Marsden commented that "I went to the box late Friday night for an exclamation mark, and found that we hadn't got any. Our Kraut had used them all up trying to be Goethe on Government-Office Stationery. So I used a question mark instead and thought I was pretty French." There is a discussion of the source and origin of Aleriel under the "Five Conventions."

The original sheet may have run six pages - unfortunately only two survive, and those largely by accident - apparently short of paper in 1907, copies of the replacement characters were printed on "scrap" - slightly smudged copies of primary characters. So two smudged pages of Aleriel survive, though fortunately we can deduce a great deal about his plot.

Aleriel - (Dr. Pekoe)

Long ago your world fell into decadence! Men - if such as you can be called men! Forgot the old ways of manliness and vigor! They clove instead to the ways of the home and hearth and came to value these things above all else. In cowardice they forsook vigor, and twilight came to your race.

They embraced French poetry and other foreign ways. Instead of war they studied in the traffic of white slavery and languished in opium dens. In time Communism came, and those who would not give up their property were slaughtered by the indifferent masses, and thus the last seeds of vigor passed from your decayed race!!

Yet you falsely consider yourself, on account of the age of your culture and the false Communist teachings of your home world to be superior to humans, because of the wonders of your science.

Your world has cars which operate on principles of anti-gravity, and great power stations, and crystalline machine-men who do the work of all men, so that there is nothing to do except lie around and be engaged in debauched and effeminate pursuits!

In your world, universal suffrage led to atheistic communism and thence to chaos. An elite Council of Scientists has rejected God, and imposed a rigidly materialistic culture. Though your people have electric lights and appliances, moving pictures, dictating machines, great airships, photoelectric relays, hovercraft, instant cameras, artificial foods, electric anti-gravity cars, and submarines, there is no joy in your world. Women are held as chattels, and children must be raised in state nurseries!

Despite your wretched condition, you imagine yourself to be the superior of men, and in your cringing way you imagine your intelligence equal to theirs. You have come in peace (for you cannot summon the courage to come as a conqueror, or even in good force) as a skulking spy, to attempt to help humanity in its hour of need. Perhaps your race senses that Humanity possesses something you lack!

[the next several pages are lost]

will surely launch a renewed attack on the Earth and wipe out all life. Their agents may be present already, and they may well be carrying the fatal Germ-Cultures that proved so injurious to them. You would be immune, but the Earth would perish.

In addition your advanced psychic powers allow you to identify another threat. There is a woman or man of great psychic power nearby, who can take the form of a giant beetle, a man a woman, or a sexless androgyne. This being will not support the Martians, but means no good to mankind, for it would impose a slavery nearly as complete as that of the Communist State.

You hope your abilities will serve you well, and that you may live to return to your world, or better remain here among vital people. Perhaps even it might be possible to redeem your world, if not yourself, by opening it to the Earthmen and setting them like a cleansing fire among your enfeebled brethren!