Goliah spoke to the Mikado and the Elder Statesmen. It was only an
ordinary cable message, despatched from San Francisco by the captain
of the Energon, but it was of sufficient moment to cause the
immediate withdrawal of Japan from the Philippines and of her
surviving fleets from the sea. Japan the sceptical was converted.
She had felt the weight of Goliah's arm. And meekly she obeyed when
Goliah commanded her to dismantle her war vessels and to turn the
metal into useful appliances for the arts of peace. In all the
ports, navy-yards, machine-shops, and foundries of Japan tens of
thousands of brown-skinned artisans converted the war-monsters into
myriads of useful things, such as ploughshares (Goliah insisted on
ploughshares), gasolene engines, bridge-trusses, telephone and
telegraph wires, steel rails, locomotives, and rolling stock for
railways. It was a world-penance for a world to see, and paltry
indeed it made appear that earlier penance, barefooted in the snow,
of an emperor to a pope for daring to squabble over temporal power.
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