During an emergency:
"'...at the same time, a certain amount of ordinary activity must continue. People will still have to eat, for instance.'" (p. 364)
Precisely. Falkayn is discussing not a world war as such but certainly a planetary emergency requiring exactly the same kind of coordinated activity as would be involved in a national war effort. Such an effort requires a working population and a functioning, albeit coordinated, economy with efficient industrial production. Grocery stores and banks must continue to function.
During World War II, my father, then a young man, was a mining engineer, a "reserved profession," so that his only military experience was in the Home Guard alongside men too old to fight, no doubt including World War I veterans. In the 1960s, he said that, allowing for exaggerations appropriate in a comedy, the Dad's Army (see also here) TV series was fully authentic to its period, particularly in the "spiv" who could get you anything on the black market.
Maybe the Merseians are too grim to enjoy a comedy set during their "Day of Burning"?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Merseians are capable of relaxing and having fun in their own rather rough and gusty way. But we can see top Merseians, Hands of Vachs, or the heads of non-Wilwidh Ocean Merseian states, regarding each other with suspicion. And practically all of them would agree at least in detesting the Gethfennu!
Ad astra! Sean
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