to the White House.
Pax had called the Naval Observatory and had transmitted the following
ultimatum, repeating it, as was his custom, three times:

"_To the President of the United States and to All Mankind:_

"I have put the nations to the test and found them wanting. The
solemn treaty entered into by the ambassadors of the belligerent
nations at Washington has been violated. My attempt by harmless
means to compel the cessation of hostilities and the abolition of
war has failed. I cannot trust the nations of the earth. Their
selfishness, their bloodthirstiness, and greed, will inevitably
prevent their fulfilling their agreements with me or keeping the
terms of their treaties with one another, which they regard, as
they themselves declare, merely as 'scraps of paper.' The time has
come for me to compel peace. I am the dictator of human destiny and
my will is law. War shall cease. On the 10th day of September I
shall shift the axis of the earth until the North Pole shall be in
the region of Strassburg and the South Pole in New Zealand. The
habitable zone of the earth will be hereafter in South Africa,
South and Central America, and regions now unfrequented by man. The
nations must migrate and a new life in which war is unknown must
begin upon the globe. This is my last message to the human race.

"PAX."

The conference of ambassadors summoned by the President to the White
House that afternoon exhibited a character in striking contrast with the
first, at which Von Koenitz and the ambassadors from France, Russia, and
England had had their memorable disagreement. It was a serious,
apprehensive, and subdued group of gentlemen that gathered round the
great mahogany table in the Cabinet chamber to debate what course of
action the nations should pursue to avert the impending calamity to
mankind. For that Pax could shift the axis of the earth, or blow the
globe clean out of its orbit into space, if he chose to do so, no one
doubted any longer.

And first it fell as the task of the ambassador representing the
Imperial German Commissioners to assure his distinguished colleagues
that his nation disavowed and denied all responsibility for the conduct
of General Treitschke in bombarding Paris after the hour set for the
armistice. It was unjust and contrary to the dictates of reason, he
argued, to hold the government of a nation compr