Ah, but let’s be realistic. The rest of the country will never go along with that five state stuff. Trouble is—if the armchair lawyers are right—the only way they can stop it is to throw out the Articles of Annexation that brought Texas into the Union in the first place. And that means the Lone Star State will have to pick up where it left off in 1845. Independent.

Independence?… Not secession, mind you, just good old hard-earned sovereignty. Battled for at Goliad, won at San Jacinto, and… well… never relinquished after all. Not such a bad idea, independence; not half bad. You say we can’t divide? Please, don’t throw us in that briar patch.

There are currently 158 countries in the world, give or take a South Sea Island or two. An independent Texas would rank 33rd in size and 45th in population. That is enough to give the Republic some clout at the U.N., where Texans already have an inside track because they speak one of its five official languages. Or is it two?

In the number of daily newspapers, Texas would rank a respectable sixteenth. But in some other areas Texans are not as well off as they think they are; the ratio of physicians to population works out to about 30th, behind most of Europe, Argentina, Mongolia, Iceland, and Nauru. And quite a few countries can top Texas in educational expendi­tures.

Economically, an independent Texas would have a lot going for it, as the following tables show. (Figures for the United States have been adjusted to exclude Texas). The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) would have a new face at its next summit meeting: President Dolph Briscoe.

And somebody in the Southwest Conference could win a national championship practically every year.