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 DANIEL McCORMACK

GREAT
POWERS
AND
INTERNATIONAL
HIERARCHY
Great Powers and International Hierarchy
 Daniel McCormack

Great Powers
and International
Hierarchy
Daniel McCormack
Austin, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-93975-9 ISBN 978-3-319-93976-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93976-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948176

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has a pretty circuitous intellectual history. I applied to graduate

school in the fall of 2008, as John McCain was suspending his presidential
campaign amidst the worst financial crisis in eighty years. While I wrote my
personal statements on a Saturday, cable news warned I might not be able
to withdraw money from the ATM by Monday. When I arrived at the
University of Texas the following fall, I was certain I wanted to write about
political economy. The first graduate seminar I took, on the same topic
(and with my eventual adviser Pat McDonald), solidified my interests.
I started work on a prospectus that examined how domestic economic
complementarities might affect interstate monetary cooperation in the
wake of economic crisis by determining the domestic distributional
implications of adjustment.
Two factors intervened. First, I discovered that I had neither the
patience nor the aptitude for graduate macroeconomics and general
equilibrium models. Second, and more importantly, I took another class
with Pat, this one titled “Bargaining and War in International History.” We
spent the course using formal theoretic models of international conflict to
undertake historiographical reinterpretation of key cases of international
conflict. One of the books we read was David Lake’s recent work Hierarchy
in International Relations. In his book, Lake argues that international
hierarchy—in his words, “transfers of authority” from one state to another
—can be measured through different dimensions of international cooper-
ation, one of which is monetary cooperation. In Lake’s formulation, the
abdication of monetary control from one state to another represented a

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

transfer of authority from this state. This was puzzling to me: my own
research suggested that monetary cooperation had divisive implications for
politics within states; Lake was using the same type of cooperation to
measure the extent to which one state allocated authority to another. It
occurred to me that perhaps his measures of hierarchy were capturing not
authoritative relations but rather the mechanisms by which domestic
leaders sought to solidify their rule at home. By linking domestically
redistributive policies to interstate security relationships, leaders through-
out the globe were putting a lien on their security in which great powers in
world politics were the lienholders. If this was right, international hierarchy
was less about international politics and more about domestic exigencies.
The key insight that I took away from this class—that components of
international hierarchy might redistribute power within as well as between
states—reframed my research agenda. It is the core insight underlining this
book, as well. This book asks what international hierarchy looks like if we
consider its domestic implications.
When I began outlining what I wanted this project (then a dissertation)
to cover, I looked first to the system of informal hierarchy set up by the
USA following World War II. This is no doubt a familiar kludge to stu-
dents of international politics: the postwar period is where our data are, so
it has become well-trod ground even for projects with larger ambits. But
especially in the case of international hierarchy, the postwar break is not an
exogenous one. The post-1945 hierarchies were substantially conditioned
by the role that hierarchy—then, empire—played in both world wars.
I began to realize that if I did not explain this conditioning process, the
project would be less for it.
This book, consequently, is broken into two parts. In the first part, I
attempt to understand why postwar hierarchies looked like they did: why
did the USA develop a global network of informally dominated states,
especially when the history of global hierarchy had theretofore looked quite
different? I link the change around 1945 in hierarchical organization to a
shifting conception of territory. Formal empires had leaned on a flexible
definition of territorial demarcation to lessen the costs paid for governing
polities directly. But the direct governance of empire had led directly to the
two world wars, and in the wake of the second, the leading hierarchical
states sought a different arrangement. I demonstrate that negotiations
between the great powers (especially the USA and Soviet Union) over the
United Nations helped to develop the new postwar system of informal
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

hierarchy. The second part of the book can be read as a sort of case study of
this period, utilizing this system of informal hierarchy to understand how
hierarchical relationships are maintained, created, and ended.
This was a large and often frustrating project. It would be impossible for
me to overstate the help I received in executing it. In particular, three of
my advisers at the University of Texas deserve more thanks than I could
possibly give. I have already mentioned Pat’s role in the germination of the
idea behind this book. Those who are familiar with his work no doubt will
see his influence throughout these pages. He has been everything one
could ask for from a dissertation adviser: patient, alternatively skeptical and
enthusiastic, encouraging, and critical. He pushed me to ask big questions,
but let me know when they were ballooning from “important” to
“unanswerable.”
Pat also generously arranged a book workshop in the spring of 2016
which greatly improved this project. In addition to the names listed below,
Ben Fordham, Katja Kleinberg, Harrison Wagner, and Rachel Wellhausen
provided fantastic comments that found their way into several of the
chapters (especially the introduction, which they convinced me was framed
particularly unproductively).
Scott Wolford and Terry Chapman were indispensable in helping me
develop the many, many iterations of the formal model that now appears in
Chapters 5–7. The first pass at it, developed in Terry’s introductory game
theory class, was, like most first modeling exercises, both too narrow and
intractably difficult to solve. But Terry patiently walked me through what
question I was trying to answer, in the process honing the focus of the
model. I fear Scott got the short end of the stick, as I worked with him
nearer to completion of my dissertation, but he gamely met with me a
(literally) countless number of times, usually over a beer, to hammer out
the details of the model that formed the core of the theory. The cohesion
of this book, particularly in the back half, owes a great deal to his men-
toring and willingness to push me to see the connections between different
political processes.
In addition to my core advisers, I had the great luck to be surrounded by
an incredible intellectual community at the University of Texas. Mike
Findley and Mark Lawrence joined my dissertation committee later, but
nevertheless provided diligent comments and helpful feedback at multiple
steps of the process. Classes with Harrison, Peter Trubowitz, Scott Moser,
Bethany Albertson, Sean Theriault, Daron Shaw, Cathy Boone, and Bruce
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Buchanan were all instrumental in helping me refine ideas. After graduate

school, I had the great fortune of spending two years at the University of
Pennsylvania. I am deeply grateful to the political science department there
for indulging my reclusion while I raced to finish this book.
My colleagues at UT also provided invaluable help. Henry Pascoe, Yuval
Weber, Calla Hummell, Andrew Boutton, Riitta Koivumaeki, Cathy Wu,
Hans Lango, Ben Rondou, Brian Lange, and many others read drafts of
various chapters.
Moving backward in time, my advisers at Oklahoma Christian
University surely deserve some credit here as well. It is highly unlikely that
I would have ended up in graduate school, were it not for the gentle
prodding of John Maple in particular. Classes with John, Matt McCook,
and Raymon Huston were invariably interesting and came at the right
time, inculcating a deep love of history and politics.
Three friends in particular warrant mention here. First, my dissertation,
and by extension this book, was greatly facilitated by regular writing
meetings with Steven Brooke throughout the 2014–2015 year and then
again as it neared completion in 2017. One of the finest weekends from my
postdoctoral fellowship was spent holed up in various bars across
Philadelphia with Steven, poring over comments on penultimate versions
of each others’ manuscripts. My work was greatly improved through these
sessions, and I also had the luck to learn more than I ever would have
guessed I’d know about the Muslim Brotherhood’s logic of social service
provision. Second, one of my very oldest friends, Jesse Tumblin, probably
deserves as much credit—or blame?—as any other single person in con-
vincing me to go to graduate school. I have enjoyed progressing through
graduate school with him, reading his work, and bitterly arguing over
arcana of imperial politics. Finally, Andy Rottas had the misfortune of
playing pretty distinct roles at different stages of this project. As a grad
school colleague, he was one of the more consistently skeptical com-
menters on early versions of my dissertation proposal. And seven years
later, as I began to plot a path out of academia, he offered me a landing
spot in the private sector that has been an extraordinary fit. Andy and the
rest of the Quantitative Insights team in Austin have been all I could ask for
as a landing spot in a change of career.
Finally, I owe a literally incalculable debt to my family. It is hard for me
to imagine an environment so conducive to learning as the one in which I
was raised. One of my earliest political memories was looking through
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

various almanacs my family had piled around the house and wondering
why so many countries were shaded differently in the maps of GDP per
capita.1 Some of my earliest memories of anything involve sitting on the
floor reading with my parents. It isn’t too reductive to point to “reading”
and “wondering why countries are different” as the engines behind this
present work, and so it is eminently fair to point to those early reading
sessions as crucial inputs to everything that follows. My dad and his dad,
both professors, have both served as models of lifelong learning that I hope
to replicate.
This is all good and leaves my wife, Melissa, to go. It is impossible to
find words to express my gratitude to Melissa for the support she has
provided over the past ten years. She has provided support along every
possible dimension imaginable and at every turn has said yes to whatever
enormously inconvenient proposal I forwarded to advance my academic
career. Spend summers away studying? Travel all over the country for
conferences? Move away for two years for a postdoc, on the long shot
chance to grab another (likely temporary) job? Yes to each. I count myself
lucky to have ever met her, much less to have spent the last (nearly) decade
married to her. It is an understatement to say that this book would not
exist without her.

1
Alamanacs, for current graduate students, contained Wikipedia listings for crucial
statistics on every country, but they were printed books and only got updated once
a year, as budgets allowed.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Structural Analogies in International Relations 33

3 Hierarchy Throughout History 61

4 The Shifting Territorial Logic of Hierarchy 87

5 Maintaining Hierarchy 119

6 Extending Hierarchy 153

7 Eclipsing Hierarchy 187

8 Conclusion: Hierarchy and Political Violence

in the International System 219

Index 243

xi
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1.1 A sketch of a hierarchical relationship 8

Fig. 1.2 Domestic and hierarchical bargaining 18
Fig. 2.1 Hierarchy under Hobbes’ “domestic analogue” 48
Fig. 2.2 Hierarchy under lineal aggregation 53
Fig. 3.1 A typology of hierarchical institutions 71
Fig. 5.1 Power, institutions, and likelihood of regime subsidies 134
Fig. 5.2 The effect of coercion on hierarchical regime subsidies 135
Fig. 6.1 Average aid levels following leadership turnover 165
Fig. 6.2 Power, institutions, and foreign-induced regime change 168
Fig. 6.3 Predicted change in aid levels after leader turnover 171
Fig. 6.4 Opportunity costs for states experiencing political competition 173
Fig. 6.5 The effects of opportunity costs on political competition 177
Fig. 7.1 Five year rolling average of state admission 189
Fig. 7.2 Effect of dominant state on domestic power 196
Fig. 7.3 A model of hierarchy collapse, repression, and civil war 200
Fig. 7.4 Change in probability of civil war onset, selected variables 209
Fig. 7.5 Hypothesized and alternative causal pathways 210
Fig. 8.1 Patterns of political independence 224
Fig. 8.2 Hierarchical competition over time 226
Fig. 8.3 a Hierarchical competition and interstate conflict,
b Hierarchical competition and civil conflict 231

xiii
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.1 Effect of foreign aid on leader stability 139

Table 6.1 Opportunity costs and foreign-induced regime change 176
Table 7.1 Quantitative analysis of hierarchically-induced civil war 208
Table 7.2 Mediation analysis results 211
Table 8.1 Political violence by hierarchical system 229

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

By 1953, a new equilibrium had begun to emerge on the European sub con-
tinent. The end of World War II had left Germany a defeated and burned-
out shell, divided and occupied by the wartime Allies. The question of how
to undo this division weighed heavily on Allied leadership. None could uni-
laterally withdraw their troops without ceding Europe’s industrial heart-
land to the other; neither could they coordinate on withdrawal and leave
Germany to rearm again. While a few years earlier there had seemed to be
some possibility of German reunification, the Soviets’ violent suppression
of political protest in East Germany increasingly disabused Washington of
the idea that reunification on Western terms would ever be attainable. In
any case, the death of Joseph Stalin in March of that year had scuttled his
plan for talks with the West and unsettled the remaining Soviet leadership,
who were now focused on solidifying rule at home. Around the same time,
French concerns about abandonment by the Americans were salved by a
promise to keep U.S. troops stationed in the Western zone. This evolv-
ing partition helped, for a time, to ease U.S.-Soviet tensions. As Kissinger
writes, by this point a summit was possible “not to settle the Cold War, but
precisely because [it] would avoid all the fundamental issues.”1 With inter-
national tensions over Germany temporarily quieted, the Western powers
turned their gaze to Germany’s domestic politics.
Even with the Soviet threat sidelined, the subordination of West
Germany—or the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)—to the Western
alliance was far from a given. The Americans viewed Kurt Schumacher,

1 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 516.

© The Author(s) 2019 1

D. McCormack, Great Powers and International Hierarchy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93976-6_1
2 D. McCORMACK

leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), with great suspicion, believ-
ing the SPD to be a Soviet stalking horse that would pave the way for
German consolidation under the aegis of Moscow. The former Secretary
of State Dean Acheson had told Schumacher on the eve of the previous
FRG election that “an attempt by the SPD to curry favor with the voter-
s…by baiting the occupation would be given short shrift.”2 The American
ambassador to the FRG, James Conant, wrote to incoming U.S. Secretary
of State John Foster Dulles that “the German reaction to the U.S. is at
the present heavily conditioned by the forthcoming election…The [SPD]
leaders cannot help regretting the obvious fact that the U.S. Government
had taken actions which help [their opponent Konrad Adenauer’s] cam-
paign.”3 What accounted for the United States’ deep involvement in West
German domestic politics? Why did the U.S. feel the need to exert what
amounted to an effective veto over German elections?
Neutering German military power had been the sine qua non for Euro-
pean peace since the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871. Many scholars
have since looked to European integration after World War II as the ulti-
mate solution to this recurrent geopolitical dilemma. In this telling, the
answer to the problem of German militarization was a network of interna-
tional institutions that bound Germany to the fate of its neighbors. By rais-
ing the cost of conflict through economic interdependence, Dulles wrote,
Germany “could not make war again even if it wanted to.”4 But this begged
a prior question: Would Germany want to fight again? West German par-
ticipation in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, and eventually the European Community
was only the external manifestation of a deeper change. During the late
1940s and 1950s, the United States, along with its Western European allies,
had forcibly reordered the boundaries of German domestic politics. The
creation of the ECSC in 1951 was the linchpin of the Western allies’ plan to
sideline Schumacher’s SPD in the upcoming elections. Konrad Adenaeur,
of the Christian Democratic Union, embraced the French proposal of the
ECSC as a way to “convince the population that Schumacher’s aims could

2 Quoted in Roger Morgan, The United States and West Germany, 1945–1973: A Study
in Alliance Politics (Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 15.
3 Quoted in Steven J. Brady, Eisenhower and Adenauer: Alliance Maintenance Under
Pressure, 1953–1960 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), p. 74.
4 Quoted in G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the
Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 182.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

be accomplished only through his [Adenauer’s] policies of cooperation

with the Western powers,” rather than through Schumacher’s nationalist
appeals.5 In the final ledger, the SPD would not form a government until
the mid-1960s, after the political and territorial settlement structuring the
Cold War had been hammered out and the Berlin Wall built. This empha-
sis on the domestic politics of Germany and the extent to which they were
shaped by the Western alliance represent somewhat of a reversal of the
narrative outlined above: Western institutions worked not by preventing
a nationalist Germany from pursuing its interests; instead, they prevented
nationalist interests from gaining political power in the first place. This
specific historiographical debate surrounding early Cold War Germany is
actually representative of a larger problem that troubles contemporary the-
ories of international relations. The ability of international actors to reshape
political interests within other states is not well understood by interna-
tional relations scholars. This book offers an important corrective to this
oversight.
German politics during the Cold War were characterized by international
hierarchy. By this, I simply mean that political behavior within West and
East Germany depended heavily on U.S. and Soviet preferences. On its
own, this statement is probably uncontroversial. Lake argues that states
throughout Western Europe, in their monetary arrangements and hosting
of U.S. military bases, were highly “subordinate” to the United States
throughout the Cold War and indeed remained so through the end of the
century.6 What has remained relatively unappreciated, however, is the effect
that these hierarchical relationships have on domestic politics within these
subordinate states. As illustrated above, the reshaping of domestic politics
in the FRG was a prerequisite for the successful execution of the United
States’ goals in Europe during the Cold War. An analysis of hierarchy that
does not pay attention to domestic politics within subordinate states is
missing much of the story.
Hierarchy, this book argues, is one of the fundamental organizing prin-
ciples of politics. Just as West German nationalist fervor during the Cold
War was cooled in the shadow of the United States, many domestic polit-
ical arrangements throughout the globe are determined by great power

5 JamesMcAllister, No Exit: America and the German Problem, 1943–1954 (Cornell

University Press, 2002), p. 181.
6 DavidA. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations (Cornell University Press, 2009),
pp. 87–88.
4 D. McCORMACK

influence. Inattention to this fact has left political scientists unable to accu-
rately explain behavioral patterns of politics in two ways. First, international
relations theorists have been unable to reconcile systemic theoretical mod-
els that give pride of place to great powers with mid-level theorizing that
treats states as like units differentiated only by their observable capabilities.
Recently, theoretical models of politics have begun to provide a way to
think about interstate relations outside of the realm of great power pol-
itics. According to the logic forwarded in these and many other works,
the differences between “great powers” and smaller, weaker states can be
fully attributed to their differing scores on key parameters of interest, for
example, military power,7 democracy,8 leader security,9 or crisis resolve.10
But in fact great powers engage in qualitatively different types of behav-
ior than weaker states. Great powers are the states that, in the aftermath
of interstate conflict, write the terms of peace settlements that structure
political behavior in the postwar years.11 Most importantly, as Braumoeller
wites, “the structure of the system is overwhelmingly influenced by the
actions of a small number of states that conventially go by the title of either
Great Powers, or, during the Cold War, superpowers.”12 By specifying
the different roles that states play in international politics, a hierarchical

7 Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics
(Princeton University Press, 1999); Branislav L. Slantchev, “The Power to Hurt: Costly
Conflict with Completely Informed States.” American Political Science Review 97.1
(2003), pp. 123–133; Bahar Leventoglu and Branislav L. Slantchev, “The Armed Peace:
A Punctuated Equilibrium Theory of War.” American Journal of Political Science 51.4
(2007), pp. 755–771.
8 Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, “Democracy, War Initiation, and Victory.” American
Political Science Review 92.2 (1998), pp. 377–389; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., “An
Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace.” American Political Science Review
93.4 (1999), pp. 791–807.
9 Hein E. Goemans, “Fighting for Survival the Fate of Leaders and the Duration of
War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44.5 (2000), pp. 555–579; Giacomo Chiozza and
Hein Erich Goemans, Leaders and International Conflict (Cambridge University Press,
2011).
10 James D. Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests Tying Hands Versus Sinking
Costs.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41.1 (1997), pp. 68–90; Alastair Smith, “Inter-
national Crises and Domestic Politics.” American Political Science Review 92.3 (1998),
pp. 623–638.
11 Ikenberry,
After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order
After Major Wars.
12 Bear F. Braumoeller, The Great Powers and the International System: Systemic Theory
in Empirical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 80.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

approach to international politics provides an intuitive way to reconcile

obvious differences in state capabilities and behavior. Second, comparative
politics scholars for the most part ignore the influence of great powers in
shaping political outcomes within smaller states. Even those who do take
these asymmetric relationships into account do not generally specify the
conditions under which great power influence is decisive. By contrast, the
theory presented in this book provides clear expectations over the condi-
tions under which hierarchy is most likely to provide explanatory leverage.
There is, then, a real and persistent crevasse in political knowledge created
by the intellectual division between international and comparative politics
scholars that a hierarchical theory of politics can bridge.
An account of hierarchy and its effect on domestic politics allows for a
reformulation of some of the core tenets of received international relations
theory. Scholars have for many years assumed that states are the primary
actors in international politics, and that all states are fundamentally alike. In
one of the most famous assertions of this claim, Waltz wrote that “[t]o call
states ‘like units’ is to say…that states are sovereign.…To say that a state
is sovereign means that it decides for itself how it will cope with its inter-
nal and external problems.”13 But it is manifestly not true that all states
are alike in their ability to decide for themselves. Krasner argues that the
principles leading to a state’s recognition as such are not logically tied to
its ability to operate free from “external authority or control.”14 Because
domestic political arrangements are often subject to high levels of external
influence or even veto power, as in the German example above, they cannot
be studied independent of great power politics. To the extent that states
displayed differences, Waltz argued, “the differences are of capability, not
of function. States perform or try to perform tasks, most of which are com-
mon to all of them…Each state has its agencies for making, executing, and
interpreting laws and regulations, for raising revenues, and for defending
itself.”15 But for a great many states, these agencies are explicit functions
of other states’ behavior. The defense of Japan, for instance, has rested on
its defense treaty with the United States throughout the post-World War II
period—so much so, in fact, that it for many years altogether abandoned

13 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,

1979), pp. 95–96.
14 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton University Press,
1999), p. 24.
15 Waltz, Theory of International Relations, p. 96.
6 D. McCORMACK

the “common task” of defending itself. As for raising revenues, many small
states throughout the Cold War depended heavily on foreign aid trans-
fers from either the United States or the Soviet Union. The function of
these defense or revenue institutions is simply different in great powers
than it is in small states—the former states provide defense and revenues,
and the latter receive them. An account of international hierarchy there-
fore suggests that because some states command the behavior of others,
patterns of political behavior are aggregated at a level “higher” than the
state. I explore the theoretical implications of this claim in more detail in
the following chapter.
Zooming out analytically from the state to higher-level political orga-
nization also provides new insights into a number of empirical patterns
traditionally studied by comparative politics scholars. In this book, I focus
on two in particular: leadership changes and civil war. As evidenced in the
experience of American policymakers’ concern with Kurt Schumacher and
the SDP’s campaign strategies in West Germany, states at the head of inter-
national hierarchies often care deeply about the sorts of groups that hold
political power within subordinate states. From this simple insight, I derive
several new empirical expectations. In Chapter 5, I demonstrate that lead-
ers who establish hierarchical relationships are much less likely to lose office
than those who do not. Not only this, the promise of establishing these
hierarchical relationships can actually work to bring new leaders into office:
Chapter 6 demonstrates that the expectation of being able to create new
hierarchical ties increases the willingness of groups to compete for office
within subordinate states. Finally, Chapter 7 shows that the end of these
hierarchical relationships is often accompanied by civil conflict generated
by sudden reversals to the security domestic leaders enjoyed. The collapse
of international hierarchies, then, helps to explain patterns of civil war onset
as domestic political arrangements are upended across the globe.
In the remainder of this chapter, I outline the building blocks for the
rest of the book. The next section describes the actors that will play a role
in the argument—great powers and the subordinate states whose domestic
politics they shape by establishing hierarchy. Once the actors are clear, I turn
to a description of these actors’ motives, or in formal terms, their preferences.
In order to understand how actors behave, we need to have some sense
of what they want. I then combine the actors and their preferences to
outline a model of hierarchical politics. This section also provides a baseline
model of politics in order to draw parallels between hierarchical politics and
domestic politics outside the shadow of great power influence. The chapter
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

then concludes by outlining the rest of the book. But before proceeding,
it will be helpful to define a few of the terms and actors that will appear
throughout the rest of the book.

Definitions
When I refer to hierarchy or a hierarchical relationship, I mean a political
relationship that structures behavior (a) between groups within one polity
and (b) between the groups within that polity and the government of a
stronger one. The concept of hierarchy is, by its nature, an asymmetric one:
political actors that consider themselves the equals of another do not often
concede control over their own political order. Hierarchy is therefore often
established in the wake—or shadow—of violent conquest. Regardless of
how precisely it is constructed, however, hierarchy is a relationship between
two actors, one of which is more powerful than the other. In this book, I
follow Lake’s terminology and refer to these stronger and weaker actors as
“dominant” and “subordinate” polities, respectively.16
What is a polity, and how is it different from a state? I also adopt Lake’s
terminology here, defining a polity as “any organized political commu-
nity that has or could have a history of self-rule.”17 How the institutional
boundaries of these political communities are defined is contingent and
prone to change over time. Since approximately the end of World War II,
polities have generally been organized as states. But historically this degree
of homogeneity in political organization is unique. In the several hundred
years prior to this, recognizably state-like political organizations were con-
tained to the European sub-continent, parts of North America, China, and,
after the 1830s and 1840s, Latin America. Elsewhere political communi-
ties organized themselves along tribal lines or as empires. Prior to the early
modern period, “states” did not exist in any recognizable form outside of
China.
But just as polities are not homogenous with respect to each other, nei-
ther are they undifferentiated internally. Recall the story that opened the
book: both the CDU and SPD had starkly different visions for how Ger-
man power might be reconstituted in the postwar period. Disagreements
between groups within a subordinate polity over their polity’s relationship

16 Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations.

17 DavidA. Lake, Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century (Prince-
ton University Press, 1999), p. 18.
8 D. McCORMACK

Fig. 1.1 A sketch of a

hierarchical relationship

with a dominant state are not uncommon. In fact, it is probably more

common to observe groups disagreeing over this relationship than it is to
see them agree. For a graphical representation of these groups and their
relationships to each other—mediated by a domestic government—and a
dominant state, see Fig. 1.1.
As for the second actor in the definition above—the government of the
stronger polity—here I am referring primarily to what political scientists
have called the “great powers.” What precisely a great power is has always
been up for debate. Waltz offered a Potter Stewart-esque definition: states
must score high on “all of the following: size of population and terri-
tory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, [and]
political stability and competence,” although ultimately “common sense”
can adjudicate between borderline cases.18 Immediately one can identify
several problems. The British Isles are not particularly large or resource-
rich. Perhaps France’s most spectacular performance as a great power—the
Napoleonic Wars—was generated not by political stability but by a period

18 Waltz, Theory of International Relations, p. 131, emphasis in original.

 1 INTRODUCTION 9

of instability. And no one would place the demise of the Soviet Union ear-
lier than the late 1980s, despite several interregnums of less than inspiring
leadership. Braumoeller offered a more precise definition, arguing that a
great power should have more than 10% of the international system’s capa-
bilities, interests that extend globally, and recognition by others as a great
power.19 What Braumoeller’s definition hints at is that a great power is
more than the sum of the named state’s endowments: Britain is not large,
but the British Empire was. In fact, one thing that great powers through-
out history have all tended to do is establish hierarchies. I therefore refer
to the states establishing hierarchies as both “dominant states” and “great
powers.”
The important actors in this book—great powers and groups within
subordinate states—are therefore different from those found in a standard
account of international relations. Many scholars assume that political rela-
tionships exist either within states—in the realm of domestic politics—or
between them, in the realm of international politics. Hierarchy suggests
that political relationships are structured at both levels simultaneously.
One example of hierarchy is the Government of India Act (1858), which
transferred control of India from the British East India Company to the
British Crown. Under this arrangement, interactions between individu-
als within India were governed by the Act, as were interactions between
those individuals and policymakers within the British government. Another
example is the U.S.–Japan Security Agreement of 1952. This agreement,
signed in the wake of the U.S. defeat of Japan in World War II, included
a Status of Forces Agreement that specified the geographical placement of
U.S. troops within Japanese territory, as well as the legal status of both these
troops and Japanese civilians employed on U.S. bases. Lest we imagine these
arrangements as relics of a more turbulent past, a final example is found in
the Coalition Provisional Authority (2003), an American-controlled tran-
sitional government of Iraq in which was vested executive, legislative, and
judicial authority. In all of these cases, the hierarchical relationship helped to
regularize behavior between groups within one polity and between those
groups and the government of another state.
Hierarchy can appear in less formal settings, as well. Following World
War II, the United States made provision of reconstruction aid to West-
ern Europe contingent on the elimination of communist groups from

19 Braumoeller, The Great Powers and the International System: Systemic Theory in Empir-
ical Perspective, p. 80.
10 D. McCORMACK

government.20 In this case, the relationship between communists and lib-

erals within France and Italy was shifted due to the relationships that each
of these groups had with the United States. Similar relationships character-
ized the domestic politics of many smaller states throughout Asia, Africa,
and Latin America during the latter half of the twentieth century.
The cases from the Cold War raise a secondary question. If there are
multiple great powers, what are the consequences of hierarchy for rela-
tionships between them? Sometimes hierarchy results in direct great power
conflict: empires, one type of hierarchical relationship, helped to fuel the
two world wars of the twentieth century. One important claim I make in
this book is that great powers come to agreements between themselves to
try to regulate conflict over hierarchy. These agreements constitute what I
call systems of hierarchy, which refer to the rules, both formal and informal,
that are negotiated between great powers to define how hierarchy will be
constructed and maintained.
Some systems of hierarchy in history are more obvious than others.
The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided the recently discovered Western
Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal for colonization. Four cen-
turies later, the Congress of Berlin (1885) divided the African conti-
nent between the European great powers and spurred several decades of
intensive hierarchy-building. These are clear examples of rules negotiated
between great powers in an effort to coordinate their hierarchy-building so
as to minimize the chances of conflict between them. Likewise, the United
Nations was utilized by the United States and Soviet Union during the
Cold War as a way to structure competition over the domestic politics of
weaker states without resorting to direct conflict. I demonstrate the success
of this strategy empirically in the closing chapter of this book.

Guiding Assumptions
The contention of this book is that international politics are primarily char-
acterized by hierarchy rather than anarchy. Because this claim represents a
fairly clear break with the bulk of writing on international relations, it is
worth exploring where it comes from. In this section, I outline and justify
three assumptions that will guide the argument in the rest of this book.

20 More on this in Chapter 5.

 1 INTRODUCTION 11

Domestic Preference Divergence

First, I assume that groups within a subordinate state or polity have dif-
ferent preferences over their polity’s external behavior. In other words, a
polity’s external behavior is domestically redistributive. In turn, these differ-
ent preferences help define the sorts of policies these groups will implement
when they control their polity’s government. Because different groups pre-
fer to implement different policies when they are in office, great powers
will, in turn, have preferences over which of these groups hold power.
The claim that groups within a state will have different preferences over
what policy that state pursues abroad has deep roots in the political science
literature.21 I am agnostic as to how these cleavages are organized within
a society. Oftentimes these preferences are straightforwardly determined
by groups’ place within the domestic, and therefore global, economy. For
instance, Frieden demonstrates that increases in capital mobility can gener-
ate divisions within states over both the level and the stability of the state’s
exchange rate, as well as over the state’s level of monetary autonomy.22
When actors’ preferences are organized along economic lines, these actors
may be incentivized to organize by sectors, by factors of production, or even
by regional division. But domestic groups may also identify ideologically.
Ideological divisions may or may not map cleanly on to economic interests.
Clearly, these divisions can implicate a wide range of international policy
issues. When a state’s external behavior coincides with domestic divisions,
groups within that state will have clear incentives to mobilize in order to
secure their interests.
One potential point of criticism is that while groups may indeed have
divergent positions over economic policy, security policy offers an area in
which there is a clear “national interest.” But this is not the case. For one,
economic and security policy are often two sides of the same coin: one need
only read Hirschman’s account of German interwar trade policy to under-
stand this.23 Fordham also demonstrates that within the United States,
individual states were much more likely to vote for intervention in World

21 Andrew Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International

Politics.” International Organization 51.4 (1997), pp. 513–553; Jeffry A. Frieden,
“Actors and Preferences in International Relations.” Strategic Choice and International
Relations (1999), pp. 39–76.
22 Jeffry A. Frieden, “Invested Interests: The Politics of National Economic Policies in
a World of Global Finance.” International Organization (1991), pp. 425–451.
23 Albert Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of International Trade, 1945.
12 D. McCORMACK

War I if their shipping interests were damaged by submarine warfare.24

In these cases, groups within a state came to see their security interests as
coterminous with their economic ones.
But security concerns can divide domestic groups even without explic-
itly agitating economic policy. This is most obviously true because at times
even within states, a group’s most pressing security concern is internal to
that state, for instance during civil conflict. Because external intervention
may help opposition groups prevail in civil war,25 groups may purposely
incite violence in order to secure intervention in what Kuperman has called
the “moral hazard of humanitarian intervention.”26 These security policy
divisions extend to issue areas with lower stakes, as well. For instance, great
powers often seek improvement in human rights practices elsewhere,27
or promise resources to incentivize peaceful political processes28 or main-
tain favorable leadership.29 Sometimes the redistributive nature of pol-
icy demands comes from the effect they have on the domestic balance
of power. For example, by the mid-1970s the United States sent more
than $40 million annually in military aid to Indonesia, making it effectively
the only external source of arms to Jakarta. When senior military officials
made a push to allow collaborative defense policies through the Associa-

24 Benjamin O. Fordham, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Exports and American Interven-

tion in World War I.” International Organization 61.2 (2007), pp. 277–310.
25 Dylan Balch-Lindsay, Andrew J. Enterline, and Kyle A. Joyce, “Third-Party Interven-
tion and the Civil War Process.” Journal of Peace Research 45.3 (2008), pp. 345–363;
Stephen E. Gent, “Going in When It Counts: Military Intervention and the Outcome
of Civil Conflicts.” International Studies Quarterly 52.4 (2008), pp. 713–735.
26 Alan J. Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from
the Balkans.” International Studies Quarterly 52.1 (2008), pp. 49–80.
27 Clair Apodaca and Michael Stohl, “United States Human Rights Policy and For-
eign Assistance.” International Studies Quarterly 43.1 (1999): Though they some-
times condition these goals on the character of the recipient government, as in nielsen
2013 rewarding. Douglas M. Gibler, “United States Economic Aid and Repression:
The Opportunity Cost Argument.” The Journal of Politics 70.2 (2008), pp. 513–526;
Brian Lai, “Examining the Goals of US Foreign Assistance in the Post-Cold War Period,
1991–96.” Journal of Peace Research 40.1 (2003), pp. 103–128.
28 Burcu Savun and Daniel C. Tirone, “Foreign Aid, Democratization, and Civil Conflict:
How Does Democracy Aid Affect Civil Conflict?” American Journal of Political Science
55.2 (2011), pp. 233–246; Joseph K. Young and Michael G. Findley, “Can Peace Be
Purchased? A Sectoral-Level Analysis of Aid’s Influence on Transnational Terrorism.”
Public Choice 149.3–4 (2011), pp. 365–381.
29 Amanda A. Licht, “Coming into Money: The Impact of Foreign Aid on Leader Sur-
vival.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 54.1 (2010), pp. 58–87.
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

tion of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—policies that would be de facto

Indonesian dominated—this dependence provided the civilian government
leverage against the military such that foreign minister Adam Malik was
able to squelch the plans out of concern for how such a move would be
viewed by “aid donors, especially sections of the American Congress.”30
In this case, a military was hamstrung by virtue of a security agreement
that should have ostensibly strengthened it. Likewise, in his review of the
post-Soviet Central Asian sphere, Cooley writes that local elites have ruth-
lessly exploited concern on the part of Russia and the United States over
terrorism to maintain domestic power.31
For a wide range of external policy areas, the ultimate choice of policy
will activate and exacerbate divisions within a state. The fact that different
groups within a state prefer different policies is enormously important:
this means that different groups will implement different types of external
policies while in office. And this, in turn, means that great powers should
have preferences over which groups hold power within these states. If great
powers are able to exert leverage over domestic competition within weaker
states, we will have the foundations for a theory of hierarchical politics.

Great Powers Seek Support—And Know How to Get It

The second and third assumptions I make in this book go together. I assume
that (a) great powers seek the support of subordinate states and that (b)
great powers have mechanisms through which they can shape political com-
petition within these states. These two assumptions are very important for
the argument I make here. After all, if great powers do not care about what
subordinate actors do, there would be no reason to construct hierarchy;
and if they had no way to shape domestic politics elsewhere, it would be
impossible to do so in any case. How do these assumptions hold up to what
we know about international relations?
First, it seems clear that great powers care about what other states
do. Sometimes subordinate states’ policies directly facilitate (or deter)
actions that great powers care deeply about. Collective defense treaties, for
instance, fit this criterion. After World War II, both the United States and

30 HaroldCrouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Rev. ed.) (Equinox Pub, 2007),
pp. 338–340.
31 Alexander
Cooley, Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central
Asia (Oxford University Press, 2012).
14 D. McCORMACK

the Soviet Union established wide-ranging collective defense organizations

in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact,
respectively. In these pacts, member states agreed to come to the defense
of any member should it suffer international aggression. The pacts also
facilitated the standardization of military assets to increase combat inter-
operability.32 Before decolonization, the European colonial powers utilized
their ties to weaker states to command contributions of military person-
nel and financial subsidization during both world wars. These relationships
show that for security relationships, great powers have clear interests in
what smaller states do.
Smaller states can also be useful to great powers as locations for coer-
cive projection. Sometimes this is due to permanent arrangements: during
World War II the British used their control of the Indian sub continent
to project power throughout the Middle East, often using Indian troops.
The contemporary United States maintains an extensive network of mil-
itary bases from Western Europe to the South Pacific—the loss of these
bases would dramatically complicate U.S. foreign policy. Smaller states can
also serve as temporary locations of power projection. For example, the
United States sought Turkish participation in both of its wars against Iraq,
as cooperation from Ankara meant that the U.S. could open a two-front
war against its foe. Domestic divisions within Turkey meant that the U.S.
was unable to secure Turkish support in 2003: Wolford argues that not
only did Turkish democracy constrain leadership’s ability to force through
unpopular measures, but the strategic goal of removing Saddam Hussein
also created a greater fear of spillover and demands for Kurdish self-rule.33
Finally, small states can play an important role by participating in great
power-led international institutions. One type of institution that has been
historically prevalent is international trade regimes. Before the nineteenth
century, when the great powers began to adopt free trade, empires were
explicitly designed as vehicles of mercantilist competition wherein the
weaker polities were forced to fill the coffers of the European powers.
Even after trade began to liberalize, intra-imperial trade preferences were
maintained: British Imperial Preference was not done away with until well
into the twentieth century. After World War II, much of international trade

32 Celeste A. Wallander, “Institutional Assets and Adaptability: NATO After the Cold
War.” International Organization 54.4 (2000), pp. 705–735.
33 Scott Wolford, The Politics of Military Coalitions (Cambridge University Press, 2015),
pp. 88–89.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

was incorporated into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which
operated to reciprocally lower tariffs on internationally traded goods. The
primary exception to this, of course, was the Soviet bloc, which developed
a crude barter-based system of exchange in the form of the Council for
Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). Critically, all these schemes of
international cooperation depended on the external policies implemented
by weaker polities across the globe.
Great powers also routinely reveal their preferences for weaker state
support through their actions at international institutions like the United
Nations (UN). Ten of the fifteen seats on the UN Security Council rotate
among weaker states. Because these seats are filled by a vote in the General
Assembly, they are reasonably unrelated to great power strategic goals. A
series of scholars have therefore analyzed how membership on this council
shapes great power behavior toward these rotating members. If the great
powers act differently toward these states while they are on the Security
Council, this would reveal a concern for the foreign policy behavior of these
states—and this is precisely what these scholars find. In short, membership
on the UN Security Council increases levels of foreign aid from the United
States,34 decreases the number of conditions on International Monetary
Fund loans,35 and increases the number of World Bank projects a country
receives.36

Modeling Hierarchical Politics

This book argues that the prevailing system of hierarchy and the distribu-
tion of hierarchical relationships together characterize international poli-
tics. Rather than analyzing world politics as occurring between a set of inde-
pendent states, this book therefore conceives of politics as being structured
predominantly by hierarchy. While much of the corpus of international and
comparative politics literature treats the realm of domestic politics as analyt-

34 Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker, “How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council
Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations.” Journal of Political Economy
114.5 (2006), pp. 905–930.
35 Axel Dreher, Jan-Egbert Sturm, and James Raymond Vreeland, “Global Horse Trad-
ing: IMF Loans for Votes in the United Nations Security Council.” European Economic
Review 53.7 (2009), pp. 742–757.
36 AxelDreher, Jan-Egbert Sturm, and James Raymond Vreeland, “Development Aid
and International Politics: Does Membership on the UN Security Council Influence
World Bank Decisions?” Journal of Development Economics 88.1 (2009), pp. 1–18.
16 D. McCORMACK

ically separable from international political behavior, in many (and perhaps

most) cases, the two are in fact mutually constituted. In this section, I pro-
vide a look into how this argument can be modeled, and how a model of
hierarchical politics differs from more common models of domestic politics.
Modeling is a common method of simplifying complex relationships. As
Clarke and Primo write, “models should be viewed as tools or instruments,
in particular, like maps. Both models and maps display limited accuracy,
partially represent reality, and most importantly, reflect the interest of the
user.”37 Models take a complicated interaction and boil it down to its
fundamental parts. In doing so, models inevitably leave out features of the
interaction. The question we should ask about a particular model is not
whether it is “true” in some objective sense, but whether, like a map, it is
useful in understanding the phenomenon at hand.
In this book, I use a particular type of theoretical model called a game
theoretic model. Game theoretic models have been enormously useful in
understanding political interactions because they provide a straightforward
way to model strategic interactions—that is, social interactions where the
action one actor prefers to take depends on what actions she expects other
actors to take. Game theoretic models discipline our thinking about strate-
gic interactions in two ways, Powell argues. First, they force us to define
“who the actors are, the order in which they make decisions, what alterna-
tives each actor has to choose from when deciding what to do, and, finally,
what each actor knows about what others have done when deciding what
to do.”38 Second, they force us as analysts to define a “solution concept”
to the game. In this book, I look for what are called “perfect equilibria.” A
perfect equilibrium is a set of strategies—statements that define the actions
an actor should take—for every actor in the model that satisfies two con-
ditions. The actors’ strategies must be self-reinforcing, so that each actor
wants to follow the prescription of the equilibrium, so long as he believes
the other actors will follow their prescribed strategies. And, it must be the
case that each actor is actually willing to follow through with the actions
prescribed by his strategy. In other words, following through on all the
actions prescribed in an actor’s strategy must be in the actor’s self-interest.
Collectively, political scientists have settled on a set of actors, prefer-
ences, and actions that seem to usefully help describe a wide range of polit-

37 Kevin A. Clarke and David M. Primo, A Model Discipline: Political Science and the
Logic of Representations (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 53.
38 Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics, p. 34.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

ical phenomena. In particular, these scholars often model domestic politics

as an interaction between a government and some opposition group. In
their interaction, the opposition group generally wants something from the
government, while the government is generally concerned primarily with
holding on to power. The government has the option of making some con-
cession to the opposition, and if it refuses, the opposition can undertake
some form of punishment against the government—either attempting a
coup d’état, competing for office, or simply protesting. Models fitting these
broad outlines have been used to analyze negotiations over the domestic tax
rate,39 political bribes,40 and democratization.41 An example of this type of
model is sketched in Fig. 1.2a. We might call this the “workhorse” model
of domestic politics, in the sense that it provides a useful starting point for
analyzing a wide range of interactions. Clearly, the model leaves out many
potentially important factors: perhaps there is more than one opposition
group, for example, or divided preferences within the government itself.
From this baseline, one could extend the model in a number of ways: do
opposition groups negotiate among themselves before protesting against
the government? Can the government accompany its offer with another
action, like repression? What precisely does it mean for the domestic oppo-
sition to “challenge” the government? But in general, the schematic of
a government negotiating with an opposition group seems to fit a wide
variety of political questions.
In order to understand the influence of hierarchy on domestic politics,
we can slightly complicate this workhorse model. Above I defined hierar-
chy as a political relationship that structures behavior (a) between groups
within one polity and (b) between the groups within that polity and the
government of a stronger one. To capture these dual connections, I simply
add a new actor to our baseline model. Instead of a negotiation between a
government and a domestic group, we now have a great power that exerts—
generally, for now—some measure of influence on these two groups. This
model is depicted in Fig. 1.2b.

39 Daron Acemoglǔ and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Democracy and Dicta-
torship, 2006.
40 Ernesto Dal Bó, Pedro Dal Bó, and Rafael Di Tella, “‘Plata o Plomo?’: Bribe and
Punishment in a Theory of Political Influence.” American Political Science Review 100.1
(2006), pp. 41–53.
41 Kevin M. Morrison, “Natural Resources, Aid, and Democratization: A Best-Case Sce-
nario.” Public Choice 131.3–4 (2007), pp. 365–386.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
et je dis à un policeman de me conduire à la direction générale du service
des détectives.
«Par bonheur, j’arrivai à temps, quoique le chef de la sûreté, le fameux
inspecteur Blunt, fût précisément sur le point de s’en aller chez lui. C’était
un homme de taille moyenne et d’une charpente ramassée, et, quand il
réfléchissait profondément, il avait une manière à lui de froncer les sourcils
et de se taper le front avec les doigts qui vous donnait tout de suite la
conviction que vous vous trouviez en présence d’un personnage comme il y
en a peu. Du premier coup d’œil il m’inspira de la confiance et me donna de
l’espoir.
«Je lui exposai l’objet de ma visite. Ma déclaration ne l’émut en aucune
façon, elle n’eut pas plus d’effet apparent sur son sang-froid de fer, que si
j’étais venu lui dire simplement qu’on m’avait volé mon chien; il m’offrit
une chaise, et me dit avec calme:
—«Permettez-moi de réfléchir un moment, je vous prie.»
«Cela dit, il s’assit à son bureau et resta la tête appuyée sur la main. Des
commis écrivaient à l’autre bout de la pièce: le grattement de leurs plumes
fut le seul bruit que j’entendis pendant les six ou sept minutes qui suivirent.
Entre temps l’inspecteur était enseveli dans ses pensées. Enfin il leva la
tête, et la fermeté des lignes de son visage me prouva que dans son cerveau
il avait achevé son travail, que son plan était arrêté. Alors, d’une voix basse
mais impressive:
—«Ce n’est pas un cas ordinaire. Chaque pas que nous allons faire doit
être fait avec prudence et il ne faut pas risquer un second pas avant d’être
sûr du premier. Il faut garder le secret, un secret profond et absolu. Ne
parlez à personne de cette affaire, pas même aux reporters. Je me charge
d’eux et j’aurai soin de ne leur laisser connaître que juste ce qu’il entre dans
mes vues de leur faire savoir.»
«Il toucha un timbre. Un garçon entra:
—«Alaric, dites aux reporters d’attendre.»
«Le garçon se retira.
—«Maintenant, en besogne et méthodiquement. On ne fait rien dans
notre métier sans une méthode stricte et minutieuse.»
«Il prit une plume et du papier.
—«Voyons. Le nom de l’éléphant?»
 —«Hassan-ben-Ali-ben-Sélim-Abdalah-Mohamed-Moïse-Alhallmall-
Jamset-Jejeeboy-Dhuleep-Sultan-Ebou-Bhoudpour.»
—«Très bien. Surnom?»
—«Jumbo.»
—«Très bien. Lieu de naissance?»
—«Capitale du Siam.»
—«Les parents, vivants?»
—«Non, morts.»
—«Ont-ils eu d’autres enfants que celui-ci?»
—«Non. Il est fils unique.»
—«Parfait. Cela suffit sur ce point. Maintenant ayez l’obligeance de me
faire la description de l’éléphant et n’omettez aucun détail, pas même le
plus insignifiant, je veux dire le plus insignifiant à votre point de vue, car
dans notre profession il n’y a pas de détails insignifiants; il n’en existe pas.»
«Je fis la description, il écrivit. Quand j’eus fini, il dit:
—«Écoutez, maintenant. Si j’ai commis des erreurs, veuillez les
corriger.»
«Il lut ce qui suit:
«Hauteur, dix-neuf pieds.
«Longueur, du sommet de la tête à l’insertion de la queue, vingt-six
pieds.
«Longueur de la trompe, seize pieds.
«Longueur de la queue, six pieds.
«Longueur totale, y compris la trompe et la queue, quarante-huit pieds.
«Longueur des défenses, neuf pieds et demi.
«Oreilles en rapport avec ces dimensions.
«Empreinte du pied: semblable à celle qu’on laisse dans la neige quand
on culbute un tonneau.
«Couleur de l’éléphant: blanc terne.
«Un trou de la grandeur d’une assiette dans chaque oreille pour
l’insertion des bijoux.
«A l’habitude, à un remarquable degré, de lancer de l’eau sur les
spectateurs et de maltraiter avec sa trompe, non seulement les personnes
qu’il connaît, mais celles qui lui sont absolument étrangères.
«Boite légèrement du pied droit de derrière.
«A une petite cicatrice sous l’aisselle gauche, provenant d’un ancien
furoncle.
«Portait au moment du vol une tour renfermant des sièges pour quinze
personnes et une couverture en drap d’or de la grandeur d’un tapis
ordinaire.»
«Il n’y avait pas d’erreur. L’inspecteur sonna, donna le signalement à
Alaric et dit:
—«Cinquante mille exemplaires à faire imprimer à la minute et à
envoyer par la malle-poste à tous les bureaux de mont-de-piété du
continent.»
«Alaric se retira.
—«Voilà pour le moment. Maintenant il nous faut une photographie de
l’objet volé.»
«Je la lui donnai. Il l’examina en connaisseur et dit:
—«On s’en contentera puisque nous ne pouvons faire mieux; mais il a la
trompe rentrée dans la bouche. Cela est fâcheux et pourra causer des
erreurs, car, évidemment, il n’est pas toujours dans cette position.»
«Il toucha le timbre.
—«Alaric, cinquante mille exemplaires de cette photographie, demain, à
la première heure, et expédiez par la malle avec les signalements.»
«Alaric se retira pour exécuter les ordres. L’inspecteur dit:
—«Il faudra offrir une récompense, naturellement. Voyons, quelle
somme?»
—«Combien croyez-vous?»
—«Pour commencer, je crois que... Disons vingt-cinq mille dollars.
C’est une affaire embrouillée et difficile. Il y a mille moyens d’échapper et
mille facilités de recel. Ces voleurs ont des amis et des complices partout.»
—«Dieu me bénisse! vous les connaissez donc!»
«La physionomie prudente, habile à ne laisser transparaître ni les
pensées ni les sentiments, ne me fournit aucun indice, pas plus que les mots
suivants, placidement prononcés:
 —«Ne vous occupez pas de cela. Je les connais ou je ne les connais pas.
Généralement nous avons vite une idée assez nette de l’auteur par la
manière dont le délit a été commis, et l’importance du profit possible pour
lui. Il ne s’agit pas d’un pickpocket ou d’un voleur de foires, mettez-vous
cela dans la tête. L’objet n’a pas été escamoté par un novice. Mais, comme
je le disais, considérant le voyage qu’il faudra accomplir, la diligence que
les voleurs mettront à faire disparaître leurs traces à mesure qu’ils
avanceront, vingt-cinq mille dollars me paraissent une faible somme, à quoi
nous pouvons cependant nous en tenir, pour commencer.»
«Nous partîmes donc de ce chiffre. Puis cet homme, qui n’oubliait rien
de ce qui pouvait fournir une indication, me dit:
—«Il y a des cas dans les annales de la police qui démontrent que parfois
des criminels ont été retrouvés par des singularités dans leur façon de se
nourrir. Pouvez-vous me dire ce que mange l’éléphant, et en quelle
quantité?»
—«Bon! ce qu’il mange? Il mange de tout. Il mangera un homme, il
mangera une bible. Il mangera n’importe quoi compris entre un homme et
une bible.»
—«C’est parfait. Un peu trop général toutefois. Il me faut quelques
détails. Les détails sont la seule chose utile dans notre métier. Très bien,
pour les hommes. Mais, voyons. A un repas, ou si vous préférez, en un jour,
combien d’hommes mangera-t-il, viande fraîche?»
—«Il lui importera peu qu’ils soient frais ou non. En un seul repas, il
pourra manger cinq hommes ordinaires.»
—«Parfait.—Cinq hommes.—C’est noté. Quelles nationalités préfère-t-
il?»
—«Il est tout à fait indifférent à la nationalité. Il préfère les gens qu’il
connaît, mais il n’a pas de parti pris contre les étrangers.»
—«Très bien! Maintenant, les bibles. Combien de bibles peut-il manger
à un repas?»
—«Il en mangera une édition tout entière.»
—«Ce n’est pas assez explicite. Parlez-vous de l’édition ordinaire, in-
octavo, ou de l’édition de famille, illustrée?»
—«Je ne crois pas qu’il se préoccupe des illustrations. C’est-à-dire je ne
pense pas qu’il fasse plus de cas des éditions illustrées que des autres.»
 —«Vous ne saisissez pas ma pensée. Je parle du volume. L’édition
ordinaire in-octavo pèse environ deux livres et demie, tandis que la grande
édition in-quarto, avec les illustrations, pèse dix ou douze livres. Combien
de bibles de Doré mangerait-il à un repas?»
—«Si vous connaissiez l’animal, vous ne demanderiez pas. Il prendrait
tout ce qu’on lui donnerait.»
—«Eh bien, calculez alors en dollars et en centimes. Il nous faut arriver
à nous fixer. Le Gustave Doré coûte cent dollars l’exemplaire, en cuir de
Russie, reliure à biseaux.»
—«Il lui faudrait une valeur d’environ cinquante mille dollars; mettons
une édition de cinq cents exemplaires.»
—«Bon, c’est plus exact. J’écris. Très bien: il aime les hommes et les
bibles. Ça va, qu’aime-t-il encore? Voyons... des détails...»
—«Il laissera les bibles pour des briques, il laissera les briques pour des
bouteilles, il laissera les bouteilles pour du drap, il laissera le drap pour des
chats, il laissera les chats pour des huîtres, il laissera les huîtres pour du
jambon, il laissera le jambon pour du sucre, il laissera le sucre pour des
pâtés, il laissera les pâtés pour des pommes de terre, il laissera les pommes
de terre pour du son, il laissera le son pour du foin, il laissera le foin pour de
l’avoine, il laissera l’avoine pour du riz qui a toujours formé sa principale
alimentation; il n’y a du reste rien qu’il ne mange si ce n’est du beurre
d’Europe; mais il en mangerait s’il l’aimait.»
—«Très bien, et quelle quantité en moyenne par repas?»
—«Nous disons environ... Eh bien! environ un quart de tonne à une
demi-tonne.»
—«Il boit?»
—«Tout ce qui est liquide: du lait, de l’eau, du whisky, de la mélasse, de
l’huile de ricin, de la térébenthine, de l’acide phénique... inutile d’insister
sur les détails; indiquez tous les liquides qui vous viennent à l’esprit;
d’ailleurs il boira n’importe quoi, excepté du café d’Europe.»
—«Très bien. Et quelle quantité?»
—«Mettons de cinq à quinze barriques, cela dépend de sa soif, qui varie,
mais son appétit ne varie pas.»
—«Ce sont des habitudes peu ordinaires; elles serviront à nous mettre
sur la piste.»
 «Il sonna.
—«Alaric, faites venir le capitaine Burns.»
«Burns arriva. L’inspecteur Blunt lui expliqua l’affaire, en entrant dans
tous les détails, puis il dit de ce ton clair et décisif d’un homme qui a son
plan nettement arrêté dans son esprit et qui est accoutumé à commander:
—«Capitaine Burns, vous chargerez les détectives Jones, Davis, Halsey,
Bates et Hackett de suivre l’éléphant comme une ombre.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous chargerez les détectives Moses, Dakin, Murphy, Rogers,
Tupper, Higgins et Barthélemy de suivre les voleurs comme une ombre.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous placerez un poste de trente hommes, trente hommes d’élite
avec un renfort de trente à l’endroit où l’éléphant a été volé, avec ordre de
faire faction nuit et jour, et de ne laisser approcher personne, excepté les
reporters, sans un ordre écrit de moi.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Des détectives en bourgeois sur le chemin de fer, les bateaux à
vapeur et sur les bacs et bateaux de passeurs, et sur toutes les routes et tous
les chemins qui partent de Jersey-City, avec ordre de fouiller toutes les
personnes suspectes.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous leur donnerez à chacun des photographies avec le signalement
de l’éléphant, et vous leur enjoindrez de fouiller tous les trains et tous les
bateaux et navires qui sortent du port.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Si on trouve l’éléphant, vous le ferez arrêter et vous m’avertirez
immédiatement par télégraphe.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous m’avertirez immédiatement si on trouve des empreintes de pied
d’animal ou toute autre chose de même nature.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous vous ferez donner l’ordre enjoignant à la police du port de faire
des patrouilles vigilantes devant les façades des maisons.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
 —«Vous ferez partir des détectives en bourgeois, par les chemins de fer,
et ils iront au nord jusqu’au Canada, à l’ouest jusqu’à l’Ohio, au sud jusqu’à
Washington.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous aurez des hommes sûrs et capables dans tous les bureaux de
télégraphes pour lire les dépêches, avec ordre de se faire interpréter toutes
les dépêches chiffrées.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Que tout cela soit exécuté dans le plus profond secret, dans le plus
impénétrable secret.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous viendrez sans faute me faire votre rapport à l’heure habituelle.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Allez maintenant.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
«Il était parti. L’inspecteur Blunt demeura silencieux et pensif un
moment; le feu de son regard s’éteignit et disparut. Il se tourna vers moi et
me dit d’une voix calme:
—«Je n’aime pas à me vanter. Ce n’est pas mon habitude, mais je crois
pouvoir dire que nous trouverons l’éléphant.»
«Je lui pris les mains chaleureusement et le remerciai. J’étais sincère,
tout ce que je voyais de cet homme me le faisait aimer davantage, et me
faisait émerveiller sur les étonnants mystères de sa profession. Il était tard.
Nous nous séparâmes, et je retournai chez moi le cœur autrement joyeux
qu’à mon arrivée à son bureau.

II
«Le lendemain matin, les détails complets étaient dans tous les journaux.
Il y avait même, en supplément, l’exposé des théories de l’agent un tel, ou
un tel, sur la manière dont le coup avait été fait, sur les auteurs présumés du
vol, et la direction qu’ils avaient dû prendre avec leur butin. Il y avait onze
théories, embrassant toutes les possibilités. Et ce simple fait montra quels
gens indépendants sont les détectives. Il n’y avait pas deux théories
semblables, ou se rapprochant en quoi que ce fût, excepté sur un certain
point, sur lequel les onze étaient absolument d’accord. C’était que,
quoiqu’on eût bouleversé et démoli l’arrière de ma maison, et que la porte
seule fût restée fermée à clef, l’éléphant n’avait pu passer par la brèche
pratiquée, mais par quelque autre issue encore inconnue. Tous s’accordaient
à dire que les voleurs n’avaient pratiqué cette brèche que pour induire la
police en erreur. Cela ne me serait pas venu à l’idée, non plus qu’à tout
homme ordinaire, mais les détectives ne s’y laissèrent pas prendre un seul
instant.
«Ainsi la chose qui me paraissait la seule claire était celle où je m’étais
le plus lourdement trompé. Les onze théories mentionnaient toutes le nom
des voleurs supposés, mais pas deux ne donnaient les mêmes noms. Le
nombre total des personnes soupçonnées était de trente-sept. Les divers
comptes-rendus des journaux se terminaient par l’énoncé de l’opinion la
plus importante de toutes, celle de l’inspecteur en chef Blunt. Voici un
extrait de ce qu’on lisait:
«L’inspecteur en chef connaît les deux principaux coupables. Ils se
nomment «Brick Duffy» et «Rouge Mac Fadden». Dix jours avant que le
vol fût accompli, il en avait eu connaissance, et avait sans bruit pris les
mesures pour mettre à l’ombre ces deux coquins notoires. Malheureusement
on perdit leurs traces juste la nuit du rapt, et avant qu’on les eût retrouvées,
l’oiseau, c’est-à-dire l’éléphant, s’était envolé.
«Duffy et Mac Fadden sont les deux plus insolents vauriens de leur
profession. Le chef a des raisons de croire que ce sont les mêmes qui
dérobèrent, l’hiver dernier, par une nuit glaciale, le poêle du poste de police,
ce qui eut pour conséquence de mettre le chef et les hommes de police entre
les mains des médecins avant l’aube, les uns avec des doigts gelés, d’autres,
les oreilles, ou d’autres membres.»
«Après avoir lu la moitié de ce passage, je fus plus étonné que jamais de
la merveilleuse sagacité de cet homme. Non seulement il voyait d’un œil
clair tous les détails présents, mais l’avenir même ne lui était pas caché!
J’allai aussitôt à son bureau, et lui dis que je ne pouvais m’empêcher de
regretter qu’il n’eût pas fait tout d’abord arrêter ces gens et empêché ainsi le
mal et le dommage. Sa réponse fut simple et sans réplique:
—«Ce n’est point notre affaire de prévenir le crime, mais de le punir.
Nous ne pouvons pas le punir tant qu’il n’a pas été commis.»
 «Je lui fis remarquer en outre que le secret dont nous avions enveloppé
nos premières recherches avait été divulgué par les journaux; que non
seulement tous nos actes, mais même tous nos plans et projets avaient été
dévoilés, que l’on avait donné le nom de toutes les personnes soupçonnées;
elles n’auraient maintenant rien de plus pressé que de se déguiser ou de se
cacher.
—«Laissez faire. Ils éprouveront que, quand je serai prêt, ma main
s’appesantira sur eux, dans leurs retraites, avec autant de sûreté que la main
du destin. Pour les journaux, nous devons marcher avec eux. La renommée,
la réputation, l’attention constante du public sont le pain quotidien du
policier. Il doit rendre manifeste ce qu’il fait, pour qu’on ne suppose pas
qu’il ne fait rien; il faut bien qu’il fasse connaître d’avance ses théories, car
il n’y a rien d’aussi curieux et d’aussi frappant que les théories d’un
détective, et rien qui lui vaille plus de respect et d’admiration. Si les
journaux publient nos projets et nos plans, c’est qu’ils insistent pour les
avoir, et nous ne pouvons leur refuser sans leur faire injure; nous devons
constamment mettre nos agissements sous les yeux du public, sinon le
public croira que nous n’agissons pas. Il est d’ailleurs plus agréable de lire
dans un journal: «Voici l’ingénieuse et remarquable théorie de l’inspecteur
Blunt», que d’y trouver quelque boutade de mauvaise humeur, ou pis
encore, quelque sarcasme.»
—«Je vois la force de votre raisonnement, mais j’ai remarqué qu’en un
passage de vos observations dans les journaux de ce matin, vous aviez
refusé de faire connaître votre opinion sur un point accessoire.»
—«Oui, c’est ce que nous faisons toujours, cela fait bon effet. D’ailleurs,
je n’avais pas d’opinion du tout sur ce point.»
«Je déposai une somme d’argent considérable entre les mains de
l’inspecteur, pour couvrir les dépenses courantes; et je m’assis pour attendre
des nouvelles: nous pouvions espérer avoir des télégrammes à chaque
minute. Entre temps, je relus les journaux et notre circulaire, et je constatai
que les 25,000 dollars de récompense semblaient n’être offerts qu’aux
détectives seulement; je dis qu’il aurait fallu les offrir à quiconque
trouverait l’éléphant, mais l’inspecteur me répondit:
—«Ce sont les détectives qui trouveront l’éléphant, par conséquent la
récompense ira à qui de droit. Si la trouvaille est faite par quelque autre
personne, ce ne sera jamais que parce qu’on aura épié les détectives, et
qu’on aura mis à profit les indications qu’ils se seront laissé voler, et ils
auront droit, de toute façon, à la récompense. Le but d’une prime de cette
nature est de stimuler le zèle des hommes qui consacrent leur temps et leurs
talents acquis à ces sortes de recherches, et non pas de favoriser des
citoyens quelconques qui ont la chance de faire une capture sans avoir
mérité la récompense par des mérites et des efforts spéciaux.»
«Cela me parut assez raisonnable. A ce moment, l’appareil télégraphique
qui était dans un coin de la pièce commença à cliqueter et la dépêche
suivante se déroula:
 «Flower Station, New-York, 7 h. 30 matin.
«Suis sur une piste. Trouvé série de profonds sillons traversant ferme
près d’ici, les ai suivis pendant deux milles direction est. Sans résultat.
Crois éléphant a pris direction ouest. Je filerai de ce côté.
«Darley, détective.»
—«Darley est un des meilleurs hommes de la division, dit l’inspecteur;
nous aurons bientôt d’autres nouvelles de lui.»
«Le télégramme nº2 arriva.
«Barker’s, N. J., 7 h. 30 matin.
«Arrive à l’instant. Effraction dans verrerie ici nuit dernière, huit cents
bouteilles enlevées. Eau en grande quantité ne se trouve qu’à cinq milles
d’ici; me transporte de ce côté. Éléphant probablement altéré, bouteilles
vides trouvées.
«Baker, détective.»
—«Cela promet, dit l’inspecteur, je vous avais bien dit que le régime de
l’animal nous mettrait sur la trace.»
«Télégramme nº3.
«Taylorville, L. I., 8 h. 15 matin.
«Une meule de foin près d’ici disparue pendant la nuit. Probablement
dévorée. Relevé et suivi la piste.
«Hubard, détective.»
—«Quel chemin il fait! dit l’inspecteur. Je savais d’ailleurs que nous
aurions du mal, mais nous l’attraperons.»
«Flower Station, N. Y., 9 h. matin.
«Relevé les traces à trois milles vers l’ouest. Larges, profondes,
déchiquetées. Nous venons de rencontrer un fermier qui dit que ce ne sont
pas des traces d’éléphant. Il prétend que ce sont des traces de trous où il mit
des plants d’arbres lors des gelées de l’hiver dernier. Donnez-moi des
indications sur la marche à suivre.
«Darley, détective.»
—«Ah! ah! un complice des voleurs! Nous brûlons», dit l’inspecteur.
 «Il télégraphia à Darley:
«Arrêtez l’homme et forcez-le à nommer ses complices. Continuez à
suivre les traces... jusqu’au Pacifique, s’il le faut.
«Blunt, chef détective.»
«Autre télégramme.
«Coney-Point, Pa., 8 h. 45 matin.
«Effraction à l’usine à gaz pendant la nuit. Quittances trimestrielles non
payées disparues. Relevé et suivi la piste.»
—«Ciel! s’exclama l’inspecteur. Mange-t-il aussi des quittances?»
—«Par inadvertance, sans doute, répondis-je. Des quittances ne peuvent
être une nourriture suffisante. Du moins, prises seules.»
«Puis arriva ce télégramme émouvant:
«Ironville, N. Y., 9 h. 30 matin.
«J’arrive. Ce village est dans la consternation. Éléphant passé ici à cinq
heures du matin. Les uns disent qu’il se dirige vers l’ouest; d’autres, vers le
nord; quelques-uns, vers le sud. Mais personne n’est resté pour faire au
moment une observation précise. Il a tué un cheval. J’en ai mis un morceau
de côté comme indice. Il l’a tué avec la trompe. D’après la nature du coup,
je crois qu’il a été porté à gauche. D’après la position où on a trouvé le
cheval, je crois que l’éléphant se dirige au nord, suivant la ligne du chemin
de fer de Berkley. Il a une avance de quatre heures et demie. Mais nous le
suivons de près.
«Harves, détective.»
«Je poussai une exclamation de joie. L’inspecteur était calme comme une
image. Il toucha posément son timbre.
—«Alaric, envoyez-moi le capitaine Burns.»
«Burns entra.
—«Combien d’hommes disponibles avez-vous?»
—«Quatre-vingt-seize, Monsieur.»
—«Envoyez-les dans le nord, immédiatement. Concentration sur la ligne
de Berkley, au nord d’Ironville.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
 —«Que tous les mouvements se fassent dans le plus grand secret. Dès
que vous aurez d’autres hommes disponibles, prévenez-moi.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Allez.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
«A ce moment arrivait un autre télégramme.
«Sage Corners, N. Y., 10 h. 30 matin.
«J’arrive. L’éléphant passé ici à 8 h. 15. Tous les habitants de la ville ont
pris la fuite, sauf un policeman. Il semble que l’éléphant ait attaqué non pas
le policeman, mais un réverbère. Tué tous les deux. J’ai ai mis de côté un
morceau du policeman comme indice.
«Stumm, détective.»
—«Ainsi l’éléphant a tourné à l’ouest, dit l’inspecteur. D’ailleurs il ne
peut échapper. J’ai des hommes partout.»
«Le télégramme suivant disait:
«Glovers, 11 h. 15 matin.
«J’arrive. Le village est abandonné. Restent les malades et les vieillards.
Éléphant passé ici il y a trois quarts d’heure. La société de protestation
contre les buveurs d’eau était réunie en séance, il a passé sa trompe par la
fenêtre et l’a vidée dans la salle; la trompe était pleine d’eau de puits,
quelques assistants l’ont avalée et sont morts, d’autres ont été noyés. Les
détectives Cross et O’Shaughnessy ont traversé la ville, mais allant au sud,
ont manqué l’éléphant. Tout le pays à plusieurs milles à la ronde saisi de
terreur. Les gens désertent leurs maisons, fuyant partout, mais partout ils
rencontrent l’éléphant. Beaucoup de tués.
«Brant, détective.»
«J’aurais voulu répandre des larmes, tant ces ravages me consternaient,
mais l’inspecteur se contenta de dire:
—«Vous voyez que nous nous rapprochons; il sent notre présence, le
voilà de nouveau à l’est.»
«Mais d’autres nouvelles sinistres nous étaient préparées. Le télégraphe
apporta ceci:
«Hoganport, 12 h. 19.
 «Arrive à l’instant. Éléphant passé ici il y a une demi-heure. Semé
partout terreur et désolation. Course furieuse à travers les rues. Deux
plombiers passant, un tué, l’autre blessé, regrets unanimes.
«O’Flaherty, détective.»
—«Enfin, le voilà au milieu de mes hommes, dit l’inspecteur, rien ne
peut le sauver.»
«Alors ce fut une série de télégrammes expédiés par des détectives
disséminés entre New-Jersey et la Pensylvanie et qui suivaient des traces,
granges ravagées, usines détruites, bibliothèques scolaires dévorées, avec
grand espoir, espoir valant certitude.
—«Je voudrais, dit l’inspecteur, pouvoir être en communication avec eux
et leur donner l’ordre de prendre le nord, mais c’est impossible. Un
détective ne va au bureau du télégraphe que pour envoyer son rapport, puis
il repart et vous ne savez jamais où mettre la main sur lui.»
«Alors arriva une dépêche ainsi conçue:
«Bridge-port, Ct., 12 h. 15.
«Barnum offre 4,000 dollars par an pour le privilège exclusif de se servir
de l’éléphant comme moyen d’annonce ambulante, à partir d’aujourd’hui
jusqu’au moment où les détectives le trouveront. Voudrait le couvrir
d’affiches de son cirque. Demande réponse immédiate.
«Boggs, détective.»
—«C’est absurde!» m’écriai-je.
—«Sans doute, dit l’inspecteur. Évidemment M. Barnum, qui se croit
très fin, ne me connaît pas. Mais je le connais.»
«Et il dicta la réponse à la dépêche:
«Offre de M. Barnum refusée. 7,000 dollars ou rien.
«Inspect. chef, Blunt.»
—«Voilà, nous n’aurons pas à attendre longtemps la réponse. M.
Barnum n’est pas chez lui, il est dans le bureau du télégraphe, c’est son
habitude quand il traite une affaire. Dans trois...»
«Affaire faite. P.-T. Barnum...» interrompit l’appareil télégraphique en
cliquetant.
 «Avant que j’eusse le temps de commenter cet extraordinaire épisode, la
dépêche suivante changea désastreusement le cours de mes idées:
«Bolivia, N. Y., 12 h. 50.
«Éléphant arrivé ici, venant du sud, a passé se dirigeant vers la forêt à 11
h. 50, dispersant un enterrement et diminuant de deux le nombre des
suiveurs. Des citoyens lui ont tiré quelques balles, puis ont pris la fuite. Le
détective Burke et moi sommes arrivés dix minutes trop tard, venant du
nord. Mais des traces fausses nous ont égarés, et nous avons perdu du
temps. A la fin, nous avons trouvé la vraie trace et l’avons suivie jusqu’à la
forêt. A ce moment nous nous sommes mis à quatre pattes, et avons relevé
les empreintes attentivement. Nous avons aperçu l’animal dans les
broussailles. Burke était devant moi. Malheureusement l’éléphant s’est
arrêté pour se reposer. Burke, qui allait la tête penchée, les yeux sur la piste,
buta contre les jambes postérieures de l’animal avant de l’avoir vu. Il se
leva aussitôt, saisit la queue, et s’écria joyeusement: «Je réclame la pri...»
Mais avant qu’il eût achevé, un simple mouvement de la trompe jeta le
brave garçon à bas, mort et en pièces. Je fis retraite, l’éléphant se retourna
et me poursuivit de près jusqu’à la lisière du bois, à une allure effrayante.
J’aurais été pris infailliblement, si les débris de l’enterrement n’étaient
miraculeusement survenus pour détourner son attention. On m’apprend
qu’il ne reste rien de l’enterrement. Ce n’est pas une perte sérieuse. Il y a ici
plus de matériaux qu’il n’en faut pour un autre. L’éléphant a disparu.
«Mulrooney, détective.»
«Nous n’eûmes plus de nouvelles, sinon des diligents et habiles
détectives dispersés, dans le New-Jersey, la Pensylvanie, le Delaware, la
Virginie, qui, tous, suivaient des pistes fraîches et sûres. Un peu après deux
heures, vint ce télégramme:
«Baxter centre, 2 h. 15 soir.
«Éléphant passé ici, tout couvert d’affiches de cirque. A dispersé une
conférence religieuse, frappant et blessant un grand nombre de ceux qui
étaient venus là pour le bien de leurs âmes. Les citoyens ont pu le saisir et
l’ont mis sous bonne garde. Quand le détective Brown et moi arrivâmes,
peu après, nous entrâmes dans l’enclos, et commençâmes à identifier
l’animal avec les photographies et descriptions. Toutes les marques
concordantes étaient reconnues, sauf une, que nous ne pouvions pas voir, la
marque à feu sous l’aisselle. Pour la voir, Brown se glissa sous l’animal, et
eut aussitôt la tête broyée; il n’en resta pas même les débris. Tous prirent la
fuite, et aussi l’éléphant, portant à droite et à gauche des coups meurtriers.
—Il s’est sauvé, mais a laissé des traces de sang, provenant des boulets de
canon. Nous sommes sûrs de le retrouver. Traverse dans la direction du sud
une forêt épaisse.»
«Ce fut le dernier télégramme. A la tombée du soir, il y eut un brouillard
si opaque que l’on ne pouvait distinguer les objets à trois pas. Il dura toute
la nuit. La circulation des bateaux et des omnibus fut interrompue.

III
Le lendemain matin, les journaux étaient pleins d’opinions de détectives.
Comme auparavant on racontait toutes les péripéties de la tragédie par le
menu et l’on ajoutait beaucoup d’autres détails reçus des correspondants
télégraphiques particuliers. Il y en avait des colonnes et des colonnes, un
bon tiers du journal avec des titres flamboyants en vedette et mon cœur
saignait à les lire. Voici le ton général:
l’éléphant blanc en liberté! il poursuit sa marche fatale! des
villages entiers abandonnés par leurs habitants frappés d’épouvante!
la pâle terreur le précède! la dévastation et la mort le suivent! puis
viennent les détectives! granges détruites! usines saccagées!
moissons dévorées! assemblées publiques dispersées! scènes de carnage
impossibles a décrire! opinion de trente-quatre détectives les plus
éminents de la division de sûreté. opinion de l’inspecteur en chef
blunt.
—«Voilà, dit l’inspecteur Blunt, trahissant presque son enthousiasme;
voilà qui est magnifique! La plus splendide aubaine qu’ait jamais eue une
administration de la sûreté. La renommée portera le bruit de nos exploits
jusqu’aux confins de la terre. Le souvenir s’en perpétuera jusqu’aux
dernières limites du temps et mon nom avec lui.»
«Mais, personnellement, je n’avais aucune raison de me réjouir; il me
semblait que c’était moi qui avais commis tous ces crimes sanglants et que
l’éléphant n’était que mon agent irresponsable. Et comme la liste s’était
accrue! Dans un endroit il était tombé au milieu d’une élection et avait tué
cinq scrutateurs. Acte de violence manifeste suivi du massacre de deux
pauvres diables nommés O’Donohue et Mac Flannigan, qui avaient «trouvé
un refuge dans l’asile des opprimés de tous les pays la veille seulement et
exerçaient pour la première fois le droit sacré des citoyens américains en se
présentant aux urnes, quand ils avaient été frappés par la main impitoyable
du fléau du Siam». Dans un autre endroit, il avait attaqué un vieux fou
prêcheur qui préparait pour la prochaine campagne son attaque héroïque
contre la danse, le théâtre et autres choses immorales, et il avait marché
dessus. Dans un autre endroit encore il avait tué un agent préposé au
paratonnerre, et la liste continuait de plus en plus sanglante, de plus en plus
navrante: il y avait soixante tués et deux cent quarante blessés. Tous les
rapports rendaient hommage à la vigilance et au dévouement des détectives
et tous se terminaient par cette remarque que le monstre avait été vu par
trois cent mille hommes et quatre détectives, et que deux de ces derniers
avaient péri.
«Je redoutais d’entendre de nouveau cliqueter l’appareil télégraphique.
Bientôt la pluie de dépêches recommença; mais je fus heureusement déçu:
on ne tarda pas à avoir la certitude que toute trace de l’éléphant avait
disparu.
«Le brouillard lui avait permis de se trouver une bonne cachette où il
restait à l’abri des investigations. Les télégrammes de localités les plus
absurdement éloignées les unes des autres annonçaient qu’une vaste masse
sombre avait été vaguement aperçue à travers le brouillard, à telle ou telle
heure, et que c’était indubitablement «l’éléphant». Cette vaste masse
sombre aurait été aperçue vaguement à New-Haven et New-Jersey, en
Pensylvanie, dans l’intérieur de l’État de New-York, à Brooklyn et même
dans la ville de New-York; mais chaque fois la vaste masse sombre s’était
évanouie et n’avait pas laissé de traces. Chacun des détectives de la
nombreuse division répandue sur cette immense étendue de pays envoyait
son rapport d’heure en heure; et chacun d’eux avait relevé une piste sûre,
épiait quelque chose et le talonnait.
«Le jour se passa néanmoins sans résultat.
«De même, le jour suivant.
«Et le troisième.
«On commençait à se lasser de lire dans les journaux des renseignements
sans issue, d’entendre parler de pistes qui ne menaient à rien, et de théories
dont l’intérêt, l’amusement et la surprise s’étaient épuisés.
 «Sur le conseil de l’inspecteur, je doublai la prime.
«Suivirent quatre jours encore de morne attente. Le coup le plus cruel
frappa alors les pauvres détectives harassés. Les journalistes refusèrent de
publier plus longtemps leurs théories, et demandèrent froidement quelque
répit.
«Quinze jours après le vol, j’élevai la prime à 75,000 dollars, sur le
conseil de l’inspecteur. C’était une somme importante, mais je compris
qu’il valait mieux sacrifier toute ma fortune personnelle que perdre mon
crédit auprès de mon gouvernement. Maintenant que les détectives étaient
en mauvaise posture, les journaux se tournèrent contre eux, et se mirent à
leur décocher les traits les plus acérés. Le théâtre s’empara de l’histoire. On
vit sur la scène des acteurs déguisés en détectives, chassant l’éléphant de la
plus amusante façon. On fit des caricatures de détectives parcourant le pays
avec des longues-vues, tandis que l’éléphant, derrière eux, mangeait des
pommes dans leurs poches. Enfin on ridiculisa de cent façons les insignes
des détectives.
«Vous avez vu l’insigne imprimé en or au dos des romans sur la police.
C’est un œil grand ouvert avec la légende: «Nous ne dormons jamais.»
Quand un agent entrait dans un bar, le patron facétieux renouvelait une
vieille plaisanterie: «Voulez-vous qu’on vous ouvre un œil?» Il y avait
partout des sarcasmes dans l’air.
«Mais un homme demeurait calme, immuable, insensible à toutes les
moqueries. C’était ce cœur de chêne, l’inspecteur. Pas une fois son regard
limpide ne se troubla, pas une fois sa confiance ne fut ébranlée. Il disait:
—«Laissez-les faire et dire. Rira bien qui rira le dernier.»
«Mon admiration pour cet homme devint un véritable culte. Je ne quittai
plus sa société. Son bureau m’était devenu un séjour de moins en moins
agréable. Cependant, puisqu’il se montrait si héroïque, je me faisais un
devoir de l’imiter, aussi longtemps du moins que je le pourrais. Je venais
régulièrement et m’installais. J’étais le seul visiteur qui parût capable de
cela. Tout le monde m’admirait. Parfois il me semblait que j’aurais dû
renoncer. Mais alors je contemplais cette face calme et apparemment
insoucieuse, et je demeurais.
«Trois semaines environ après le vol de l’éléphant, je fus un matin sur le
point de dire que j’allais donner ma démission et me retirer. A ce moment
même, pour me retenir, le grand détective me soumit un nouveau plan
génial.
«C’était une transaction avec les voleurs. La fertilité de ce génie inventif
surpassait tout ce que j’avais jamais vu, et pourtant j’ai été en relations avec
les esprits les plus distingués. Il me dit qu’il était sûr de pouvoir transiger
pour cent mille dollars, et de me faire avoir l’éléphant. Je répondis que je
croyais pouvoir réunir cette somme, mais je demandai ce que deviendraient
ces pauvres détectives qui avaient montré tant de zèle.
—«Dans les transactions, m’assura-t-il, ils ont toujours la moitié.»
«Cela écartait ma seule objection. L’inspecteur écrivit deux billets ainsi
conçus:
«Chère Madame,
«Votre mari peut gagner une forte somme d’argent (et compter
absolument sur la protection de la loi) en venant me voir immédiatement.
«Blunt, chef inspecteur.»
«Il envoya un de ces billets à la femme supposée de Brick Duffy, l’autre
à celle de Rouge Mac Fadden.
«Une heure après arrivèrent ces deux réponses insolentes:
«Vieux hibou, Brick Mac Duffy est mort depuis deux ans.»
«Bridget Mahoney.»
«Vieille chauve-souris, Rouge Mac Fadden a été pendu il y a dix-huit
mois. Tout autre âne qu’un détective sait cela.
«Mary O’Hooligan.»
—«Je m’en doutais depuis longtemps, dit l’inspecteur. Ce témoignage
prouve que mon flair ne m’a pas trompé.»
«Dès qu’une ressource lui échappait, il en trouvait une autre toute prête.
Il envoya aussitôt aux journaux du matin une annonce dont je gardai la
copie.
«A—XWBLV, 242, N, Tjd—Fz, 328 wmlg. Ozpo—2m!
«Ogw Mum.»
«Il me dit que si le voleur était encore vivant, cela le déciderait à venir
au rendez-vous habituel; il m’expliqua que ce rendez-vous était dans un
endroit où se traitaient tous les compromis entre détectives et criminels.
L’heure fixée était minuit sonnant.
«Nous ne pouvions rien faire jusque-là. Je quittai le bureau sans retard,
heureux d’un moment de liberté.
«A onze heures du soir, j’apportai les 100,000 dollars en billets de
banque et les remis entre les mains du chef détective. Peu après, il me
quitta, avec dans le regard la lueur d’espérance et de confiance que je
connaissais bien. Une heure s’écoula, presque intolérable. Puis j’entendis
son pas béni. Je me levai tout ému et chancelant de joie, et j’allai vers lui.
Quelle flamme de triomphe dans ses yeux! Il dit:
—«Nous avons transigé. Les rieurs déchanteront demain. Suivez-moi.»
«Il prit une bougie et descendit dans la vaste crypte qui s’étendait sous la
maison, et où dormaient continuellement soixante détectives, tandis qu’un
renfort de vingt autres jouaient aux cartes pour tuer le temps. Je marchais
sur ses pas. Il alla légèrement jusqu’au bout de la pièce sombre, et au
moment précis où je succombais à la suffocation et me préparais à
m’évanouir, je le vis trébucher et s’étaler sur les membres étendus d’un
objet gigantesque. Je l’entendis crier en tombant:
—«Notre noble profession est vengée. Voici l’éléphant!»
«On me transporta dans le bureau. Je repris mes sens en respirant de
l’éther.
«Tous les détectives accoururent. Je vis une scène de triomphe comme je
n’en avais jamais vu encore. On appela les reporters. On éventra des paniers
de champagne. On porta des toasts. Il y eut des serrements de mains, des
congratulations, un enthousiasme indicible et infini. Naturellement le chef
fut le héros du moment et son bonheur était si complet, il avait si
patiemment, si légitimement, si bravement remporté la victoire que j’étais
heureux moi-même de le voir ainsi, quoique je ne fusse plus pour ce qui me
concernait qu’un mendiant sans feu ni lieu: le trésor inappréciable qu’on
m’avait confié était perdu et ma position officielle m’échappait par suite de
ce que l’on considérait toujours comme une négligence coupable dans
l’accomplissement de ma grande mission. Bien des regards éloquents
témoignèrent leur profonde admiration pour le chef, et plus d’un détective
murmurait à voix basse:
—«Voyez-le, c’est le roi de la profession; il ne lui faut qu’un indice et il
n’y a rien de caché qu’il ne puisse retrouver.»