He took his own advice and utilized one of the benches that ran along the mess table. Six or eight of the others, including Ross, Tilly and Combs, seated themselves as well, but the others remained standing.
Pater Riggin brought his eyes back to Ross and said, “My son, you do not suppress an ideal by butchering its adherents, unless you are in position to liquidate them all. Even then it may germinate among others. This most certainly applies to social systems. Decimate the adherents enough and they will go underground, perhaps, but the teachings remain—be they right or wrong—and will hibernate until opportunity presents itself again to make a bid for realization.”
“Then in spite of Number One’s efforts for the past half century, the Karlist movement remained in existence, underground?” Ross asked.
“Correct.”
Ross looked at Tilly, scowling. “But what’s this got to do with the extent to which you Betastani have infiltrated Alphaland?”
“Don’t be dense, Rossie. Had we been limited to signing up Alphaland traitors and buying the money-hungry, we would have had a small underground indeed. But when we were able to gain the cooperation of a whole socioeconomic movement, comparatively small though its membership might be, we had on our side an organization of dedicated idealists. And that you can’t beat when you’re in the clutch, Rossie mine.”
Then you’re all, all damned Karlists!” he snapped.
Pater Riggin put back his rounded head and laughed.
“My son, my son. Please remember that I lived through the civil war, heard the slogans, even helped write the diatribes against the movement. Sat at the side when the leaders, some of whom were long-time friends, were tried and shot. Participated through it all as an active anti-Karlist.”
“But you just said…”
The older man held up a hand. “To my shame and sorrow, it was not until later that I was able to rise above the slogan level and actually investigate the teachings of these people. It was then that I became converted—much too late to have got myself shot as an adherent.”
Ross was scowling at the Temple Monk. From the side of his eyes, he could see Tilly Trice watching him intently with an element of worry there. This was apparently of the greatest importance to Tilly. He refused to consider the obvious reason why.
Pater Riggin was more serious now.
“Ross Westley, most great beliefs, ideals, can be summed up in a sentence or two. If they need more, then there is a weakness, the belief is not whole. So then, in your own words, tell me what you think the basic teaching of the Karlists is?”
Ross looked at him. All his life, since he had been a child at the knee of the passionate Franklin Westley, he had been subjected to the anti-Karlist teachings. In these, his later years, he had even participated in spreading them. Long, supposedly, after the Karlists had been a danger.
Anti-Karlism was a dogma, a faith, he knew. Decades past, the adherents of Number One had dug out every last book or pamphlet written by that organization’s leaders and had burned them. Every novel, ever so lightly tinged, every play, or even verse, that could be accused of Karlist leanings—all were destroyed. It came to him now that he, Deputy of Information, had never actually read a true Karlist book or article. Oh yes, books on socioeconomics which had quoted in limited amounts from this work or that, the better to criticize and condemn the movement, but the basic works of the enemy? He didn’t know, but he doubted if even Number One had them in his private library. Or even Mark Fielder.
His voice, as though in spite of himself, was wild again. “They’re anarchists. They want to tear down everything that their betters have built. They want to turn society on its head and let the yokes rule their superiors.”
Altschuler said softly, for once without humor, That, fella, is exactly what we don’t want to do. You’ve been reading your own propaganda again.”
Pater Riggin volunteered. “Let me do it for you. In a sentence, Ross Westley, the basic belief of the Karlists is that government should be instituted to help realize the full potentialities of each member of society.”
Ross was put to staring again.
He shook his head in disgust. “Any government subscribes to that!”
But Pater Riggin shook his head right back. “Then most of them lie. Because most governments are instituted to maintain the privileges of a minority, against the interest of society as a whole. The interest of society as a whole is to realize the full potentialities of each individual member of society.” Ross continued to stare, his indignation waning. The older man pressed on. “They will all say that is their goal, but they lie. A socioeconomic system based on an aristocracy, such as feudalism, keeps at the helm a nobility that is not necessarily competent. Many an emperor or king, down through the ages, was actually insane. I mention in passing such as Caligula and George Third of England.”
Ross said, “What’s that got to do with the policy of the government being directed at realizing the full potentialities of the people?”
“My son,” the Temple Monk said with a twinkle, “if the ultimate head of the government is in a job that has nothing to do with real capabilities and potentialities, what can we expect on lower levels?
“But to go on. Various other socioeconomic systems have been seen in which the possessors of power and wealth dominated government to the benefit of themselves and their immediate relatives and friends. As good an example as any was England during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries of Mother Earth. The British writer, Somerset Maugham, once wrote that he had met many of the top leaders of government and was at first surprised at how indifferently intelligent they were. He came to the conclusion that it didn’t take particularly intelligent people to run a government. Of course, finally, under the administrations of these incompetents, Great Britain became a third-rate power.
“To go on still further, we find the so-called communists of the Twentieth Century. Rip-snorting idealists when first they came to the helm, we were soon able to observe that party membership and relationship to ranking members of the hierarchy counted most when it came to obtaining high office. Ability was not necessarily the thing. The son of Stalin, although known as a problem drinker, quickly became a general of the air force; the son-in-law of Khrushchev was soon top editor of Pravda.”
The Temple Monk was smiling at him. I submit, Ross Westley, that none of these socioeconomic systems was in truth utilizing the full potentialities of the citizenry. If at the top you do not have the most suited elements guiding the country, certainly all the way down the line nepotism, the power of money, and a score of other factors will hinder many from realizing their most.
“Do you know the real motivation of Number One and his Old Hands when they fought the Karlists in the streets? Whatever the highblown slogans they repeated ad nauseam, in actuality they were fighting to preserve a system of privilege. Your father was fighting to preserve a system under which he could hand down his high office to you, his beloved son, in spite of the fact that you were unsuited to hold it. He must have known it, toward the end of his life, but that didn’t prevent him from urging Number One to appoint you to the position. I suspect you do not even like the job as Propaganda Deputy, but so it is. You, though one of the highest ranking officials in Alphaland, would be more suited to be a professor of history, and undoubtedly happier. I suspect Emperor Caligula would have been better off had he lived under a system where he would have found his own level, based on his true abilities, rather than having been born into the Julian family and being shunted into the Imperium.”