Beyond Governments

I said last night that we would start into Poul Anderson's story, "High Treason," but I now think that issues in Seven Conquests still warrant further discussion.

In "License," the narrator says:

"'Consider, as merely one example, German history after the Thirty Years' War.'" (p. 161)

- but does not elaborate with the result that I am none the wiser!

What he is talking about more generally is the issue of a global authority to oversee or regulate the activities of national governments. In this story, there is a Peace Authority which, he says:

"'...is possible only because we've found a better outlet than war, at least a less harmful one, for the evil in man.'" (pp. 161-162)

When challenged on the word, "evil," he concedes that hatred of civilization might be a better description. We will have to return to this. Meanwhile, the Peace Authority will not let armed South Africans go beyond their own borders to attack whites. (Apartheid lasted from 1948 until 1994. "License" was published in 1957.)

In "Strange Bedfellows," Sevigny, taking evidence of sabotage on the Moon to the World Safety Corps on Earth, must evade corrupted agents of the US Federal Police. Corps men are peace officers of the Commonwealth which addresses only international matters, which sabotage on the Moon is, but first Sevigny must contact the Corps to make his case.

In Anderson's "Un-Man," the UN is becoming a world government but must overcome strong opposition, including that from within national governments. Thus, a UN agent, an "Un-man," is on the run from US Security men, "S-men." (The UN Lunar Guard is a forerunner of the later Solar Union's Solar Guard.)

There is always more to be said here.