and hundreds of millions of treasure were consumed, and then the world moved in—­not in zones, as was the idea of Baron Albrecht, but heterogeneously, according to the democratic American programme.  It was a vast and happy intermingling of nationalities that settled down in China in 1982 and the years that followed—­a tremendous and successful experiment in cross-fertilization.  We know to-day the splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output that followed.

It was in 1987, the Great Truce having been dissolved, that the ancient quarrel between France and Germany over Alsace-Lorraine recrudesced.  The war-cloud grew dark and threatening in April, and on April 17 the Convention of Copenhagen was called.  The representatives of the nations of the world, being present, all nations solemnly pledged themselves never to use against one another the laboratory methods of warfare they had employed in the invasion of China.

—­Excerpt from Walt Mervin’s “Certain Essays in History.”

THE ENEMY OF ALL THE WORLD

It was Silas Bannerman who finally ran down that scientific wizard and arch-enemy of mankind, Emil Gluck.  Gluck’s confession, before he went to the electric chair, threw much light upon the series of mysterious events, many apparently unrelated, that so perturbed the world between the years 1933 and 1941.  It was not until that remarkable document was made public that the world dreamed of there being any connection between the assassination of the King and Queen of Portugal and the murders of the New York City police officers.  While the deeds of Emil Gluck were all that was abominable, we cannot but feel, to a certain extent, pity for the unfortunate, malformed, and maltreated genius.  This side of his story has never been told before, and from his confession and from the great mass of evidence and the documents and records of the time we are able to construct a fairly accurate portrait of him, and to discern the factors and pressures that moulded him into the human monster he became and that drove him onward and downward along the fearful path he trod.

Emil Gluck was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1895.  His father, Josephus Gluck, was a special policeman and night watchman, who, in the year 1900, died suddenly of pneumonia.  The mother, a pretty, fragile creature, who, before her marriage, had been a milliner, grieved herself to death over the loss of her husband.  This sensitiveness of the mother was the heritage that in the boy became morbid and horrible.

In 1901, the boy, Emil, then six years of age, went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Ann Bartell.  She was his mother’s sister, but in her breast was no kindly feeling for the sensitive, shrinking boy.  Ann Bartell was a vain, shallow, and heartless woman.  Also, she was cursed with poverty and burdened with a husband who was a lazy, erratic ne’er-do-well.  Young Emil Gluck was not wanted, and Ann Bartell could be trusted to impress this fact sufficiently upon him.  As an illustration of the treatment he received in that early, formative period, the following instance is given.