The Bloodless War 
by David H. Keller, M.D. 
". . . Five hundred planes headed northward . . . five hundred going northwest. 
. . one thousand going northeast. Only a few parachutes . . . entire sky dotted 
with planes going in almost every direction. . ." 



DR. KELLER, the well known author and physician, needs no introduction to our 
readers. He may always be relied upon to do the unusual as well as the 
extraordinary, and yet his stories have a reality that bring his ideas vividly 
home. 
In the present story, he gives us an inkling of what is likely to happen at any 
time and which also serves as a warning that America is by no means supreme in 
the air. 
Automatically controlled airplanes are no longer a novelty; indeed, as long as 
10 years ago, the French government sent an airplane aloft that cruised for some 
hours, without a single being on board. It was controlled entirely by radio 
waves from the ground. 
We are certain you will enjoy the present offering of this versatile author. 
Sketch of the author, Dr. David H. Keller, M.D. 



A Futile Task 
IN 1940 the United States was unprepared for war. 
That was the normal condition for this nation during the years of peace. Other 
nations were in constant anticipation of hostilities and secretly and openly, 
were doing all that they could do to precipitate war at the moment they would be 
ready for it. 
After the Revolutionary War, the standing army of the States was barely 
sufficient to garrison West Point, while, year by year, after the World War, the 
Pacifists did all in their power to destroy the efficiency of the regular army. 
Even though everyone who understood military tactics realized that the next war 
was to be fought in the air, the Air Corps of the Army was more and more 
neglected. While commercial aviation was rapidly growing in importance, military 
aviation was continually starved by insufficient appropriations. The foreign 
nations could put thousands of the most modern planes in the air in a day's 
notice, but the United States was still making use of machines that were 
antiquated survivors of the experimental stage of flying. 
It must not be thought that Congress had no warning of the dangers inherent in 
continually slashing the appropriations for the Air Service. Again and again, in 
every way possible, the students of modern and future warfare thundered their 
warnings. The political leaders of the nation paid no more attention to their 
pleas than if they were the buzzing of so many gnats. If the protesters became 
too annoying, those in power simply had their annoyers removed from the service. 

Consequently, the United States became the richest, the best hated and the 
weakest nation in the world. Trusting in her position, with two oceans, one east 
and one west, a peaceful friend to the north, and a weak nation on the south, 
the Queen of the Western hemisphere felt that there was nothing to fear. As a 
supreme proof of the country's ability to defend herself, the Pacifists pointed 
with pride to the fact that practically every nation in the world was in debt to 
her. They did not realize the truth that this condition was just as apt to make 
enemies of the debtor nations as it was to make friends. 
Consequently, when John Farrol arrived at Washington with his message of warning 
in regard to a terrible danger that was threatening from Mexico, he found no one 
willing to listen to him. His tale was so fantastic, so impossible, that the 
officials, whom he talked to, even in the War Department, simply dismissed him 
as a harmless fanatic. For three days he wandered around the Capitol, growing 
more and more accustomed to the rebuffs that were being handed to him, yet never 
fully realizing the fact that he was being looked upon as a paranoic. At the end 
of this time he saw that he was making no headway, and took an evening train to 
New York City. There as he was trying to tell his story to the Mayor he was 
arrested as a suspicious character, probably insane, and spent his first night 
in the city in a police station. 
The next morning, thanks to the fact that he kept his mouth shut about the 
Mexican trouble, he was discharged for lack of evidence. Not a word of his 
arrest was placed in the papers, due to its absolute unimportance in the eyes of 
the reporters. He was therefore placed in a peculiar position; the great men of 
the nation had either refused to listen to him, or, listening, had ridiculed 
him. He was disgusted with politics, and, at the same time, as horrified as ever 
with the knowledge that the nation was in peril and that something had to be 
done. After deep thought, he determined to see, if he could, the President of 
the Universal Electric Company. 
That worthy, Jacob Strange by name, had risen by sheer ability, from the 
position of office boy to president. He was an inventor, an administrator and a 
financier. Under his leadership, Universal Electric had assumed a dominant 
position in the industrial world, and had placed several startling patents on 
the market which were as successful financially as they were perfect from the 
standpoint of electrical engineering. Strange was a man of moods, and a constant 
reader of literature. He was possessed of both imagination and initiative. His 
life was divided into periods of intense work and calm loafing. So fortunately, 
John Farrol arrived at the offices of Universal Electric during one of these 
periods of loafing. 



A Sympathetic Ear 
HE passed through the outer office by virtue of a fraternity pin; he was able by 
certain mysterious words whispered in the ear of the private secretary to send a 
message to Strange, and finally he spent three hours with the President, 
privately, during which he told everything he knew about the impending danger. 
The fact was that the captain of industry believed every word told him. The 
message was unusual, but, to the man trained in the modern sciences grouped 
around electricity, there was nothing impossible about it. 
"Here is the problem, Mr. Strange," John Farrol began. "Mexico has formed a 
treaty with Japan, the object being the complete conquest of the United States. 
I suppose that when this end is accomplished, Japan will claim the states west 
of the Rocky Mountains and Mexico some of the Southwestern states. They may even 
reduce the United States to the territory east of the Mississippi River. That 
point is a matter of unimportant detail. Japan has to have a landing point. She 
needs Mexico as a base. Mexico needs money and supplies. Their plan is this; to 
send a bombing fleet of planes to blow every big city in the nation to 
splinters. While the country is recovering from this shock and is wondering what 
it means, an invading army of Japs and Mexicans will capture New Orleans, Los 
Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and St. Louis. By the time that our country is 
ready to fight, everything west of the river will be conquered. They are not 
going to declare war . . . they are simply going ahead to destroy our cities 
over night. I believe that they are going to use as many as twenty thousand 
bombing planes, each capable of carrying over a ton of powerful explosives." 
For the first time the President of Universal Electrics shook his head. 
"Each of those planes would require two men. That would mean 40,000 experienced 
pilots. There are not that many in the whole world." 
"I realize that, but these planes are not going to have pilots . . . not human 
ones." 
"Do you mean robots?" 
"Something like that. Perhaps you remember reading about that small steam yacht 
that was sent out to sea, swung around, and returned to the dock without a 
pilot? The machinery on that boat was governed from the shore by wireless waves; 
the steering, the rate at which the machinery worked, was finally and completely 
under the control of a man on shore, who operated at a switchboard. At a certain 
distance from shore, he shut off the engine and the boat coasted back to the 
dock. Now I know that the Japs have perfected this radio control of a plane. 
Each of the planes has a gyroscope. Started at a certain height, pointed in a 
certain direction, those planes will go on at a definite speed. The operators in 
Mexico can determine within a few minutes just when a plane will be over New 
Orleans or St. Louis. At that minute they will press a button which will release 
the ton of explosive. They do not care what happens to the plane. The few 
thousands that it costs is a mere trifle." 
"It could all be done", finally answered Jacob Strange. "That is, I mean that I 
could put my men to work and perfect such an apparatus in connection with a 
plane. Of course, that yacht was just a toy. I think something like that was 
done with an automobile too. The difference between guiding an auto and an 
airplane is probably simply a matter of detail. But it would require a wonderful 
brain to put a plan like that into operation. I did not know that the Japs had a 
man good enough to invent a wireless controlled plane." 
"They did not have. It is my invention. They stole it from me three years ago. 
Perhaps you are not willing to believe that? You will have to. I tried to sell 
the entire patent to the United States Government and the people in Washington 
thought that I was a crank. I was mad, but not enough to try and sell it to a 
power like France or Germany but I did think that I could interest one of the 
small countries in Asia, like Afghanistan. So, I sailed from San Francisco, 
intending to go to Japan, and from there overland. They got me in Tokio; I was 
in a hospital for three months with a fractured skull. By the time that I was 
able to ask questions, the trail was cold. Nothing was taken out of my baggage 
except my plans for the wireless control of a plane. 
"I was destitute, so, I took the first job that I could get, and that was in the 
Burns plant in Tokio. I suppose you know that the Burns people assemble planes 
there for sale in eastern Asia? The plant was making so many of them and selling 
so many that I became suspicious; but, by that time, I had learned to keep my 
mouth shut. What I wanted to know was who was buying all those planes and where 
they were going. They certainly were not being used in Japan. I went to the 
American Ambassador, and he laughed at me. No use telling you about that, 
though. Then, after a hard time, I found that these planes were all being 
shipped out of the country, some to Korea and some to China. I got the names of 
some of these ships and their destination. Going to those ports, I found that 
they had never arrived. It did not take much reasoning power to arrive at the 
conclusion that they were going to a secret destination. Of course, I was taking 
my life in my hands, but I felt interested; so, I went on one of those ships as 
a stowaway. I finally landed on the Mexican coast. If I wanted to, I could write 
a story about that voyage and sell it, but what's the use? No one would believe 
me. There I was on the west coast of Mexico, at a port that had no 
name--desolate as an inferno and just as hot! I started out for the desert and 
watched, and those planes, one by one, rose in the air and went like bees over 
the desert. Going somewhere, see? 
"I was accustomed by that time to being hungry, and the only way to find where 
those planes were going was to go after them. Fortunately, it was not far. Fifty 
miles from the coast there was as pretty a flying field as you ever saw, in what 
seemed to be the bottom of an old volcano. It was surrounded by low mountains. 
There was not a breath of air--and room on the sandy floor for thirty thousand 
planes! 



Farrol's Plan 
"I GOT up on top of one of those mountains, found a spring, made a rabbit trap, 
and, somehow, lived for another three weeks. There were hundreds of men down 
there, a regular little tent city, but that was not what was interesting to me. 
It was the stuff that they were doing in the air that at first was so puzzling, 
but, of course, I soon tumbled to it. A man would take one of those big planes 
up in the air, about one thousand feet, and then he would come down in a 
parachute. The plane would go on for a few miles, turn around and then glide 
down to the ground. Sometimes, when it was up in the air, a small package would 
drop from the bottom. 
"After thinking over it for some days, I saw what had happened. Those Japs had 
discovered that I had an invention for the control of planes by radio waves. 
That is why they nearly killed me in Tokio. Now they were assembling a great 
fleet of planes in this isolated valley and learning how to control them by my 
invention. And they were doing it! Those little packages, that they were 
dropping out of the planes were dummy explosives. Their release was provided for 
by my invention. 
"Someway, I managed to reach the border. I was starved and broke. I tried to get 
money . . . no one would listen to me. So, I started to go to work. I saved my 
money, and, just as soon as I could, I went to Washington. All that they did to 
me there was laugh at me. Then I went to New York and tried to see the Mayor, 
and I was arrested as a suspicious character. However, I managed to make them 
believe that I was harmless, and when they released me I came here. It is my 
idea that those Japs are going to blow our cities into eternity." 
"That is just your idea?" 
"Yes." 
"No real dope to back the idea with?" 
"Nothing but common sense. What would they want with twenty thousand planes? 
What would be the use of perfecting my pilotless plane and practicing the 
electrical release of the bombs? Nothing commercial about that is there? That 
means war, and the only place to wage war, if they attack us, is on the Mexican 
border." 
"I believe you are right," the President of Universal Electric finally said. 
"But I want to be sure that you know what you are talking about. You cannot fool 
my experts. I am going to call three of them in and you describe your invention 
to them. If they say that it is practical, we will see what we can do to save 
the nation." 
For the next three hours John Farrol talked to an audience of four men who 
probably knew more practical electrical science than any other four men in the 
United States. At the end of that time he convinced them that he actually had 
invented a practical method for controlling the flight and the course of an 
aeroplane without a pilot. The matter of releasing the bomb at a certain time 
was simply a matter of definite radio waves. 
"I think," finally remarked President Strange, "that Farrol and I had better go 
to Washington and see the President and the Secretary of War." 
"It would not do a bit of good," replied John Farrol. "They would not believe 
us, and, even if they did, it would simply precipitate the war by premature 
publicity. My idea is to work this problem out ourselves." 
"But how?" 
"Somewhat like this. They will send those planes out in large groups, probably 
twenty-five for New Orleans, fifty for St. Louis, one hundred for Denver, three 
hundred for the Canal Zone. Maybe as many as five hundred for cities like 
Chicago and New York. These groups will all go out at the same time and be under 
the control of the same wave lengths. They will be supposed to travel in a 
straight line, but, at the same time, they will be capable of being guided by 
radio waves from the central office in Mexico. In my description of the proper 
use of such fleets for commercial purposes, I advised that in each fleet of 
freight planes there be one plane with a pilot who would serve to send messages 
by radio as to the exact location of the airfleet. Suppose we imagine five 
hundred planes sent in a bee line from Mexico to New York? Among these will be a 
plane with a pilot. When the squadron of planes arrives at New York, the pilot 
sends a signal to the central office and they send out the radio wave necessary 
to release the five hundred bombs, each weighing over a ton. 
"That means five hundred tons of some powerful explosive, liberated at the same 
time and tearing five hundred sections of New York to pieces. What is to be 
done? Simply this. I know that you have done a lot of work with radio and the 
telephone. You know all that there is to be known about the amplification of 
sound. Make the largest one that you can and tune it in for the earliest 
detection of five hundred airplane motors. They cannot run five hundred of those 
new Burns motors in one group without making a lot of noise. Then, just as soon 
as it is certain that the fleet is heading for New York, capture it." 
"Capture it!" exclaimed President Strange. 
"Certainly. It is under the control of certain wave lengths, sent from Mexico. I 
know just exactly how that was described in my patent papers. I do not believe 
that there is a man, either in Mexico or Japan, who has the ability to change 
that code. Now, we will send a radio wave to that special fleet that is to 
attack New York, causing the entire fleet to go sharply to the right. That is 
all that we are going to do. The fleet goes on. Of course, the pilot may realize 
that he is off the course and then he may not. We shall have to take chances. 
Perhaps there will not be any pilot. At any rate, we will have those planes 
going out over the Atlantic. When we are sure that they are in the right place, 
we will release the bombs, but they will be released anyway, because the planes 
will make a certain speed, and they will have estimated the exact time at which 
they reach New York. Of course, by that time, they will be out over the 
Atlantic. Even if they do not release the bombs, the planes are going to land in 
the ocean, because they are going to run short of gas." 
"That ought to work for New York, but how about the other cities?" 
"I think that we can work them. Each fleet will be operating under a different 
code, but the key code that I invented will control any of the variations, just 
as a bunch of skeleton keys always has a master key. We will have a large sound 
receptor and amplifier in every city that we expect to be attacked, and a 
trained man at every city station. The air fleet, attacking the western cities, 
can be sent out to the Pacific. Those threatening the Gulf and Atlantic Coast 
cities can easily be deflected eastward. I think that the best thing that we can 
do with the valley cities is to turn the fleets around and send them right back 
to Mexico to blow up the great, wide, open spaces. Perhaps, we can dispose of 
the Chicago and St. Louis assault by sending them to pieces in the bad lands of 
the Dakotas. You want to remember one point. The logical thing for them to do is 
to send these fleets out at different times so that all the cities will be torn 
to bits within at least one hour of each other. That means that just as soon as 
we hear one fleet, we can at once expect the other. Naturally, the great flocks 
of airbirds, sent to destroy the larger cities, will be heard first, because 
they will make the most noise." 
"Let me ask you one thing, Mr. Farrol," said President Strange. "Do you really 
think that Universal Electrics can handle this themselves?" 
"You have to! You control the electrical and radio brains of the nation. The 
Japs are going to send twenty thousand planes over within twenty four hours of 
each other. What could the nation do, fighting them in the old way? We have not 
nearly that many pilots, counting them all. If we should destroy a machine, the 
bomb would fall with the machine anyway and do a certain amount of damage. We 
could do something with individual planes. During the last war, our pilots were 
just as brave as any, and we still have brave men in the service; but the odds 
against them would be too great. Besides, there is the question of my pride. 
Those Japs stole my invention and fractured my skull. If I can invent a radio 
control of those planes, I can use that control to take charge of their planes. 
I want to do it. I can have your factory make the necessary apparatus in a few 
days. I believe that you have in your employ fifty men that are brilliant enough 
to learn the code and how to use it. Place a man and an amplifier and a control 
set in every large city. If you can do so, put extra men there, so that during 
every minute of the 24 hours, a man can be constantly on duty. Have all three 
men sleep and eat and live at the machines." 
The President of the Electrical Company looked at his experts. 
"Can we do it?" he asked. 
"We have to!" was their only reply. 



A Great Gamble 
FROM that moment on there was no rest for John Farrol and the wizards of the 
Universal Electric. They worked and ate and slept, when they had to, and soon 
awoke to work and eat to another point of exhaustion. President Strange took his 
full share of the work. At the end of the ten days the apparatus was finished, 
and shipment was begun to every large city in the United States and the Canal 
Zone. At each of these cities an office was opened on the roof of the Universal 
Electric building and the three guardians of the safety of that city installed. 
With a sigh of relief, Farrol and Strange received the wireless message from San 
Francisco that that station was all ready for anyemergency. 
There was now nothing to do except to wait. 
The entire work, costing several millions of dollars, had been done on the guess 
of one man as to what was going to happen. If he guessed wrong; if, through the 
silence of Strange and Farrol, the cities of the United States were blown to 
bits, then, one of the greatest and most needless tragedies of history would be 
the result. 
Without taking Farrol into his confidence, Strange had employed several of the 
most brilliant detectives in the States to make an examination of this new 
Mexican aviation camp and of the proposed army invasion. Their report confirmed 
in every detail the story that Farrol had told during the first interview. There 
were over a thousand trained aviators there in the camp, but not one of them was 
to do anything more than simply take the machines up in the air, place them 
under the automatic control and then parachute down. No pilot was to actually 
make the trip. Try as the detectives could, they could not learn when the attack 
was to be made, but it was a simple matter for Strange to have an observation 
station located in the heights of the surrounding mountains and a powerful 
transmitting station installed. They found furthermore signs of strange activity 
at the Pacific Coast where a great number of presumably commercial vessels had 
gathered. And yet America slumbered unaware of the danger. 
From the observation station, the first news of the attack came to the weary and 
almost desperate men in the central office at New York. It came through in code, 
a code that read something about the peach blossoms being in bloom and the 
skylark soaring in the sky. The . . . and the . . . followed each other in rapid 
succession, and finally read, when decoded: 
"Five hundred planes headed northward ten minutes ago. Now five hundred are 
going northwest. (Silence for 10 minutes) One thousand going north east. Can see 
perfectly. Only a few parachutes. Must have perfected a means of starting 
without pilots. (One hour later). Entire sky dotted with planes going in almost 
every direction except south. Growing dark but can hear planes." 
Morning came and still the radio told of departing planes. At last, came the 
final message. 
"Still some planes at the camp. No activity. Do not believe that there will be 
any more fleets sent out. Probable that the other planes will be sent out 
tomorrow for observation purposes. Shall we close station? Radio instructions." 
From the time that the first message had been sent out from this observation 
station on the mountain top overlooking the camp, the word of warning had been 
flashed to each of the fifty control stations. 
Now began one of the strangest, most peculiar and most remarkable battles that 
was ever fought for the control of a nation. On one side were twenty thousand 
airplanes, hurling through the air, governed in the flight by radio waves from a 
central station, and not one of those planes carrying a human being, either as 
passenger or as pilot. Those planes were being sent against fifty of the great 
cities of the United States, in some instances as many as five hundred being 
directed against a single city. They were started at different times, their 
departure being so arranged that the cities would all be bombed within an hour 
of each other. Twenty thousand planes each carrying a ton of high explosives, 
probably a hundred times as effective as the T. N. T. of the World War. 
Opposed to these there was not a single airplane. When the great fleets of the 
air ships passed over the United States that night, they were practically 
unobserved. Flying in triangular formation at a great height, they might have 
been looked on by the country people as flocks of wild geese, or migrating 
ducks. The War Department did not realize what was going on till it was all 
over; even had they realized the danger on the last day, they would have been 
unable to put more than two hundred combat planes into the battle, and these 
fleets of enemy airplanes were moving in so many directions that no concerted 
movement would have been possible in an effort to stop them. 
The battle in the air was one of waves, not of machine guns. From the date of 
this battle, men flew in the air, but gave up all idea of duelling with each 
other. Twenty thousand deadly planes crossed the border that night, and their 
only opposition was composed of one hundred and fifty trained radio operators at 
fifty stations, one station in each of the threatened cities. Three men to save 
New York from destruction; three more men to keep desolation from Chicago; three 
men to ward off threatening doom from cities like Denver, Philadelphia and Los 
Angeles. 



Saved ! 
JOHN Farrol and Jacob Strange were in charge of the New York station. What 
happened there was typical of what happened at each of the others. The two men 
sat at the radio controls, silently waiting for their sound receptors to tell 
the news of the approaching fleet. The amplification was as powerful as modern 
science could devise. An entirely new invention enabled the distance of the 
approaching sounds to be recorded on a dial. Consequently, it was an easy matter 
to determine the position of the coming fleet at any minute. The men waited at 
the controls, pale, sweating, and, in spite of themselves, trembling. In deadly 
silence, a half dozen experts stood near them. 
Suddenly, John Farrol exclaimed, "The New York fleet is passing over 
Philadelphia! The time has come to swing them into the ocean!" 
He started to broadcast in code. Again and again he sent the same message. 
Meantime, he was looking at the distance dial. Suddenly, the hand, which had 
recorded ninety miles, paused, and then advanced slowly, eighty, seventy, sixty, 
fifty, forty... the experts looked at each other. Was it a failure? Was the 
entire protective scheme useless? But they saw the thin, white face of Farrol, 
the inventor, relax, and then smile. Now, the hand on the distance dial began to 
move in the opposite direction . . . fifty . . . sixty . . .seventy . . . one 
hundred . . . long minutes of waiting that seemed eternity. The sound from the 
amplifying receptors seemed to be growing less. Three hundred miles. 
"They are out to sea. The nation is saved!" exclaimed Farrol, turning to the 
President of the Universal Electric. "I think that I shall try to liberate the 
bombs. Of course, we shall never know whether they have dropped or not, for they 
will fall into the ocean instead of on the greatest city in the world. Still, we 
had better try to release them, for there is no telling how far the planes will 
go before they run out of gas." 
For another ten seconds he broadcasted another code signal. Then he arose from 
his seat, and wiped his sweat covered face. 
"Mr. Strange," he said, "We ought to get in touch with the other stations. Are 
you sure that they had orders to call us up when their work was finished?" 
But, as though in answer to his question, messages began to come in code through 
the air. San Francisco and Los Angeles had had no trouble in sending their 
enemies into the Pacific Ocean. In fact, the next half hour disclosed the fact 
that all of the coast cities had successfully provided a watery grave for their 
antagonists. The border cities, like San Antonio and Houston, had been unable to 
completely reverse the course of the fleets attacking them, but, at the same 
time, had been able to send them out into the Gulf of Mexico. Chicago and St. 
Louis had sent their fleets into the Dakotas and were anxiously trying to make 
them drop their bombs in the prairies before they crossed the Canadian border. 
In every case, the threatened cities had been saved. It was too early to tell 
what damage had been done by the bombs dropped in the rural districts of the 
border states, or whether Canada had escaped loss of life or property. 
The finishing of the reports could be left to subordinates. Now was the time for 
sharper action. Farrol and Strange left at once by air express for Washington. 
There they demanded and obtained an interview with the President and his 
cabinet. In a few words they told the story of the threatened cataclysm and how 
the danger had been averted. It was for the President and his advisers to decide 
on a satisfactory plan of action against Mexico and Japan. This was difficult. 
No state of war had been declared, and, as far as was known, not a life had been 
taken. Most of the attacking planes were sunk in the oceans, and, thus, their 
value as evidence was destroyed. It was realized that the enemies had a spy 
system that would not waste any time in reporting the entire failure of the 
proposed destruction of billions of dollars of property. 
Even as they sat there debating on their next move, the Mexican Ambassador 
called in person. He bore a personal message from the President of his nation. 
There had been a serious misunderstanding. The country below the Rio Grande had 
been badly treated by Japan. They had made an agreement, so they thought, only 
for commercial purposes, but, when it was too late, they had discovered that 
military action was intended. The Mexican Government seriously regretted this 
and hoped that there had been no loss of life or serious destruction of 
property. If anyone had been killed, they were willing to pay an indemnity. This 
message was delivered in a most serious manner to the President and his cabinet, 
augmented by the presence of Farrol and Strange. 



Farrol Speaks Out 
THE President of the United States heard this remarkable statement without 
moving a muscle of his face. He was a good politician and realized that now was 
the time to do some quick acting. He suggested that at once a treaty, offensive 
and defensive, be drawn up and signed by both nations. The Mexican Ambassador 
was delighted with the suggestion; he said that he had full power to act in any 
way that he saw best for the interest of his country, and he was sure that 
nothing would be better for Mexico than to have the good wishes of her Northern 
sister. 
The Ambassador left the room with the Secretary of State. The President sighed, 
"Well, that leaves Japan." 
"I do not think, that we need worry about that country," replied the Secretary 
of War. "She has lost twenty thousand planes and her American ally. She realizes 
that we know just what she attempted. Her fleet was mobilizing for a cruise in 
the vicinity of the Philippine Islands. A great fleet of mysterious commercial 
vessels in the Pacific has disappeared. I have every reason to believe that she 
will cancel all action. We can watch her more closely than we did before and 
strengthen our Pacific fleet. I feel that Great Britain and France should know 
about this attempt. They are our friends. For the time being, the danger is 
over, thanks to these gentlemen." 
"The country will not forget them," answered the President. 
John Farrol stood up, as he said, 
"Mr. President and gentlemen of the Cabinet. This has been a bloodless war. In 
this we have simply been fortunate. Next time there may be an entirely different 
story. The answer to the problem of future danger is simple . . . the United 
States must always be prepared. There will never be a complete surety of peace 
so long as men are simply animals, covered with a thin veneer of civilization. 
Mr. Strange and I were glad to do what we did. It was our duty as American 
citizens. We ask for no pay, demand no reward, but we do hope that the leaders 
of our nation have learned their lesson." 
THE END