12. Conference, Dance Party (Thirty-One)

The conservatives accused the liberals of being bookish nerds who had read themselves into a state of oxygen deprivation, and the radicals considered them timid defeatists. Strictly speaking, neither of these labels quite fit the truth.

Headed by scholars such as Joseph Weidemai, William Weitelin, and Franz Siegel, the liberals were not a tightly organized political society, but a group of pacifist romantics, idealists, and philanthropists. They simply didn't want the achievements they had worked hard to build for years to be destroyed by war, and they were unhappy with the militarized social system. They hoped to win more benefits for laborers, including humans, to decentralize power that was too concentrated in the hands of the ruling officials, and to implement universal democracy and social reform.