The War of the End of the World

At the office of the Journal de Noticías the shortsighted journalist is composing an article for Epaminondas Gonçalves. It is nighttime and the offices are almost empty.

The article relates a stormy session of the Bahia Legislative Assembly, in which members of Gonçalves’s Progressivist Republican Party accuse the governing Bahia Autonomist Party, loyal to the Baron de Canabrava, of conspiring with England to overthrow the Republic and restore the monarchy. A shipment of English rifles and the body of an English agent, Galileo Gall, prove the connection. They call for the intervention of the Federal Army to defeat the rebels at Canudos, armed and trained by the English, who have already defeated Major Brito’s expedition. The majority accuse the republicans of conspiracy: Gall’s body and the rifles were discovered in a region controlled by their party, by the Bahia Rural Guard, which is loyal to the Progressivists. The session ends with Gonçalves reaffirming his party’s loyalty to the Republic and promising a drive to buy arms for the federal troops.

Gonçalves is delighted with the article. He asks the journalist if he prefers working for his paper over the baron’s. The journalist says he enjoys the work but claims to have no political convictions either way.