diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/1059-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/1059-0.txt | 7234 |
1 files changed, 7234 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/1059-0.txt b/old/1059-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..09a6920 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1059-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7234 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of The World Set Free, by Herbert George Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: The World Set Free + A Story of Mankind + +Author: Herbert George Wells + +Release Date: October, 1997 [eBook #1059] +[Most recently updated: November 24, 2022] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Charles Keller and David Widger + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD SET FREE *** + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +The World Set Free + +by H.G. Wells + + +We Are All Things That Make And Pass, +Striving Upon A Hidden Mission, +Out To The Open Sea. + +TO +Frederick Soddy’s +‘Interpretation Of Radium’ +This Story, +Which Owes Long Passages +To The Eleventh Chapter Of That Book, +Acknowledges And Inscribes Itself + + +Contents + + PREFACE + PRELUDE. THE SUN SNARERS + CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY + CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE LAST WAR + CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE ENDING OF WAR + CHAPTER THE FOURTH. THE NEW PHASE + CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN + + + + +PREFACE + + +_The World Set Free_ was written in 1913 and published early in 1914, +and it is the latest of a series of three fantasias of possibility, +stories which all turn on the possible developments in the future of +some contemporary force or group of forces. _The World Set Free_ was +written under the immediate shadow of the Great War. Every intelligent +person in the world felt that disaster was impending and knew no way of +averting it, but few of us realised in the earlier half of 1914 how +near the crash was to us. The reader will be amused to find that here +it is put off until the year 1956. He may naturally want to know the +reason for what will seem now a quite extraordinary delay. As a +prophet, the author must confess he has always been inclined to be +rather a slow prophet. The war aeroplane in the world of reality, for +example, beat the forecast in _Anticipations_ by about twenty years or +so. I suppose a desire not to shock the sceptical reader’s sense of use +and wont and perhaps a less creditable disposition to hedge, have +something to do with this dating forward of one’s main events, but in +the particular case of _The World Set Free_ there was, I think, another +motive in holding the Great War back, and that was to allow the chemist +to get well forward with his discovery of the release of atomic energy. +1956—or for that matter 2056—may be none too late for that crowning +revolution in human potentialities. And apart from this procrastination +of over forty years, the guess at the opening phase of the war was +fairly lucky; the forecast of an alliance of the Central Empires, the +opening campaign through the Netherlands, and the despatch of the +British Expeditionary Force were all justified before the book had been +published six months. And the opening section of Chapter the Second +remains now, after the reality has happened, a fairly adequate +diagnosis of the essentials of the matter. One happy hit (in Chapter +the Second, Section 2), on which the writer may congratulate himself, +is the forecast that under modern conditions it would be quite +impossible for any great general to emerge to supremacy and concentrate +the enthusiasm of the armies of either side. There could be no +Alexanders or Napoleons. And we soon heard the scientific corps +muttering, ‘These old fools,’ exactly as it is here foretold. + +These, however, are small details, and the misses in the story far +outnumber the hits. It is the main thesis which is still of interest +now; the thesis that because of the development of scientific +knowledge, separate sovereign states and separate sovereign empires are +no longer possible in the world, that to attempt to keep on with the +old system is to heap disaster upon disaster for mankind and perhaps to +destroy our race altogether. The remaining interest of this book now is +the sustained validity of this thesis and the discussion of the +possible ending of war on the earth. I have supposed a sort of epidemic +of sanity to break out among the rulers of states and the leaders of +mankind. I have represented the native common sense of the French mind +and of the English mind—for manifestly King Egbert is meant to be +‘God’s Englishman’—leading mankind towards a bold and resolute effort +of salvage and reconstruction. Instead of which, as the school book +footnotes say, compare to-day’s newspaper. Instead of a frank and +honourable gathering of leading men, Englishman meeting German and +Frenchman Russian, brothers in their offences and in their disaster, +upon the hills of Brissago, beheld in Geneva at the other end of +Switzerland a poor little League of (Allied) Nations (excluding the +United States, Russia, and most of the ‘subject peoples’ of the world), +meeting obscurely amidst a world-wide disregard to make impotent +gestures at the leading problems of the debacle. Either the disaster +has not been vast enough yet or it has not been swift enough to inflict +the necessary moral shock and achieve the necessary moral revulsion. +Just as the world of 1913 was used to an increasing prosperity and +thought that increase would go on for ever, so now it would seem the +world is growing accustomed to a steady glide towards social +disintegration, and thinks that that too can go on continually and +never come to a final bump. So soon do use and wont establish +themselves, and the most flaming and thunderous of lessons pale into +disregard. + +The question whether a Leblanc is still possible, the question whether +it is still possible to bring about an outbreak of creative sanity in +mankind, to avert this steady glide to destruction, is now one of the +most urgent in the world. It is clear that the writer is +temperamentally disposed to hope that there is such a possibility. But +he has to confess that he sees few signs of any such breadth of +understanding and steadfastness of will as an effectual effort to turn +the rush of human affairs demands. The inertia of dead ideas and old +institutions carries us on towards the rapids. Only in one direction is +there any plain recognition of the idea of a human commonweal as +something overriding any national and patriotic consideration, and that +is in the working class movement throughout the world. And labour +internationalism is closely bound up with conceptions of a profound +social revolution. If world peace is to be attained through labour +internationalism, it will have to be attained at the price of the +completest social and economic reconstruction and by passing through a +phase of revolution that will certainly be violent, that may be very +bloody, which may be prolonged through a long period, and may in the +end fail to achieve anything but social destruction. Nevertheless, the +fact remains that it is in the labour class, and the labour class +alone, that any conception of a world rule and a world peace has so far +appeared. The dream of _The World Set Free_, a dream of highly educated +and highly favoured leading and ruling men, voluntarily setting +themselves to the task of reshaping the world, has thus far remained a +dream. + +H. G. WELLS. + +EASTON GLEBE, DUNMOW, 1921. + + + + +PRELUDE +THE SUN SNARERS + + +Section I + +The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external +power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. From the outset of +his terrestrial career we find him supplementing the natural strength +and bodily weapons of a beast by the heat of burning and the rough +implement of stone. So he passed beyond the ape. From that he expands. +Presently he added to himself the power of the horse and the ox, he +borrowed the carrying strength of water and the driving force of the +wind, he quickened his fire by blowing, and his simple tools, pointed +first with copper and then with iron, increased and varied and became +more elaborate and efficient. He sheltered his heat in houses and made +his way easier by paths and roads. He complicated his social +relationships and increased his efficiency by the division of labour. +He began to store up knowledge. Contrivance followed contrivance, each +making it possible for a man to do more. Always down the lengthening +record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more.... A +quarter of a million years ago the utmost man was a savage, a being +scarcely articulate, sheltering in holes in the rocks, armed with a +rough-hewn flint or a fire-pointed stick, naked, living in small family +groups, killed by some younger man so soon as his first virile activity +declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would have +sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical river +valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his little herds, a +male, a few females, a child or so. + +He knew no future then, no kind of life except the life he led. He fled +the cave-bear over the rocks full of iron ore and the promise of sword +and spear; he froze to death upon a ledge of coal; he drank water muddy +with the clay that would one day make cups of porcelain; he chewed the +ear of wild wheat he had plucked and gazed with a dim speculation in +his eyes at the birds that soared beyond his reach. Or suddenly he +became aware of the scent of another male and rose up roaring, his +roars the formless precursors of moral admonitions. For he was a great +individualist, that original, he suffered none other than himself. + +So through the long generations, this heavy precursor, this ancestor of +all of us, fought and bred and perished, changing almost imperceptibly. + +Yet he changed. That keen chisel of necessity which sharpened the +tiger’s claw age by age and fined down the clumsy Orchippus to the +swift grace of the horse, was at work upon him—is at work upon him +still. The clumsier and more stupidly fierce among him were killed +soonest and oftenest; the finer hand, the quicker eye, the bigger +brain, the better balanced body prevailed; age by age, the implements +were a little better made, the man a little more delicately adjusted to +his possibilities. He became more social; his herd grew larger; no +longer did each man kill or drive out his growing sons; a system of +taboos made them tolerable to him, and they revered him alive and soon +even after he was dead, and were his allies against the beasts and the +rest of mankind. (But they were forbidden to touch the women of the +tribe, they had to go out and capture women for themselves, and each +son fled from his stepmother and hid from her lest the anger of the Old +Man should be roused. All the world over, even to this day, these +ancient inevitable taboos can be traced.) And now instead of caves came +huts and hovels, and the fire was better tended and there were +wrappings and garments; and so aided, the creature spread into colder +climates, carrying food with him, storing food—until sometimes the +neglected grass-seed sprouted again and gave a first hint of +agriculture. + +And already there were the beginnings of leisure and thought. + +Man began to think. There were times when he was fed, when his lusts +and his fears were all appeased, when the sun shone upon the +squatting-place and dim stirrings of speculation lit his eyes. He +scratched upon a bone and found resemblance and pursued it and began +pictorial art, moulded the soft, warm clay of the river brink between +his fingers, and found a pleasure in its patternings and repetitions, +shaped it into the form of vessels, and found that it would hold water. +He watched the streaming river, and wondered from what bountiful breast +this incessant water came; he blinked at the sun and dreamt that +perhaps he might snare it and spear it as it went down to its +resting-place amidst the distant hills. Then he was roused to convey to +his brother that once indeed he had done so—at least that some one had +done so—he mixed that perhaps with another dream almost as daring, that +one day a mammoth had been beset; and therewith began fiction—pointing +a way to achievement—and the august prophetic procession of tales. + +For scores and hundreds of centuries, for myriads of generations that +life of our fathers went on. From the beginning to the ripening of that +phase of human life, from the first clumsy eolith of rudely chipped +flint to the first implements of polished stone, was two or three +thousand centuries, ten or fifteen thousand generations. So slowly, by +human standards, did humanity gather itself together out of the dim +intimations of the beast. And that first glimmering of speculation, +that first story of achievement, that story-teller bright-eyed and +flushed under his matted hair, gesticulating to his gaping, incredulous +listener, gripping his wrist to keep him attentive, was the most +marvellous beginning this world has ever seen. It doomed the mammoths, +and it began the setting of that snare that shall catch the sun. + +Section 2 + +That dream was but a moment in a man’s life, whose proper business it +seemed was to get food and kill his fellows and beget after the manner +of all that belongs to the fellowship of the beasts. About him, hidden +from him by the thinnest of veils, were the untouched sources of Power, +whose magnitude we scarcely do more than suspect even to-day, Power +that could make his every conceivable dream come real. But the feet of +the race were in the way of it, though he died blindly unknowing. + +At last, in the generous levels of warm river valleys, where food is +abundant and life very easy, the emerging human overcoming his earlier +jealousies, becoming, as necessity persecuted him less urgently, more +social and tolerant and amenable, achieved a larger community. There +began a division of labour, certain of the older men specialised in +knowledge and direction, a strong man took the fatherly leadership in +war, and priest and king began to develop their _rôles_ in the opening +drama of man’s history. The priest’s solicitude was seed-time and +harvest and fertility, and the king ruled peace and war. In a hundred +river valleys about the warm, temperate zone of the earth there were +already towns and temples, a score of thousand years ago. They +flourished unrecorded, ignoring the past and unsuspicious of the +future, for as yet writing had still to begin. + +Very slowly did man increase his demand upon the illimitable wealth of +Power that offered itself on every hand to him. He tamed certain +animals, he developed his primordially haphazard agriculture into a +ritual, he added first one metal to his resources and then another, +until he had copper and tin and iron and lead and gold and silver to +supplement his stone, he hewed and carved wood, made pottery, paddled +down his river until he came to the sea, discovered the wheel and made +the first roads. But his chief activity for a hundred centuries and +more, was the subjugation of himself and others to larger and larger +societies. The history of man is not simply the conquest of external +power; it is first the conquest of those distrusts and fiercenesses, +that self-concentration and intensity of animalism, that tie his hands +from taking his inheritance. The ape in us still resents association. +From the dawn of the age of polished stone to the achievement of the +Peace of the World, man’s dealings were chiefly with himself and his +fellow man, trading, bargaining, law-making, propitiating, enslaving, +conquering, exterminating, and every little increment in Power, he +turned at once and always turns to the purposes of this confused +elaborate struggle to socialise. To incorporate and comprehend his +fellow men into a community of purpose became the last and greatest of +his instincts. Already before the last polished phase of the stone age +was over he had become a political animal. He made astonishingly +far-reaching discoveries within himself, first of counting and then of +writing and making records, and with that his town communities began to +stretch out to dominion; in the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, and +the great Chinese rivers, the first empires and the first written laws +had their beginnings. Men specialised for fighting and rule as soldiers +and knights. Later, as ships grew seaworthy, the Mediterranean which +had been a barrier became a highway, and at last out of a tangle of +pirate polities came the great struggle of Carthage and Rome. The +history of Europe is the history of the victory and breaking up of the +Roman Empire. Every ascendant monarch in Europe up to the last, aped +Cæsar and called himself Kaiser or Tsar or Imperator or Kasir-i-Hind. +Measured by the duration of human life it is a vast space of time +between that first dynasty in Egypt and the coming of the aeroplane, +but by the scale that looks back to the makers of the eoliths, it is +all of it a story of yesterday. + +Now during this period of two hundred centuries or more, this period of +the warring states, while men’s minds were chiefly preoccupied by +politics and mutual aggression, their progress in the acquirement of +external Power was slow—rapid in comparison with the progress of the +old stone age, but slow in comparison with this new age of systematic +discovery in which we live. They did not very greatly alter the weapons +and tactics of warfare, the methods of agriculture, seamanship, their +knowledge of the habitable globe, or the devices and utensils of +domestic life between the days of the early Egyptians and the days when +Christopher Columbus was a child. Of course, there were inventions and +changes, but there were also retrogressions; things were found out and +then forgotten again; it was, on the whole, a progress, but it +contained no steps; the peasant life was the same, there were already +priests and lawyers and town craftsmen and territorial lords and +rulers, doctors, wise women, soldiers and sailors in Egypt and China +and Assyria and south-eastern Europe at the beginning of that period, +and they were doing much the same things and living much the same life +as they were in Europe in A.D. 1500. The English excavators of the year +A.D. 1900 could delve into the remains of Babylon and Egypt and +disinter legal documents, domestic accounts, and family correspondence +that they could read with the completest sympathy. There were great +religious and moral changes throughout the period, empires and +republics replaced one another, Italy tried a vast experiment in +slavery, and indeed slavery was tried again and again and failed and +failed and was still to be tested again and rejected again in the New +World; Christianity and Mohammedanism swept away a thousand more +specialised cults, but essentially these were progressive adaptations +of mankind to material conditions that must have seemed fixed for ever. +The idea of revolutionary changes in the material conditions of life +would have been entirely strange to human thought through all that +time. + +Yet the dreamer, the story-teller, was there still, waiting for his +opportunity amidst the busy preoccupations, the comings and goings, the +wars and processions, the castle building and cathedral building, the +arts and loves, the small diplomacies and incurable feuds, the crusades +and trading journeys of the middle ages. He no longer speculated with +the untrammelled freedom of the stone-age savage; authoritative +explanations of everything barred his path; but he speculated with a +better brain, sat idle and gazed at circling stars in the sky and mused +upon the coin and crystal in his hand. Whenever there was a certain +leisure for thought throughout these times, then men were to be found +dissatisfied with the appearances of things, dissatisfied with the +assurances of orthodox belief, uneasy with a sense of unread symbols in +the world about them, questioning the finality of scholastic wisdom. +Through all the ages of history there were men to whom this whisper had +come of hidden things about them. They could no longer lead ordinary +lives nor content themselves with the common things of this world once +they had heard this voice. And mostly they believed not only that all +this world was as it were a painted curtain before things unguessed at, +but that these secrets were Power. Hitherto Power had come to men by +chance, but now there were these seekers seeking, seeking among rare +and curious and perplexing objects, sometimes finding some odd +utilisable thing, sometimes deceiving themselves with fancied +discovery, sometimes pretending to find. The world of every day laughed +at these eccentric beings, or found them annoying and ill-treated them, +or was seized with fear and made saints and sorcerers and warlocks of +them, or with covetousness and entertained them hopefully; but for the +greater part heeded them not at all. Yet they were of the blood of him +who had first dreamt of attacking the mammoth; every one of them was of +his blood and descent; and the thing they sought, all unwittingly, was +the snare that will some day catch the sun. + +Section 3 + +Such a man was that Leonardo da Vinci, who went about the court of +Sforza in Milan in a state of dignified abstraction. His common-place +books are full of prophetic subtlety and ingenious anticipations of the +methods of the early aviators. Dürer was his parallel and Roger +Bacon—whom the Franciscans silenced—of his kindred. Such a man again in +an earlier city was Hero of Alexandria, who knew of the power of steam +nineteen hundred years before it was first brought into use. And +earlier still was Archimedes of Syracuse, and still earlier the +legendary Daedalus of Cnossos. All up and down the record of history +whenever there was a little leisure from war and brutality the seekers +appeared. And half the alchemists were of their tribe. + +When Roger Bacon blew up his first batch of gunpowder one might have +supposed that men would have gone at once to the explosive engine. But +they could see nothing of the sort. They were not yet beginning to +think of seeing things; their metallurgy was all too poor to make such +engines even had they thought of them. For a time they could not make +instruments sound enough to stand this new force even for so rough a +purpose as hurling a missile. Their first guns had barrels of coopered +timber, and the world waited for more than five hundred years before +the explosive engine came. + +Even when the seekers found, it was at first a long journey before the +world could use their findings for any but the roughest, most obvious +purposes. If man in general was not still as absolutely blind to the +unconquered energies about him as his paleolithic precursor, he was at +best purblind. + +Section 4 + +The latent energy of coal and the power of steam waited long on the +verge of discovery, before they began to influence human lives. + +There were no doubt many such devices as Hero’s toys devised and +forgotten, time after time, in courts and palaces, but it needed that +coal should be mined and burning with plenty of iron at hand before it +dawned upon men that here was something more than a curiosity. And it +is to be remarked that the first recorded suggestion for the use of +steam was in war; there is an Elizabethan pamphlet in which it is +proposed to fire shot out of corked iron bottles full of heated water. +The mining of coal for fuel, the smelting of iron upon a larger scale +than men had ever done before, the steam pumping engine, the +steam-engine and the steam-boat, followed one another in an order that +had a kind of logical necessity. It is the most interesting and +instructive chapter in the history of the human intelligence, the +history of steam from its beginning as a fact in human consciousness to +the perfection of the great turbine engines that preceded the +utilisation of intra-molecular power. Nearly every human being must +have seen steam, seen it incuriously for many thousands of years; the +women in particular were always heating water, boiling it, seeing it +boil away, seeing the lids of vessels dance with its fury; millions of +people at different times must have watched steam pitching rocks out of +volcanoes like cricket balls and blowing pumice into foam, and yet you +may search the whole human record through, letters, books, +inscriptions, pictures, for any glimmer of a realisation that here was +force, here was strength to borrow and use.... Then suddenly man woke +up to it, the railways spread like a network over the globe, the ever +enlarging iron steamships began their staggering fight against wind and +wave. + +Steam was the first-comer in the new powers, it was the beginning of +the Age of Energy that was to close the long history of the Warring +States. + +But for a long time men did not realise the importance of this novelty. +They would not recognise, they were not able to recognise that anything +fundamental had happened to their immemorial necessities. They called +the steam-engine the ‘iron horse’ and pretended that they had made the +most partial of substitutions. Steam machinery and factory production +were visibly revolutionising the conditions of industrial production, +population was streaming steadily in from the country-side and +concentrating in hitherto unthought-of masses about a few city centres, +food was coming to them over enormous distances upon a scale that made +the one sole precedent, the corn ships of imperial Rome, a petty +incident; and a huge migration of peoples between Europe and Western +Asia and America was in Progress, and—nobody seems to have realised +that something new had come into human life, a strange swirl different +altogether from any previous circling and mutation, a swirl like the +swirl when at last the lock gates begin to open after a long phase of +accumulating water and eddying inactivity.... + +The sober Englishman at the close of the nineteenth century could sit +at his breakfast-table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee from +Brazil, devour an egg from France with some Danish ham, or eat a New +Zealand chop, wind up his breakfast with a West Indian banana, glance +at the latest telegrams from all the world, scrutinise the prices +current of his geographically distributed investments in South Africa, +Japan, and Egypt, and tell the two children he had begotten (in the +place of his father’s eight) that he thought the world changed very +little. They must play cricket, keep their hair cut, go to the old +school he had gone to, shirk the lessons he had shirked, learn a few +scraps of Horace and Virgil and Homer for the confusion of cads, and +all would be well with them.... + +Section 5 + +Electricity, though it was perhaps the earlier of the two to be +studied, invaded the common life of men a few decades after the +exploitation of steam. To electricity also, in spite of its provocative +nearness all about him, mankind had been utterly blind for incalculable +ages. Could anything be more emphatic than the appeal of electricity +for attention? It thundered at man’s ears, it signalled to him in +blinding flashes, occasionally it killed him, and he could not see it +as a thing that concerned him enough to merit study. It came into the +house with the cat on any dry day and crackled insinuatingly whenever +he stroked her fur. It rotted his metals when he put them together.... +There is no single record that any one questioned why the cat’s fur +crackles or why hair is so unruly to brush on a frosty day, before the +sixteenth century. For endless years man seems to have done his very +successful best not to think about it at all; until this new spirit of +the Seeker turned itself to these things. + +How often things must have been seen and dismissed as unimportant, +before the speculative eye and the moment of vision came! It was +Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth’s court physician, who first puzzled his +brains with rubbed amber and bits of glass and silk and shellac, and so +began the quickening of the human mind to the existence of this +universal presence. And even then the science of electricity remained a +mere little group of curious facts for nearly two hundred years, +connected perhaps with magnetism—a mere guess that—perhaps with the +lightning. Frogs’ legs must have hung by copper hooks from iron +railings and twitched upon countless occasions before Galvani saw them. +Except for the lightning conductor, it was 250 years after Gilbert +before electricity stepped out of the cabinet of scientific curiosities +into the life of the common man.... Then suddenly, in the half-century +between 1880 and 1930, it ousted the steam-engine and took over +traction, it ousted every other form of household heating, abolished +distance with the perfected wireless telephone and the +telephotograph.... + +Section 6 + +And there was an extraordinary mental resistance to discovery and +invention for at least a hundred years after the scientific revolution +had begun. Each new thing made its way into practice against a +scepticism that amounted at times to hostility. One writer upon these +subjects gives a funny little domestic conversation that happened, he +says, in the year 1898, within ten years, that is to say, of the time +when the first aviators were fairly on the wing. He tells us how he sat +at his desk in his study and conversed with his little boy. + +His little boy was in profound trouble. He felt he had to speak very +seriously to his father, and as he was a kindly little boy he did not +want to do it too harshly. + +This is what happened. + +‘I wish, Daddy,’ he said, coming to his point, ‘that you wouldn’t write +all this stuff about flying. The chaps rot me.’ + +‘Yes!’ said his father. + +‘And old Broomie, the Head I mean, he rots me. Everybody rots me.’ + +‘But there is going to be flying—quite soon.’ + +The little boy was too well bred to say what he thought of that. +‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t write about it.’ + +‘You’ll fly—lots of times—before you die,’ the father assured him. + +The little boy looked unhappy. + +The father hesitated. Then he opened a drawer and took out a blurred +and under-developed photograph. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said. + +The little boy came round to him. The photograph showed a stream and a +meadow beyond, and some trees, and in the air a black, pencil-like +object with flat wings on either side of it. It was the first record of +the first apparatus heavier than air that ever maintained itself in the +air by mechanical force. Across the margin was written: ‘Here we go up, +up, up—from S. P. Langley, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.’ + +The father watched the effect of this reassuring document upon his son. +‘Well?’ he said. + +‘That,’ said the schoolboy, after reflection, ‘is only a model.’ + +‘Model to-day, man to-morrow.’ + +The boy seemed divided in his allegiance. Then he decided for what he +believed quite firmly to be omniscience. ‘But old Broomie,’ he said, +‘he told all the boys in his class only yesterday, “no man will ever +fly.” No one, he says, who has ever shot grouse or pheasants on the +wing would ever believe anything of the sort....’ + +Yet that boy lived to fly across the Atlantic and edit his father’s +reminiscences. + +Section 7 + +At the close of the nineteenth century as a multitude of passages in +the literature of that time witness, it was thought that the fact that +man had at last had successful and profitable dealings with the steam +that scalded him and the electricity that flashed and banged about the +sky at him, was an amazing and perhaps a culminating exercise of his +intelligence and his intellectual courage. The air of ‘Nunc Dimittis’ +sounds in same of these writings. ‘The great things are discovered,’ +wrote Gerald Brown in his summary of the nineteenth century. ‘For us +there remains little but the working out of detail.’ The spirit of the +seeker was still rare in the world; education was unskilled, +unstimulating, scholarly, and but little valued, and few people even +then could have realised that Science was still but the flimsiest of +trial sketches and discovery scarcely beginning. No one seems to have +been afraid of science and its possibilities. Yet now where there had +been but a score or so of seekers, there were many thousands, and for +one needle of speculation that had been probing the curtain of +appearances in 1800, there were now hundreds. And already Chemistry, +which had been content with her atoms and molecules for the better part +of a century, was preparing herself for that vast next stride that was +to revolutionise the whole life of man from top to bottom. + +One realises how crude was the science of that time when one considers +the case of the composition of air. This was determined by that strange +genius and recluse, that man of mystery, that disembowelled +intelligence, Henry Cavendish, towards the end of the eighteenth +century. So far as he was concerned the work was admirably done. He +separated all the known ingredients of the air with a precision +altogether remarkable; he even put it upon record that he had some +doubt about the purity of the nitrogen. For more than a hundred years +his determination was repeated by chemists all the world over, his +apparatus was treasured in London, he became, as they used to say, +‘classic,’ and always, at every one of the innumerable repetitions of +his experiment, that sly element argon was hiding among the nitrogen +(and with a little helium and traces of other substances, and indeed +all the hints that might have led to the new departures of the +twentieth-century chemistry), and every time it slipped unobserved +through the professorial fingers that repeated his procedure. + +Is it any wonder then with this margin of inaccuracy, that up to the +very dawn of the twentieth-century scientific discovery was still +rather a procession of happy accidents than an orderly conquest of +nature? + +Yet the spirit of seeking was spreading steadily through the world. +Even the schoolmaster could not check it. For the mere handful who grew +up to feel wonder and curiosity about the secrets of nature in the +nineteenth century, there were now, at the beginning of the twentieth, +myriads escaping from the limitations of intellectual routine and the +habitual life, in Europe, in America, North and South, in Japan, in +China, and all about the world. + +It was in 1910 that the parents of young Holsten, who was to be called +by a whole generation of scientific men, ‘the greatest of European +chemists,’ were staying in a villa near Santo Domenico, between Fiesole +and Florence. He was then only fifteen, but he was already +distinguished as a mathematician and possessed by a savage appetite to +understand. He had been particularly attracted by the mystery of +phosphorescence and its apparent unrelatedness to every other source of +light. He was to tell afterwards in his reminiscences how he watched +the fireflies drifting and glowing among the dark trees in the garden +of the villa under the warm blue night sky of Italy; how he caught and +kept them in cages, dissected them, first studying the general anatomy +of insects very elaborately, and how he began to experiment with the +effect of various gases and varying temperature upon their light. Then +the chance present of a little scientific toy invented by Sir William +Crookes, a toy called the spinthariscope, on which radium particles +impinge upon sulphide of zinc and make it luminous, induced him to +associate the two sets of phenomena. It was a happy association for his +inquiries. It was a rare and fortunate thing, too, that any one with +the mathematical gift should have been taken by these curiosities. + +Section 8 + +And while the boy Holsten was mooning over his fireflies at Fiesole, a +certain professor of physics named Rufus was giving a course of +afternoon lectures upon Radium and Radio-Activity in Edinburgh. They +were lectures that had attracted a very considerable amount of +attention. He gave them in a small lecture-theatre that had become more +and more congested as his course proceeded. At his concluding +discussion it was crowded right up to the ceiling at the back, and +there people were standing, standing without any sense of fatigue, so +fascinating did they find his suggestions. One youngster in particular, +a chuckle-headed, scrub-haired lad from the Highlands, sat hugging his +knee with great sand-red hands and drinking in every word, eyes aglow, +cheeks flushed, and ears burning. + +‘And so,’ said the professor, ‘we see that this Radium, which seemed at +first a fantastic exception, a mad inversion of all that was most +established and fundamental in the constitution of matter, is really at +one with the rest of the elements. It does noticeably and forcibly what +probably all the other elements are doing with an imperceptible +slowness. It is like the single voice crying aloud that betrays the +silent breathing multitude in the darkness. Radium is an element that +is breaking up and flying to pieces. But perhaps all elements are doing +that at less perceptible rates. Uranium certainly is; thorium—the stuff +of this incandescent gas mantle—certainly is; actinium. I feel that we +are but beginning the list. And we know now that the atom, that once we +thought hard and impenetrable, and indivisible and final +and—lifeless—lifeless, is really a reservoir of immense energy. That is +the most wonderful thing about all this work. A little while ago we +thought of the atoms as we thought of bricks, as solid building +material, as substantial matter, as unit masses of lifeless stuff, and +behold! these bricks are boxes, treasure boxes, boxes full of the +intensest force. This little bottle contains about a pint of uranium +oxide; that is to say, about fourteen ounces of the element uranium. It +is worth about a pound. And in this bottle, ladies and gentlemen, in +the atoms in this bottle there slumbers at least as much energy as we +could get by burning a hundred and sixty tons of coal. If at a word, in +one instant I could suddenly release that energy here and now it would +blow us and everything about us to fragments; if I could turn it into +the machinery that lights this city, it could keep Edinburgh brightly +lit for a week. But at present no man knows, no man has an inkling of +how this little lump of stuff can be made to hasten the release of its +store. It does release it, as a burn trickles. Slowly the uranium +changes into radium, the radium changes into a gas called the radium +emanation, and that again to what we call radium A, and so the process +goes on, giving out energy at every stage, until at last we reach the +last stage of all, which is, so far as we can tell at present, lead. +But we cannot hasten it.’ + +‘I take ye, man,’ whispered the chuckle-headed lad, with his red hands +tightening like a vice upon his knee. ‘I take ye, man. Go on! Oh, go +on!’ + +The professor went on after a little pause. ‘Why is the change +gradual?’ he asked. ‘Why does only a minute fraction of the radium +disintegrate in any particular second? Why does it dole itself out so +slowly and so exactly? Why does not all the uranium change to radium +and all the radium change to the next lowest thing at once? Why this +decay by driblets; why not a decay _en masse?_ . . . Suppose presently +we find it is possible to quicken that decay?’ + +The chuckle-headed lad nodded rapidly. The wonderful inevitable idea +was coming. He drew his knee up towards his chin and swayed in his seat +with excitement. ‘Why not?’ he echoed, ‘why not?’ + +The professor lifted his forefinger. + +‘Given that knowledge,’ he said, ‘mark what we should be able to do! We +should not only be able to use this uranium and thorium; not only +should we have a source of power so potent that a man might carry in +his hand the energy to light a city for a year, fight a fleet of +battleships, or drive one of our giant liners across the Atlantic; but +we should also have a clue that would enable us at last to quicken the +process of disintegration in all the other elements, where decay is +still so slow as to escape our finest measurements. Every scrap of +solid matter in the world would become an available reservoir of +concentrated force. Do you realise, ladies and gentlemen, what these +things would mean for us?’ + +The scrub head nodded. ‘Oh! go on. Go on.’ + +‘It would mean a change in human conditions that I can only compare to +the discovery of fire, that first discovery that lifted man above the +brute. We stand to-day towards radio-activity as our ancestor stood +towards fire before he had learnt to make it. He knew it then only as a +strange thing utterly beyond his control, a flare on the crest of the +volcano, a red destruction that poured through the forest. So it is +that we know radio-activity to-day. This—this is the dawn of a new day +in human living. At the climax of that civilisation which had its +beginning in the hammered flint and the fire-stick of the savage, just +when it is becoming apparent that our ever-increasing needs cannot be +borne indefinitely by our present sources of energy, we discover +suddenly the possibility of an entirely new civilisation. The energy we +need for our very existence, and with which Nature supplies us still so +grudgingly, is in reality locked up in inconceivable quantities all +about us. We cannot pick that lock at present, but——’ + +He paused. His voice sank so that everybody strained a little to hear +him. + +‘——we will.’ + +He put up that lean finger again, his solitary gesture. + +‘And then,’ he said.... + +‘Then that perpetual struggle for existence, that perpetual struggle to +live on the bare surplus of Nature’s energies will cease to be the lot +of Man. Man will step from the pinnacle of this civilisation to the +beginning of the next. I have no eloquence, ladies and gentlemen, to +express the vision of man’s material destiny that opens out before me. +I see the desert continents transformed, the poles no longer +wildernesses of ice, the whole world once more Eden. I see the power of +man reach out among the stars....’ + +He stopped abruptly with a catching of the breath that many an actor or +orator might have envied. + +The lecture was over, the audience hung silent for a few seconds, +sighed, became audible, stirred, fluttered, prepared for dispersal. +More light was turned on and what had been a dim mass of figures became +a bright confusion of movement. Some of the people signalled to +friends, some crowded down towards the platform to examine the +lecturer’s apparatus and make notes of his diagrams. But the +chuckle-headed lad with the scrub hair wanted no such detailed +frittering away of the thoughts that had inspired him. He wanted to be +alone with them; he elbowed his way out almost fiercely, he made +himself as angular and bony as a cow, fearing lest some one should +speak to him, lest some one should invade his glowing sphere of +enthusiasm. + +He went through the streets with a rapt face, like a saint who sees +visions. He had arms disproportionately long, and ridiculous big feet. + +He must get alone, get somewhere high out of all this crowding of +commonness, of everyday life. + +He made his way to the top of Arthur’s Seat, and there he sat for a +long time in the golden evening sunshine, still, except that ever and +again he whispered to himself some precious phrase that had stuck in +his mind. + +‘If,’ he whispered, ‘if only we could pick that lock....’ + +The sun was sinking over the distant hills. Already it was shorn of its +beams, a globe of ruddy gold, hanging over the great banks of cloud +that would presently engulf it. + +‘Eh!’ said the youngster. ‘Eh!’ + +He seemed to wake up at last out of his entrancement, and the red sun +was there before his eyes. He stared at it, at first without +intelligence, and then with a gathering recognition. Into his mind came +a strange echo of that ancestral fancy, that fancy of a Stone Age +savage, dead and scattered bones among the drift two hundred thousand +years ago. + +‘Ye auld thing,’ he said—and his eyes were shining, and he made a kind +of grabbing gesture with his hand; ‘ye auld red thing.... We’ll have ye +_yet_.’ + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST +THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY + + +Section I + +The problem which was already being mooted by such scientific men as +Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very beginning of the twentieth +century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in the heavier elements +and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was solved by a wonderful +combination of induction, intuition, and luck by Holsten so soon as the +year 1933. From the first detection of radio-activity to its first +subjugation to human purpose measured little more than a quarter of a +century. For twenty years after that, indeed, minor difficulties +prevented any striking practical application of his success, but the +essential thing was done, this new boundary in the march of human +progress was crossed, in that year. He set up atomic disintegration in +a minute particle of bismuth; it exploded with great violence into a +heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrated in its turn in +the course of seven days, and it was only after another year’s work +that he was able to show practically that the last result of this rapid +release of energy was gold. But the thing was done—at the cost of a +blistered chest and an injured finger, and from the moment when the +invisible speck of bismuth flashed into riving and rending energy, +Holsten knew that he had opened a way for mankind, however narrow and +dark it might still be, to worlds of limitless power. He recorded as +much in the strange diary biography he left the world, a diary that was +up to that particular moment a mass of speculations and calculations, +and which suddenly became for a space an amazingly minute and human +record of sensations and emotions that all humanity might understand. + +He gives, in broken phrases and often single words, it is true, but +none the less vividly for that, a record of the twenty-four hours +following the demonstration of the correctness of his intricate tracery +of computations and guesses. ‘I thought I should not sleep,’ he +writes—the words he omitted are supplied in brackets—(on account of) +‘pain in (the) hand and chest and (the) wonder of what I had done.... +Slept like a child.’ + +He felt strange and disconcerted the next morning; he had nothing to +do, he was living alone in apartments in Bloomsbury, and he decided to +go up to Hampstead Heath, which he had known when he was a little boy +as a breezy playground. He went up by the underground tube that was +then the recognised means of travel from one part of London to another, +and walked up Heath Street from the tube station to the open heath. He +found it a gully of planks and scaffoldings between the hoardings of +house-wreckers. The spirit of the times had seized upon that narrow, +steep, and winding thoroughfare, and was in the act of making it +commodious and interesting, according to the remarkable ideals of +Neo-Georgian æstheticism. Such is the illogical quality of humanity +that Holsten, fresh from work that was like a petard under the seat of +current civilisation, saw these changes with regret. He had come up +Heath Street perhaps a thousand times, had known the windows of all the +little shops, spent hours in the vanished cinematograph theatre, and +marvelled at the high-flung early Georgian houses upon the westward +bank of that old gully of a thoroughfare; he felt strange with all +these familiar things gone. He escaped at last with a feeling of relief +from this choked alley of trenches and holes and cranes, and emerged +upon the old familiar scene about the White Stone Pond. That, at least, +was very much as it used to be. + +There were still the fine old red-brick houses to left and right of +him; the reservoir had been improved by a portico of marble, the +white-fronted inn with the clustering flowers above its portico still +stood out at the angle of the ways, and the blue view to Harrow Hill +and Harrow spire, a view of hills and trees and shining waters and +wind-driven cloud shadows, was like the opening of a great window to +the ascending Londoner. All that was very reassuring. There was the +same strolling crowd, the same perpetual miracle of motors dodging +through it harmlessly, escaping headlong into the country from the +Sabbatical stuffiness behind and below them. There was a band still, a +women’s suffrage meeting—for the suffrage women had won their way back +to the tolerance, a trifle derisive, of the populace again—socialist +orators, politicians, a band, and the same wild uproar of dogs, frantic +with the gladness of their one blessed weekly release from the back +yard and the chain. And away along the road to the Spaniards strolled a +vast multitude, saying, as ever, that the view of London was +exceptionally clear that day. + +Young Holsten’s face was white. He walked with that uneasy affectation +of ease that marks an overstrained nervous system and an +under-exercised body. He hesitated at the White Stone Pond whether to +go to the left of it or the right, and again at the fork of the roads. +He kept shifting his stick in his hand, and every now and then he would +get in the way of people on the footpath or be jostled by them because +of the uncertainty of his movements. He felt, he confesses, ‘inadequate +to ordinary existence.’ He seemed to himself to be something inhuman +and mischievous. All the people about him looked fairly prosperous, +fairly happy, fairly well adapted to the lives they had to lead—a week +of work and a Sunday of best clothes and mild promenading—and he had +launched something that would disorganise the entire fabric that held +their contentments and ambitions and satisfactions together. ‘Felt like +an imbecile who has presented a box full of loaded revolvers to a +Crêche,’ he notes. + +He met a man named Lawson, an old school-fellow, of whom history now +knows only that he was red-faced and had a terrier. He and Holsten +walked together and Holsten was sufficiently pale and jumpy for Lawson +to tell him he overworked and needed a holiday. They sat down at a +little table outside the County Council house of Golders Hill Park and +sent one of the waiters to the Bull and Bush for a couple of bottles of +beer, no doubt at Lawson’s suggestion. The beer warmed Holsten’s rather +dehumanised system. He began to tell Lawson as clearly as he could to +what his great discovery amounted. Lawson feigned attention, but indeed +he had neither the knowledge nor the imagination to understand. ‘In the +end, before many years are out, this must eventually change war, +transit, lighting, building, and every sort of manufacture, even +agriculture, every material human concern——’ + +Then Holsten stopped short. Lawson had leapt to his feet. ‘Damn that +dog!’ cried Lawson. ‘Look at it now. Hi! Here! _Phewoo-phewoo-phewoo!_ +Come _here, Bobs!_ Come _here!_’ + +The young scientific man, with his bandaged hand, sat at the green +table, too tired to convey the wonder of the thing he had sought so +long, his friend whistled and bawled for his dog, and the Sunday people +drifted about them through the spring sunshine. For a moment or so +Holsten stared at Lawson in astonishment, for he had been too intent +upon what he had been saying to realise how little Lawson had attended. + +Then he remarked, ‘_Well!_’ and smiled faintly, and—finished the +tankard of beer before him. + +Lawson sat down again. ‘One must look after one’s dog,’ he said, with a +note of apology. ‘What was it you were telling me?’ + +Section 2 + +In the evening Holsten went out again. He walked to Saint Paul’s +Cathedral, and stood for a time near the door listening to the evening +service. The candles upon the altar reminded him in some odd way of the +fireflies at Fiesole. Then he walked back through the evening lights to +Westminster. He was oppressed, he was indeed scared, by his sense of +the immense consequences of his discovery. He had a vague idea that +night that he ought not to publish his results, that they were +premature, that some secret association of wise men should take care of +his work and hand it on from generation to generation until the world +was riper for its practical application. He felt that nobody in all the +thousands of people he passed had really awakened to the fact of +change, they trusted the world for what it was, not to alter too +rapidly, to respect their trusts, their assurances, their habits, their +little accustomed traffics and hard-won positions. + +He went into those little gardens beneath the over-hanging, +brightly-lit masses of the Savoy Hotel and the Hotel Cecil. He sat down +on a seat and became aware of the talk of the two people next to him. +It was the talk of a young couple evidently on the eve of marriage. The +man was congratulating himself on having regular employment at last; +‘they like me,’ he said, ‘and I like the job. If I work up—in’r dozen +years or so I ought to be gettin’ somethin’ pretty comfortable. That’s +the plain sense of it, Hetty. There ain’t no reason whatsoever why we +shouldn’t get along very decently—very decently indeed.’ + +The desire for little successes amidst conditions securely fixed! So it +struck upon Holsten’s mind. He added in his diary, ‘I had a sense of +all this globe as that....’ + +By that phrase he meant a kind of clairvoyant vision of this populated +world as a whole, of all its cities and towns and villages, its high +roads and the inns beside them, its gardens and farms and upland +pastures, its boatmen and sailors, its ships coming along the great +circles of the ocean, its time-tables and appointments and payments and +dues as it were one unified and progressive spectacle. Sometimes such +visions came to him; his mind, accustomed to great generalisations and +yet acutely sensitive to detail, saw things far more comprehensively +than the minds of most of his contemporaries. Usually the teeming +sphere moved on to its predestined ends and circled with a stately +swiftness on its path about the sun. Usually it was all a living +progress that altered under his regard. But now fatigue a little +deadened him to that incessancy of life, it seemed now just an eternal +circling. He lapsed to the commoner persuasion of the great fixities +and recurrencies of the human routine. The remoter past of wandering +savagery, the inevitable changes of to-morrow were veiled, and he saw +only day and night, seed-time and harvest, loving and begetting, births +and deaths, walks in the summer sunlight and tales by the winter +fireside, the ancient sequence of hope and acts and age perennially +renewed, eddying on for ever and ever, save that now the impious hand +of research was raised to overthrow this drowsy, gently humming, +habitual, sunlit spinning-top of man’s existence.... + +For a time he forgot wars and crimes and hates and persecutions, famine +and pestilence, the cruelties of beasts, weariness and the bitter wind, +failure and insufficiency and retrocession. He saw all mankind in terms +of the humble Sunday couple upon the seat beside him, who schemed their +inglorious outlook and improbable contentments. ‘I had a sense of all +this globe as that.’ + +His intelligence struggled against this mood and struggled for a time +in vain. He reassured himself against the invasion of this +disconcerting idea that he was something strange and inhuman, a loose +wanderer from the flock returning with evil gifts from his sustained +unnatural excursions amidst the darknesses and phosphorescences beneath +the fair surfaces of life. Man had not been always thus; the instincts +and desires of the little home, the little plot, was not all his +nature; also he was an adventurer, an experimenter, an unresting +curiosity, an insatiable desire. For a few thousand generations indeed +he had tilled the earth and followed the seasons, saying his prayers, +grinding his corn and trampling the October winepress, yet not for so +long but that he was still full of restless stirrings. + +‘If there have been home and routine and the field,’ thought Holsten, +‘there have also been wonder and the sea.’ + +He turned his head and looked up over the back of the seat at the great +hotels above him, full of softly shaded lights and the glow and colour +and stir of feasting. Might his gift to mankind mean simply more of +that? . . . + +He got up and walked out of the garden, surveyed a passing tram-car, +laden with warm light, against the deep blues of evening, dripping and +trailing long skirts of shining reflection; he crossed the Embankment +and stood for a time watching the dark river and turning ever and again +to the lit buildings and bridges. His mind began to scheme conceivable +replacements of all those clustering arrangements.... + +‘It has begun,’ he writes in the diary in which these things are +recorded. ‘It is not for me to reach out to consequences I cannot +foresee. I am a part, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the +armoury of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score +of years had passed, some other man would be doing this. . . + +Section 3 + +Holsten, before he died, was destined to see atomic energy dominating +every other source of power, but for some years yet a vast network of +difficulties in detail and application kept the new discovery from any +effective invasion of ordinary life. The path from the laboratory to +the workshop is sometimes a tortuous one; electro-magnetic radiations +were known and demonstrated for twenty years before Marconi made them +practically available, and in the same way it was twenty years before +induced radio-activity could be brought to practical utilisation. The +thing, of course, was discussed very much, more perhaps at the time of +its discovery than during the interval of technical adaptation, but +with very little realisation of the huge economic revolution that +impended. What chiefly impressed the journalists of 1933 was the +production of gold from bismuth and the realisation albeit upon +unprofitable lines of the alchemist’s dreams; there was a considerable +amount of discussion and expectation in that more intelligent section +of the educated publics of the various civilised countries which +followed scientific development; but for the most part the world went +about its business—as the inhabitants of those Swiss villages which +live under the perpetual threat of overhanging rocks and mountains go +about their business—just as though the possible was impossible, as +though the inevitable was postponed for ever because it was delayed. + +It was in 1953 that the first Holsten-Roberts engine brought induced +radio-activity into the sphere of industrial production, and its first +general use was to replace the steam-engine in electrical generating +stations. Hard upon the appearance of this came the Dass-Tata +engine—the invention of two among the brilliant galaxy of Bengali +inventors the modernisation of Indian thought was producing at this +time—which was used chiefly for automobiles, aeroplanes, waterplanes, +and such-like, mobile purposes. The American Kemp engine, differing +widely in principle but equally practicable, and the Krupp-Erlanger +came hard upon the heels of this, and by the autumn of 1954 a gigantic +replacement of industrial methods and machinery was in progress all +about the habitable globe. Small wonder was this when the cost, even of +these earliest and clumsiest of atomic engines, is compared with that +of the power they superseded. Allowing for lubrication the Dass-Tata +engine, once it was started cost a penny to run thirty-seven miles, and +added only nine and quarter pounds to the weight of the carriage it +drove. It made the heavy alcohol-driven automobile of the time +ridiculous in appearance as well as preposterously costly. For many +years the price of coal and every form of liquid fuel had been +clambering to levels that made even the revival of the draft horse seem +a practicable possibility, and now with the abrupt relaxation of this +stringency, the change in appearance of the traffic upon the world’s +roads was instantaneous. In three years the frightful armoured monsters +that had hooted and smoked and thundered about the world for four awful +decades were swept away to the dealers in old metal, and the highways +thronged with light and clean and shimmering shapes of silvered steel. +At the same time a new impetus was given to aviation by the relatively +enormous power for weight of the atomic engine, it was at last possible +to add Redmayne’s ingenious helicopter ascent and descent engine to the +vertical propeller that had hitherto been the sole driving force of the +aeroplane without overweighting the machine, and men found themselves +possessed of an instrument of flight that could hover or ascend or +descend vertically and gently as well as rush wildly through the air. +The last dread of flying vanished. As the journalists of the time +phrased it, this was the epoch of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic +aeroplane became indeed a mania; every one of means was frantic to +possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust +and danger of the road, and in France alone in the year 1943 thirty +thousand of these new aeroplanes were manufactured and licensed, and +soared humming softly into the sky. + +And with an equal speed atomic engines of various types invaded +industrialism. The railways paid enormous premiums for priority in the +delivery of atomic traction engines, atomic smelting was embarked upon +so eagerly as to lead to a number of disastrous explosions due to +inexperienced handling of the new power, and the revolutionary +cheapening of both materials and electricity made the entire +reconstruction of domestic buildings a matter merely dependent upon a +reorganisation of the methods of the builder and the house-furnisher. +Viewed from the side of the new power and from the point of view of +those who financed and manufactured the new engines and material it +required the age of the Leap into the Air was one of astonishing +prosperity. Patent-holding companies were presently paying dividends of +five or six hundred per cent. and enormous fortunes were made and +fantastic wages earned by all who were concerned in the new +developments. This prosperity was not a little enhanced by the fact +that in both the Dass-Tata and Holsten-Roberts engines one of the +recoverable waste products was gold—the former disintegrated dust of +bismuth and the latter dust of lead—and that this new supply of gold +led quite naturally to a rise in prices throughout the world. + +This spectacle of feverish enterprise was productivity, this crowding +flight of happy and fortunate rich people—every great city was as if a +crawling ant-hill had suddenly taken wing—was the bright side of the +opening phase of the new epoch in human history. Beneath that +brightness was a gathering darkness, a deepening dismay. If there was a +vast development of production there was also a huge destruction of +values. These glaring factories working night and day, these glittering +new vehicles swinging noiselessly along the roads, these flights of +dragon-flies that swooped and soared and circled in the air, were +indeed no more than the brightnesses of lamps and fires that gleam out +when the world sinks towards twilight and the night. Between these high +lights accumulated disaster, social catastrophe. The coal mines were +manifestly doomed to closure at no very distant date, the vast amount +of capital invested in oil was becoming unsaleable, millions of coal +miners, steel workers upon the old lines, vast swarms of unskilled or +under-skilled labourers in innumerable occupations, were being flung +out of employment by the superior efficiency of the new machinery, the +rapid fall in the cost of transit was destroying high land values at +every centre of population, the value of existing house property had +become problematical, gold was undergoing headlong depreciation, all +the securities upon which the credit of the world rested were slipping +and sliding, banks were tottering, the stock exchanges were scenes of +feverish panic;—this was the reverse of the spectacle, these were the +black and monstrous under-consequences of the Leap into the Air. + +There is a story of a demented London stockbroker running out into +Threadneedle Street and tearing off his clothes as he ran. ‘The Steel +Trust is scrapping the whole of its plant,’ he shouted. ‘The State +Railways are going to scrap all their engines. Everything’s going to be +scrapped—everything. Come and scrap the mint, you fellows, come and +scrap the mint!’ + +In the year 1955 the suicide rate for the United States of America +quadrupled any previous record. There was an enormous increase also in +violent crime throughout the world. The thing had come upon an +unprepared humanity; it seemed as though human society was to be +smashed by its own magnificent gains. + +For there had been no foresight of these things. There had been no +attempt anywhere even to compute the probable dislocations this flood +of inexpensive energy would produce in human affairs. The world in +these days was not really governed at all, in the sense in which +government came to be understood in subsequent years. Government was a +treaty, not a design; it was forensic, conservative, disputatious, +unseeing, unthinking, uncreative; throughout the world, except where +the vestiges of absolutism still sheltered the court favourite and the +trusted servant, it was in the hands of the predominant caste of +lawyers, who had an enormous advantage in being the only trained caste. +Their professional education and every circumstance in the manipulation +of the fantastically naïve electoral methods by which they clambered to +power, conspired to keep them contemptuous of facts, conscientiously +unimaginative, alert to claim and seize advantages and suspicious of +every generosity. Government was an obstructive business of energetic +fractions, progress went on outside of and in spite of public +activities, and legislation was the last crippling recognition of needs +so clamorous and imperative and facts so aggressively established as to +invade even the dingy seclusions of the judges and threaten the very +existence of the otherwise inattentive political machine. + +The world was so little governed that with the very coming of plenty, +in the full tide of an incalculable abundance, when everything +necessary to satisfy human needs and everything necessary to realise +such will and purpose as existed then in human hearts was already at +hand, one has still to tell of hardship, famine, anger, confusion, +conflict, and incoherent suffering. There was no scheme for the +distribution of this vast new wealth that had come at last within the +reach of men; there was no clear conception that any such distribution +was possible. As one attempts a comprehensive view of those opening +years of the new age, as one measures it against the latent achievement +that later years have demonstrated, one begins to measure the +blindness, the narrowness, the insensate unimaginative individualism of +the pre-atomic time. Under this tremendous dawn of power and freedom, +under a sky ablaze with promise, in the very presence of science +standing like some bountiful goddess over all the squat darknesses of +human life, holding patiently in her strong arms, until men chose to +take them, security, plenty, the solution of riddles, the key of the +bravest adventures, in her very presence, and with the earnest of her +gifts in court, the world was to witness such things as the squalid +spectacle of the Dass-Tata patent litigation. + +There in a stuffy court in London, a grimy oblong box of a room, during +the exceptional heat of the May of 1956, the leading counsel of the day +argued and shouted over a miserable little matter of more royalties or +less and whether the Dass-Tata company might not bar the +Holsten-Roberts’ methods of utilising the new power. The Dass-Tata +people were indeed making a strenuous attempt to secure a world +monopoly in atomic engineering. The judge, after the manner of those +times, sat raised above the court, wearing a preposterous gown and a +foolish huge wig, the counsel also wore dirty-looking little wigs and +queer black gowns over their usual costume, wigs and gowns that were +held to be necessary to their pleading, and upon unclean wooden benches +stirred and whispered artful-looking solicitors, busily scribbling +reporters, the parties to the case, expert witnesses, interested +people, and a jostling confusion of subpoenaed persons, briefless young +barristers (forming a style on the most esteemed and truculent +examples) and casual eccentric spectators who preferred this pit of +iniquity to the free sunlight outside. Every one was damply hot, the +examining King’s Counsel wiped the perspiration from his huge, +clean-shaven upper lip; and into this atmosphere of grasping contention +and human exhalations the daylight filtered through a window that was +manifestly dirty. The jury sat in a double pew to the left of the +judge, looking as uncomfortable as frogs that have fallen into an +ash-pit, and in the witness-box lied the would-be omnivorous Dass, +under cross-examination.... + +Holsten had always been accustomed to publish his results so soon as +they appeared to him to be sufficiently advanced to furnish a basis for +further work, and to that confiding disposition and one happy flash of +adaptive invention the alert Dass owed his claim.... + +But indeed a vast multitude of such sharp people were clutching, +patenting, pre-empting, monopolising this or that feature of the new +development, seeking to subdue this gigantic winged power to the +purposes of their little lusts and avarice. That trial is just one of +innumerable disputes of the same kind. For a time the face of the world +festered with patent legislation. It chanced, however, to have one +oddly dramatic feature in the fact that Holsten, after being kept +waiting about the court for two days as a beggar might have waited at a +rich man’s door, after being bullied by ushers and watched by +policemen, was called as a witness, rather severely handled by counsel, +and told not to ‘quibble’ by the judge when he was trying to be +absolutely explicit. + +The judge scratched his nose with a quill pen, and sneered at Holsten’s +astonishment round the corner of his monstrous wig. Holsten was a great +man, was he? Well, in a law-court great men were put in their places. + +‘We want to know has the plaintiff added anything to this or hasn’t +he?’ said the judge, ‘we don’t want to have your views whether Sir +Philip Dass’s improvements were merely superficial adaptations or +whether they were implicit in your paper. No doubt—after the manner of +inventors—you think most things that were ever likely to be discovered +are implicit in your papers. No doubt also you think too that most +subsequent additions and modifications are merely superficial. +Inventors have a way of thinking that. The law isn’t concerned with +that sort of thing. The law has nothing to do with the vanity of +inventors. The law is concerned with the question whether these patent +rights have the novelty the plantiff claims for them. What that +admission may or may not stop, and all these other things you are +saying in your overflowing zeal to answer more than the questions +addressed to you—none of these things have anything whatever to do with +the case in hand. It is a matter of constant astonishment to me in this +court to see how you scientific men, with all your extraordinary claims +to precision and veracity, wander and wander so soon as you get into +the witness-box. I know no more unsatisfactory class of witness. The +plain and simple question is, has Sir Philip Dass made any real +addition to existing knowledge and methods in this matter or has he +not? We don’t want to know whether they were large or small additions +nor what the consequences of your admission may be. That you will leave +to us.’ + +Holsten was silent. + +‘Surely?’ said the judge, almost pityingly. + +‘No, he hasn’t,’ said Holsten, perceiving that for once in his life he +must disregard infinitesimals. + +‘Ah!’ said the judge, ‘now why couldn’t you say that when counsel put +the question? . . .’ + +An entry in Holsten’s diary-autobiography, dated five days later, runs: +‘Still amazed. The law is the most dangerous thing in this country. It +is hundreds of years old. It hasn’t an idea. The oldest of old bottles +and this new wine, the most explosive wine. Something will overtake +them.’ + +Section 4 + +There was a certain truth in Holsten’s assertion that the law was +‘hundreds of years old.’ It was, in relation to current thought and +widely accepted ideas, an archaic thing. While almost all the material +and methods of life had been changing rapidly and were now changing +still more rapidly, the law-courts and the legislatures of the world +were struggling desperately to meet modern demands with devices and +procedures, conceptions of rights and property and authority and +obligation that dated from the rude compromises of relatively barbaric +times. The horse-hair wigs and antic dresses of the British judges, +their musty courts and overbearing manners, were indeed only the +outward and visible intimations of profounder anachronisms. The legal +and political organisation of the earth in the middle twentieth century +was indeed everywhere like a complicated garment, outworn yet strong, +that now fettered the governing body that once it had protected. + +Yet that same spirit of free-thinking and outspoken publication that in +the field of natural science had been the beginning of the conquest of +nature, was at work throughout all the eighteenth and nineteenth +centuries preparing the spirit of the new world within the degenerating +body of the old. The idea of a greater subordination of individual +interests and established institutions to the collective future, is +traceable more and more clearly in the literature of those times, and +movement after movement fretted itself away in criticism of and +opposition to first this aspect and then that of the legal, social, and +political order. Already in the early nineteenth century Shelley, with +no scrap of alternative, is denouncing the established rulers of the +world as Anarchs, and the entire system of ideas and suggestions that +was known as Socialism, and more particularly its international side, +feeble as it was in creative proposals or any method of transition, +still witnesses to the growth of a conception of a modernised system of +inter-relationships that should supplant the existing tangle of +proprietary legal ideas. + +The word ‘Sociology’ was invented by Herbert Spencer, a popular writer +upon philosophical subjects, who flourished about the middle of the +nineteenth century, but the idea of a state, planned as an +electric-traction system is planned, without reference to pre-existing +apparatus, upon scientific lines, did not take a very strong hold upon +the popular imagination of the world until the twentieth century. Then, +the growing impatience of the American people with the monstrous and +socially paralysing party systems that had sprung out of their absurd +electoral arrangements, led to the appearance of what came to be called +the ‘Modern State’ movement, and a galaxy of brilliant writers, in +America, Europe, and the East, stirred up the world to the thought of +bolder rearrangements of social interaction, property, employment, +education, and government, than had ever been contemplated before. No +doubt these Modern State ideas were very largely the reflection upon +social and political thought of the vast revolution in material things +that had been in progress for two hundred years, but for a long time +they seemed to be having no more influence upon existing institutions +than the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire seemed to have had at the +time of the death of the latter. They were fermenting in men’s minds, +and it needed only just such social and political stresses as the +coming of the atomic mechanisms brought about, to thrust them forward +abruptly into crude and startling realisation. + +Section 5 + +Frederick Barnet’s _Wander Jahre_ is one of those autobiographical +novels that were popular throughout the third and fourth decades of the +twentieth century. It was published in 1970, and one must understand +Wander Jahre rather in a spiritual and intellectual than in a literal +sense. It is indeed an allusive title, carrying the world back to the +_Wilhelm Meister_ of Goethe, a century and a half earlier. + +Its author, Frederick Barnet, gives a minute and curious history of his +life and ideas between his nineteenth and his twenty-third birthdays. +He was neither a very original nor a very brilliant man, but he had a +trick of circumstantial writing; and though no authentic portrait was +to survive for the information of posterity, he betrays by a score of +casual phrases that he was short, sturdy, inclined to be plump, with a +‘rather blobby’ face, and full, rather projecting blue eyes. He +belonged until the financial _débâcle_ of 1956 to the class of fairly +prosperous people, he was a student in London, he aeroplaned to Italy +and then had a pedestrian tour from Genoa to Rome, crossed in the air +to Greece and Egypt, and came back over the Balkans and Germany. His +family fortunes, which were largely invested in bank shares, coal +mines, and house property, were destroyed. Reduced to penury, he sought +to earn a living. He suffered great hardship, and was then caught up by +the war and had a year of soldiering, first as an officer in the +English infantry and then in the army of pacification. His book tells +all these things so simply and at the same time so explicitly, that it +remains, as it were, an eye by which future generations may have at +least one man’s vision of the years of the Great Change. + +And he was, he tells us, a ‘Modern State’ man ‘by instinct’ from the +beginning. He breathed in these ideas in the class rooms and +laboratories of the Carnegie Foundation school that rose, a long and +delicately beautiful facade, along the South Bank of the Thames +opposite the ancient dignity of Somerset House. Such thought was +interwoven with the very fabric of that pioneer school in the +educational renascence in England. After the customary exchange years +in Heidelberg and Paris, he went into the classical school of London +University. The older so-called ‘classical’ education of the British +pedagogues, probably the most paralysing, ineffective, and foolish +routine that ever wasted human life, had already been swept out of this +great institution in favour of modern methods; and he learnt Greek and +Latin as well as he had learnt German, Spanish, and French, so that he +wrote and spoke them freely, and used them with an unconscious ease in +his study of the foundation civilisations of the European system to +which they were the key. (This change was still so recent that he +mentions an encounter in Rome with an ‘Oxford don’ who ‘spoke Latin +with a Wiltshire accent and manifest discomfort, wrote Greek letters +with his tongue out, and seemed to think a Greek sentence a charm when +it was a quotation and an impropriety when it wasn’t.’) + +Barnet saw the last days of the coal-steam engines upon the English +railways and the gradual cleansing of the London atmosphere as the +smoke-creating sea-coal fires gave place to electric heating. The +building of laboratories at Kensington was still in progress, and he +took part in the students’ riots that delayed the removal of the Albert +Memorial. He carried a banner with ‘We like Funny Statuary’ on one +side, and on the other ‘Seats and Canopies for Statues, Why should our +Great Departed Stand in the Rain?’ He learnt the rather athletic +aviation of those days at the University grounds at Sydenham, and he +was fined for flying over the new prison for political libellers at +Wormwood Scrubs, ‘in a manner calculated to exhilarate the prisoners +while at exercise.’ That was the time of the attempted suppression of +any criticism of the public judicature and the place was crowded with +journalists who had ventured to call attention to the dementia of Chief +Justice Abrahams. Barnet was not a very good aviator, he confesses he +was always a little afraid of his machine—there was excellent reason +for every one to be afraid of those clumsy early types—and he never +attempted steep descents or very high flying. He also, he records, +owned one of those oil-driven motor-bicycles whose clumsy complexity +and extravagant filthiness still astonish the visitors to the museum of +machinery at South Kensington. He mentions running over a dog and +complains of the ruinous price of ‘spatchcocks’ in Surrey. +‘Spatchcocks,’ it seems, was a slang term for crushed hens. + +He passed the examinations necessary to reduce his military service to +a minimum, and his want of any special scientific or technical +qualification and a certain precocious corpulence that handicapped his +aviation indicated the infantry of the line as his sphere of training. +That was the most generalised form of soldiering. The development of +the theory of war had been for some decades but little assisted by any +practical experience. What fighting had occurred in recent years, had +been fighting in minor or uncivilised states, with peasant or barbaric +soldiers and with but a small equipment of modern contrivances, and the +great powers of the world were content for the most part to maintain +armies that sustained in their broader organisation the traditions of +the European wars of thirty and forty years before. There was the +infantry arm to which Barnet belonged and which was supposed to fight +on foot with a rifle and be the main portion of the army. There were +cavalry forces (horse soldiers), having a ratio to the infantry that +had been determined by the experiences of the Franco-German war in +1871. There was also artillery, and for some unexplained reason much of +this was still drawn by horses; though there were also in all the +European armies a small number of motor-guns with wheels so constructed +that they could go over broken ground. In addition there were large +developments of the engineering arm, concerned with motor transport, +motor-bicycle scouting, aviation, and the like. + +No first-class intelligence had been sought to specialise in and work +out the problem of warfare with the new appliances and under modern +conditions, but a succession of able jurists, Lord Haldane, Chief +Justice Briggs, and that very able King’s Counsel, Philbrick, had +reconstructed the army frequently and thoroughly and placed it at last, +with the adoption of national service, upon a footing that would have +seemed very imposing to the public of 1900. At any moment the British +Empire could now put a million and a quarter of arguable soldiers upon +the board of Welt-Politik. The traditions of Japan and the Central +European armies were more princely and less forensic; the Chinese still +refused resolutely to become a military power, and maintained a small +standing army upon the American model that was said, so far as it went, +to be highly efficient, and Russia, secured by a stringent +administration against internal criticism, had scarcely altered the +design of a uniform or the organisation of a battery since the opening +decades of the century. Barnet’s opinion of his military training was +manifestly a poor one, his Modern State ideas disposed him to regard it +as a bore, and his common sense condemned it as useless. Moreover, his +habit of body made him peculiarly sensitive to the fatigues and +hardships of service. + +‘For three days in succession we turned out before dawn and—for no +earthly reason—without breakfast,’ he relates. ‘I suppose that is to +show us that when the Day comes the first thing will be to get us +thoroughly uncomfortable and rotten. We then proceeded to Kriegspiel, +according to the mysterious ideas of those in authority over us. On the +last day we spent three hours under a hot if early sun getting over +eight miles of country to a point we could have reached in a motor +omnibus in nine minutes and a half—I did it the next day in that—and +then we made a massed attack upon entrenchments that could have shot us +all about three times over if only the umpires had let them. Then came +a little bayonet exercise, but I doubt if I am sufficiently a barbarian +to stick this long knife into anything living. Anyhow in this battle I +shouldn’t have had a chance. Assuming that by some miracle I hadn’t +been shot three times over, I was far too hot and blown when I got up +to the entrenchments even to lift my beastly rifle. It was those others +would have begun the sticking.... + +‘For a time we were watched by two hostile aeroplanes; then our own +came up and asked them not to, and—the practice of aerial warfare still +being unknown—they very politely desisted and went away and did dives +and circles of the most charming description over the Fox Hills.’ + +All Barnet’s accounts of his military training were written in the same +half-contemptuous, half-protesting tone. He was of opinion that his +chances of participating in any real warfare were very slight, and +that, if after all he should participate, it was bound to be so +entirely different from these peace manœuvres that his only course as a +rational man would be to keep as observantly out of danger as he could +until he had learnt the tricks and possibilities of the new conditions. +He states this quite frankly. Never was a man more free from sham +heroics. + +Section 6 + +Barnet welcomed the appearance of the atomic engine with the zest of +masculine youth in all fresh machinery, and it is evident that for some +time he failed to connect the rush of wonderful new possibilities with +the financial troubles of his family. ‘I knew my father was worried,’ +he admits. That cast the smallest of shadows upon his delighted +departure for Italy and Greece and Egypt with three congenial +companions in one of the new atomic models. They flew over the Channel +Isles and Touraine, he mentions, and circled about Mont Blanc—‘These +new helicopters, we found,’ he notes, ‘had abolished all the danger and +strain of sudden drops to which the old-time aeroplanes were +liable’—and then he went on by way of Pisa, Paestum, Ghirgenti, and +Athens, to visit the pyramids by moonlight, flying thither from Cairo, +and to follow the Nile up to Khartum. Even by later standards, it must +have been a very gleeful holiday for a young man, and it made the +tragedy of his next experiences all the darker. A week after his return +his father, who was a widower, announced himself ruined, and committed +suicide by means of an unscheduled opiate. + +At one blow Barnet found himself flung out of the possessing, spending, +enjoying class to which he belonged, penniless and with no calling by +which he could earn a living. He tried teaching and some journalism, +but in a little while he found himself on the underside of a world in +which he had always reckoned to live in the sunshine. For innumerable +men such an experience has meant mental and spiritual destruction, but +Barnet, in spite of his bodily gravitation towards comfort, showed +himself when put to the test, of the more valiant modern quality. He +was saturated with the creative stoicism of the heroic times that were +already dawning, and he took his difficulties and discomforts stoutly +as his appointed material, and turned them to expression. + +Indeed, in his book, he thanks fortune for them. ‘I might have lived +and died,’ he says, ‘in that neat fool’s paradise of secure lavishness +above there. I might never have realised the gathering wrath and sorrow +of the ousted and exasperated masses. In the days of my own prosperity +things had seemed to me to be very well arranged.’ Now from his new +point of view he was to find they were not arranged at all; that +government was a compromise of aggressions and powers and lassitudes, +and law a convention between interests, and that the poor and the weak, +though they had many negligent masters, had few friends. + +‘I had thought things were looked after,’ he wrote. ‘It was with a kind +of amazement that I tramped the roads and starved—and found that no one +in particular cared.’ + +He was turned out of his lodging in a backward part of London. + +‘It was with difficulty I persuaded my landlady—she was a needy widow, +poor soul, and I was already in her debt—to keep an old box for me in +which I had locked a few letters, keepsakes, and the like. She lived in +great fear of the Public Health and Morality Inspectors, because she +was sometimes too poor to pay the customary tip to them, but at last +she consented to put it in a dark tiled place under the stairs, and +then I went forth into the world—to seek first the luck of a meal and +then shelter.’ + +He wandered down into the thronging gayer parts of London, in which a +year or so ago he had been numbered among the spenders. + +London, under the Visible Smoke Law, by which any production of visible +smoke with or without excuse was punishable by a fine, had already +ceased to be the sombre smoke-darkened city of the Victorian time; it +had been, and indeed was, constantly being rebuilt, and its main +streets were already beginning to take on those characteristics that +distinguished them throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. +The insanitary horse and the plebeian bicycle had been banished from +the roadway, which was now of a resilient, glass-like surface, +spotlessly clean; and the foot passenger was restricted to a narrow +vestige of the ancient footpath on either side of the track and +forbidden at the risk of a fine, if he survived, to cross the roadway. +People descended from their automobiles upon this pavement and went +through the lower shops to the lifts and stairs to the new ways for +pedestrians, the Rows, that ran along the front of the houses at the +level of the first story, and, being joined by frequent bridges, gave +the newer parts of London a curiously Venetian appearance. In some +streets there were upper and even third-story Rows. For most of the day +and all night the shop windows were lit by electric light, and many +establishments had made, as it were, canals of public footpaths through +their premises in order to increase their window space. + +Barnet made his way along this night-scene rather apprehensively since +the police had power to challenge and demand the Labour Card of any +indigent-looking person, and if the record failed to show he was in +employment, dismiss him to the traffic pavement below. + +But there was still enough of his former gentility about Barnet’s +appearance and bearing to protect him from this; the police, too, had +other things to think of that night, and he was permitted to reach the +galleries about Leicester Square—that great focus of London life and +pleasure. + +He gives a vivid description of the scene that evening. In the centre +was a garden raised on arches lit by festoons of lights and connected +with the Rows by eight graceful bridges, beneath which hummed the +interlacing streams of motor traffic, pulsating as the current +alternated between east and west and north and south. Above rose great +frontages of intricate rather than beautiful reinforced porcelain, +studded with lights, barred by bold illuminated advertisements, and +glowing with reflections. There were the two historical music halls of +this place, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, in which the municipal +players revolved perpetually through the cycle of Shakespeare’s plays, +and four other great houses of refreshment and entertainment whose +pinnacles streamed up into the blue obscurity of the night. The south +side of the square was in dark contrast to the others; it was still +being rebuilt, and a lattice of steel bars surmounted by the frozen +gestures of monstrous cranes rose over the excavated sites of vanished +Victorian buildings. + +This framework attracted Barnet’s attention for a time to the exclusion +of other interests. It was absolutely still, it had a dead rigidity, a +stricken inaction, no one was at work upon it and all its machinery was +quiet; but the constructor’s globes of vacuum light filled its every +interstice with a quivering green moonshine and showed alert but +motionless—soldier sentinels! + +He asked a passing stroller, and was told that the men had struck that +day against the use of an atomic riveter that would have doubled the +individual efficiency and halved the number of steel workers. + +‘Shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t get chucking bombs,’ said Barnet’s +informant, hovered for a moment, and then went on his way to the +Alhambra music hall. + +Barnet became aware of an excitement in the newspaper kiosks at the +corners of the square. Something very sensational had been flashed upon +the transparencies. Forgetting for a moment his penniless condition, he +made his way over a bridge to buy a paper, for in those days the +papers, which were printed upon thin sheets of metallic foil, were sold +at determinate points by specially licensed purveyors. Half over, he +stopped short at a change in the traffic below; and was astonished to +see that the police signals were restricting vehicles to the half +roadway. When presently he got within sight of the transparencies that +had replaced the placards of Victorian times, he read of the Great +March of the Unemployed that was already in progress through the West +End, and so without expenditure he was able to understand what was +coming. + +He watched, and his book describes this procession which the police had +considered it unwise to prevent and which had been spontaneously +organised in imitation of the Unemployed Processions of earlier times. +He had expected a mob but there was a kind of sullen discipline about +the procession when at last it arrived. What seemed for a time an +unending column of men marched wearily, marched with a kind of +implacable futility, along the roadway underneath him. He was, he says, +moved to join them, but instead he remained watching. They were a +dingy, shabby, ineffective-looking multitude, for the most part +incapable of any but obsolete and superseded types of labour. They bore +a few banners with the time-honoured inscription: ‘Work, not Charity,’ +but otherwise their ranks were unadorned. + +They were not singing, they were not even talking, there was nothing +truculent nor aggressive in their bearing, they had no definite +objective they were just marching and showing themselves in the more +prosperous parts of London. They were a sample of that great mass of +unskilled cheap labour which the now still cheaper mechanical powers +had superseded for evermore. They were being ‘scrapped’—as horses had +been ‘scrapped.’ + +Barnet leant over the parapet watching them, his mind quickened by his +own precarious condition. For a time, he says, he felt nothing but +despair at the sight; what should be done, what could be done for this +gathering surplus of humanity? They were so manifestly useless—and +incapable—and pitiful. + +What were they asking for? + +They had been overtaken by unexpected things. Nobody had foreseen—— + +It flashed suddenly into his mind just what the multitudinous shambling +enigma below meant. It was an appeal against the unexpected, an appeal +to those others who, more fortunate, seemed wiser and more powerful, +for something—for _intelligence_. This mute mass, weary footed, rank +following rank, protested its persuasion that some of these others must +have foreseen these dislocations—that anyhow they ought to have +foreseen—and arranged. + +That was what this crowd of wreckage was feeling and seeking so dumbly +to assert. + +‘Things came to me like the turning on of a light in a darkened room,’ +he says. ‘These men were praying to their fellow creatures as once they +prayed to God! The last thing that men will realise about anything is +that it is inanimate. They had transferred their animation to mankind. +They still believed there was intelligence somewhere, even if it was +careless or malignant.... It had only to be aroused to be +conscience-stricken, to be moved to exertion.... And I saw, too, that +as yet _there was no such intelligence_. The world waits for +intelligence. That intelligence has still to be made, that will for +good and order has still to be gathered together, out of scraps of +impulse and wandering seeds of benevolence and whatever is fine and +creative in our souls, into a common purpose. It’s something still to +come....’ + +It is characteristic of the widening thought of the time that this not +very heroical young man who, in any previous age, might well have been +altogether occupied with the problem of his own individual necessities, +should be able to stand there and generalise about the needs of the +race. + +But upon all the stresses and conflicts of that chaotic time there was +already dawning the light of a new era. The spirit of humanity was +escaping, even then it was escaping, from its extreme imprisonment in +individuals. Salvation from the bitter intensities of self, which had +been a conscious religious end for thousands of years, which men had +sought in mortifications, in the wilderness, in meditation, and by +innumerable strange paths, was coming at last with the effect of +naturalness into the talk of men, into the books they read, into their +unconscious gestures, into their newspapers and daily purposes and +everyday acts. The broad horizons, the magic possibilities that the +spirit of the seeker had revealed to them, were charming them out of +those ancient and instinctive preoccupations from which the very threat +of hell and torment had failed to drive them. And this young man, +homeless and without provision even for the immediate hours, in the +presence of social disorganisation, distress, and perplexity, in a +blazing wilderness of thoughtless pleasure that blotted out the stars, +could think as he tells us he thought. + +‘I saw life plain,’ he wrote. ‘I saw the gigantic task before us, and +the very splendour of its intricate and immeasurable difficulty filled +me with exaltation. I saw that we have still to discover government, +that we have still to discover education, which is the necessary +reciprocal of government, and that all this—in which my own little +speck of a life was so manifestly overwhelmed—this and its yesterday in +Greece and Rome and Egypt were nothing, the mere first dust swirls of +the beginning, the movements and dim murmurings of a sleeper who will +presently be awake....’ + +Section 7 + +And then the story tells, with an engaging simplicity, of his descent +from this ecstatic vision of reality. + +‘Presently I found myself again, and I was beginning to feel cold and a +little hungry.’ + +He bethought himself of the John Burns Relief Offices which stood upon +the Thames Embankment. He made his way through the galleries of the +booksellers and the National Gallery, which had been open continuously +day and night to all decently dressed people now for more than twelve +years, and across the rose-gardens of Trafalgar Square, and so by the +hotel colonnade to the Embankment. He had long known of these admirable +offices, which had swept the last beggars and matchsellers and all the +casual indigent from the London streets, and he believed that he would, +as a matter of course, be able to procure a ticket for food and a +night’s lodgings and some indication of possible employment. + +But he had not reckoned upon the new labour troubles, and when he got +to the Embankment he found the offices hopelessly congested and +besieged by a large and rather unruly crowd. He hovered for a time on +the outskirts of the waiting multitude, perplexed and dismayed, and +then he became aware of a movement, a purposive trickling away of +people, up through the arches of the great buildings that had arisen +when all the railway stations were removed to the south side of the +river, and so to the covered ways of the Strand. And here, in the open +glare of midnight, he found unemployed men begging, and not only +begging, but begging with astonishing assurance, from the people who +were emerging from the small theatres and other such places of +entertainment which abounded in that thoroughfare. + +This was an altogether unexampled thing. There had been no begging in +London streets for a quarter of a century. But that night the police +were evidently unwilling or unable to cope with the destitute who were +invading those well-kept quarters of the town. They had become stonily +blind to anything but manifest disorder. + +Barnet walked through the crowd, unable to bring himself to ask; indeed +his bearing must have been more valiant than his circumstances, for +twice he says that he was begged from. Near the Trafalgar Square +gardens, a girl with reddened cheeks and blackened eyebrows, who was +walking alone, spoke to him with a peculiar friendliness. + +‘I’m starving,’ he said to her abruptly. + +‘Oh! poor dear!’ she said; and with the impulsive generosity of her +kind, glanced round and slipped a silver piece into his hand.... + +It was a gift that, in spite of the precedent of De Quincey, might +under the repressive social legislation of those times, have brought +Barnet within reach of the prison lash. But he took it, he confesses, +and thanked her as well as he was able, and went off very gladly to get +food. + +Section 8 + +A day or so later—and again his freedom to go as he pleased upon the +roads may be taken as a mark of increasing social disorganisation and +police embarrassment—he wandered out into the open country. He speaks +of the roads of that plutocratic age as being ‘fenced with barbed wire +against unpropertied people,’ of the high-walled gardens and trespass +warnings that kept him to the dusty narrowness of the public ways. In +the air, happy rich people were flying, heedless of the misfortunes +about them, as he himself had been flying two years ago, and along the +road swept the new traffic, light and swift and wonderful. One was +rarely out of earshot of its whistles and gongs and siren cries even in +the field paths or over the open downs. The officials of the labour +exchanges were everywhere overworked and infuriated, the casual wards +were so crowded that the surplus wanderers slept in ranks under sheds +or in the open air, and since giving to wayfarers had been made a +punishable offence there was no longer friendship or help for a man +from the rare foot passenger or the wayside cottage.... + +‘I wasn’t angry,’ said Barnet. ‘I saw an immense selfishness, a +monstrous disregard for anything but pleasure and possession in all +those people above us, but I saw how inevitable that was, how certainly +if the richest had changed places with the poorest, that things would +have been the same. What else can happen when men use science and every +new thing that science gives, and all their available intelligence and +energy to manufacture wealth and appliances, and leave government and +education to the rustling traditions of hundreds of years ago? Those +traditions come from the dark ages when there was really not enough for +every one, when life was a fierce struggle that might be masked but +could not be escaped. Of course this famine grabbing, this fierce +dispossession of others, must follow from such a disharmony between +material and training. Of course the rich were vulgar and the poor grew +savage and every added power that came to men made the rich richer and +the poor less necessary and less free. The men I met in the casual +wards and the relief offices were all smouldering for revolt, talking +of justice and injustice and revenge. I saw no hope in that talk, nor +in anything but patience....’ + +But he did not mean a passive patience. He meant that the method of +social reconstruction was still a riddle, that no effectual +rearrangement was possible until this riddle in all its tangled aspects +was solved. ‘I tried to talk to those discontented men,’ he wrote, ‘but +it was hard for them to see things as I saw them. When I talked of +patience and the larger scheme, they answered, “But then we shall all +be dead”—and I could not make them see, what is so simple to my own +mind, that that did not affect the question. Men who think in lifetimes +are of no use to statesmanship.’ + +He does not seem to have seen a newspaper during those wanderings, and +a chance sight of the transparency of a kiosk in the market-place at +Bishop’s Stortford announcing a ‘Grave International Situation’ did not +excite him very much. There had been so many grave international +situations in recent years. + +This time it was talk of the Central European powers suddenly attacking +the Slav Confederacy, with France and England going to the help of the +Slavs. + +But the next night he found a tolerable meal awaiting the vagrants in +the casual ward, and learnt from the workhouse master that all +serviceable trained men were to be sent back on the morrow to their +mobilisation centres. The country was on the eve of war. He was to go +back through London to Surrey. His first feeling, he records, was one +of extreme relief that his days of ‘hopeless battering at the underside +of civilisation’ were at an end. Here was something definite to do, +something definitely provided for. But his relief was greatly modified +when he found that the mobilisation arrangements had been made so +hastily and carelessly that for nearly thirty-six hours at the +improvised depôt at Epsom he got nothing either to eat or to drink but +a cup of cold water. The depôt was absolutely unprovisioned, and no one +was free to leave it. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND +THE LAST WAR + + +Section I + +Viewed from the standpoint of a sane and ambitious social order, it is +difficult to understand, and it would be tedious to follow, the motives +that plunged mankind into the war that fills the histories of the +middle decades of the twentieth century. + +It must always be remembered that the political structure of the world +at that time was everywhere extraordinarily behind the collective +intelligence. That is the central fact of that history. For two hundred +years there had been no great changes in political or legal methods and +pretensions, the utmost change had been a certain shifting of +boundaries and slight readjustment of procedure, while in nearly every +other aspect of life there had been fundamental revolutions, gigantic +releases, and an enormous enlargement of scope and outlook. The +absurdities of courts and the indignities of representative +parliamentary government, coupled with the opening of vast fields of +opportunity in other directions, had withdrawn the best intelligences +more and more from public affairs. The ostensible governments of the +world in the twentieth century were following in the wake of the +ostensible religions. They were ceasing to command the services of any +but second-rate men. After the middle of the eighteenth century there +are no more great ecclesiastics upon the world’s memory, after the +opening of the twentieth no more statesmen. Everywhere one finds an +energetic, ambitious, short-sighted, common-place type in the seats of +authority, blind to the new possibilities and litigiously reliant upon +the traditions of the past. + +Perhaps the most dangerous of those outworn traditions were the +boundaries of the various ‘sovereign states,’ and the conception of a +general predominance in human affairs on the part of some one +particular state. The memory of the empires of Rome and Alexander +squatted, an unlaid carnivorous ghost, in the human imagination—it +bored into the human brain like some grisly parasite and filled it with +disordered thoughts and violent impulses. For more than a century the +French system exhausted its vitality in belligerent convulsions, and +then the infection passed to the German-speaking peoples who were the +heart and centre of Europe, and from them onward to the Slavs. Later +ages were to store and neglect the vast insane literature of this +obsession, the intricate treaties, the secret agreements, the infinite +knowingness of the political writer, the cunning refusals to accept +plain facts, the strategic devices, the tactical manœuvres, the records +of mobilisations and counter-mobilisations. It ceased to be credible +almost as soon as it ceased to happen, but in the very dawn of the new +age their state craftsmen sat with their historical candles burning, +and, in spite of strange, new reflections and unfamiliar lights and +shadows, still wrangling and planning to rearrange the maps of Europe +and the world. + +It was to become a matter for subtle inquiry how far the millions of +men and women outside the world of these specialists sympathised and +agreed with their portentous activities. One school of psychologists +inclined to minimise this participation, but the balance of evidence +goes to show that there were massive responses to these suggestions of +the belligerent schemer. Primitive man had been a fiercely combative +animal; innumerable generations had passed their lives in tribal +warfare, and the weight of tradition, the example of history, the +ideals of loyalty and devotion fell in easily enough with the +incitements of the international mischief-maker. The political ideas of +the common man were picked up haphazard, there was practically nothing +in such education as he was given that was ever intended to fit him for +citizenship as such (that conception only appeared, indeed, with the +development of Modern State ideas), and it was therefore a +comparatively easy matter to fill his vacant mind with the sounds and +fury of exasperated suspicion and national aggression. + +For example, Barnet describes the London crowd as noisily patriotic +when presently his battalion came up from the depôt to London, to +entrain for the French frontier. He tells of children and women and +lads and old men cheering and shouting, of the streets and rows hung +with the flags of the Allied Powers, of a real enthusiasm even among +the destitute and unemployed. The Labour Bureaux were now partially +transformed into enrolment offices, and were centres of hotly patriotic +excitement. At every convenient place upon the line on either side of +the Channel Tunnel there were enthusiastic spectators, and the feeling +in the regiment, if a little stiffened and darkened by grim +anticipations, was none the less warlike. + +But all this emotion was the fickle emotion of minds without +established ideas; it was with most of them, Barnet says, as it was +with himself, a natural response to collective movement, and to martial +sounds and colours, and the exhilarating challenge of vague dangers. +And people had been so long oppressed by the threat of and preparation +for war that its arrival came with an effect of positive relief. + +Section 2 + +The plan of campaign of the Allies assigned the defence of the lower +Meuse to the English, and the troop-trains were run direct from the +various British depôts to the points in the Ardennes where they were +intended to entrench themselves. + +Most of the documents bearing upon the campaign were destroyed during +the war, from the first the scheme of the Allies seems to have been +confused, but it is highly probable that the formation of an aerial +park in this region, from which attacks could be made upon the vast +industrial plant of the lower Rhine, and a flanking raid through +Holland upon the German naval establishments at the mouth of the Elbe, +were integral parts of the original project. Nothing of this was known +to such pawns in the game as Barnet and his company, whose business it +was to do what they were told by the mysterious intelligences at the +direction of things in Paris, to which city the Whitehall staff had +also been transferred. From first to last these directing intelligences +remained mysterious to the body of the army, veiled under the name of +‘Orders.’ There was no Napoleon, no Cæsar to embody enthusiasm. Barnet +says, ‘We talked of Them. _They_ are sending us up into Luxembourg. +_They_ are going to turn the Central European right.’ + +Behind the veil of this vagueness the little group of more or less +worthy men which constituted Headquarters was beginning to realise the +enormity of the thing it was supposed to control.... + +In the great hall of the War Control, whose windows looked out across +the Seine to the Trocadero and the palaces of the western quarter, a +series of big-scale relief maps were laid out upon tables to display +the whole seat of war, and the staff-officers of the control were +continually busy shifting the little blocks which represented the +contending troops, as the reports and intelligence came drifting in to +the various telegraphic bureaux in the adjacent rooms. In other smaller +apartments there were maps of a less detailed sort, upon which, for +example, the reports of the British Admiralty and of the Slav +commanders were recorded as they kept coming to hand. Upon these maps, +as upon chessboards, Marshal Dubois, in consultation with General Viard +and the Earl of Delhi, was to play the great game for world supremacy +against the Central European powers. Very probably he had a definite +idea of his game; very probably he had a coherent and admirable plan. + +But he had reckoned without a proper estimate either of the new +strategy of aviation or of the possibilities of atomic energy that +Holsten had opened for mankind. While he planned entrenchments and +invasions and a frontier war, the Central European generalship was +striking at the eyes and the brain. And while, with a certain diffident +hesitation, he developed his gambit that night upon the lines laid down +by Napoleon and Moltke, his own scientific corps in a state of mutinous +activity was preparing a blow for Berlin. ‘These old fools!’ was the +key in which the scientific corps was thinking. + +The War Control in Paris, on the night of July the second, was an +impressive display of the paraphernalia of scientific military +organisation, as the first half of the twentieth century understood it. +To one human being at least the consulting commanders had the likeness +of world-wielding gods. + +She was a skilled typist, capable of nearly sixty words a minute, and +she had been engaged in relay with other similar women to take down +orders in duplicate and hand them over to the junior officers in +attendance, to be forwarded and filed. There had come a lull, and she +had been sent out from the dictating room to take the air upon the +terrace before the great hall and to eat such scanty refreshment as she +had brought with her until her services were required again. + +From her position upon the terrace this young woman had a view not only +of the wide sweep of the river below her, and all the eastward side of +Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to Saint Cloud, great blocks and masses +of black or pale darkness with pink and golden flashes of illumination +and endless interlacing bands of dotted lights under a still and +starless sky, but also the whole spacious interior of the great hall +with its slender pillars and gracious arching and clustering lamps was +visible to her. There, over a wilderness of tables, lay the huge maps, +done on so large a scale that one might fancy them small countries; the +messengers and attendants went and came perpetually, altering, moving +the little pieces that signified hundreds and thousands of men, and the +great commander and his two consultants stood amidst all these things +and near where the fighting was nearest, scheming, directing. They had +but to breathe a word and presently away there, in the world of +reality, the punctual myriads moved. Men rose up and went forward and +died. The fate of nations lay behind the eyes of these three men. +Indeed they were like gods. + +Most godlike of the three was Dubois. It was for him to decide; the +others at most might suggest. Her woman’s soul went out to this grave, +handsome, still, old man, in a passion of instinctive worship. + +Once she had taken words of instruction from him direct. She had +awaited them in an ecstasy of happiness—and fear. For her exaltation +was made terrible by the dread that some error might dishonour her.... + +She watched him now through the glass with all the unpenetrating +minuteness of an impassioned woman’s observation. + +He said little, she remarked. He looked but little at the maps. The +tall Englishman beside him was manifestly troubled by a swarm of ideas, +conflicting ideas; he craned his neck at every shifting of the little +red, blue, black, and yellow pieces on the board, and wanted to draw +the commander’s attention to this and that. Dubois listened, nodded, +emitted a word and became still again, brooding like the national +eagle. + +His eyes were so deeply sunken under his white eyebrows that she could +not see his eyes; his moustache overhung the mouth from which those +words of decision came. Viard, too, said little; he was a dark man with +a drooping head and melancholy, watchful eyes. He was more intent upon +the French right, which was feeling its way now through Alsace to the +Rhine. He was, she knew, an old colleague of Dubois; he knew him +better, she decided, he trusted him more than this unfamiliar +Englishman.... + +Not to talk, to remain impassive and as far as possible in profile; +these were the lessons that old Dubois had mastered years ago. To seem +to know all, to betray no surprise, to refuse to hurry—itself a +confession of miscalculation; by attention to these simple rules, +Dubois had built up a steady reputation from the days when he had been +a promising junior officer, a still, almost abstracted young man, +deliberate but ready. Even then men had looked at him and said: ‘He +will go far.’ Through fifty years of peace he had never once been found +wanting, and at manœuvres his impassive persistence had perplexed and +hypnotised and defeated many a more actively intelligent man. Deep in +his soul Dubois had hidden his one profound discovery about the modern +art of warfare, the key to his career. And this discovery was that +_nobody knew_, that to act therefore was to blunder, that to talk was +to confess; and that the man who acted slowly and steadfastly and above +all silently, had the best chance of winning through. Meanwhile one fed +the men. Now by this same strategy he hoped to shatter those mysterious +unknowns of the Central European command. Delhi might talk of a great +flank march through Holland, with all the British submarines and +hydroplanes and torpedo craft pouring up the Rhine in support of it; +Viard might crave for brilliance with the motor bicycles, aeroplanes, +and ski-men among the Swiss mountains, and a sudden swoop upon Vienna; +the thing was to listen—and wait for the other side to begin +experimenting. It was all experimenting. And meanwhile he remained in +profile, with an air of assurance—like a man who sits in an automobile +after the chauffeur has had his directions. + +And every one about him was the stronger and surer for that quiet face, +that air of knowledge and unruffled confidence. The clustering lights +threw a score of shadows of him upon the maps, great bunches of him, +versions of a commanding presence, lighter or darker, dominated the +field, and pointed in every direction. Those shadows symbolised his +control. When a messenger came from the wireless room to shift this or +that piece in the game, to replace under amended reports one Central +European regiment by a score, to draw back or thrust out or distribute +this or that force of the Allies, the Marshal would turn his head and +seem not to see, or look and nod slightly, as a master nods who +approves a pupil’s self-correction. ‘Yes, that’s better.’ + +How wonderful he was, thought the woman at the window, how wonderful it +all was. This was the brain of the western world, this was Olympus with +the warring earth at its feet. And he was guiding France, France so +long a resentful exile from imperialism, back to her old predominance. + +It seemed to her beyond the desert of a woman that she should be +privileged to participate.... + +It is hard to be a woman, full of the stormy impulse to personal +devotion, and to have to be impersonal, abstract, exact, punctual. She +must control herself.... + +She gave herself up to fantastic dreams, dreams of the days when the +war would be over and victory enthroned. Then perhaps this harshness, +this armour would be put aside and the gods might unbend. Her eyelids +drooped.... + +She roused herself with a start. She became aware that the night +outside was no longer still. That there was an excitement down below on +the bridge and a running in the street and a flickering of searchlights +among the clouds from some high place away beyond the Trocadero. And +then the excitement came surging up past her and invaded the hall +within. + +One of the sentinels from the terrace stood at the upper end of the +room, gesticulating and shouting something. + +And all the world had changed. A kind of throbbing. She couldn’t +understand. It was as if all the water-pipes and concealed machinery +and cables of the ways beneath, were beating—as pulses beat. And about +her blew something like a wind—a wind that was dismay. + +Her eyes went to the face of the Marshal as a frightened child might +look towards its mother. + +He was still serene. He was frowning slightly, she thought, but that +was natural enough, for the Earl of Delhi, with one hand gauntly +gesticulating, had taken him by the arm and was all too manifestly +disposed to drag him towards the great door that opened on the terrace. +And Viard was hurrying towards the huge windows and doing so in the +strangest of attitudes, bent forward and with eyes upturned. + +Something up there? + +And then it was as if thunder broke overhead. + +The sound struck her like a blow. She crouched together against the +masonry and looked up. She saw three black shapes swooping down through +the torn clouds, and from a point a little below two of them, there had +already started curling trails of red.... + +Everything else in her being was paralysed, she hung through moments +that seemed infinities, watching those red missiles whirl down towards +her. + +She felt torn out of the world. There was nothing else in the world but +a crimson-purple glare and sound, deafening, all-embracing, continuing +sound. Every other light had gone out about her and against this glare +hung slanting walls, pirouetting pillars, projecting fragments of +cornices, and a disorderly flight of huge angular sheets of glass. She +had an impression of a great ball of crimson-purple fire like a +maddened living thing that seemed to be whirling about very rapidly +amidst a chaos of falling masonry, that seemed to be attacking the +earth furiously, that seemed to be burrowing into it like a blazing +rabbit.... + +She had all the sensations of waking up out of a dream. + +She found she was lying face downward on a bank of mould and that a +little rivulet of hot water was running over one foot. She tried to +raise herself and found her leg was very painful. She was not clear +whether it was night or day nor where she was; she made a second +effort, wincing and groaning, and turned over and got into a sitting +position and looked about her. + +Everything seemed very silent. She was, in fact, in the midst of a vast +uproar, but she did not realise this because her hearing had been +destroyed. + +At first she could not join on what she saw to any previous experience. + +She seemed to be in a strange world, a soundless, ruinous world, a +world of heaped broken things. And it was lit—and somehow this was more +familiar to her mind than any other fact about her—by a flickering, +purplish-crimson light. Then close to her, rising above a confusion of +_débris_, she recognised the Trocadero; it was changed, something had +gone from it, but its outline was unmistakable. It stood out against a +streaming, whirling uprush of red-lit steam. And with that she recalled +Paris and the Seine and the warm, overcast evening and the beautiful, +luminous organisation of the War Control.... + +She drew herself a little way up the slope of earth on which she lay, +and examined her surroundings with an increasing understanding.... + +The earth on which she was lying projected like a cape into the river. +Quite close to her was a brimming lake of dammed-up water, from which +these warm rivulets and torrents were trickling. Wisps of vapour came +into circling existence a foot or so from its mirror-surface. Near at +hand and reflected exactly in the water was the upper part of a +familiar-looking stone pillar. On the side of her away from the water +the heaped ruins rose steeply in a confused slope up to a glaring +crest. Above and reflecting this glare towered pillowed masses of steam +rolling swiftly upward to the zenith. It was from this crest that the +livid glow that lit the world about her proceeded, and slowly her mind +connected this mound with the vanished buildings of the War Control. + +‘_Mais!_’ she whispered, and remained with staring eyes quite +motionless for a time, crouching close to the warm earth. + +Then presently this dim, broken human thing began to look about it +again. She began to feel the need of fellowship. She wanted to +question, wanted to speak, wanted to relate her experience. And her +foot hurt her atrociously. There ought to be an ambulance. A little +gust of querulous criticisms blew across her mind. This surely was a +disaster! Always after a disaster there should be ambulances and +helpers moving about.... + +She craned her head. There was something there. But everything was so +still! + +‘_Monsieur!_’ she cried. Her ears, she noted, felt queer, and she began +to suspect that all was not well with them. + +It was terribly lonely in this chaotic strangeness, and perhaps this +man—if it was a man, for it was difficult to see—might for all his +stillness be merely insensible. He might have been stunned.... + +The leaping glare beyond sent a ray into his corner and for a moment +every little detail was distinct. It was Marshal Dubois. He was lying +against a huge slab of the war map. To it there stuck and from it there +dangled little wooden objects, the symbols of infantry and cavalry and +guns, as they were disposed upon the frontier. He did not seem to be +aware of this at his back, he had an effect of inattention, not +indifferent attention, but as if he were thinking.... + +She could not see the eyes beneath his shaggy brows, but it was evident +he frowned. He frowned slightly, he had an air of not wanting to be +disturbed. His face still bore that expression of assured confidence, +that conviction that if things were left to him France might obey in +security.... + +She did not cry out to him again, but she crept a little nearer. A +strange surmise made her eyes dilate. With a painful wrench she pulled +herself up so that she could see completely over the intervening lumps +of smashed-up masonry. Her hand touched something wet, and after one +convulsive movement she became rigid. + +It was not a whole man there; it was a piece of a man, the head and +shoulders of a man that trailed down into a ragged darkness and a pool +of shining black.... + +And even as she stared the mound above her swayed and crumbled, and a +rush of hot water came pouring over her. Then it seemed to her that she +was dragged downward.... + +Section 3 + +When the rather brutish young aviator with the bullet head and the +black hair close-cropped _en brosse_, who was in charge of the French +special scientific corps, heard presently of this disaster to the War +Control, he was so wanting in imagination in any sphere but his own, +that he laughed. Small matter to him that Paris was burning. His mother +and father and sister lived at Caudebec; and the only sweetheart he had +ever had, and it was poor love-making then, was a girl in Rouen. He +slapped his second-in-command on the shoulder. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘there’s +nothing on earth to stop us going to Berlin and giving them +tit-for-tat.... Strategy and reasons of state—they’re over.... Come +along, my boy, and we’ll just show these old women what we can do when +they let us have our heads.’ + +He spent five minutes telephoning and then he went out into the +courtyard of the chateau in which he had been installed and shouted for +his automobile. Things would have to move quickly because there was +scarcely an hour and a half before dawn. He looked at the sky and noted +with satisfaction a heavy bank of clouds athwart the pallid east. + +He was a young man of infinite shrewdness, and his material and +aeroplanes were scattered all over the country-side, stuck away in +barns, covered with hay, hidden in woods. A hawk could not have +discovered any of them without coming within reach of a gun. But that +night he only wanted one of the machines, and it was handy and quite +prepared under a tarpaulin between two ricks not a couple of miles +away; he was going to Berlin with that and just one other man. Two men +would be enough for what he meant to do.... + +He had in his hands the black complement to all those other gifts +science was urging upon unregenerate mankind, the gift of destruction, +and he was an adventurous rather than a sympathetic type.... + +He was a dark young man with something negroid about his gleaming face. +He smiled like one who is favoured and anticipates great pleasures. +There was an exotic richness, a chuckling flavour, about the voice in +which he gave his orders, and he pointed his remarks with the long +finger of a hand that was hairy and exceptionally big. + +‘We’ll give them tit-for-tat,’ he said. ‘We’ll give them tit-for-tat. +No time to lose, boys....’ + +And presently over the cloud-banks that lay above Westphalia and Saxony +the swift aeroplane, with its atomic engine as noiseless as a dancing +sunbeam and its phosphorescent gyroscopic compass, flew like an arrow +to the heart of the Central European hosts. + +It did not soar very high; it skimmed a few hundred feet above the +banked darknesses of cumulus that hid the world, ready to plunge at +once into their wet obscurities should some hostile flier range into +vision. The tense young steersman divided his attention between the +guiding stars above and the level, tumbled surfaces of the vapour +strata that hid the world below. Over great spaces those banks lay as +even as a frozen lava-flow and almost as still, and then they were rent +by ragged areas of translucency, pierced by clear chasms, so that dim +patches of the land below gleamed remotely through abysses. Once he saw +quite distinctly the plan of a big railway station outlined in lamps +and signals, and once the flames of a burning rick showing livid +through a boiling drift of smoke on the side of some great hill. But if +the world was masked it was alive with sounds. Up through that vapour +floor came the deep roar of trains, the whistles of horns of +motor-cars, a sound of rifle fire away to the south, and as he drew +near his destination the crowing of cocks.... + +The sky above the indistinct horizons of this cloud sea was at first +starry and then paler with a light that crept from north to east as the +dawn came on. The Milky Way was invisible in the blue, and the lesser +stars vanished. The face of the adventurer at the steering-wheel, +darkly visible ever and again by the oval greenish glow of the compass +face, had something of that firm beauty which all concentrated purpose +gives, and something of the happiness of an idiot child that has at +last got hold of the matches. His companion, a less imaginative type, +sat with his legs spread wide over the long, coffin-shaped box which +contained in its compartments the three atomic bombs, the new bombs +that would continue to explode indefinitely and which no one so far had +ever seen in action. Hitherto Carolinum, their essential substance, had +been tested only in almost infinitesimal quantities within steel +chambers embedded in lead. Beyond the thought of great destruction +slumbering in the black spheres between his legs, and a keen resolve to +follow out very exactly the instructions that had been given him, the +man’s mind was a blank. His aquiline profile against the starlight +expressed nothing but a profound gloom. + +The sky below grew clearer as the Central European capital was +approached. + +So far they had been singularly lucky and had been challenged by no +aeroplanes at all. The frontier scouts they must have passed in the +night; probably these were mostly under the clouds; the world was wide +and they had had luck in not coming close to any soaring sentinel. +Their machine was painted a pale gray, that lay almost invisibly over +the cloud levels below. But now the east was flushing with the near +ascent of the sun, Berlin was but a score of miles ahead, and the luck +of the Frenchmen held. By imperceptible degrees the clouds below +dissolved.... + +Away to the north-eastward, in a cloudless pool of gathering light and +with all its nocturnal illuminations still blazing, was Berlin. The +left finger of the steersman verified roads and open spaces below upon +the mica-covered square of map that was fastened by his wheel. There in +a series of lake-like expansions was the Havel away to the right; over +by those forests must be Spandau; there the river split about the +Potsdam island; and right ahead was Charlottenburg cleft by a great +thoroughfare that fell like an indicating beam of light straight to the +imperial headquarters. There, plain enough, was the Thiergarten; beyond +rose the imperial palace, and to the right those tall buildings, those +clustering, beflagged, bemasted roofs, must be the offices in which the +Central European staff was housed. It was all coldly clear and +colourless in the dawn. + +He looked up suddenly as a humming sound grew out of nothing and became +swiftly louder. Nearly overhead a German aeroplane was circling down +from an immense height to challenge him. He made a gesture with his +left arm to the gloomy man behind and then gripped his little wheel +with both hands, crouched over it, and twisted his neck to look upward. +He was attentive, tightly strung, but quite contemptuous of their +ability to hurt him. No German alive, he was assured, could outfly him, +or indeed any one of the best Frenchmen. He imagined they might strike +at him as a hawk strikes, but they were men coming down out of the +bitter cold up there, in a hungry, spiritless, morning mood; they came +slanting down like a sword swung by a lazy man, and not so rapidly but +that he was able to slip away from under them and get between them and +Berlin. They began challenging him in German with a megaphone when they +were still perhaps a mile away. The words came to him, rolled up into a +mere blob of hoarse sound. Then, gathering alarm from his grim silence, +they gave chase and swept down, a hundred yards above him perhaps, and +a couple of hundred behind. They were beginning to understand what he +was. He ceased to watch them and concentrated himself on the city +ahead, and for a time the two aeroplanes raced.... + +A bullet came tearing through the air by him, as though some one was +tearing paper. A second followed. Something tapped the machine. + +It was time to act. The broad avenues, the park, the palaces below +rushed widening out nearer and nearer to them. ‘Ready!’ said the +steersman. + +The gaunt face hardened to grimness, and with both hands the +bomb-thrower lifted the big atomic bomb from the box and steadied it +against the side. It was a black sphere two feet in diameter. Between +its handles was a little celluloid stud, and to this he bent his head +until his lips touched it. Then he had to bite in order to let the air +in upon the inducive. Sure of its accessibility, he craned his neck +over the side of the aeroplane and judged his pace and distance. Then +very quickly he bent forward, bit the stud, and hoisted the bomb over +the side. + +‘Round,’ he whispered inaudibly. + +The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air, and fell, a descending +column of blaze eddying spirally in the midst of a whirlwind. Both the +aeroplanes were tossed like shuttlecocks, hurled high and sideways and +the steersman, with gleaming eyes and set teeth, fought in great +banking curves for a balance. The gaunt man clung tight with hand and +knees; his nostrils dilated, his teeth biting his lips. He was firmly +strapped.... + +When he could look down again it was like looking down upon the crater +of a small volcano. In the open garden before the Imperial castle a +shuddering star of evil splendour spurted and poured up smoke and flame +towards them like an accusation. They were too high to distinguish +people clearly, or mark the bomb’s effect upon the building until +suddenly the facade tottered and crumbled before the flare as sugar +dissolves in water. The man stared for a moment, showed all his long +teeth, and then staggered into the cramped standing position his straps +permitted, hoisted out and bit another bomb, and sent it down after its +fellow. + +The explosion came this time more directly underneath the aeroplane and +shot it upward edgeways. The bomb box tipped to the point of +disgorgement, and the bomb-thrower was pitched forward upon the third +bomb with his face close to its celluloid stud. He clutched its +handles, and with a sudden gust of determination that the thing should +not escape him, bit its stud. Before he could hurl it over, the +monoplane was slipping sideways. Everything was falling sideways. +Instinctively he gave himself up to gripping, his body holding the bomb +in its place. + +Then that bomb had exploded also, and steersman, thrower, and aeroplane +were just flying rags and splinters of metal and drops of moisture in +the air, and a third column of fire rushed eddying down upon the doomed +buildings below.... + +Section 4 + +Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing +explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only +explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely +to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst +upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them. +Those used by the Allies were lumps of pure Carolinum, painted on the +outside with unoxidised cydonator inducive enclosed hermetically in a +case of membranium. A little celluloid stud between the handles by +which the bomb was lifted was arranged so as to be easily torn off and +admit air to the inducive, which at once became active and set up +radio-activity in the outer layer of the Carolinum sphere. This +liberated fresh inducive, and so in a few minutes the whole bomb was a +blazing continual explosion. The Central European bombs were the same, +except that they were larger and had a more complicated arrangement for +animating the inducive. + +Always before in the development of warfare the shells and rockets +fired had been but momentarily explosive, they had gone off in an +instant once for all, and if there was nothing living or valuable +within reach of the concussion and the flying fragments then they were +spent and over. But Carolinum, which belonged to the β-Group of +Hyslop’s so-called ‘suspended degenerator’ elements, once its +degenerative process had been induced, continued a furious radiation of +energy and nothing could arrest it. Of all Hyslop’s artificial +elements, Carolinum was the most heavily stored with energy and the +most dangerous to make and handle. To this day it remains the most +potent degenerator known. What the earlier twentieth-century chemists +called its half period was seventeen days; that is to say, it poured +out half of the huge store of energy in its great molecules in the +space of seventeen days, the next seventeen days’ emission was a half +of that first period’s outpouring, and so on. As with all radio-active +substances this Carolinum, though every seventeen days its power is +halved, though constantly it diminishes towards the imperceptible, is +never entirely exhausted, and to this day the battle-fields and bomb +fields of that frantic time in human history are sprinkled with radiant +matter, and so centres of inconvenient rays. + +What happened when the celluloid stud was opened was that the inducive +oxidised and became active. Then the surface of the Carolinum began to +degenerate. This degeneration passed only slowly into the substance of +the bomb. A moment or so after its explosion began it was still mainly +an inert sphere exploding superficially, a big, inanimate nucleus +wrapped in flame and thunder. Those that were thrown from aeroplanes +fell in this state, they reached the ground still mainly solid, and, +melting soil and rock in their progress, bored into the earth. There, +as more and more of the Carolinum became active, the bomb spread itself +out into a monstrous cavern of fiery energy at the base of what became +very speedily a miniature active volcano. The Carolinum, unable to +disperse, freely drove into and mixed up with a boiling confusion of +molten soil and superheated steam, and so remained spinning furiously +and maintaining an eruption that lasted for years or months or weeks +according to the size of the bomb employed and the chances of its +dispersal. Once launched, the bomb was absolutely unapproachable and +uncontrollable until its forces were nearly exhausted, and from the +crater that burst open above it, puffs of heavy incandescent vapour and +fragments of viciously punitive rock and mud, saturated with Carolinum, +and each a centre of scorching and blistering energy, were flung high +and far. + +Such was the crowning triumph of military science, the ultimate +explosive that was to give the ‘decisive touch’ to war.... + +Section 5 + +A recent historical writer has described the world of that time as one +that ‘believed in established words and was invincibly blind to the +obvious in things.’ Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been +more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the +rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they +did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in +their fumbling hands. Yet the broad facts must have glared upon any +intelligent mind. All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries +the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually +increasing. Applied to warfare that meant that the power to inflict a +blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing. There was no +increase whatever in the ability to escape. Every sort of passive +defence, armour, fortifications, and so forth, was being outmastered by +this tremendous increase on the destructive side. Destruction was +becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it; it +was revolutionising the problems of police and internal rule. Before +the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could +carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck +half a city. These facts were before the minds of everybody; the +children in the streets knew them. And yet the world still, as the +Americans used to phrase it, ‘fooled around’ with the paraphernalia and +pretensions of war. + +It is only by realising this profound, this fantastic divorce between +the scientific and intellectual movement on the one hand, and the world +of the lawyer-politician on the other, that the men of a later time can +hope to understand this preposterous state of affairs. Social +organisation was still in the barbaric stage. There were already great +numbers of actively intelligent men and much private and commercial +civilisation, but the community, as a whole, was aimless, untrained and +unorganised to the pitch of imbecility. Collective civilisation, the +‘Modern State,’ was still in the womb of the future.... + +Section 6 + +But let us return to Frederick Barnet’s _Wander Jahre_ and its account +of the experiences of a common man during the war time. While these +terrific disclosures of scientific possibility were happening in Paris +and Berlin, Barnet and his company were industriously entrenching +themselves in Belgian Luxembourg. + +He tells of the mobilisation and of his summer day’s journey through +the north of France and the Ardennes in a few vivid phrases. The +country was browned by a warm summer, the trees a little touched with +autumnal colour, and the wheat already golden. When they stopped for an +hour at Hirson, men and women with tricolour badges upon the platform +distributed cakes and glasses of beer to the thirsty soldiers, and +there was much cheerfulness. ‘Such good, cool beer it was,’ he wrote. +‘I had had nothing to eat nor drink since Epsom.’ + +A number of monoplanes, ‘like giant swallows,’ he notes, were scouting +in the pink evening sky. + +Barnet’s battalion was sent through the Sedan country to a place called +Virton, and thence to a point in the woods on the line to Jemelle. Here +they detrained, bivouacked uneasily by the railway—trains and stores +were passing along it all night—and next morning he marched eastward +through a cold, overcast dawn, and a morning, first cloudy and then +blazing, over a large spacious country-side interspersed by forest +towards Arlon. + +There the infantry were set to work upon a line of masked entrenchments +and hidden rifle pits between St Hubert and Virton that were designed +to check and delay any advance from the east upon the fortified line of +the Meuse. They had their orders, and for two days they worked without +either a sight of the enemy or any suspicion of the disaster that had +abruptly decapitated the armies of Europe, and turned the west of Paris +and the centre of Berlin into blazing miniatures of the destruction of +Pompeii. + +And the news, when it did come, came attenuated. ‘We heard there had +been mischief with aeroplanes and bombs in Paris,’ Barnet relates; ‘but +it didn’t seem to follow that “They” weren’t still somewhere +elaborating their plans and issuing orders. When the enemy began to +emerge from the woods in front of us, we cheered and blazed away, and +didn’t trouble much more about anything but the battle in hand. If now +and then one cocked up an eye into the sky to see what was happening +there, the rip of a bullet soon brought one down to the horizontal +again.... + +That battle went on for three days all over a great stretch of country +between Louvain on the north and Longwy to the south. It was +essentially a rifle and infantry struggle. The aeroplanes do not seem +to have taken any decisive share in the actual fighting for some days, +though no doubt they effected the strategy from the first by preventing +surprise movements. They were aeroplanes with atomic engines, but they +were not provided with atomic bombs, which were manifestly unsuitable +for field use, nor indeed had they any very effective kind of bomb. And +though they manœuvred against each other, and there was rifle shooting +at them and between them, there was little actual aerial fighting. +Either the airmen were indisposed to fight or the commanders on both +sides preferred to reserve these machines for scouting.... + +After a day or so of digging and scheming, Barnet found himself in the +forefront of a battle. He had made his section of rifle pits chiefly +along a line of deep dry ditch that gave a means of +inter-communication, he had had the earth scattered over the adjacent +field, and he had masked his preparations with tussocks of corn and +poppy. The hostile advance came blindly and unsuspiciously across the +fields below and would have been very cruelly handled indeed, if some +one away to the right had not opened fire too soon. + +‘It was a queer thrill when these fellows came into sight,’ he +confesses; ‘and not a bit like manœuvres. They halted for a time on the +edge of the wood and then came forward in an open line. They kept +walking nearer to us and not looking at us, but away to the right of +us. Even when they began to be hit, and their officers’ whistles woke +them up, they didn’t seem to see us. One or two halted to fire, and +then they all went back towards the wood again. They went slowly at +first, looking round at us, then the shelter of the wood seemed to draw +them, and they trotted. I fired rather mechanically and missed, then I +fired again, and then I became earnest to hit something, made sure of +my sighting, and aimed very carefully at a blue back that was dodging +about in the corn. At first I couldn’t satisfy myself and didn’t shoot, +his movements were so spasmodic and uncertain; then I think he came to +a ditch or some such obstacle and halted for a moment. “_Got_ you,” I +whispered, and pulled the trigger. + +‘I had the strangest sensations about that man. In the first instance, +when I felt that I had hit him I was irradiated with joy and pride.... + +‘I sent him spinning. He jumped and threw up his arms.... + +‘Then I saw the corn tops waving and had glimpses of him flapping +about. Suddenly I felt sick. I hadn’t killed him.... + +‘In some way he was disabled and smashed up and yet able to struggle +about. I began to think.... + +‘For nearly two hours that Prussian was agonising in the corn. Either +he was calling out or some one was shouting to him.... + +‘Then he jumped up—he seemed to try to get up upon his feet with one +last effort; and then he fell like a sack and lay quite still and never +moved again. + +‘He had been unendurable, and I believe some one had shot him dead. I +had been wanting to do so for some time....’ + +The enemy began sniping the rifle pits from shelters they made for +themselves in the woods below. A man was hit in the pit next to Barnet, +and began cursing and crying out in a violent rage. Barnet crawled +along the ditch to him and found him in great pain, covered with blood, +frantic with indignation, and with the half of his right hand smashed +to a pulp. ‘Look at this,’ he kept repeating, hugging it and then +extending it. ‘Damned foolery! Damned foolery! My right hand, sir! My +right hand!’ + +For some time Barnet could do nothing with him. The man was consumed by +his tortured realisation of the evil silliness of war, the realisation +which had come upon him in a flash with the bullet that had destroyed +his skill and use as an artificer for ever. He was looking at the +vestiges with a horror that made him impenetrable to any other idea. At +last the poor wretch let Barnet tie up his bleeding stump and help him +along the ditch that conducted him deviously out of range.... + +When Barnet returned his men were already calling out for water, and +all day long the line of pits suffered greatly from thirst. For food +they had chocolate and bread. + +‘At first,’ he says, ‘I was extraordinarily excited by my baptism of +fire. Then as the heat of the day came on I experienced an enormous +tedium and discomfort. The flies became extremely troublesome, and my +little grave of a rifle pit was invaded by ants. I could not get up or +move about, for some one in the trees had got a mark on me. I kept +thinking of the dead Prussian down among the corn, and of the bitter +outcries of my own man. Damned foolery! It _was_ damned foolery. But +who was to blame? How had we got to this? . . . + +‘Early in the afternoon an aeroplane tried to dislodge us with dynamite +bombs, but she was hit by bullets once or twice, and suddenly dived +down over beyond the trees. + +‘“From Holland to the Alps this day,” I thought, “there must be +crouching and lying between half and a million of men, trying to +inflict irreparable damage upon one another. The thing is idiotic to +the pitch of impossibility. It is a dream. Presently I shall wake up.” +. . . + +‘Then the phrase changed itself in my mind. “Presently mankind will +wake up.” + +‘I lay speculating just how many thousands of men there were among +these hundreds of thousands, whose spirits were in rebellion against +all these ancient traditions of flag and empire. Weren’t we, perhaps, +already in the throes of the last crisis, in that darkest moment of a +nightmare’s horror before the sleeper will endure no more of it—and +wakes? + +‘I don’t know how my speculations ended. I think they were not so much +ended as distracted by the distant thudding of the guns that were +opening fire at long range upon Namur.’ + +Section 7 + +But as yet Barnet had seen no more than the mildest beginnings of +modern warfare. So far he had taken part only in a little shooting. The +bayonet attack by which the advanced line was broken was made at a +place called Croix Rouge, more than twenty miles away, and that night +under cover of the darkness the rifle pits were abandoned and he got +his company away without further loss. + +His regiment fell back unpressed behind the fortified lines between +Namur and Sedan, entrained at a station called Mettet, and was sent +northward by Antwerp and Rotterdam to Haarlem. Hence they marched into +North Holland. It was only after the march into Holland that he began +to realise the monstrous and catastrophic nature of the struggle in +which he was playing his undistinguished part. + +He describes very pleasantly the journey through the hills and open +land of Brabant, the repeated crossing of arms of the Rhine, and the +change from the undulating scenery of Belgium to the flat, rich +meadows, the sunlit dyke roads, and the countless windmills of the +Dutch levels. In those days there was unbroken land from Alkmaar and +Leiden to the Dollart. Three great provinces, South Holland, North +Holland, and Zuiderzeeland, reclaimed at various times between the +early tenth century and 1945 and all many feet below the level of the +waves outside the dykes, spread out their lush polders to the northern +sun and sustained a dense industrious population. An intricate web of +laws and custom and tradition ensured a perpetual vigilance and a +perpetual defence against the beleaguering sea. For more than two +hundred and fifty miles from Walcheren to Friesland stretched a line of +embankments and pumping stations that was the admiration of the world. + +If some curious god had chosen to watch the course of events in those +northern provinces while that flanking march of the British was in +progress, he would have found a convenient and appropriate seat for his +observation upon one of the great cumulus clouds that were drifting +slowly across the blue sky during all these eventful days before the +great catastrophe. For that was the quality of the weather, hot and +clear, with something of a breeze, and underfoot dry and a little +inclined to be dusty. This watching god would have looked down upon +broad stretches of sunlit green, sunlit save for the creeping patches +of shadow cast by the clouds, upon sky-reflecting meres, fringed and +divided up by masses of willow and large areas of silvery weeds, upon +white roads lying bare to the sun and upon a tracery of blue canals. +The pastures were alive with cattle, the roads had a busy traffic, of +beasts and bicycles and gaily coloured peasants’ automobiles, the hues +of the innumerable motor barges in the canal vied with the eventfulness +of the roadways; and everywhere in solitary steadings, amidst ricks and +barns, in groups by the wayside, in straggling villages, each with its +fine old church, or in compact towns laced with canals and abounding in +bridges and clipped trees, were human habitations. + +The people of this country-side were not belligerents. The interests +and sympathies alike of Holland had been so divided that to the end she +remained undecided and passive in the struggle of the world powers. And +everywhere along the roads taken by the marching armies clustered +groups and crowds of impartially observant spectators, women and +children in peculiar white caps and old-fashioned sabots, and elderly, +clean-shaven men quietly thoughtful over their long pipes. They had no +fear of their invaders; the days when ‘soldiering’ meant bands of +licentious looters had long since passed away.... + +That watcher among the clouds would have seen a great distribution of +khaki-uniformed men and khaki-painted material over the whole of the +sunken area of Holland. He would have marked the long trains, packed +with men or piled with great guns and war material, creeping slowly, +alert for train-wreckers, along the north-going lines; he would have +seen the Scheldt and Rhine choked with shipping, and pouring out still +more men and still more material; he would have noticed halts and +provisionings and detrainments, and the long, bustling caterpillars of +cavalry and infantry, the maggot-like wagons, the huge beetles of great +guns, crawling under the poplars along the dykes and roads northward, +along ways lined by the neutral, unmolested, ambiguously observant +Dutch. All the barges and shipping upon the canals had been +requisitioned for transport. In that clear, bright, warm weather, it +would all have looked from above like some extravagant festival of +animated toys. + +As the sun sank westward the spectacle must have become a little +indistinct because of a golden haze; everything must have become warmer +and more glowing, and because of the lengthening of the shadows more +manifestly in relief. The shadows of the tall churches grew longer and +longer, until they touched the horizon and mingled in the universal +shadow; and then, slow, and soft, and wrapping the world in fold after +fold of deepening blue, came the night—the night at first obscurely +simple, and then with faint points here and there, and then jewelled in +darkling splendour with a hundred thousand lights. Out of that mingling +of darkness and ambiguous glares the noise of an unceasing activity +would have arisen, the louder and plainer now because there was no +longer any distraction of sight. + +It may be that watcher drifting in the pellucid gulf beneath the stars +watched all through the night; it may be that he dozed. But if he gave +way to so natural a proclivity, assuredly on the fourth night of the +great flank march he was aroused, for that was the night of the battle +in the air that decided the fate of Holland. The aeroplanes were +fighting at last, and suddenly about him, above and below, with cries +and uproar rushing out of the four quarters of heaven, striking, +plunging, oversetting, soaring to the zenith and dropping to the +ground, they came to assail or defend the myriads below. + +Secretly the Central European power had gathered his flying machines +together, and now he threw them as a giant might fling a handful of ten +thousand knives over the low country. And amidst that swarming flight +were five that drove headlong for the sea walls of Holland, carrying +atomic bombs. From north and west and south, the allied aeroplanes rose +in response and swept down upon this sudden attack. So it was that war +in the air began. Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and +fell like archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. +Surely the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy +pounding of your Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of +chariots, beside this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this +headlong swoop to death? + +And then athwart this whirling rush of aerial duels that swooped and +locked and dropped in the void between the lamp-lights and the stars, +came a great wind and a crash louder than thunder, and first one and +then a score of lengthening fiery serpents plunged hungrily down upon +the Dutchmen’s dykes and struck between land and sea and flared up +again in enormous columns of glare and crimsoned smoke and steam. + +And out of the darkness leapt the little land, with its spires and +trees, aghast with terror, still and distinct, and the sea, tumbled +with anger, red-foaming like a sea of blood.... + +Over the populous country below went a strange multitudinous crying and +a flurry of alarm bells.... + +The surviving aeroplanes turned about and fled out of the sky, like +things that suddenly know themselves to be wicked.... + +Through a dozen thunderously flaming gaps that no water might quench, +the waves came roaring in upon the land.... + +Section 8 + +‘We had cursed our luck,’ says Barnet, ‘that we could not get to our +quarters at Alkmaar that night. There, we were told, were provisions, +tobacco, and everything for which we craved. But the main canal from +Zaandam and Amsterdam was hopelessly jammed with craft, and we were +glad of a chance opening that enabled us to get out of the main column +and lie up in a kind of little harbour very much neglected and +weedgrown before a deserted house. We broke into this and found some +herrings in a barrel, a heap of cheeses, and stone bottles of gin in +the cellar; and with this I cheered my starving men. We made fires and +toasted the cheese and grilled our herrings. None of us had slept for +nearly forty hours, and I determined to stay in this refuge until dawn +and then if the traffic was still choked leave the barge and march the +rest of the way into Alkmaar. + +‘This place we had got into was perhaps a hundred yards from the canal +and underneath a little brick bridge we could see the flotilla still, +and hear the voices of the soldiers. Presently five or six other barges +came through and lay up in the mere near by us, and with two of these, +full of men of the Antrim regiment, I shared my find of provisions. In +return we got tobacco. A large expanse of water spread to the westward +of us and beyond were a cluster of roofs and one or two church towers. +The barge was rather cramped for so many men, and I let several squads, +thirty or forty perhaps altogether, bivouac on the bank. I did not let +them go into the house on account of the furniture, and I left a note +of indebtedness for the food we had taken. We were particularly glad of +our tobacco and fires, because of the numerous mosquitoes that rose +about us. + +‘The gate of the house from which we had provisioned ourselves was +adorned with the legend, _Vreugde bij Vrede_, “Joy with Peace,” and it +bore every mark of the busy retirement of a comfort-loving proprietor. +I went along his garden, which was gay and delightful with big bushes +of rose and sweet brier, to a quaint little summer-house, and there I +sat and watched the men in groups cooking and squatting along the bank. +The sun was setting in a nearly cloudless sky. + +‘For the last two weeks I had been a wholly occupied man, intent only +upon obeying the orders that came down to me. All through this time I +had been working to the very limit of my mental and physical faculties, +and my only moments of rest had been devoted to snatches of sleep. Now +came this rare, unexpected interlude, and I could look detachedly upon +what I was doing and feel something of its infinite wonderfulness. I +was irradiated with affection for the men of my company and with +admiration at their cheerful acquiescence in the subordination and +needs of our positions. I watched their proceedings and heard their +pleasant voices. How willing those men were! How ready to accept +leadership and forget themselves in collective ends! I thought how +manfully they had gone through all the strains and toil of the last two +weeks, how they had toughened and shaken down to comradeship together, +and how much sweetness there is after all in our foolish human blood. +For they were just one casual sample of the species—their patience and +readiness lay, as the energy of the atom had lain, still waiting to be +properly utilised. Again it came to me with overpowering force that the +supreme need of our race is leading, that the supreme task is to +discover leading, to forget oneself in realising the collective purpose +of the race. Once more I saw life plain....’ + +Very characteristic is that of the ‘rather too corpulent’ young +officer, who was afterwards to set it all down in the _Wander Jahre_. +Very characteristic, too, it is of the change in men’s hearts that was +even then preparing a new phase of human history. + +He goes on to write of the escape from individuality in science and +service, and of his discovery of this ‘salvation.’ All that was then, +no doubt, very moving and original; now it seems only the most obvious +commonplace of human life. + +The glow of the sunset faded, the twilight deepened into night. The +fires burnt the brighter, and some Irishmen away across the mere +started singing. But Barnet’s men were too weary for that sort of +thing, and soon the bank and the barge were heaped with sleeping forms. + +‘I alone seemed unable to sleep. I suppose I was over-weary, and after +a little feverish slumber by the tiller of the barge I sat up, awake +and uneasy.... + +‘That night Holland seemed all sky. There was just a little black lower +rim to things, a steeple, perhaps, or a line of poplars, and then the +great hemisphere swept over us. As at first the sky was empty. Yet my +uneasiness referred itself in some vague way to the sky. + +‘And now I was melancholy. I found something strangely sorrowful and +submissive in the sleepers all about me, those men who had marched so +far, who had left all the established texture of their lives behind +them to come upon this mad campaign, this campaign that signified +nothing and consumed everything, this mere fever of fighting. I saw how +little and feeble is the life of man, a thing of chances, +preposterously unable to find the will to realise even the most timid +of its dreams. And I wondered if always it would be so, if man was a +doomed animal who would never to the last days of his time take hold of +fate and change it to his will. Always, it may be, he will remain +kindly but jealous, desirous but discursive, able and unwisely +impulsive, until Saturn who begot him shall devour him in his turn.... + +‘I was roused from these thoughts by the sudden realisation of the +presence of a squadron of aeroplanes far away to the north-east and +very high. They looked like little black dashes against the midnight +blue. I remember that I looked up at them at first rather idly—as one +might notice a flight of birds. Then I perceived that they were only +the extreme wing of a great fleet that was advancing in a long line +very swiftly from the direction of the frontier and my attention +tightened. + +‘Directly I saw that fleet I was astonished not to have seen it before. + +‘I stood up softly, undesirous of disturbing my companions, but with my +heart beating now rather more rapidly with surprise and excitement. I +strained my ears for any sound of guns along our front. Almost +instinctively I turned about for protection to the south and west, and +peered; and then I saw coming as fast and much nearer to me, as if they +had sprung out of the darkness, three banks of aeroplanes; a group of +squadrons very high, a main body at a height perhaps of one or two +thousand feet, and a doubtful number flying low and very indistinct. +The middle ones were so thick they kept putting out groups of stars. +And I realised that after all there was to be fighting in the air. + +‘There was something extraordinarily strange in this swift, noiseless +convergence of nearly invisible combatants above the sleeping hosts. +Every one about me was still unconscious; there was no sign as yet of +any agitation among the shipping on the main canal, whose whole course, +dotted with unsuspicious lights and fringed with fires, must have been +clearly perceptible from above. Then a long way off towards Alkmaar I +heard bugles, and after that shots, and then a wild clamour of bells. I +determined to let my men sleep on for as long as they could.... + +‘The battle was joined with the swiftness of dreaming. I do not think +it can have been five minutes from the moment when I first became aware +of the Central European air fleet to the contact of the two forces. I +saw it quite plainly in silhouette against the luminous blue of the +northern sky. The allied aeroplanes—they were mostly French—came +pouring down like a fierce shower upon the middle of the Central +European fleet. They looked exactly like a coarser sort of rain. There +was a crackling sound—the first sound I heard—it reminded one of the +Aurora Borealis, and I supposed it was an interchange of rifle shots. +There were flashes like summer lightning; and then all the sky became a +whirling confusion of battle that was still largely noiseless. Some of +the Central European aeroplanes were certainly charged and overset; +others seemed to collapse and fall and then flare out with so bright a +light that it took the edge off one’s vision and made the rest of the +battle disappear as though it had been snatched back out of sight. + +‘And then, while I still peered and tried to shade these flames from my +eyes with my hand, and while the men about me were beginning to stir, +the atomic bombs were thrown at the dykes. They made a mighty thunder +in the air, and fell like Lucifer in the picture, leaving a flaring +trail in the sky. The night, which had been pellucid and detailed and +eventful, seemed to vanish, to be replaced abruptly by a black +background to these tremendous pillars of fire.... + +‘Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was +filled with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds.... + +‘There was something discontinuous in this impact. At one moment I was +a lonely watcher in a sleeping world; the next saw every one about me +afoot, the whole world awake and amazed.... + +‘And then the wind had struck me a buffet, taken my helmet and swept +aside the summerhouse of _Vreugde bij Vrede_, as a scythe sweeps away +grass. I saw the bombs fall, and then watched a great crimson flare +leap responsive to each impact, and mountainous masses of red-lit steam +and flying fragments clamber up towards the zenith. Against the glare I +saw the country-side for miles standing black and clear, churches, +trees, chimneys. And suddenly I understood. The Central Europeans had +burst the dykes. Those flares meant the bursting of the dykes, and in a +little while the sea-water would be upon us....’ + +He goes on to tell with a certain prolixity of the steps he took—and +all things considered they were very intelligent steps—to meet this +amazing crisis. He got his men aboard and hailed the adjacent barges; +he got the man who acted as barge engineer at his post and the engines +working, he cast loose from his moorings. Then he bethought himself of +food, and contrived to land five men, get in a few dozen cheeses, and +ship his men again before the inundation reached them. + +He is reasonably proud of this piece of coolness. His idea was to take +the wave head-on and with his engines full speed ahead. And all the +while he was thanking heaven he was not in the jam of traffic in the +main canal. He rather, I think, overestimated the probable rush of +waters; he dreaded being swept away, he explains, and smashed against +houses and trees. + +He does not give any estimate of the time it took between the bursting +of the dykes and the arrival of the waters, but it was probably an +interval of about twenty minutes or half an hour. He was working now in +darkness—save for the light of his lantern—and in a great wind. He hung +out head and stern lights.... + +Whirling torrents of steam were pouring up from the advancing waters, +which had rushed, it must be remembered, through nearly incandescent +gaps in the sea defences, and this vast uprush of vapour soon veiled +the flaring centres of explosion altogether. + +‘The waters came at last, an advancing cascade. It was like a broad +roller sweeping across the country. They came with a deep, roaring +sound. I had expected a Niagara, but the total fall of the front could +not have been much more than twelve feet. Our barge hesitated for a +moment, took a dose over her bows, and then lifted. I signalled for +full speed ahead and brought her head upstream, and held on like grim +death to keep her there. + +‘There was a wind about as strong as the flood, and I found we were +pounding against every conceivable buoyant object that had been between +us and the sea. The only light in the world now came from our lamps, +the steam became impenetrable at a score of yards from the boat, and +the roar of the wind and water cut us off from all remoter sounds. The +black, shining waters swirled by, coming into the light of our lamps +out of an ebony blackness and vanishing again into impenetrable black. +And on the waters came shapes, came things that flashed upon us for a +moment, now a half-submerged boat, now a cow, now a huge fragment of a +house’s timberings, now a muddle of packing-cases and scaffolding. The +things clapped into sight like something shown by the opening of a +shutter, and then bumped shatteringly against us or rushed by us. Once +I saw very clearly a man’s white face.... + +‘All the while a group of labouring, half-submerged trees remained +ahead of us, drawing very slowly nearer. I steered a course to avoid +them. They seemed to gesticulate a frantic despair against the black +steam clouds behind. Once a great branch detached itself and tore +shuddering by me. We did, on the whole, make headway. The last I saw of +_Vreugde bij Vrede_ before the night swallowed it, was almost dead +astern of us....’ + +Section 9 + +Morning found Barnet still afloat. The bows of his barge had been badly +strained, and his men were pumping or baling in relays. He had got +about a dozen half-drowned people aboard whose boat had capsized near +him, and he had three other boats in tow. He was afloat, and somewhere +between Amsterdam and Alkmaar, but he could not tell where. It was a +day that was still half night. Gray waters stretched in every direction +under a dark gray sky, and out of the waves rose the upper parts of +houses, in many cases ruined, the tops of trees, windmills, in fact the +upper third of all the familiar Dutch scenery; and on it there drifted +a dimly seen flotilla of barges, small boats, many overturned, +furniture, rafts, timbering, and miscellaneous objects. + +The drowned were under water that morning. Only here and there did a +dead cow or a stiff figure still clinging stoutly to a box or chair or +such-like buoy hint at the hidden massacre. It was not till the +Thursday that the dead came to the surface in any quantity. The view +was bounded on every side by a gray mist that closed overhead in a gray +canopy. The air cleared in the afternoon, and then, far away to the +west under great banks of steam and dust, the flaming red eruption of +the atomic bombs came visible across the waste of water. + +They showed flat and sullen through the mist, like London sunsets. +‘They sat upon the sea,’ says Barnet, ‘like frayed-out waterlilies of +flame.’ + +Barnet seems to have spent the morning in rescue work along the track +of the canal, in helping people who were adrift, in picking up derelict +boats, and in taking people out of imperilled houses. He found other +military barges similarly employed, and it was only as the day wore on +and the immediate appeals for aid were satisfied that he thought of +food and drink for his men, and what course he had better pursue. They +had a little cheese, but no water. ‘Orders,’ that mysterious direction, +had at last altogether disappeared. He perceived he had now to act upon +his own responsibility. + +‘One’s sense was of a destruction so far-reaching and of a world so +altered that it seemed foolish to go in any direction and expect to +find things as they had been before the war began. I sat on the +quarter-deck with Mylius my engineer and Kemp and two others of the +non-commissioned officers, and we consulted upon our line of action. We +were foodless and aimless. We agreed that our fighting value was +extremely small, and that our first duty was to get ourselves in touch +with food and instructions again. Whatever plan of campaign had +directed our movements was manifestly smashed to bits. Mylius was of +opinion that we could take a line westward and get back to England +across the North Sea. He calculated that with such a motor barge as +ours it would be possible to reach the Yorkshire coast within +four-and-twenty hours. But this idea I overruled because of the +shortness of our provisions, and more particularly because of our +urgent need of water. + +‘Every boat we drew near now hailed us for water, and their demands did +much to exasperate our thirst. I decided that if we went away to the +south we should reach hilly country, or at least country that was not +submerged, and then we should be able to land, find some stream, drink, +and get supplies and news. Many of the barges adrift in the haze about +us were filled with British soldiers and had floated up from the Nord +See Canal, but none of them were any better informed than ourselves of +the course of events. “Orders” had, in fact, vanished out of the sky. + +‘“Orders” made a temporary reappearance late that evening in the form +of a megaphone hail from a British torpedo boat, announcing a truce, +and giving the welcome information that food and water were being +hurried down the Rhine and were to be found on the barge flotilla lying +over the old Rhine above Leiden.’... + +We will not follow Barnet, however, in the description of his strange +overland voyage among trees and houses and churches by Zaandam and +between Haarlem and Amsterdam, to Leiden. It was a voyage in a red-lit +mist, in a world of steamy silhouette, full of strange voices and +perplexity, and with every other sensation dominated by a feverish +thirst. ‘We sat,’ he says, ‘in a little huddled group, saying very +little, and the men forward were mere knots of silent endurance. Our +only continuing sound was the persistent mewing of a cat one of the men +had rescued from a floating hayrick near Zaandam. We kept a southward +course by a watch-chain compass Mylius had produced.... + +‘I do not think any of us felt we belonged to a defeated army, nor had +we any strong sense of the war as the dominating fact about us. Our +mental setting had far more of the effect of a huge natural +catastrophe. The atomic bombs had dwarfed the international issues to +complete insignificance. When our minds wandered from the +preoccupations of our immediate needs, we speculated upon the +possibility of stopping the use of these frightful explosives before +the world was utterly destroyed. For to us it seemed quite plain that +these bombs and the still greater power of destruction of which they +were the precursors might quite easily shatter every relationship and +institution of mankind. + +‘“What will they be doing,” asked Mylius, “what will they be doing? +It’s plain we’ve got to put an end to war. It’s plain things have to be +run some way. _This_—all this—is impossible.” + +‘I made no immediate answer. Something—I cannot think what—had brought +back to me the figure of that man I had seen wounded on the very first +day of actual fighting. I saw again his angry, tearful eyes, and that +poor, dripping, bloody mess that had been a skilful human hand five +minutes before, thrust out in indignant protest. “Damned foolery,” he +had stormed and sobbed, “damned foolery. My right hand, sir! My _right_ +hand. . . .” + +‘My faith had for a time gone altogether out of me. “I think we are +too—too silly,” I said to Mylius, “ever to stop war. If we’d had the +sense to do it, we should have done it before this. I think this——” I +pointed to the gaunt black outline of a smashed windmill that stuck up, +ridiculous and ugly, above the blood-lit waters—“this is the end.”’ + +Section 10 + +But now our history must part company with Frederick Barnet and his +barge-load of hungry and starving men. + +For a time in western Europe at least it was indeed as if civilisation +had come to a final collapse. These crowning buds upon the tradition +that Napoleon planted and Bismarck watered, opened and flared ‘like +waterlilies of flame’ over nations destroyed, over churches smashed or +submerged, towns ruined, fields lost to mankind for ever, and a million +weltering bodies. Was this lesson enough for mankind, or would the +flames of war still burn amidst the ruins? + +Neither Barnet nor his companions, it is clear, had any assurance in +their answers to that question. Already once in the history of mankind, +in America, before its discovery by the whites, an organised +civilisation had given way to a mere cult of warfare, specialised and +cruel, and it seemed for a time to many a thoughtful man as if the +whole world was but to repeat on a larger scale this ascendancy of the +warrior, this triumph of the destructive instincts of the race. + +The subsequent chapters of Barnet’s narrative do but supply body to +this tragic possibility. He gives a series of vignettes of +civilisation, shattered, it seemed, almost irreparably. He found the +Belgian hills swarming with refugees and desolated by cholera; the +vestiges of the contending armies keeping order under a truce, without +actual battles, but with the cautious hostility of habit, and a great +absence of plan everywhere. + +Overhead aeroplanes went on mysterious errands, and there were rumours +of cannibalism and hysterical fanaticisms in the valleys of the Semoy +and the forest region of the eastern Ardennes. There was the report of +an attack upon Russia by the Chinese and Japanese, and of some huge +revolutionary outbreak in America. The weather was stormier than men +had ever known it in those regions, with much thunder and lightning and +wild cloud-bursts of rain.... + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD +THE ENDING OF WAR + + +Section 1 + +On the mountain-side above the town of Brissago and commanding two long +stretches of Lake Maggiore, looking eastward to Bellinzona, and +southward to Luino, there is a shelf of grass meadows which is very +beautiful in springtime with a great multitude of wild flowers. More +particularly is this so in early June, when the slender asphodel Saint +Bruno’s lily, with its spike of white blossom, is in flower. To the +westward of this delightful shelf there is a deep and densely wooded +trench, a great gulf of blue some mile or so in width out of which +arise great precipices very high and wild. Above the asphodel fields +the mountains climb in rocky slopes to solitudes of stone and sunlight +that curve round and join that wall of cliffs in one common skyline. +This desolate and austere background contrasts very vividly with the +glowing serenity of the great lake below, with the spacious view of +fertile hills and roads and villages and islands to south and east, and +with the hotly golden rice flats of the Val Maggia to the north. And +because it was a remote and insignificant place, far away out of the +crowding tragedies of that year of disaster, away from burning cities +and starving multitudes, bracing and tranquillising and hidden, it was +here that there gathered the conference of rulers that was to arrest, +if possible, before it was too late, the _débâcle_ of civilisation. +Here, brought together by the indefatigable energy of that impassioned +humanitarian, Leblanc, the French ambassador at Washington, the chief +Powers of the world were to meet in a last desperate conference to +‘save humanity.’ + +Leblanc was one of those ingenuous men whose lot would have been +insignificant in any period of security, but who have been caught up to +an immortal _rôle_ in history by the sudden simplification of human +affairs through some tragical crisis, to the measure of their +simplicity. Such a man was Abraham Lincoln, and such was Garibaldi. And +Leblanc, with his transparent childish innocence, his entire +self-forgetfulness, came into this confusion of distrust and intricate +disaster with an invincible appeal for the manifest sanities of the +situation. His voice, when he spoke, was ‘full of remonstrance.’ He was +a little bald, spectacled man, inspired by that intellectual idealism +which has been one of the peculiar gifts of France to humanity. He was +possessed of one clear persuasion, that war must end, and that the only +way to end war was to have but one government for mankind. He brushed +aside all other considerations. At the very outbreak of the war, so +soon as the two capitals of the belligerents had been wrecked, he went +to the president in the White House with this proposal. He made it as +if it was a matter of course. He was fortunate to be in Washington and +in touch with that gigantic childishness which was the characteristic +of the American imagination. For the Americans also were among the +simple peoples by whom the world was saved. He won over the American +president and the American government to his general ideas; at any rate +they supported him sufficiently to give him a standing with the more +sceptical European governments, and with this backing he set to work—it +seemed the most fantastic of enterprises—to bring together all the +rulers of the world and unify them. He wrote innumerable letters, he +sent messages, he went desperate journeys, he enlisted whatever support +he could find; no one was too humble for an ally or too obstinate for +his advances; through the terrible autumn of the last wars this +persistent little visionary in spectacles must have seemed rather like +a hopeful canary twittering during a thunderstorm. And no accumulation +of disasters daunted his conviction that they could be ended. + +For the whole world was flaring then into a monstrous phase of +destruction. Power after Power about the armed globe sought to +anticipate attack by aggression. They went to war in a delirium of +panic, in order to use their bombs first. China and Japan had assailed +Russia and destroyed Moscow, the United States had attacked Japan, +India was in anarchistic revolt with Delhi a pit of fire spouting death +and flame; the redoubtable King of the Balkans was mobilising. It must +have seemed plain at last to every one in those days that the world was +slipping headlong to anarchy. By the spring of 1959 from nearly two +hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the +unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs, the flimsy +fabric of the world’s credit had vanished, industry was completely +disorganised and every city, every thickly populated area was starving +or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital cities of +the world were burning; millions of people had already perished, and +over great areas government was at an end. Humanity has been compared +by one contemporary writer to a sleeper who handles matches in his +sleep and wakes to find himself in flames. + +For many months it was an open question whether there was to be found +throughout all the race the will and intelligence to face these new +conditions and make even an attempt to arrest the downfall of the +social order. For a time the war spirit defeated every effort to rally +the forces of preservation and construction. Leblanc seemed to be +protesting against earthquakes, and as likely to find a spirit of +reason in the crater of Etna. Even though the shattered official +governments now clamoured for peace, bands of irreconcilables and +invincible patriots, usurpers, adventurers, and political desperadoes, +were everywhere in possession of the simple apparatus for the +disengagement of atomic energy and the initiation of new centres of +destruction. The stuff exercised an irresistible fascination upon a +certain type of mind. Why should any one give in while he can still +destroy his enemies? Surrender? While there is still a chance of +blowing them to dust? The power of destruction which had once been the +ultimate privilege of government was now the only power left in the +world—and it was everywhere. There were few thoughtful men during that +phase of blazing waste who did not pass through such moods of despair +as Barnet describes, and declare with him: ‘This is the end....’ + +And all the while Leblanc was going to and fro with glittering glasses +and an inexhaustible persuasiveness, urging the manifest reasonableness +of his view upon ears that ceased presently to be inattentive. Never at +any time did he betray a doubt that all this chaotic conflict would +end. No nurse during a nursery uproar was ever so certain of the +inevitable ultimate peace. From being treated as an amiable dreamer he +came by insensible degrees to be regarded as an extravagant +possibility. Then he began to seem even practicable. The people who +listened to him in 1958 with a smiling impatience, were eager before +1959 was four months old to know just exactly what he thought might be +done. He answered with the patience of a philosopher and the lucidity +of a Frenchman. He began to receive responses of a more and more +hopeful type. He came across the Atlantic to Italy, and there he +gathered in the promises for this congress. He chose those high meadows +above Brissago for the reasons we have stated. ‘We must get away,’ he +said, ‘from old associations.’ He set to work requisitioning material +for his conference with an assurance that was justified by the replies. +With a slight incredulity the conference which was to begin a new order +in the world, gathered itself together. Leblanc summoned it without +arrogance, he controlled it by virtue of an infinite humility. Men +appeared upon those upland slopes with the apparatus for wireless +telegraphy; others followed with tents and provisions; a little cable +was flung down to a convenient point upon the Locarno road below. +Leblanc arrived, sedulously directing every detail that would affect +the tone of the assembly. He might have been a courier in advance +rather than the originator of the gathering. And then there arrived, +some by the cable, most by aeroplane, a few in other fashions, the men +who had been called together to confer upon the state of the world. It +was to be a conference without a name. Nine monarchs, the presidents of +four republics, a number of ministers and ambassadors, powerful +journalists, and such-like prominent and influential men, took part in +it. There were even scientific men; and that world-famous old man, +Holsten, came with the others to contribute his amateur statecraft to +the desperate problem of the age. Only Leblanc would have dared so to +summon figure heads and powers and intelligence, or have had the +courage to hope for their agreement.... + +Section 2 + +And one at least of those who were called to this conference of +governments came to it on foot. This was King Egbert, the young king of +the most venerable kingdom in Europe. He was a rebel, and had always +been of deliberate choice a rebel against the magnificence of his +position. He affected long pedestrian tours and a disposition to sleep +in the open air. He came now over the Pass of Sta Maria Maggiore and by +boat up the lake to Brissago; thence he walked up the mountain, a +pleasant path set with oaks and sweet chestnut. For provision on the +walk, for he did not want to hurry, he carried with him a pocketful of +bread and cheese. A certain small retinue that was necessary to his +comfort and dignity upon occasions of state he sent on by the cable +car, and with him walked his private secretary, Firmin, a man who had +thrown up the Professorship of World Politics in the London School of +Sociology, Economics, and Political Science, to take up these duties. +Firmin was a man of strong rather than rapid thought, he had +anticipated great influence in this new position, and after some years +he was still only beginning to apprehend how largely his function was +to listen. Originally he had been something of a thinker upon +international politics, an authority upon tariffs and strategy, and a +valued contributor to various of the higher organs of public opinion, +but the atomic bombs had taken him by surprise, and he had still to +recover completely from his pre-atomic opinions and the silencing +effect of those sustained explosives. + +The king’s freedom from the trammels of etiquette was very complete. In +theory—and he abounded in theory—his manners were purely democratic. It +was by sheer habit and inadvertency that he permitted Firmin, who had +discovered a rucksack in a small shop in the town below, to carry both +bottles of beer. The king had never, as a matter of fact, carried +anything for himself in his life, and he had never noted that he did +not do so. + +‘We will have nobody with us,’ he said, ‘at all. We will be perfectly +simple.’ + +So Firmin carried the beer. + +As they walked up—it was the king made the pace rather than Firmin—they +talked of the conference before them, and Firmin, with a certain want +of assurance that would have surprised him in himself in the days of +his Professorship, sought to define the policy of his companion. ‘In +its broader form, sir,’ said Firmin; ‘I admit a certain plausibility in +this project of Leblanc’s, but I feel that although it may be advisable +to set up some sort of general control for International affairs—a sort +of Hague Court with extended powers—that is no reason whatever for +losing sight of the principles of national and imperial autonomy.’ + +‘Firmin,’ said the king, ‘I am going to set my brother kings a good +example.’ + +Firmin intimated a curiosity that veiled a dread. + +‘By chucking all that nonsense,’ said the king. + +He quickened his pace as Firmin, who was already a little out of +breath, betrayed a disposition to reply. + +‘I am going to chuck all that nonsense,’ said the king, as Firmin +prepared to speak. ‘I am going to fling my royalty and empire on the +table—and declare at once I don’t mean to haggle. It’s haggling—about +rights—has been the devil in human affairs, for—always. I am going to +stop this nonsense.’ + +Firmin halted abruptly. ‘But, sir!’ he cried. + +The king stopped six yards ahead of him and looked back at his +adviser’s perspiring visage. + +‘Do you really think, Firmin, that I am here as—as an infernal +politician to put my crown and my flag and my claims and so forth in +the way of peace? That little Frenchman is right. You know he is right +as well as I do. Those things are over. We—we kings and rulers and +representatives have been at the very heart of the mischief. Of course +we imply separation, and of course separation means the threat of war, +and of course the threat of war means the accumulation of more and more +atomic bombs. The old game’s up. But, I say, we mustn’t stand here, you +know. The world waits. Don’t you think the old game’s up, Firmin?’ + +Firmin adjusted a strap, passed a hand over his wet forehead, and +followed earnestly. ‘I admit, sir,’ he said to a receding back, ‘that +there has to be some sort of hegemony, some sort of Amphictyonic +council——’ + +‘There’s got to be one simple government for all the world,’ said the +king over his shoulder. + +‘But as for a reckless, unqualified abandonment, sir——’ + +‘_Bang!_’ cried the king. + +Firmin made no answer to this interruption. But a faint shadow of +annoyance passed across his heated features. + +‘Yesterday,’ said the king, by way of explanation, ‘the Japanese very +nearly got San Francisco.’ + +‘I hadn’t heard, sir.’ + +‘The Americans ran the Japanese aeroplane down into the sea and there +the bomb got busted.’ + +‘Under the sea, sir?’ + +‘Yes. Submarine volcano. The steam is in sight of the Californian +coast. It was as near as that. And with things like this happening, you +want me to go up this hill and haggle. Consider the effect of that upon +my imperial cousin—and all the others!’ + +‘_He_ will haggle, sir.’ + +‘Not a bit of it,’ said the king. + +‘But, sir.’ + +‘Leblanc won’t let him.’ + +Firmin halted abruptly and gave a vicious pull at the offending strap. +‘Sir, he will listen to his advisers,’ he said, in a tone that in some +subtle way seemed to implicate his master with the trouble of the +knapsack. + +The king considered him. + +‘We will go just a little higher,’ he said. ‘I want to find this +unoccupied village they spoke of, and then we will drink that beer. It +can’t be far. We will drink the beer and throw away the bottles. And +then, Firmin, I shall ask you to look at things in a more generous +light.... Because, you know, you must....’ + +He turned about and for some time the only sound they made was the +noise of their boots upon the loose stones of the way and the irregular +breathing of Firmin. + +At length, as it seemed to Firmin, or quite soon, as it seemed to the +king, the gradient of the path diminished, the way widened out, and +they found themselves in a very beautiful place indeed. It was one of +those upland clusters of sheds and houses that are still to be found in +the mountains of North Italy, buildings that were used only in the high +summer, and which it was the custom to leave locked up and deserted +through all the winter and spring, and up to the middle of June. The +buildings were of a soft-toned gray stone, buried in rich green grass, +shadowed by chestnut trees and lit by an extraordinary blaze of yellow +broom. Never had the king seen broom so glorious; he shouted at the +light of it, for it seemed to give out more sunlight even than it +received; he sat down impulsively on a lichenous stone, tugged out his +bread and cheese, and bade Firmin thrust the beer into the shaded weeds +to cool. + +‘The things people miss, Firmin,’ he said, ‘who go up into the air in +ships!’ + +Firmin looked around him with an ungenial eye. ‘You see it at its best, +sir,’ he said, ‘before the peasants come here again and make it +filthy.’ + +‘It would be beautiful anyhow,’ said the king. + +‘Superficially, sir,’ said Firmin. ‘But it stands for a social order +that is fast vanishing away. Indeed, judging by the grass between the +stones and in the huts, I am inclined to doubt if it is in use even +now.’ + +‘I suppose,’ said the king, ‘they would come up immediately the hay on +this flower meadow is cut. It would be those slow, creamy-coloured +beasts, I expect, one sees on the roads below, and swarthy girls with +red handkerchiefs over their black hair.... It is wonderful to think +how long that beautiful old life lasted. In the Roman times and long +ages before ever the rumour of the Romans had come into these parts, +men drove their cattle up into these places as the summer came on.... +How haunted is this place! There have been quarrels here, hopes, +children have played here and lived to be old crones and old gaffers, +and died, and so it has gone on for thousands of lives. Lovers, +innumerable lovers, have caressed amidst this golden broom....’ + +He meditated over a busy mouthful of bread and cheese. + +‘We ought to have brought a tankard for that beer,’ he said. + +Firmin produced a folding aluminium cup, and the king was pleased to +drink. + +‘I wish, sir,’ said Firmin suddenly, ‘I could induce you at least to +delay your decision——’ + +‘It’s no good talking, Firmin,’ said the king. ‘My mind’s as clear as +daylight.’ + +‘Sire,’ protested Firmin, with his voice full of bread and cheese and +genuine emotion, ‘have you no respect for your kingship?’ + +The king paused before he answered with unwonted gravity. ‘It’s just +because I have, Firmin, that I won’t be a puppet in this game of +international politics.’ He regarded his companion for a moment and +then remarked: ‘Kingship!—what do _you_ know of kingship, Firmin? + +‘Yes,’ cried the king to his astonished counsellor. ‘For the first time +in my life I am going to be a king. I am going to lead, and lead by my +own authority. For a dozen generations my family has been a set of +dummies in the hands of their advisers. Advisers! Now I am going to be +a real king—and I am going to—to abolish, dispose of, finish, the crown +to which I have been a slave. But what a world of paralysing shams this +roaring stuff has ended! The rigid old world is in the melting-pot +again, and I, who seemed to be no more than the stuffing inside a regal +robe, I am a king among kings. I have to play my part at the head of +things and put an end to blood and fire and idiot disorder.’ + +‘But, sir,’ protested Firmin. + +‘This man Leblanc is right. The whole world has got to be a Republic, +one and indivisible. You know that, and my duty is to make that easy. A +king should lead his people; you want me to stick on their backs like +some Old Man of the Sea. To-day must be a sacrament of kings. Our trust +for mankind is done with and ended. We must part our robes among them, +we must part our kingship among them, and say to them all, now the king +in every one must rule the world.... Have you no sense of the +magnificence of this occasion? You want me, Firmin, you want me to go +up there and haggle like a damned little solicitor for some price, some +compensation, some qualification....’ + +Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed an expression of despair. +Meanwhile, he conveyed, one must eat. + +For a time neither spoke, and the king ate and turned over in his mind +the phrases of the speech he intended to make to the conference. By +virtue of the antiquity of his crown he was to preside, and he intended +to make his presidency memorable. Reassured of his eloquence, he +considered the despondent and sulky Firmin for a space. + +‘Firmin,’ he said, ‘you have idealised kingship.’ + +‘It has been my dream, sir,’ said Firmin sorrowfully, ‘to serve.’ + +‘At the levers, Firmin,’ said the king. + +‘You are pleased to be unjust,’ said Firmin, deeply hurt. + +‘I am pleased to be getting out of it,’ said the king. + +‘Oh, Firmin,’ he went on, ‘have you no thought for me? Will you never +realise that I am not only flesh and blood but an imagination—with its +rights. I am a king in revolt against that fetter they put upon my +head. I am a king awake. My reverend grandparents never in all their +august lives had a waking moment. They loved the job that you, you +advisers, gave them; they never had a doubt of it. It was like giving a +doll to a woman who ought to have a child. They delighted in +processions and opening things and being read addresses to, and +visiting triplets and nonagenarians and all that sort of thing. +Incredibly. They used to keep albums of cuttings from all the +illustrated papers showing them at it, and if the press-cutting parcels +grew thin they were worried. It was all that ever worried them. But +there is something atavistic in me; I hark back to unconstitutional +monarchs. They christened me too retrogressively, I think. I wanted to +get things done. I was bored. I might have fallen into vice, most +intelligent and energetic princes do, but the palace precautions were +unusually thorough. I was brought up in the purest court the world has +ever seen.... Alertly pure.... So I read books, Firmin, and went about +asking questions. The thing was bound to happen to one of us sooner or +later. Perhaps, too, very likely I’m not vicious. I don’t think I am.’ + +He reflected. ‘No,’ he said. + +Firmin cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think you are, sir,’ he said. ‘You +prefer——’ + +He stopped short. He had been going to say ‘talking.’ He substituted +‘ideas.’ + +‘That world of royalty!’ the king went on. ‘In a little while no one +will understand it any more. It will become a riddle.... + +‘Among other things, it was a world of perpetual best clothes. +Everything was in its best clothes for us, and usually wearing bunting. +With a cinema watching to see we took it properly. If you are a king, +Firmin, and you go and look at a regiment, it instantly stops whatever +it is doing, changes into full uniform and presents arms. When my +august parents went in a train the coal in the tender used to be +whitened. It did, Firmin, and if coal had been white instead of black I +have no doubt the authorities would have blackened it. That was the +spirit of our treatment. People were always walking about with their +faces to us. One never saw anything in profile. One got an impression +of a world that was insanely focused on ourselves. And when I began to +poke my little questions into the Lord Chancellor and the archbishop +and all the rest of them, about what I should see if people turned +round, the general effect I produced was that I wasn’t by any means +displaying the Royal Tact they had expected of me....’ + +He meditated for a time. + +‘And yet, you know, there is something in the kingship, Firmin. It +stiffened up my august little grandfather. It gave my grandmother a +kind of awkward dignity even when she was cross—and she was very often +cross. They both had a profound sense of responsibility. My poor +father’s health was wretched during his brief career; nobody outside +the circle knows just how he screwed himself up to things. “My people +expect it,” he used to say of this tiresome duty or that. Most of the +things they made him do were silly—it was part of a bad tradition, but +there was nothing silly in the way he set about them.... The spirit of +kingship is a fine thing, Firmin; I feel it in my bones; I do not know +what I might not be if I were not a king. I could die for my people, +Firmin, and you couldn’t. No, don’t say you could die for me, because I +know better. Don’t think I forget my kingship, Firmin, don’t imagine +that. I am a king, a kingly king, by right divine. The fact that I am +also a chattering young man makes not the slightest difference to that. +But the proper text-book for kings, Firmin, is none of the court +memoirs and Welt-Politik books you would have me read; it is old +Fraser’s _Golden Bough_. Have you read that, Firmin?’ + +Firmin had. ‘Those were the authentic kings. In the end they were cut +up and a bit given to everybody. They sprinkled the nations—with +Kingship.’ + +Firmin turned himself round and faced his royal master. + +‘What do you intend to do, sir?’ he asked. ‘If you will not listen to +me, what do you propose to do this afternoon?’ + +The king flicked crumbs from his coat. + +‘Manifestly war has to stop for ever, Firmin. Manifestly this can only +be done by putting all the world under one government. Our crowns and +flags are in the way. Manifestly they must go.’ + +‘Yes, sir,’ interrupted Firmin, ‘but _what_ government? I don’t see +what government you get by a universal abdication!’ + +‘Well,’ said the king, with his hands about his knees, ‘_We_ shall be +the government.’ + +‘The conference?’ exclaimed Firmin. + +‘Who else?’ asked the king simply. + +‘It’s perfectly simple,’ he added to Firmin’s tremendous silence. + +‘But,’ cried Firmin, ‘you must have sanctions! Will there be no form of +election, for example?’ + +‘Why should there be?’ asked the king, with intelligent curiosity. + +‘The consent of the governed.’ + +‘Firmin, we are just going to lay down our differences and take over +government. Without any election at all. Without any sanction. The +governed will show their consent by silence. If any effective +opposition arises we shall ask it to come in and help. The true +sanction of kingship is the grip upon the sceptre. We aren’t going to +worry people to vote for us. I’m certain the mass of men does not want +to be bothered with such things.... We’ll contrive a way for any one +interested to join in. That’s quite enough in the way of democracy. +Perhaps later—when things don’t matter.... We shall govern all right, +Firmin. Government only becomes difficult when the lawyers get hold of +it, and since these troubles began the lawyers are shy. Indeed, come to +think of it, I wonder where all the lawyers are.... Where are they? A +lot, of course, were bagged, some of the worst ones, when they blew up +my legislature. You never knew the late Lord Chancellor.... + +‘Necessities bury rights. And create them. Lawyers live on dead rights +disinterred.... We’ve done with that way of living. We won’t have more +law than a code can cover and beyond that government will be free.... + +‘Before the sun sets to-day, Firmin, trust me, we shall have made our +abdications, all of us, and declared the World Republic, supreme and +indivisible. I wonder what my august grandmother would have made of it! +All my rights! . . . And then we shall go on governing. What else is +there to do? All over the world we shall declare that there is no +longer mine or thine, but ours. China, the United States, two-thirds of +Europe, will certainly fall in and obey. They will have to do so. What +else can they do? Their official rulers are here with us. They won’t be +able to get together any sort of idea of not obeying us.... Then we +shall declare that every sort of property is held in trust for the +Republic....’ + +‘But, sir!’ cried Firmin, suddenly enlightened. ‘Has this been arranged +already?’ + +‘My dear Firmin, do you think we have come here, all of us, to talk at +large? The talking has been done for half a century. Talking and +writing. We are here to set the new thing, the simple, obvious, +necessary thing, going.’ + +He stood up. + +Firmin, forgetting the habits of a score of years, remained seated. + +‘_Well_,’ he said at last. ‘And I have known nothing!’ + +The king smiled very cheerfully. He liked these talks with Firmin. + +Section 3 + +That conference upon the Brissago meadows was one of the most +heterogeneous collections of prominent people that has ever met +together. Principalities and powers, stripped and shattered until all +their pride and mystery were gone, met in a marvellous new humility. +Here were kings and emperors whose capitals were lakes of flaming +destruction, statesmen whose countries had become chaos, scared +politicians and financial potentates. Here were leaders of thought and +learned investigators dragged reluctantly to the control of affairs. +Altogether there were ninety-three of them, Leblanc’s conception of the +head men of the world. They had all come to the realisation of the +simple truths that the indefatigable Leblanc had hammered into them; +and, drawing his resources from the King of Italy, he had provisioned +his conference with a generous simplicity quite in accordance with the +rest of his character, and so at last was able to make his astonishing +and entirely rational appeal. He had appointed King Egbert the +president, he believed in this young man so firmly that he completely +dominated him, and he spoke himself as a secretary might speak from the +president’s left hand, and evidently did not realise himself that he +was telling them all exactly what they had to do. He imagined he was +merely recapitulating the obvious features of the situation for their +convenience. He was dressed in ill-fitting white silk clothes, and he +consulted a dingy little packet of notes as he spoke. They put him out. +He explained that he had never spoken from notes before, but that this +occasion was exceptional. + +And then King Egbert spoke as he was expected to speak, and Leblanc’s +spectacles moistened at that flow of generous sentiment, most amiably +and lightly expressed. ‘We haven’t to stand on ceremony,’ said the +king, ‘we have to govern the world. We have always pretended to govern +the world and here is our opportunity.’ + +‘Of course,’ whispered Leblanc, nodding his head rapidly, ‘of course.’ + +‘The world has been smashed up, and we have to put it on its wheels +again,’ said King Egbert. ‘And it is the simple common sense of this +crisis for all to help and none to seek advantage. Is that our tone or +not?’ + +The gathering was too old and seasoned and miscellaneous for any great +displays of enthusiasm, but that was its tone, and with an astonishment +that somehow became exhilarating it began to resign, repudiate, and +declare its intentions. Firmin, taking notes behind his master, heard +everything that had been foretold among the yellow broom, come true. +With a queer feeling that he was dreaming, he assisted at the +proclamation of the World State, and saw the message taken out to the +wireless operators to be throbbed all round the habitable globe. ‘And +next,’ said King Egbert, with a cheerful excitement in his voice, ‘we +have to get every atom of Carolinum and all the plant for making it, +into our control....’ + +Firmin was not alone in his incredulity. Not a man there who was not a +very amiable, reasonable, benevolent creature at bottom; some had been +born to power and some had happened upon it, some had struggled to get +it, not clearly knowing what it was and what it implied, but none was +irreconcilably set upon its retention at the price of cosmic disaster. +Their minds had been prepared by circumstances and sedulously +cultivated by Leblanc; and now they took the broad obvious road along +which King Egbert was leading them, with a mingled conviction of +strangeness and necessity. Things went very smoothly; the King of Italy +explained the arrangements that had been made for the protection of the +camp from any fantastic attack; a couple of thousand of aeroplanes, +each carrying a sharpshooter, guarded them, and there was an excellent +system of relays, and at night all the sky would be searched by scores +of lights, and the admirable Leblanc gave luminous reasons for their +camping just where they were and going on with their administrative +duties forthwith. He knew of this place, because he had happened upon +it when holiday-making with Madame Leblanc twenty years and more ago. +‘There is very simple fare at present,’ he explained, ‘on account of +the disturbed state of the countries about us. But we have excellent +fresh milk, good red wine, beef, bread, salad, and lemons.... In a few +days I hope to place things in the hands of a more efficient +caterer....’ + +The members of the new world government dined at three long tables on +trestles, and down the middle of these tables Leblanc, in spite of the +barrenness of his menu, had contrived to have a great multitude of +beautiful roses. There was similar accommodation for the secretaries +and attendants at a lower level down the mountain. The assembly dined +as it had debated, in the open air, and over the dark crags to the west +the glowing June sunset shone upon the banquet. There was no precedency +now among the ninety-three, and King Egbert found himself between a +pleasant little Japanese stranger in spectacles and his cousin of +Central Europe, and opposite a great Bengali leader and the President +of the United States of America. Beyond the Japanese was Holsten, the +old chemist, and Leblanc was a little way down the other side. + +The king was still cheerfully talkative and abounded in ideas. He fell +presently into an amiable controversy with the American, who seemed to +feel a lack of impressiveness in the occasion. + +It was ever the Transatlantic tendency, due, no doubt, to the necessity +of handling public questions in a bulky and striking manner, to +over-emphasise and over-accentuate, and the president was touched by +his national failing. He suggested now that there should be a new era, +starting from that day as the first day of the first year. + +The king demurred. + +‘From this day forth, sir, man enters upon his heritage,’ said the +American. + +‘Man,’ said the king, ‘is always entering upon his heritage. You +Americans have a peculiar weakness for anniversaries—if you will +forgive me saying so. Yes—I accuse you of a lust for dramatic effect. +Everything is happening always, but you want to say this or this is the +real instant in time and subordinate all the others to it.’ + +The American said something about an epoch-making day. + +‘But surely,’ said the king, ‘you don’t want us to condemn all humanity +to a world-wide annual Fourth of July for ever and ever more. On +account of this harmless necessary day of declarations. No conceivable +day could ever deserve that. Ah! you do not know, as I do, the +devastations of the memorable. My poor grandparents were—_rubricated_. +The worst of these huge celebrations is that they break up the +dignified succession of one’s contemporary emotions. They interrupt. +They set back. Suddenly out come the flags and fireworks, and the old +enthusiasms are furbished up—and it’s sheer destruction of the proper +thing that ought to be going on. Sufficient unto the day is the +celebration thereof. Let the dead past bury its dead. You see, in +regard to the calendar, I am for democracy and you are for aristocracy. +All things I hold, are august, and have a right to be lived through on +their merits. No day should be sacrificed on the grave of departed +events. What do you think of it, Wilhelm?’ + +‘For the noble, yes, all days should be noble.’ + +‘Exactly my position,’ said the king, and felt pleased at what he had +been saying. + +And then, since the American pressed his idea, the king contrived to +shift the talk from the question of celebrating the epoch they were +making to the question of the probabilities that lay ahead. Here every +one became diffident. They could see the world unified and at peace, +but what detail was to follow from that unification they seemed +indisposed to discuss. This diffidence struck the king as remarkable. +He plunged upon the possibilities of science. All the huge expenditure +that had hitherto gone into unproductive naval and military +preparations, must now, he declared, place research upon a new footing. +‘Where one man worked we will have a thousand.’ He appealed to Holsten. +‘We have only begun to peep into these possibilities,’ he said. ‘You at +any rate have sounded the vaults of the treasure house.’ + +‘They are unfathomable,’ smiled Holsten. + +‘Man,’ said the American, with a manifest resolve to justify and +reinstate himself after the flickering contradictions of the king, +‘Man, I say, is only beginning to enter upon his heritage.’ + +‘Tell us some of the things you believe we shall presently learn, give +us an idea of the things we may presently do,’ said the king to +Holsten. + +Holsten opened out the vistas.... + +‘Science,’ the king cried presently, ‘is the new king of the world.’ + +‘_Our_ view,’ said the president, ‘is that sovereignty resides with the +people.’ + +‘No!’ said the king, ‘the sovereign is a being more subtle than that. +And less arithmetical. Neither my family nor your emancipated people. +It is something that floats about us, and above us, and through us. It +is that common impersonal will and sense of necessity of which Science +is the best understood and most typical aspect. It is the mind of the +race. It is that which has brought us here, which has bowed us all to +its demands....’ + +He paused and glanced down the table at Leblanc, and then re-opened at +his former antagonist. + +‘There is a disposition,’ said the king, ‘to regard this gathering as +if it were actually doing what it appears to be doing, as if we +ninety-odd men of our own free will and wisdom were unifying the world. +There is a temptation to consider ourselves exceptionally fine fellows, +and masterful men, and all the rest of it. We are not. I doubt if we +should average out as anything abler than any other casually selected +body of ninety-odd men. We are no creators, we are consequences, we are +salvagers—or salvagees. The thing to-day is not ourselves but the wind +of conviction that has blown us hither....’ + +The American had to confess he could hardly agree with the king’s +estimate of their average. + +‘Holsten, perhaps, and one or two others, might lift us a little,’ the +king conceded. ‘But the rest of us?’ + +His eyes flitted once more towards Leblanc. + +‘Look at Leblanc,’ he said. ‘He’s just a simple soul. There are +hundreds and thousands like him. I admit, a certain dexterity, a +certain lucidity, but there is not a country town in France where there +is not a Leblanc or so to be found about two o’clock in its principal +café. It’s just that he isn’t complicated or Super-Mannish, or any of +those things that has made all he has done possible. But in happier +times, don’t you think, Wilhelm, he would have remained just what his +father was, a successful _épicier_, very clean, very accurate, very +honest. And on holidays he would have gone out with Madame Leblanc and +her knitting in a punt with a jar of something gentle and have sat +under a large reasonable green-lined umbrella and fished very neatly +and successfully for gudgeon....’ + +The president and the Japanese prince in spectacles protested together. + +‘If I do him an injustice,’ said the king, ‘it is only because I want +to elucidate my argument. I want to make it clear how small are men and +days, and how great is man in comparison....’ + +Section 4 + +So it was King Egbert talked at Brissago after they had proclaimed the +unity of the world. Every evening after that the assembly dined +together and talked at their ease and grew accustomed to each other and +sharpened each other’s ideas, and every day they worked together, and +really for a time believed that they were inventing a new government +for the world. They discussed a constitution. But there were matters +needing attention too urgently to wait for any constitution. They +attended to these incidentally. The constitution it was that waited. It +was presently found convenient to keep the constitution waiting +indefinitely as King Egbert had foreseen, and meanwhile, with an +increasing self-confidence, that council went on governing.... + +On this first evening of all the council’s gatherings, after King +Egbert had talked for a long time and drunken and praised very +abundantly the simple red wine of the country that Leblanc had procured +for them, he gathered about him a group of congenial spirits and fell +into a discourse upon simplicity, praising it above all things and +declaring that the ultimate aim of art, religion, philosophy, and +science alike was to simplify. He instanced himself as a devotee to +simplicity. And Leblanc he instanced as a crowning instance of the +splendour of this quality. Upon that they all agreed. + +When at last the company about the tables broke up, the king found +himself brimming over with a peculiar affection and admiration for +Leblanc, he made his way to him and drew him aside and broached what he +declared was a small matter. There was, he said, a certain order in his +gift that, unlike all other orders and decorations in the world, had +never been corrupted. It was reserved for elderly men of supreme +distinction, the acuteness of whose gifts was already touched to +mellowness, and it had included the greatest names of every age so far +as the advisers of his family had been able to ascertain them. At +present, the king admitted, these matters of stars and badges were +rather obscured by more urgent affairs, for his own part he had never +set any value upon them at all, but a time might come when they would +be at least interesting, and in short he wished to confer the Order of +Merit upon Leblanc. His sole motive in doing so, he added, was his +strong desire to signalise his personal esteem. He laid his hand upon +the Frenchman’s shoulder as he said these things, with an almost +brotherly affection. Leblanc received this proposal with a modest +confusion that greatly enhanced the king’s opinion of his admirable +simplicity. He pointed out that eager as he was to snatch at the +proffered distinction, it might at the present stage appear invidious, +and he therefore suggested that the conferring of it should be +postponed until it could be made the crown and conclusion of his +services. The king was unable to shake this resolution, and the two men +parted with expressions of mutual esteem. + +The king then summoned Firmin in order to make a short note of a number +of things that he had said during the day. But after about twenty +minutes’ work the sweet sleepiness of the mountain air overcame him, +and he dismissed Firmin and went to bed and fell asleep at once, and +slept with extreme satisfaction. He had had an active, agreeable day. + +Section 5 + +The establishment of the new order that was thus so humanly begun, was, +if one measures it by the standard of any preceding age, a rapid +progress. The fighting spirit of the world was exhausted. Only here or +there did fierceness linger. For long decades the combative side in +human affairs had been monstrously exaggerated by the accidents of +political separation. This now became luminously plain. An enormous +proportion of the force that sustained armaments had been nothing more +aggressive than the fear of war and warlike neighbours. It is doubtful +if any large section of the men actually enlisted for fighting ever at +any time really hungered and thirsted for bloodshed and danger. That +kind of appetite was probably never very strong in the species after +the savage stage was past. The army was a profession, in which killing +had become a disagreeable possibility rather than an eventful +certainty. If one reads the old newspapers and periodicals of that +time, which did so much to keep militarism alive, one finds very little +about glory and adventure and a constant harping on the +disagreeableness of invasion and subjugation. In one word, militarism +was funk. The belligerent resolution of the armed Europe of the +twentieth century was the resolution of a fiercely frightened sheep to +plunge. And now that its weapons were exploding in its hands, Europe +was only too eager to drop them, and abandon this fancied refuge of +violence. + +For a time the whole world had been shocked into frankness; nearly all +the clever people who had hitherto sustained the ancient belligerent +separations had now been brought to realise the need for simplicity of +attitude and openness of mind; and in this atmosphere of moral +renascence, there was little attempt to get negotiable advantages out +of resistance to the new order. Human beings are foolish enough no +doubt, but few have stopped to haggle in a fire-escape. The council had +its way with them. The band of ‘patriots’ who seized the laboratories +and arsenal just outside Osaka and tried to rouse Japan to revolt +against inclusion in the Republic of Mankind, found they had +miscalculated the national pride and met the swift vengeance of their +own countrymen. That fight in the arsenal was a vivid incident in this +closing chapter of the history of war. To the last the ‘patriots’ were +undecided whether, in the event of a defeat, they would explode their +supply of atomic bombs or not. They were fighting with swords outside +the iridium doors, and the moderates of their number were at bay and on +the verge of destruction, only ten, indeed, remained unwounded, when +the republicans burst in to the rescue.... + +Section 6 + +One single monarch held out against the general acquiescence in the new +rule, and that was that strange survival of mediaevalism, the ‘Slavic +Fox,’ the King of the Balkans. He debated and delayed his submissions. +He showed an extraordinary combination of cunning and temerity in his +evasion of the repeated summonses from Brissago. He affected ill-health +and a great preoccupation with his new official mistress, for his +semi-barbaric court was arranged on the best romantic models. His +tactics were ably seconded by Doctor Pestovitch, his chief minister. +Failing to establish his claims to complete independence, King +Ferdinand Charles annoyed the conference by a proposal to be treated as +a protected state. Finally he professed an unconvincing submission, and +put a mass of obstacles in the way of the transfer of his national +officials to the new government. In these things he was +enthusiastically supported by his subjects, still for the most part an +illiterate peasantry, passionately if confusedly patriotic, and so far +with no practical knowledge of the effect of atomic bombs. More +particularly he retained control of all the Balkan aeroplanes. + +For once the extreme _naïveté_ of Leblanc seems to have been mitigated +by duplicity. He went on with the general pacification of the world as +if the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he +announced the disbandment of the force of aeroplanes that hitherto +guarded the council at Brissago upon the approaching fifteenth of July. +But instead he doubled the number upon duty on that eventful day, and +made various arrangements for their disposition. He consulted certain +experts, and when he took King Egbert into his confidence there was +something in his neat and explicit foresight that brought back to that +ex-monarch’s mind his half-forgotten fantasy of Leblanc as a fisherman +under a green umbrella. + +About five o’clock in the morning of the seventeenth of July one of the +outer sentinels of the Brissago fleet, which was soaring unobtrusively +over the lower end of the lake of Garda, sighted and hailed a strange +aeroplane that was flying westward, and, failing to get a satisfactory +reply, set its wireless apparatus talking and gave chase. A swarm of +consorts appeared very promptly over the westward mountains, and before +the unknown aeroplane had sighted Como, it had a dozen eager attendants +closing in upon it. Its driver seems to have hesitated, dropped down +among the mountains, and then turned southward in flight, only to find +an intercepting biplane sweeping across his bows. He then went round +into the eye of the rising sun, and passed within a hundred yards of +his original pursuer. + +The sharpshooter therein opened fire at once, and showed an intelligent +grasp of the situation by disabling the passenger first. The man at the +wheel must have heard his companion cry out behind him, but he was too +intent on getting away to waste even a glance behind. Twice after that +he must have heard shots. He let his engine go, he crouched down, and +for twenty minutes he must have steered in the continual expectation of +a bullet. It never came, and when at last he glanced round, three great +planes were close upon him, and his companion, thrice hit, lay dead +across his bombs. His followers manifestly did not mean either to upset +or shoot him, but inexorably they drove him down, down. At last he was +curving and flying a hundred yards or less over the level fields of +rice and maize. Ahead of him and dark against the morning sunrise was a +village with a very tall and slender campanile and a line of cable +bearing metal standards that he could not clear. He stopped his engine +abruptly and dropped flat. He may have hoped to get at the bombs when +he came down, but his pitiless pursuers drove right over him and shot +him as he fell. + +Three other aeroplanes curved down and came to rest amidst grass close +by the smashed machine. Their passengers descended, and ran, holding +their light rifles in their hands towards the _débris_ and the two dead +men. The coffin-shaped box that had occupied the centre of the machine +had broken, and three black objects, each with two handles like the +ears of a pitcher, lay peacefully amidst the litter. + +These objects were so tremendously important in the eyes of their +captors that they disregarded the two dead men who lay bloody and +broken amidst the wreckage as they might have disregarded dead frogs by +a country pathway. + +‘By God,’ cried the first. ‘Here they are!’ + +‘And unbroken!’ said the second. + +‘I’ve never seen the things before,’ said the first. + +‘Bigger than I thought,’ said the second. + +The third comer arrived. He stared for a moment at the bombs and then +turned his eyes to the dead man with a crushed chest who lay in a muddy +place among the green stems under the centre of the machine. + +‘One can take no risks,’ he said, with a faint suggestion of apology. + +The other two now also turned to the victims. ‘We must signal,’ said +the first man. A shadow passed between them and the sun, and they +looked up to see the aeroplane that had fired the last shot. ‘Shall we +signal?’ came a megaphone hail. + +‘Three bombs,’ they answered together. + +‘Where do they come from?’ asked the megaphone. + +The three sharpshooters looked at each other and then moved towards the +dead men. One of them had an idea. ‘Signal that first,’ he said, ‘while +we look.’ They were joined by their aviators for the search, and all +six men began a hunt that was necessarily brutal in its haste, for some +indication of identity. They examined the men’s pockets, their +bloodstained clothes, the machine, the framework. They turned the +bodies over and flung them aside. There was not a tattoo mark.... +Everything was elaborately free of any indication of its origin. + +‘We can’t find out!’ they called at last. + +‘Not a sign?’ + +‘Not a sign.’ + +‘I’m coming down,’ said the man overhead.... + +Section 7 + +The Slavic fox stood upon a metal balcony in his picturesque Art +Nouveau palace that gave upon the precipice that overhung his bright +little capital, and beside him stood Pestovitch, grizzled and cunning, +and now full of an ill-suppressed excitement. Behind them the window +opened into a large room, richly decorated in aluminium and crimson +enamel, across which the king, as he glanced ever and again over his +shoulder with a gesture of inquiry, could see through the two open +doors of a little azure walled antechamber the wireless operator in the +turret working at his incessant transcription. Two pompously uniformed +messengers waited listlessly in this apartment. The room was furnished +with a stately dignity, and had in the middle of it a big green +baize-covered table with the massive white metal inkpots and antiquated +sandboxes natural to a new but romantic monarchy. It was the king’s +council chamber and about it now, in attitudes of suspended intrigue, +stood the half-dozen ministers who constituted his cabinet. They had +been summoned for twelve o’clock, but still at half-past twelve the +king loitered in the balcony and seemed to be waiting for some news +that did not come. + +The king and his minister had talked at first in whispers; they had +fallen silent, for they found little now to express except a vague +anxiety. Away there on the mountain side were the white metal roofs of +the long farm buildings beneath which the bomb factory and the bombs +were hidden. (The chemist who had made all these for the king had died +suddenly after the declaration of Brissago.) Nobody knew of that store +of mischief now but the king and his adviser and three heavily faithful +attendants; the aviators who waited now in the midday blaze with their +bomb-carrying machines and their passenger bomb-throwers in the +exercising grounds of the motor-cyclist barracks below were still in +ignorance of the position of the ammunition they were presently to take +up. It was time they started if the scheme was to work as Pestovitch +had planned it. It was a magnificent plan. It aimed at no less than the +Empire of the World. The government of idealists and professors away +there at Brissago was to be blown to fragments, and then east, west, +north, and south those aeroplanes would go swarming over a world that +had disarmed itself, to proclaim Ferdinand Charles, the new Cæsar, the +Master, Lord of the Earth. It was a magnificent plan. But the tension +of this waiting for news of the success of the first blow +was—considerable. + +The Slavic fox was of a pallid fairness, he had a remarkably long nose, +a thick, short moustache, and small blue eyes that were a little too +near together to be pleasant. It was his habit to worry his moustache +with short, nervous tugs whenever his restless mind troubled him, and +now this motion was becoming so incessant that it irked Pestovitch +beyond the limits of endurance. + +‘I will go,’ said the minister, ‘and see what the trouble is with the +wireless. They give us nothing, good or bad.’ + +Left to himself, the king could worry his moustache without stint; he +leant his elbows forward on the balcony and gave both of his long white +hands to the work, so that he looked like a pale dog gnawing a bone. +Suppose they caught his men, what should he do? Suppose they caught his +men? + +The clocks in the light gold-capped belfries of the town below +presently intimated the half-hour after midday. + +Of course, he and Pestovitch had thought it out. Even if they had +caught those men, they were pledged to secrecy.... Probably they would +be killed in the catching.... One could deny anyhow, deny and deny. + +And then he became aware of half a dozen little shining specks very +high in the blue.... Pestovitch came out to him presently. ‘The +government messages, sire, have all dropped into cipher,’ he said. ‘I +have set a man——’ + +‘_look!_’ interrupted the king, and pointed upward with a long, lean +finger. + +Pestovitch followed that indication and then glanced for one +questioning moment at the white face before him. + +‘We have to face it out, sire,’ he said. + +For some moments they watched the steep spirals of the descending +messengers, and then they began a hasty consultation.... + +They decided that to be holding a council upon the details of an +ultimate surrender to Brissago was as innocent-looking a thing as the +king could well be doing, and so, when at last the ex-king Egbert, whom +the council had sent as its envoy, arrived upon the scene, he +discovered the king almost theatrically posed at the head of his +councillors in the midst of his court. The door upon the wireless +operators was shut. + +The ex-king from Brissago came like a draught through the curtains and +attendants that gave a wide margin to King Ferdinand’s state, and the +familiar confidence of his manner belied a certain hardness in his eye. +Firmin trotted behind him, and no one else was with him. And as +Ferdinand Charles rose to greet him, there came into the heart of the +Balkan king again that same chilly feeling that he had felt upon the +balcony—and it passed at the careless gestures of his guest. For surely +any one might outwit this foolish talker who, for a mere idea and at +the command of a little French rationalist in spectacles, had thrown +away the most ancient crown in all the world. + +One must deny, deny.... + +And then slowly and quite tiresomely he realised that there was nothing +to deny. His visitor, with an amiable ease, went on talking about +everything in debate between himself and Brissago except——. + +Could it be that they had been delayed? Could it be that they had had +to drop for repairs and were still uncaptured? Could it be that even +now while this fool babbled, they were over there among the mountains +heaving their deadly charge over the side of the aeroplane? + +Strange hopes began to lift the tail of the Slavic fox again. + +What was the man saying? One must talk to him anyhow until one knew. At +any moment the little brass door behind him might open with the news of +Brissago blown to atoms. Then it would be a delightful relief to the +present tension to arrest this chatterer forthwith. He might be killed +perhaps. What? + +The king was repeating his observation. ‘They have a ridiculous fancy +that your confidence is based on the possession of atomic bombs.’ + +King Ferdinand Charles pulled himself together. He protested. + +‘Oh, quite so,’ said the ex-king, ‘quite so.’ + +‘What grounds?’ The ex-king permitted himself a gesture and the ghost +of a chuckle—why the devil should he chuckle? ‘Practically none,’ he +said. ‘But of course with these things one has to be so careful.’ + +And then again for an instant something—like the faintest shadow of +derision—gleamed out of the envoy’s eyes and recalled that chilly +feeling to King Ferdinand’s spine. + +Some kindred depression had come to Pestovitch, who had been watching +the drawn intensity of Firmin’s face. He came to the help of his +master, who, he feared, might protest too much. + +‘A search!’ cried the king. ‘An embargo on our aeroplanes.’ + +‘Only a temporary expedient,’ said the ex-king Egbert, ‘while the +search is going on.’ + +The king appealed to his council. + +‘The people will never permit it, sire,’ said a bustling little man in +a gorgeous uniform. + +‘You’ll have to make ‘em,’ said the ex-king, genially addressing all +the councillors. + +King Ferdinand glanced at the closed brass door through which no news +would come. + +‘When would you want to have this search?’ + +The ex-king was radiant. ‘We couldn’t possibly do it until the day +after to-morrow,’ he said. + +‘Just the capital?’ + +‘Where else?’ asked the ex-king, still more cheerfully. + +‘For my own part,’ said the ex-king confidentially, ‘I think the whole +business ridiculous. Who would be such a fool as to hide atomic bombs? +Nobody. Certain hanging if he’s caught—certain, and almost certain +blowing up if he isn’t. But nowadays I have to take orders like the +rest of the world. And here I am.’ + +The king thought he had never met such detestable geniality. He glanced +at Pestovitch, who nodded almost imperceptibly. It was well, anyhow, to +have a fool to deal with. They might have sent a diplomatist. ‘Of +course,’ said the king, ‘I recognise the overpowering force—and a kind +of logic—in these orders from Brissago.’ + +‘I knew you would,’ said the ex-king, with an air of relief, ‘and so +let us arrange——’ + +They arranged with a certain informality. No Balkan aeroplane was to +adventure into the air until the search was concluded, and meanwhile +the fleets of the world government would soar and circle in the sky. +The towns were to be placarded with offers of reward to any one who +would help in the discovery of atomic bombs.... + +‘You will sign that,’ said the ex-king. + +‘Why?’ + +‘To show that we aren’t in any way hostile to you.’ + +Pestovitch nodded ‘yes’ to his master. + +‘And then, you see,’ said the ex-king in that easy way of his, ‘we’ll +have a lot of men here, borrow help from your police, and run through +all your things. And then everything will be over. Meanwhile, if I may +be your guest....’ When presently Pestovitch was alone with the king +again, he found him in a state of jangling emotions. His spirit was +tossing like a wind-whipped sea. One moment he was exalted and full of +contempt for ‘that ass’ and his search; the next he was down in a pit +of dread. ‘They will find them, Pestovitch, and then he’ll hang us.’ + +‘Hang us?’ + +The king put his long nose into his councillor’s face. ‘That grinning +brute _wants_ to hang us,’ he said. ‘And hang us he will, if we give +him a shadow of a chance.’ + +‘But all their Modern State Civilisation!’ + +‘Do you think there’s any pity in that crew of Godless, Vivisecting +Prigs?’ cried this last king of romance. ‘Do you think, Pestovitch, +they understand anything of a high ambition or a splendid dream? Do you +think that our gallant and sublime adventure has any appeal to them? +Here am I, the last and greatest and most romantic of the Cæsars, and +do you think they will miss the chance of hanging me like a dog if they +can, killing me like a rat in a hole? And that renegade! He who was +once an anointed king! . . . + +‘I hate that sort of eye that laughs and keeps hard,’ said the king. + +‘I won’t sit still here and be caught like a fascinated rabbit,’ said +the king in conclusion. ‘We must shift those bombs.’ + +‘Risk it,’ said Pestovitch. ‘Leave them alone.’ + +‘No,’ said the king. ‘Shift them near the frontier. Then while they +watch us here—they will always watch us here now—we can buy an +aeroplane abroad, and pick them up....’ + +The king was in a feverish, irritable mood all that evening, but he +made his plans nevertheless with infinite cunning. They must get the +bombs away; there must be a couple of atomic hay lorries, the bombs +could be hidden under the hay.... Pestovitch went and came, instructing +trusty servants, planning and replanning.... The king and the ex-king +talked very pleasantly of a number of subjects. All the while at the +back of King Ferdinand Charles’s mind fretted the mystery of his +vanished aeroplane. There came no news of its capture, and no news of +its success. At any moment all that power at the back of his visitor +might crumble away and vanish.... + +It was past midnight, when the king, in a cloak and slouch hat that +might equally have served a small farmer, or any respectable +middle-class man, slipped out from an inconspicuous service gate on the +eastward side of his palace into the thickly wooded gardens that sloped +in a series of terraces down to the town. Pestovitch and his +guard-valet Peter, both wrapped about in a similar disguise, came out +among the laurels that bordered the pathway and joined him. It was a +clear, warm night, but the stars seemed unusually little and remote +because of the aeroplanes, each trailing a searchlight, that drove +hither and thither across the blue. One great beam seemed to rest on +the king for a moment as he came out of the palace; then instantly and +reassuringly it had swept away. But while they were still in the palace +gardens another found them and looked at them. + +‘They see us,’ cried the king. + +‘They make nothing of us,’ said Pestovitch. + +The king glanced up and met a calm, round eye of light, that seemed to +wink at him and vanish, leaving him blinded.... + +The three men went on their way. Near the little gate in the garden +railings that Pestovitch had caused to be unlocked, the king paused +under the shadow of an ilex and looked back at the place. It was very +high and narrow, a twentieth-century rendering of mediaevalism, +mediaevalism in steel and bronze and sham stone and opaque glass. +Against the sky it splashed a confusion of pinnacles. High up in the +eastward wing were the windows of the apartments of the ex-king Egbert. +One of them was brightly lit now, and against the light a little black +figure stood very still and looked out upon the night. + +The king snarled. + +‘He little knows how we slip through his fingers,’ said Pestovitch. + +And as he spoke they saw the ex-king stretch out his arms slowly, like +one who yawns, knuckle his eyes and turn inward—no doubt to his bed. + +Down through the ancient winding back streets of his capital hurried +the king, and at an appointed corner a shabby atomic-automobile waited +for the three. It was a hackney carriage of the lowest grade, with +dinted metal panels and deflated cushions. The driver was one of the +ordinary drivers of the capital, but beside him sat the young secretary +of Pestovitch, who knew the way to the farm where the bombs were +hidden. + +The automobile made its way through the narrow streets of the old town, +which were still lit and uneasy—for the fleet of airships overhead had +kept the cafés open and people abroad—over the great new bridge, and so +by straggling outskirts to the country. And all through his capital the +king who hoped to outdo Cæsar, sat back and was very still, and no one +spoke. And as they got out into the dark country they became aware of +the searchlights wandering over the country-side like the uneasy ghosts +of giants. The king sat forward and looked at these flitting +whitenesses, and every now and then peered up to see the flying ships +overhead. + +‘I don’t like them,’ said the king. + +Presently one of these patches of moonlight came to rest about them and +seemed to be following their automobile. The king drew back. + +‘The things are confoundedly noiseless,’ said the king. ‘It’s like +being stalked by lean white cats.’ + +He peered again. ‘That fellow is watching us,’ he said. + +And then suddenly he gave way to panic. ‘Pestovitch,’ he said, +clutching his minister’s arm, ‘they are watching us. I’m not going +through with this. They are watching us. I’m going back.’ + +Pestovitch remonstrated. ‘Tell him to go back,’ said the king, and +tried to open the window. For a few moments there was a grim struggle +in the automobile; a gripping of wrists and a blow. ‘I can’t go through +with it,’ repeated the king, ‘I can’t go through with it.’ + +‘But they’ll hang us,’ said Pestovitch. + +‘Not if we were to give up now. Not if we were to surrender the bombs. +It is you who brought me into this....’ + +At last Pestovitch compromised. There was an inn perhaps half a mile +from the farm. They could alight there and the king could get brandy, +and rest his nerves for a time. And if he still thought fit to go back +he could go back. + +‘See,’ said Pestovitch, ‘the light has gone again.’ + +The king peered up. ‘I believe he’s following us without a light,’ said +the king. + +In the little old dirty inn the king hung doubtful for a time, and was +for going back and throwing himself on the mercy of the council. ‘If +there is a council,’ said Pestovitch. ‘By this time your bombs may have +settled it. + +‘But if so, these infernal aeroplanes would go.’ + +‘They may not know yet.’ + +‘But, Pestovitch, why couldn’t you do all this without me?’ + +Pestovitch made no answer for a moment. ‘I was for leaving the bombs in +their place,’ he said at last, and went to the window. About their +conveyance shone a circle of bright light. Pestovitch had a brilliant +idea. ‘I will send my secretary out to make a kind of dispute with the +driver. Something that will make them watch up above there. Meanwhile +you and I and Peter will go out by the back way and up by the hedges to +the farm....’ + +It was worthy of his subtle reputation and it answered passing well. + +In ten minutes they were tumbling over the wall of the farm-yard, wet, +muddy, and breathless, but unobserved. But as they ran towards the +barns the king gave vent to something between a groan and a curse, and +all about them shone the light—and passed. + +But had it passed at once or lingered for just a second? + +‘They didn’t see us,’ said Peter. + +‘I don’t think they saw us,’ said the king, and stared as the light +went swooping up the mountain side, hung for a second about a hayrick, +and then came pouring back. + +‘In the barn!’ cried the king. + +He bruised his shin against something, and then all three men were +inside the huge steel-girdered barn in which stood the two motor hay +lorries that were to take the bombs away. Kurt and Abel, the two +brothers of Peter, had brought the lorries thither in daylight. They +had the upper half of the loads of hay thrown off, ready to cover the +bombs, so soon as the king should show the hiding-place. ‘There’s a +sort of pit here,’ said the king. ‘Don’t light another lantern. This +key of mine releases a ring....’ + +For a time scarcely a word was spoken in the darkness of the barn. +There was the sound of a slab being lifted and then of feet descending +a ladder into a pit. Then whispering and then heavy breathing as Kurt +came struggling up with the first of the hidden bombs. + +‘We shall do it yet,’ said the king. And then he gasped. ‘Curse that +light. Why in the name of Heaven didn’t we shut the barn door?’ For the +great door stood wide open and all the empty, lifeless yard outside and +the door and six feet of the floor of the barn were in the blue glare +of an inquiring searchlight. + +‘Shut the door, Peter,’ said Pestovitch. + +‘No,’ cried the king, too late, as Peter went forward into the light. +‘Don’t show yourself!’ cried the king. Kurt made a step forward and +plucked his brother back. For a time all five men stood still. It +seemed that light would never go and then abruptly it was turned off, +leaving them blinded. ‘Now,’ said the king uneasily, ‘now shut the +door.’ + +‘Not completely,’ cried Pestovitch. ‘Leave a chink for us to go out +by....’ + +It was hot work shifting those bombs, and the king worked for a time +like a common man. Kurt and Abel carried the great things up and Peter +brought them to the carts, and the king and Pestovitch helped him to +place them among the hay. They made as little noise as they could.... + +‘Ssh!’ cried the king. ‘What’s that?’ + +But Kurt and Abel did not hear, and came blundering up the ladder with +the last of the load. + +‘Ssh!’ Peter ran forward to them with a whispered remonstrance. Now +they were still. + +The barn door opened a little wider, and against the dim blue light +outside they saw the black shape of a man. + +‘Any one here?’ he asked, speaking with an Italian accent. + +The king broke into a cold perspiration. Then Pestovitch answered: +‘Only a poor farmer loading hay,’ he said, and picked up a huge hay +fork and went forward softly. + +‘You load your hay at a very bad time and in a very bad light,’ said +the man at the door, peering in. ‘Have you no electric light here?’ + +Then suddenly he turned on an electric torch, and as he did so +Pestovitch sprang forward. ‘Get out of my barn!’ he cried, and drove +the fork full at the intruder’s chest. He had a vague idea that so he +might stab the man to silence. But the man shouted loudly as the prongs +pierced him and drove him backward, and instantly there was a sound of +feet running across the yard. + +‘Bombs,’ cried the man upon the ground, struggling with the prongs in +his hand, and as Pestovitch staggered forward into view with the force +of his own thrust, he was shot through the body by one of the two +new-comers. + +The man on the ground was badly hurt but plucky. ‘Bombs,’ he repeated, +and struggled up into a kneeling position and held his electric torch +full upon the face of the king. ‘Shoot them,’ he cried, coughing and +spitting blood, so that the halo of light round the king’s head danced +about. + +For a moment in that shivering circle of light the two men saw the king +kneeling up in the cart and Peter on the barn floor beside him. The old +fox looked at them sideways—snared, a white-faced evil thing. And then, +as with a faltering suicidal heroism, he leant forward over the bomb +before him, they fired together and shot him through the head. + +The upper part of his face seemed to vanish. + +‘Shoot them,’ cried the man who had been stabbed. ‘Shoot them all!’ + +And then his light went out, and he rolled over with a groan at the +feet of his comrades. + +But each carried a light of his own, and in another moment everything +in the barn was visible again. They shot Peter even as he held up his +hands in sign of surrender. + +Kurt and Abel at the head of the ladder hesitated for a moment, and +then plunged backward into the pit. ‘If we don’t kill them,’ said one +of the sharpshooters, ‘they’ll blow us to rags. They’ve gone down that +hatchway. Come! . . . + +‘Here they are. Hands up! I say. Hold your light while I shoot....’ + +Section 8 + +It was still quite dark when his valet and Firmin came together and +told the ex-king Egbert that the business was settled. + +He started up into a sitting position on the side of his bed. + +‘Did he go out?’ asked the ex-king. + +‘He is dead,’ said Firmin. ‘He was shot.’ + +The ex-king reflected. ‘That’s about the best thing that could have +happened,’ he said. ‘Where are the bombs? In that farm-house on the +opposite hill-side! Why! the place is in sight! Let us go. I’ll dress. +Is there any one in the place, Firmin, to get us a cup of coffee?’ + +Through the hungry twilight of the dawn the ex-king’s automobile +carried him to the farm-house where the last rebel king was lying among +his bombs. The rim of the sky flashed, the east grew bright, and the +sun was just rising over the hills when King Egbert reached the +farm-yard. There he found the hay lorries drawn out from the barn with +the dreadful bombs still packed upon them. A couple of score of +aviators held the yard, and outside a few peasants stood in a little +group and stared, ignorant as yet of what had happened. Against the +stone wall of the farm-yard five bodies were lying neatly side by side, +and Pestovitch had an expression of surprise on his face and the king +was chiefly identifiable by his long white hands and his blonde +moustache. The wounded aeronaut had been carried down to the inn. And +after the ex-king had given directions in what manner the bombs were to +be taken to the new special laboratories above Zurich, where they could +be unpacked in an atmosphere of chlorine, he turned to these five still +shapes. + +Their five pairs of feet stuck out with a curious stiff unanimity.... + +‘What else was there to do?’ he said in answer to some internal +protest. + +‘I wonder, Firmin, if there are any more of them?’ + +‘Bombs, sir?’ asked Firmin. + +‘No, such kings.... + +‘The pitiful folly of it!’ said the ex-king, following his thoughts. +‘Firmin, as an ex-professor of International Politics, I think it falls +to you to bury them. There? . . . No, don’t put them near the well. +People will have to drink from that well. Bury them over there, some +way off in the field.’ + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH +THE NEW PHASE + + +Section 1 + +The task that lay before the Assembly of Brissago, viewed as we may +view it now from the clarifying standpoint of things accomplished, was +in its broad issues a simple one. Essentially it was to place social +organisation upon the new footing that the swift, accelerated advance +of human knowledge had rendered necessary. The council was gathered +together with the haste of a salvage expedition, and it was confronted +with wreckage; but the wreckage was irreparable wreckage, and the only +possibilities of the case were either the relapse of mankind to the +agricultural barbarism from which it had emerged so painfully or the +acceptance of achieved science as the basis of a new social order. The +old tendencies of human nature, suspicion, jealousy, particularism, and +belligerency, were incompatible with the monstrous destructive power of +the new appliances the inhuman logic of science had produced. The +equilibrium could be restored only by civilisation destroying itself +down to a level at which modern apparatus could no longer be produced, +or by human nature adapting itself in its institutions to the new +conditions. It was for the latter alternative that the assembly +existed. + +Sooner or later this choice would have confronted mankind. The sudden +development of atomic science did but precipitate and render rapid and +dramatic a clash between the new and the customary that had been +gathering since ever the first flint was chipped or the first fire +built together. From the day when man contrived himself a tool and +suffered another male to draw near him, he ceased to be altogether a +thing of instinct and untroubled convictions. From that day forth a +widening breach can be traced between his egotistical passions and the +social need. Slowly he adapted himself to the life of the homestead, +and his passionate impulses widened out to the demands of the clan and +the tribe. But widen though his impulses might, the latent hunter and +wanderer and wonderer in his imagination outstripped their development. +He was never quite subdued to the soil nor quite tamed to the home. +Everywhere it needed teaching and the priest to keep him within the +bounds of the plough-life and the beast-tending. Slowly a vast system +of traditional imperatives superposed itself upon his instincts, +imperatives that were admirably fitted to make him that cultivator, +that cattle-mincer, who was for twice ten thousand years the normal +man. + +And, unpremeditated, undesired, out of the accumulations of his tilling +came civilisation. Civilisation was the agricultural surplus. It +appeared as trade and tracks and roads, it pushed boats out upon the +rivers and presently invaded the seas, and within its primitive courts, +within temples grown rich and leisurely and amidst the gathering medley +of the seaport towns rose speculation and philosophy and science, and +the beginning of the new order that has at last established itself as +human life. Slowly at first, as we traced it, and then with an +accumulating velocity, the new powers were fabricated. Man as a whole +did not seek them nor desire them; they were thrust into his hand. For +a time men took up and used these new things and the new powers +inadvertently as they came to him, recking nothing of the consequences. +For endless generations change led him very gently. But when he had +been led far enough, change quickened the pace. It was with a series of +shocks that he realised at last that he was living the old life less +and less and a new life more and more. + +Already before the release of atomic energy the tensions between the +old way of living and the new were intense. They were far intenser than +they had been even at the collapse of the Roman imperial system. On the +one hand was the ancient life of the family and the small community and +the petty industry, on the other was a new life on a larger scale, with +remoter horizons and a strange sense of purpose. Already it was growing +clear that men must live on one side or the other. One could not have +little tradespeople and syndicated businesses in the same market, +sleeping carters and motor trolleys on the same road, bows and arrows +and aeroplane sharpshooters in the same army, or illiterate peasant +industries and power-driven factories in the same world. And still less +it was possible that one could have the ideas and ambitions and greed +and jealousy of peasants equipped with the vast appliances of the new +age. If there had been no atomic bombs to bring together most of the +directing intelligence of the world to that hasty conference at +Brissago, there would still have been, extended over great areas and a +considerable space of time perhaps, a less formal conference of +responsible and understanding people upon the perplexities of this +world-wide opposition. If the work of Holsten had been spread over +centuries and imparted to the world by imperceptible degrees, it would +nevertheless have made it necessary for men to take counsel upon and +set a plan for the future. Indeed already there had been accumulating +for a hundred years before the crisis a literature of foresight; there +was a whole mass of ‘Modern State’ scheming available for the +conference to go upon. These bombs did but accentuate and dramatise an +already developing problem. + +Section 2 + +This assembly was no leap of exceptional minds and super-intelligences +into the control of affairs. It was teachable, its members trailed +ideas with them to the gathering, but these were the consequences of +the ‘moral shock’ the bombs had given humanity, and there is no reason +for supposing its individual personalities were greatly above the +average. It would be possible to cite a thousand instances of error and +inefficiency in its proceedings due to the forgetfulness, irritability, +or fatigue of its members. It experimented considerably and blundered +often. Excepting Holsten, whose gift was highly specialised, it is +questionable whether there was a single man of the first order of human +quality in the gathering. But it had a modest fear of itself, and a +consequent directness that gave it a general distinction. There was, of +course, a noble simplicity about Leblanc, but even of him it may be +asked whether he was not rather good and honest-minded than in the +fuller sense great. + +The ex-king had wisdom and a certain romantic dash, he was a man among +thousands, even if he was not a man among millions, but his memoirs, +and indeed his decision to write memoirs, give the quality of himself +and his associates. The book makes admirable but astonishing reading. +Therein he takes the great work the council was doing for granted as a +little child takes God. It is as if he had no sense of it at all. He +tells amusing trivialities about his cousin Wilhelm and his secretary +Firmin, he pokes fun at the American president, who was, indeed, rather +a little accident of the political machine than a representative +American, and he gives a long description of how he was lost for three +days in the mountains in the company of the only Japanese member, a +loss that seems to have caused no serious interruption of the work of +the council.... + +The Brissago conference has been written about time after time, as +though it were a gathering of the very flower of humanity. Perched up +there by the freak or wisdom of Leblanc, it had a certain Olympian +quality, and the natural tendency of the human mind to elaborate such a +resemblance would have us give its members the likenesses of gods. It +would be equally reasonable to compare it to one of those enforced +meetings upon the mountain-tops that must have occurred in the opening +phases of the Deluge. The strength of the council lay not in itself but +in the circumstances that had quickened its intelligence, dispelled its +vanities, and emancipated it from traditional ambitions and +antagonisms. It was stripped of the accumulation of centuries, a naked +government with all that freedom of action that nakedness affords. And +its problems were set before it with a plainness that was out of all +comparison with the complicated and perplexing intimations of the +former time. + +The world on which the council looked did indeed present a task quite +sufficiently immense and altogether too urgent for any wanton +indulgence in internal dissension. It may be interesting to sketch in a +few phrases the condition of mankind at the close of the period of +warring states, in the year of crisis that followed the release of +atomic power. It was a world extraordinarily limited when one measures +it by later standards, and it was now in a state of the direst +confusion and distress. + +It must be remembered that at this time men had still to spread into +enormous areas of the land surface of the globe. There were vast +mountain wildernesses, forest wildernesses, sandy deserts, and frozen +lands. Men still clung closely to water and arable soil in temperate or +sub-tropical climates, they lived abundantly only in river valleys, and +all their great cities had grown upon large navigable rivers or close +to ports upon the sea. Over great areas even of this suitable land +flies and mosquitoes, armed with infection, had so far defeated human +invasion, and under their protection the virgin forests remained +untouched. Indeed, the whole world even in its most crowded districts +was filthy with flies and swarming with needless insect life to an +extent which is now almost incredible. A population map of the world in +1950 would have followed seashore and river course so closely in its +darker shading as to give an impression that _homo sapiens_ was an +amphibious animal. His roads and railways lay also along the lower +contours, only here and there to pierce some mountain barrier or reach +some holiday resort did they clamber above 3000 feet. And across the +ocean his traffic passed in definite lines; there were hundreds of +thousands of square miles of ocean no ship ever traversed except by +mischance. + +Into the mysteries of the solid globe under his feet he had not yet +pierced for five miles, and it was still not forty years since, with a +tragic pertinacity, he had clambered to the poles of the earth. The +limitless mineral wealth of the Arctic and Antarctic circles was still +buried beneath vast accumulations of immemorial ice, and the secret +riches of the inner zones of the crust were untapped and indeed +unsuspected. The higher mountain regions were known only to a +sprinkling of guide-led climbers and the frequenters of a few gaunt +hotels, and the vast rainless belts of land that lay across the +continental masses, from Gobi to Sahara and along the backbone of +America, with their perfect air, their daily baths of blazing sunshine, +their nights of cool serenity and glowing stars, and their reservoirs +of deep-lying water, were as yet only desolations of fear and death to +the common imagination. + +And now under the shock of the atomic bombs, the great masses of +population which had gathered into the enormous dingy town centres of +that period were dispossessed and scattered disastrously over the +surrounding rural areas. It was as if some brutal force, grown +impatient at last at man’s blindness, had with the deliberate intention +of a rearrangement of population upon more wholesome lines, shaken the +world. The great industrial regions and the large cities that had +escaped the bombs were, because of their complete economic collapse, in +almost as tragic plight as those that blazed, and the country-side was +disordered by a multitude of wandering and lawless strangers. In some +parts of the world famine raged, and in many regions there was +plague.... The plains of north India, which had become more and more +dependent for the general welfare on the railways and that great system +of irrigation canals which the malignant section of the patriots had +destroyed, were in a state of peculiar distress, whole villages lay +dead together, no man heeding, and the very tigers and panthers that +preyed upon the emaciated survivors crawled back infected into the +jungle to perish. Large areas of China were a prey to brigand bands.... + +It is a remarkable thing that no complete contemporary account of the +explosion of the atomic bombs survives. There are, of course, +innumerable allusions and partial records, and it is from these that +subsequent ages must piece together the image of these devastations. + +The phenomena, it must be remembered, changed greatly from day to day, +and even from hour to hour, as the exploding bomb shifted its position, +threw off fragments or came into contact with water or a fresh texture +of soil. Barnet, who came within forty miles of Paris early in October, +is concerned chiefly with his account of the social confusion of the +country-side and the problems of his command, but he speaks of heaped +cloud masses of steam. ‘All along the sky to the south-west’ and of a +red glare beneath these at night. Parts of Paris were still burning, +and numbers of people were camped in the fields even at this distance +watching over treasured heaps of salvaged loot. He speaks too of the +distant rumbling of the explosion—‘like trains going over iron +bridges.’ + +Other descriptions agree with this; they all speak of the ‘continuous +reverberations,’ or of the ‘thudding and hammering,’ or some such +phrase; and they all testify to a huge pall of steam, from which rain +would fall suddenly in torrents and amidst which lightning played. +Drawing nearer to Paris an observer would have found the salvage camps +increasing in number and blocking up the villages, and large numbers of +people, often starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents +because there was no place for them to go. The sky became more and more +densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day and left +nothing but a dull red glare ‘extraordinarily depressing to the +spirit.’ In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, +clinging to their houses and in many cases subsisting in a state of +partial famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores in the +shops of the provision dealers. + +Coming in still closer, the investigator would have reached the police +cordon, which was trying to check the desperate enterprise of those who +would return to their homes or rescue their more valuable possessions +within the ‘zone of imminent danger.’ + +That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If our spectator could have +got permission to enter it, he would have entered also a zone of +uproar, a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange purplish-red +light, and quivering and swaying with the incessant explosion of the +radio-active substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight and +burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly +and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond. +The shells of other edifices already burnt rose, pierced by rows of +window sockets against the red-lit mist. + +Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a descent within the +crater of an active volcano. These spinning, boiling bomb centres would +shift or break unexpectedly into new regions, great fragments of earth +or drain or masonry suddenly caught by a jet of disruptive force might +come flying by the explorer’s head, or the ground yawn a fiery grave +beneath his feet. Few who adventured into these areas of destruction +and survived attempted any repetition of their experiences. There are +stories of puffs of luminous, radio-active vapour drifting sometimes +scores of miles from the bomb centre and killing and scorching all they +overtook. And the first conflagrations from the Paris centre spread +westward half-way to the sea. + +Moreover, the air in this infernal inner circle of red-lit ruins had a +peculiar dryness and a blistering quality, so that it set up a soreness +of the skin and lungs that was very difficult to heal.... + +Such was the last state of Paris, and such on a larger scale was the +condition of affairs in Chicago, and the same fate had overtaken +Berlin, Moscow, Tokio, the eastern half of London, Toulon, Kiel, and +two hundred and eighteen other centres of population or armament. Each +was a flaming centre of radiant destruction that only time could +quench, that indeed in many instances time has still to quench. To this +day, though indeed with a constantly diminishing uproar and vigour, +these explosions continue. In the map of nearly every country of the +world three or four or more red circles, a score of miles in diameter, +mark the position of the dying atomic bombs and the death areas that +men have been forced to abandon around them. Within these areas +perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries, galleries of +masterpieces, and a vast accumulation of human achievement, whose +charred remains lie buried, a legacy of curious material that only +future generations may hope to examine.... + +Section 3 + +The state of mind of the dispossessed urban population which swarmed +and perished so abundantly over the country-side during the dark days +of the autumnal months that followed the Last War, was one of blank +despair. Barnet gives sketch after sketch of groups of these people, +camped among the vineyards of Champagne, as he saw them during his +period of service with the army of pacification. + +There was, for example, that ‘man-milliner’ who came out from a field +beside the road that rises up eastward out of Epernay, and asked how +things were going in Paris. He was, says Barnet, a round-faced man, +dressed very neatly in black—so neatly that it was amazing to discover +he was living close at hand in a tent made of carpets—and he had ‘an +urbane but insistent manner,’ a carefully trimmed moustache and beard, +expressive eyebrows, and hair very neatly brushed. + +‘No one goes into Paris,’ said Barnet. + +‘But, Monsieur, that is very unenterprising,’ the man by the wayside +submitted. + +‘The danger is too great. The radiations eat into people’s skins.’ + +The eyebrows protested. ‘But is nothing to be done?’ + +‘Nothing can be done.’ + +‘But, Monsieur, it is extraordinarily inconvenient, this living in +exile and waiting. My wife and my little boy suffer extremely. There is +a lack of amenity. And the season advances. I say nothing of the +expense and difficulty in obtaining provisions.... When does Monsieur +think that something will be done to render Paris—possible?’ + +Barnet considered his interlocutor. + +‘I’m told,’ said Barnet, ‘that Paris is not likely to be possible again +for several generations.’ + +‘Oh! but this is preposterous! Consider, Monsieur! What are people like +ourselves to do in the meanwhile? I am a costumier. All my connections +and interests, above all my style, demand Paris....’ + +Barnet considered the sky, from which a light rain was beginning to +fall, the wide fields about them from which the harvest had been taken, +the trimmed poplars by the wayside. + +‘Naturally,’ he agreed, ‘you want to go to Paris. But Paris is over.’ + +‘Over!’ + +‘Finished.’ + +‘But then, Monsieur—what is to become—of _me?_’ + +Barnet turned his face westward, whither the white road led. + +‘Where else, for example, may I hope to find—opportunity?’ + +Barnet made no reply. + +‘Perhaps on the Riviera. Or at some such place as Homburg. Or some +place perhaps.’ + +‘All that,’ said Barnet, accepting for the first time facts that had +lain evident in his mind for weeks; ‘all that must be over, too.’ + +There was a pause. Then the voice beside him broke out. ‘But, Monsieur, +it is impossible! It leaves—nothing.’ + +‘No. Not very much.’ + +‘One cannot suddenly begin to grow potatoes!’ + +‘It would be good if Monsieur could bring himself——’ + +‘To the life of a peasant! And my wife——You do not know the +distinguished delicacy of my wife, a refined helplessness, a peculiar +dependent charm. Like some slender tropical creeper—with great white +flowers.... But all this is foolish talk. It is impossible that Paris, +which has survived so many misfortunes, should not presently revive.’ + +‘I do not think it will ever revive. Paris is finished. London, too, I +am told—Berlin. All the great capitals were stricken....’ + +‘But——! Monsieur must permit me to differ.’ + +‘It is so.’ + +‘It is impossible. Civilisations do not end in this manner. Mankind +will insist.’ + +‘On Paris?’ + +‘On Paris.’ + +‘Monsieur, you might as well hope to go down the Maelstrom and resume +business there.’ + +‘I am content, Monsieur, with my own faith.’ + +‘The winter comes on. Would not Monsieur be wiser to seek a house?’ + +‘Farther from Paris? No, Monsieur. But it is not possible, Monsieur, +what you say, and you are under a tremendous mistake.... Indeed you are +in error.... I asked merely for information....’ + +‘When last I saw him,’ said Barnet, ‘he was standing under the signpost +at the crest of the hill, gazing wistfully, yet it seemed to me a +little doubtfully, now towards Paris, and altogether heedless of a +drizzling rain that was wetting him through and through....’ + +Section 4 + +This effect of chill dismay, of a doom as yet imperfectly apprehended +deepens as Barnet’s record passes on to tell of the approach of winter. +It was too much for the great mass of those unwilling and incompetent +nomads to realise that an age had ended, that the old help and guidance +existed no longer, that times would not mend again, however patiently +they held out. They were still in many cases looking to Paris when the +first snowflakes of that pitiless January came swirling about them. The +story grows grimmer.... + +If it is less monstrously tragic after Barnet’s return to England, it +is, if anything, harder. England was a spectacle of fear-embittered +householders, hiding food, crushing out robbery, driving the starving +wanderers from every faltering place upon the roads lest they should +die inconveniently and reproachfully on the doorsteps of those who had +failed to urge them onward.... + +The remnants of the British troops left France finally in March, after +urgent representations from the provisional government at Orleans that +they could be supported no longer. They seem to have been a fairly +well-behaved, but highly parasitic force throughout, though Barnet is +clearly of opinion that they did much to suppress sporadic brigandage +and maintain social order. He came home to a famine-stricken country, +and his picture of the England of that spring is one of miserable +patience and desperate expedients. The country was suffering much more +than France, because of the cessation of the overseas supplies on which +it had hitherto relied. His troops were given bread, dried fish, and +boiled nettles at Dover, and marched inland to Ashford and paid off. On +the way thither they saw four men hanging from the telegraph posts by +the roadside, who had been hung for stealing swedes. The labour refuges +of Kent, he discovered, were feeding their crowds of casual wanderers +on bread into which clay and sawdust had been mixed. In Surrey there +was a shortage of even such fare as that. He himself struck across +country to Winchester, fearing to approach the bomb-poisoned district +round London, and at Winchester he had the luck to be taken on as one +of the wireless assistants at the central station and given regular +rations. The station stood in a commanding position on the chalk hill +that overlooks the town from the east.... + +Thence he must have assisted in the transmission of the endless cipher +messages that preceded the gathering at Brissago, and there it was that +the Brissago proclamation of the end of the war and the establishment +of a world government came under his hands. + +He was feeling ill and apathetic that day, and he did not realise what +it was he was transcribing. He did it mechanically, as a part of his +tedious duty. + +Afterwards there came a rush of messages arising out of the declaration +that strained him very much, and in the evening when he was relieved, +he ate his scanty supper and then went out upon the little balcony +before the station, to smoke and rest his brains after this sudden and +as yet inexplicable press of duty. It was a very beautiful, still +evening. He fell talking to a fellow operator, and for the first time, +he declares, ‘I began to understand what it was all about. I began to +see just what enormous issues had been under my hands for the past four +hours. But I became incredulous after my first stimulation. “This is +some sort of Bunkum,” I said very sagely. + +‘My colleague was more hopeful. “It means an end to bomb-throwing and +destruction,” he said. “It means that presently corn will come from +America.” + +‘“Who is going to send corn when there is no more value in money?” I +asked. + +‘Suddenly we were startled by a clashing from the town below. The +cathedral bells, which had been silent ever since I had come into the +district, were beginning, with a sort of rheumatic difficulty, to ring. +Presently they warmed a little to the work, and we realised what was +going on. They were ringing a peal. We listened with an unbelieving +astonishment and looking into each other’s yellow faces. + +‘“They mean it,” said my colleague. + +‘“But what can they do now?” I asked. “Everything is broken down....”’ + +And on that sentence, with an unexpected artistry, Barnet abruptly ends +his story. + +Section 5 + +From the first the new government handled affairs with a certain +greatness of spirit. Indeed, it was inevitable that they should act +greatly. From the first they had to see the round globe as one problem; +it was impossible any longer to deal with it piece by piece. They had +to secure it universally from any fresh outbreak of atomic destruction, +and they had to ensure a permanent and universal pacification. On this +capacity to grasp and wield the whole round globe their existence +depended. There was no scope for any further performance. + +So soon as the seizure of the existing supplies of atomic ammunition +and the apparatus for synthesising Carolinum was assured, the +disbanding or social utilisation of the various masses of troops still +under arms had to be arranged, the salvation of the year’s harvests, +and the feeding, housing, and employment of the drifting millions of +homeless people. In Canada, in South America, and Asiatic Russia there +were vast accumulations of provision that was immovable only because of +the breakdown of the monetary and credit systems. These had to be +brought into the famine districts very speedily if entire depopulation +was to be avoided, and their transportation and the revival of +communications generally absorbed a certain proportion of the soldiery +and more able unemployed. The task of housing assumed gigantic +dimensions, and from building camps the housing committee of the +council speedily passed to constructions of a more permanent type. They +found far less friction than might have been expected in turning the +loose population on their hands to these things. People were +extraordinarily tamed by that year of suffering and death; they were +disillusioned of their traditions, bereft of once obstinate prejudices; +they felt foreign in a strange world, and ready to follow any confident +leadership. The orders of the new government came with the best of all +credentials, rations. The people everywhere were as easy to control, +one of the old labour experts who had survived until the new time +witnesses, ‘as gangs of emigrant workers in a new land.’ And now it was +that the social possibilities of the atomic energy began to appear. The +new machinery that had come into existence before the last wars +increased and multiplied, and the council found itself not only with +millions of hands at its disposal but with power and apparatus that +made its first conceptions of the work it had to do seem pitifully +timid. The camps that were planned in iron and deal were built in stone +and brass; the roads that were to have been mere iron tracks became +spacious ways that insisted upon architecture; the cultivations of +foodstuffs that were to have supplied emergency rations, were +presently, with synthesisers, fertilisers, actinic light, and +scientific direction, in excess of every human need. + +The government had begun with the idea of temporarily reconstituting +the social and economic system that had prevailed before the first +coming of the atomic engine, because it was to this system that the +ideas and habits of the great mass of the world’s dispossessed +population was adapted. Subsequent rearrangement it had hoped to leave +to its successors—whoever they might be. But this, it became more and +more manifest, was absolutely impossible. As well might the council +have proposed a revival of slavery. The capitalist system had already +been smashed beyond repair by the onset of limitless gold and energy; +it fell to pieces at the first endeavour to stand it up again. Already +before the war half of the industrial class had been out of work, the +attempt to put them back into wages employment on the old lines was +futile from the outset—the absolute shattering of the currency system +alone would have been sufficient to prevent that, and it was necessary +therefore to take over the housing, feeding, and clothing of this +worldwide multitude without exacting any return in labour whatever. In +a little while the mere absence of occupation for so great a multitude +of people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the +government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative +work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, +fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale +to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying wages to the +younger adults for attendance at schools that would equip them to use +the new atomic machinery.... So quite insensibly the council drifted +into a complete reorganisation of urban and industrial life, and indeed +of the entire social system. + +Ideas that are unhampered by political intrigue or financial +considerations have a sweeping way with them, and before a year was out +the records of the council show clearly that it was rising to its +enormous opportunity, and partly through its own direct control and +partly through a series of specific committees, it was planning a new +common social order for the entire population of the earth. ‘There can +be no real social stability or any general human happiness while large +areas of the world and large classes of people are in a phase of +civilisation different from the prevailing mass. It is impossible now +to have great blocks of population misunderstanding the generally +accepted social purpose or at an economic disadvantage to the rest.’ So +the council expressed its conception of the problem it had to solve. +The peasant, the field-worker, and all barbaric cultivators were at an +‘economic disadvantage’ to the more mobile and educated classes, and +the logic of the situation compelled the council to take up +systematically the supersession of this stratum by a more efficient +organisation of production. It developed a scheme for the progressive +establishment throughout the world of the ‘modern system’ in +agriculture, a system that should give the full advantages of a +civilised life to every agricultural worker, and this replacement has +been going on right up to the present day. The central idea of the +modern system is the substitution of cultivating guilds for the +individual cultivator, and for cottage and village life altogether. +These guilds are associations of men and women who take over areas of +arable or pasture land, and make themselves responsible for a certain +average produce. They are bodies small enough as a rule to be run on a +strictly democratic basis, and large enough to supply all the labour, +except for a certain assistance from townspeople during the harvest, +needed upon the land farmed. They have watchers’ bungalows or chalets +on the ground cultivated, but the ease and the costlessness of modern +locomotion enables them to maintain a group of residences in the +nearest town with a common dining-room and club house, and usually also +a guild house in the national or provincial capital. Already this +system has abolished a distinctively ‘rustic’ population throughout +vast areas of the old world, where it has prevailed immemorially. That +shy, unstimulated life of the lonely hovel, the narrow scandals and +petty spites and persecutions of the small village, that hoarding, half +inanimate existence away from books, thought, or social participation +and in constant contact with cattle, pigs, poultry, and their +excrement, is passing away out of human experience. In a little while +it will be gone altogether. In the nineteenth century it had already +ceased to be a necessary human state, and only the absence of any +collective intelligence and an imagined need for tough and +unintelligent soldiers and for a prolific class at a low level, +prevented its systematic replacement at that time.... + +And while this settlement of the country was in progress, the urban +camps of the first phase of the council’s activities were rapidly +developing, partly through the inherent forces of the situation and +partly through the council’s direction, into a modern type of town.... + +Section 6 + +It is characteristic of the manner in which large enterprises forced +themselves upon the Brissago council, that it was not until the end of +the first year of their administration and then only with extreme +reluctance that they would take up the manifest need for a _lingua +franca_ for the world. They seem to have given little attention to the +various theoretical universal languages which were proposed to them. +They wished to give as little trouble to hasty and simple people as +possible, and the world-wide distribution of English gave them a bias +for it from the beginning. The extreme simplicity of its grammar was +also in its favour. + +It was not without some sacrifices that the English-speaking peoples +were permitted the satisfaction of hearing their speech used +universally. The language was shorn of a number of grammatical +peculiarities, the distinctive forms for the subjunctive mood for +example and most of its irregular plurals were abolished; its spelling +was systematised and adapted to the vowel sounds in use upon the +continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign nouns and +verbs commenced that speedily reached enormous proportions. Within ten +years from the establishment of the World Republic the New English +Dictionary had swelled to include a vocabulary of 250,000 words, and a +man of 1900 would have found considerable difficulty in reading an +ordinary newspaper. On the other hand, the men of the new time could +still appreciate the older English literature.... Certain minor acts of +uniformity accompanied this larger one. The idea of a common +understanding and a general simplification of intercourse once it was +accepted led very naturally to the universal establishment of the +metric system of weights and measures, and to the disappearance of the +various makeshift calendars that had hitherto confused chronology. The +year was divided into thirteen months of four weeks each, and New +Year’s Day and Leap Year’s Day were made holidays, and did not count at +all in the ordinary week. So the weeks and the months were brought into +correspondence. And moreover, as the king put it to Firmin, it was +decided to ‘nail down Easter.’ . . . In these matters, as in so many +matters, the new civilisation came as a simplification of ancient +complications; the history of the calendar throughout the world is a +history of inadequate adjustments, of attempts to fix seed-time and +midwinter that go back into the very beginning of human society; and +this final rectification had a symbolic value quite beyond its +practical convenience. But the council would have no rash nor harsh +innovations, no strange names for the months, and no alteration in the +numbering of the years. + +The world had already been put upon one universal monetary basis. For +some months after the accession of the council, the world’s affairs had +been carried on without any sound currency at all. Over great regions +money was still in use, but with the most extravagant variations in +price and the most disconcerting fluctuations of public confidence. The +ancient rarity of gold upon which the entire system rested was gone. +Gold was now a waste product in the release of atomic energy, and it +was plain that no metal could be the basis of the monetary system +again. Henceforth all coins must be token coins. Yet the whole world +was accustomed to metallic money, and a vast proportion of existing +human relationships had grown up upon a cash basis, and were almost +inconceivable without that convenient liquidating factor. It seemed +absolutely necessary to the life of the social organisation to have +some sort of currency, and the council had therefore to discover some +real value upon which to rest it. Various such apparently stable values +as land and hours of work were considered. Ultimately the government, +which was now in possession of most of the supplies of energy-releasing +material, fixed a certain number of units of energy as the value of a +gold sovereign, declared a sovereign to be worth exactly twenty marks, +twenty-five francs, five dollars, and so forth, with the other current +units of the world, and undertook, under various qualifications and +conditions, to deliver energy upon demand as payment for every +sovereign presented. On the whole, this worked satisfactorily. They +saved the face of the pound sterling. Coin was rehabilitated, and after +a phase of price fluctuations, began to settle down to definite +equivalents and uses again, with names and everyday values familiar to +the common run of people.... + +Section 7 + +As the Brissago council came to realise that what it had supposed to be +temporary camps of refugees were rapidly developing into great towns of +a new type, and that it was remoulding the world in spite of itself, it +decided to place this work of redistributing the non-agricultural +population in the hands of a compactor and better qualified special +committee. That committee is now, far more than the council of any +other of its delegated committees, the active government of the world. +Developed from an almost invisible germ of ‘town-planning’ that came +obscurely into existence in Europe or America (the question is still in +dispute) somewhere in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, +its work, the continual active planning and replanning of the world as +a place of human habitation, is now so to speak the collective material +activity of the race. The spontaneous, disorderly spreadings and +recessions of populations, as aimless and mechanical as the trickling +of spilt water, which was the substance of history for endless years, +giving rise here to congestions, here to chronic devastating wars, and +everywhere to a discomfort and disorderliness that was at its best only +picturesque, is at an end. Men spread now, with the whole power of the +race to aid them, into every available region of the earth. Their +cities are no longer tethered to running water and the proximity of +cultivation, their plans are no longer affected by strategic +considerations or thoughts of social insecurity. The aeroplane and the +nearly costless mobile car have abolished trade routes; a common +language and a universal law have abolished a thousand restraining +inconveniences, and so an astonishing dispersal of habitations has +begun. One may live anywhere. And so it is that our cities now are true +social gatherings, each with a character of its own and distinctive +interests of its own, and most of them with a common occupation. They +lie out in the former deserts, these long wasted sun-baths of the race, +they tower amidst eternal snows, they hide in remote islands, and bask +on broad lagoons. For a time the whole tendency of mankind was to +desert the river valleys in which the race had been cradled for half a +million years, but now that the War against Flies has been waged so +successfully that this pestilential branch of life is nearly extinct, +they are returning thither with a renewed appetite for gardens laced by +watercourses, for pleasant living amidst islands and houseboats and +bridges, and for nocturnal lanterns reflected by the sea. + +Man who is ceasing to be an agricultural animal becomes more and more a +builder, a traveller, and a maker. How much he ceases to be a +cultivator of the soil the returns of the Redistribution Committee +showed. Every year the work of our scientific laboratories increases +the productivity and simplifies the labour of those who work upon the +soil, and the food now of the whole world is produced by less than one +per cent. of its population, a percentage which still tends to +decrease. Far fewer people are needed upon the land than training and +proclivity dispose towards it, and as a consequence of this excess of +human attention, the garden side of life, the creation of groves and +lawns and vast regions of beautiful flowers, has expanded enormously +and continues to expand. For, as agricultural method intensifies and +the quota is raised, one farm association after another, availing +itself of the 1975 regulations, elects to produce a public garden and +pleasaunce in the place of its former fields, and the area of freedom +and beauty is increased. And the chemists’ triumphs of synthesis, which +could now give us an entirely artificial food, remain largely in +abeyance because it is so much more pleasant and interesting to eat +natural produce and to grow such things upon the soil. Each year adds +to the variety of our fruits and the delightfulness of our flowers. + +Section 8 + +The early years of the World Republic witnessed a certain recrudescence +of political adventure. There was, it is rather curious to note, no +revival of separatism after the face of King Ferdinand Charles had +vanished from the sight of men, but in a number of countries, as the +first urgent physical needs were met, there appeared a variety of +personalities having this in common, that they sought to revive +political trouble and clamber by its aid to positions of importance and +satisfaction. In no case did they speak in the name of kings, and it is +clear that monarchy must have been far gone in obsolescence before the +twentieth century began, but they made appeals to the large survivals +of nationalist and racial feeling that were everywhere to be found, +they alleged with considerable justice that the council was overriding +racial and national customs and disregarding religious rules. The great +plain of India was particularly prolific in such agitators. The revival +of newspapers, which had largely ceased during the terrible year +because of the dislocation of the coinage, gave a vehicle and a method +of organisation to these complaints. At first the council disregarded +this developing opposition, and then it recognised it with an entirely +devastating frankness. + +Never, of course, had there been so provisional a government. It was of +an extravagant illegality. It was, indeed, hardly more than a club, a +club of about a hundred persons. At the outset there were ninety-three, +and these were increased afterwards by the issue of invitations which +more than balanced its deaths, to as many at one time as one hundred +and nineteen. Always its constitution has been miscellaneous. At no +time were these invitations issued with an admission that they +recognised a right. The old institution or monarchy had come out +unexpectedly well in the light of the new _régime_. Nine of the +original members of the first government were crowned heads who had +resigned their separate sovereignty, and at no time afterwards did the +number of its royal members sink below six. In their case there was +perhaps a kind of attenuated claim to rule, but except for them and the +still more infinitesimal pretensions of one or two ex-presidents of +republics, no member of the council had even the shade of a right to +his participation in its power. It was natural, therefore, that its +opponents should find a common ground in a clamour for representative +government, and build high hopes upon a return, to parliamentary +institutions. + +The council decided to give them everything they wanted, but in a form +that suited ill with their aspirations. It became at one stroke a +representative body. It became, indeed, magnificently representative. +It became so representative that the politicians were drowned in a +deluge of votes. Every adult of either sex from pole to pole was given +a vote, and the world was divided into ten constituencies, which voted +on the same day by means of a simple modification of the world post. +Membership of the government, it was decided, must be for life, save in +the exceptional case of a recall; but the elections, which were held +quinquennially, were arranged to add fifty members on each occasion. +The method of proportional representation with one transferable vote +was adopted, and the voter might also write upon his voting paper in a +specially marked space, the name of any of his representatives that he +wished to recall. A ruler was recallable by as many votes as the quota +by which he had been elected, and the original members by as many votes +in any constituency as the returning quotas in the first election. + +Upon these conditions the council submitted itself very cheerfully to +the suffrages of the world. None of its members were recalled, and its +fifty new associates, which included twenty-seven which it had seen fit +to recommend, were of an altogether too miscellaneous quality to +disturb the broad trend of its policy. Its freedom from rules or +formalities prevented any obstructive proceedings, and when one of the +two newly arrived Home Rule members for India sought for information +how to bring in a bill, they learnt simply that bills were not brought +in. They asked for the speaker, and were privileged to hear much ripe +wisdom from the ex-king Egbert, who was now consciously among the +seniors of the gathering. Thereafter they were baffled men.... + +But already by that time the work of the council was drawing to an end. +It was concerned not so much for the continuation of its construction +as for the preservation of its accomplished work from the dramatic +instincts of the politician. + +The life of the race becomes indeed more and more independent of the +formal government. The council, in its opening phase, was heroic in +spirit; a dragon-slaying body, it slashed out of existence a vast, +knotted tangle of obsolete ideas and clumsy and jealous +proprietorships; it secured by a noble system of institutional +precautions, freedom of inquiry, freedom of criticism, free +communications, a common basis of education and understanding, and +freedom from economic oppression. With that its creative task was +accomplished. It became more and more an established security and less +and less an active intervention. There is nothing in our time to +correspond with the continual petty making and entangling of laws in an +atmosphere of contention that is perhaps the most perplexing aspect of +constitutional history in the nineteenth century. In that age they seem +to have been perpetually making laws when we should alter regulations. +The work of change which we delegate to these scientific committees of +specific general direction which have the special knowledge needed, and +which are themselves dominated by the broad intellectual process of the +community, was in those days inextricably mixed up with legislation. +They fought over the details; we should as soon think of fighting over +the arrangement of the parts of a machine. We know nowadays that such +things go on best within laws, as life goes on between earth and sky. +And so it is that government gathers now for a day or so in each year +under the sunshine of Brissago when Saint Bruno’s lilies are in flower, +and does little more than bless the work of its committees. And even +these committees are less originative and more expressive of the +general thought than they were at first. It becomes difficult to mark +out the particular directive personalities of the world. Continually we +are less personal. Every good thought contributes now, and every able +brain falls within that informal and dispersed kingship which gathers +together into one purpose the energies of the race. + +Section 9 + +It is doubtful if we shall ever see again a phase of human existence in +which ‘politics,’ that is to say a partisan interference with the +ruling sanities of the world, will be the dominant interest among +serious men. We seem to have entered upon an entirely new phase in +history in which contention as distinguished from rivalry, has almost +abruptly ceased to be the usual occupation, and has become at most a +subdued and hidden and discredited thing. Contentious professions cease +to be an honourable employment for men. The peace between nations is +also a peace between individuals. We live in a world that comes of age. +Man the warrior, man the lawyer, and all the bickering aspects of life, +pass into obscurity; the grave dreamers, man the curious learner, and +man the creative artist, come forward to replace these barbaric aspects +of existence by a less ignoble adventure. + +There is no natural life of man. He is, and always has been, a sheath +of varied and even incompatible possibilities, a palimpsest of +inherited dispositions. It was the habit of many writers in the early +twentieth century to speak of competition and the narrow, private life +of trade and saving and suspicious isolation as though such things were +in some exceptional way proper to the human constitution, and as though +openness of mind and a preference for achievement over possession were +abnormal and rather unsubstantial qualities. How wrong that was the +history of the decades immediately following the establishment of the +world republic witnesses. Once the world was released from the +hardening insecurities of a needless struggle for life that was +collectively planless and individually absorbing, it became apparent +that there was in the vast mass of people a long, smothered passion to +make things. The world broke out into making, and at first mainly into +æsthetic making. This phase of history, which has been not inaptly +termed the ‘Efflorescence,’ is still, to a large extent, with us. The +majority of our population consists of artists, and the bulk of +activity in the world lies no longer with necessities but with their +elaboration, decoration, and refinement. There has been an evident +change in the quality of this making during recent years. It becomes +more purposeful than it was, losing something of its first elegance and +prettiness and gaining in intensity; but that is a change rather of hue +than of nature. That comes with a deepening philosophy and a sounder +education. For the first joyous exercises of fancy we perceive now the +deliberation of a more constructive imagination. There is a natural +order in these things, and art comes before science as the satisfaction +of more elemental needs must come before art, and as play and pleasure +come in a human life before the development of a settled purpose.... + +For thousands of years this gathering impulse to creative work must +have struggled in man against the limitations imposed upon him by his +social ineptitude. It was a long smouldering fire that flamed out at +last in all these things. The evidence of a pathetic, perpetually +thwarted urgency to make something, is one of the most touching aspects +of the relics and records of our immediate ancestors. There exists +still in the death area about the London bombs, a region of deserted +small homes that furnish the most illuminating comment on the old state +of affairs. These homes are entirely horrible, uniform, square, squat, +hideously proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy, and in some respects +quite filthy, only people in complete despair of anything better could +have lived in them, but to each is attached a ridiculous little +rectangle of land called ‘the garden,’ containing usually a prop for +drying clothes and a loathsome box of offal, the dustbin, full of +egg-shells, cinders, and such-like refuse. Now that one may go about +this region in comparative security—for the London radiations have +dwindled to inconsiderable proportions—it is possible to trace in +nearly every one of these gardens some effort to make. Here it is a +poor little plank summer-house, here it is a ‘fountain’ of bricks and +oyster-shells, here a ‘rockery,’ here a ‘workshop.’ And in the houses +everywhere there are pitiful little decorations, clumsy models, feeble +drawings. These efforts are almost incredibly inept, like the drawings +of blindfolded men, they are only one shade less harrowing to a +sympathetic observer than the scratchings one finds upon the walls of +the old prisons, but there they are, witnessing to the poor buried +instincts that struggled up towards the light. That god of joyous +expression our poor fathers ignorantly sought, our freedom has declared +to us.... + +In the old days the common ambition of every simple soul was to possess +a little property, a patch of land, a house uncontrolled by others, an +‘independence’ as the English used to put it. And what made this desire +for freedom and prosperity so strong, was very evidently the dream of +self-expression, of doing something with it, of playing with it, of +making a personal delightfulness, a distinctiveness. Property was never +more than a means to an end, nor avarice more than a perversion. Men +owned in order to do freely. Now that every one has his own apartments +and his own privacy secure, this disposition to own has found its +release in a new direction. Men study and save and strive that they may +leave behind them a series of panels in some public arcade, a row of +carven figures along a terrace, a grove, a pavilion. Or they give +themselves to the penetration of some still opaque riddle in phenomena +as once men gave themselves to the accumulation of riches. The work +that was once the whole substance of social existence—for most men +spent all their lives in earning a living—is now no more than was the +burden upon one of those old climbers who carried knapsacks of +provisions on their backs in order that they might ascend mountains. It +matters little to the easy charities of our emancipated time that most +people who have made their labour contribution produce neither new +beauty nor new wisdom, but are simply busy about those pleasant +activities and enjoyments that reassure them that they are alive. They +help, it may be, by reception and reverberation, and they hinder +nothing. ... + +Section 10 + +Now all this phase of gigantic change in the contours and appearances +of human life which is going on about us, a change as rapid and as +wonderful as the swift ripening of adolescence to manhood after the +barbaric boyish years, is correlated with moral and mental changes at +least as unprecedented. It is not as if old things were going out of +life and new things coming in, it is rather that the altered +circumstances of men are making an appeal to elements in his nature +that have hitherto been suppressed, and checking tendencies that have +hitherto been over-stimulated and over-developed. He has not so much +grown and altered his essential being as turned new aspects to the +light. Such turnings round into a new attitude the world has seen on a +less extensive scale before. The Highlanders of the seventeenth +century, for example, were cruel and bloodthirsty robbers, in the +nineteenth their descendants were conspicuously trusty and honourable +men. There was not a people in Western Europe in the early twentieth +century that seemed capable of hideous massacres, and none that had not +been guilty of them within the previous two centuries. The free, frank, +kindly, gentle life of the prosperous classes in any European country +before the years of the last wars was in a different world of thought +and feeling from that of the dingy, suspicious, secretive, and +uncharitable existence of the respectable poor, or the constant +personal violence, the squalor and naïve passions of the lowest +stratum. Yet there were no real differences of blood and inherent +quality between these worlds; their differences were all in +circumstances, suggestion, and habits of mind. And turning to more +individual instances the constantly observed difference between one +portion of a life and another consequent upon a religious conversion, +were a standing example of the versatile possibilities of human nature. + +The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and +businesses and economic relations shook them also out of their old +established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and +prejudices that came down to them from the past. To borrow a word from +the old-fashioned chemists, men were made nascent; they were released +from old ties; for good or evil they were ready for new associations. +The council carried them forward for good; perhaps if his bombs had +reached their destination King Ferdinand Charles might have carried +them back to an endless chain of evils. But his task would have been a +harder one than the council’s. The moral shock of the atomic bombs had +been a profound one, and for a while the cunning side of the human +animal was overpowered by its sincere realisation of the vital +necessity for reconstruction. The litigious and trading spirits cowered +together, scared at their own consequences; men thought twice before +they sought mean advantages in the face of the unusual eagerness to +realise new aspirations, and when at last the weeds revived again and +‘claims’ began to sprout, they sprouted upon the stony soil of +law-courts reformed, of laws that pointed to the future instead of the +past, and under the blazing sunshine of a transforming world. A new +literature, a new interpretation of history were springing into +existence, a new teaching was already in the schools, a new faith in +the young. The worthy man who forestalled the building of a research +city for the English upon the Sussex downs by buying up a series of +estates, was dispossessed and laughed out of court when he made his +demand for some preposterous compensation; the owner of the discredited +Dass patents makes his last appearance upon the scroll of history as +the insolvent proprietor of a paper called _The Cry for Justice_, in +which he duns the world for a hundred million pounds. That was the +ingenuous Dass’s idea of justice, that he ought to be paid about five +million pounds annually because he had annexed the selvage of one of +Holsten’s discoveries. Dass came at last to believe quite firmly in his +right, and he died a victim of conspiracy mania in a private hospital +at Nice. Both of these men would probably have ended their days +enormously wealthy, and of course ennobled in the England of the +opening twentieth century, and it is just this novelty of their fates +that marks the quality of the new age. + +The new government early discovered the need of a universal education +to fit men to the great conceptions of its universal rule. It made no +wrangling attacks on the local, racial, and sectarian forms of +religious profession that at that time divided the earth into a +patchwork of hatreds and distrusts; it left these organisations to make +their peace with God in their own time; but it proclaimed as if it were +a mere secular truth that sacrifice was expected from all, that respect +had to be shown to all; it revived schools or set them up afresh all +around the world, and everywhere these schools taught the history of +war and the consequences and moral of the Last War; everywhere it was +taught not as a sentiment but as a matter of fact that the salvation of +the world from waste and contention was the common duty and occupation +of all men and women. These things which are now the elementary +commonplaces of human intercourse seemed to the councillors of +Brissago, when first they dared to proclaim them, marvellously daring +discoveries, not untouched by doubt, that flushed the cheek and fired +the eye. + +The council placed all this educational reconstruction in the hands of +a committee of men and women, which did its work during the next few +decades with remarkable breadth and effectiveness. This educational +committee was, and is, the correlative upon the mental and spiritual +side of the redistribution committee. And prominent upon it, and indeed +for a time quite dominating it, was a Russian named Karenin, who was +singular in being a congenital cripple. His body was bent so that he +walked with difficulty, suffered much pain as he grew older, and had at +last to undergo two operations. The second killed him. Already +malformation, which was to be seen in every crowd during the middle +ages so that the crippled beggar was, as it were, an essential feature +of the human spectacle, was becoming a strange thing in the world. It +had a curious effect upon Karenin’s colleagues; their feeling towards +him was mingled with pity and a sense of inhumanity that it needed +usage rather than reason to overcome. He had a strong face, with little +bright brown eyes rather deeply sunken and a large resolute thin-lipped +mouth. His skin was very yellow and wrinkled, and his hair iron gray. +He was at all times an impatient and sometimes an angry man, but this +was forgiven him because of the hot wire of suffering that was +manifestly thrust through his being. At the end of his life his +personal prestige was very great. To him far more than to any +contemporary is it due that self-abnegation, self-identification with +the world spirit, was made the basis of universal education. That +general memorandum to the teachers which is the key-note of the modern +educational system, was probably entirely his work. + +‘Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it,’ he wrote. ‘That is the +device upon the seal of this document, and the starting point of all we +have to do. It is a mistake to regard it as anything but a plain +statement of fact. It is the basis for your work. You have to teach +self-forgetfulness, and everything else that you have to teach is +contributory and subordinate to that end. Education is the release of +man from self. You have to widen the horizons of your children, +encourage and intensify their curiosity and their creative impulses, +and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. That is what you are for. +Under your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them, +they have to shed the old Adam of instinctive suspicions, hostilities, +and passions, and to find themselves again in the great being of the +universe. The little circles of their egotisms have to be opened out +until they become arcs in the sweep of the racial purpose. And this +that you teach to others you must learn also sedulously yourselves. +Philosophy, discovery, art, every sort of skill, every sort of service, +love: these are the means of salvation from that narrow loneliness of +desire, that brooding preoccupation with self and egotistical +relationships, which is hell for the individual, treason to the race, +and exile from God....’ + +Section 11 + +As things round themselves off and accomplish themselves, one begins +for the first time to see them clearly. From the perspectives of a new +age one can look back upon the great and widening stream of literature +with a complete understanding. Things link up that seemed disconnected, +and things that were once condemned as harsh and aimless are seen to be +but factors in the statement of a gigantic problem. An enormous bulk of +the sincerer writing of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth +centuries falls together now into an unanticipated unanimity; one sees +it as a huge tissue of variations upon one theme, the conflict of human +egotism and personal passion and narrow imaginations on the one hand, +against the growing sense of wider necessities and a possible, more +spacious life. + +That conflict is in evidence in so early a work as Voltaire’s +_Candide_, for example, in which the desire for justice as well as +happiness beats against human contrariety and takes refuge at last in a +forced and inconclusive contentment with little things. _Candide_ was +but one of the pioneers of a literature of uneasy complaint that was +presently an innumerable multitude of books. The novels more +particularly of the nineteenth century, if one excludes the mere +story-tellers from our consideration, witness to this uneasy +realisation of changes that call for effort and of the lack of that +effort. In a thousand aspects, now tragically, now comically, now with +a funny affectation of divine detachment, a countless host of witnesses +tell their story of lives fretting between dreams and limitations. Now +one laughs, now one weeps, now one reads with a blank astonishment at +this huge and almost unpremeditated record of how the growing human +spirit, now warily, now eagerly, now furiously, and always, as it +seems, unsuccessfully, tried to adapt itself to the maddening misfit of +its patched and ancient garments. And always in these books as one +draws nearer to the heart of the matter there comes a disconcerting +evasion. It was the fantastic convention of the time that a writer +should not touch upon religion. To do so was to rouse the jealous fury +of the great multitude of professional religious teachers. It was +permitted to state the discord, but it was forbidden to glance at any +possible reconciliation. Religion was the privilege of the pulpit.... + +It was not only from the novels that religion was omitted. It was +ignored by the newspapers; it was pedantically disregarded in the +discussion of business questions, it played a trivial and apologetic +part in public affairs. And this was done not out of contempt but +respect. The hold of the old religious organisations upon men’s respect +was still enormous, so enormous that there seemed to be a quality of +irreverence in applying religion to the developments of every day. This +strange suspension of religion lasted over into the beginnings of the +new age. It was the clear vision of Marcus Karenin much more than any +other contemporary influence which brought it back into the texture of +human life. He saw religion without hallucinations, without +superstitious reverence, as a common thing as necessary as food and +air, as land and energy to the life of man and the well-being of the +Republic. He saw that indeed it had already percolated away from the +temples and hierarchies and symbols in which men had sought to imprison +it, that it was already at work anonymously and obscurely in the +universal acceptance of the greater state. He gave it clearer +expression, rephrased it to the lights and perspectives of the new +dawn.... + +But if we return to our novels for our evidence of the spirit of the +times it becomes evident as one reads them in their chronological +order, so far as that is now ascertainable, that as one comes to the +latter nineteenth and the earlier twentieth century the writers are +much more acutely aware of secular change than their predecessors were. +The earlier novelists tried to show ‘life as it is,’ the latter showed +life as it changes. More and more of their characters are engaged in +adaptation to change or suffering from the effects of world changes. +And as we come up to the time of the Last Wars, this newer conception +of the everyday life as a reaction to an accelerated development is +continually more manifest. Barnet’s book, which has served us so well, +is frankly a picture of the world coming about like a ship that sails +into the wind. Our later novelists give a vast gallery of individual +conflicts in which old habits and customs, limited ideas, ungenerous +temperaments, and innate obsessions are pitted against this great +opening out of life that has happened to us. They tell us of the +feelings of old people who have been wrenched away from familiar +surroundings, and how they have had to make peace with uncomfortable +comforts and conveniences that are still strange to them. They give us +the discord between the opening egotisms of youths and the ill-defined +limitations of a changing social life. They tell of the universal +struggle of jealousy to capture and cripple our souls, of romantic +failures and tragical misconceptions of the trend of the world, of the +spirit of adventure, and the urgency of curiosity, and how these serve +the universal drift. And all their stories lead in the end either to +happiness missed or happiness won, to disaster or salvation. The +clearer their vision and the subtler their art, the more certainly do +these novels tell of the possibility of salvation for all the world. +For any road in life leads to religion for those upon it who will +follow it far enough.... + +It would have seemed a strange thing to the men of the former time that +it should be an open question as it is to-day whether the world is +wholly Christian or not Christian at all. But assuredly we have the +spirit, and as surely have we left many temporary forms behind. +Christianity was the first expression of world religion, the first +complete repudiation of tribalism and war and disputation. That it fell +presently into the ways of more ancient rituals cannot alter that. The +common sense of mankind has toiled through two thousand years of +chastening experience to find at last how sound a meaning attaches to +the familiar phrases of the Christian faith. The scientific thinker as +he widens out to the moral problems of the collective life, comes +inevitably upon the words of Christ, and as inevitably does the +Christian, as his thought grows clearer, arrive at the world republic. +As for the claims of the sects, as for the use of a name and +successions, we live in a time that has shaken itself free from such +claims and consistencies. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH +THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN + + +Section 1 + +The second operation upon Marcus Karenin was performed at the new +station for surgical work at Paran, high in the Himalayas above the +Sutlej Gorge, where it comes down out of Thibet. + +It is a place of such wildness and beauty as no other scenery in the +world affords. The granite terrace which runs round the four sides of +the low block of laboratories looks out in every direction upon +mountains. Far below in the hidden depths of a shadowy blue cleft, the +river pours down in its tumultuous passage to the swarming plains of +India. No sound of its roaring haste comes up to those serenities. +Beyond that blue gulf, in which whole forests of giant deodars seem no +more than small patches of moss, rise vast precipices of many-coloured +rock, fretted above, lined by snowfalls, and jagged into pinnacles. +These are the northward wall of a towering wilderness of ice and snow +which clambers southward higher and wilder and vaster to the +culminating summits of our globe, to Dhaulagiri and Everest. Here are +cliffs of which no other land can show the like, and deep chasms in +which Mt. Blanc might be plunged and hidden. Here are icefields as big +as inland seas on which the tumbled boulders lie so thickly that +strange little flowers can bloom among them under the untempered +sunshine. To the northward, and blocking out any vision of the uplands +of Thibet, rises that citadel of porcelain, that gothic pile, the Lio +Porgyul, walls, towers, and peaks, a clear twelve thousand feet of +veined and splintered rock above the river. And beyond it and eastward +and westward rise peaks behind peaks, against the dark blue Himalayan +sky. Far away below to the south the clouds of the Indian rains pile up +abruptly and are stayed by an invisible hand. + +Hither it was that with a dreamlike swiftness Karenin flew high over +the irrigations of Rajputana and the towers and cupolas of the ultimate +Delhi; and the little group of buildings, albeit the southward wall +dropped nearly five hundred feet, seemed to him as he soared down to it +like a toy lost among these mountain wildernesses. No road came up to +this place; it was reached only by flight. + +His pilot descended to the great courtyard, and Karenin assisted by his +secretary clambered down through the wing fabric and made his way to +the officials who came out to receive him. + +In this place, beyond infections and noise and any distractions, +surgery had made for itself a house of research and a healing fastness. +The building itself would have seemed very wonderful to eyes accustomed +to the flimsy architecture of an age when power was precious. It was +made of granite, already a little roughened on the outside by frost, +but polished within and of a tremendous solidity. And in a honeycomb of +subtly lit apartments, were the spotless research benches, the +operating tables, the instruments of brass, and fine glass and platinum +and gold. Men and women came from all parts of the world for study or +experimental research. They wore a common uniform of white and ate at +long tables together, but the patients lived in an upper part of the +buildings, and were cared for by nurses and skilled attendants.... + +The first man to greet Karenin was Ciana, the scientific director of +the institution. Beside him was Rachel Borken, the chief organiser. +‘You are tired?’ she asked, and old Karenin shook his head. + +‘Cramped,’ he said. ‘I have wanted to visit such a place as this.’ + +He spoke as if he had no other business with them. + +There was a little pause. + +‘How many scientific people have you got here now?’ he asked. + +‘Just three hundred and ninety-two,’ said Rachel Borken. + +‘And the patients and attendants and so on?’ + +‘Two thousand and thirty.’ + +‘I shall be a patient,’ said Karenin. ‘I shall have to be a patient. +But I should like to see things first. Presently I will be a patient.’ + +‘You will come to my rooms?’ suggested Ciana. + +‘And then I must talk to this doctor of yours,’ said Karenin. ‘But I +would like to see a bit of this place and talk to some of your people +before it comes to that.’ + +He winced and moved forward. + +‘I have left most of my work in order,’ he said. + +‘You have been working hard up to now?’ asked Rachel Borken. + +‘Yes. And now I have nothing more to do—and it seems strange.... And +it’s a bother, this illness and having to come down to oneself. This +doorway and the row of windows is well done; the gray granite and just +the line of gold, and then those mountains beyond through that arch. +It’s very well done....’ + +Section 2 + +Karenin lay on the bed with a soft white rug about him, and Fowler, who +was to be his surgeon sat on the edge of the bed and talked to him. An +assistant was seated quietly in the shadow behind the bed. The +examination had been made, and Karenin knew what was before him. He was +tired but serene. + +‘So I shall die,’ he said, ‘unless you operate?’ + +Fowler assented. ‘And then,’ said Karenin, smiling, ‘probably I shall +die.’ + +‘Not certainly.’ + +‘Even if I do not die; shall I be able to work?’ + +‘There is just a chance....’ + +‘So firstly I shall probably die, and if I do not, then perhaps I shall +be a useless invalid?’ + +‘I think if you live, you may be able to go on—as you do now.’ + +‘Well, then, I suppose I must take the risk of it. Yet couldn’t you, +Fowler, couldn’t you drug me and patch me instead of all +this—vivisection? A few days of drugged and active life—and then the +end?’ + +Fowler thought. ‘We are not sure enough yet to do things like that,’ he +said. + +‘But a day is coming when you will be certain.’ + +Fowler nodded. + +‘You make me feel as though I was the last of deformity—Deformity is +uncertainty—inaccuracy. My body works doubtfully, it is not even sure +that it will die or live. I suppose the time is not far off when such +bodies as mine will no longer be born into the world.’ + +‘You see,’ said Fowler, after a little pause, ‘it is necessary that +spirits such as yours should be born into the world.’ + +‘I suppose,’ said Karenin, ‘that my spirit has had its use. But if you +think that is because my body is as it is I think you are mistaken. +There is no peculiar virtue in defect. I have always chafed against—all +this. If I could have moved more freely and lived a larger life in +health I could have done more. But some day perhaps you will be able to +put a body that is wrong altogether right again. Your science is only +beginning. It’s a subtler thing than physics and chemistry, and it +takes longer to produce its miracles. And meanwhile a few more of us +must die in patience.’ + +‘Fine work is being done and much of it,’ said Fowler. ‘I can say as +much because I have nothing to do with it. I can understand a lesson, +appreciate the discoveries of abler men and use my hands, but those +others, Pigou, Masterton, Lie, and the others, they are clearing the +ground fast for the knowledge to come. Have you had time to follow +their work?’ + +Karenin shook his head. ‘But I can imagine the scope of it,’ he said. + +‘We have so many men working now,’ said Fowler. ‘I suppose at present +there must be at least a thousand thinking hard, observing, +experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen hundred.’ + +‘Not counting those who keep the records?’ + +‘Not counting those. Of course, the present indexing of research is in +itself a very big work, and it is only now that we are getting it +properly done. But already we are feeling the benefit of that. Since it +ceased to be a paid employment and became a devotion we have had only +those people who obeyed the call of an aptitude at work upon these +things. Here—I must show you it to-day, because it will interest you—we +have our copy of the encyclopaedic index—every week sheets are taken +out and replaced by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to +us by the aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is an index of +knowledge that grows continually, an index that becomes continually +truer. There was never anything like it before.’ + +‘When I came into the education committee,’ said Karenin, ‘that index +of human knowledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had produced a +chaotic mountain of results, in a hundred languages and a thousand +different types of publication....’ He smiled at his memories. ‘How we +groaned at the job!’ + +‘Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall see.’ + +‘I have been so busy with my own work——Yes, I shall be glad to see.’ + +The patient regarded the surgeon for a time with interested eyes. + +‘You work here always?’ he asked abruptly. + +‘No,’ said Fowler. + +‘But mostly you work here?’ + +‘I have worked about seven years out of the past ten. At times I go +away—down there. One has to. At least I have to. There is a sort of +grayness comes over all this, one feels hungry for life, real, personal +passionate life, love-making, eating and drinking for the fun of the +thing, jostling crowds, having adventures, laughter—above all +laughter——’ + +‘Yes,’ said Karenin understandingly. + +‘And then one day, suddenly one thinks of these high mountains +again....’ + +‘That is how I would have lived, if it had not been for my—defects,’ +said Karenin. ‘Nobody knows but those who have borne it the +exasperation of abnormality. It will be good when you have nobody alive +whose body cannot live the wholesome everyday life, whose spirit cannot +come up into these high places as it wills.’ + +‘We shall manage that soon,’ said Fowler. + +‘For endless generations man has struggled upward against the +indignities of his body—and the indignities of his soul. Pains, +incapacities, vile fears, black moods, despairs. How well I’ve known +them. They’ve taken more time than all your holidays. It is true, is it +not, that every man is something of a cripple and something of a beast? +I’ve dipped a little deeper than most; that’s all. It’s only now when +he has fully learnt the truth of that, that he can take hold of himself +to be neither beast nor cripple. Now that he overcomes his servitude to +his body, he can for the first time think of living the full life of +his body.... Before another generation dies you’ll have the thing in +hand. You’ll do as you please with the old Adam and all the vestiges +from the brutes and reptiles that lurk in his body and spirit. Isn’t +that so?’ + +‘You put it boldly,’ said Fowler. + +Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution.... ‘When,’ asked Karenin +suddenly, ‘when will you operate?’ + +‘The day after to-morrow,’ said Fowler. ‘For a day I want you to drink +and eat as I shall prescribe. And you may think and talk as you +please.’ + +‘I should like to see this place.’ + +‘You shall go through it this afternoon. I will have two men carry you +in a litter. And to-morrow you shall lie out upon the terrace. Our +mountains here are the most beautiful in the world....’ + +Section 3 + +The next morning Karenin got up early and watched the sun rise over the +mountains, and breakfasted lightly, and then young Gardener, his +secretary, came to consult him upon the spending of his day. Would he +care to see people? Or was this gnawing pain within him too much to +permit him to do that? + +‘I’d like to talk,’ said Karenin. ‘There must be all sorts of +lively-minded people here. Let them come and gossip with me. It will +distract me—and I can’t tell you how interesting it makes everything +that is going on to have seen the dawn of one’s own last day.’ + +‘Your last day!’ + +‘Fowler will kill me.’ + +‘But he thinks not.’ + +‘Fowler will kill me. If he does not he will not leave very much of me. +So that this is my last day anyhow, the days afterwards if they come at +all to me, will be refuse. I know....’ + +Gardener was about to speak when Karenin went on again. + +‘I hope he kills me, Gardener. Don’t be—old-fashioned. The thing I am +most afraid of is that last rag of life. I may just go on—a scarred +salvage of suffering stuff. And then—all the things I have hidden and +kept down or discounted or set right afterwards will get the better of +me. I shall be peevish. I may lose my grip upon my own egotism. It’s +never been a very firm grip. No, no, Gardener, don’t say that! You know +better, you’ve had glimpses of it. Suppose I came through on the other +side of this affair, belittled, vain, and spiteful, using the prestige +I have got among men by my good work in the past just to serve some +small invalid purpose....’ + +He was silent for a time, watching the mists among the distant +precipices change to clouds of light, and drift and dissolve before the +searching rays of the sunrise. + +‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I am afraid of these anæsthetics and these fag +ends of life. It’s life we are all afraid of. Death!—nobody minds just +death. Fowler is clever—but some day surgery will know its duty better +and not be so anxious just to save something . . . provided only that +it quivers. I’ve tried to hold my end up properly and do my work. After +Fowler has done with me I am certain I shall be unfit for work—and what +else is there for me? . . . I know I shall not be fit for work.... + +‘I do not see why life should be judged by its last trailing thread of +vitality.... I know it for the splendid thing it is—I who have been a +diseased creature from the beginning. I know it well enough not to +confuse it with its husks. Remember that, Gardener, if presently my +heart fails me and I despair, and if I go through a little phase of +pain and ingratitude and dark forgetfulness before the end.... Don’t +believe what I may say at the last.... If the fabric is good enough the +selvage doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. So long as you are alive you +are just the moment, perhaps, but when you are dead then you are all +your life from the first moment to the last....’ + +Section 4 + +Presently, in accordance with his wish, people came to talk to him, and +he could forget himself again. Rachel Borken sat for a long time with +him and talked chiefly of women in the world, and with her was a girl +named Edith Haydon who was already very well known as a cytologist. And +several of the younger men who were working in the place and a patient +named Kahn, a poet, and Edwards, a designer of plays and shows, spent +some time with him. The talk wandered from point to point and came back +upon itself, and became now earnest and now trivial as the chance +suggestions determined. But soon afterwards Gardener wrote down notes +of things he remembered, and it is possible to put together again the +outlook of Karenin upon the world and how he thought and felt about +many of the principal things in life. + +‘Our age,’ he said, ‘has been so far an age of scene-shifting. We have +been preparing a stage, clearing away the setting of a drama that was +played out and growing tiresome.... If I could but sit out the first +few scenes of the new spectacle.... + +‘How encumbered the world had become! It was ailing as I am ailing with +a growth of unmeaning things. It was entangled, feverish, confused. It +was in sore need of release, and I suppose that nothing less than the +violence of those bombs could have released it and made it a healthy +world again. I suppose they were necessary. Just as everything turns to +evil in a fevered body so everything seemed turning to evil in those +last years of the old time. Everywhere there were obsolete +organisations seizing upon all the new fine things that science was +giving to the world, nationalities, all sorts of political bodies, the +churches and sects, proprietorship, seizing upon those treat powers and +limitless possibilities and turning them to evil uses. And they would +not suffer open speech, they would not permit of education, they would +let no one be educated to the needs of the new time.... You who are +younger cannot imagine the mixture of desperate hope and protesting +despair in which we who could believe in the possibilities of science +lived in those years before atomic energy came.... + +‘It was not only that the mass of people would not attend, would not +understand, but that those who did understand lacked the power of real +belief. They said the things, they saw the things, and the things meant +nothing to them.... + +‘I have been reading some old papers lately. It is wonderful how our +fathers bore themselves towards science. They hated it. They feared it. +They permitted a few scientific men to exist and work—a pitiful +handful.... “Don’t find out anything about us,” they said to them; +“don’t inflict vision upon us, spare our little ways of life from the +fearful shaft of understanding. But do tricks for us, little limited +tricks. Give us cheap lighting. And cure us of certain disagreeable +things, cure us of cancer, cure us of consumption, cure our colds and +relieve us after repletion....” We have changed all that, Gardener. +Science is no longer our servant. We know it for something greater than +our little individual selves. It is the awakening mind of the race, and +in a little while——In a little while——I wish indeed I could watch for +that little while, now that the curtain has risen.... + +‘While I lie here they are clearing up what is left of the bombs in +London,’ he said. ‘Then they are going to repair the ruins and make it +all as like as possible to its former condition before the bombs fell. +Perhaps they will dig out the old house in St John’s Wood to which my +father went after his expulsion from Russia.... That London of my +memories seems to me like a place in another world. For you younger +people it must seem like a place that could never have existed.’ + +‘Is there much left standing?’ asked Edith Haydon. + +‘Square miles that are scarcely shaken in the south and north-west, +they say; and most of the bridges and large areas of dock. Westminster, +which held most of the government offices, suffered badly from the +small bomb that destroyed the Parliament, there are very few traces of +the old thoroughfare of Whitehall or the Government region thereabout, +but there are plentiful drawings to scale of its buildings, and the +great hole in the east of London scarcely matters. That was a poor +district and very like the north and the south.... It will be possible +to reconstruct most of it.... It is wanted. Already it becomes +difficult to recall the old time—even for us who saw it.’ + +‘It seems very distant to me,’ said the girl. + +‘It was an unwholesome world,’ reflected Karenin. ‘I seem to remember +everybody about my childhood as if they were ill. They were ill. They +were sick with confusion. Everybody was anxious about money and +everybody was doing uncongenial things. They ate a queer mixture of +foods, either too much or too little, and at odd hours. One sees how +ill they were by their advertisements. All this new region of London +they are opening up now is plastered with advertisements of pills. +Everybody must have been taking pills. In one of the hotel rooms in the +Strand they have found the luggage of a lady covered up by falling +rubble and unburnt, and she was equipped with nine different sorts of +pill and tabloid. The pill-carrying age followed the weapon-carrying +age. They are equally strange to us. People’s skins must have been in a +vile state. Very few people were properly washed; they carried the +filth of months on their clothes. All the clothes they wore were old +clothes; our way of pulping our clothes again after a week or so of +wear would have seemed fantastic to them. Their clothing hardly bears +thinking about. And the congestion of them! Everybody was jostling +against everybody in those awful towns. In an uproar. People were run +over and crushed by the hundred; every year in London the cars and +omnibuses alone killed or disabled twenty thousand people, in Paris it +was worse; people used to fall dead for want of air in the crowded +ways. The irritation of London, internal and external, must have been +maddening. It was a maddened world. It is like thinking of a sick +child. One has the same effect of feverish urgencies and acute +irrational disappointments. + +‘All history,’ he said, ‘is a record of a childhood.... + +‘And yet not exactly a childhood. There is something clean and keen +about even a sick child—and something touching. But so much of the old +times makes one angry. So much they did seems grossly stupid, +obstinately, outrageously stupid, which is the very opposite to being +fresh and young. + +‘I was reading only the other day about Bismarck, that hero of +nineteenth-century politics, that sequel to Napoleon, that god of blood +and iron. And he was just a beery, obstinate, dull man. Indeed, that is +what he was, the commonest, coarsest man, who ever became great. I +looked at his portraits, a heavy, almost froggish face, with projecting +eyes and a thick moustache to hide a poor mouth. He aimed at nothing +but Germany, Germany emphasised, indurated, enlarged; Germany and his +class in Germany; beyond that he had no ideas, he was inaccessible to +ideas; his mind never rose for a recorded instant above a bumpkin’s +elaborate cunning. And he was the most influential man in the world, in +the whole world, no man ever left so deep a mark on it, because +everywhere there were gross men to resonate to the heavy notes he +emitted. He trampled on ten thousand lovely things, and a kind of +malice in these louts made it pleasant to them to see him trample. +No—he was no child; the dull, national aggressiveness he stood for, no +childishness. Childhood is promise. He was survival. + +‘All Europe offered its children to him, it sacrificed education, art, +happiness and all its hopes of future welfare to follow the clatter of +his sabre. The monstrous worship of that old fool’s “blood and iron” +passed all round the earth. Until the atomic bombs burnt our way to +freedom again....’ + +‘One thinks of him now as one thinks of the megatherium,’ said one of +the young men. + +‘From first to last mankind made three million big guns and a hundred +thousand complicated great ships for no other purpose but war.’ + +‘Were there no sane men in those days,’ asked the young man, ‘to stand +against that idolatry?’ + +‘In a state of despair,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘He is so far off—and there are men alive still who were alive when +Bismarck died!’ . . . said the young man.... + +Section 5 + +‘And yet it may be I am unjust to Bismarck,’ said Karenin, following +his own thoughts. ‘You see, men belong to their own age; we stand upon +a common stock of thought and we fancy we stand upon the ground. I met +a pleasant man the other day, a Maori, whose great-grandfather was a +cannibal. It chanced he had a daguerreotype of the old sinner, and the +two were marvellously alike. One felt that a little juggling with time +and either might have been the other. People are cruel and stupid in a +stupid age who might be gentle and splendid in a gracious one. The +world also has its moods. Think of the mental food of Bismarck’s +childhood; the humiliations of Napoleon’s victories, the crowded, +crowning victory of the Battle of the Nations.... Everybody in those +days, wise or foolish, believed that the division of the world under a +multitude of governments was inevitable, and that it was going on for +thousands of years more. It _was_ inevitable until it was impossible. +Any one who had denied that inevitability publicly would have been +counted—oh! a _silly_ fellow. Old Bismarck was only just a +little—forcible, on the lines of the accepted ideas. That is all. He +thought that since there had to be national governments he would make +one that was strong at home and invincible abroad. Because he had fed +with a kind of rough appetite upon what we can see now were very stupid +ideas, that does not make him a stupid man. We’ve had advantages; we’ve +had unity and collectivism blasted into our brains. Where should we be +now but for the grace of science? I should have been an embittered, +spiteful, downtrodden member of the Russian Intelligenza, a +conspirator, a prisoner, or an assassin. You, my dear, would have been +breaking dingy windows as a suffragette.’ + +‘_Never_,’ said Edith stoutly.... + +For a time the talk broke into humorous personalities, and the young +people gibed at each other across the smiling old administrator, and +then presently one of the young scientific men gave things a new turn. +He spoke like one who was full to the brim. + +‘You know, sir, I’ve a fancy—it is hard to prove such things—that +civilisation was very near disaster when the atomic bombs came banging +into it, that if there had been no Holsten and no induced +radio-activity, the world would have—smashed—much as it did. Only +instead of its being a smash that opened a way to better things, it +might have been a smash without a recovery. It is part of my business +to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before +Holsten was just a hundred years’ crescendo of waste. Only the extreme +individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective +understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up +material—insanely. They had got through three-quarters of all the coal +in the planet, they had used up most of the oil, they had swept away +their forests, and they were running short of tin and copper. Their +wheat areas were getting weary and populous, and many of the big towns +had so lowered the water level of their available hills that they +suffered a drought every summer. The whole system was rushing towards +bankruptcy. And they were spending every year vaster and vaster amounts +of power and energy upon military preparations, and continually +expanding the debt of industry to capital. The system was already +staggering when Holsten began his researches. So far as the world in +general went there was no sense of danger and no desire for inquiry. +They had no belief that science could save them, nor any idea that +there was a need to be saved. They could not, they would not, see the +gulf beneath their feet. It was pure good luck for mankind at large +that any research at all was in progress. And as I say, sir, if that +line of escape hadn’t opened, before now there might have been a crash, +revolution, panic, social disintegration, famine, and—it is +conceivable—complete disorder.... The rails might have rusted on the +disused railways by now, the telephone poles have rotted and fallen, +the big liners dropped into sheet-iron in the ports; the burnt, +deserted cities become the ruinous hiding-places of gangs of robbers. +We might have been brigands in a shattered and attenuated world. Ah, +you may smile, but that had happened before in human history. The world +is still studded with the ruins of broken-down civilisations. Barbaric +bands made their fastness upon the Acropolis, and the tomb of Hadrian +became a fortress that warred across the ruins of Rome against the +Colosseum.... Had all that possibility of reaction ended so certainly +in 1940? Is it all so very far away even now?’ + +‘It seems far enough away now,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘But forty years ago?’ + +‘No,’ said Karenin with his eyes upon the mountains, ‘I think you +underrate the available intelligence in those early decades of the +twentieth century. Officially, I know, politically, that intelligence +didn’t tell—but it was there. And I question your hypothesis. I doubt +if that discovery could have been delayed. There is a kind of +inevitable logic now in the progress of research. For a hundred years +and more thought and science have been going their own way regardless +of the common events of life. You see—_they have got loose_. If there +had been no Holsten there would have been some similar man. If atomic +energy had not come in one year it would have come in another. In +decadent Rome the march of science had scarcely begun.... Nineveh, +Babylon, Athens, Syracuse, Alexandria, these were the first rough +experiments in association that made a security, a breathing-space, in +which inquiry was born. Man had to experiment before he found out the +way to begin. But already two hundred years ago he had fairly begun.... +The politics and dignities and wars of the nineteenth and twentieth +centuries were only the last phoenix blaze of the former civilisation +flaring up about the beginnings of the new. Which we serve.... ‘Man +lives in the dawn for ever,’ said Karenin. ‘Life is beginning and +nothing else but beginning. It begins everlastingly. Each step seems +vaster than the last, and does but gather us together for the nest. +This Modern State of ours, which would have been a Utopian marvel a +hundred years ago, is already the commonplace of life. But as I sit +here and dream of the possibilities in the mind of man that now gather +to a head beneath the shelter of its peace, these great mountains here +seem but little things....’ + +Section 6 + +About eleven Karenin had his midday meal, and afterwards he slept among +his artificial furs and pillows for two hours. Then he awoke and some +tea was brought to him, and he attended to a small difficulty in +connection with the Moravian schools in the Labrador country and in +Greenland that Gardener knew would interest him. He remained alone for +a little while after that, and then the two women came to him again. +Afterwards Edwards and Kahn joined the group, and the talk fell upon +love and the place of women in the renascent world. The cloudbanks of +India lay under a quivering haze, and the blaze of the sun fell full +upon the eastward precipices. Ever and again as they talked, some vast +splinter of rock would crack and come away from these, or a wild rush +of snow and ice and stone, pour down in thunder, hang like a wet thread +into the gulfs below, and cease.... + +Section 7 + +For a time Karenin said very little, and Kahn, the popular poet, talked +of passionate love. He said that passionate, personal love had been the +abiding desire of humanity since ever humanity had begun, and now only +was it becoming a possible experience. It had been a dream that +generation after generation had pursued, that always men had lost on +the verge of attainment. To most of those who had sought it obstinately +it had brought tragedy. Now, lifted above sordid distresses, men and +women might hope for realised and triumphant love. This age was the +Dawn of Love.... + +Karenin remained downcast and thoughtful while Kahn said these things. +Against that continued silence Kahn’s voice presently seemed to beat +and fail. He had begun by addressing Karenin, but presently he was +including Edith Haydon and Rachel Borken in his appeal. Rachel listened +silently; Edith watched Karenin and very deliberately avoided Kahn’s +eyes. + +‘I know,’ said Karenin at last, ‘that many people are saying this sort +of thing. I know that there is a vast release of love-making in the +world. This great wave of decoration and elaboration that has gone +about the world, this Efflorescence, has of course laid hold of that. I +know that when you say that the world is set free, you interpret that +to mean that the world is set free for love-making. Down there,—under +the clouds, the lovers foregather. I know your songs, Kahn, your +half-mystical songs, in which you represent this old hard world +dissolving into a luminous haze of love—sexual love.... I don’t think +you are right or true in that. You are a young, imaginative man, and +you see life—ardently—with the eyes of youth. But the power that has +brought man into these high places under this blue-veiled blackness of +the sky and which beckons us on towards the immense and awful future of +our race, is riper and deeper and greater than any such emotions.... + +‘All through my life—it has been a necessary part of my work—I have had +to think of this release of sexual love and the riddles that perfect +freedom and almost limitless power will put to the soul of our race. I +can see now, all over the world, a beautiful ecstasy of waste; “Let us +sing and rejoice and be lovely and wonderful.” . . . The orgy is only +beginning, Kahn.... It was inevitable—but it is not the end of +mankind.... + +‘Think what we are. It is but a yesterday in the endlessness of time +that life was a dreaming thing, dreaming so deeply that it forgot +itself as it dreamt, its lives, its individual instincts, its moments, +were born and wondered and played and desired and hungered and grew +weary and died. Incalculable successions of vision, visions of sunlit +jungle, river wilderness, wild forest, eager desire, beating hearts, +soaring wings and creeping terror flamed hotly and then were as though +they had never been. Life was an uneasiness across which lights played +and vanished. And then we came, man came, and opened eyes that were a +question and hands that were a demand and began a mind and memory that +dies not when men die, but lives and increases for ever, an over-mind, +a dominating will, a question and an aspiration that reaches to the +stars.... Hunger and fear and this that you make so much of, this sex, +are but the elementals of life out of which we have arisen. All these +elementals, I grant you, have to be provided for, dealt with, +satisfied, but all these things have to be left behind.’ + +‘But Love,’ said Kahn. + +‘I speak of sexual love and the love of intimate persons. And that is +what you mean, Kahn.’ + +Karenin shook his head. ‘You cannot stay at the roots and climb the +tree,’ he said.... + +‘No,’ he said after a pause, ‘this sexual excitement, this love story, +is just a part of growing up and we grow out of it. So far literature +and art and sentiment and all our emotional forms have been almost +altogether adolescent, plays and stories, delights and hopes, they have +all turned on that marvellous discovery of the love interest, but life +lengthens out now and the mind of adult humanity detaches itself. Poets +who used to die at thirty live now to eighty-five. You, too, Kahn! +There are endless years yet for you—and all full of learning.... We +carry an excessive burden of sex and sexual tradition still, and we +have to free ourselves from it. We do free ourselves from it. We have +learnt in a thousand different ways to hold back death, and this sex, +which in the old barbaric days was just sufficient to balance our +dying, is now like a hammer that has lost its anvil, it plunges through +human life. You poets, you young people want to turn it to delight. +Turn it to delight. That may be one way out. In a little while, if you +have any brains worth thinking about, you will be satisfied, and then +you will come up here to the greater things. The old religions and +their new offsets want still, I see, to suppress all these things. Let +them suppress. If they can suppress. In their own people. Either road +will bring you here at last to the eternal search for knowledge and the +great adventure of power.’ + +‘But incidentally,’ said Rachel Borken; ‘incidentally you have half of +humanity, you have womankind, very much specialised for—for this love +and reproduction that is so much less needed than it was.’ + +‘Both sexes are specialised for love and reproduction,’ said Karenin. + +‘But the women carry the heavier burden.’ + +‘Not in their imaginations,’ said Edwards. + +‘And surely,’ said Kahn, ‘when you speak of love as a phase—isn’t it a +necessary phase? Quite apart from reproduction the love of the sexes is +necessary. Isn’t it love, sexual love, which has released the +imagination? Without that stir, without that impulse to go out from +ourselves, to be reckless of ourselves and wonderful, would our lives +be anything more than the contentment of the stalled ox?’ + +‘The key that opens the door,’ said Karenin, ‘is not the goal of the +journey.’ + +‘But women!’ cried Rachel. ‘Here we are! What is our future—as women? +Is it only that we have unlocked the doors of the imagination for you +men? Let us speak of this question now. It is a thing constantly in my +thoughts, Karenin. What do you think of us? You who must have thought +so much of these perplexities.’ + +Karenin seemed to weigh his words. He spoke very deliberately. ‘I do +not care a rap about your future—as women. I do not care a rap about +the future of men—as males. I want to destroy these peculiar futures. I +care for your future as intelligences, as parts of and contribution to +the universal mind of the race. Humanity is not only naturally +over-specialised in these matters, but all its institutions, its +customs, everything, exaggerate, intensify this difference. I want to +unspecialise women. No new idea. Plato wanted exactly that. I do not +want to go on as we go now, emphasising this natural difference; I do +not deny it, but I want to reduce it and overcome it.’ + +‘And—we remain women,’ said Rachel Borken. ‘Need you remain thinking of +yourselves as women?’ + +‘It is forced upon us,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘I do not think a woman becomes less of a woman because she dresses and +works like a man,’ said Edwards. ‘You women here, I mean you scientific +women, wear white clothing like the men, twist up your hair in the +simplest fashion, go about your work as though there was only one sex +in the world. You are just as much women, even if you are not so +feminine, as the fine ladies down below there in the plains who dress +for excitement and display, whose only thoughts are of lovers, who +exaggerate every difference.... Indeed we love you more.’ + +‘But we go about our work,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘So does it matter?’ asked Rachel. + +‘If you go about your work and if the men go about their work then for +Heaven’s sake be as much woman as you wish,’ said Karenin. ‘When I ask +you to unspecialise, I am thinking not of the abolition of sex, but the +abolition of the irksome, restricting, obstructive obsession with sex. +It may be true that sex made society, that the first society was the +sex-cemented family, the first state a confederacy of blood relations, +the first laws sexual taboos. Until a few years ago morality meant +proper sexual behaviour. Up to within a few years of us the chief +interest and motive of an ordinary man was to keep and rule a woman and +her children and the chief concern of a woman was to get a man to do +that. That was the drama, that was life. And the jealousy of these +demands was the master motive in the world. You said, Kahn, a little +while ago that sexual love was the key that let one out from the +solitude of self, but I tell you that so far it has only done so in +order to lock us all up again in a solitude of two.... All that may +have been necessary but it is necessary no longer. All that has changed +and changes still very swiftly. Your future, Rachel, _as women_, is a +diminishing future.’ + +‘Karenin?’ asked Rachel, ‘do you mean that women are to become men?’ + +‘Men and women have to become human beings.’ + +‘You would abolish women? But, Karenin, listen! There is more than sex +in this. Apart from sex we are different from you. We take up life +differently. Forget we are—females, Karenin, and still we are a +different sort of human being with a different use. In some things we +are amazingly secondary. Here am I in this place because of my trick of +management, and Edith is here because of her patient, subtle hands. +That does not alter the fact that nearly the whole body of science is +man made; that does not alter the fact that men do so predominatingly +make history, that you could nearly write a complete history of the +world without mentioning a woman’s name. And on the other hand we have +a gift of devotion, of inspiration, a distinctive power for truly +loving beautiful things, a care for life and a peculiar keen close eye +for behaviour. You know men are blind beside us in these last matters. +You know they are restless—and fitful. We have a steadfastness. We may +never draw the broad outlines nor discover the new paths, but in the +future isn’t there a confirming and sustaining and supplying _rôle_ for +us? As important, perhaps, as yours? Equally important. We hold the +world up, Karenin, though you may have raised it.’ + +‘You know very well, Rachel, that I believe as you believe. I am not +thinking of the abolition of woman. But I do want to abolish—the +heroine, the sexual heroine. I want to abolish the woman whose support +is jealousy and whose gift possession. I want to abolish the woman who +can be won as a prize or locked up as a delicious treasure. And away +down there the heroine flares like a divinity.’ + +‘In America,’ said Edwards, ‘men are fighting duels over the praises of +women and holding tournaments before Queens of Beauty.’ + +‘I saw a beautiful girl in Lahore,’ said Kahn, ‘she sat under a golden +canopy like a goddess, and three fine men, armed and dressed like the +ancient paintings, sat on steps below her to show their devotion. And +they wanted only her permission to fight for her.’ + +‘That is the men’s doing,’ said Edith Haydon. + +‘I _said_,’ cried Edwards, ‘that man’s imagination was more specialised +for sex than the whole being of woman. What woman would do a thing like +that? Women do but submit to it or take advantage of it.’ + +‘There is no evil between men and women that is not a common evil,’ +said Karenin. ‘It is you poets, Kahn, with your love songs which turn +the sweet fellowship of comrades into this woman-centred excitement. +But there is something in women, in many women, which responds to these +provocations; they succumb to a peculiarly self-cultivating egotism. +They become the subjects of their own artistry. They develop and +elaborate themselves as scarcely any man would ever do. They _look_ for +golden canopies. And even when they seem to react against that, they +may do it still. I have been reading in the old papers of the movements +to emancipate women that were going on before the discovery of atomic +force. These things which began with a desire to escape from the +limitations and servitude of sex, ended in an inflamed assertion of +sex, and women more heroines than ever. Helen of Holloway was at last +as big a nuisance in her way as Helen of Troy, and so long as you think +of yourselves as women’—he held out a finger at Rachel and smiled +gently—‘instead of thinking of yourselves as intelligent beings, you +will be in danger of—Helenism. To think of yourselves as women is to +think of yourselves in relation to men. You can’t escape that +consequence. You have to learn to think of yourselves—for our sakes and +your own sakes—in relation to the sun and stars. You have to cease to +be our adventure, Rachel, and come with us upon our adventures. ...’ He +waved his hand towards the dark sky above the mountain crests. + +Section 8 + +‘These questions are the next questions to which research will bring us +answers,’ said Karenin. ‘While we sit here and talk idly and inexactly +of what is needed and what may be, there are hundreds of keen-witted +men and women who are working these things out, dispassionately and +certainly, for the love of knowledge. The next sciences to yield great +harvests now will be psychology and neural physiology. These +perplexities of the situation between man and woman and the trouble +with the obstinacy of egotism, these are temporary troubles, the issue +of our own times. Suddenly all these differences that seem so fixed +will dissolve, all these incompatibles will run together, and we shall +go on to mould our bodies and our bodily feelings and personal +reactions as boldly as we begin now to carve mountains and set the seas +in their places and change the currents of the wind.’ + +‘It is the next wave,’ said Fowler, who had come out upon the terrace +and seated himself silently behind Karenin’s chair. + +‘Of course, in the old days,’ said Edwards, ‘men were tied to their +city or their country, tied to the homes they owned or the work they +did....’ + +‘I do not see,’ said Karenin, ‘that there is any final limit to man’s +power of self-modification. + +‘There is none,’ said Fowler, walking forward and sitting down upon the +parapet in front of Karenin so that he could see his face. ‘There is no +absolute limit to either knowledge or power.... I hope you do not tire +yourself talking.’ + +‘I am interested,’ said Karenin. ‘I suppose in a little while men will +cease to be tired. I suppose in a little time you will give us +something that will hurry away the fatigue products and restore our +jaded tissues almost at once. This old machine may be made to run +without slacking or cessation.’ + +‘That is possible, Karenin. But there is much to learn.’ + +‘And all the hours we give to digestion and half living; don’t you +think there will be some way of saving these?’ + +Fowler nodded assent. + +‘And then sleep again. When man with his blazing lights made an end to +night in his towns and houses—it is only a hundred years or so ago that +that was done—then it followed he would presently resent his eight +hours of uselessness. Shan’t we presently take a tabloid or lie in some +field of force that will enable us to do with an hour or so of slumber +and rise refreshed again?’ + +‘Frobisher and Ameer Ali have done work in that direction.’ + +‘And then the inconveniences of age and those diseases of the system +that come with years; steadily you drive them back and you lengthen and +lengthen the years that stretch between the passionate tumults of youth +and the contractions of senility. Man who used to weaken and die as his +teeth decayed now looks forward to a continually lengthening, +continually fuller term of years. And all those parts of him that once +gathered evil against him, the vestigial structures and odd, +treacherous corners of his body, you know better and better how to deal +with. You carve his body about and leave it re-modelled and unscarred. +The psychologists are learning how to mould minds, to reduce and remove +bad complexes of thought and motive, to relieve pressures and broaden +ideas. So that we are becoming more and more capable of transmitting +what we have learnt and preserving it for the race. The race, the +racial wisdom, science, gather power continually to subdue the +individual man to its own end. Is that not so?’ + +Fowler said that it was, and for a time he was telling Karenin of new +work that was in progress in India and Russia. ‘And how is it with +heredity?’ asked Karenin. + +Fowler told them of the mass of inquiry accumulated and arranged by the +genius of Tchen, who was beginning to define clearly the laws of +inheritance and how the sex of children and the complexions and many of +the parental qualities could be determined. + +‘He can actually _do_——?’ + +‘It is still, so to speak, a mere laboratory triumph,’ said Fowler, +‘but to-morrow it will be practicable.’ + +‘You see,’ cried Karenin, turning a laughing face to Rachel and Edith, +‘while we have been theorising about men and women, here is science +getting the power for us to end that old dispute for ever. If woman is +too much for us, we’ll reduce her to a minority, and if we do not like +any type of men and women, we’ll have no more of it. These old bodies, +these old animal limitations, all this earthly inheritance of gross +inevitabilities falls from the spirit of man like the shrivelled cocoon +from an imago. And for my own part, when I hear of these things I feel +like that—like a wet, crawling new moth that still fears to spread its +wings. Because where do these things take us?’ + +‘Beyond humanity,’ said Kahn. + +‘No,’ said Karenin. ‘We can still keep our feet upon the earth that +made us. But the air no longer imprisons us, this round planet is no +longer chained to us like the ball of a galley slave.... + +‘In a little while men who will know how to bear the strange +gravitations, the altered pressures, the attenuated, unfamiliar gases +and all the fearful strangenesses of space will be venturing out from +this earth. This ball will be no longer enough for us; our spirit will +reach out.... Cannot you see how that little argosy will go glittering +up into the sky, twinkling and glittering smaller and smaller until the +blue swallows it up. They may succeed out there; they may perish, but +other men will follow them.... + +‘It is as if a great window opened,’ said Karenin. + +Section 9 + +As the evening drew on Karenin and those who were about him went up +upon the roof of the buildings, so that they might the better watch the +sunset and the flushing of the mountains and the coming of the +afterglow. They were joined by two of the surgeons from the +laboratories below, and presently by a nurse who brought Karenin +refreshment in a thin glass cup. It was a cloudless, windless evening +under the deep blue sky, and far away to the north glittered two +biplanes on the way to the observatories on Everest, two hundred miles +distant over the precipices to the east. The little group of people +watched them pass over the mountains and vanish into the blue, and then +for a time they talked of the work that the observatory was doing. From +that they passed to the whole process of research about the world, and +so Karenin’s thoughts returned again to the mind of the world and the +great future that was opening upon man’s imagination. He asked the +surgeons many questions upon the detailed possibilities of their +science, and he was keenly interested and excited by the things they +told him. And as they talked the sun touched the mountains, and became +very swiftly a blazing and indented hemisphere of liquid flame and +sank. + +Karenin looked blinking at the last quivering rim of incandescence, and +shaded his eyes and became silent. + +Presently he gave a little start. + +‘What?’ asked Rachel Borken. + +‘I had forgotten,’ he said. + +‘What had you forgotten?’ + +‘I had forgotten about the operation to-morrow. I have been so +interested as Man to-day that I have nearly forgotten Marcus Karenin. +Marcus Karenin must go under your knife to-morrow, Fowler, and very +probably Marcus Karenin will die.’ He raised his slightly shrivelled +hand. ‘It does not matter, Fowler. It scarcely matters even to me. For +indeed is it Karenin who has been sitting here and talking; is it not +rather a common mind, Fowler, that has played about between us? You and +I and all of us have added thought to thought, but the thread is +neither you nor me. What is true we all have; when the individual has +altogether brought himself to the test and winnowing of expression, +then the individual is done. I feel as though I had already been +emptied out of that little vessel, that Marcus Karenin, which in my +youth held me so tightly and completely. Your beauty, dear Edith, and +your broad brow, dear Rachel, and you, Fowler, with your firm and +skilful hands, are now almost as much to me as this hand that beats the +arm of my chair. And as little me. And the spirit that desires to know, +the spirit that resolves to do, that spirit that lives and has talked +in us to-day, lived in Athens, lived in Florence, lives on, I know, for +ever.... + +‘And you, old Sun, with your sword of flame searing these poor eyes of +Marcus for the last time of all, beware of me! You think I die—and +indeed I am only taking off one more coat to get at you. I have +threatened you for ten thousand years, and soon I warn you I shall be +coming. When I am altogether stripped and my disguises thrown away. +Very soon now, old Sun, I shall launch myself at you, and I shall reach +you and I shall put my foot on your spotted face and tug you about by +your fiery locks. One step I shall take to the moon, and then I shall +leap at you. I’ve talked to you before, old Sun, I’ve talked to you a +million times, and now I am beginning to remember. Yes—long ago, long +ago, before I had stripped off a few thousand generations, dust now and +forgotten, I was a hairy savage and I pointed my hand at you +and—clearly I remember it!—I saw you in a net. Have you forgotten that, +old Sun? . . . + +‘Old Sun, I gather myself together out of the pools of the individual +that have held me dispersed so long. I gather my billion thoughts into +science and my million wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink +down behind the mountains from me, well may you cower....’ + +Section 10 + +Karenin desired that he might dream alone for a little while before he +returned to the cell in which he was to sleep. He was given relief for +a pain that began to trouble him and wrapped warmly about with furs, +for a great coldness was creeping over all things, and so they left +him, and he sat for a long time watching the afterglow give place to +the darkness of night. + +It seemed to those who had to watch over him unobtrusively lest he +should be in want of any attention, that he mused very deeply. + +The white and purple peaks against the golden sky sank down into cold, +blue remoteness, glowed out again and faded again, and the burning +cressets of the Indian stars, that even the moonrise cannot altogether +quench, began their vigil. The moon rose behind the towering screen of +dark precipices to the east, and long before it emerged above these, +its slanting beams had filled the deep gorges below with luminous mist +and turned the towers and pinnacles of Lio Porgyul to a magic +dreamcastle of radiance and wonder.... + +Came a great uprush of ghostly light above the black rim of rocks, and +then like a bubble that is blown and detaches itself the moon floated +off clear into the unfathomable dark sky.... + +And then Karenin stood up. He walked a few paces along the terrace and +remained for a time gazing up at that great silver disc, that silvery +shield that must needs be man’s first conquest in outer space.... + +Presently he turned about and stood with his hands folded behind him, +looking at the northward stars.... + +At length he went to his own cell. He lay down there and slept +peacefully till the morning. And early in the morning they came to him +and the anæsthetic was given him and the operation performed. + +It was altogether successful, but Karenin was weak and he had to lie +very still; and about seven days later a blood clot detached itself +from the healing scar and travelled to his heart, and he died in an +instant in the night. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD SET FREE *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following +the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use +of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for +copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very +easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation +of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project +Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may +do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected +by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark +license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country other than the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where + you are located before using this eBook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that: + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of +the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set +forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, +Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up +to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website +and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without +widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our website which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + |