Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 54 — page 73: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a pub, a tobacco kiosk, without light reading, commercial entertainment, illogical sports or any of the time- wasting pursuits we now have. Some things would have their ad- vantages; guns and armies would become obsolete as the world began to lose its boundaries and nationalistic pride. Within two generations, three at most, Earth would have changed and the race of man changed with it, Unless ...4 Unless we fought to retain our basic rights. Unless our arrogance prevented us from accepting the friendship of the too-sane aliens. For there are more ways than one of uniting the world against a common enemy. It needn’t take the threat of planetary invasion to bring different races and creeds together in the face of common danger. Interference with personal liberty can have the same effect, and as our accustomed pleasures began to vanish by order of our ‘“‘friends”’ we would fight to retain them. And we would fight in the only way we knew how. Desperately, insanely, refusing to admit when we were beaten, taking ridiculous chances and running stupid risks in order to continue poisoning our own bodies—if we so wished. The right to kill ourselves in too-heavy traffic, to sit over a smoking fire, to drink tea or other stimulants, to waste Our Own time in Our Own way. Not with weapons, of course—there would be no weapons—but with passive resistance, dumb _ insolence, stubborn refusal to do what is best for us, ignoring the directives, and driving our ‘“‘friends’’ into perplexity at our illogical behaviour. Perhaps they would give up then, admit defeat and let us go our own way. Perhaps they would use harsher measures, grieving at what they did, but determined to save us if they had to kill us to do it. Perhaps we, by our unity, would have done the very thing which could possibly save us from extinction and, their mission accom- plished, they would return to their own world. ; Or, perhaps, they would just give us up as hopeless, a race suffering from incurable insanity. And perhaps they_would_be right. TWENTY-FOUR comiclbooks.con