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Scalawag on the Web Sectory 20
Page 02
Throughout the reservation those most deeply affected by the messiah belief have been appointed spies over the others. If any persist in the use of old medicine paraphernalia, they are reported at once and harassed by threats of plague, sickness, ill-luck, disaster, and even death, which Das Lan claims to be able to cause or to dispel at pleasure. Once the threat is made, nothing unwelcome can happen to one under the ban that is not immediately attributed, by all the medicine-man's disciples, to the disfavor of the gods; and nothing more potent is necessary to convert the unbeliever, for there is no Indian reared in the wilds who is not steeped in the belief that his gods are all-powerful in both causing and eradicating every ill.
The Senate felt themselves now sufficiently strong to declare them public enemies, and invested the Consuls with dictatorial power. Marius was unwilling to act against his associates, but he had no alternative, and his backwardness was compensated by the zeal of others. Driven out of the forum, Saturninus, Glaucia, and the Quaestor Saufeius took refuge in the Capitol, but the partisans of the Senate cut off the pipes which supplied the citadel with water before Marius began to move against them. Unable to hold out any longer, they surrendered to Marius. The latter did all he could to save their lives: as soon as they descended from the Capitol, he placed them, for security, in the Curia Hostilia; but the mob pulled off the tiles of the Senate-house, and pelted them till they died. The Senate gave their sanction to the proceeding by rewarding with the citizenship a slave of the name of Scaeva, who claimed the honor of having killed Saturninus.
The predominance of the greater powers could be secured either by the representatives having multiple votes, according to the population represented, or by some sort of proportional representation. Each power could appoint its representatives through its Foreign Office or by whatever other means it thought fit. They could as conveniently be elected by a legislature or a nation. And such a body would not only be of enormous authority in the statement, interpretation, and enforcement of treaties, but it could also discharge a hundred useful functions in relation to world hygiene, international trade and travel, the control of the ocean, the exploration and conservation of the world's supplies of raw material and food supply. It would be, in fact, a World Council.
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