1.) A nuclear-rocket guided missile, officially designated as the Sword of Islam, vastly superior to your Excellencies’ respective guided missiles Marxist Victory and Celestial Destroyer.  It should be; it was the product of the joint efforts of Dr. Voronoff and Dr. Bao Hu-Shin, whom your Excellencies know.

2.) A new type of radar-radio-electronic defense screen, which can not only detect the approach of a guided missile, at any velocity whatever, but will automatically capture and redirect same.  In case either of your Excellencies doubt this statement, you are invited to aim a rocket at some target in Afghanistan and see what happens.

3.) Both the UPREA mutated virus and the UEESR contagious sterility, with positive vaccines against the former and means of instrumental detection of the latter.

4.) A technique for initiating and controlling the Bethe carbon-hydrogen cycle.  We are now using this as a source of heat for industrial and even domestic purposes, and we also have a carbon-hydrogen cycle bomb.  Such a bomb, delivered by one of our Sword of Islam Mark IV’s, was activated yesterday over the Northern tip of Nova Zembla, at an altitude of four miles.  I am enclosing photographic reproductions of views of this test, televised to Kabul by an accompanying Sword of Islam Mark V observation rocket.  I am informed that expeditions have been sent by both the UEESR and the UPREA to investigate; they should find some very interesting conditions.  For one thing, they won’t need their climbing equipment to get over the Nova Zembla Glacier; the Nova Zembla Glacier isn’t there, any more.

5.) A lithium bomb.  This has not been tested, yet.  A lithium bomb is nothing for a country the size of Afghanistan to let off inside its own borders.  We intend making a test with it within the next ten days, however If your Excellencies will designate a target, which must be at the center of an uninhabited area at least five hundred miles square, the test can be made in perfect safety.  If not, I cannot answer the results; that will be in the hands of Allah, Who has ordained all things.  No doubt Allah has ordained the destruction of either Moscow or Nanking; whichever city Allah has elected to erase, I will make it my personal responsibility to see to it that the other isn’t slighted, either.

However, if your Excellencies decide to accede to my modest and reasonable demands, not later than one week from today, this test-launching will be cancelled as unnecessary.  Of course, that would leave unsettled a bet I have made with Dr. Hong Foo—­a star sapphire against his favorite Persian concubine—­that the explosion of a lithium bomb will not initiate a chain reaction in the Earth’s crust and so disintegrate this planet.  This, of course, is a minor consideration, unworthy of Your notice.