then glory and thanks be to the majority which made such provisions and to Evrer’s journal and its opinions on the revolution of mankind — let it be a lesson to this entire Assembly how it fares when Constitution, law, and decree are adapted to inevitable reality. If, on the other hand, we have acquired honest and virtuous citizens who keep the oath they swore, let no one suppose I would wish otherwise. Yet I insist that henceforth we show greater prudence and regard for the immutabilities of nature; therefore I propose we alter the decree concerning prisoners so that, until war’s end, admission to Guntrelandic citizenship be suspended for all captives save those in whose case, beyond reasonable doubt and with testimony from Guntrelandic witnesses, it is shown that they voluntarily and without coercion grounded their balloons upon territory under the Republic’s control, or surrendered to Republican aerial patrols before any necessity for combat, or leapt by parachute from their craft before mortal peril beset them, or otherwise set foot upon our soil with the exclusive intent of joining the Republican cause. Only in such persons may we be confident — or, to speak more rightly, may we have any rational reason to believe — that they shall comport themselves as good Guntrelandic citizens; and that only provided it can be demonstrated they possess no close family members in their native lands whose lives might be used to coerce them toward royalism. Any other manner by which those whose feelings and upbringing do not belong to us are admitted into our ranks is a danger to the Republic and, I will say plainly, negligence of her destiny. — (Applause)
Hrebs. If we alter the captive decree, let us insert therein that which is the best protection for all good Republicans: place barrels of powder beneath the dungeons where captives are kept, so the enemy shall know that, if he would set upon our freedom, before he can enslave us his own countrymen shall be slain. — (Citizen Hrebs is cut short by loud applause) — This will press the citizens of hostile lands to put pressure upon their rulers — rulers who value their subjects not at all — to desist from assaulting our liberty, and will enable a peace in which these captives are exchanged for our imprisoned compatriots whom the enemy holds.
Henscher. Whatever coat of arms is on the passport, let that coat of arms be on the heart! Citizens, let not a single man who has taken the Oath be cast under suspicion! An oath to tyrants binds no soul; the Oath to the Republic — that invisible tricolour band about the breast of the good citizen — is by the law of Nature the strongest of bonds by which a Person’s honour and duty can be bound! Those who have linked their fate to the fate of the Republic of Guntreland, those who, should she fall, will themselves perish — perhaps more bitterly than other Guntrelanders, for their former masters will call them traitors — and those who, should she triumph, will taste the fruits of her liberty and live for ever in her glory, these are our brothers by the flag; and shame upon him who questions their Republicanism and their Guntrelandry!
And if it were otherwise — if among them lurked those whose defection to our side formed part of some tyrannic stratagem, or men who had no true intention of becoming sincere Guntrelandic republicans — it would be no citizenly course to treat the Civic Oath, that word which binds a man’s honour, as a filthy instrument of deceit and fraud: such a scorn would profane the sanctity of the Oath and affront the natural dignity of Man and Citizen; and if any man did commit sacrilege against these inviolable things, let the shame and loathing of that sacrilege rest upon him alone, and not upon us, the representatives of the people’s sovereignty of a nation free and natural and founded upon Virtue.
We respect the cat; and since it has not the reason to perceive the meaning of flag, passport, or law, we may believe that a cat brought from Tildeland would in some cases prefer the soil of that slavish country to our free ground: but Man, a being of law, cannot be bound to a country other than that which, by its law, has made him a free citizen. There are forms of political assessment by which it is determined which captives possess the requisite consciousness to be Citizens of our Republic, and there are civic juries who, with the conscience of good republicans, decide upon naturalization according to whether the admission of a given candidate, judged by his personal qualities, would be a gain for the Republic; if, by some unhappy corrupt device, royalists in heart should contrive to deceive forms and juries and to infiltrate our ranks with base intentions, our duty toward every man of honest mind who would fight for universal liberty — which is the natural right and duty of every upright man — would be to ensure that he is not deprived of that possibility.
The standard proposed by Citizen Masden fails to meet the exigencies of the complex events of war, a naval and an aerial blockade: it fails to cover every case in which a man might truly desire to fight for freedom. Consider a man who desires liberty, yet finds himself upon the deck of a balloon whose majority favour tyranny — he remains under its unclean hand. Therefore Masden’s proposal, in this form, must be rejected, as must earlier proposals that only those who set foot on our soil by the perilous act of parachuting be admitted to citizenship; such splendid acts will certainly win the confidence of civic juries, but let us not deny Liberty the chance to find her children also among those who lacked the physical daring to perform so singular and birdlike a deed and who are more human than avian. Let us weigh the fact that these unhappy slaves of tyranny have already paid a certain toll to liberty — they stood in the line of its just fire and by fortunate chance did not pay for their service to tyranny with their lives.
It is true that in most men there exists a natural loyalty to the land in which they were reared and in which their families and friends dwell — and Nature’s greatness is that it ordains this. Taking into account that their native lands lie in the manacles of tyrants, and that their families and friends are so bound, whom many of our new fellow-citizens long to return to — but as liberators — (here Citizen Henscher was interrupted by applause and cries of “Hurrah!”) — we shall provide that these citizens shall, within thirty days of the liberation of their native countries, have the option to retrieve the citizenship of those lands and to be released from the Guntrelandic Civic Oath. Yet Nature has also planted in man the capacity to feel that another land, even a very distant one, may better suit the constitution and sentiments of his private soul. Let us not doubt that those who choose a country by reason may be truer to it than those who received it by the chance of birth; so born Tildelanders may indeed become great Guntrelanders, for Reason will not betray what freely it has chosen.
As for the blackmail of royalist soldiers with the lives of their loved ones, all know that royalist states, in the vileness of their irrational cruelties, answer to the deed they deem treason by murdering the whole family of the supposed traitor; yet the Committee of Public Command has concluded that oto and jobst dare not do this, because they covet the military aid of Karolina-Louise and know that her person, under the influence of enlightenment, would sternly condemn such practices. Thus much for Citizen Masden’s proposal.
As to Citizen Hrebs’ suggestion, I say it is irrational: powder is too necessary to the Republic for other ends — to our fighting force — and the same deterrent effect might be achieved by threatening and executing captives by other means, if moral warrant existed, without wasting powder; moreover we do not suppose that the tyrant of Tildeland would change his policy at the whim of his slaves, for were that so he would be a President, not a tyrant. I propose that the Assembly, by a unanimous act, reject the proposals of Citizens Masden and Hrebs and rebuke every speech which casts doubt upon the honourable intentions of those who have taken the Civic Oath of the Republic of Guntreland. — (Citizen Henscher’s proposal is adopted.)
The speech was followed by long and loud applause.
From the Hagiography of Herman Henscher, by Albrecht Lubens
The marble hall of the National Assembly trembles beneath the thunder of fists striking wooden benches and the cries of “Hoorah!” with which the adherents of Henscher celebrate the rejection of the proposals advanced by their political rivals. These answer with other shouts—some personal, some bearing the sharp edge of menace. Thus it is always within this National Assembly; thus it is beyond its doors, in the popular committees, in private homes. Ill fortune for the Republic, above which already loom the spectres of intervention, of royalist executioners, of gallows and breaking-wheels.
Hermann Henscher’s proposal—that both the plan of Masden and that of Hrebs concerning the fate of the captured soldiers of the interventionist armies be jointly rejected—has been adopted, despite the grave debate that preceded it. The radical yet rides the hippogriff of centrism, securing the passage of his motions less by the firm conviction of a majority than by the mutual dread which left and right bear toward one another’s designs.
At the centre of the scene, at the centre of the hall, sits Citizen Henscher—illumined for no more than a fleeting instant by the glow of parliamentary victory, for that momentary brilliance is swiftly obscured by darker clouds. For some of these cares there is no ready remedy; and that which most torments him is precisely the one for which a remedy exists—yet his colleagues hesitate to apply it.
Shall there, at last, be justice?
The thought chokes Hermann: Justice is within reach; she already stretches forth her beak toward her prey—yet the Republic herself, who ought to be her most faithful ally, still withholds that prey and shields it beneath her maternal fur. Hermann has himself spoken with the witnesses and the victims of the crimes of the former princes; he has clasped their shoulders as they shed the tears of the righteous and has given them his civic word that the joy of vengeance would not be denied them. And now those arch-criminals yet breathe freely; indeed, as gaolers and examining magistrates report, they permit themselves merriment at the Republic’s distress and mock the noblest friends of the people—above all him, Citizen Henscher!—in expectation of their speedy liberation and triumphant return to exalted station.
The mere thought of such a possibility—of the Afsens freed and exultant in impunity—draws a spasm across Herman’s face. No! In the name of the Constitution, it shall not be so! He will not permit it.
Hermann rises once more and lifts his hand to demand the floor. As no other speaker remains inscribed, the presiding member grants it to him. Yet the habitual roar of the chamber, inflamed by contrary opinions and by still sharper personal animosities, does not subside.
“Citizen Representatives of the People!” he begins in a resonant voice, fixing his gaze upon the President in hope that order will be secured during his discourse—and, should tumult arise from what is to be said, that order will be enforced. “Let my next proposal be heard with the utmost attention.”
The uproar continues until the President’s bell intervenes. The more decent deputies fall silent, leaving only the unbridled laughter from the benches of the Hrebsites. A second peal subdues the greater part even of them; few are eager to test the President’s resolve in the matter of pecuniary penalties.
Hermann knows he lacks the gift of extemporaneous eloquence possessed by Masden, Zold, and many others, nor does he command that supple faculty of bending speech to the temper of the hour which distinguishes even his closest associate, Schmeck. It was not harangues before tumultuous crowds that carried him to these benches, but carefully wrought texts composed in the quiet and order of his study. He will not risk omitting a single argument already forged by reflection, nor waste his strength in committing his speech to memory. Thus, conscious of the defects of such a method yet resolved upon completeness, he draws forth his notebook, opens it at a page bearing the underlined heading JUSTICE, and begins to read in a voice as clear and firm as he can command:
“Citizens have heard and read from Representatives of the People three propositions which outrage Popular Justice.”
He does not lift his eyes from the page; feeling that the carriage once set in motion must not be checked, he proceeds:
“The first of these ignoble propositions declares that Clarence Afsen should be spared condemnation to annihilation, alleging that the elder Afsen took no part in the crimes for which his brother is notorious, and that upon his hands rests no blood of the nation.”
Hermann does not look up, though he knows full well how many—even within his own club—have embraced this view. Instead, in a louder and more solemn tone, he advances his reply:
“Citizens! He who wore upon his breast the shameful princely sash cannot have clean hands of the nation’s blood; for the very title of prince is itself a crime against the nation.”
From various quarters of the hall—most loudly from the centre—bursts the cry: “So it is!” The watchword strikes home, though not yet with unanimous acclamation. Henscher lifts his gaze, but only toward the flag and the arms above the President’s table—the glorious tricolour, and the escutcheon from which the russet fox regards him, holding the scroll inscribed: Honour the Constitution, Citizens. Does that emblematic gaze fortify him, issuing as it does from the serene and ideal realm of Republican symbols, so much clearer than the troubled world governed by human frailty? Does the ordered harmony of the constitutional state grant him the same calm his beloved household companion—so like that heraldic, national one on the escutcheon—bestows upon him in the quiet of his home, asking for a meal or mere attention?
“The second—and yet more ignoble—proposition,” he continues, “is that even if the vile Afsens be condemned to destruction, they should not be destroyed, by reason of their value as hostages in negotiation.”
He knows well that those who think thus are as numerous as those who would spare one of the Afsens—perhaps more so. He feels, without looking at them, their shaking heads and their murmurs of disapproval. For them too he has an answer—practical enough for these admirers, or at least convenient users, of realism:
“The National Assembly knows well the declared position of the tyrants of tildeland, neuland, and bautia—that they will exchange no prisoners with the Republic, and that they will hold for null and void—though what is more null and void than themselves and their titles?—any compact the tyrant Alfons might conclude to recover his sons. And even were it otherwise”—Hermann will not allow prudence ever to eclipse principle—“the moral obligation of the Republic is to accomplish justice though the whole world perish; and he who would nonetheless postpone the annihilation of Clarence and Rupert Afsen must be regarded with suspicion.”
At these words he raised his forefinger in menace; and he lifted his gaze once more only toward the escutcheon and the flag, leaving those who felt themselves struck to endure, as best they might, the uneasy meeting of suspicious glances—those of their fellow Representatives of the People, and even that of the Republican symbols themselves, in whose sacred name and under whose ideals he addressed them.
Again a few cries of “So it is!” and even “Hurrah!”—though more concentrated upon the benches of his own club, and still far from unanimous acclamation. Yet there was no loud protest, no open contradiction. He must press forward.
“Finally, the third and most ignominious of these notions is this: that from the indictment against the two Afsens there should be omitted those acts which they committed before the founding of the Republic, upon the pretext that no man may be punished for acts which, at the time of their commission, were not designated as crimes. What?”
Hermann nearly doubled the force of his voice, already prepared for bitter combat with those who concealed their cowardice and weakness not behind so-called realism, but behind a pretended juridical formalism—no less hollow of virtue than the invocation of ‘objective’ relations of force by the self-styled realists.
“Is it not a crime to be a tyrant, because the laws of tyranny did not foresee such a crime? Are murder, plunder, abduction, and calumny not crimes, because under the laws of tyranny the so-called princes were permitted to comport themselves thus toward their then-slaves and toward the inhabitants of their so-called princely domains? To recognize, in consideration of the state of the so-called laws which prevailed under tyranny, any exculpation whatsoever, would be to accord legitimacy to tyranny itself—and it is well that the indictment has not done so. Acts whose criminal nature is inscribed in the eternal moral law of Nature bear forever upon themselves the seal of evil, and by that same eternal law of Nature they eternally demand their adequate sanction.”
Louder than before rang out the cries of “Hurrah!” and “So it is!” Yet Hermann knew that thus far his discourse had consisted in general moral observations, inexpensive and easy to applaud. The hour had struck for the true blow—for the application of these principles to reality.
“Citizens, my compatriots, my brothers by the Constitution and by the Flag!”
He felt upon him the gaze of the entire hall and of the galleries; he felt also the gaze of History and of generations yet unborn. Raising his notebook slightly above the level of his eyes, so that he might read and at once behold the arms and banner of the beloved Homeland, he continued:
“The People have shown sufficient patience that the indictment against the two Afsens be drawn up; they now demand to see Justice as she must be. Those who oppose this will rightly be regarded as friends of the accused. I therefore submit the following motion: since the indictment against them has been completed and no legal cause remains for delay, that Citizens Clarence and Rupert Afsen, within the term of ten hours, be brought before the Judicial Committee of the National Assembly, in conformity with the principles of procedure applicable to captured traitors and enemies of the Republic.”
Silence. Even the great Assembly clock could be heard, beating its measured cadence, unhurried—ready for counting the final ten republican hours in the lives of the two once most-privileged sons of Guntreland, who in the rest of the world were still deemed the “legitimate” heirs to the crown of this vast continent.
Hermann at last closed his notebook and, satisfied with his words yet profoundly anxious as to their effect, turned his head sharply.
From every side, hands were raised. Henscher first saw those of his club comrades; yet hands were lifted to the left, to the right, and behind. Alfred Masden stood with arm aloft; Hans Hrebs no less so. None wished the People to behold them as friends of their most hardened enemies. Even among the marble columns of the galleries—where no vote might be cast—hands were raised in full assent, manifesting the solidarity of the People with their Representatives.
Hermann himself raised his hand. The counting of votes was unnecessary: the President declared the motion adopted by acclamation.
“Hurrah!” resounded from all quarters.
But the labor was not ended; in truth, it had only begun. The parliamentary clock commenced the reckoning of the fateful ten hours. With the creaking of wheels, Vernas propelled himself from his bench and made for the exit; all knew why he hastened, and what immense task awaited him. From the galleries flowers were cast in the direction of his chair.
Yet who now rose and demanded the floor?
It was the stiff, old-regime-bred Representative, Professor of History Defrager—his head already thinning though he had not yet entered his fortieth year—speaking in that declamatory and courteous tone with which men once addressed the monarch himself, priding themselves on the title of courtier.
“Citizens!” he began—though Hermann well knew that to this Defrager other forms of address were dearer—“I implore you to be compassionate in your victory; let us not resemble the tyrants whom we have overthrown and taken captive. If it be the will of this Assembly that the citizens, former princes, be brought before the tribunal within ten republican hours, I entreat the members of the Judicial Committee, should they establish their guilt—once the facts are fully set forth and the virtue of Truth thereby satisfied—to rise above the cruelty of the younger Afsens, who broke our friends upon the wheel, hanged them, and consigned them to the flames, and to spare the lives of these enemies of the Republic. I would further remind you that the former princes may serve as useful hostages of the Republic; whatever foreign kings may now declare, the day must come—by the very nature of things—when we shall require a card to play in negotiations for peace and for foreign recognition.”
As Hermann listened, he boiled with indignation. He knew Defrager well from the days of the underground Republic. Though inwardly a monarchist—attached to another dynastic branch—Defrager had more than once risked his head for the Republic and had thereby earned election, at the first vote of an almost wholly republican electorate, to the National Assembly. Toward Hermann he had shown respect when many others had not; and perhaps for that reason—perhaps for his services to the Republican cause, perhaps for both—Hermann had not pressed for his political neutralization as relentlessly as might have been expected of one of the more uncompromising Republicans.
Now Hermann asked himself whether he had erred—and whether that weakness might cost the Republic the realization of Justice.
“Boooo!” rose from various benches—least of all from the ranks of the decent. From other directions erupted further tumult. Henscher sprang to his feet at once and, without awaiting silence in the hall, almost roared at the preceding speaker, striving to outshout both representatives and galleries alike:
“Compassion must be reserved for the martyrs of the Revolution; for its enemies there can remain of the passions only a fierce hatred born of the soul’s own purity!”
At these words there bursts from every side a thunderous “Hurrah!” Good. The Judicial Committee—those of its members who remained within it, for from Vernas no clemency toward former princes had ever been expected—had heard clearly the will of the overwhelming majority.
Then from the galleries there rang out a loud, sonorous female voice, known to all, for whether invited or unbidden it often cut across the debates with sharp commentary: it was Frida Hover, President of the Assembly Gallery. Thus she addressed Defrager:
“I rise from the gallery in the name of the Republican Public! You shield yourself behind your inviolability, and therefore you cannot be brought to trial unless a majority of representatives so decide—which they do not, because you are too contemptible to merit even that, and because they pity the citizens who elected you, unwilling to shame them by condemning their chosen representative as a royalist; perhaps also because they imagine you may one day compose a handsome history of the Revolution, and are thus of use. But until that day, I, as a free citizen, may freely accuse you—and I do so now, Defrager! You are a royalist who turned revolutionary only because you hate the younger branch of the Afsens, believing it guilty of the disappearance of the elder[1]; and moreover, I declare that you are a libertine who quits this Assembly several times each day only to repair to the bedchambers of aging women—most commonly former countesses and former marchionesses. Down with Defrager—royalist and debauchee!”
The victory was secured. Defrager’s intervention had wrought no alteration in the decree; rather, it had blackened the name of the well-mannered Professor of History himself. What little he contrived to answer the President of the Gallery served only further to unmask him as a man of the old regime: he declared—nothing less—that he would not respond to the esteemed Citizen Hover in equal measure “above all out of respect for her sex.”
This provoked yet louder hissing and cries of “Boooo!” directed against him, until even the presiding officer silenced him with the ringing of the bell.
Hermann’s joy and triumph were, at least for this hour, complete. He waved his fist in exultation, clasped the hands of colleagues upon the surrounding benches, while many palms struck his shoulder in congratulation. Let justice be done, though the world perish! Now all rested with the Judicial Committee, with Citizen Vernas and his nine colleagues, every one of them trained in the law. Herman Henscher had done his part; and he might now permit himself a brief respite from his sacred patriotic labor, and go in person to stroke and feed his fox.
[1] The branch of the so-called "Elder Afsens" descended from Clarence I, the eldest son of Fridhold I Afsen, and ruled until the year 96 of the Congress (90 B.R.), when all three heirs from this branch lost their lives to illness, which many believe was caused by poisoning. They strongly opposed the equalization of the "king's men" with nobles in terms of privileges. In the year 90th before the Republic, Alphonse I, whose dynastic branch originated from Friedhold's younger son Alphonse, ascended the throne of Guntreland, becoming the progenitor of the “Younger Afsen” line, which relied on the strong support of the "king's men" who, during their reign, had a position more similar to that of nobles.
