The saddest thing about the recent announcement that there are no canals on Mars is that Robert and I will now have so little to talk about. Robert is my favourite waiter, and when he found out that I am what the newspapers call a literary worker, he made up his mind that the ordinary topics of light conversation would not do at all for me. After prolonged resistance on my part he has succeeded in reducing our common interests to two: the canals on Mars and French depopulation. Now and then I venture to bring up the weather or the higher cost of living. Once I asked him what he thought about the need of football reform. Once I tried to drag in Mme. Steinheil. But Robert listens patiently, and when I have concluded he calls my attention to the fact that in 1908 the number of deaths in France exceeded the number of births by 12,000. When the French population fails to stir me, he wonders whether the inhabitants of Mars are really as intelligent as they are supposed to be.

And yet it must have been I that first suggested Mars to him. Let me confess. I do not love the Martian canals with the devouring passion they have aroused in susceptible souls like Robert. But in a quieter way the canals have been very dear to me. Their threatened loss comes like the loss of an old friend; a distant friend whose face one has almost forgotten and never hopes to see again, from whom one never hopes to borrow, and to whom one never expects to lend, but who all the more lives in the mind a remote, impersonal, and gentle influence. I am not ashamed to admit that I have learned to care more for the Martian canals than for any canals much closer to us. The Panama Canal will probably cut in two the distance to China, and give us a monopoly of the cotton goods trade in the Pacific; but I think cotton goods are unhealthful, and I don't want to go to China. The Suez Canal may be the mainstay of the British Empire, but I have no doubt that it would make just as satisfactory a mainstay for some other empire. My interest in the Erie Canal is connected entirely with the fact that when it was opened somebody said, "What hath God wrought!" or "There is no more North and no more South"—I have forgotten which.

I have always had a softer spot in my heart for the inhabitants of Mars than for any other alien people. They have always impressed me as more unassuming than the English, fonder of outdoor exercise than the Germans, and less addicted to garrulity than the French. They lead simple, laborious lives, digging away at their canals every morning, and filling them up every night, for reasons best known to themselves and certain professors at Harvard. I am attracted by their quaint appearance. Mr. H. G. Wells, for instance, has depicted them with cylindrical bodies of sheet iron, long legs like a tripod, heads like an enormous diver's helmet, and arms like the tentacles of an octopus—as odd a sight in their way as the latest woman's fashions from Paris. Others have described the Martians as pot-bellied and hairless, with goggle eyes, powerful arms, and curly, gelatinous legs, the result of millions of years of universal culture and Subway congestion. A race so unattractive could not but be virtuous. One feels instinctively that there is no graft bound up with the digging of the Martian canals.

No, anything but graft. One of the principal reasons why I am so fond of the canals on Mars is that they are the most cheaply built system of public works on record. A professor of astronomy in Italy or Arizona finds a few dim lines on the plate of his camera, and immediately Mars is equipped with a splendid network of artificial waterways. Am I wrong in thinking of the Martian canals as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind? An African savage might find an elephant's skeleton and from that reconstruct the animal in life. Only science can reconstruct an elephant from a half-inch fragment of the bone of his hind leg. Only a scientist could have reconstructed the Martian canals from a few photographic scratches. Of such reconstructions our civilisation is largely made up. We build up a statesman out of a bit of buncombe and a frock coat; a genius out of two sonnets and half a dozen cocktails; a dramatic "star" out of a lisp and a giggle; a two-column news story out of the fragment of a fact; a multitude out of three men and a band; a crusade out of one man and a press agent; a novel out of the trimmings of earlier novels; a reputation out of an accident; a captain of industry out of an itching palm; a philanthropist out of a beneficent smile and a platitude; a critic out of a wise look and a fountain pen; and a social prophet out of pretty small potatoes. I need not allude here to the process of making mountains out of molehills, beams out of motes, and entire summers out of single swallows.

But mind, I do not mean that I was ever sceptical about the canals. Indeed, I have always admired the way in which their existence was demonstrated. There have always been two ways of proving that something is true. One way is to bring forward sixteen reasons why, let us say, the moon is made of green cheese. The other way is to assume that the moon is made of green cheese and to answer sixteen objections brought forward against the theory. I have always preferred the second method, because it throws the burden of proof on your opponent. There is no argument under the sun that cannot be refuted. Obviously, then, it is an advantage to let your opponents supply the argument while you supply the refutation.

Neglect this precaution, and you are in difficulties from the start. You contend, for instance, that the moon must be made of cheese because the moon and cheese are both round, as a rule. True, says your opponent, but so are doughnuts, women's arguments, and, occasionally, the wheels on a trolley car. The moon and cheese, you go on, both come after dinner. Yes, says your opponent, but so do unwelcome visitors, musical comedies, and indigestion. Then, you say, there is the cow who jumped over the moon. Would she have resorted to such extraordinary procedure if she had not perceived that the moon was made of cheese from her own milk? Well (says your opponent), the cow might merely have been trying to gain a broader outlook upon life. And here you are thirteen reasons from the end, and your hands hopelessly full.

Now compare the advantages of the other method. You adopt a resolute bearing and declare: "The moon is made of green cheese." It is now for your opponent to speak. He argues: "But that would make the moon's ingredients different from those of the earth and other celestial bodies." "Not at all," you say; "the earth is made up largely of chalk, and what is the difference between chalk and cheese, except in the price?" "But, if it's green cheese the moon is made of," asks your opponent, "why does it look yellow?" "Only the natural effect of atmospheric refraction," you reply calmly; "remember how a politician's badly soiled reputation will shine out a brilliant white, through the favourable atmosphere that surrounds a Congressional investigating committee. Recall how a lady who is green with envy at her neighbour's new hat will turn pink with delight when the two meet in the street and kiss. Recall how the same lady's complexion of roses and milk will assume its natural yellow under the candid dissection of her dearest friends." Your opponent might go on marshalling his objections forever, and you would have no difficulty in knocking them on the head.

So I used to believe. But if the method breaks down in the case of Mars and its canals, it breaks down everywhere else. If there are no canals on Mars, what about the blessings of the tariff, which are based on exactly the same kind of reasoning? What about the efficacy of mental healing? What about the advantages of giving up coffee? What about the impending invasion of California by the Japanese? What about the Kaiser's qualifications as an art critic? What about the restraining influence of publicity on corporations? What about the connection between easy divorce and the higher life? What about the divine right of railroad presidents? What about the theatrical manager's passion for a purified stage? What about the value of all anti-fat medicines? All of these things have been shown to be true by assuming that they are true. If the canals on Mars go, all these have to go. And that makes me almost as sad as the fact that I shall have nothing to talk about with my favourite waiter.