"From 1970 to the turn of the century a partial solution was found. Our excess wealth was poured into our sister continent and it was developed as a new frontier. Gold mined from the Chilean Andes helped for a while to preserve the fiction of a favorable trade balance. After that and in addition to it, almost any sort of wildcat financing was acceptable that would keep up the flow of goods to the south. The private bankers turned to this rich field of exploitation and convinced the public that the new El Dorado lay under the Southern Cross. The whole shaky business piled up until practically the entire continent was mortgaged to the skies in return for goods that we couldn't use ourselves and would have poisoned us if we had kept them. But the Latin temperament had a simple solution. I sometimes wonder whether it was planned or was the inevitable result of the circumstances. But when the due day came each government folded up and a new government calmly repudiated the commitments of its predecessor.
"The first incident of the A.-B.-C. War occurred in 2002 April. The Argentine government had refused to recognize its debts to us both public and private, and several stiff notes had been exchanged. Our South American squadron was ordered to Buenos Aires. Chile and Brazil each informed the United States that any display of force in Argentina would be regarded as an unfriendly act.
"Nevertheless the squadron was not recalled. It steamed into the harbor and had no more than anchored, two old aircraft carriers and an odd dozen of minor craft, when it was attacked from the air and sunk to the last man, before a plane could rise. We don't know yet who did it, but we do know that both the Chilean and Brazilian navies and air fleets had made a rendezvous some two hundred kilometers off Buenos Aires."
"How did the war work out? I found the record account a bit sketchy for my professional taste."
"Why, Perry, you aren't really interested in killing, are you?" Diana was perturbed and incredulous.
He patted her hand. "No Dian', not at all. But the matters of the strategy and the tactics involved and the weapons used are of intellectual interest to me, just as you might be interested in the ceremonial dances that accompanied the Aztecs' Blood sacrifices.
The wrinkles smoothed out from her brow. "Yes, I suppose so. But it does seem barbaric."
"I imagine the weapons would have been largely familiar to you, Perry. The United States had not been at war for many years and it is a matter of history that few weapons are developed in peacetime. The military mind clings tenaciously to its accustomed ways—if you will pardon me. The strategic principle of exterior lines determined the war. Neither side was equipped to deal any telling blow on the other. They were too far apart and there was too much terrain involved. There was no commerce to raid as practically all the shipping had been between the United States and South America. Each side was able to raid the cities of the other, but armies of occupation would have necessitated extended lines of communication to protect at a serious strategic disadvantage. The most startling single incident in the war was the raid on Manhattan."
"Tell me about that."
"One would think that Manhattan would have been evacuated early in the war, but it was extremely inconvenient to do so and the public had been assured that no enemy force could possibly get that far north. As a matter of fact, practically all the fighting had been below the equator. Except for two raids in the Gulf and one on Palm Beach, none of which did much damage, the United States was untouched. But in 2003 December two aircraft carriers, the Santa Maria and the Reina Borealis raided Manhattan. They had proceeded to New York by a route that took them far east in the Atlantic and by luck and partly by foresight they reached the North Atlantic without discovery. They were aided by the weather for the last thousand kilometers had to be made in a thick fog. They attacked at noon, dropping out of a cloudy sky with a ceiling of less than two hundred meters and in some places lower. The attack must have been worked out with great precision, for each ship seemed to know exactly where to go. The bridges were destroyed first, and the landing platforms. It must have been a terrifying sight to see those great helicopters settling out of the clouds and proceeding leisurely to destroy their objectives while the more agile fighting planes that escorted them buzzed around like hornets. The tubes under the rivers were bombed also. A helicopter would settle at the last station, its crew would gas the bystanders while a working party commandeered a train and loaded aboard the explosives. Then with controls and time bomb on board the train would make its last run."
"How much damage was done?"
"The damage was practically complete. The water works were destroyed along with the power stations. The skyscrapers were almost completely wrecked. Incendiary fires were started throughout the city. It was remarkably efficient, for warfare, as explosives were not thrown around at random but carefully placed to do maximum damage. It is believed that the helicopters made two or three trips. The weather made the whole thing possible, of course, particularly the gas attack that completed the job."
"How was that?"
"After the attackers had apparently exhausted their supplies of high explosives, they systematically patrolled the island, remaining always in the clouds and dropped gas containers. They must have returned to their floating bases time and again for they kept this up for thirty-six hours."
"You speak as if they had no opposition."
"There was opposition, surely, but consider—You are a pilot. How would you attack an enemy ship in a cloudbank. "
"I couldn't."
"That's the answer. They destroyed Manhattan and nearly eighty per cent of its population. Although it wasn't conclusive, hardly more than an exhibition of frightfulness, it lead indirectly to the end of the war."
"Why was that?"
"Five out of six of the heads of the leading international banks were killed in the raid on Manhattan, not to mention the destruction of a large part of the records of the financial dealings that had started the trouble. And of course hundreds of the small fry in the banking racket. With the ring leaders gone Congress listened to the people of the country who had never wanted a war in the first place. An armistice was declared in 2004 February. The terms of the peace included moratoria on international obligations which was a polite word for cancellation, and established a Pan-American export-import bank to provide for resumption of trade on what amounted to a cash and carry basis."
"Anything else?"
"That was about all. The destruction of Manhattan was checked off against the raids on Rio and Buenos Aires. But the most important result was the twenty-seventh amendment."
"That's the war referendum amendment, isn't it?"
"Yes. Did the records tell you how it works?"
"Well, I gathered that it was an arrangement whereby the people had to vote on it before war could be declared."
"That is true as far it goes. In effect the amendment states that, except in case of invasion of the United States, Congress shall not have the power to declare war without submitting the matter to a referendum. The article sketches out briefly the machinery for holding the referendum and sets a time limit in which to accomplish it. But the most amusing feature is the provision saying who shall vote in the matter."
"Doesn't everybody?"
"No, only those persons vote who are eligible for military duty."
"Aren't women permitted to vote?"
"Yes and no. If the current laws make women eligible for combat duty, they vote. If not, they don't vote."