An hour since, too, he had performed an impressive ceremony on a balcony of the provincial capitol building. With officers flanking him and troops drawn up in the square below, he had read a proclamation to the people of Kantolia. They had been redeemed, said the proclamation, from the grinding oppression of their native country; henceforth they would enjoy all the blessings of oppressive taxes and secret police enjoyed by the invaders. They should rejoice, because now they were citizens of their great neighbour—and anybody who did not rejoice was very likely to be shot. In short, General Viadek had read a proclamation annexing Kantolia to his own country, and he felt very much like a fool. It was not exactly a gala occasion. But the only witnesses outside of his own troops had been two gaping street sweepers and a little knot of twenty quislings who tried to make their cheers atone for the silence of the twenty thousand people who stayed away.
However, when Surgeon General Mors was brought to his office as a prisoner of war, General Vladek felt a little better. A general officer taken prisoner! This had some of the savor of traditional war! The prisoner, of course, was a stocky, short figure in a badly fitting uniform, and his broad features indicated peasant ancestry.
But General Viadek tried to make the most of the situation with military courtesy.
“I offer my apologies,” said General Viadek grandly, “if you were subjected to any discourtesy at the time of your capture, my dear General. But after all”—he smiled condescendingly—“this is war!”
“Is it?” asked Mors. He continued in a businesslike tone, “I was not sure. When was the declaration of war issued, and by whom?”
General Viadek blinked.
“Why—ah—no formal declaration was made by my government. There were military reasons for secrecy.”
Surgeon General Mors sat down and mopped his face.
“Ah! I am relieved. If you invaded without a declaration of war, you have the legal status of a bandit. Naturally, my government would not regularize your position. Even as a bandit, however,” he said prosaically, “you will understand that the local sanitary arrangements should not be interfered with. That was what I came to see you about. My country has the lowest death rate in all Europe, and any meddling with our health services would be very stupid. I hope you will give orders—”
General Vladek roared. Then he calmed himself, fuming. “I did not receive you to be lectured,” he said stiffly. “So far as I am aware, you are the ranking officer of your army to be captured by my men. I make a formal demand for the surrender of all troops under your command.”
“But there aren’t any!” said Surgeon General Mors in surprise, “My government would not be so imbecilic as to leave soldiers in a province they were not strong enough to defend! They’d only have been killed in trumped-up fighting so you could claim a victory!”
General Vladek’s eyes glittered. He pounced.
“Ha! Then your government knew that we intended to invade?”
“My dear man!” said Mors with some tartness. “Your government has been drooling at the mouth for years over the fact that the taxes from our richest province would almost balance its budget! Of course we suspected you would someday try to seize it! We are not altogether fools!”
“Yet,” said General Viadek sardonically, “you did not prepare to defend it!”
Surgeon General Mors blinked at the slim, bemedaled figure of his official captor.
“When a peaceful householder hears a burglar in his house,” he said shortly, “he may or may not go to fight himself, but he does not send his young sons! If he is sensible, he sends for the police.”
“He sends for the police!” repeated Vladek incredulously. “My good Surgeon General Mors, do you expect the United Nations to interfere in this matter? The United Nations is run by diplomats, phrasemakers. They are aghast and helpless before an accomplished fact like our actual possession of Kantolia! My good sir—”
“This talk is nonsense!” said Mors irritably. “I came to offer you the benefit of my experience in matters of military and public health. Do you have the welfare of your men actually at heart?”
There was a pause. General Vladek was slim and beautifully tailored. He did not belong in the office of the provincial governor of Kantolia, whose desk was still littered with papers concerning such local affairs as the price of pigs and crops and an outbreak of measles in the public schools. The office was slightly grubby, despite a certain plebeian attempt at elegance. General Vladek seemed fastidiously detached from his surroundings. And he was amused.
“I assure you,” said General Viadek, “that I am duly solicitous of my men’s health.”
“If you are solicitous enough,” said Surgeon General Mors curtly, “you will get them out of here as quickly as they came in! But I can hardly expect you to comply with that wish. What I have to say is that your troops had better have as little to do with the civilian population as possible—no communication of any sort that can possibly be avoided.”
“You are ridiculous,” said General Vladek, annoyed. “Kantolia is now part of my country. Its people are the fellow citizens of my troops. Isolate them? Ridiculous!”
Surgeon General Mors stood up and shrugged.
“Very well,” he said heavily. “I advised you. Now, either I am a prisoner or I am not. If not, I would like a pass allowing me to go about freely. The sudden entry of so large an invading force introduces problems of public health—”
“Which my medical corps,” said General Viadek scornfully, “is quite able to cope with! You are a prisoner, and I think a fool! Good day!”
Surgeon General Mors marched stolidly to the door ...
Since the invasion was not yet one day old, there had been no time to build concentration camps. Surgeon General Mors was confined, therefore, in a school which had been closed to education that it might be taken over and used as a prison. He found himself in company with the provincial governor of Kantolia, with the mayor of Stadheim, and various other officials arrested by the invaders. There were private citizens in confinement, too—mostly people whom the small number of quislings in Kantolia had denounced. They were not accused of crimes, as yet. Even the invading army did not yet pretend that they had committed any offense against either military or civilian law. But most of them were frantic. It was not easy to forget tales of hostages shot for acts of resistance by conquered populations. They knew of places where leading citizens had been exterminated for the crime of being leading citizens, and educated men destroyed because they rejected propaganda that outraged all reason. The fate of Kantoha had precedents. If precedent were followed, those first arrested when the land was overrun were in no enviable situation.
Surgeon General Mors tried to reassure them, but he had not much success. The entire situation looked hopeless. The seizure of a single province of a very minor nation would appear to the rest of the world either as a crisis, or an affront to the United Nations, or as a rectification of frontiers—according to the nationality and political persuasion of the commentator. It would go on the agenda of the United Nations Council; deftly it would be intermixed with other matters so that it could not be untangled and considered separately. Ultimately it would be the subject of a compromise—one item in a complicated Great Power deal—which would leave matters exactly as the invaders wished them. Practically speaking, that was the prospect.