But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to direct the more
terrible force of vril were chiefly remarkable in their influence upon
social polity. As these effects became familiarly known and skillfully
administered, war between the vril-discoverers ceased, for they brought
the art of destruction to such perfection as to annul all superiority in
numbers, discipline, or military skill. The fire lodged in the hollow
of a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter the strongest
fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an
embattled host. If army met army, and both had command of this agency,
it could be but to the annihilation of each. The age of war was
therefore gone, but with the cessation of war other effects bearing
upon the social state soon became apparent. Man was so completely at
the mercy of man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing,
to slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by force
gradually vanished from political systems and forms of law. It is only
by force that vast communities, dispersed through great distances of
space, can be kept together; but now there was no longer either the
necessity of self-preservation or the pride of aggrandisement to make
one state desire to preponderate in population over another.

The Vril-discoverers thus, in the course of a few generations,
peacefully split into communities of moderate size. The tribe amongst
which I had fallen was limited to 12,000 families. Each tribe occupied
a territory sufficient for all its wants, and at stated periods the
surplus population departed to seek a realm of its own. There appeared
no necessity for any arbitrary selection of these emigrants; there was
always a sufficient number who volunteered to depart.

These subdivided states, petty if we regard either territory or