IN TWO SCENES
The Minister for Fine Arts (to whose Department had been
lately added the new subsection of Electoral Engineering)
paid a business visit to the Grand Vizier. According to
Eastern etiquette they discoursed for a while on indifferent
subjects. The Minister only checked himself in time from
making a passing reference to the Marathon Race, remembering
that the Vizier had a Persian grandmother and might consider
any allusion to Marathon as somewhat tactless. Presently
the Minister touched the subject of his interview.
“Under the new Constitution are women to have votes?” he
asked suddenly.
“To have votes? Women?” exclaimed the Vizier in some
astonishment. “My dear Pasha, the New Departure has a
flavour of the absurd as it is; don't let's try and make it
altogether ridiculous. Women have no souls and no
intelligence; why on earth should they have votes?”
“I know it sounds absurd,” said the Minister, “but they
are seriously considering the idea in the West.”
“Then they must have a larger equipment of seriousness
than I gave them credit for. After a lifetime of
specialized effort in maintaining my gravity I can scarcely
restrain an inclination to smile at the suggestion. Why,
our womenfolk in most cases don't know how to read or write.
How could they perform the operation of voting?”
“They could be shown the names of the candidates and
where to make their cross.”
“I beg your pardon?” interrupted the Vizier.
“Their crescent, I mean,” corrected the Minister, “It
would be to the liking of the Young Turkish Party,” he
added.
“Oh, well,” said the Vizier, “if we are to do the thing
at all we may as well go the whole h---” he pulled up just
as he was uttering the name of an unclean animal, and
continued, “the complete camel. I will issue instructions
that womenfolk are to have votes.”
*
The poll was drawing to a close in the Lakoumistan
division. The candidate of the Young Turkish Party was
known to be three or four hundred votes ahead, and he was
already drafting his address, returning thanks to the
electors. His victory had been almost a foregone
conclusion, for he had set in motion all the approved
electioneering machinery of the West. He had even employed
motor-cars. Few of his supporters had gone to the poll in
these vehicles, but, thanks to the intelligent driving of
his chauffeurs, many of his opponents had gone to their
graves or to the local hospitals, or otherwise abstained
from voting. And then something unlooked-for happened. The
rival candidate, Ali the Blest, arrived on the scene with
his wives and womenfolk, who numbered, roughly, six hundred.
Ali had wasted little effort on election literature, but had
been heard to remark that every vote given to his opponent
meant another sack thrown into the Bosporus. The Young
Turkish candidate, who had conformed to the Western custom
of one wife and hardly any mistresses, stood by helplessly
while his adversary's poll swelled to a triumphant majority.
“Cristabel Columbus!” he exclaimed, invoking in some
confusion the name of a distinguished pioneer; “who would
have thought it?”
“Strange,” mused Ali, “that one who harangued so
clamorously about the Secret Ballot should have overlooked
the Veiled Vote.”
And, walking homeward with his constituents, he murmured
in his beard an improvisation on the heretic poet of Persia:
“One, rich in metaphors, his Cause contrives
To urge with edged words, like Kabul knives;
And I, who worst him in this sorry game,
Was never rich in anything but---wives.”