B1099 <=> B1101 [BTG XLIII Beelzebub’s opinion of war, p. 1100]

“’If the universal laws I have discovered are opposed to the means you expected might bring a certain happiness to mankind, then, however strange it may seem to you at first glance, if only these same laws be employed otherwise, they might serve for the attainment of this aim we have set for ourselves.

“’Now listen to what we must do to attain this aim. The results of all my researches clearly prove that Nature requires that at certain periods a certain number of deaths should take place on the Earth; and at the same time I have succeeded in making clear that for the needs of nature it is indifferent which deaths these are, whether deaths of people themselves or deaths of the lives of other forms of beings.

“’From this it follows that if the number of deaths required by Nature is made up by the deaths of other forms of lives of the Earth, then obviously the need for the number of deaths of men themselves will thus be of itself correspondingly reduced.

“’And it will be quite possible to attain to this if all the members of our society continue to work with the same intensity, only not with the aim of realizing our former program, but of reviving upon the Earth on a larger scale than before the ancient custom among men of offering sacrifices to their gods and saints by destroying the lives of other forms.’

“When this proud Kurd had finished his speech, there arose among the members of the society ‘The-Earth-Is-Equally-Free-for-All’ an astonishment and agitation not less than on the occasion when he had first expounded his famous theory.

“For nearly three days and three nights following that memorable day they scarcely adjourned, but in the halls that had been put by the citizens of Mosulopolis at the disposal of this all-planetary society of men-beings there was a continuous rumble of discussion and deliberation; at last, on the forth day, an official general meeting was convened at which by general consent a resolution was carried, to do in the future also everything exactly as should be indicated by the great Kurd, the philosopher Atarnakh.