an could agree, and all the arrangements be
made for the Toss on Kashmir. But in that month, the world had other
things to think about. Chiang Kai Shek accepted his gambling loss
without a murmur and removed his troops from Quemoy and Matsu, the
American Seventh Fleet helping, the Communists not interfering. All
civilians on the islands who wished to go to Formosa were taken there.

Washington said little officially, but in the corridors of the
Pentagon, Congress and the White House, the sighs of relief reached gale
force. General O'Reilly received a confidential and personal message
from the Army Chief of Staff that made him pink with pleasure.

"May get that third star after all," he told his wife that night. "And
not too long to wait, maybe."

But, above all, the month was filled with clamor from Ireland. Her
Majesty's Government in Whitehall had immediately issued a communique
which took a glacial view of the "puerile" proposal to toss for Northern
Ireland. It was the timing of this communique, rather than its contents,
that proved a tactical error. It had come too quickly, and Irishmen,
both north and south, resented it.

As a Belfast newspaper wrote tartly: "Irishmen on both sides of the line
are quite able to decide such matters for themselves, without the
motherly interference of London."

Dublin agreed in principle to toss, but the wrangling over conditions
and exceptions boiled up into the greatest inter-Irish quarreling of
twenty years. It was still raging when General O'Reilly flew into the
Vale of Kashmir with a broad smile and the Golden Judge.

Again the great coin glittered high in the air while none other than
Nehru himself called out, tensely: "Heads!"

It fell "Tails."

"So be it!" Nehru said calmly, shaking hands with the Governor-General
of Pakistan.

"Well, general," Nehru said, turning to O'Reilly with a smile, "are you
satisfied now? I think we've proved we're a sporting people. So have the
Chinese, and the Jews and the Arabs. But what about your own folk, the
Irish? From what I read, their sporting qualities seem to be highly
overrated. I'd say they'd never gamble but on a sure thing."

The general's face went red at the insult, and so, a day later, did the
collective face of all Irishmen, North and South. For a while there was
aghast silence from the Emerald Isle, a silence sullen and embarrassed.
And then a great rumbling roar of indignation.

"Mr. Speaker!" cried a member of the