Empires and kingdoms in those days kept up enormous fleets.  Penguinia, compelled to do as they did, sank under the pressure of her armaments.  Everybody deplored or pretended to deplore so grievous a necessity.  However, the rich, and those engaged in business or affairs, submitted to it with a good heart through a spirit of patriotism, and because they counted on the soldiers and sailors to defend their goods at home and to acquire markets and territories abroad.  The great manufacturers encouraged the making of cannons and ships through a zeal for the national defence and in order to obtain orders.  Among the citizens of middle rank and of the liberal professions some resigned themselves to this state of affairs without complaining, believing that it would last for ever; others waited impatiently for its end and thought they might be able to lead the powers to a simultaneous disarmament.

The illustrious Professor Obnubile belonged to this latter class.

“War,” said he, “is a barbarity to which the progress of civilization will put an end.  The great democracies are pacific and will soon impose their will upon the aristocrats.”

Professor Obnubile, who had for sixty years led a solitary and retired life in his laboratory, whither external noises did not penetrate, resolved to observe the spirit of the peoples for himself.  He began his studies with the greatest of all democracies and set sail for New Atlantis.

After a voyage of fifteen days his steamer entered, during the night, the harbour of Titanport, where thousands of ships were anchored.  An iron bridge thrown across the water and shining with lights, stretched between two piers so far apart that Professor Obnubile imagined he was sailing on the seas of Saturn and that he saw the marvellous ring which girds the planet of the Old Man.  And this immense conduit bore upon it more than a quarter of the wealth of the world.  The learned Penguin, having disembarked, was waited on by automatons in a hotel forty-eight stories high.  Then he took the great railway that led to Gigantopolis, the capital of New Atlantis.  In the train there were restaurants, gaming-rooms, athletic arenas, telegraphic, commercial, and financial offices, a Protestant Church, and the printing-office of a great newspaper, which latter the doctor was unable to read, as he did not know the language of the New Atlantans.  The train passed along the banks of great rivers, through manufacturing cities which concealed the sky with the smoke from their chimneys, towns black in the day, towns red at night, full of noise by day and full of noise also by night.

“Here,” thought the doctor, “is a people far too much engaged in industry and trade to make war.  I am already certain that the New Atlantans pursue a policy of peace.  For it is an axiom admitted by all economists that peace without and peace within are necessary for the progress of commerce and industry.”