Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

THE LITTLE CORPORAL the same time it reached out blindly, wonderingly, toward the great thing an Earth- Venus-Mars Alliance could be on the Barker plan. For Winter never doubted that. The layman had to trust the doctor, the mechanic, the dentist, the architect, the buil- der, the designer. He had to believe blindly when his foot was the first to tread a new building that the edifice would not collapse with him. And Winter trusted Barker’s plan —if he could only trust Barker. *“Why am I necessary?’ he asked. Barker grinned, but it was only a gesture. ““The dictator, the emperor, always needs someone he. can trust,” he said. “He can’t be awake twenty-four hours of the day, or be in two places at once. You're not the first to know of the larger plan. There was another young man, the Ser- geant Williams you’ve heard about. He knew the whole scheme for the Earth-Venus Alliance long before anyone else but myself had any idea it was coming. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see it. I’ve always been sorry about that. I’d have given a million other men to have George Williams see that he hadn’t been wrong to trust me.”’ No doubt he would, Winter thought. “But only he and you must ever know,” said Barker, with sudden vehemence, under- lining his words. “Can you understand that? Ordinary men are not made to see how they’ve been controlled, pushed into pre-arranged paths. Not until centuries have passed, and then it no longer matters to anyone. Some day someone will write a book suggesting that I may have planned the Earth-Venus- Mars Alliance, and a few savants will say it’s an inter- esting idea, but prove it’s no more than that. And the man in the street will never even hear of the theory. “Do you understand? Whatever happens, win or lose, you must keep the plan behind the plan to yourself. — You'll marry Pamela Stone- house and have children. She and they must believe that I was a half-mad despot, noth- ing more. Do you see that?” conmiclsooks.com