the Azores to the western shores of the Hawaiian Islands,
nor has any man of either hemisphere dared cross 30dW. or
175dW. From 30d to 175d is ours--from 30d to 175d is
peace, prosperity and happiness.

Beyond was the great unknown. Even the geographies of my
boyhood showed nothing beyond. We were taught of nothing
beyond. Speculation was discouraged. For two hundred years
the Eastern Hemisphere had been wiped from the maps and
histories of Pan-America. Its mention in fiction, even, was
forbidden.

Our ships of peace patrol thirty and one hundred seventy-
five. What ships from beyond they have warned only the
secret archives of government show; but, a naval officer
myself, I have gathered from the traditions of the service
that it has been fully two hundred years since smoke or sail
has been sighted east of 30d or west of 175d. The fate of
the relinquished provinces which lay beyond the dead lines
we could only speculate upon. That they were taken by the
military power, which rose so suddenly in China after the
fall of the republic, and which wrested Manchuria and Korea
from Russia and Japan, and also absorbed the Philippines, is
quite within the range of possibility.

It was the commander of a Chinese man-of-war who received a
copy of the edict of 1972 from the hand of my illustrious
ancestor, Admiral Turck, on one hundred seventy-five, two
hundred and six years ago, and from the yellowed pages of
the admiral's diary I learned that the fate of the