Take Me to Your President

By Leonard Wibberley

Take Me to Your President is another brilliant political satire by the author of The Mouse That Roared.

 

After chasing his dog (who was chasing a rabbit), a simple farmer from a small village in England finds himself inexplicably on board a top-secret intergalactic missile. Before he can sort it out, the farmer finds himself touching down in the United States of America where he is mistaken for a Martian. And now it's up to him to bring world peace.

 

"Once again Leonard Wibberley—author of The Mouse That Roared—has conjured a unique sort of comedy from a blend of fantasy, blandly satirical spoofing, and sound common sense."—New York Herald Tribune Book Review

 

"Leonard Wibberley is one of the few men, in this gloomy age of atom-smashing, guided missiles and horror bombs, who has retained his sense of proportion about life. He is still able to laugh at it and, better still, to persuade others, lots of others, that they may laugh with him without setting off the H-bomb."—The Los Angeles Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Duchy of Grand Fenwick
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223434955

Book preview

TAKE ME TO YOUR PRESIDENT

By Leonard Wibberley

Take Me to Your President

Copyright © 1958 by Leonard Wibberley

First Digital Edition Copyright © 2017 by

The Estate of the Late Leonard Wibberley

leonardwibberleybooks (at) gmail (dot) com

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DEDICATED

TO HAZEL, literary critic and comforter, finder of all things irretrievably lost, secretary extraordinary, wife, and mother of my four children. What an empty world this would be without her.

FOREWORD

READERS of this curious history, in which is given for the first time the true story of the nuclear disarmament conference of the summer of 1960, may rightly wonder how it came about that in so prosaic a country as England there should be a village with the bizarre name of Mars.

There have been a number of theories regarding the name in the past. Some have speculated that the original name of the village was Marsh and others that it was Marse and that colloquial usage rubbed these spellings down to Mars.

These speculations and others of a similar nature are without any support in fact. The name of the village is the same as the planet—Mars. And to trace how the village came into being (it is of comparatively recent origin) it is necessary to go back to the remarkable career of Colonel Jeremy Ponsonby, commander in the eighteenth century of Ponsonby’s Buffs, or the Fourteenth Regiment of Foot, to use the official war department title at that time.

Jeremy Ponsonby was born to a good family whose sense of loyalty to the current regime was unfortunately vastly superior to their sense of political expediency. The family seat was in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, where the fertile valley of Wensleydale disappears in the bleak, high moorlands. On the rare occasions when loyalty and good politics coincided, the family estate was large. But more often it consisted solely of a few unproductive acres and a rambling house, not quite of manor proportions, which was in constant need of repair, and a piggery.

When Elizabeth I came to the throne and faced her troubles with Catholic Spain, the Ponsonbys were Papists and their estate suffered accordingly. The reign which brought the defeat of the Spanish Armada brought also the loss of the Ponsonby piggery from which most of the sustenance of the Ponsonby family was derived. By the time the aged Elizabeth had died, however, the Ponsonbys had turned Anglican, having during the course of her long reign conceived a hatred of the Spanish and a deep love of Elizabeth. The piggery was restored but went again with the accession of James of Scotland. James’ policy was one of conciliation toward Spain, and it was a policy which the Ponsonbys could not abide. They were taxed out of the piggery and the head of the family was put in that convenient filing cabinet for the politically inept, the Tower of London.

When Charles succeeded James, matters changed once more. England went to war with Spain largely because Charles was rejected by the Infanta, the Spanish king’s daughter. This royal love affair had its effect on the Ponsonby piggery, which was restored to the owners and the head of the family released from the Tower.

But not long afterward Ponsonby loyalties were once more at odds with political wisdom. King and Parliament went to war, and this was the only occasion that any Ponsonby was known to have raised the question of a choice between political expediency and loyalty to a sovereign. The question was raised by the mother of the Jeremy Ponsonby with whom we are concerned.

When news arrived that Parliamentarians and Royalists were at each other’s throats, Jeremy’s father flung the dispatch into the fireplace and called for his horse and his sword, which he proposed to place at the service of the king. His wife, sitting opposite him and working on a piece of embroidery, said, almost to the embroidery, What about the pigs?

Her husband’s reply was for many years a cherished saying of the Ponsonby family.

Woman, he cried, who would hesitate in a choice between pigs and princes?

The English Civil War then, for the Ponsonby family, was one between King and Parliament with the piggery at stake, and of course the piggery went once more. Nor was it restored during the Cromwellian interregnum because, happily for once, there was not time for the family loyalties to become adjusted to the facts of political life. This paid off handsomely when Charles II was restored to the throne, and during the short reigns of the last two Stuarts no more handsome piggery and no wider estates ever belonged to the Ponsonby family.

The piggery, however, had gone once more when William of Orange took over the throne of England from his father-in-law, James II, at which time Jeremy Ponsonby was head of the family, his father having died a year before the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The last words of his father to Jeremy had been, Remember, son, a man does not have to hesitate between pigs and princes.

Jeremy, however, was not greatly interested in either pigs or princes. He had been educated in Holland and there, at Leyden, met a certain Dr. Joachim van Delt, who lectured on astronomy and had twice been pilloried for asserting that there were people on Mars.

It was not that the government of Holland objected to the idea that there were people on Mars. The objection came from certain church groups who demanded to know whether the good doctor believed that these people on Mars were creatures of God.

Dr. van Delt warily replied that the whole universe was undoubtedly the creation of God. Then came the question of whether he believed that the people on Mars were Christians, and he gave it as his opinion that they were not. That brought the trouble. In essence the good doctor had asserted that God had created people on a far planet to whom it was impossible to send missionaries to bring them into the true faith. That was a flagrant denial of divine goodness and mercy, and van Delt went to the pillory.

Jeremy admired the man and loved astronomy. He determined to devote his life to it rather than to pigs (or princes), but was shrewd enough to realize that not much of a living was to be made from stargazing. Educated on the Continent, however, and rooming frequently in houses where soldiers were quartered, he made the happy discovery that with any luck, and a determination to avoid strong liquors, a man could make a fair fortune in the army.

Jeremy sold what little remained of the family lands in Yorkshire and with the money received bought himself a captaincy in a foot regiment of the new king, William of Orange. He then waited for a war to break out. His patience was not tried too long, for on May 4, 1702, England and Austria agreed that God and patriotism demanded that they beat the French in the interests of Spain. The War of the Spanish Succession was launched and Jeremy Ponsonby rejoiced.

His first duty to ensure the future happiness and security of the Spanish people, he realized, was to raise a company of foot numbering one hundred and twenty stout fellows.

He raised eighty, sent in a hundred and twenty names to his superiors, drew pay for them, and pocketed the difference. On paper, Captain Ponsonby’s company of foot bore a charmed existence. Though present at the storming of Kaiserworth and Venlo, not one of them died. At least, Captain Ponsonby faithfully returned their names as present and full of vigor to the paymaster each month, and drew their pay.

It was a common saying among his men that more dead soldiers served Captain Ponsonby than live ones, but Jeremy’s eyes were on the stars and he ignored such jibes. He carefully saved the money earned for him by his dead soldiers and in time amassed sufficient to purchase the rank of colonel, with a commission to raise a regiment. So Ponsonby’s Buffs or the Fourteenth Regiment of Foot came into being. One thousand strong on paper, it performed, with six hundred effectives, marvels for the anxious people of Spain awaiting news of who was to obtain the monarchy. And for Jeremy, who was saving up for a telescope.

Blenheim Field put an end to Jeremy Ponsonby’s military career. With the Buffs he took part in two disastrous though spirited charges against the French under Tallard, and the original six hundred of his regiment was reduced to four hundred and fifty. While reforming his men on the higher ground to the north of Blenheim, a whiff of grape swept over Colonel Ponsonby and he lost the sight of his left eye and was also struck in the right shoulder.

That he survived his wounds is undoubtedly due to the fact that he stoutly refused to go to the field hospital for treatment. He disliked the idea of bandages taken off dead men being applied to his own hurts after a cursory rinsing in water. So he stuck to his tent, with a personal servant attending him. The wound to his eye, though enough to blind him, did no further harm. The ball did not enter the skull, and the more dangerous of his hurts was the shoulder wound. This took several weeks to heal, by which time Colonel Ponsonby had sold his commission for a handsome sum, bid his adieus to Marlborough, and returned to England.

He had now all the funds needed to set up his private observatory, equipped with the best instruments available, and devote the remainder of his life to the study of the stars. He had long had in mind the site for his observatory. He repurchased the family lands on the moorlands at the head of Wensleydale and constructed his observatory on the grounds formerly occupied by the Ponsonby piggery.

The place was ideal for his studies. Remote, high above the mists of the lowlands, he was ensured of excellent observation conditions and seclusion, and for the following twenty years he did little but study the stars, occasionally sending a paper on his findings to the Royal Society in London, which elected him to membership.

Gradually, however, the sight of Ponsonby’s remaining eye failed, and becoming more and more desirous of leaving some lasting mark of his contribution to astronomy, Jeremy bethought himself of a plan both apt and philanthropic. There can be no doubt that he was influenced in the formation of this plan by the love and respect in which he held his former tutor in astronomy, Dr. van Delt, twice pilloried for asserting that there were people on Mars.

Jeremy had long hoped to substantiate this statement by his own observations, but had failed to do so. He decided, then, that he would build a number of villages or hamlets named after the planets in which agricultural laborers could live free of rent. Each cottage would have ground sufficient (or a vegetable garden to help support its inhabitants.

The first to be built would be called Mars and the second Venus—these two planets having been in the ascendant on the day that Jeremy was born. Mars was built then on the desolate moorlands at the head of Wensleydale and, consisting as it did of only a dozen cottages, was readily peopled, making the doctor’s assertion that Mars was inhabited true. With rent-free cottages and land on which to raise vegetables, the villagers took to sheep rearing, selling fleeces and carcasses to complete their livelihood. It was a modest livelihood by every standard, but nonetheless sufficient for each cottager. The population remained stable through the generations as, with secure but limited futures ahead, the more ambitious of each crop of youngsters left. Thus Mars remained through the years a self-supporting, modest, and remote community.

After Mars came Venus, planned by Jeremy for a site some distance off. But before the work could be put in hand the good astronomer died, the newspapers of the day making some quips about the fact that Colonel Ponsonby, stargazer, was the first man known to have been buried in Mars.

These facts establishing the reasons for the naming of the village as well as the authenticity of the spelling Mars were largely assembled by the Reverend Reems, who was appointed vicar of the village shortly after the close of World War II.

They have some bearing on the story which follows.

CHAPTER ONE

ON the afternoon of the 10th of July, 1944 when the invasion of Europe was over a month old and all at a deadlock, a decision of the greatest importance to the future of the world was taken by a corporal of the Yorkshire Fusiliers who, with five men, found himself boxed in by mortar fire behind a Normandy hedgerow.

It was the pleasantest of days and Corporal Jerry Blackwood, as he was known to the British Army, and A-I as he was known to his men, a huge, slow-talking native of a remote English village called Mars, had come to the conclusion that there was something to be said for the French countryside.

It was not, of course, to be compared with the moorlands that surrounded his village at the head of Wensleydale, Yorkshire. It suffered from the heavy disadvantage of being populated by Frenchmen, who were foreigners. But it had a decided appeal of its own with its little fields and hills and apple orchards. And it was just as he had conceded this to himself that Corporal Blackwood heard the high whistle of the first mortar shell and plumped down with his five companions behind the hedgerow.

The mortar barrage lasted for a devastating ten minutes. Corporal Blackwood’s men, veterans of five years’ active service, had wisely dispersed themselves and, when the barrage was over, had suffered only two casualties. Tom Forster who came from the corporal’s village had been blown into a butchered mess, and Pete Simmons who had driven a grocery van in Leeds had a pulped foot and would likely lose his left leg.

Eh, said Corporal Blackwood, rising slowly and solemnly to his knees and shaking his head, something’s got to be done about this.

That was the decision. It was one that was undoubtedly taken by hundreds of thousands of servicemen in World War II on similar occasions—the decision that something must be done to ensure that never again should decent and harmless chaps like Tom Forster and Pete Simmons be butchered. The difference was that while the rest of the servicemen forgot the decision, or on the return of peace left its implementation to others, Corporal Blackwood, or A-I to use the name by which he was more readily known, never did.

When the war was over; when Berlin had been occupied and the Potsdam Conference settled and A-I had received his discharge from the army and returned to his native village, he never forgot the decision that something had to be done to preserve the peace of nations.

Indeed, the events of the dozen or more years that followed the close of World War II served to strengthen A-I’s conviction; and as international relations deteriorated and the world divided into sharply hostile camps, each intent, in the interests of its own preservation, upon creating weapons to destroy the other, A-I began to see that the diplomats were failing again, as they had failed prior to World War I and World War II. This made it all the clearer that he himself would have to take the matter in hand. He was not at all uncertain as to how he could accomplish the task.

Give me half an hour’s plain talk, man to man, with the big shots—half an hour is all I ask, mark you—and I’ll settle the whole thing, he would say. This pronouncement, made at the end of every discussion of international affairs in the taproom of the village pub, the Plough and Stars became a kind of ritual with A-I. He made it slowly and with conviction, emphasizing his point by thumping his huge forefinger upon the polished mahogany bar, and was always listened to with respect.

Mr. Beamish, the proprietor of the Plough and Stars would invariably nod his head and say, That’s right, and the others present would agree with profound exclamations of A-I! All except Greene, the grocer, a man as big as A-I and a newcomer to the village, having settled there to run a grocery business shortly after the war. Greene had lived and worked in London (a distinction of great worth).

Whenever A-I made his favorite pronouncement, Greene would give a snort between scorn and laughter and on one occasion had gone so far as to say out loud, Fat chance. A-I had not demeaned himself by taking any notice of this piece of impertinence, but Mr. Beamish had later taken Greene aside and told him man to man to keep a civil tongue in his head or drink his pint of old and mild somewhere else.

In the village of Mars, until the arrival of Greene, A-I was the unchallenged leader and commanded a great deal of respect. He was a big man to begin with, six-feet-four inches and muscled to match. He moved and spoke with a slowness that gave a wonderful touch of solemn deliberation to whatever he had to say. He had a fine war record, though his rank