The Diothas, or, A Far Look Ahead/Chapter 17
Although, as before stated, there was neither army nor navy to maintain, there was, nevertheless, a sort of conscription in force that exacted for public purposes the service of all young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. By these conscripts, called zerdars, were performed those labors which, however useful or indispensable, are not attractive as life employments to those not compelled to follow them.
At seventeen each young man was expected to report for duty at a certain place. There, unless allowed to return home for another year, he was at once assigned to some duty, always at a distance from home. According as exigency required, any zerdar might become a sailor, a miner, a member of the sanitary police, and so on. The nature of the training they had received rendered them fully competent for the management of the machinery that had superseded muscular labor in every department of life.
The younger were first assigned to comparatively light tasks. I had already remarked, with some surprise, that the conductors of the city railroads, and other similar officials, were all very young. After a year or more at such light tasks, they were drafted to heavier labors in some other division of the world; regard being had, as far as possible, to the preferences of the young men. In order to give the zerdars the educational advantage of becoming familiar, in turn, with every great division of the world, its climate, and its productions, the various nations had established a sort of universal labor exchange, somewhat on the plan of the postal unions of the present. In this way, during his seven or eight years of service, each zerdar would visit every part of the world, and certainly gain an extensive knowledge of mankind; no impediment existing in the way of difference of language, or class feeling, to prevent free social or intellectual intercourse.
All this time, too, he was receiving good pay, and his education was carefully attended to. A certain portion of every day was assigned to advanced studies under teachers of the highest class. This, indeed, was the busiest and most hard-worked part of a man's life, the dangers of idleness being guarded against by almost constant occupation. This the young submitted to cheerfully, looking forward, as they did, to an assured life of comparative ease on the expiration of their period of service.
Most of them, too, were fortunate enough to be able to look forward to a happy rounding off of their life by a union with their other self, the fair complement of their otherwise incomplete personality. If not during the first year, yet, in the great majority of cases, during the remainder of their term of public service, they were happy in the acknowledged love of some fair zerua, who, in her distant home, was also completing the course of training that was to make her for him the crown and joy, as now she was the aspiration, of his life. The great majority of betrothals took place, either just before the youthful zerdar departed on his first year of service, or during the furlough at the end of that year. Experience had shown that was the most favorable time for putting the momentous question, when the maidens' hearts were softened by pity for the young fellows about to depart on their distant wanderings, to engage in arduous and sometimes dangerous duties, from which their own sex debarred them.
It must not be supposed that the separation was so complete as it would now be under like circumstances. The enormously improved telephone enabled the zerdar, no matter how distant, to converse as freely with his betrothed as if in the same apartment. Imagine such an intercourse continuing for years, an interchange of ideas combining the charms of conversation with those of correspondence. Like conversation, it comprised the pleasure caused by the falling of a loved voice on the ear, the delicate shading of thought possible to the living voice alone, and the mental stimulus arising from the present collision of thought with thought. At the same time it possessed, like correspondence, the power of presenting facts and depicting scenes inaccessible to the person informed, but with the enormous advantage of their being presented while the impression upon the speaker's mind was fresh, while the facts had all the gloss of novelty.
The reciprocal interaction of two minds engaged for several years in this interchange of intimate thought had the effect of making the one in reality the intellectual complement of the other. After this course of mutual training, a young couple on their wedding morning already understood and appreciated each other to a degree now rarely attained during a long wedded life, except, perhaps, in a few fortunate exceptions to the general rule. Our ideal of marriage is, no doubt, greatly in advance of that of any former age. Friendship among men, in the ancient acceptation of the term, is practically extinct. Among several causes for this, the chief one is, that men have, to a great degree, learned to look to their wives for that sympathy and confidential advice once sought from some chosen friend. The next step will be, the attainment of that intellectual companionship now so rarely found. It is found, however, and will be found in an ever-increasing proportion, till it become the normal type of wedded life.
Nor was the zerdar shut out from the pleasures of a refined society. All being equal in family and education, there were no barriers to social intercourse. Zerdars occupied, in fact, much the same social position as the officers of a garrison among us; supposing, at the same time, that all said officers are young, handsome, and well-bred.
All wore a handsome uniform; the years of service, and hence the official rank, being indicated by the different colors of the edging to the tunic. Those under betrothal were easily distinguished by the engagement ring, which they were expected to wear on all occasions. Besides, with the great facilities for communication by telephone, any desired information in regard to a zerdar was as easy to obtain as if he came from the next village. It was the special duty, indeed, of certain officials, to furnish such information when required. If an incipient flirtation was suspected between a maiden of the place and an ineligible, that is, a betrothed, zerdur, he was apt to be suddenly assigned to a distant field of duty.
Though subject to an organization and discipline resembling, in some degree, that of our armies, the zerdars were not quartered in barracks, but were assigned to homes among the households of the place where duty detained them. I say homes advisedly; for the accepted rule of conduct on both sides was, that he was, in every respect, to be treated, and he, in turn, to behave toward his hosts, as a son of the house. The relation thus established, though temporary, was none the less real, and was frequently the origin of life-long friendships.
With all the facility of youth, the young man soon felt at home amid his new surroundings, and readily accorded to his temporary guardians the respect and duty he had been trained to show his parents. Nor was the guardianship assumed by the householder so onerous as it would now be apt to prove. There were no such haunts as now disgrace our cities to lead a young man astray; and, with the simple habits of the period, debt was practically unknown.
At the season when transferred from one post of duty to another, each zerdar was allowed a furlough of a month or six weeks. in which to transport himself to his new sphere of duty. The transfers took place for one-half the number in spring, for the other half in autumn. In this way was secured the most desirable season of the year for travelling.
If betrothed, the zerdar was naturally anxious to pay at least a flying visit to where was for him the centre of attraction. As he was not allowed, however, to spend more than two days at home, a large part of the journey, if not all, was performed by curricle. Mounted on these, and careering over the splendid roads that penetrated every corner of the terrestrial globe, the young men could accomplish with ease a distance of two hundred and forty miles a day, or four hundred miles when pressed for time.
My host's eyes would yet sparkle with enthusiasm as he told of those glorious days of travel in company with a band of comrades. With literally "the world before them where to choose," they yet preferred, as a rule, so to map out their route, that it would gradually bring them to the place where, on a certain day, they should report for duty. Thus, at one time they would course for days over the seemingly endless pampas of South America: on another occasion they spent weeks of wonder and delight in the region of the Amazon, skirting the shores of its mighty flood, and viewing with the intelligent curiosity of cultivated minds the most remarkable vegetation to be seen on earth. On another excursion they sped across Africa, no longer the sable and unknown, to visit the renowned cataracts of the Zambesi, still distinguished by the name of a good queen of ancient renown. Thence they turned to descend the course of the once mysterious Nile, viewed with awe the pyramids, most venerable of earth's monuments, thence hastened along the southern shores of the Mediterranean to their appointed station in what is now called Morocco.
These journeys, and others unnecessary to mention, were, no doubt, interesting, even to hear of. Yet they are such as can be performed even now, though not so easily. What did engage my deepest attention was his account of an excursion by balloon to the North Pole. To Utis, however, this journey proved of much inferior interest to others attended with less discomfort. He showed me, in his album, photographs of scenery immediately around the pole. They struck me as remarkably similar to the well-known scenes found in every record of Polar travel of the present day. Icebergs, walruses, seals, all were there: only the familiar Esquimau and his dog were missing,—vanished into the limbo of the long-forgotten past.