The Spirit of the Conqueror
Summary
On the edge of a luminescent limbo, phantoms of history’s titans—Caesar’s ambition, Socrates’ doubt, Joan’s fire—hover like breath on glass. They await a courier fresh from Earth’s bruised crust; he arrives with news that the planet thrashes beneath the pincers of capital and labor. Into this ectoplasmic parliament strides the Master of Re-incarnation, a cosmic choreographer who brandishes a single vacant cradle in a Manhattan palace. The caucus of ghosts, craving equipoise, nominates the spirit that once marched across Europe in cocked hat and jackboot: Napoleon. Re-tooled for peace, the Conqueror plummets through astral strata and slips into the infant arteries of James Morgan, heir to a granite-hearted financier. Childhood becomes boot camp; every nursery rhyme a drill in logistics. At twenty-one, James—equal parts boardroom prodigy and reincarnated artillery genius—storms out of Harvard’s gates and straight into the gilded cage of Peter Morgan’s brokerage. There he meets Edith Webb, whose father’s turbine patent was gutted by Morgan’s fine-print sharks. The spark of injustice fuses with inherited strategic brilliance. James defects to the union hall, transforms strike committees into supply-chain phalanxes, and orchestrates a planetary work stoppage so absolute that locomotives freeze mid-breath, skyscrapers dangle unfinished like paused metronomes, and the stock ticker’s clatter becomes a funeral drum. Three months of bloodless siege later, senators crawl to his sickbed; capital capitulates; the world exhales. But the Conqueror’s borrowed heart, overclocked by ceaseless sorties of diplomacy, finally ruptures. As Peter Morgan kneels to kiss the hand that bested him, James dies—his soul rocketing back to the astral war-room where ghostly comrades salute. Earth inherits fairer wages; Paradise regains its tactician.
Synopsis
The shades of departed spirits gather on the borderland of Paradise to meet a messenger returning from the earth who reports that all humanity is suffering because of the conflict between capital and labor. The "Master of Re-incarnation" tells the shades that there is a great work to be done on earth, that a body on earth awaits a soul. He tells the shades to select a proper man, and they select the spirit of the Conqueror Napoleon. With his genius of organization applied to peace instead of war. the shades think he can best solve the world's problems. The Master of Reincarnation leads him to the house of Peter Morgan, the great financier, and the soul of Napoleon enters into the body of the son when he is born an hour later, and is christened James Morgan. Years later, we see James returning from college, enter the office of his father. Edith Webb, the daughter of an old inventor, who has been defrauded by Morgan senior, calls to plead his case, but only to get the reply, "Your father should read his contracts before signing; the matter is closed now." James disapproves of his father's business methods, and tells him so. He hears of a new cut in wages by his father, and meets the union labor leader, Malone. Peter Morgan gives a dinner in honor of his son's arrival, and James voices his disapproval of the wage cut. The father threatens disinheritance if the son interferes. This decides James' course, and he goes to the union mass-meeting, telling them who he is, and saying he will lead their strike. He tells them to be law-abiding. Edith Webb and her father ask him to share their humble home. It is not long before James proves his genius of organization to the labor leaders of the world. James succeeds in forming an international labor association and calls a general strike, but his health breaks down under the strain. The general strike is called, and all union labor, perfectly organized, walks out to enforce its demands on the Universal Employers' Association, of which the senior Morgan is president. Three months later we see the gigantic strike still on; the commerce of the country paralyzed, and militia and army refuse to act against workmen. There is no violence. The President sends a committee of Senators to interview James Morgan on his sick bed, attended by Edith, whom he has grown to love. The Senators persuade capital to give into the demands of labor. James Morgan has won the great victory of labor, but when his father comes to call on him, and acknowledge the son a better general, James passes away; the spirit of the Conqueror goes again to Paradise, where his soul is welcomed back by the other shades, while millions of men on earth have their joy in the great labor victory dimmed by the loss of their beloved leader.
