Chapter 272 Failed Reconciliation

During the halftime break, representatives from all parties were constantly moving around, trying to win over the remaining neutral members.

After all the members had just attended the meeting, except for a few who really couldn't see the situation clearly, most of them had already realized that the conflict between the two factions had reached a point where it was almost impossible to ease.

If Locke had not been the host of the meeting, the two factions might have fought in the hall.

Therefore, all the members who participated anticipated that a storm was about to sweep across the entire resistance army.

Either one of the two factions will give in under pressure, or the resistance will disband, or there may even be a bloody civil war.

However, regarding civil war, most members still believe that there should be no civil war.

First of all, most of the border faction’s military forces are deployed on the border, where they need to guard against the green tide, and they cannot spare any military forces to engage in a bloody civil war with the local faction.

Moreover, after losing the logistical supplies from the local faction, the border area faction simply did not have sufficient material logistics to support them in waging a civil war.

As for the local factions, it is even more impossible for them. Although they united under the pressure of the border area factions, they are still divided internally, and many things are discussed internally.

Moreover, they came here to make a profit. The reason they refused to provide logistical supplies to the rebels was not to make more money. How could they waste resources to fight a civil war that had no benefits?

If the border area faction is defeated, who will resist the green tide on the front line?

Therefore, most people in both factions do not believe that a full-scale civil war will break out. Most of them only think that the rebels may be disbanded, and at most there will be some small-scale conflicts.

The reason for winning over others was just to prepare for the small-scale conflict they were expecting next.

In addition, during the intermission, Locke did not abandon his policy of balanced neutrality and met with senior leaders of the border area faction and the local faction.

Try to persuade them once again, ease the conflict, make them support your policies, and restore the balance of the resistance.

But it was of no use. Almost every senior executive who communicated with Locke ended up parting on bad terms. Later, the senior executives of both factions even directly rejected Locke's invitation and refused to meet, making their choice with their actions.

The time for change has come for the resistance. They can either remain neutral and wait for the outcome, or choose which side to side with.

In short, there is no place for Lockean equilibrium policy.

After the intermission, the meeting continued.

Locke, looking a little haggard, appeared in front of everyone.

Obviously, Locke already knew that everything was unstoppable.

The second meeting was not as confrontational as the first one. On the contrary, after the intermission, both sides had made it clear that neither was willing to compromise.

Therefore, there was no need for much quarrelling, only lukewarm opposition to the proposal.

No matter what proposal Locke put forward, it would either be opposed by the local faction, or by the border faction, or by both factions.

When the resistance army was founded, many things were decided on the spur of the moment by a group of wandering knights who knew little or nothing about politics, and they made constant adjustments and modifications while fighting the Green Tide.

But no matter how it is changed, the foundation of the resistance army is there, and there are obvious institutional flaws. What's more, these institutional flaws are difficult to modify even for Locke. In fact, Locke himself is not aware of these problems.

Unlimited local autonomy, unrestrained local civil wars, a bloated and unsystematic military system, a chaotic command system, and an arbitrary promotion mechanism.

It can be said that the rebels’ administrative and military systems are in chaos.

As the leader of the resistance army, Locke had no idea about the situation in various local territories. He had no idea about the local population, development, how much taxes to collect, or how many soldiers to recruit. He usually just reported a random number when collecting taxes.

As long as the local authorities can bribe the tax collectors, they can reduce the amount of taxes and military personnel they have to pay.

And, the worst thing is that Locke did not impose any restrictions or penalties on tax collectors.

As long as the tax collectors said that there was a disaster in the area and they could not collect taxes, Locke would believe them. He would even provide aid materials, but he would not send people to check again. Even if the matter was exposed, he would not punish the tax collectors, but just let them collect taxes in another place, and then that was it.

If it were Roland, he would have been killed long ago.

Given this tax collection system, it is not surprising that the rebels faced logistical problems.

Moreover, the restrictions on local factions are better than nothing, although they restrict the annexation of local factions by each other.

However, this kind of restriction depends entirely on self-awareness and is only designed to prevent gentlemen, not villains.

Just push a puppet outside and pretend that those territories are not under your control.

This unspoken rule was brought up by the local faction in order to win over Roland.

After knowing this unspoken rule, Roland directly sent an elite team to wipe out the territories near Jiuqi and changed their owners.

Otherwise, the territories near Jiuqi would not be so obedient, never causing trouble to Jiuqi, and even sucking blood from Jiuqi to build themselves up.

In addition to the administrative system, the same is true for the military system, which lacks a clear standard.

Anyone can get in by just gathering a team.

Moreover, the rebels do not have a clear command system. Apart from their own troops, Locke does not even know how many troops the rebels have, and can only carry out rough operations.

For example: which newly joined army will be assigned to whom to command, how many people there are, whether he can be commanded, and whether he can command well, that is none of Locke's business.

Moreover, there are no standards for promoting generals, and they are promoted randomly.

Although Roland was a beneficiary of this chaotic system and was promoted at the speed of light, he still felt it was against the will of heaven.

In addition, the same thing happened with the logistics supply system. The logistics personnel had no idea what supplies the front line needed or how much supplies they needed. They just delivered whatever was available. If the supplies were delivered to the wrong place and were useless, they didn't care. At most, Locke would let them work somewhere else, but he wouldn't kill them.

In addition to these, what Roland found most outrageous was the parliamentary resolution.

The parliamentary system of veto made Roland feel numb.

Any proposal cannot be passed if there is even one veto.

Is this a system that humans can come up with? Everyone has a veto. This is too democratic and too free.

It is precisely because of this that almost all proposals failed to pass.

Only a few bills were passed by Locke using his own undefined and unknown usefulness to force his way through them.

But even so, most of the local and border factions looked indifferent.

Passed ≠ I executed.

After no more arguments, all the proposals were quickly concluded, and more than 90% of them were rejected. As for the few proposals that were passed, it was obvious that no one would care or comply with them.

This meeting did not produce any results. Not only did it fail to ease the conflict between the two factions, but on the contrary, it brought the conflict between the local faction and the border area faction to the forefront.

The members of the meeting parted unhappily, and most of them were prepared for the disintegration of the resistance army.

However, what they didn't know was that Roland and the top leaders of the Border Region faction had reached an agreement and were preparing for a coup.

Before the meeting began, they had already prepared for a coup and all-out civil war.

(End of this chapter)