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diff --git a/old/1059-h/1059-h.htm b/old/1059-h/1059-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a59700a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1059-h/1059-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8738 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The World Set Free, by Herbert George Wells</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 2em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The World Set Free, by Herbert George Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. 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. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The World Set Free<br /> + A Story of Mankind</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Herbert George Wells</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October, 1997 [eBook #1059]<br /> +[Most recently updated: November 24, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Charles Keller and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD SET FREE ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>The World Set Free</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by H.G. Wells</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +We Are All Things That Make And Pass,<br/> +Striving Upon A Hidden Mission,<br/> +Out To The Open Sea. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +TO<br/> +Frederick Soddy’s<br/> +‘Interpretation Of Radium’<br/> +This Story,<br/> +Which Owes Long Passages<br/> +To The Eleventh Chapter Of That Book,<br/> +Acknowledges And Inscribes Itself +</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#pref01">PREFACE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#pref02">PRELUDE. THE SUN SNARERS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE LAST WAR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE ENDING OF WAR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER THE FOURTH. THE NEW PHASE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="pref01"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<p> +<i>The World Set Free</i> 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. <i>The World Set Free</i> 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 <i>Anticipations</i> 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 <i>The +World Set Free</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>The World Set +Free</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +H. G. WELLS. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +E<small>ASTON</small> G<small>LEBE</small>, D<small>UNMOW</small>, 1921. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="pref02"></a>PRELUDE<br/> +THE SUN SNARERS</h2> + +<h3>Section I</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +So through the long generations, this heavy precursor, this ancestor of all of +us, fought and bred and perished, changing almost imperceptibly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And already there were the beginnings of leisure and thought. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>rôles</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 4</h3> + +<p> +The latent energy of coal and the power of steam waited long on the verge of +discovery, before they began to influence human lives. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 5</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 6</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This is what happened. +</p> + +<p> +‘I wish, Daddy,’ he said, coming to his point, ‘that you +wouldn’t write all this stuff about flying. The chaps rot me.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Yes!’ said his father. +</p> + +<p> +‘And old Broomie, the Head I mean, he rots me. Everybody rots me.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But there is going to be flying—quite soon.’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘You’ll fly—lots of times—before you die,’ the +father assured him. +</p> + +<p> +The little boy looked unhappy. +</p> + +<p> +The father hesitated. Then he opened a drawer and took out a blurred and +under-developed photograph. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +The father watched the effect of this reassuring document upon his son. +‘Well?’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +‘That,’ said the schoolboy, after reflection, ‘is only a +model.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Model to-day, man to-morrow.’ +</p> + +<p> +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....’ +</p> + +<p> +Yet that boy lived to fly across the Atlantic and edit his father’s +reminiscences. +</p> + +<h3>Section 7</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 8</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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!’ +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>en masse?</i> . . . Suppose presently we find it is possible to +quicken that decay?’ +</p> + +<p> +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?’ +</p> + +<p> +The professor lifted his forefinger. +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +The scrub head nodded. ‘Oh! go on. Go on.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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——’ +</p> + +<p> +He paused. His voice sank so that everybody strained a little to hear him. +</p> + +<p> +‘——we will.’ +</p> + +<p> +He put up that lean finger again, his solitary gesture. +</p> + +<p> +‘And then,’ he said.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +He stopped abruptly with a catching of the breath that many an actor or orator +might have envied. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He went through the streets with a rapt face, like a saint who sees visions. He +had arms disproportionately long, and ridiculous big feet. +</p> + +<p> +He must get alone, get somewhere high out of all this crowding of commonness, +of everyday life. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘If,’ he whispered, ‘if only we could pick that +lock....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Eh!’ said the youngster. ‘Eh!’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>yet</i>.’ +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST<br/> +THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY</h2> + +<h3>Section I</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——’ +</p> + +<p> +Then Holsten stopped short. Lawson had leapt to his feet. ‘Damn that +dog!’ cried Lawson. ‘Look at it now. Hi! Here! +<i>Phewoo-phewoo-phewoo!</i> Come <i>here, Bobs!</i> Come <i>here!</i>’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then he remarked, ‘<i>Well!</i>’ and smiled faintly, +and—finished the tankard of beer before him. +</p> + +<p> +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?’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘If there have been home and routine and the field,’ thought +Holsten, ‘there have also been wonder and the sea.’ +</p> + +<p> +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? . . . +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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. . . +</p> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +Holsten was silent. +</p> + +<p> +‘Surely?’ said the judge, almost pityingly. +</p> + +<p> +‘No, he hasn’t,’ said Holsten, perceiving that for once in +his life he must disregard infinitesimals. +</p> + +<p> +‘Ah!’ said the judge, ‘now why couldn’t you say that +when counsel put the question? . . .’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 4</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 5</h3> + +<p> +Frederick Barnet’s <i>Wander Jahre</i> 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 <i>Wilhelm Meister</i> +of Goethe, a century and a half earlier. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>débâcle</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’) +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 6</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +He was turned out of his lodging in a backward part of London. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +He wandered down into the thronging gayer parts of London, in which a year or +so ago he had been numbered among the spenders. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +What were they asking for? +</p> + +<p> +They had been overtaken by unexpected things. Nobody had foreseen—— +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>intelligence</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +That was what this crowd of wreckage was feeling and seeking so dumbly to +assert. +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>there was no such +intelligence</i>. 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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 7</h3> + +<p> +And then the story tells, with an engaging simplicity, of his descent from this +ecstatic vision of reality. +</p> + +<p> +‘Presently I found myself again, and I was beginning to feel cold and a +little hungry.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘I’m starving,’ he said to her abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +‘Oh! poor dear!’ she said; and with the impulsive generosity of her +kind, glanced round and slipped a silver piece into his hand.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 8</h3> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND<br/> +THE LAST WAR</h2> + +<h3>Section I</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. <i>They</i> are sending us up into +Luxembourg. <i>They</i> are going to turn the Central European right.’ +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +She watched him now through the glass with all the unpenetrating minuteness of +an impassioned woman’s observation. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>nobody knew</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to her beyond the desert of a woman that she should be privileged to +participate.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One of the sentinels from the terrace stood at the upper end of the room, +gesticulating and shouting something. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes went to the face of the Marshal as a frightened child might look +towards its mother. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Something up there? +</p> + +<p> +And then it was as if thunder broke overhead. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +Everything else in her being was paralysed, she hung through moments that +seemed infinities, watching those red missiles whirl down towards her. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +She had all the sensations of waking up out of a dream. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At first she could not join on what she saw to any previous experience. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>débris</i>, 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.... +</p> + +<p> +She drew herself a little way up the slope of earth on which she lay, and +examined her surroundings with an increasing understanding.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>Mais!</i>’ she whispered, and remained with staring eyes quite +motionless for a time, crouching close to the warm earth. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +She craned her head. There was something there. But everything was so still! +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>Monsieur!</i>’ she cried. Her ears, she noted, felt queer, and +she began to suspect that all was not well with them. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p> +When the rather brutish young aviator with the bullet head and the black hair +close-cropped <i>en brosse</i>, 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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘We’ll give them tit-for-tat,’ he said. ‘We’ll +give them tit-for-tat. No time to lose, boys....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The sky below grew clearer as the Central European capital was approached. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +A bullet came tearing through the air by him, as though some one was tearing +paper. A second followed. Something tapped the machine. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Round,’ he whispered inaudibly. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 4</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the crowning triumph of military science, the ultimate explosive that +was to give the ‘decisive touch’ to war.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 5</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 6</h3> + +<p> +But let us return to Frederick Barnet’s <i>Wander Jahre</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +A number of monoplanes, ‘like giant swallows,’ he notes, were +scouting in the pink evening sky. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +“<i>Got</i> you,” I whispered, and pulled the trigger. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘I sent him spinning. He jumped and threw up his arms.... +</p> + +<p> +‘Then I saw the corn tops waving and had glimpses of him flapping about. +Suddenly I felt sick. I hadn’t killed him.... +</p> + +<p> +‘In some way he was disabled and smashed up and yet able to struggle +about. I began to think.... +</p> + +<p> +‘For nearly two hours that Prussian was agonising in the corn. Either he +was calling out or some one was shouting to him.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘He had been unendurable, and I believe some one had shot him dead. I had +been wanting to do so for some time....’ +</p> + +<p> +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!’ +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>was</i> damned foolery. But who was to blame? How had we got to +this? . . . +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘“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.” . . . +</p> + +<p> +‘Then the phrase changed itself in my mind. “Presently mankind will +wake up.” +</p> + +<p> +‘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? +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 7</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +Over the populous country below went a strange multitudinous crying and a +flurry of alarm bells.... +</p> + +<p> +The surviving aeroplanes turned about and fled out of the sky, like things that +suddenly know themselves to be wicked.... +</p> + +<p> +Through a dozen thunderously flaming gaps that no water might quench, the waves +came roaring in upon the land.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 8</h3> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘The gate of the house from which we had provisioned ourselves was +adorned with the legend, <i>Vreugde bij Vrede</i>, “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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +Very characteristic is that of the ‘rather too corpulent’ young +officer, who was afterwards to set it all down in the <i>Wander Jahre</i>. Very +characteristic, too, it is of the change in men’s hearts that was even +then preparing a new phase of human history. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Directly I saw that fleet I was astonished not to have seen it before. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was filled +with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘And then the wind had struck me a buffet, taken my helmet and swept +aside the summerhouse of <i>Vreugde bij Vrede</i>, 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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>Vreugde bij Vrede</i> before the +night swallowed it, was almost dead astern of us....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 9</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They showed flat and sullen through the mist, like London sunsets. ‘They +sat upon the sea,’ says Barnet, ‘like frayed-out waterlilies of +flame.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘“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.’... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘“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. <i>This</i>—all +this—is impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +‘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 +<i>right</i> hand. . . .” +</p> + +<p> +‘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.”’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 10</h3> + +<p> +But now our history must part company with Frederick Barnet and his barge-load +of hungry and starving men. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD<br/> +THE ENDING OF WAR</h2> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p> +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 +<i>débâcle</i> 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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>rôle</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘We will have nobody with us,’ he said, ‘at all. We will be +perfectly simple.’ +</p> + +<p> +So Firmin carried the beer. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Firmin,’ said the king, ‘I am going to set my brother kings +a good example.’ +</p> + +<p> +Firmin intimated a curiosity that veiled a dread. +</p> + +<p> +‘By chucking all that nonsense,’ said the king. +</p> + +<p> +He quickened his pace as Firmin, who was already a little out of breath, +betrayed a disposition to reply. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +Firmin halted abruptly. ‘But, sir!’ he cried. +</p> + +<p> +The king stopped six yards ahead of him and looked back at his adviser’s +perspiring visage. +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +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——’ +</p> + +<p> +‘There’s got to be one simple government for all the world,’ +said the king over his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +‘But as for a reckless, unqualified abandonment, sir——’ +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>Bang!</i>’ cried the king. +</p> + +<p> +Firmin made no answer to this interruption. But a faint shadow of annoyance +passed across his heated features. +</p> + +<p> +‘Yesterday,’ said the king, by way of explanation, ‘the +Japanese very nearly got San Francisco.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I hadn’t heard, sir.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘The Americans ran the Japanese aeroplane down into the sea and there the +bomb got busted.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Under the sea, sir?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>He</i> will haggle, sir.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Not a bit of it,’ said the king. +</p> + +<p> +‘But, sir.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Leblanc won’t let him.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The king considered him. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘The things people miss, Firmin,’ he said, ‘who go up into +the air in ships!’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It would be beautiful anyhow,’ said the king. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +He meditated over a busy mouthful of bread and cheese. +</p> + +<p> +‘We ought to have brought a tankard for that beer,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +Firmin produced a folding aluminium cup, and the king was pleased to drink. +</p> + +<p> +‘I wish, sir,’ said Firmin suddenly, ‘I could induce you at +least to delay your decision——’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It’s no good talking, Firmin,’ said the king. ‘My +mind’s as clear as daylight.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Sire,’ protested Firmin, with his voice full of bread and cheese +and genuine emotion, ‘have you no respect for your kingship?’ +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>you</i> know of kingship, Firmin? +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But, sir,’ protested Firmin. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed an expression of despair. Meanwhile, +he conveyed, one must eat. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Firmin,’ he said, ‘you have idealised kingship.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It has been my dream, sir,’ said Firmin sorrowfully, ‘to +serve.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘At the levers, Firmin,’ said the king. +</p> + +<p> +‘You are pleased to be unjust,’ said Firmin, deeply hurt. +</p> + +<p> +‘I am pleased to be getting out of it,’ said the king. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +He reflected. ‘No,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +Firmin cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think you are, sir,’ he +said. ‘You prefer——’ +</p> + +<p> +He stopped short. He had been going to say ‘talking.’ He +substituted ‘ideas.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘That world of royalty!’ the king went on. ‘In a little while +no one will understand it any more. It will become a riddle.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +He meditated for a time. +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>Golden Bough</i>. Have you read that, Firmin?’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +Firmin turned himself round and faced his royal master. +</p> + +<p> +‘What do you intend to do, sir?’ he asked. ‘If you will not +listen to me, what do you propose to do this afternoon?’ +</p> + +<p> +The king flicked crumbs from his coat. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Yes, sir,’ interrupted Firmin, ‘but <i>what</i> government? +I don’t see what government you get by a universal abdication!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Well,’ said the king, with his hands about his knees, +‘<i>We</i> shall be the government.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘The conference?’ exclaimed Firmin. +</p> + +<p> +‘Who else?’ asked the king simply. +</p> + +<p> +‘It’s perfectly simple,’ he added to Firmin’s +tremendous silence. +</p> + +<p> +‘But,’ cried Firmin, ‘you must have sanctions! Will there be +no form of election, for example?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Why should there be?’ asked the king, with intelligent curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +‘The consent of the governed.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But, sir!’ cried Firmin, suddenly enlightened. ‘Has this +been arranged already?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +He stood up. +</p> + +<p> +Firmin, forgetting the habits of a score of years, remained seated. +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>Well</i>,’ he said at last. ‘And I have known +nothing!’ +</p> + +<p> +The king smiled very cheerfully. He liked these talks with Firmin. +</p> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Of course,’ whispered Leblanc, nodding his head rapidly, ‘of +course.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The king demurred. +</p> + +<p> +‘From this day forth, sir, man enters upon his heritage,’ said the +American. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +The American said something about an epoch-making day. +</p> + +<p> +‘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—<i>rubricated</i>. 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?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘For the noble, yes, all days should be noble.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Exactly my position,’ said the king, and felt pleased at what he +had been saying. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘They are unfathomable,’ smiled Holsten. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +Holsten opened out the vistas.... +</p> + +<p> +‘Science,’ the king cried presently, ‘is the new king of the +world.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>Our</i> view,’ said the president, ‘is that sovereignty +resides with the people.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +He paused and glanced down the table at Leblanc, and then re-opened at his +former antagonist. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +The American had to confess he could hardly agree with the king’s +estimate of their average. +</p> + +<p> +‘Holsten, perhaps, and one or two others, might lift us a little,’ +the king conceded. ‘But the rest of us?’ +</p> + +<p> +His eyes flitted once more towards Leblanc. +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>épicier</i>, 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....’ +</p> + +<p> +The president and the Japanese prince in spectacles protested together. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 4</h3> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 5</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 6</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +For once the extreme <i>naïveté</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>débris</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘By God,’ cried the first. ‘Here they are!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘And unbroken!’ said the second. +</p> + +<p> +‘I’ve never seen the things before,’ said the first. +</p> + +<p> +‘Bigger than I thought,’ said the second. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘One can take no risks,’ he said, with a faint suggestion of +apology. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Three bombs,’ they answered together. +</p> + +<p> +‘Where do they come from?’ asked the megaphone. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘We can’t find out!’ they called at last. +</p> + +<p> +‘Not a sign?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Not a sign.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I’m coming down,’ said the man overhead.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 7</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘I will go,’ said the minister, ‘and see what the trouble is +with the wireless. They give us nothing, good or bad.’ +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +The clocks in the light gold-capped belfries of the town below presently +intimated the half-hour after midday. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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——’ +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>look!</i>’ interrupted the king, and pointed upward with a +long, lean finger. +</p> + +<p> +Pestovitch followed that indication and then glanced for one questioning moment +at the white face before him. +</p> + +<p> +‘We have to face it out, sire,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +For some moments they watched the steep spirals of the descending messengers, +and then they began a hasty consultation.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One must deny, deny.... +</p> + +<p> +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——. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Strange hopes began to lift the tail of the Slavic fox again. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +The king was repeating his observation. ‘They have a ridiculous fancy +that your confidence is based on the possession of atomic bombs.’ +</p> + +<p> +King Ferdinand Charles pulled himself together. He protested. +</p> + +<p> +‘Oh, quite so,’ said the ex-king, ‘quite so.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘A search!’ cried the king. ‘An embargo on our +aeroplanes.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Only a temporary expedient,’ said the ex-king Egbert, ‘while +the search is going on.’ +</p> + +<p> +The king appealed to his council. +</p> + +<p> +‘The people will never permit it, sire,’ said a bustling little man +in a gorgeous uniform. +</p> + +<p> +‘You’ll have to make ‘em,’ said the ex-king, genially +addressing all the councillors. +</p> + +<p> +King Ferdinand glanced at the closed brass door through which no news would +come. +</p> + +<p> +‘When would you want to have this search?’ +</p> + +<p> +The ex-king was radiant. ‘We couldn’t possibly do it until the day +after to-morrow,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +‘Just the capital?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Where else?’ asked the ex-king, still more cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I knew you would,’ said the ex-king, with an air of relief, +‘and so let us arrange——’ +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘You will sign that,’ said the ex-king. +</p> + +<p> +‘Why?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘To show that we aren’t in any way hostile to you.’ +</p> + +<p> +Pestovitch nodded ‘yes’ to his master. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Hang us?’ +</p> + +<p> +The king put his long nose into his councillor’s face. ‘That +grinning brute <i>wants</i> to hang us,’ he said. ‘And hang us he +will, if we give him a shadow of a chance.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But all their Modern State Civilisation!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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! . . . +</p> + +<p> +‘I hate that sort of eye that laughs and keeps hard,’ said the +king. +</p> + +<p> +‘I won’t sit still here and be caught like a fascinated +rabbit,’ said the king in conclusion. ‘We must shift those +bombs.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Risk it,’ said Pestovitch. ‘Leave them alone.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘They see us,’ cried the king. +</p> + +<p> +‘They make nothing of us,’ said Pestovitch. +</p> + +<p> +The king glanced up and met a calm, round eye of light, that seemed to wink at +him and vanish, leaving him blinded.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The king snarled. +</p> + +<p> +‘He little knows how we slip through his fingers,’ said Pestovitch. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘I don’t like them,’ said the king. +</p> + +<p> +Presently one of these patches of moonlight came to rest about them and seemed +to be following their automobile. The king drew back. +</p> + +<p> +‘The things are confoundedly noiseless,’ said the king. +‘It’s like being stalked by lean white cats.’ +</p> + +<p> +He peered again. ‘That fellow is watching us,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But they’ll hang us,’ said Pestovitch. +</p> + +<p> +‘Not if we were to give up now. Not if we were to surrender the bombs. It +is you who brought me into this....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘See,’ said Pestovitch, ‘the light has gone again.’ +</p> + +<p> +The king peered up. ‘I believe he’s following us without a +light,’ said the king. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘But if so, these infernal aeroplanes would go.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘They may not know yet.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But, Pestovitch, why couldn’t you do all this without me?’ +</p> + +<p> +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....’ +</p> + +<p> +It was worthy of his subtle reputation and it answered passing well. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But had it passed at once or lingered for just a second? +</p> + +<p> +‘They didn’t see us,’ said Peter. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘In the barn!’ cried the king. +</p> + +<p> +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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Shut the door, Peter,’ said Pestovitch. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Not completely,’ cried Pestovitch. ‘Leave a chink for us to +go out by....’ +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘Ssh!’ cried the king. ‘What’s that?’ +</p> + +<p> +But Kurt and Abel did not hear, and came blundering up the ladder with the last +of the load. +</p> + +<p> +‘Ssh!’ Peter ran forward to them with a whispered remonstrance. Now +they were still. +</p> + +<p> +The barn door opened a little wider, and against the dim blue light outside +they saw the black shape of a man. +</p> + +<p> +‘Any one here?’ he asked, speaking with an Italian accent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The upper part of his face seemed to vanish. +</p> + +<p> +‘Shoot them,’ cried the man who had been stabbed. ‘Shoot them +all!’ +</p> + +<p> +And then his light went out, and he rolled over with a groan at the feet of his +comrades. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! . . . +</p> + +<p> +‘Here they are. Hands up! I say. Hold your light while I shoot....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 8</h3> + +<p> +It was still quite dark when his valet and Firmin came together and told the +ex-king Egbert that the business was settled. +</p> + +<p> +He started up into a sitting position on the side of his bed. +</p> + +<p> +‘Did he go out?’ asked the ex-king. +</p> + +<p> +‘He is dead,’ said Firmin. ‘He was shot.’ +</p> + +<p> +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?’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Their five pairs of feet stuck out with a curious stiff unanimity.... +</p> + +<p> +‘What else was there to do?’ he said in answer to some internal +protest. +</p> + +<p> +‘I wonder, Firmin, if there are any more of them?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Bombs, sir?’ asked Firmin. +</p> + +<p> +‘No, such kings.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br/> +THE NEW PHASE</h2> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>homo sapiens</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘No one goes into Paris,’ said Barnet. +</p> + +<p> +‘But, Monsieur, that is very unenterprising,’ the man by the +wayside submitted. +</p> + +<p> +‘The danger is too great. The radiations eat into people’s +skins.’ +</p> + +<p> +The eyebrows protested. ‘But is nothing to be done?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Nothing can be done.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +Barnet considered his interlocutor. +</p> + +<p> +‘I’m told,’ said Barnet, ‘that Paris is not likely to +be possible again for several generations.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Naturally,’ he agreed, ‘you want to go to Paris. But Paris +is over.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Over!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Finished.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But then, Monsieur—what is to become—of <i>me?</i>’ +</p> + +<p> +Barnet turned his face westward, whither the white road led. +</p> + +<p> +‘Where else, for example, may I hope to find—opportunity?’ +</p> + +<p> +Barnet made no reply. +</p> + +<p> +‘Perhaps on the Riviera. Or at some such place as Homburg. Or some place +perhaps.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. Then the voice beside him broke out. ‘But, Monsieur, +it is impossible! It leaves—nothing.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘No. Not very much.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘One cannot suddenly begin to grow potatoes!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It would be good if Monsieur could bring himself——’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I do not think it will ever revive. Paris is finished. London, too, I am +told—Berlin. All the great capitals were stricken....’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But——! Monsieur must permit me to differ.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It is so.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It is impossible. Civilisations do not end in this manner. Mankind will +insist.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘On Paris?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘On Paris.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Monsieur, you might as well hope to go down the Maelstrom and resume +business there.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I am content, Monsieur, with my own faith.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘The winter comes on. Would not Monsieur be wiser to seek a house?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 4</h3> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.” +</p> + +<p> +‘“Who is going to send corn when there is no more value in +money?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘“They mean it,” said my colleague. +</p> + +<p> +‘“But what can they do now?” I asked. “Everything is +broken down....”’ +</p> + +<p> +And on that sentence, with an unexpected artistry, Barnet abruptly ends his +story. +</p> + +<h3>Section 5</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 6</h3> + +<p> +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 <i>lingua franca</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 7</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 8</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>régime</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 9</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. ... +</p> + +<h3>Section 10</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>The Cry for +Justice</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 11</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +That conflict is in evidence in so early a work as Voltaire’s +<i>Candide</i>, 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. <i>Candide</i> 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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER THE FIFTH<br/> +THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN</h2> + +<h3>Section 1</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘Cramped,’ he said. ‘I have wanted to visit such a place as +this.’ +</p> + +<p> +He spoke as if he had no other business with them. +</p> + +<p> +There was a little pause. +</p> + +<p> +‘How many scientific people have you got here now?’ he asked. +</p> + +<p> +‘Just three hundred and ninety-two,’ said Rachel Borken. +</p> + +<p> +‘And the patients and attendants and so on?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Two thousand and thirty.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘You will come to my rooms?’ suggested Ciana. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +He winced and moved forward. +</p> + +<p> +‘I have left most of my work in order,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +‘You have been working hard up to now?’ asked Rachel Borken. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 2</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘So I shall die,’ he said, ‘unless you operate?’ +</p> + +<p> +Fowler assented. ‘And then,’ said Karenin, smiling, ‘probably +I shall die.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Not certainly.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Even if I do not die; shall I be able to work?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘There is just a chance....’ +</p> + +<p> +‘So firstly I shall probably die, and if I do not, then perhaps I shall +be a useless invalid?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I think if you live, you may be able to go on—as you do +now.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +Fowler thought. ‘We are not sure enough yet to do things like +that,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +‘But a day is coming when you will be certain.’ +</p> + +<p> +Fowler nodded. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘You see,’ said Fowler, after a little pause, ‘it is +necessary that spirits such as yours should be born into the world.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +Karenin shook his head. ‘But I can imagine the scope of it,’ he +said. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Not counting those who keep the records?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall see.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I have been so busy with my own work——Yes, I shall be glad +to see.’ +</p> + +<p> +The patient regarded the surgeon for a time with interested eyes. +</p> + +<p> +‘You work here always?’ he asked abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +‘No,’ said Fowler. +</p> + +<p> +‘But mostly you work here?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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——’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Yes,’ said Karenin understandingly. +</p> + +<p> +‘And then one day, suddenly one thinks of these high mountains +again....’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘We shall manage that soon,’ said Fowler. +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘You put it boldly,’ said Fowler. +</p> + +<p> +Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution.... ‘When,’ asked Karenin +suddenly, ‘when will you operate?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I should like to see this place.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 3</h3> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Your last day!’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Fowler will kill me.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But he thinks not.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +Gardener was about to speak when Karenin went on again. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 4</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Is there much left standing?’ asked Edith Haydon. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It seems very distant to me,’ said the girl. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘All history,’ he said, ‘is a record of a childhood.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +‘One thinks of him now as one thinks of the megatherium,’ said one +of the young men. +</p> + +<p> +‘From first to last mankind made three million big guns and a hundred +thousand complicated great ships for no other purpose but war.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Were there no sane men in those days,’ asked the young man, +‘to stand against that idolatry?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘In a state of despair,’ said Edith Haydon. +</p> + +<p> +‘He is so far off—and there are men alive still who were alive when +Bismarck died!’ . . . said the young man.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 5</h3> + +<p> +‘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 <i>was</i> inevitable until it +was impossible. Any one who had denied that inevitability publicly would have +been counted—oh! a <i>silly</i> 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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘<i>Never</i>,’ said Edith stoutly.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It seems far enough away now,’ said Edith Haydon. +</p> + +<p> +‘But forty years ago?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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—<i>they have got loose</i>. 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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 6</h3> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<h3>Section 7</h3> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But Love,’ said Kahn. +</p> + +<p> +‘I speak of sexual love and the love of intimate persons. And that is +what you mean, Kahn.’ +</p> + +<p> +Karenin shook his head. ‘You cannot stay at the roots and climb the +tree,’ he said.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Both sexes are specialised for love and reproduction,’ said +Karenin. +</p> + +<p> +‘But the women carry the heavier burden.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Not in their imaginations,’ said Edwards. +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘The key that opens the door,’ said Karenin, ‘is not the goal +of the journey.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘And—we remain women,’ said Rachel Borken. ‘Need you +remain thinking of yourselves as women?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It is forced upon us,’ said Edith Haydon. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘But we go about our work,’ said Edith Haydon. +</p> + +<p> +‘So does it matter?’ asked Rachel. +</p> + +<p> +‘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, <i>as women</i>, is a diminishing +future.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Karenin?’ asked Rachel, ‘do you mean that women are to +become men?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Men and women have to become human beings.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>rôle</i> for us? As important, +perhaps, as yours? Equally important. We hold the world up, Karenin, though you +may have raised it.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘In America,’ said Edwards, ‘men are fighting duels over the +praises of women and holding tournaments before Queens of Beauty.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘That is the men’s doing,’ said Edith Haydon. +</p> + +<p> +‘I <i>said</i>,’ 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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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 <i>look</i> 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. +</p> + +<h3>Section 8</h3> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It is the next wave,’ said Fowler, who had come out upon the +terrace and seated himself silently behind Karenin’s chair. +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<p> +‘I do not see,’ said Karenin, ‘that there is any final limit +to man’s power of self-modification. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘That is possible, Karenin. But there is much to learn.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘And all the hours we give to digestion and half living; don’t you +think there will be some way of saving these?’ +</p> + +<p> +Fowler nodded assent. +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Frobisher and Ameer Ali have done work in that direction.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +‘He can actually <i>do</i>——?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘It is still, so to speak, a mere laboratory triumph,’ said Fowler, +‘but to-morrow it will be practicable.’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘Beyond humanity,’ said Kahn. +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘It is as if a great window opened,’ said Karenin. +</p> + +<h3>Section 9</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Karenin looked blinking at the last quivering rim of incandescence, and shaded +his eyes and became silent. +</p> + +<p> +Presently he gave a little start. +</p> + +<p> +‘What?’ asked Rachel Borken. +</p> + +<p> +‘I had forgotten,’ he said. +</p> + +<p> +‘What had you forgotten?’ +</p> + +<p> +‘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.... +</p> + +<p> +‘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? . . . +</p> + +<p> +‘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....’ +</p> + +<h3>Section 10</h3> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +Presently he turned about and stood with his hands folded behind him, looking +at the northward stars.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD SET FREE ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +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. 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