THE WORLD SET FREE
MR. WELLS has also written
The following NOVELS :
LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM
K.&K MR. POLLY
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
ANN VERONICA t'Z-MARRIAGE
THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
and TONO BUNGAY
Numerous short stories now collected
in one volume under the title of
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
The following fantastic and imaginative
ROMANCES : /^ n
THE TIME MACHINE
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
THE SEA LADY
THE WONDERFUL VISIT
IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET
THE SLEEPER AWAKES
THE FOOD OF THE GODS
THE WAR IN THE AIR
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
and THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU
A series of books upon social and political
questions of which
ANTICIPATIONS (1900)
A MODERN UTOPIA "7
FIRST AND LAST THINGS (RELIGION
AND PHILOSOPHY)
and NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
are the chief. And two little books
- about play called
FLOOR GAMES AND LITTLE WARS
THE WORLD SET
FREE
A STORr OF MANKIND
/Gf WELLS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1914
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
COPYRIGHT
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BBCCLES
FREDERICK SODDY'S
"INTERPRETATION OF RADIUM"
THIS STORY, WHICH OWES LONG PASSAGES
TO THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER OF
THAT BOOK, ACKNOWLEDGES
AND INSCRIBES
ITSELF
CONTENTS
PRELUDE
PAGE
THE SUN SNARERS I
CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY ..... 30
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE LAST WAR 76
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE ENDING OF WAR 134
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
THE NEW PHASE .. . . , . . .192
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN . . . 244
THE WORLD SET FREE
PRELUDE
THE SUN SNARERS
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
2 THE WORLD SET FREE
and increased his efficiency by the division of
labour. He began to store up knowledge.
Contrivance followed contrivance, each making
it possible for a man to do more. Always down
the lengthening record, save for a set-back ever
and again, he is doing more. . . .
A quarter of a million years ago the utmost
man was a savage, a being scarcely articulate,
sheltering in holes in the rocks, armed with a
rough-hewn flint or a fire-pointed stick, naked,
living in small family groups, killed by some
younger man so soon as his first virile activity
declined. Over most of the great wildernesses
of earth you would have sought him in vain ;
only in a few temperate and sub-tropical river
valleys would you have found the squatting lairs
of his little herds, a male, a few females, a child
or so.
He knew no future then, no kind of life
except the life he led. He fled the cave-bear
over the rocks full of iron ore and the promise
of sword and spear ; he froze to death upon
ledge of coal ; he drank water muddy with th<
clay that would one day make cups of porcelain
he chewed the ear of wild wheat he had pluckec
and gazed with a dim speculation in his eyes at
the birds that soared beyond his reach,
suddenly he became aware of the scent of
another male and rose up roaring, his roars the
formless precursors of moral admonitions. For
THE SUN SNARERS 3
he was a great individualist, that original, he
suffered none other than himself.
So through the long generations, this heavy
precursor, this ancestor of all of us, fought and
bred and perished, changing almost imperceptibly.
Yet he changed. That keen chisel of neces-
sity 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
4 THE WORLD SET FREE
wrappings and garments ; and so aided, the
creature spread into colder climates, carrying
food with him, storing food until sometimes
the neglected grass-seed sprouted again and gave
a first hint of agriculture.
And already there were the beginnings of
leisure and thought.
Man began to think. There were times
when he was fed, when his lusts and his fears
were all appeased, when the sun shone upon
the squatting-place and dim stirrings of specu-
lation 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 someone 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 point-
ing a way to achievement and the august
prophetic procession of tales.
THE SUN SNARERS 5
For scores and hundreds of centuries, for
myriads of generations that life of our fathers
went on. From the beginning to the ripen-
ing 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.
2
That dream was but a moment in a man's life,
whose proper business it seemed was to get food
and kill his fellows and beget after the manner of
all that belongs to the fellowship of the beasts.
About him, hidden from him by the thinnest of
veils, were the untouched sources of Power, whose
magnitude we scarcely do more than suspect even
to-day, Power that could make his every con-
ceivable dream come real. But the feet of the
6 THE WORLD SET FREE
race were in the way of it, though he died blindly
unknowing.
At last, in the generous levels of warm river
valleys, where food is abundant and life very easy,
the emerging human, overcoming his earlier
jealousies, becoming, as necessity persecuted him
less urgently, more social and tolerant and
amenable, achieved a larger community. There
began a division of labour, certain of the older
men specialized in knowledge and direction, a
strong man took the fatherly leadership in war,
and priest and king began to develop their r61es
in the opening drama of man's history. The
priest's solicitude was seed-time and harvest and
fertility, and the king ruled peace and war. In a
hundred river valleys about the warm temperate
zone of the earth there were already towns and
temples, a score of thousand years ago. They
flourished unrecorded, ignoring the past and
unsuspicious of the future, for as yet writing had
still to begin.
Very slowly did man increase his demand
upon the illimitable wealth of Power that offered
itself on every hand to him. He tamed certain
animals, he developed his primordially haphazard
agriculture into a ritual, he added first one metal
to his resources and then another until he had
copper and tin and iron and lead and gold and
silver to supplement his stone, he hewed and
carved wood, made pottery, paddled down his
THE SUN SNARERS 7
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 achieve-
ment 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 socialize. 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 specialized for fighting
8 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 Caesar
and called himself Kaiser or Czar or Imperator
or Kasir-i-Hind. Measured by the duration of
human life it is a vast space of time between that
first dynasty in Egypt and the coming of the
aeroplane, but by the scale that looks back to
the makers of the eoliths, it is all of it a story of
yesterday.
Now during this period of two hundred
centuries or more, this period of the warring
states, while men's minds were chiefly preoccupied
by politics and mutual aggression, their progress
in the acquirement of external Power was slow
rapid in comparison with the progress of the old
stone age, but slow in comparison with this new
age of systematic discovery in which we live.
They did not very greatly alter the weapons and
tactics of warfare, the methods of agriculture,
seamanship, their knowledge of the habitable
globe, or the devices and utensils of domestic
life between the days of the early Egyptians
and the days when Christopher Columbus was a
child. Of course there were inventions and
THE SUN SNARERS 9
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 crafts-
men 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 1500 A.D.
The English excavators of the year 1900 A.D.
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 through-
out 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 Mahometan ism swept away a thousand more
specialized cults, but essentially these were pro-
gressive 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.
io THE WORLD SET FREE
Yet the dreamer, the story-teller, was there
still, waiting for his opportunity amidst the
busy pre-occupations, 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 un-
trammelled 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,
THE SUN SNARERS n
seeking among rare and curious and perplexing
objects, sometimes finding some odd utilizable
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 un-
wittingly, was the snare that will some day catch
the sun.
3
Such a man was that Leonardo da Vinci,
who went about the court of Sforza in Milan in
a state of dignified abstraction. His common-
place books are full of prophetic subtlety and
ingenious anticipations of the methods of the
early aviators. Diirer 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
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before it was first brought into use. And
earlier still was Archimedes of Syracuse, and
still earlier the legendary Daedalus of Cnossos.
All up and down the record of history whenever
there was a little leisure from war and brutality
the seekers appeared. And half the alchemists
were of their tribe.
When Roger Bacon blew up his first batch
of gunpowder one might have supposed that
men would have gone at once to the explosive
engine. But they could see nothing of the sort.
They were not yet beginning to think of seeing
things ; their metallurgy was all too poor to
make such engines even had they thought of
them. For a time they could not make instru-
ments sound enough to stand this new force
even for so rough a purpose as hurling a
missile. Their first guns had barrels of coopered
timber, and the world waited for more than
five hundred years before the explosive engine
came.
Even when the seekers found, it was at first
a long journey before the world could use their
findings for any but the roughest, most obvious
purposes. If man in general was not still as
absolutely blind to the unconquered energies
about him as his paleolithic precursor, he was
at best purblind.
THE SUN SNARERS 13
4
The latent energy of coal and the power
of steam waited long on the verge of discovery,
before they began to influence human lives.
There were no doubt many such devices
as Hero's toys devised and forgotten, time after
time, in courts and palaces, but it needed that
coal should be mined and burning with plenty
of iron at hand before it dawned upon men that
here was something more than a curiosity. And
it is to be remarked that the first recorded
suggestion for the use of steam was in war ;
there is an Elizabethan pamphlet in which it is
proposed to fire shot out of corked iron bottles
full of heated water. The mining of coal for
fuel, the smelting of iron upon a larger scale
than men had ever done before, the steam
pumping engine, the steam-engine and the
steam-boat, followed one another in an order
that had a kind of logical necessity. It is the
most interesting and instructive chapter in the
history of the human intelligence, the history of
steam from its beginning as a fact in human
consciousness to the perfection of the great
turbine engines that preceded the utilization
of intra- molecular power. Nearly every human
being must have seen steam, seen it incuriously
for many thousands of years ; the women in
i 4 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 realization that here was force,
here was strength to borrow and use. . . .
Then suddenly man woke up to it, the rail-
ways spread like a network over the globe, the
ever enlarging iron steamships began their
staggering fight against wind and wave.
Steam was the first-comer in the new powers,
it was the beginning of the Age of Energy that
was to close the long history of the Warring
States.
But for a long time men did not realize
the importance of this novelty. They would not
recognize, they were not able to recognize 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 revolutionizing the conditions of industrial
production, population was streaming steadily in
from the countryside and concentrating in hitherto
unthought-of masses about a few city centres,
THE SUN SNARERS 15
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
realized that something new had come into
human life, a strange swirl different altogether
from any previous circling and mutation, a swirl
like the swirl when at last the lock gates begin to
open after a long phase of accumulating water
and eddying inactivity. . . .
The sober Englishman at the close of the
nineteenth century could sit at his breakfast-
table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee
from Brazil, devour an egg from France with some
Danish ham, or eat a New Zealand chop, wind
up his breakfast with a West Indian banana,
glance at the latest telegrams from all the world,
scrutinize 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. . . .
1 6 THE WORLD SET FREE
5
Electricity, though it was perhaps the earlier
of the two to be studied, invaded the common
life of men a few decades after the exploitation
of steam. To electricity also, in spite of its
provocative nearness all about him, mankind had
been utterly blind for incalculable ages.
Could anything be more emphatic than the
appeal of electricity for attention ? It thundered
at man's ears, it signalled to him in blinding
flashes, occasionally it killed him, and he could
not see it as a thing that concerned him enough
to merit study. It came into the house with the
cat on any dry day and crackled insinuatingly
whenever he stroked her fur. It rotted his
metals when he put them together. . . . There
is no single record that anyone questioned why
the cat's fur crackles or why hair is so unruly to
brush on a frosty day, before the sixteenth
century. For endless years man seems to have
done his very successful best not to think about
it at all ; until this new spirit of the Seeker
turned itself to these things.
How often things must have been seen and
dismissed as unimportant, before the speculative
eye and the moment of vision came ! It was
Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth's court physician, who
first puzzled his brains with rubbed amber and
THE SUN SNARERS 17
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. . . .
6
And there was an extraordinary mental re-
sistance 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 conver-
sation that happened, he says, in the year 1898,
c
1 8 THE WORLD SET FREE
within ten years, that is to say, of the time when
the first aviators were fairly on the wing. He
tells us how he sat at his desk in his study and
conversed with his little boy.
His little boy was in profound trouble. He
felt he had to speak very seriously to his father,
and as he was a kindly little boy he did not want
to do it too harshly.
This is what happened.
" I wish, Daddy," he said, coming to his
point, " that you wouldn't write all this stuff
about flying. The chaps rot me."
" Yes ! " said his father.
" And old Broomie, the Head I mean, he
rots me. Everybody rots me."
" But there is going to be flying quite
soon."
The little boy was too well bred to say what
he thought of that. " Anyhow," he said, " I
wish you wouldn't write about it."
" You'll fly lots of times before you die,"
the father assured him.
The little boy looked unhappy.
The father hesitated. Then he opened a
drawer and took out a blurred and under-
developed photograph. " Come and look at
this," he said.
The little boy came round to him. The
photograph showed a stream and a meadow
beyond and some trees and in the air a black
THE SUN SNARERS 19
pencil-like object with flat wings on either side
of it. It was the first record of the first
apparatus heavier than air that ever maintained
itself in the air by mechanical force. Across
the margin was written : " Here we go up,
up, up from S. P. Langley, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington."
The father watched the effect of this re-
assuring document upon his son. " Well ? "
he said.
"That," said the schoolboy after reflection,
" is only a model."
" Model to-day, man to-morrow."
The boy seemed divided in his allegiance.
Then he decided for what he believed quite
firmly to be omniscience. " But old Broomie,"
he said, "he told all the boys in his class only
yesterday, * no man will ever fly.' No one, he
says, who has ever shot grouse or pheasants on
the wing would ever believe anything of the
sort. . . ."
Yet that boy lived to fly across the Atlantic
and edit his father's reminiscences.
7
At the close of the nineteenth century, as a
multitude of passages in the literature of that
time witness, it was thought that the fact that
man had at last had successful and profitable
20 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 some of these writings.
" The great things are discovered," wrote Gerald
Brown in his summary of the nineteenth cen-
tury. " 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 realized 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 hun-
dreds. 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 revolutionize
the whole life of man from top to bottom.
One realizes 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
THE SUN SNARERS 21
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 remark-
able ; he even put it upon record that he had
some doubt about the purity of the nitrogen.
For more than a hundred years his determi-
nation 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 chem-
istry) and every time it slipped unobserved
through the professorial fingers that repeated his
procedure.
Is it any wonder then with this margin of
inaccuracy, that up to the very dawn of the
twentieth century scientific discovery was still
rather a procession of happy accidents than an
orderly conquest .of nature ?
Yet the spirit of seeking was spreading
steadily through the world. Even the school-
master could not check it. For the mere handful
who grew up to feel wonder and curiosity
about the secrets of nature in the nineteenth
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century, there were now at the beginning of
the twentieth myriads escaping from the limi-
tations of intellectual routine and the habitual
life, in Europe, in America, North and South,
in Japan, in China and all about the world.
It was in 1910 that the parents of young
Holsten, who was to be called by a whole
generation of scientific men, " the greatest of
European chemists," were staying in a villa near
Santo Domenico between Fiesole and Florence.
He was then only fifteen, but he was already
distinguished as a mathematician and possessed
by a savage appetite to understand. He had
been particularly attracted by the mystery of
phosphorescence and its apparent unrelatedness
to ever)' 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 experi-
ment 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
THE SUN SNARERS 23
of phenomena. It was a happy association for
his enquiries. It was a rare and fortunate thing,
too, that any one with the mathematical gift
should have been taken by these curiosities.
8
And while the boy Holsten was mooning
over his fireflies at Fiesole, a certain professor of
physics named Rufus was giving a course of
afternoon lectures upon Radium and Radio-
Activity in Edinburgh. They were lectures that
had attracted a very considerable amount of
attention. He gave them in a small lecture-
theatre that had become more and more con-
gested as his course proceeded. At his
concluding discussion it was crowded right up
to the ceiling at the back, and there people were
standing, standing without any sense of fatigue,
so fascinating did they find his suggestions.
One youngster in particular, a chuckle-headed
scrub-haired lad from the Highlands, sat hugging
his knee with great sand-red hands and drinking
in every word, eyes aglow, cheeks flushed and
ears burning.
" And so," said the professor, " we see that
this Radium, which seemed at first a fantastic
exception, a mad inversion of all that was most
established and fundamental in the constitution
of matter, is really at one with the rest of the
24 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 kss
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 im-
penetrable, 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
botde 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
THE SUN SNARERS 25
fragments ; if I could turn it into the machinery
that lights this city, it could keep Edinburgh
brightly lit for a week. But at present no man
knows, no man has an inkling of how this little
lump of stuff can be made to hasten the release
of its store. It does release it, as a burn
trickles. Slowly the uranium changes into
radium, the radium changes into a gas called
the radium emanation, and that again to what
we call radium A, and so the process goes on,
giving out energy at every stage, until at last we
reach the last stage of all, which is, so far as we
can tell at present, lead. But we cannot
hasten it."
" I take ye, man," whispered the chuckle-
headed lad, with his red hands tightening like a
vice upon his knee. " I take ye, man. Go on !
Oh, go on ! "
The professor went on after a little pause.
" Why is the change gradual ? " he asked.
" Why does only a minute fraction of the
radium disintegrate in any particular second ?
Why does it dole itself out so slowly and so
exactly ? Why does not all the uranium change
to radium and all the radium change to the next
lowest thing at once ? Why this decay by
driblets ; why not a decay en masse ? . . . .
Suppose presently we find it is possible to
quicken that decay ? "
The chuckle-headed lad nodded rapidly.
26 THE WORLD SET FREE
The wonderful inevitable idea was coming.
He drew his knee up towards his chin and
swayed in his seat with excitement. " Why
not ? " he echoed, " why not ? "
The professor lifted his forefinger.
" Given that knowledge," he said, " mark
what we should be able to do ! We should not
only be able to use this uranium and thorium;
not only should we have a source of power so
potent that a man might carry in his hand the
energy to light a city for a year, fight a fleet of
battleships or drive one of our giant liners across
the Atlantic ; but we should also have a clue that
would enable us at last to quicken the process of
disintegration in all the other elements, where
decay is still so slow as to escape our finest
measurements. Every scrap of solid matter in
the world would become an available reservoir of
concentrated force. Do you realize, ladies and
gentlemen, what these things would mean for
us?"
The scrub head nodded. " Oh ! go on.
Go on."
" It would mean a change in human con-
ditions 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 exactly 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
THE SUN SNARERS 27
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 civilization 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 civilization. The energy we need for our
very existence, and with which Nature supplies
us still so grudgingly, is in reality locked up in
inconceivable quantities all about us. We cannot
pick that lock at present, but "
He paused. His voice sank so that every-
body strained a little to hear him.
we will."
He put up that lean finger again, his solitary
gesture.
" And then," he said. . . .
" Then that perpetual struggle for existence,
that perpetual struggle to live on the bare surplus
of Nature's energies will cease to be the lot of
Man. Man will step from the pinnacle of this
civilization 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
28 THE WORLD SET FREE
ice, the whole world once more Eden. I see the
power of man reach out among the stars. . . ."
He stopped abruptly with a catching of the
breath that many an actor or orator might have
envied. . . .
The lecture was over, the audience hung
silent for a few seconds, sighed, became audible,
stirred, fluttered, prepared for dispersal. More
light was turned on and what had been a dim
mass of figures became a bright confusion of
movement. Some of the people signalled to
friends, some crowded down towards the platform
to examine the lecturer's apparatus and make
notes of his diagrams. But the chuckle-headed
lad with the scrub hair wanted no such detailed
frittering away of the thoughts that had inspired
him. He wanted to be alone with them ; he
elbowed his way out almost fiercely, he made
himself as angular and bony as a cow, fearing lest
someone should speak to him, lest someone
should invade his glowing sphere of enthusiasm.
He went through the streets with a rapt face,
like a saint who sees visions. He had arms
disproportionately long, and ridiculous big feet.
He must get alone, get somewhere high out
of all this crowding of commonness of everyday
life.
He made his way to the top of Arthur's Seat,
and there he sat for a long time in the golden
evening sunshine, still, except that ever and again
THE SUN SNARERS 29
he whispered to himself some precious phrase that
had stuck in his mind.
" If," he whispered, " if only we could pick
that lock. . . ."
The sun was sinking over the distant hills.
Already it was shorn of its beams, a globe of
ruddy gold, hanging over the great banks of
cloud that would presently engulf it.
" Eh ! " said the youngster. " Eh ! "
He seemed to wake up at last out of his
entrancement, and the red sun was there before
his eyes. He stared at it, at first without intelli-
gence 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
hu-ndred thousand years ago.
" Ye auld thing," he said, and his eyes were
shining, and he made a kind of grabbing gesture
with his hand ; " ye auld red thing. . . . We'll
have ye yet."
CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY
I
THE problem which was already being mooted by
such scientific men as Ramsay, Rutherford, and
Soddy in the very beginning of the twentieth
century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in
the heavier elements and so tapping the internal
energy of atoms, was solved by a wonderful
combination of induction, intuition and luck by
Holsten so soon as the year 1933. From the first
detection of radio-activity to its first subjugation
to human purpose measured little more than a
quarter of a century. For twenty years after that,
indeed, minor difficulties prevented any striking
practical application of his success, but the essen-
tial 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 31
another year's work that he was able to show
practically that the last result of this rapid
release of energy was gold. But the thing was
done, at the cost of a blistered chest and an
injured finger, and from the moment when the
invisible speck of bismuth flashed into riving and
rending energy, Holsten knew that he had opened
a way for mankind, however narrow and dark it
might still be, to worlds of limitless power. He
recorded as much in the strange diary biography
he left the world, a diary that was up to that
particular moment a mass of speculations and
calculations, and which suddenly became for a
space an amazingly minute and human record
of sensations and emotions that all humanity
might understand.
He gives, in broken phrases and often single
words, it is true, but none the less vividly for
that, a record of the twenty-four hours following
the demonstration of the correctness of his intri-
cate tracery of computations and guesses. " I
thought I should not sleep," he writes the
words he omitted are supplied in brackets (on
account of) "pain in (the) hand and chest and
(the) wonder of what I had done. . . . Slept
like a child."
He felt strange and disconcerted the next
morning ; he had nothing to do, he was living
alone in apartments in Bloomsbury, and he
decided to go up to Hampstead Heath, which
32 THE WORLD SET FREE
he had known when he was a little boy as a
breezy play-ground. He went up by the under-
ground 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 aestheticism.
Such is the illogical quality of humanity that
Holsten, fresh from work that was like a petard
under the seat of current civilization, 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 mar-
velled at the high-flung early Georgian houses
upon the westward bank of that old gully of a
thoroughfare ; he felt strange with all these
familiar things gone. He escaped at last with
a feeling of relief from this choked alley of
trenches and holes and cranes, and emerged upon
the old familiar scene about the White Stone
Pond. That, at least, was very much as it used
to be.
There were still the fine old red-brick houses
to left and right of him ; the reservoir had been
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 33
improved by a portico of marble, the white-
fronted inn with the clustering flowers above its
portico still stood out at the angle of the ways,
and the blue view to Harrow Hill and Harrow
spire, a view of hills and trees and shining waters
and wind-driven cloud shadows, was like the
opening of a great window to the ascending
Londoner. All that was very reassuring. There
was the same strolling crowd, the same perpetual
miracle of motors dodging through it harmlessly,
escaping headlong into the country from the
Sabbatical stuffiness behind and below them.
There was a band still, a women's suffrage
meeting for the suffrage women had won their
way back to the tolerance, a trifle derisive, of the
populace again socialist orators, politicians, a
band, and the same wild uproar of dogs, frantic
with the gladness of their one blessed weekly
release from the back yard and the chain. And
away along the road to the Spaniards strolled
a- vast multitude, saying as ever that the
view of London was exceptionally clear that
day.
Young Holsten's face was white. He walked
with that uneasy affectation of ease that marks
an over-strained 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
34 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 disorganize the entire fabric that
held their contentments and ambitions and satis-
factions together. "Felt like an imbecile who
has presented a box full of loaded revolvers to
a Cre'che," he notes.
He met a man named Lawson, an old school-
fellow, of whom history now knows only that he
was red-faced and had a terrier. He and
Holsten walked together and Holsten was suffi-
ciently 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 dehumanized
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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 35
understand. " In the end, before many years
are out, this must eventually change war, transit,
lighting, building and every sort of manufac-
ture, even agriculture, every material human
concern "
Then Holsten stopped short. Lawson had
leapt to his feet. " Damn that dog ! " cried
Lawson. " Look at it now. Hi ! Here !
Phewoo phewoo phewoo ! Come here, Bobs !
Come here ! "
The young scientific man with his bandaged
hand sat at the green table, too tired to convey
the wonder of the thing he had sought so long,
his friend whistled t 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 realize how little Lawson had attended.
Then he remarked, " Well ! " and smiled
faintly and finished the tankard of beer before
him.
Lawson sat down again. " One must look
after one's dog," he said with a note of apology.
" What was it you were telling me ? "
In the evening Holsten went out again. He
walked to Saint Paul's Cathedral and stood for
36 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 in-
deed scared, by his sense of the immense conse-
quences of his discovery. He had a vague idea
that night that he ought not to publish his
results, that they were premature, that some
secret association of wise men should take care
of his work and hand it on from generation to
generation until the world was riper for its
practical application. He felt that nobody in
all the thousands of people he passed had really
awakened to the fact of change, they trusted the
world for what it was, not to alter too rapidly,
to respect their trusts, their assurances, their
habits, their little accustomed traffics and hard-
won positions.
He went into those little gardens beneath
the over-hanging brightly-lit masses of the Savoy
Hotel and the Hotel Cecil. He sat down on a
seat and became aware of the talk of the two
people next to him. It was the talk of a young
couple evidently on the eve of marriage. The
man was congratulating himself on having regular
employment at last ; " they like me," he said,
"and I like the job. If I work up in'r dozen
years or so I ought to be gettin' somethin'
pretty comfortable. That's the plain sense of
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 37
it, Hetty. There ain't no reason whatsoever
why we shouldn't get along very decently
very decently indeed."
The desire for little successes amidst conditions
securely fixed ! So it struck upon Holsten's
mind. He added in his diary, " I had a sense
of all this globe as that. . . ."
By that phrase he meant a kind of clairvoyant
vision of this populated world as a whole, of all
its cities and towns and villages, its high roads
and the inns beside them, its gardens and farms
and upland pastures, its boatmen and sailors, its
ships coming along the great circles of the ocean,
its time-tables and appointments and payments
and dues as it were one unified and progressive
spectacle. Sometimes such visions came to him ;
his mind, accustomed to great generalizations 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
38 THE WORLD SET FREE
he saw only day and night, seed-time and harvest,
loving and begetting, births and deaths, walks
in the summer sunlight and tales by the winter
fireside, the ancient sequence of hope and acts
and age perennially renewed, eddying on for
ever and ever, save that now the impious hand
of research was raised to overthrow this drowsy,
gently humming, habitual, sunlit spinning-top of
man's existence. . . .
For a time he forgot wars and crimes and
hates and persecutions, famine and pestilence, the
cruelties of beasts, weariness and the bitter wind,
failure and insufficiency and retrocession. He
saw all mankind in terms of the humble Sunday
couple upon the seat beside him, who schemed
their inglorious outlook and improbable content-
ments. " I had a sense of all this globe as that."
His intelligence struggled against this mood
and struggled for a time in vain. He reassured
himself against the invasion of this disconcerting
idea that he was something strange and inhuman,
a loose wanderer from the flock returning with
evil gifts from his sustained unnatural excursions
amidst the darknesses and phosphorescences
beneath the fair surfaces of life. Man had not
been always thus ; the instincts and desires of the
little home, the little plot, was not all his
nature ; also he was an adventurer, an ex-
perimenter, an unresting curiosity, an insatiable
desire. For a few thousand generations indeed
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 39
he had tilled the earth and followed the
seasons, saying his prayers, grinding his corn
and trampling the October winepress, yet not
for so long but that he was still full of restless
stirrings. . . .
" If there have been home and routine and
the field," thought Holsten, "there have also
been wonder and the sea."
He turned his head and looked up over the
back of the seat at the great hotels above him,
full of softly shaded lights and the glow and
colour and stir of feasting. Might his gift to
mankind mean simply more of that ? . . .
He got up and walked out of the garden,
surveyed a passing tramcar, laden with warm
light, against the deep blues of evening, dripping
and trailing long skirts of shining reflection ; he
crossed the Embankment and stood for a time
watching the dark river and turning ever and
again to the lit buildings and bridges. His
mind began to scheme conceivable replacements
of all those clustering arrangements. . . .
" It has begun," he writes in the diary in
which these things are recorded. " It is not for
me to reach out to consequences I cannot fore-
see. 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.
4 o THE WORLD SET FREE
3
Holsten, before he died, was destined to see
atomic energy dominating every other source
of power, but for some years yet a vast network
of difficulties in detail and application kept the
new discovery from any effective invasion of
ordinary life. The path from the laboratory to
the workshop is sometimes a tortuous one ;
electro-magnetic radiations were known and
demonstrated for twenty years before Marconi
made them practically available, and in the same
way it was twenty years before induced radio-
activity could be brought to practical utilization.
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 realization of the huge economic
revolution that impended. What chiefly im-
pressed the journalists of 1933 was the produc-
tion of gold from bismuth and the realization
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
civilized 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 41
perpetual threat of overhanging rocks and
mountains go about their business just as
though the possible was impossible, as though
the inevitable was postponed for ever because
it was delayed.
It was in 1953 that the first Holsten-Roberts
engine brought induced radio-activity into the
sphere of industrial production, and its first
general use was to replace the steam engine in
electrical generating stations. Hard upon the
appearance of this came the Dass-Tata engine
the invention of two among the brilliant galaxy
of Bengali inventors the modernization of Indian
thought was producing at this time which was
used chiefly for automobiles, aeroplanes, water-
planes and suchlike mobile purposes. The
American Kemp engine, differing widely in prin-
ciple 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 pro-
gress all about the habitable globe. Small
wonder was this when the cost, even of these
earliest and clumsiest of atomic engines, is com-
pared 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 a quarter
pounds to the weight of the carriage it drove.
It made the heavy alcohol- driven automobile of
42 THE WORLD SET FREE
the time ridiculous in appearance as well as pre-
posterously 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 in-
genious helicopter ascent and descent engine to
the vertical propeller that had hitherto been the
sole driving force of the aeroplane without over-
weighting the machine, and men found them-
selves 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 43
and danger of the road, and in France alone in
the year 1943 thirty thousand of these new aero-
planes were manufactured and licensed, and soared
humming softly into the sky.
And with an equal speed atomic engines of
various types invaded industrialism. The rail-
ways paid enormous premiums for priority in the
delivery of atomic traction engines, atomic smelt-
ing was embarked upon so eagerly as to lead to
a number of disastrous explosions due to inex-
perienced 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 reorganization 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 astonish-
ing prosperity. Patent- hold ing 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
44 THE WORLD SET FREE
gold led quite naturally to a rise in prices
throughout the world.
This spectacle of feverish enterprise was pro-
ductivity, 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 deepen-
ing 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 bright-
nesses 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 mani-
festly 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 innumer-
able occupations were being flung out of employ-
ment 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 45
had become problematical, gold was under-
going headlong depreciation, all the securities
upon which the credit of the world rested were
slipping and sliding, banks were tottering, the
stock exchanges were scenes of feverish panic ;
this was the reverse of the spectacle, these were
the black and monstrous under-consequences of
the Leap into the Air.
There is a story of a demented London
stockbroker running out into Threadneedle Street
and tearing off his clothes as he ran. " The Steel
Trust is scrapping the whole of its plant," he
shouted. " The State Railways are going to scrap
all their engines. Everything's going to be
scrapped everything. Come and scrap the mint,
you fellows, come and scrap the mint ! "
In the year 1955 the suicide rate for the United
States of America quadrupled any previous record.
There was an enormous increase also in violent
crime throughout the world. The thing had come
upon an unprepared humanity ; it seemed as
though human society was to be smashed by its
own magnificent gains.
For there had been no foresight of these
things. There had been no attempt anywhere
even to compute the probable dislocations this
flood of inexpensive energy would produce in
human affairs. The world in these days was not
really governed at all, in the sense in which
government came to be understood in subsequent
46 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 profes-
sional education and every circumstance in the
manipulation of the fantastically naive electoral
methods by which they clambered to power,
conspired to keep them contemptuous of facts,
conscientiously unimaginative, alert to claim and
seize advantages and suspicious of every generosity.
Government was an obstructive business of
energetic fractions, progress went on outside of
and in spite of public activities, and legislation
was the last crippling recognition of needs so
clamorous and imperative and facts so aggressively
established as to invade even the dingy seclusions
of the judges and threaten the very existence of
the otherwise inattentive political machine.
The world was so little governed that with
the very coming of plenty, in the full tide of an
incalculable abundance, when everything necessary
to satisfy human needs and everything necessary
to realize 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 47
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 indivi-
dualism of the pre-atomic time. Under this
tremendous dawn of power and freedom, under a
sky ablaze with promise, in the very presence of
science standing like some bountiful goddess over
all the squat darknesses of human life, holding
patiently in her strong arms, until men chose to
take them, security, plenty, the solution of
riddles, the key of the bravest adventures, in her
very presence, and with the earnest of her gifts
in court, the world was to witness such things as the
squalid spectacle of the Dass-Tata patent litigation.
There in a stuffy court in London, a grimy
oblong box of a room, during the exceptional heat
of the May of 1956, the leading counsel of the
day argued and shouted over a miserable little
matter of more royalties or less and whether the
Dass-Tata company might not bar the Holsten-
Roberts' methods of utilizing 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
48 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 subpoena-ed 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. Everyone was damply hot,
the examining King's Counsel wiped the perspira-
tion from his huge, clean-shaven upper lip ; and
into this atmosphere of grasping contention and
human exhalations the daylight filtered through a
window that was manifestly dirty. The jury sat
in a double pew to the left of the judge, looking as
uncomfortable as frogs that have fallen into an
ash-pit, and in the witness-box lied the would-
be omnivorous Dass, under cross-examination. . . .
Holsten had always been accustomed to publish
his results so soon as they appeared to him to be
sufficiently advanced to furnish a basis for further
work, and to that confiding disposition and one
happy flash of adaptive invention the alert Dass
owed his claim. . . .
But indeed a vast multitude of such sharp
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 49
people were clutching, patenting, pre-empting,
monopolising this or that feature of the new
development, seeking to subdue this gigantic
winged power to the purposes of their little lusts
and avarice. That trial is just one of innumerable
disputes of the same kind. For a time the face
of the world festered with patent legislation. It
chanced however to have one oddly dramatic
feature in the fact that Holsten, after being kept
waiting about the court for two days as a beggar
might have waited at a rich man's door, after
being bullied by ushers and watched by policemen,
was called as a witness, rather severely handled by
counsel, and told not to " quibble " by the judge
when he was trying to be absolutely explicit.
The judge scratched his nose with a quill pen,
and sneered at Holsten's astonishment round the
corner of his monstrous wig. Holsten was a great
man, was he ? Well, in a law-court great men
were put in their places.
"We want to know has the plaintiff added
anything to this or hasn't he ?" said the judge,
" we don't want to have your views whether Sir
Philip Dass's improvements were merely super-
ficial 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.
50 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 plaintiff
claims for them. What that admission may or
may not stop, and all these other things you are
saying in your overflowing zeal to answer more
than the questions addressed to you none of
these things have anything whatever to do with
the case in hand. It is a matter of constant
astonishment to me in this court to see how you
scientific men, with all your extraordinary claims to
precision and veracity, wander and wander so soon
as you get into the witness-box. I know no more
unsatisfactory class of witness. The plain and
simple question is, has Sir Philip Dass made any
real addition to existing knowledge and methods
in this matter or has he not ? We don't want to
know whether they were large or small additions
nor what the consequences of your admission may
be. That you will leave to us."
Holsten was silent.
" Surely ? " said the judge almost pityingly.
" No, he hasn't," said Holsten, perceiving
that for once in his life he must disregard in-
finitesimals.
" Ah ! " said the judge, " Now why couldn't
you say that when counsel put the question ? . . ."
An entry in Holsten's diary-autobiography,
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 51
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."
4
There was a certain truth in Holsten's asser-
tion 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 com-
promises 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 intima-
tions of profounder anachronisms. The legal
and political organization 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.
52 THE WORLD SET FREE
Yet that same spirit of free-thinking and out-
spoken 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
modernized system of inter-relationships that
should supplant the existing tangle of proprietary
legal ideas.
The word " Sociology " was invented by
Herbert Spencer, a popular writer upon philo-
sophical 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 53
scientific lines, did not take a very strong hold
upon the popular imagination of the world until
the twentieth century. Then, the growing im-
patience of the American people with the
monstrous and socially paralyzing 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 realization.
54
5
Frederick Earnefs Wander Jahre is one of
those autobiographical novels that were popular
throughout the third and fourth decades of the
twentieth century. It was published in 1970 and
one must understand Wander Jahre rather in a
spiritual and intellectual than in a literal sense.
It is indeed an allusive title carrying the world
back to the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe, a century
and a half earlier.
Its author, Frederick Bar net, 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
debdcle of 1956 to the class of fairly prosperous
people, he was a student in London, he aero-
planed 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 55
mines and house property, were destroyed.
Reduced to penury he sought to earn a living.
He suffered great hardship, and was then caught
up by the war and had a year of soldiering, first as
an officer in the English infantry and then in the
army of pacification. His book tells all these
things so simply and at the same time so
explicitly that it remains as it were an eye by
which future generations may have at least one
man's vision of the years of the Great Change.
And he was, he tells us, a " Modern State "
man " by instinct " from the beginning. He
breathed in these ideas in the class rooms and
laboratories of the Carnegie Foundation school
that rose, a long and delicately beautiful facade,
along the South Bank of the Thames opposite the
ancient dignity of Somerset House. Such thought
was interwoven with the very fabric of that
pioneer school in the educational renascence in
England. After the customary exchange years
in Heidelberg and Paris, he went into the
classical school of London University. The
older so-called "classical" education of the British
pedagogues, probably the most paralysing, in-
effective 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
56 THE WORLD SET FREE
an unconscious ease in his study of the foundation
civilizations of the European system to which
they were the key. (This change was still so
recent that he mentions an encounter in Rome
with an " Oxford don " who " spoke Latin with
a Wiltshire accent and manifest discomfort, wrote
Greek letters with his tongue out, and seemed to
think a Greek sentence a charm when it was a
quotation and an impropriety when it wasn't.")
Barnet saw the last days of the coal- steam
engines upon the English railways and the gradual
cleansing of the London atmosphere as the smoke-
creating sea-coal fires gave place to electric heating.
The building of laboratories at Kensington was
still in progress and he took part in the students'
riots that delayed the removal of the Albert
Memorial. He carried a banner with " We like
Funny Statuary " on one side and on the other
" Seats and Canopies for Statues, Why should
our Great Departed Stand in the Rain ? " He
learnt the rather athletic aviation of those days at
the University grounds at Sydenham, and he was
fined for flying over the new prison for political
libellers at Wormwood Scrubs, " in a manner
calculated to exhilarate the prisoners while at
exercise." That was the time of the attempted
suppression of any criticism of the public judi-
cature and the place was crowded with journalists
who had ventured to call attention to the
dementia of Chief Justice Abrahams. Barnet was
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 57
not a very good aviator, he confesses he was always
a little afraid of his machine there was excellent
reason for everyone 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 filthi-
ness 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. " Spatch-
cocks," it seems, was a slang term of crushed
hens.
He passed the examinations necessary to
reduce his military service to a minimum, and
his want of any special scientific or technical
qualification and a certain precocious corpulence
that handicapped his aviation indicated the
infantry of the line as his sphere of training.
That was the most generalized 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
uncivilized 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 organization
the traditions of the European wars of thirty and
58 THE WORLD SET FREE
forty years before. There was the infantry arm
to which Barnet belonged and which was supposed
to fight on foot with a rifle and be the main
portion of the army. There were cavalry forces,
(horse soldiers), having a ratio to the infantry
that had been determined by the experiences of
the Franco-German war in 1871. There was also
artillery, and for some unexplained reason much
of this was still drawn by horses ; though there
were also in all the European armies a small
number of motor-guns with wheels so constructed
that they could go over broken ground. In
addition there were large developments of the
engineering arm, concerned with motor transport,
motor-bicycle scouting, aviation and the like.
No first-class intelligence had been sought to
specialize in and work out the problem of warfare
with the new appliances and under modern con-
ditions, 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 190x5. 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
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 59
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 organization 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. More-
over his habit of body made him peculiarly
sensitive to the fatigues and hardships of service.
" For three days in succession we turned out
before dawn and for no earthly reason without
breakfast," he relates. " I suppose that is to
show us that when the Day comes the first thing
will be to get us thoroughly uncomfortable and
rotten. We then proceeded to Kriegspiel
according to the mysterious ideas of those in
authority over us. On the last day we spent
three hours under a hot if early sun getting over
eight miles of country to a point we could have
reached in a motor omnibus in nine minutes and
a half I did it the next day in that and then
we made a massed attack upon entrenchments
that could have shot us all about three times
over if only the umpires had let them. Then
came a little bayonet exercise, but I doubt if I am
sufficiently a barbarian to stick this long knife
6o THE WORLD SET FREE
into anything living. Anyhow in this battle
I shouldn't have had a chance. Assuming that
by some miracle I hadn't been shot three times
over, I was far too hot and blown when I got up
to the entrenchments even to lift my beastly rifle.
It was those others would have begun the
sticking. . . .
" For a time we were watched by two hostile
aeroplanes ; then our own came up and asked
them not to, and the practice of aerial warfare
still being unknown they very politely desisted
and went away and did dives and circles of the
most charming description over the Fox Hills."
All Barnet's accounts of his military training
were written in the same half-contemptuous, half-
protesting tone. He was of opinion that his
chances of participating in any real warfare were
very slight, and that, if after all he should partici-
pate, it was bound to be so entirely different from
these peace manoeuvres 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.
6
Barnet welcomed the appearance of the atomic
engine with the zest of masculine youth in all
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 61
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. " 1 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
oldtime 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 Khartoum.
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 com-
mitted suicide by means of an unscheduled
opiate.
At one blow Barnet found himself flung out
of the possessing, spending, enjoying class to
which he belonged, penniless and with no calling
by which he could earn a living. He tried teach-
ing 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
62 THE WORLD SET FREE
sunshine. For innumerable men such an experi-
ence has meant mental and spiritual destruction,
but Barnet, in spite of his bodily gravitation
towards comfort, showed himself, when put to the
test, of the more valiant modern quality. He was
saturated with the creative stoicism of the heroic
times that were already dawning, and he took
his difficulties and discomforts stoutly as his
appointed material, and turned them to
expression.
Indeed, in his book he thanks fortune for
them. " I might have lived and died," he says,
" in that neat fool's paradise of secure lavishness
above there. I might never have realized the
gathering wrath and sorrow of the ousted and
exasperated masses. In the days of my own
prosperity things had seemed to me to be very well
arranged." Now from his new point of view he
was to find they were not arranged at all ; that
government was a compromise of aggressions and
powers and lassitudes, and law a convention
between interests, and that the poor and the weak
though they had many negligent masters had few
friends.
" I had thought things were looked after," he
wrote. " It was with a kind of amazement that
I tramped the roads and starved and found that
no one in particular cared."
He was turned out of his lodging in a
backward part of London.
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 63
" It was with difficulty I persuaded my land-
lady she was a needy widow, poor soul, and I
was already in her debt to keep an old box for
me in which I had locked a few letters, keepsakes
and the like. She lived in great fear of the
Public Health and Morality Inspectors because
she was sometimes too poor to pay the customary
tip to them, but at last she consented to put it in
a dark tiled place under the stairs, and then I
went forth into the world to seek first the luck
of a meal and then shelter."
He wandered down into the thronging gayer
parts of London in which a year or so ago he had
been numbered among the spenders.
London, under the Visible Smoke Law, by
which any production of visible smoke with or
without excuse was punishable by a fine, had
already ceased to be the sombre smoke-darkened
city of the Victorian time ; it had been and indeed
was constantly being rebuilt, and its main streets
were already beginning to take on those
characteristics that distinguished them throughout
the latter half of the twentieth century. The
insanitary horse and the plebeian bicycle had
been banished from the roadway, which was now
of a resilient glass-like surface, spotlessly clean ;
and the foot passenger was restricted to a narrow
vestige of the ancient footpath on either side of
the track and forbidden at the risk of a fine, if he
survived, to cross the roadway. People descended
64 THE WORLD SET FREE
from their automobiles upon this pavement and
went through the lower shops to the lifts and
stairs to the new ways for pedestrians, the Rows,
that ran along the front of the houses at the level
of the first story and, being joined by frequent
bridges, gave the newer parts of London a
curiously Venetian appearance. In some streets
there were upper and even third-story Rows.
For most of the day and all night the shop
windows were lit by electric light, and many
establishments had made as it were canals of
public footpaths through their premises in order
to increase their window space.
Barnet made his way along this night-scene
rather apprehensively since the police had power
to challenge and demand the Labour Card of any
indigent-looking person, and if the record failed
to show he was in employment dismiss him to
the traffic pavement below.
But there was still enough of his former
gentility about Barnet's appearance and bearing
to protect him from this ; the police, too, had
other things to think of that night, and he was
permitted to reach the galleries about Leicester
Square, that great focus of London life and
pleasure.
He gives a vivid description of the scene that
evening. In the centre was a garden raised on
arches lit by festoons of lights and connected with
the Rows by eight graceful bridges, beneath
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 65
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 Shakespear
Memorial Theatre, in which the municipal
players revolved perpetually through the cycle
of Shakespear's plays, and four other great
houses of refreshment and entertainment whose
pinnacles streamed up into the blue obscurity of
the night. The south side of the square was in
dark contrast to the others ; it was still being
rebuilt, and a lattice of steel bars surmounted by
the frozen gestures of monstrous cranes rose
over the excavated sites of vanished Victorian
buildings.
This framework attracted Barnet's attention
for a time to the exclusion of other interests. It
was absolutely still, it had a dead rigidity, a
stricken inaction, no one was at work upon it
and all its machinery was quiet ; but the
constructors' globes of vacuum light filled its
every interstice with a quivering green moon-
shine and showed alert but motionless soldier
sentinels !
He asked a passing stroller, and was told that
the men had struck that day against the use of an
F
66 THE WORLD SET FREE
atomic riveter that would have doubled the
individual efficiency and halved the number of
steel workers.
" Shouldn't wonder if they didn't get chuck-
ing bombs," said Barnet's informant, hovered for
a moment, and then went on his way to the
Alhambra music hall.
Barnet became aware of an excitement in the
newspaper kiosks at the corners of the square.
Something very sensational had been flashed
upon the transparencies. Forgetting for a
moment his penniless condition he made his
way over a bridge to buy a paper, for in those
days the papers, which were printed upon thin
sheets of metallic foil, were sold at determinate
points by specially licensed purveyors. Half
over he stopped short at a change in the traffic
below ; and was astonished to see that the police
signals were restricting vehicles to the half road-
way. 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 expendi-
ture he was able to understand what was coming.
He watched, and his book describes this
procession which the police had considered it
unwise to prevent and which had been spon-
taneously organized in imitation of the Un-
employed Processions of earlier times. He had
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 67
expected a mob, but there was a kind of sullen
discipline about the procession when at last it
arrived. What seemed for a time an unending
column of men marched wearily, marched with a
kind of implacable futility, along the roadway
underneath him. He was, he says, moved to
join them, but instead he remained watching.
They were a dingy, shabby, ineffective-looking
multitude, for the most part incapable of any
but obsolete and superseded types of labour.
They bore a few banners with the time-honoured
inscription : " Work not Charity," but otherwise
their ranks were unadorned.
They were not singing, they were not even
talking, there was nothing truculent nor aggres-
sive in their bearing, they had no definite
objective, they were just marching and showing
themselves in the more prosperous parts of
London. They were a sample of that great
mass of unskilled cheap labour which the now
still cheaper mechanical powers had superseded
for evermore. They were being " scrapped "
as horses had been " scrapped."
Barnet leant over the parapet watching them,
his mind quickened by his own precarious condi-
tion. 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.
68 THE WORLD SET FREE
What were they asking for ?
They had been overtaken by unexpected
things. Nobody had foreseen
It flashed suddenly into his mind just what
the multitudinous shambling enigma below
meant. It was an appeal against the unexpected,
an appeal to those others who, more fortunate,
seemed wiser and more powerful, for something
for intelligence. This mute mass, weary footed,
rank following rank, protested its persuasion that
some of these others must have foreseen these
dislocations, that anyhow they ought to have
foreseen and arranged.
That was what this crowd of wreckage was
feeling and seeking so dumbly to assert.
" Things came to me like the turning on of a
light in a darkened room," he says. " These
men were praying to their fellow creatures as
once they prayed to God ! The last thing that
men will realize about anything is that it is
inanimate. They had transferred their animation
to mankind. They still believed there was in-
telligence somewhere, even if it was careless or
malignant. ... It had only to be aroused to be
conscience-stricken, to be moved to exertion.
. . . And I saw too that as yet there was no such
intelligence. The world waits for intelligence.
That intelligence has still to be made, that will
for good and order has still to be gathered
together, out of scraps of impulse and wandering
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 69
seeds of benevolence and whatever is fine and
creative in our souls, into a common purpose.
It's something still to come. . . ."
It is characteristic of the widening thought of
the time that this not very heroical young man
who, in any previous age, might well have been
altogether occupied with the problem of his own
individual necessities, should be able to stand
there and generalize about the needs of the
race.
But upon all the stresses and conflicts of that
chaotic time there was already dawning the light
of a new era. The spirit of humanity was
escaping, even then it was escaping, from its
extreme imprisonment in individuals. Salvation
from the bitter intensities of self, which had been
a conscious religious end for thousands of years,
which men had sought in mortifications, in the
wilderness, in meditation and by innumerable
strange paths, was coming at last with the effect
of naturalness into the talk of men, into the
books they read, into their unconscious gestures,
into their newspapers and daily purposes and
everyday acts. The broad horizons, the magic
possibilities that the spirit of the seeker had
revealed to them, were charming them out of
those ancient and instinctive preoccupations from
which the very threat of hell and torment had
failed to drive them. And this young man,
homeless and without provision even for the
yo THE WORLD SET FREE
immediate hours, in the presence of social dis-
organization, distress and perplexity, in a blazing
wilderness of thoughtless pleasure that blotted
out the stars, could think as he tells us he
thought.
" I saw life plain," he wrote. " I saw the
gigantic task before us, and the very splendour of
its intricate and immeasurable difficulty rilled me
with exaltation. I saw that we have still to dis-
cover 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 murmur-
ings of a sleeper who will presently be awake. . . ."
: ' '. 7
And then the story tells, with an engaging
simplicity, of his descent from this ecstatic vision
of reality.
" Presently I found myself again and I was
beginning to feel cold and a little hungry."
He bethought himself of the John Burns
Relief Offices which stood upon the Thames
Embankment. He made his way through the
galleries of the booksellers and the National
Gallery, which had been open continuously day
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 71
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 employ-
ment.
But he had not reckoned upon the new
labour troubles, and when he got to the Embank-
ment 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 assur-
ance, from the people who were emerging from
the small theatres and other such places of enter-
tainment which abounded in that thoroughfare.
This was an altogether unexampled thing.
There had been no begging in London streets for
72 THE WORLD SET FREE
a quarter of a century. But that night the police
were evidently unwilling or unable to cope with
the destitute who were invading those well-kept
quarters of the town. They had become stonily
blind to anything but manifest disorder.
Barnet walked through the crowd unable to
bring himself to ask ; indeed his bearing must
have been more valiant than his circumstances for
twice he says that he was begged from. Near the
Trafalgar Square gardens, a girl with reddened
cheeks and blackened eyebrows who was walking
alone spoke to him with a peculiar friendliness.
" I'm starving," he said to her abruptly.
" Oh ! poor dear ! " she said ; and with the
impulsive generosity of her kind glanced round
and slipped a silver piece into his hand. . . .
It was a gift that, in spite of the precedent of
De Quincey, might under the repressive social
legislation of those times have brought Barnet
within reach of the prison lash. But he took it,
he confesses, and thanked her as well as he was
able and went off very gladly to get food.
8
A day or so later and again his freedom to
go as he pleased upon the roads may be taken as
a mark of increasing social disorganization and
police embarrassment he wandered out into the
open country.
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 73
He speaks of the roads of that plutocratic age
as being " fenced with barbed wire against unpro-
pertied 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 mis-
fortunes about them, as he himself had been
flying two years ago, and along the road swept
the new traffic, light and swift and wonderful.
One was rarely out of earshot of its whistles and
gongs and siren cries even in the field paths or
over the open downs. The officials of the labour
exchanges were everywhere overworked and
infuriated, the casual wards were so crowded
that the surplus wanderers slept in ranks under
sheds or in the open air, and since giving to
wayfarers had been made a punishable offence
there was no longer friendship or help for a
man from the rare foot passenger or the wayside
cottage. . . .
" I wasn't angry," said Barnet. " I saw an
immense selfishness, a monstrous disregard for
anything but pleasure and possession in all those
people above us, but I saw how inevitable that
was, how certainly if the richest had changed
places with the poorest, that things would have
been the same. What else can happen when men
use science and every new thing that science gives
and all their available intelligence and energy to
manufacture wealth and appliances, and leave
74 THE WORLD SET FREE
government and education to the rustling tra-
ditions of hundreds of years ago ? Those
traditions come from the dark ages when there
was really not enough for everyone, 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 in-
justice and revenge. I saw no hope in that talk,
nor in anything but patience. . . ."
But he did not mean a passive patience. He
meant that the method of social reconstruction
was still a riddle, that no effectual rearrangement
was possible until this riddle in all its tangled
aspects was solved. " I tried to talk to those dis-
contented men," he wrote, " but it was hard for
them to see things as I saw them. "When I
talked of patience and the larger scheme, they
answered, * But then we shall all be dead ' and I
could not make them see, what is so simple to my
own mind, that that did not affect the question.
Men who think in lifetimes are of no use to
statesmanship."
He does not seem to have seen a newspaper
THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY 75
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 interna-
tional situations in recent years.
This time it was talk of the Central European
powers suddenly attacking the Slav Confederacy,
with France and England going to the help of the
Slavs.
But the next night he found a tolerable meal
awaiting the vagrants in the casual ward, and
learnt from the workhouse master that all service-
able 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 civilization " 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 mobilization arrangements
had been made so hastily and carelessly that for
nearly thirty-six hours at the improvised depot at
Epsom he got nothing either to eat or to drink
but a cup of cold water. The depot was abso-
lutely unprovisioned, and no one was free to
leave it.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE LAST WAR
I
VIEWED from the standpoint of a sane and
ambitious social order, it is difficult to under-
stand and it would be tedious to follow the
motives that plunged mankind into the war that
fills the histories of the middle decades of the
twentieth century.
It must always be remembered that the
political structure of the world at that time
was everywhere extraordinarily behind the
collective intelligence. That is the central fact
of that history. For two hundred years there
had been no great changes in political or legal
methods and pretensions, the utmost change had
been a certain shifting of boundaries and slight
readjustment of procedure, while in nearly every
other aspect of life there had been fundamental
revolutions, gigantic releases and an enormous
enlargement of scope and outlook. The absurdi-
ties of courts and the indignities of representative
THE LAST WAR 77
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 ostensi-
ble governments of the world in the twentieth
century were following in the wake of the
ostensible religions. They were ceasing to
command the services of any but second-rate
men. After the middle of the eighteenth century
there are no more great ecclesiastics upon the
world's memory, after the opening of the
twentieth no more statesmen. Everywhere one
finds an energetic, ambitious, short-sighted,
common-place type in the seats of authority,
blind to the new possibilities and litigiously
reliant upon the traditions of the past.
Perhaps the most dangerous of those outworn
traditions were the boundaries of the various
" sovereign states," and the conception of a general
predominance in human affairs on the part of
some one particular state. The memory of the
empires of Rome and Alexander squatted, an
unlaid carnivorous ghost, in the human imagina-
tion 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
78 THE WORLD SET FREE
onward to the Slavs. Later ages were to store
and neglect the vast insane literature of this
obsession, the intricate treaties, the secret agree-
ments, the infinite knowingness of the political
writer, the cunning refusals to accept plain facts,
the strategic devices, the tactical manoeuvres, the
records of mobilizations and counter-mobiliza-
tions. It ceased to be credible almost as soon
as it ceased to happen, but in the very dawn of
the new age their state-craftsmen sat with their
historical candles burning, and, in spite of strange
new reflections and unfamiliar lights and shadows,
still wrangling and planning to rearrange the maps
of Europe and the world.
It was to become a matter for subtle inquiry
how far the millions of men and women outside
the world of these specialists sympathized and
agreed with their portentous activities. One
school of psychologists inclined to minimize 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 incite-
ments of the international mischief-maker. The
political ideas of the common man were picked up
haphazard, there was practically nothing in such
THE LAST WAR 79
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 com-
paratively easy matter to fill his vacant mind with
the sounds and fury of exasperated suspicion and
national aggression.
For example, Barnet describes the London
crowd as noisily patriotic when presently his
battalion came up from the dep6t 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 un-
employed. 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 enthusi-
astic spectators, and the feeling in the regiment,
if a little stiffened and darkened by grim antici-
pations, was none the less warlike.
But all this emotion was the fickle emotion of
minds without established ideas ; it was with
most of them, Barnet says, as it was with himself,
a natural response to collective movement, and
to martial sounds and colours, and the exhilarating
challenge of vague dangers. And people had
been so long oppressed by the threat of and
8o~ THE WORLD SET FREE
preparation for war that its arrival came with an
effect of positive relief.
^
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 depots to the points in the
Ardennes where they were intended to entrench
themselves.
Most of the documents bearing upon the
campaign were destroyed during the war, from
the first the scheme of the allies seems to have
been confused, but it is highly probable that the
formation of an aerial park in this region, from
which attacks could be made upon the vast
industrial plant of the lower Rhine, and a
flanking raid through Holland upon the German
naval establishments at the mouth of the Elbe,
were integral parts of the original project.
Nothing of this was known to such pawns in the
game as Barnet and his company, whose business
it was to do what they were told by the
mysterious intelligences at the direction of things
in Paris, to which city the Whitehall staff had
also been transferred. From first to last these
directing intelligences remained mysterious to the
body of the army, veiled under the name of
" Orders." There was no Napoleon, no Csesar
THE LAST WAR 81
to embody enthusiasm. Barnet says, " We
talked of Them. They are sending us up into
Luxembourg. They are going to turn the
Central European right."
Behind the veil of this vagueness the little
group of more or less worthy men which con-
stituted Headquarters was beginning to realize
the enormity of the thing it was supposed to
control. . . .
In the great hall of the W r ar 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 intelli-
gence 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.
G
82 THE WORLD SET FREE
But he had reckoned without a proper
estimate either of the new strategy of aviation or
of the possibilities of atomic energy that Holsten
had opened for mankind. While he planned
entrenchments and invasions and a frontier war,
the Central European generalship was striking at
the eyes and the brain. And while, with a certain
diffident hesitation, he developed his gambit that
night upon the lines laid down by Napoleon and
Moltke, his own scientific corps in a state of
mutinous activity was preparing a blow for Berlin.
"These old fools ! " was the key in which the
scientific corps was thinking.
The War Control in Paris on the night of
July the second was an impressive display of the
paraphernalia of scientific military organization, as
the first half of the twentieth century understood
it. To one human being at least the consulting
commanders had the likeness of world-wielding
gods. . . .
She was a skilled typist, capable of nearly
sixty words a minute, and she had been engaged
in relay with other similar women to take down
orders in duplicate and hand them over to the
junior officers in attendance to be forwarded and
filed. There had come a lull, and she had been
sent out from the dictating room to take the air
upon the terrace before the great hall and to eat
such scanty refreshment as she had brought with
her until her services were required again.
THE LAST WAR 83
From her position upon the terrace this
young woman had a view not only of the wide
sweep of the river below her, and all the eastward
side of Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to Saint
Cloud, great blocks and masses of black or pale
darkness with pink and golden flashes of
illumination and endless interlacing bands of
dotted lights under a still and starless sky, but
also the whole spacious interior of the great hall
with its slender pillars and gracious arching and
clustering lamps was visible to her. There, over
a wilderness of tables, lay the huge maps, done on
so large a scale that one might fancy them small
countries ; the messengers and attendants went
and came perpetually, altering, moving the little
pieces that signified hundreds and thousands of
men, and the great commander and his two
consultants stood amidst all these things and near
where the fighting was nearest, scheming,
directing. They had but to breathe a word and
presently away there, in the world of reality, the
punctual myriads moved. Men rose up and
went forward and died. The fate of nations lay
behind the eyes of these three men. Indeed they
were like gods.
Most godlike of the three was Dubois. It
was for him to decide ; the others at most might
suggest. Her woman's soul went out to this
grave, handsome, still, old man, in a passion of
instinctive worship. . . .
84 THE WORLD SET FREE
Once she had taken words of instruction from
him direct. She had awaited them in an ecstasy
of happiness and fear. For her exaltation was
made terrible by the dread that some error might
dishonour her. . . .
She watched him now through the glass with
all the impenetrating minuteness of an impas-
sioned woman's observation.
He said little, she remarked. He looked but
little at the maps. The tall Englishman beside
him was manifestly troubled by a swarm of
ideas, conflicting ideas ; he craned his neck at
every shifting of the little red, blue, black and
yellow pieces on the board and wanted to draw
the commander's attention to this and that.
Dubois listened, nodded, emitted a word and
became still again, brooding like the national
eagle.
His eyes were so deeply sunken under his
white eyebrows that she could not see his eyes ;
his moustache overhung the mouth from which
those words of decision came. Viard, too, said
little ; he was a dark man with a drooping head
and melancholy watchful eyes. He was more
intent upon the French right, which was feeling
its way now through Alsace to the Rhine. He
was, she knew, an old colleague of Dubois ; he
knew him better, she decided, he trusted him
more than this unfamiliar Englishman. . . .
Not to talk, to remain impassive and as far
THE LAST WAR 85
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 manoeuvres his impassive persistence had
perplexed and hypnotized and defeated many
a more actively intelligent man. Deep in his soul
Dubois had hidden his one profound discovery
about the modern art of warfare, the key to his
career. And this discovery was that nobody knew,
that to act therefore was to blunder, that to talk
was to confess ; and that the man who acted
slowly and steadfastly and above all silently had
the best chance of winning through. Meanwhile
one fed the men. Now by this same strategy
he hoped to shatter those mysterious unknowns
of the Central European command. Delhi
might talk of a great flank march through
Holland with all the British submarines and
hydroplanes and torpedo craft pouring up the
Rhine in support of it ; Viard might crave for
brilliance with the motor bicycles, aeroplanes and
ski-men among the Swiss mountains and a
86 THE WORLD SET FREE
sudden swoop upon Vienna ; the thing was to
listen and wait for the other side to begin
experimenting. It was all experimenting. And
meanwhile he remained in profile, with an air of
assurance like a man who sits in an automobile
after the chauffeur has had his directions.
And every one about him was the stronger
and surer for that quiet face, that air of know-
ledge 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, domi-
nated the field, and pointed in every direction.
Those shadows symbolized his control. When
a messenger came from the wireless room to
shift this or that piece in the game, to replace
under amended reports one Central European
regiment by a score, to draw back or thrust out
or distribute this or that force of the allies, the
Marshal would turn his head and seem not to
see, or look and nod slightly, as a master nods
who approves a pupil's self-correction. " Yes,
that's better."
How wonderful he was, thought the woman
at the window, how wonderful it all was. This
was the brain of the western world, this was
Olympus with the warring earth at its feet. And
he was guiding France, France so long a resent-
ful exile from imperialism, back to her old
predominance.
THE LAST WAR 87
It seemed to her beyond the desert of a
woman that she should be privileged to
participate. . . .
It is hard to be a woman, full of the stormy
impulse to personal devotion, and to have to
be impersonal, abstract, exact, punctual. She
must control herself. . . .
She gave herself up to fantastic dreams,
dreams of the days when the war would be over
and victory enthroned. Then perhaps this
harshness, this armour would be put aside
and the gods might unbend. Her eyelids
drooped. . . .
She roused herself with a start. She became
aware that the night outside was no longer still.
That there was an excitement down below on
the bridge and a running in the street and a
flickering of searchlights among the clouds from
some high place away beyond the Trocadero.
And then the excitement came surging up past
her and invaded the hall within.
One of the sentinels from the terrace stood
at the upper end of the room gesticulating and
shouting something.
And all the world had changed. A kind of
throbbing. She couldn't understand. It was as
if all the water-pipes and concealed machinery
and cables of the ways beneath, were beating as
pulses beat. And about her blew something like
a wind a wind that was dismay.
88 THE WORLD SET FREE
Her eyes went to the face of the Marshal as a
frightened child might look towards its mother.
He was still serene. He was frowning
slightly, she thought, but that was natural enough,
for the Earl of Delhi with one hand gauntly
gesticulating had taken him by the arm and was
all too manifestly disposed to drag him towards
the great door that opened on the terrace. And
Viard was hurrying towards the huge windows
and doing so in the strangest of attitudes, bent
forward and with eyes upturned.
Something up there ?
And then it was as if thunder broke over-
head.
The sound struck her like a blow. She
crouched together against the masonry and looked
up. She saw three black shapes swooping down
through the torn clouds, and from a point a little
below two of them there had already started
curling trails of red. . . .
Everything else in her being was paralyzed,
she hung through moments that seemed infinities,
watching those red missiles whirl down towards
her.
She felt torn out of the world. There was
nothing else in the world but a crimson-purple
glare and sound, deafening, all-embracing, con-
tinuing sound. Every other light had gone
out about her and against this glare hung slanting
walls, pirouetting pillars, projecting fragments of
THE LAST WAR 89
cornices and a disorderly flight of huge angular
sheets of glass.
She had an impression of a great ball of
crimson-purple fire like a maddened living thing
that seemed to be whirling about very rapidly
amidst a chaos of falling masonry, that seemed to
be attacking the earth furiously, that seemed to be
burrowing into it like a blazing rabbit. . . .
She had all the sensations of waking up out of
a dream.
She found she was lying face downward on a
bank of mould and that a little rivulet of hot
water was running over one foot. She tried to
raise herself and found her leg was very painful.
She was not clear whether it was night or day nor
where she was ; she made a second effort, wincing
and groaning, and turned over and got into a
sitting position and looked about her.
Everything seemed very silent. She was in
fact in the midst of a vast uproar, but she did
not realize this because her hearing had been
destroyed.
At first she could not join on what she saw to
any previous experience.
She seemed to be in a strange world, a sound-
less 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
90 THE WORLD SET FREE
debris, she recognized the Trocadero ; it was
changed, something had gone from it, but its out-
line 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
organization of the War Control. . . .
She drew herself a little way up the slope of
earth on which she lay and examined her
surroundings with an increasing understand-
ing. . . .
The earth on which she was lying projected
like a cape into the river. Quite close to her was
a brimming lake of dammed-up water from which
these warm rivulets and torrents were trickling.
Wisps of vapour came into circling existence a
foot or so from its mirror-surface. Near at hand
and reflected exactly in the water was the upper
part of a familiar-looking stone pillar. On the
side of her away from the water the heaped ruins
rose steeply in a confused slope up to a glaring
crest. Above and reflecting this glare towered
pillowed masses of steam rolling swiftly upward
to the zenith. It was from this crest that the
livid glow that lit the world about her proceeded,
and slowly her mind connected this mound with
the vanished buildings of the War Control.
" Mais I " she whispered and remained with
staring eyes quite motionless for a time, crouching
close to the warm earth.
THE LAST WAR 91
Then presently this dim, broken human thing
began to look about it again. She began to feel
the need of fellowship. She wanted to question,
wanted to speak, wanted to relate her experience.
And her foot hurt her atrociously. There ought
to be an ambulance. A little gust of querulous
criticisms blew across her mind. This surely was
a disaster ! Always after a disaster there should
be ambulances and helpers moving about. . . .
She craned her head. There was something
there. But everything was so still !
" Monsieur ! " she cried. Her ears, she noted,
felt queer, and she began to suspect that all was
not well with them.
It was terribly lonely in this chaotic strange-
ness, and perhaps this man if it was a man, for
it was difficult to see might for all his stillness
be merely insensible. He might have been
stunned. . . .
The leaping glare beyond sent a ray into his
corner and for a moment every little detail was
distinct. It was Marshal Dubois. He was
lying against a huge slab of the war map. To it
there stuck and from it there dangled little wooden
objects, the symbols of infantry and cavalry and
guns as they were disposed upon the frontier.
He did not seem to be aware of this at his back }
he had an effect of inattention, not indifferent
attention, but as if he were thinking. . . .
She could not see the eyes beneath his shaggy
92 THE WORLD SET FREE
brows but it was evident he frowned. He
frowned slightly, he had an air of not wanting to
be disturbed. His face still bore that expression
of assured confidence, that conviction that if
things were left to him France might obey in
security. . . .
She did not cry out to him again, but she
crept a little nearer. A strange surmise made her
eyes dilate. With a painful wrench she pulled
herself up so that she could see completely over
the intervening lumps of smashed-up masonry.
Her hand touched something wet, and after one
convulsive movement she became rigid.
It was not a whole man there ; it was a piece
of a man, the head and shoulders of a man that
trailed down into a ragged darkness and a pool of
shining black. . . .
And even as she stared the mound above her
swayed and crumbled and a rush of hot water
came pouring over her. Then it seemed to her
that she was dragged downward. . . .
3
When the rather brutish young aviator with
the bullet head and the black hair close-cropped
en brosse who was in charge of the French
special scientific corps heard presently of this
disaster to the War Control, he was so wanting in
imagination in any sphere but his own, that he
THE LAST WAR 93
laughed. Small matter to him that Paris was
burning. His mother and father and sister lived
at Caudebec ; and the only sweetheart he had
ever had, and it was poor love-making then, was
a girl in Rouen. He slapped his second-in-
command on the shoulder. " Now," he said,
" there's nothing on earth to stop us going to
Berlin and giving them tit-for-tat. . . . Strategy
and reasons of state they're over. . . . Come
along, my boy, and we'll just show these old
women what we can do when they let us have
our heads."
He spent five minutes telephoning and then
he went out into the courtyard of the chateau in
which he had been installed and shouted for his
automobile. Things would have to move quickly
because there was scarcely an hour and a half
before dawn. He looked at the sky and noted
with satisfaction a heavy bank of clouds athwart
the pallid east.
He was a young man of infinite shrewdness,
and his material and aeroplanes were scattered all
over the countryside, 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.
94
Two men would be enough for what he meant to
do. ...
He had in his hands the black complement to
all those other gifts science was urging upon
unregenerate mankind, the gift of destruction,
and he was an adventurous rather than a
sympathetic type. . . .
He was a dark young man with something
negroid about his gleaming face. He smiled like
one who is favoured and anticipates great
pleasures. There was an exotic richness, a
chuckling flavour, about the voice in which he
gave his orders, and he pointed his remarks with
the long finger of a hand that was hairy and
exceptionally big.
"We'll give them tit-for-tat," he said.
" We'll give them tit-for-tat. No time to lose,
boys. . . ."
And presently over the cloud-banks that lay
above Westphalia and Saxony the swift aeroplane,
with its atomic engine as noiseless as a dancing
sunbeam and its phosphorescent gyroscopic com-
pass, flew like an arrow to the heart of the
Central European hosts.
It did not soar very high ; it skimmed a few
hundred feet above the banked darknesses of
cumulus that hid the world, ready to plunge at
once into their wet obscurities should some
hostile flier range into vision. The tense young
steersman divided his attention between the
THE LAST WAR 95
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 trans-
lucency, pierced by clear chasms, so that .dim
patches of the land below gleamed remotely
through abysses. Once he saw quite distinctly
the plan of a big railway station outlined in lamps
and signals, and once the flames of a burning rick
showing livid through a boiling drift of smoke on
the side of some great hill. But if the world
was masked it was alive with sounds. Up
through that vapour floor came the deep roar of
trains, the whistles of horns of motor cars, a
sound of rifle fire away to the south, and as he
drew near his destination the crowing of
cocks. . . .
The sky above the indistinct horizons of this
cloud sea was at first starry and then paler with a
light that crept from north to east as the dawn
came on. The Milky Way was invisible in the
blue, and the lesser stars vanished. The face of
the adventurer at the steering-wheel, darkly
visible ever and again by the oval greenish glow
of the compass face, had something of that firm
beauty which all concentrated purpose gives, and
something of the happiness of an idiot child that
has at last got hold of the matches. His
companion, a less imaginative type, sat with his
96 THE WORLD SET FREE
legs spread wide over the long coffin-shaped box
which contained in its compartments the three
atomic bombs, the new bombs that would
continue to explode indefinitely and which no
one so far had ever seen in action. Hitherto
Carolinum, their essential substance, had been
tested only in almost infinitesimal quantities
within steel chambers embedded in lead. Beyond
the thought of great destruction slumbering in
the black spheres between his legs, and a keen
resolve to follow out very exactly the instructions
that had been given him, the man's mind was a
blank. His aquiline profile against the starlight
expressed nothing but a profound gloom.
The sky below grew clearer as the Central
European capital was approached.
So far they had been singularly lucky and had
been challenged by no aeroplanes at all. The
frontier scouts they must have passed in the
night ; probably these were mostly under the
clouds ; the world was wide and they had had
luck in not coming close to any soaring sentinel.
Their machine was painted a pale grey that lay
almost invisibly over the cloud levels below.
But now the east was flushing with the near
ascent of the sun, Berlin was but a score of miles
ahead, and the luck of the Frenchmen held.
By imperceptible degrees the clouds below
dissolved. . . .
Away to the north-eastward, in a cloudless pool
THE LAST WAR 97
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 head-
quarters. There, plain enough, was the Thier-
garten ; beyond rose the imperial palace, and to
the right those tall buildings, those clustering
beflagged, bemasted roofs, must be the offices in
which the Central European staff was housed. It
was all coldly clear and colourless in the dawn.
He looked up suddenly as a humming sound
grew out of nothing and became swiftly louder.
Nearly overhead a German aeroplane was circling
down from an immense height to challenge him.
He made a gesture with his left arm to the
gloomy man behind and then gripped his little
wheel with both hands, crouched over it and
twisted his neck to look upward. He was
attentive, tightly strung, but quite contemptuous
of their ability to hurt him. No German alive,
he was assured, could outfly him, or indeed any
one of the best Frenchmen. He imagined they
might strike at him as a hawk strikes, but they
H
98 THE WORLD SET FREE
were men coming down out of the bitter cold up
there, in a hungry spiritless morning mood ; they
came slanting down like a sword swung by a lazy
man, and not so rapidly but that he was able to
slip away from under them and get between them
and Berlin. They began challenging him in
German with a megaphone when they were still
perhaps a mile away. The words came to him,
rolled up into a mere blob of hoarse sound.
Then, gathering alarm from his grim silence, they
gave chase and swept down, a hundred yards
above him perhaps and a couple of hundred
behind. They were beginning to understand
what he was. He ceased to watch them and
concentrated himself on the city ahead and for a
time the two aeroplanes raced. . . .
A bullet came tearing through the air by him,
as though someone was tearing paper. A second
followed. Something tapped the machine.
It was time to act. The broad avenues, the
park, the palaces below rushed widening out
nearer and nearer to them.
" Ready ! " said the steersman.
The gaunt face hardened to grimness, and
with both hands the bomb-thrower lifted the big
atomic bomb from the box and steadied it against
the side. It was a black sphere two feet in
diameter. Between its handles was a little
celluloid stud, and to this he bent his head until
his lips touched it. Then he had to bite in order
THE LAST WAR
99
to let the air in upon the inducive. Sure of its
accessibility, he craned his neck over the side of
the aeroplane and judged his pace and distance.
Then very quickly he bent forward, bit the stud
and hoisted the bomb over the side.
^ Round," he whispered inaudibly.
The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air
and^felij a descending column of blaze eddying
spirally in the midst of a whirlwind. Both the
aeroplanes were tossed like shuttlecocks, hurled
high and sideways ; and the steersman with
gleaming eyes and set teeth fought in great
banking curves for a balance. The gaunt man
clung tight with hand and knees ; his nostrils
dilated, his teeth biting his lips. He was firmly
strapped. . . .
When he could look down again it was like
looking down upon the crater of a small volcano.
In the open garden before the Imperial castle a
shuddering star of evil splendour spurted and
poured up smoke and flame towards them like an
accusation. They were too high to distinguish
people clearly, or mark the bomb's effect upon
the building until suddenly the facade tottered
and crumbled before the flare as sugar dissolves
in water. The man stared for a moment, showed
all his long teeth, and then staggered into the
cramped standing position his straps permitted,
hoisted out and bit another bomb and sent it
down after its fellow.
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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 determin-
ation that the thing should not escape him, bit
its stud. Before he could hurl it over, the mono-
plane was slipping sideways. Everything was
falling sideways. Instinctively he gave himself up
to gripping, his body holding the bomb in its
place.
Then that bomb had exploded also, and
steersman, thrower, and aeroplane were just fly-
ing 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. . . .
4
Never before in the history of warfare had
there been a continuing explosive ; indeed up to
the middle of the twentieth century the only
explosives known were combustibles whose ex-
plosiveness was due entirely to their instantaneous-
ness ; and these atomic bombs which science
burst upon the world that night were strange
even to the men who used them. Those used
THE LAST WAR 101
by the allies were lumps of pure Carolinum,
painted on the outside with unoxidized cydonator
inducive enclosed hermetically in a case of mem-
branium. 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 radioactivity in the outer layer of the
Carolinum sphere. This liberated fresh inducive,
and so in a few minutes the whole bomb was
a blazing continual explosion. The Central
European bombs were the same except that
they were larger and had a more complicated
arrangement for animating the inducive.
Always before in the development of warfare
the shells and rockets fired had been but
momentarily explosive, they had gone off in an
instant once for all, and if there was nothing
living or valuable within reach of the concussion
and the flying fragments then they were spent
and over. But Carolinum, which belonged to
the ft 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
102 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 battlefields and
bomb fields of that frantic time in human history
are sprinkled with radiant matter and so centres
of inconvenient rays. . . .
What happened when the celluloid stud was
opened was that the inducive oxydized 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 super-
ficially, 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,
THE LAST WAR 103
freely drove into and mixed up with a boiling
confusion of molten soil and superheated steam
and so remained spinning furiously and main-
taining 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 unap-
proachable and uncontrollable until its forces
were nearly exhausted, and from the crater that
burst open above it, puffs of heavy incandescent
vapour and fragments of viciously punitive rock
and mud, saturated with Carolinum, and each a
centre of scorching and blistering energy, were
flung high and far.
Such was the crowning triumph of military
science, the ultimate explosive that was to give
the " decisive touch " to war.
5
A recent historical writer has described the
world of that time as one that " believed in
established words and was invincibly blind to the
obvious in things." Certainly it seems now that
nothing could have been more obvious to the
people of the earlier twentieth century than the
rapidity with which war was becoming impossible.
And as certainly they did not see it. They did
not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their
fumbling hands. Yet the broad facts must have
104 THE WORLD SET FREE
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, fortifica-
tions 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 revolu-
tionizing the problems of police and internal rule.
Before the last war began it was a matter of
common knowledge that a man could carry about
in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient
to wreck half a city. These facts were before
the minds of everybody ; the children in the
streets knew them. And yet the world still, as
the Americans used to phrase it, " fooled around "
with the paraphernalia and pretensions of war.
It is only by realizing this profound, this
fantastic divorce between the scientific and intel-
lectual 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 pre-
posterous state of affairs. Social organization
was still in the barbaric stage. There were
already great numbers of actively intelligent men
and much private and commercial civilization, but
THE LAST WAR 105
the community as a whole was aimless, untrained
and unorganized to the pitch of imbecility. Col-
lective civilization, the " Modern State," was still
in the womb of the future.
6
But let us return to Frederick Barnet's
"Wander Jahre " and its account of the ex-
periences of a common man during the war
time. While these terrific disclosures of scien-
tific possibility were happening in Paris and
Berlin, Barnet and his company were indus-
triously entrenching themselves in Belgian
Luxembourg.
He tells of the mobilization 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 dis-
tributed cakes and glasses of beer to the thirsty
soldiers and there was much cheerfulness. " Such
good cool beer it was," he wrote. " I had had
nothing to eat nor drink since Epsom."
A number of monoplanes " like giant
swallows," he notes, were scouting in the pink
evening sky.
io6 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 rail-
way 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
countryside interspersed by forest towards Arlon.
There the infantry were set to work upon a
line of masked entrenchments and hidden rifle pits
between St. Hubert and Virton that were designed
to check and delay any advance from the east
upon the fortified line of the Meuse. They had
their orders, and for two days they worked with-
out either a sight of the enemy or any suspicion
of the disaster that had abruptly decapitated the
armies of Europe, and turned the west of Paris
and the centre of Berlin into blazing miniatures of
the destruction of Pompeii.
And the news, when it did come, came
attenuated. " We heard there had been mischief
with aeroplanes and bombs in Paris," Barnet
relates ; " but it didn't seem to follow that c 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
THE LAST WAR 107
see what was happening there, the rip of a
bullet soon brought one down to the horizontal
again . . .
That battle went on for three days all over a
great stretch of country between Louvain on the
north and Longway 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 mani-
festly unsuitable for field use, nor indeed had they
any very effective kind of bomb. And though they
manoeuvred against each other, and there was rifle
shooting at them and between them, there was
little actual aerial fighting. Either the airmen
were indisposed to fight or the commanders on
both sides preferred to reserve these machines for
scouting. . . .
After a day or so of digging and scheming,
Barnet found himself in the forefront of a battle.
He had made his section of rifle pits chiefly along
a line of deep dry ditch that gave a means of
intercommunication, 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
io8 THE WORLD SET FREE
have been very cruelly handled indeed, if someone
away to the right had not opened fire too soon.
" It was a queer thrill when these fellows
came into sight," he confesses ; " and not a bit
like manoeuvres. They halted for a time on the
edge of the wood and then came forward in an
open line. They kept walking nearer to us and
not looking at us, but away to the right of us.
Even when they began to be hit, and their officers'
whistles woke them up, they didn't seem to see
us. One or two halted to fire and then they all
went back towards the wood again. They went
slowly at first, looking round at us, then the
shelter of the wood seemed to draw them and they
trotted. I fired rather mechanically and missed,
then I fired again, and then I became earnest to
hit something, made sure of my sighting and
aimed very carefully at a blue back that was
dodging about in the corn. At first I couldn't
satisfy myself and didn't shoot, his movements
were so spasmodic and uncertain ; then I think
he came to a ditch or some such obstacle and
halted for a moment. ' Got you,' I whispered,
and pulled the trigger.
"I had the strangest sensations about that
man. In the first instance when I felt that I had
hit him I was irradiated with joy and pride. . . .
"I sent him spinning. He jumped and
threw up his arms
" Then I saw the corn tops waving and had
THE LAST WAR 109
glimpses of him flapping about. Suddenly I felt
sick. I hadn't killed him. . . .
" In some way he was disabled and smashed
up and yet able to struggle about. I began to
think. . . .
" For nearly two hours that Prussian was
agonizing in the corn. Either he was calling out
or someone was shouting to him. . . .
" Then he jumped up, he seemed to try and
get up upon his feet with one last effort ; and
then he fell like a sack and lay quite still and
never moved again.
" He had been unendurable, and I believe
someone had shot him dead. I had been wanting
to do so for some time. . . ."
The enemy began sniping the rifle pits from
shelters they made for themselves in the woods
below. A man was hit in the pit next to Barnet
and began cursing and crying out in a violent
rage. Barnet crawled along the ditch to him and
found him in great pain, covered with blood,
frantic with indignation and with the half of his
right hand smashed to a pulp. " Look at this," he
kept repeating, hugging it and then extending it.
" Damned foolery ! Damned foolery ! My
right hand, sir ! My right hand ! "
For some time Barnet could do nothing with
him. The man was consumed by his tortured
realization of the evil silliness of war, the realiza-
tion which had come upon him in a flash with the
no THE WORLD SET FREE
bullet that had destroyed his skill and use as an
artificer for ever. He was looking at the vestiges
with a horror that made him impenetrable to any
other idea. At last the poor wretch let Barnet
tie up his bleeding stump and help him along the
ditch that conducted him deviously out of
range. . .
When Barnet returned his men were already
calling out for water, and all day long the line of
pits suffered greatly from thirst. For food they
had chocolate and bread.
" At first," he says, " I was extraordinarily
excited by my baptism of fire. Then as the heat
of the day came on I experienced an enormous
tedium and discomfort. The flies became ex-
tremely troublesome and my little grave of a rifle
pit was invaded by ants. I could not get up or
move about, for some one in the trees had got a
mark on me. I kept thinking of the dead Prussian
down among the corn and of the bitter outcries of
my own man. Damned foolery ! It was damned
foolery. But who was to blame ? How had we
got to this ? . . .
" Early in the afternoon an aeroplane tried to
dislodge us with dynamite bombs, but she was
hit by bullets once or twice and suddenly dived
down over beyond the trees.
" ' From Holland to the Alps this day,' I
thought, * there must be crouching and lying
between half and a million of men, trying to inflict
THE LAST WAR in
irreparable damage upon one another. The thing is
idiotic to the pitch of impossibility. It is a dream.
Presently I shall wake up. ' . . .
" Then the phrase changed itself in my mind.
' Presently mankind will wake up.'
" I lay speculating just how many thousands
of men there were among these hundreds of
thousands, whose spirits were in rebellion against
all these ancient traditions of flag and empire.
Weren't we perhaps already in the throes of the
last crisis, in that darkest moment of a nightmare's
horror before the sleeper will endure no more of
it and wakes ?
" I don't know how my speculations ended.
I think they were not so much ended as distracted
by the distant thudding of the guns that were
opening fire at long range upon Namur."
7
But as yet Barnet had seen no more than the
mildest beginnings of modern warfare. So far he
had taken part only in a little shooting. The
bayonet attack by which the advanced line was
broken was made at a place called Croix Rouge
more than twenty miles away, and that night
under cover of the darkness the rifle pits were
abandoned and he got his company away without
further loss.
ii2 THE WORLD SET FREE
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
realize the monstrous and catastrophic nature of
the struggle in which he was playing his undistin-
guished part.
He describes very pleasantly the journey
through the hills and open land of Brabant, the
repeated crossing of arms of the Rhine, and the
change from the undulating scenery of Belgium to
the flat rich meadows, the sunlit dyke roads, and
the countless windmills of the Dutch levels. In
those days there was unbroken land from Alkmaar
and Leiden to the Dollart. Three great provinces,
South Holland, North Holland, and Zuiderzee-
land, 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 in-
tricate 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.
THE LAST WAR 113
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 event-
ful 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 every-
where in solitary steadings, amidst ricks and barns,
in groups by the wayside, in straggling villages,
each with its fine old church, or in compact towns
laced with canals and abounding in bridges and
clipped trees, were human habitations.
The people of this countryside were not
belligerents. The interests and sympathies alike
of Holland had been so divided that to the end
ii 4 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 ob-
servant 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 in-
vaders ; the days when " soldiering " meant
bands of licentious looters had long since passed
away. . . .
That watcher among the clouds would have
seen a great distribution of khaki-uniformed
men and khaki-painted material over the whole of
the sunken area of Holland. He would have
marked the long trains, packed with men or piled
with great guns and war material, creeping slowly,
alert for train-wreckers, along the north-going
lines ; he would have seen the Scheldt and Rhine
choked with shipping and pouring out still more
men and still more material ; he would have
noticed halts and provisionings and detrainments,
and the long bustling caterpillars of cavalry and
infantry, the maggot-like waggons, 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
THE LAST WAR 115
it would all have looked from above like some
extravagant festival of animated toys.
As the sun sank westward the spectacle must
have become a little indistinct because of a golden
haze ; everything must have become warmer and
more glowing, and because of the lengthening of
the shadows more manifestly in relief. The
shadows of the tall churches grew longer and
longer until they touched the horizon and
mingled in the universal shadow ; and then,
slow, and soft, and wrapping the world in fold
after fold of deepening blue, came the night the
night at first obscurely simple, and then with faint
points here and there, and then jewelled in
darkling splendour with a hundred thousand
lights. Out of that mingling of darkness and
ambiguous glares the noise of an unceasing
activity would have arisen, the louder and plainer
now because there was no longer any distraction
of sight.
It may be that watcher drifting in the pellucid
gulf beneath the stars watched all through the
night ; it may be that he dozed. But if he gave
way to so natural a proclivity assuredly on the
fourth night of the great flank march he was
aroused, for that was the night of the battle in the
air that decided the fate of Holland.
The aeroplanes were fighting at last, and
suddenly about him, above and below, with cries
and uproar rushing out of the four quarters of
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heaven, striking, plunging, oversetting, soaring
to the zenith and dropping to the ground, they
came to assail or defend the myriads below.
Secretly the Central European power had
gathered his flying machines together, and now
he threw them as a giant might fling a handful of
ten thousand knives over the low country. And
amidst that swarming flight were five that drove
headlong for the sea walls of Holland, carrying
atomic bombs. From north and west and south
the allied aeroplanes rose in response and swept
down upon this sudden attack. So it was that
war in the air began. Men rode upon the whirl-
wind that night and slew and fell like archangels.
The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth.
Surely the last fights of mankind were the best.
What was the heavy pounding of your Homeric
swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of
chariots, beside this swift rush, this crash, this
giddy triumph, this headlong swoop to death ?
And then athwart this whirling rush of aerial
duels that swooped and locked and dropped in
the void between the lamp-lights and the stars,
came a great wind and a crash louder than
thunder, and first one and then a score of
lengthening fiery serpents plunged hungrily down
upon the Dutchmen's dykes and struck between
land and sea and flared up again in enormous
columns of glare and crimsoned smoke and
steam.
THE LAST WAR 117
And out of the darkness leapt the little land,
with its spires and trees, aghast with terror, still
and distinct, and the sea, tumbled with anger,
red-foaming like a sea of blood. . . .
Over the populous country below went a
strange multitudinous crying and a flurry of alarm
bells. . . .
The surviving aeroplanes turned about and
fled out of the sky, like things that suddenly
know themselves to be wicked. . . .
Through a dozen thunderously flaming gaps
that no water might quench, the waves came
roaring in upon the land. . . .
"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
n8 THE WORLD SET FREE
toasted the cheese and grilled our herrings.
None of us had slept for nearly forty hours and I
determined to stay in this refuge until dawn and
then if the traffic was still choked leave the barge
and march the rest of the way into Alkmaar.
" This place we had got into was perhaps a
hundred yards from the canal and underneath a
little brick bridge we could see the flotilla still
and hear the voices of the soldiers. Presently
five or six other barges came through and lay up
in the meer near by us and with two of these,
full of men of the Antrim regiment, I shared my
find of provisions. Jn return we got tobacco.
A large expanse of water spread to the westward
of us and beyond were a cluster of roofs and one
or two church towers. The barge was rather
cramped for so many men and I let several
squads, thirty or forty perhaps altogether, bivouac
on the bank. I did not let them go into the
house on account of the furniture, and I left a
note of indebtedness for the food we had taken.
We were particularly glad of our tobacco and
fires because of the numerous mosquitoes that
rose about us.
" The gate of the house from which we had
provisioned ourselves was adorned with the
legend Vreugde bij Vrede, * Joy with Peace,' and it
bore every mark of the busy retirement of a com-
fort-loving proprietor. \ went along his garden,
which was gay and delightful with big bushes of
THE LAST WAR 119
rose and sweet briar, to a quaint little summer-
house, and there I sat and watched the men in
groups cooking and squatting along the bank.
The sun was setting in a nearly cloudless sky.
" For the last two weeks I had been a wholly
occupied man, intent only upon obeying the
orders that came down to me. All through this
time I had been working to the very limit of my
mental and physical faculties and my only
moments of rest had been devoted to snatches of
sleep. Now came this rare unexpected interlude
and I could look detachedly upon what I was
doing and feel something of its infinite wonder-
fulness. 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 pro-
ceedings 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 utilized. Again it came to me with
overpowering force that the supreme need of our
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race is leading, that the supreme task is to
discover leading, to forget oneself in realizing the
collective purpose of the race. Once more I saw
life plain. . . ."
Very characteristic is that of the " rather too
corpulent" young officer, who was afterwards to
set it all down in the " Wander Jahre." Very
characteristic too it is of the change in men's
hearts that was even then preparing a new phase
of human history.
He goes on to write of the escape from
individuality in science and service and of his
discovery of this " salvation." All that was then
no doubt very moving and original ; now it seems
only the most obvious commonplace of human
life.
The glow of the sunset faded, the twilight
deepened into night. The fires burnt the
brighter, and some Irishmen away across the
meer started singing. But Barnet's men were
too weary for that sort of thing, and soon the
bank and the barge were heaped with sleeping
forms.
" I alone seemed unable to sleep. I suppose
I was over-weary, and after a little feverish
slumber by the tiller of the barge I sat up, awake
and uneasy. . . .
" That night Holland seemed all sky. There
was just a little black lower rim to things, a
steeple perhaps or a line of poplars, and then the
THE LAST WAR 121
great hemisphere swept over us. As at first the
sky was empty. Yet my uneasiness referred
itself in some vague way to the sky.
" And now I was melancholy. 1 found some-
thing 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 realize even the most
timid of its dreams. And I wondered if always
it would be so, if man was a doomed animal who
would never to the last days of his time take hold
of fate and change it to his will. Always, it may
be, he will remain kindly but jealous, desirous
but discursive, able and unwisely impulsive, until
Saturn who begot him shall devour him in his
turn. . . .
" I was roused from these thoughts by the
sudden realization 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
122 THE WORLD SET FREE
swiftly from the direction of the frontier and my
attention tightened.
" Directly I saw that fleet I was astonished
not to have seen it before.
" I stood up softly, undesirous of disturbing
my companions, but with my heart beating now
rather more rapidly with surprise and excitement.
I strained my ears for any sound of guns along
our front. Almost instinctively I turned about
for protection to the south and west, and peered ;
and then I saw coming as fast and much nearer to
me, as if they had sprung out of the darkness,
three banks of aeroplanes ; a group of squadrons
very high, a main body at a height perhaps of one
or two thousand feet, and a doubtful number
flying low and very indistinct. The middle ones
were so thick they kept putting out groups of
stars. And I realized that after all there was to
be fighting in the air.
"There was something extraordinarily strange
in this swift, noiseless convergence of nearly
invisible combatants above the sleeping hosts.
Everyone 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
THE LAST WAR 123
my men sleep on for as long as they
could. . . .
" The battle was joined with the swiftness of
dreaming. I do not think it can have been five
minutes from the moment when I first became
aware of the Central European air fleet to the
contact of the two forces. I saw it quite plainly
in silhouette against the luminous blue of the
northern sky. The allied aeroplanes they were
mostly French came pouring down like a fierce
shower upon the middle of the Central European
fleet. They looked exactly like a coarser sort of
rain. There was a crackling sound the first
sound I heard it reminded one of the Aurora
Borealis and I supposed it was an interchange
of rifle shots. There were flashes like summer
lightning ; and then all the sky became a whirling
confusion of battle that was still largely noiseless.
Some of the Central European aeroplanes were
certainly charged and overset ; others seemed to
collapse and fall and then flare out with so bright
a light that it took the edge off one's vision and
made the rest of the battle disappear as though it
had been snatched back out of sight.
" And then while I still peered and tried to
shade these flames from my eyes with my hand,
and while the men about me were beginning to
stir, the atomic bombs were thrown at the dykes.
They made a mighty thunder in the air, and fell
like Lucifer in the picture, leaving a flaring trail
124 THE WORLD SET FREE
in the sky. The night which had been pellucid
and detailed and eventful seemed to vanish, to be
replaced abruptly by a black background to these
tremendous pillars of fire. . . .
" Hard upon the sound of them came a
roaring wind, and the sky was filled with flicker-
ing lightnings and rushing clouds. . . .
" There was something discontinuous in this
impact. At one moment I was a lonely watcher
in a sleeping world ; the next saw everyone
about me afoot, the whole world awake and
amazed. . . .
" And then the wind had struck me a buffet,
taken my helmet and swept aside the summer-
house of Vreugde bij Vrede^ as a scythe sweeps
away grass. I saw the bombs fall, and then
watched a great crimson flare leap responsive to
each impact, and mountainous masses of red-lit
steam and flying fragments clamber up towards
the zenith. Against the glare I saw the country-
side for miles standing black and clear, churches,
trees, chimneys. And suddenly I understood.
The Central Europeans had burst the dykes.
Those flares meant the bursting of the dykes, and
in a little while the sea-water would be upon
us. . . ."
He goes on to tell with a certain prolixity of
the steps he took and all things considered they
were very intelligent steps to meet this amazing
crisis. He got his men aboard and hailed the
THE LAST WAR 125
adjacent barges ; he got the man who acted as
barge engineer at his post and the engines
working, he cast loose from his moorings. Then
he bethought himself of food and contrived to
land five men, get in a few dozen cheeses and
ship his men again before the inundation reached
them.
He is reasonably proud of this piece of cool-
ness. His idea was to take the wave head-on
and with his engines full speed ahead. And all
the while he was thanking heaven he was not in
the jam of traffic in the main canal. He rather,
I think, overestimated the probable rush of
waters ; he dreaded being swept away, he explains,
and smashed against houses and trees.
He does not give any estimate of the time it
took between the bursting of the dykes and the
arrival of the waters, but it was probably an
interval of about twenty minutes or half an hour.
He was working now in darkness save for the
light of his lantern and in a great wind. He
hung out head and stern lights. . . .
Whirling torrents of steam were pouring up
from the advancing waters, which had rushed, it
must be remembered, through nearly incandescent
gaps in the sea defences, and this vast uprush of
vapour soon veiled the flaring centres of explosion
altogether. . . .
" The waters came at last, an advancing
cascade. It was like a broad roller sweeping
126 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 up stream, and held on like
grim death to keep her there.
"There was a wind about as strong as the
flood and I found we were pounding against every
conceivable buoyant object, that had been between
us and the sea. The only light in the world now
came from our lamps, the steam became im-
penetrable 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 shatter-
ingly against us or rushed by us. Once I saw
very clearly a man's white face. . . .
" All the while a group of labouring half-
submerged trees remained ahead of us drawing
very slowly nearer. I steered a course to avoid
THE LAST WAR 127
them. They seemed to gesticulate a frantic
despair against the black steam clouds behind.
Once a great branch detached itself and tore
shuddering by me. We did on the whole make
headway. The last I saw of Vreugde bij Vrede
before the night swallowed it, was almost dead
astern of us.
9
Morning found Barnet still afloat. The bows
of his barge had been badly strained, and his men
were pumping or baling in relays. He had got
about a dozen half-drowned people aboard whose
boat had capsized near him, and he had three other
boats in tow. He was afloat, and somewhere
between Amsterdam and Alkmaar, but he could
not tell where. It was a day that was still half
night. Grey waters stretched in every direction
under a dark grey sky, and out of the waves rose
the upper parts of houses, in many cases ruined,
the tops of trees, windmills, in fact the upper
third of all the familiar Dutch scenery ; and on it
there drifted a dimly seen flotilla of barges, small
boats, many overturned, furniture, rafts, timbering
and miscellaneous objects.
The drowned were under water that morning.
Only here and there did a dead cow or a stiff
figure still clinging stoutly to a box or chair or
suchlike buoy hint at the hidden massacre. It
128 THE WORLD SET FREE
was not till the Thursday that the dead came to
the surface in any quantity. The view was
bounded on every side by a grey mist that closed
overhead in a grey canopy. The air cleared in
the afternoon, and then, far away to the west
under great banks of steam and dust, the flaming
red eruption of the atomic bombs came visible
across the waste of water.
They showed flat and sullen through the mist,
like London sunsets. " They sat upon the sea,"
says Barnet, " like frayed-out waterlilies of
flame."
Barnet seems to have spent the morning in
rescue work along the track of the canal, in help-
ing people who were adrift, in picking up derelict
boats and in taking people out of imperilled
houses. He found other military barges similarly
employed, and it was only as the day wore on and
the immediate appeals for aid were satisfied that
he thought of food and drink for his men and
what course he had better pursue. They had a
little cheese but no water. " Orders," that
mysterious direction, had at last altogether
disappeared. He perceived he had now to act
upon his own responsibility.
" One's sense was of a destruction so far-
reaching and of a world so altered that it seemed
foolish to go in any direction and expect to find
things as they had been before the war began. I
sat on the quarter-deck with Mylius my engineer
THE LAST WAR 129
and Kemp and two others of the non-com-
missioned officers, and we consulted upon our
line of action. We were foodless and aimless.
We agreed that our righting value was extremely
small, and that our first duty was to get ourselves
in touch with food and instructions again.
Whatever plan of campaign had directed our
movements was manifestly smashed to bits.
Mylius was of opinion that we could take a line
westward and get back to England across the
North Sea. He calculated that with such a motor
barge as ours it would be possible to reach the
Yorkshire coast within four-and-twenty hours.
But this idea I overruled because of the shortness
of our provisions, and more particularly because of
our urgent need of water.
" Every boat we drew near now hailed us for
water, and their demands did much to exasperate
our thirst. I decided that if we went away to the
south we should reach hilly country, or at least
country that was not submerged, and then we
should be able to land, find some stream, drink,
and get supplies and news. Many of the barges
adrift in the haze about us were filled with British
soldiers and had floated up from the Nord See
Canal, but none of them were any better informed
than ourselves of the course of events. ( Orders '
had in fact vanished out of the sky.
" l Orders ' made a temporary reappearance
late that evening in the form of a megaphone hail
K
1 30 THE WORLD SET FREE
from a British torpedo boat, announcing a truce,
and giving the welcome information that food and
water were being hurried down the Rhine and
were to be found on the barge flotilla lying over
the old Rhine above Leiden." . . .
We will not follow Barnet, however, in the
description of his strange overland voyage among
trees and houses and churches by Zaandam and
between Haarlem and Amsterdam, to Leiden. It
was a voyage in a red-lit mist, in a world of
steamy silhouette, full of strange voices and per-
plexity 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 watchchain compass
Mylius had produced. . . .
" I do not think any of us felt we belonged
to a defeated army, nor had we any strong sense
of the war as the dominating fact about us. Our
mental setting had far more of the effect of a
huge natural catastrophe. The atomic bombs
had dwarfed the international issues to complete
insignificance. When our minds wandered from
the preoccupations of our immediate needs, we
speculated upon the possibility of stopping the
use of these frightful explosives before the world
THE LAST WAR 131
was utterly destroyed. For to us it seemed
quite plain that these bombs and the still greater
power of destruction of which they were the
precursors might quite easily shatter every
relationship and institution of mankind.
" * What will they be doing,' asked Mylius,
'what will they be doing? It's plain we've
got to put an end to war. It's plain things
have to be run some way. This all this is
impossible.'
" I made no immediate answer. Something
I cannot think what had brought back to me
the figure of that man I had seen wounded on
the very first day of actual fighting. I saw again
his angry tearful eyes and that poor dripping
bloody mess that had been a skilful human hand
five minutes before, thrust out in indignant
protest. * Damned foolery,' he had stormed
and sobbed, damned foolery. My right hand,
sir ! My right hand. . . .'
" My faith had for a time gone altogether out
of me. ' I think we are too too silly,' I said
to Mylius, * ever to stop war. If we'd had
the sense to do it, we should have done it
before this. I think this I pointed to the
gaunt black outline of a smashed windmill that
stuck up, ridiculous and ugly, above the blood-
lit waters 'this is the end.' "
i 3 2 THE WORLD SET FREE
10
But now our history must part company with
Frederick Barnet and his barge-load of hungry
and starving men.
For a time in western Europe at least it was
indeed as if civilization had come to a final
collapse. These crowning buds upon the tradi-
tion that Napoleon planted and Bismarck
watered, opened and flared "like waterlilies of
flame " over nations destroyed, over churches
smashed or submerged, towns ruined, fields lost
to mankind for ever and a million weltering
bodies. Was this lesson enough for mankind,
or would the flames of war still burn amidst
the ruins ?
Neither Barnet nor his companions, it is
clear, had any assurance in their answers to that
question. Already once in the history of man-
kind, in America, before its discovery by the
whites, an organized civilization had given way
to a mere cult of warfare, specialized and cruel,
and it seemed for a time to many a thoughtful
man as if the whole world was but to repeat on
a larger scale this ascendancy of the warrior,
this triumph of the destructive instincts of the
race.
The subsequent chapters of Barnet's narrative
do but supply body to this tragic possibility. He
gives a series of vignettes of civilization,
THE LAST WAR 133
shattered, it seemed, almost irreparably. He
found the Belgian hills swarming with refugees
and desolated by cholera ; the vestiges of the
contending armies keeping order under a truce,
without actual battles but with the cautious
hostility of habit, and a great absence of plan
everywhere.
Overhead aeroplanes went on mysterious
errands, and there were rumours of cannibalism
and hysterical fanaticisms in the valleys of the
Semoy and the forest region of the eastern
Ardennes. There was the report of an attack
upon Russia by the Chinese and Japanese and
of some huge revolutionary outbreak in America.
The weather was stormier than men had ever
known it in those regions, with much thunder
and lightning and wild cloud-bursts of rain. . . .
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE ENDING OF WAR
I
ON the mountain-side above the town of
Brissago and commanding two long stretches
of Lake Maggiore, looking eastward to Bellin-
zona, 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 ENDING OF WAR 135
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 tranquillizing
and hidden, it was here that there gathered the
conference of rulers that was to arrest if possible,
before it was too late, the debacle of civilization.
Here, brought together by the indefatigable
energy of that impassioned humanitarian, Leblanc,
the French ambassador at Washington, the chief
powers of the world were to meet in a last
desperate conference to " save humanity."
Leblanc was one of those ingenuous men
whose lot would have been insignificant in any
period of security, but who have been caught up
to an immortal r61e 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
136 THE WORLD SET FREE
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
THE ENDING OF WAR 137
no accumulation of disasters daunted his conviction
that they could be ended.
For the whole world was flaring then into a
monstrous phase of destruction. Power after
power about the armed globe sought to anticipate
attack by aggression. They went to war in a
delirium of panic, in order to use their bombs
first. China and Japan had assailed Russia and
destroyed Moscow, the United States had attacked
Japan, India was in anarchistic revolt with Delhi
a pit of fire spouting death and flame ; the
redoubtable King of the Balkans was mobilizing.
It must have seemed plain at last to everyone 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 disorganized and every city, every
thickly populated area was starving or trembled
on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital
cities of the world were burning ; millions of
people had already perished, and over great areas
government was at an end. Humanity has been
compared by one contemporary writer to a sleeper
who handles matches in his sleep and wakes to
find himself in flames.
For many months it was an open question
whether there was to be found throughout all the
138 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 anyone give
in while he can still destroy his enemies ?
Surrender ? While there is still a chance of
blowing them to dust ? The power of destruction
which had once been the ultimate privilege of
government was now the only power left in the
world and it was everywhere. There were few
thoughtful men during that phase of blazing
waste who did not pass through such moods of
despair as Barnet describes, and declare with him :
" This is the end. . . ."
And all the while Leblanc was going to and
fro with glittering glasses and an inexhaustible
persuasiveness urging the manifest reasonableness
of his view upon ears that ceased presently to be
THE ENDING OF WAR 139
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 extrava-
gant 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.
i 4 o THE WORLD SET FREE
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 suchlike 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. . . .
s*
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 disposi-
tion to sleep in the open air. He came now
over the Pass of Sta Maria Maggiore and by boat
THE ENDING OF WAR 141
up the lake to Brissago ; thence he walked up
the mountain, a pleasant path set with oaks and
sweet chestnut. For provision on the walk, for
he did not want to hurry, he carried with him a
pocketful of bread and cheese. A certain small
retinue that was necessary to his comfort and
dignity upon occasions of state he sent on by
the cable car, and with him walked his private
secretary, Firmin, a man who had thrown up the
Professorship of World Politics in the London
School of Sociology, Economics and Political
Science, to take up these duties. Firmin was a
man of strong rather than rapid thought, he had
anticipated great influence in this new position,
and after some years he was still only beginning
to apprehend how largely his function was to
listen. Originally he had been something of a
thinker upon international politics, an authority
upon tariffs and strategy and a valued contributor
to various of the higher organs of public opinion,
but the atomic bombs had taken him by surprise
and he had still to recover completely from his
pre-atomic opinions and the silencing effect of
those sustained explosives.
The king's freedom from the trammels of
etiquette was very complete. In theory and he
abounded in theory his manners were purely
democratic. It was by sheer habit and inad-
vertency that he permitted Firmin, who had
discovered a rucksack in a small shop in the town
i 4 2 THE WORLD SET FREE
below, to carry both bottles of beer. The king
had never as a matter of fact carried anything for
himself in his life and he had never noted that he
did not do so.
" We will have nobody with us," he said, " at
all. We will be perfectly simple."
So Firmin carried the beer.
As they walked up it was the king made
the pace rather than Firmin they talked of the
conference before them, and Firmin, with a
certain want of assurance that would have
surprised him in himself in the days of his
Professorship, sought to define the policy of his
companion. " In its broader form, sir," said
Firmin ; " I admit a certain plausibility in this
project of Leblanc's, but I feel that although it
may be advisable to set up some sort of general
control for International affairs a sort of Hague
Court with extended powers that is no reason
whatever for losing sight of the principles of
national and imperial autonomy."
" Firmin," said the king, " I am going to set
my brother kings a good example."
Firmin intimated a curiosity that veiled a
dread.
" By chucking all that nonsense," said the
king.
He quickened his pace as Firmin, who was
already a little out of breath, betrayed a disposi-
tion to reply.
THE ENDING OF WAR 143
" I am going to chuck all that nonsense," said
the king as Firmin prepared to speak. " I am
going to fling my royalty and empire on the
table and declare at once I don't mean to
haggle. It's haggling about rights has been
the devil in human affairs, for always. I am
going to stop this nonsense."
Firmin halted abruptly. " But, sir ! " he
cried.
The king stopped six yards ahead of him and
looked back at his adviser's perspiring visage.
" Do you really think, Firmin, that I am
here as as an infernal politician to put my crown
and my flag and my claims and so forth in the
way of peace ? That little Frenchman is right.
You know he is right as well as I do. Those
things are over. We we kings and rulers and re-
presentatives have been at the very heart of the
mischief. Of course we imply separation, and of
course separation means the threat of war, and of
course the threat of war means the accumulation
of more and more atomic bombs. The old
game's up. But, I say, we mustn't stand here,
you know. The world waits. Don't you think
the old game's up, Firmin ? "
Firmin adjusted a strap, passed a hand over
his wet forehead and followed earnestly. " I
admit, sir," he said to a receding back, " that
there has to be some sort of hegemony, some sort
of Amphictyonic council "
144 THE WORLD SET FREE
" There's got to be one simple government
for all the world," said the king over his
shoulder.
"But as for a reckless unqualified abandon-
ment, sir
" Bang ! " cried the king.
Firmin made no answer to this interruption.
But a faint shadow of annoyance passed across his
heated features.
" Yesterday," said the king by way of explana-
tion, " the Japanese very nearly got San
Francisco."
I hadn't heard, sir."
" The Americans ran the Japanese aeroplane
down into the sea and there the bomb got
busted."
" Under the sea, sir ? "
" Yes. Submarine volcano. The steam is in
sight of the Californian coast. It was as near as
that. And with things like this happening, you
want me to go up this hill and haggle. Consider
the effect of that upon my imperial cousin and
all the others ! "
" He will haggle, sir."
" Not a bit of it," said the king.
" But, sir."
" Leblanc won't let him."
Firmin halted abruptly and gave a vicious
pull at the offending strap. " Sir, he will listen
to his advisers," he said, in a tone that in some
THE ENDING OF WAR 145
subtle way seemed to implicate his master with
the trouble of the knapsack.
The king considered him.
" We will go just a little higher," he said.
" I want to find this unoccupied village they
spoke of, and then we will drink that beer. It
can't be far. We will drink the beer and throw
away the bottles. And then, Firmin, I shall ask
you to look at things in a more generous light.
. . . Because, you know, you must. ..."
He turned about and for some time the only
sound they made was the noise of their boots
upon the loose stones of the way and the
irregular breathing of Firmin.
At length, as it seemed to Firmin, or quite
soon, as it seemed to the king, the gradient of
the path diminished, the way widened out, and
they found themselves in a very beautiful place
indeed. It was one of those upland clusters of
sheds and houses that are still to be found in the
mountains of North Italy, buildings that were
used only in the high summer, and which it was
the custom to leave locked up and deserted
through all the winter and spring and up to the
middle of June. The buildings were of a
soft-toned grey stone, buried in rich green grass,
shadowed by chestnut trees and lit by an extra-
ordinary 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
L
146 THE WORLD SET FREE
sunlight even than it received ; he sat down
impulsively on a lichenous stone, tugged out his
bread and cheese, and bade Firmin thrust the
beer into the shaded weeds to cool.
"The things people miss, Firmin," he said,
" who go up into the air in ships ! "
Firmin looked around him with an ungenial
eye. "You see it at its best, sir," he said,
" before the peasants come here again and make
it filthy."
" It would be beautiful anyhow," said the
king.
" Superficially, sir," said Firmin. " But it
stands for a social order that is fast vanishing
away. Indeed, judging by the grass between the
stones and in the huts, I am inclined to doubt if
it is in use even now."
" I suppose," said the king, " they would
come up immediately the hay on this flower
meadow is cut. It would be those slow creamy-
coloured beasts, I expect, one sees on the roads
below, and swarthy girls with red handkerchiefs
over their black hair. ... It is wonderful to
think how long that beautiful old life lasted. In
the Roman times and long ages before ever the
rumour of the Romans had come into these parts,
men drove their cattle up into these places
as the summer came on. . . . How haunted is
this place ! There have been quarrels here,
hopes, children have played here and lived to
THE ENDING OF WAR 147
be old crones and old gaffers and died, and so it
has gone on for thousands of lives. Lovers,
innumerable lovers, have caressed amidst this
golden broom. . . ."
He meditated over a busy mouthful of bread
and cheese.
" We ought to have brought a tankard for
that beer," he said.
Firmin produced a folding aluminium cup,
and the king was pleased to drink.
" I wish, sir," said Firmin suddenly, " I
could induce you at least to delay your deci-
sion "
" It's no good talking, Firmin," said the king.
" My mind's as clear as daylight."
" Sire," protested Firmin, with his voice full
of bread and cheese and genuine emotion, " have
you no respect for your kingship ? "
The king paused before he answered with
unwonted gravity. "It's just because I have,
Firmin, that I won't be a puppet in this game
of international politics." He regarded his
companion for a moment and then remarked :
" Kingship ! what do you know of kingship,
Firmin ?
" Yes," cried the king to his astonished
counsellor. " For the first time in my life I
am going to be a king. I am going to lead,
and lead by my own authority. For a dozen
generations my family has been a set of dummies
148 THE WORLD SET FREE
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
paralyzing 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. 1 have to play my part at the head of
things and put an end to blood and fire and idiot
disorder."
" But, sir," protested Firmin.
"This man Leblanc is right. The whole
world has got to be a Republic, one and in-
divisible. 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 sacra-
ment of kings. Our trust for mankind is done
with and ended. We must part our robes among
them, we must part our kingship among them
and say to them all, now the king in every one
must rule the world. . . . Have you no sense of
the magnificence of this occasion ? You want
me, Firmin, you want me to go up there and
haggle like a damned little solicitor for some price,
some compensation, some qualification. ..."
Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed
an expression of despair. Meanwhile, he con-
veyed, one must eat.
THE ENDING OF WAR 149
For a time neither spoke, and the king ate
and turned over in his mind the phrases of the
speech he intended to make to the conference.
By virtue of the antiquity of his crown he was to
preside, and he intended to make his presidency
memorable. Reassured of his eloquence, he
considered the despondent and sulky Firmin
for a space.
" Firmin," he said, " you have idealized
kingship."
" It has been my dream, sir," said Firmin,
sorrowfully, " to serve."
" At the levers, Firmin," said the king.
"You are pleased to be unjust," said Firmin
deeply hurt.
" I am pleased to be getting out of it," said
the king.
" Oh, Firmin," he went on, " have you no
thought for me ? Will you never realize 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.
1 50 THE WORLD SET FREE
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.
1 wanted to get things done. I was bored. I
might have fallen into vice, most intelligent and
energetic princes do, but the palace precautions
were unusually thorough. I was brought up
in the purest court the world has ever seen.
. . . Alertly pure. ... So I read books, Firmin,
and went about asking questions. The thing
was bound to happen to one of us sooner or later.
Perhaps, too, very likely I'm not vicious. I
don't think I am."
He reflected. " No," he said.
Firmin cleared his throat. " I don't think
you are, sir," he said. " You prefer
He stopped short. He had been going to
say " talking ". He substituted " ideas ".
" That world of royalty ! " the king went on.
" In a little while no one will understand it any
more. It will become a riddle. . . .
" Among ,other things it was a world of per-
petual 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
THE ENDING OF WAR 151
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 treat-
ment. 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 focussed on ourselves. And when I
began to poke my little questions into the Lord
Chancellor and the archbishop and all the rest
of them, about what I should see if people turned
round, the general effect I produced was that
I wasn't by any means displaying the Royal Tact
they had expected of me. ..."
He meditated for a time.
" And yet you know there is something in the
kingship, Firmin. It stiffened up my august
little grandfather. It gave my grandmother a
kind of awkward dignity even when she was
cross and she was very often cross. They both
had a profound sense of responsibility. My poor
father's health was wretched during his brief
career ; nobody outside the circle knows just how
he screwed himself up to things. * My people
expect it,' he used to say of this tiresome duty or
that. Most of the things they made him do were
silly it was part of a bad tradition, but there was
152 THE WORLD SET FREE
nothing silly in the way he set about them. . . .
The spirit of kingship is a fine thing, Firmin ; I
feel it in my bones ; 1 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 Eraser's
Golden Bough. Have you read that, Firmin ? "
Firmin had.
"Those were the authentic kings. In the
end they were cut up and a bit given to everybody.
They sprinkled the nations with Kingship."
Firmin turned himself round and faced his
royal master.
" What do you intend to do, sir ? " he asked.
" If you will not listen to me, what do you
propose to do this afternoon ? "
The king flicked crumbs from his coat.
" Manifestly war has to stop for ever, Firmin.
Manifestly this can only be done by putting all
the world under one government. Our crowns
and flags are in the way. Manifestly they must
g-"
" Yes, sir," interrupted Firmin, " but what
THE ENDING OF WAR 153
government ? I don't see what government you
get by a universal abdication ! "
" Well," said the king with his hands about
his knees, " We shall be the government."
" The conference ? " exclaimed Firmin.
" Who else ? " asked the king simply.
" It's perfectly simple," he added to Firmin's
tremendous silence.
"But," cried Firmin, "you must have
sanctions ! Will there be no form of election, for
example ? "
" Why should there be ? " asked the king with
intelligent curiosity.
" The consent of the governed."
"Firmin, we are just going to lay down our
differences and take over government. Without
any election at all. Without any sanction. The
governed will show their consent by silence. If
any effective opposition arises we shall ask it to
come in and help. The true sanction of kingship
is the grip upon the sceptre. We aren't going to
worry people to vote for us. I'm certain the mass
of men does not want to be bothered with such
things. . . . We'll contrive a way for anyone
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
i 5 4 THE WORLD SET FREE
to think of it I wonder where all the lawyers
are. . . . Where are they ? A lot of course were
bagged, some of the worst ones, when they blew
up my legislature. You never knew the late
Lord Chancellor. . . .
"Necessities bury rights. And create them.
Lawyers live on dead rights disinterred. . . .
We've done with that way of living. We won't
have more law than a code can cover and beyond
that government will be free. . . .
" Before the sun sets to-day, Firmin, trust me,
we shall have made our abdications, all of us, and
declared the World Republic, supreme and indi-
visible. I wonder what my august grandmother
would have made of it ! All my rights ! . . .
And then we shall go on governing. What else
is there to do ? All over the world we shall
declare that there is no longer mine or thine but
ours. China, the United States, two-thirds of
Europe, will certainly fall in and obey. They
will have to do so. What else can they do ?
Their official rulers are here with us. They won't
be able to get together any sort of idea of not
obeying us. ... Then we shall declare that
every sort of property is held in trust for the
Republic. . . ."
" But, sir ! " cried Firmin, suddenly enlight-
ened. " Has this been arranged already ? "
" My dear Firmin, do you think we have
come here, all of us, to talk at large ? The
THE ENDING OF WAR 155
talking has been done for half a century.
Talking and writing. We are here to set the
new thing, the simple obvious necessary thing,
going."
He stood up.
Firmin, forgetting the habits of a score of
years, remained seated.
" Well" he said at last. " And I have known
nothing ! "
The king smiled very cheerfully. He liked
these talks with Firmin.
3
That conference upon the Brissago meadows
was one of the most heterogeneous collections
of prominent people that has ever met together.
Principalities and powers, stripped and shattered
until all their pride and mystery were gone, met
in a marvellous new humility. Here were kings
and emperors whose capitals were lakes of
flaming destruction, statesmen whose countries
had become chaos, scared politicians and financial
potentates. Here were leaders of thought and
learned investigators dragged reluctantly to the
control of affairs. Altogether there were ninety-
three of them, Leblanc's conception of the head
men of the world. They had all come to the
realization of the simple truths that the inde-
fatigable Leblanc had hammered into them ;
156 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 realize himself that he was telling them all
exactly what they had to do. He imagined he
was merely recapitulating the obvious features
of the situation for their convenience. He was
dressed in ill-fitting white silk clothes, and he
consulted a dingy little packet of notes as he
spoke. They put him out. He explained that
he had never spoken from notes before, but that
this occasion was exceptional.
And then King Egbert spoke as he was
expected to speak, and Leblanc's spectacles
moistened at that flow of generous sentiment,
most amiably and lightly expressed. " We
haven't to stand on ceremony," said the king,
" we have to govern the world. We have
always pretended to govern the world and here
is our opportunity."
"Of course," whispered Leblanc nodding
his head rapidly, " of course."
"The world has been smashed up, and we
THE ENDING OF WAR 157
have to put it on its wheels again," said King
Egbert. "And it is the simple common sense
of this crisis for all to help and none to seek
advantage. Is that our tone or not ? "
The gathering was too old and seasoned and
miscellaneous for any great displays of enthusiasm,
but that was its tone, and with an astonishment
that somehow became exhilarating it began to
resign, repudiate, and declare its intentions.
Firmin, taking notes behind his master, heard
everything that had been foretold among the
yellow broom, come true. With a queer feeling
that he was dreaming he assisted at the proclama-
tion 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. . . ."
Firman 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 sedu-
lously cultivated by Leblanc ; and now they took
158 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 protec-
tion 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 forth-
with. He knew of this place because he had
happened upon it when holiday-making with
Madame Leblanc twenty years and more ago.
"There is very simple fare at present," he
explained, " on account of the disturbed state of
the countries about us. But we have excellent
fresh milk, good red wine, beef, bread, salad and
lemons In a few days I hope to place
things in the hands of a more efficient
caterer. ..."
The members of the new world government
dined at three long tables on trestles, and down
the middle of these tables Leblanc in spite of
the barrenness of his menu had contrived to
have a great multitude of beautiful roses. There
was similar accommodation for the secretaries
and attendants at a lower level down the
THE ENDING OF WAR 159
mountain. The assembly dined as it had
debated, in the open air, and over the dark
crags to the west the glowing June sunset shone
upon the banquet. There was no precedency
now among the ninety-three, and King Egbert
found himself between a pleasant little Japanese
stranger in spectacles and his cousin of Central
Europe, and opposite a great Bengali leader and
the President of the United States of America.
Beyond the Japanese was Holsten the old
chemist, and Leblanc was a little way down
the other side.
The king was still cheerfully talkative and
abounded in ideas. He fell presently into an
amiable controversy with the American, who
seemed to feel a lack of impressiveness in the
occasion.
It was ever the Transatlantic tendency, due
no doubt to the necessity of handling public
questions in a bulky and striking manner, to
over-emphasise and over-accentuate, and the
president was touched by his national failing.
He suggested now that there should be a new
era, starting from that day as the first day of the
first year.
The king demurred.
" From this day forth, sir, man enters upon
his heritage," said the American.
" Man," said the king, "is always entering
upon his heritage. You Americans have a
i6o THE WORLD SET FREE
peculiar weakness for anniversaries if you will
forgive me saying so. Yes I accuse you of a
lust for dramatic effect. Everything is happening
always, but you want to say this or this is the real
instant in time and subordinate all the others to
it."
The American said something about an
epoch-making day.
" But surely," said the king, " you don't
want us to condemn all humanity to a world-
wide annual Fourth of June for ever and ever
more. On account of this harmless necessary
day of declarations. No conceivable day could
ever deserve that. Ah ! you do not know, as I
do, the devastations of the memorable. My
poor grandparents were rubricated. The worst
of these huge celebrations is that they break up
the dignified succession of one's contemporary
emotions. They interrupt. They set back.
Suddenly out come the flags and fireworks and
the old enthusiasms are furbished up and it's
sheer destruction of the proper thing that ought
to be going on. Sufficient unto the day is the
celebration thereof. Let the dead past bury its
dead. You see in regard to the calendar I am for
democracy and you are for aristocracy. All things
I hold are august and have a right to be lived
through on their merits. No day should be
sacrificed on the grave of departed events. What
do you think of it, Wilhelm ? "
THE ENDING OF WAR 161
" For the noble, yes, all days should be
noble."
" Exactly my position," said the king, and
felt pleased at what he had been saying.
And then since the American pressed his
idea the king contrived to shift the talk from
the question of celebrating the epoch they were
making to the question of the probabilities that
lay ahead. Here everyone 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 expendi-
ture that had hitherto gone into unproductive
naval and military preparations, must now, he
declared, place research upon a new footing.
"Where one man worked we will have a thousand."
He appealed to Holsten. " We have only begun
to peep into these possibilities," he said. " You at
any rate have sounded the vaults of the treasure
house."
" They are unfathomable," smiled Holsten.
" Man," said the American with a manifest
resolve to justify and reinstate himself after the
flickering contradictions of the king, " Man, I
say, is only beginning to enter upon his heritage."
" Tell us some of the things you believe we
shall presently learn, give us an idea of the things
we may presently do," said the king to Holsten.
M
1 62 THE WORLD SET FREE
Holsten opened out the vistas. . . .
" Science," the king cried presently, " is the
new king of the world."
" Our view," said the president, " is that
sovereignty resides with the people."
" No ! " said the king, " the sovereign is a
being more subtle than that. And less arithmetical.
Neither my family nor your emancipated people.
It is something that floats about us, and above us,
and through us. It is that common impersonal
will and sense of necessity of which Science is the
best understood and most typical aspect. It is the
mind of the race. It is that which has brought us
here, which has bowed us all to its demands. . . ."
He paused and glanced down the table at
Leblanc and then re-opened at his former
antagonist.
"There is a disposition," said the king, "to
regard this gathering as if it were actually doing
what it appears to be doing, as if we ninety-odd
men of our own free will and wisdom were
unifying the world. There is a temptation to
consider ourselves exceptionally fine fellows, and
masterful men, and all the rest of it. We are
not. I doubt if we should average out as any-
thing abler than any other casually selected body
of ninety-odd men. We are no creators, we are
consequences, we are salvagers or salvagees.
The thing to-day is not ourselves but the wind
of conviction that has blown us hither.
THE ENDING OF WAR 163
The American had to confess he could hardly
agree with the king's estimate of their average.
" Holsten perhaps and one or two others
might lift us a little," the king conceded. " But
the rest of us ? "
His eyes flitted once more towards Leblanc.
" Look at Leblanc," he said. " He's just a
simple soul. There are hundreds and thousands
like him. I admit, a certain dexterity, a certain
lucidity, but there is not a country town in
France where there is not a Leblanc or so to be
found about two o'clock in its principal cafe.
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
epicier, very clean, very accurate, very honest.
And on holidays he would have gone out with
Madame Leblanc and her knitting in a punt
with a jar of something gentle and have sat
under a large reasonable green-lined umbrella
and fished very neatly and successfully for
gudgeon. . . ."
The president and the Japanese prince in
spectacles protested together.
" If I do him an injustice," said the king, " it
is only because I want to elucidate my argument.
I want to make it clear how small are men and
days and how great is man in comparison. . . ."
1 64 THE WORLD SET FREE
4
So it was King Egbert talked at Brissago
after they had proclaimed the unity of the world.
Every evening after that the assembly dined
together and talked at their ease and grew
accustomed to each other and sharpened each
other's ideas, and every day they worked together
and really for a time believed that they were
inventing a new government for the world.
They discussed a constitution. But there were
matters needing attention too urgently to wait
for any constitution. They attended to these
incidentally. The constitution it was that
waited. It was presently found convenient to
keep the constitution waiting indefinitely as
King Egbert had foreseen, and meanwhile with
an increasing self-confidence, that council went
on governing. . . .
On this first evening of alt 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 fathered 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
THE ENDING OF WAR 165
to simplicity. And Leblanc he instanced as a
crowning instance of the splendour of this
quality. Upon that they all agreed.
When at last the company about the tables
broke up, the king found himself brimming over
with a peculiar affection and admiration for
Leblanc, he made his way to him and drew him
aside and broached what he declared was a small
matter. There was, he said, a certain order in
his gift that, unlike all other orders and decora-
tions 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 signalize 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
1 66 THE WORLD SET FREE
pointed out that eager as he was to snatch at
the proffered distinction, it might at the present
stage appear invidious, and he therefore suggested
that the conferring of it should be postponed
until it could be made the crown and conclusion
of his services. The king was unable to shake
this resolution, and the two men parted with
expressions of mutual esteem.
The king then summoned Firmin in order
to make a short note of a number of things that
he had said during the day. But after about
twenty minutes' work the sweet sleepiness of the
mountain air overcame him, and he dismissed
Firmin and went to bed and fell asleep at
once, and slept with extreme satisfaction. He
had had an active agreeable day.
5
The establishment of the new order that was
thus so humanly begun, was, if one measures
it by the standard of any preceding age, a rapid
progress. The fighting spirit of the world was
exhausted. Only here or there did fierceness
linger. For long decades the combative side
in human affairs had been monstrously exag-
gerated 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
THE ENDING OF WAR 167
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 possi-
bility rather than an eventful certainty. If one
reads the old newspapers and periodicals of that
time, which did so much to keep militarism alive,
one finds very little about glory and adventure
and a constant harping on the disagreeableness
of invasion and subjugation. In one word
militarism was funk. The belligerent resolution
of the armed Europe of the twentieth century
was the resolution of a fiercely frightened sheep
to plunge. And now that its weapons were
exploding in its hands Europe was only too
eager to drop them, and abandon this fancied
refuge of violence.
For a time the whole world had been shocked
into frankness ; nearly all the clever people who
had hitherto sustained the ancient belligerent
separations had now been brought to realize 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
1 68 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 destruc-
tion, only ten indeed remained unwounded, when
the republicans burst in to the rescue. . . .
One single monarch held out against the
general acquiescence in the new rule, and that was
that strange survival of medievalism, the " Slavic
Fox," the King of the Balkans. He debated and
delayed his submissions. He showed an extra-
ordinary 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
THE ENDING OF WAR 169
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 enthusi-
astically supported by his subjects, still for the
most part an illiterate peasantry, passionately if
confusedly patriotic and so far with no practical
knowledge of the effect of atomic bombs. More
particularly he retained control of all the Balkan
aeroplanes.
For once the extreme naivet6 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.
1 7 o THE WORLD SET FREE
About five o'clock in the morning of the
seventeenth of July one of the outer sentinels of
the Brissago fleet, which was soaring unobtrusively
over the lower end of the lake of Garda, sighted
and hailed a strange aeroplane that was flying
westward and, failing to get a satisfactory reply,
set its wireless apparatus talking and gave chase.
A swarm of consorts appeared very promptly over
the westward mountains, and before the unknown
aeroplane had sighted Como, it had a dozen eager
attendants closing in upon it. Its driver seems
to have hesitated, dropped down among the
mountains and then turned southward in flight,
only to find an intercepting biplane sweeping
across his bows. He then went round into the
eye of the rising sun, and passed within a hundred
yards of his original pursuer.
The sharpshooter therein opened fire at once,
and showed an intelligent grasp of the situation
by disabling the passenger first. The man at the
wheel must have heard his companion cry out
behind him, but he was too intent on getting away
to waste even a glance behind. Twice after that
he must have heard shots. He let his engine go,
he crouched down, and for twenty minutes he
must have steered in the continual expectation of a
bullet. It never came, and when at last he
glanced round three great planes were close upon
him, and his companion, thrice hit, lay dead across
his bombs. His followers manifestly did not
THE ENDING OF WAR 171
mean either to upset or shoot him, but inexorably
they drove him down, down. At last he was
curving and flying a hundred yards or less over
the level fields of rice and maize. Ahead of him
and dark against the morning sunrise was a
village with a very tall and slender campanile and
a line of cable bearing metal standards that he
could not clear. He stopped his engine abruptly
and dropped flat. He may have hoped to get at
the bombs when he came down, but his pitiless
pursuers drove right over him and shot him as he
fell.
Three other aeroplanes curved down and came
to rest amidst grass close by the smashed
machine. Their passengers descended, and ran
holding their light rifles in their hands towards
the debris and the two dead men. The coffin-
shaped box that had occupied the centre of the
machine had broken, and three black objects, each
with two handles like the ears of a pitcher, lay
peacefully amidst the litter.
These objects were so tremendously im-
portant in the eyes of their captors that they
disregarded the two dead men who lay bloody and
broken amidst the wreckage as they might have
disregarded dead frogs by a country pathway.
" By God," cried the first. " Here they are ! "
" And unbroken ! " said the second.
" I've never seen the things before," said the
first.
172 THE WORLD SET FREE
" Bigger than I thought," said the second.
The third comer arrived. He stared for a
moment at the bombs and then turned his eyes to
the dead man with a crushed chest who lay in a
muddy place among the green stems under the
centre of the machine.
" One can take no risks," he said with a faint
suggestion of apology.
The other two now also turned to the victims.
" We must signal," said the first man. A shadow
passed between them and the sun and they looked
up to see the aeroplane that had fired the last
shot. " Shall we signal ? " came a megaphone
hail.
" Three bombs," they answered together.
" Where do they come from ? " asked the
megaphone.
The three sharpshooters looked at each other
and then moved towards the dead men. One of
them had an idea. " Signal that first," he said,
"while we look." They were joined by their
aviators for the search, and all six men began
a hunt that was necessarily brutal in its haste, for
some indication of identity. They examined the
men's pockets, their bloodstained clothes, the
machine, the framework. They turned the bodies
over and flung them aside. There was not
a tattoo mark. . . . Everything was elaborately
free of any indication of its origin.
" We can't find out ! " they called at last.
THE ENDING OF WAR 173
" Not a sign ? "
"Not a sign."
" I'm coming down," said the man over-
head.
7
The Slavic fox stood upon a metal balcony in
his picturesque Art Nouveau palace that gave
upon the precipice that overhung his bright little
capital, and beside him stood Pestovitch, grizzled
and cunning and now full of an ill-suppressed
excitement. Behind them the window opened
into a large room, richly decorated in aluminium
and crimson enamel, across which the king, as he
glanced ever and again over his shoulder with a
gesture of enquiry, 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
174 THE WORLD SET FREE
still at half-past twelve the king loitered in the
balcony and seemed to be waiting for some news
that did not come.
The king and his minister had talked at first
in whispers ; they had fallen silent, for they found
little now to express except a vague anxiety.
Away there on the mountain side were the white
metal roofs of the long farm buildings beneath
which the bomb factory and the bombs were
hidden. (The chemist who had made all these
for the king had died suddenly after the declaration
of Brissago.) Nobody knew of that store of mis-
chief 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 Caesar,
the Master, Lord of the Earth.
It was a magnificent plan. But the tension
THE ENDING OF WAR 175
of this waiting for news of the success of the first
blow was considerable.
The Slavic fox was of a pallid fairness, he had
a remarkably long nose, a thick short moustache
and small blue eyes that were a little too near to-
gether to be pleasant. It was his habit to worry
his moustache with short nervous tugs whenever
his restless mind troubled him, and now this
motion was becoming so incessant that it irked
Pestovitch beyond the limits of endurance.
" I will go," said the minister, " and see what
the trouble is with the wireless. They give us
nothing, good or bad."
Left to himself the king could worry his
moustache without stint ; he leant his elbows
forward on the balcony and gave both of his long
white hands to the work, so that he looked like a
pale dog gnawing a bone. Suppose they caught
his men, what should he do ? Suppose they
caught his men ?
The clocks in the light gold capped belfries of
the town below presently intimated the half-hour
after midday.
Of course he and Pestovitch had thought it
out. Even if they had caught those men, they
were pledged to secrecy. . . . Probably they
would be killed in the catching. . . . One could
deny anyhow, deny and deny.
And then he became aware of half-a-dozen
little shining specks very high in the blue. . . .
1 76 THE WORLD SET FREE
Pestovitch came out to him presently. " The
government messages, sire, have all dropped into
cypher," he said. " I have set a man "
" Look ! " interrupted the king, and pointed
upward with a long lean finger.
Pestovitch followed that indication and then
glanced for one questioning moment at the white
face before him.
" We have to face it out, sire," he said.
For some moments they watched the steep
spirals of the descending messengers and then
they began a hasty consultation. . . .
They decided that to be holding a council
upon the details of an ultimate surrender to
Brissago was as innocent-looking a thing as the
king could well be doing, and so when at last the
ex-king Egbert, whom the council had sent as its
envoy, arrived upon the scene, he discovered the
king almost theatrically posed at the head of his
councillors in the midst of his court. The door
upon the wireless operators was shut.
The ex-king from Brissago came like a
draught through the curtains and attendants that
gave a wide margin to King Ferdinand's state,
and the familiar confidence of his manner belied
a certain hardness in his eye. Firmin trotted
behind him and no one else was with him. And
as Ferdinand Charles rose to greet him, there
came into the heart of the Balkan king again that
same chilly feeling that he had felt upon the
THE ENDING OF WAR 177
balcony and it passed at the careless gestures of
his guest. For surely anyone might outwit this
foolish talker who, for a mere idea and at the
command of a little French rationalist in
spectacles, had thrown away the most ancient
crown in all the world.
One must deny, deny. . . .
And then slowly and quite tiresomely he
realized that there was nothing to deny. His
visitor, with an amiable ease, went on talking
about everything in debate between himself and
Brissago except .
Could it be that they had been delayed ?
Could it be that they had had to drop for repairs
and were still uncaptured ? Could it be that
even now while this fool babbled, they were over
there among the mountains heaving their deadly
charge over the side of the aeroplane ?
Strange hopes began to lift the tail of the
Slavic fox again.
What was the man saying ? One must talk
to him anyhow until one knew. At any moment
the little brass do.or behind him might open with
the news of Brissago blown to atoms. Then it
would be a delightful relief to the present tension
to arrest this chatterer forthwith. He might be
killed perhaps. What ?
The king was repeating his observation.
"They have a ridiculous fancy that your confi-
dence is based on the possession of atomic bombs."
N
178 THE WORLD SET FREE
King Ferdinand Charles pulled himself to-
gether. He protested.
" Oh, quite so," said the ex-king, " quite so."
" What grounds ? "
The ex-king permitted himself a gesture
and the ghost of a chuckle why the devil should
he chuckle ? " Practically none," he said.
" But of course with these things one has to be
so careful."
And then again for an instant something
like the faintest shadow of derision gleamed out
of the envoy's eyes and recalled that chilly feeling
to King Ferdinand's spine.
Some kindred depression had come to Pesto-
vitch, who had been watching the drawn intensity
of Firmin's face. He came to the help of his
master who, he feared, might protest too much.
" A search ! " cried the king. " An embargo
on our aeroplanes."
" Only as a temporary expedient," said the
ex-king Egbert, " while the search is going on."
The king appealed to his council.
" The people will never permit it, Sire," said
a bustling little man in a gorgeous uniform.
" You'll have to make 'em," said the ex-king,
genially addressing all the councillors.
King Ferdinand glanced at the closed brass
door through which no news would come.
" When would you want to have this
search ? "
THE ENDING OF WAR 179
The ex-king was radiant. " We couldn't
possibly do it until the day after to-morrow,"
he said.
" Just the capital ? "
" Where else ? " asked the ex-king still more
cheerfully.
" For my own part," said the ex-king, confi-
dentially, " I think the whole business ridiculous.
Who would be such a fool as to hide atomic
bombs ? Nobody. Certain hanging if he's
caught certain, and almost certain blowing up if
he isn't. But nowadays I have to take orders
like the rest of the world. And here I am."
The king thought he had never met such
detestable geniality. He glanced at Pestovitch,
who nodded almost imperceptibly. It was well
anyhow to have a fool to deal with. They might
have sent a diplomatist. " Of course," said the
king, " I recognize the overpowering force and
a kind of logic in these orders from Brissago."
"I knew you would," said the ex-king with
an air of relief, " and so let us arrange "
They arranged with a certain informality.
No Balkan aeroplane was to adventure into the air
until the search was concluded and meanwhile the
fleets of the world government would soar and
circle in the sky. The towns were to be placarded
with offers of reward to anyone who would help
in the discovery of atomic bombs. . . .
" You will sign that," said the ex-king.
i8o THE WORLD SET FREE
"Why ?"
" To show that we aren't in any way hostile
to you."
Pestovitch nodded " yes " to his master.
" And then you see," said the ex-king in that
easy way of his, " we'll have a lot of men here,
borrow help from your police and run through all
your things. And then everything will be over.
Meanwhile, if I may be your guest. . . ."
When presently Pestovitch was alone with
the king again, . he found him in a state of
jangling emotions. His spirit was tossing like
a wind-whipped sea. One moment he was
exalted and full of contempt for " that ass " and
his search ; the next he was down in a pit of
dread. "They will find them, Pestovitch, and
then he'll hang us."
" Hang us ? "
The king put his long nose into his coun-
cillor's face. " That grinning brute wants to
hang us," he said. " And hang us he will, if
we give him a shadow of a chance."
" But all their Modern State Civilization ! "
" 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
THE ENDING OF WAR 181
and most romantic of the Caesars, and do you
think they will miss the chance of hanging me
like a dog if they can, killing me like a rat in a
hole ? And that renegade ! He who was once
an anointed king ! . . ."
" I hate that sort of eye that laughs and keeps
hard," said the king.
" I won't sit still here and be caught like a
fascinated rabbit," said the king in conclusion.
" We must shift those bombs."
" Risk it," said Pestovitch. " Leave them
alone."
" No," said the king. " Shift them near the
frontier. Then while they watch us here they
will always watch us here now we can buy an
aeroplane abroad, and pick them up. . . ."
The king was in a feverish irritable mood all
that evening, but he made his plans nevertheless
with infinite cunning. They must get the bombs
away ; there must be a couple of atomic hay
lorries, the bombs could be hidden under the
hay. . . . Pestovitch went and came, instructing
trusty servants, planning and replanning. . . .
The king and the ex-king talked very pleasantly
of a number of subjects. All the while at the
back of King Ferdinand Charles's mind fretted
the mystery of his vanished aeroplane. There
came no news of its capture and no news of its
success. At any moment all that power at the back
of his visitor might crumble away and vanish. . . .
1 82 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 had seemed to rest on the king for a
moment as he came out of the palace ; then
instantly and reassuringly it had swept away.
But while they were still in the palace gardens
another found them and looked at them.
" They see us," cried the king.
"They make nothing of us," said Pesto-
vitch.
The king glanced up and met a calm round
eye of light, that seemed to wink at him and
vanish, leaving him blinded. . . .
The three men went on their way. Near
the little gate in the garden railings that Pesto-
vitch had caused to be unlocked, the king paused
under the shadow of an ilex and looked back
at the palace. It was very high and narrow, a
THE ENDING OF WAR 183
twentieth century rendering of medievalism,
medievalism 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 apart-
ments of the ex-king Egbert. One of them
was brightly lit now and against the light a little
black figure stood very still and looked out upon
the night.
The king snarled.
" He little knows how we slip through his
fingers," said Pestovitch.
And as he spoke they saw the ex-king stretch
out his arms slowly like one who yawns, knuckle
his eyes and turn inward no doubt to his
bed.
Down through the ancient winding back
streets of his capital hurried the king, and at an
appointed corner a shabby atomic-automobile
waited for the three. It was a hackney carriage
of the lowest grade, with dinted metal panels
and deflated cushions. The driver was one of
the ordinary drivers of the capital, but beside
him sat the young secretary of Pestovitch who
knew the way to the farm where the bombs
were hidden.
The automobile made its way through the
narrow streets of the old town, which were still
lit and uneasy for the fleet of airships overhead
had kept the cafes open and people abroad over
1 84 THE WORLD SET FREE
the great new bridge and so by straggling
outskirts to the country. And all through his
capital the king who hoped to outdo Caesar, 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 countryside like the uneasy ghosts of giants.
The king sat forward and looked at these flitting
whitenesses and every now and then peered up
to see the flying ships overhead.
" I don't like them," said the king.
Presently one of these patches of moonlight
came to rest about them and seemed to be
following their automobile. The king drew back.
" The things are confoundedly noiseless," said
the king. " It's like being stalked by lean
white cats."
He peered again. " That fellow is watching
us," he said.
And then suddenly he gave way to panic.
" Pestovitch," he said, clutching his minister's
arm, " they are watching us. I'm not going
through with this. They are watching us. I'm
going back."
Pestovitch remonstrated. " Tell him to go
back," said the king and tried to open the window.
For a few moments there was a grim struggle
in the automobile ; a gripping of wrists and a
blow. " I can't go through with it," repeated the
king, " I can't go through with it."
THE ENDING OF WAR 185
" But they'll hang us," said Pestovitch.
" Not if we were to give up now. Not if
we were to surrender the bombs. It is you who
brought me into this. . . ."
At last Pestovitch compromised. There was
an inn perhaps half a mile from the farm. They
could alight there and the king could get brandy,
and rest his nerves for a time. And if he still
thought fit to go back he could go back.
" See," said Pestovitch, " the light has gone
again."
The king peered up. " I believe he's
following us without a light," said the king.
In the little old dirty inn the king hung
doubtful for a time and was for going back and
throwing himself on the mercy of the council.
" If there is a council," said Pestovitch. " By
this time your bombs may have settled it."
" But if so, these infernal aeroplanes would
g."
" They may not know yet."
" But, Pestovitch, why couldn't you do all
this without me ? "
Pestovitch made no answer for a moment.
" I was for leaving the bombs in their place," he
said at last and went to the window. About their
conveyance shone a circle of bright light. Pesto-
vitch 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
1 86 THE WORLD SET FREE
up above there. Meanwhile you and I and
Peter will go out by the back way and up by
the hedges to the farm. . . ."
It was worthy of his subtle reputation and
it answered passing well.
In ten minutes they were tumbling over
the wall of the farmyard, wet, muddy and
breathless but unobserved. But as they ran
towards the barns the king gave vent to some-
thing between a groan and a curse and all about
them shone the light and passed.
But had it passed at once or lingered for
just a second ?
" They didn't see us," said Peter.
" I don't think they saw us," said the king,
and stared as the light went swooping up the
mountain side, hung for a second about a hay-
rick and then came pouring back.
" In the barn ! " cried the king.
He bruised his shin against something and
then all three men were inside the huge steel-
girdered barn in which stood the two motor hay
lorries that were to take the bombs away. Kurt
and Abel, the two brothers of Peter, had brought
the lorries thither in daylight. They had the
upper half of the loads of hay thrown off, ready
to cover the bombs, so soon as the king should
show the hiding-place. "There's a sort of pit
here," said the king. " Don't light another
lantern. This key of mine releases a ring. ..."
THE ENDING OF WAR 187
For a time scarcely a word was spoken in the
darkness of the barn. There was the sound of a
slab being lifted and then of feet descending a
ladder into a pit. Then whispering and then
heavy breathing as Kurt came struggling up with
the first of the hidden bombs.
"We shall do it yet," said the king. And
then he gasped. " Curse that light. Why in
the name of heaven didn't we shut the barn
door ? " For the great door stood wide open
and all the empty lifeless yard outside and the
door and six feet of the floor of the barn
were in the blue glare of an enquiring search-
light.
" Shut the door, Peter," said Pestovitch.
" No," cried the king too late as Peter went
forward into the light. " Don't show yourself ! "
cried the king. Kurt made a step forward and
plucked his brother back. For a time all five
men stood still. It seemed that light would
never go and then abruptly it was turned off,
leaving them blinded. " Now," said the king
uneasily, " now shut the door."
" Not completely," cried Pestovitch. " Leave
a chink for us to go out by. . . ."
It was hot work shifting those bombs, and the
king worked for a time like a common man.
Kurt and Abel carried the great things up and
Peter brought them to the carts, and the king
and Pestovitch helped him to place them among
1 88 THE WORLD SET FREE
the hay. They made as little noise as they
could. . . .
" Ssh ! " cried the king. " What's that ? "
But Kurt and Abel did not hear and came
blundering up the ladder with the last of the
load.
" Ssh ! " Peter ran forward to them with a
whispered remonstrance. Now they were still.
The barn door opened a little wider and
against the dim blue light outside they saw the
black shape of a man.
" Any one here ? " he asked, speaking with
an Italian accent.
The king broke into a cold perspiration.
Then Pestovitch answered : " Only a poor
farmer loading hay," he said, and picked up a
huge hay fork and went forward softly.
" You load your hay at a very bad time and
in a very bad light," said the man at the door,
peering in. " Have you no electric light here ? "
Then suddenly he turned on an electric torch
and as he did so Pestovitch sprang forward.
" Get out of my barn ! " he cried, and drove
the fork full at the intruder's chest. He had a
vague idea that so he might stab the man to
silence. But the man shouted loudly as the
prongs pierced him and drove him backward,
and instantly there was a sound of feet running
across the yard.
" Bombs," cried the man upon the ground,
THE ENDING OF WAR 189
struggling with the prongs in his hand, and as
Pestovitch staggered forward into view with the
force of his own thrust, he was shot through the
body by one of the two new-comers.
The man on the ground was badly hurt but
plucky. " Bombs," he repeated and struggled
up into a kneeling position and held his electric
torch full upon the face of the king. " Shoot
them," he cried, coughing and spitting blood,
so that the halo of light round the king's head
danced about.
For a moment in that shivering circle of light
the two men saw the king kneeling up in the
cart and Peter on the barn floor beside him.
The old fox looked at them sideways snared,
a white-faced evil thing. And then as with a
faltering suicidal heroism he leant forward over
the bomb before him they fired together and
shot him through the head.
The upper part of his face seemed to vanish.
" Shoot them," cried the man who had been
stabbed. " Shoot them all ! "
And then his light went out and he rolled
over with a groan at the feet of his comrades.
But each carried a light of his own, and in
another moment everything in the barn was
visible again. They shot Peter even as he held
up his hands in sign of surrender.
Kurt and Abel at the head of the ladder
hesitated for a moment, and then plunged
1 90 THE WORLD SET FREE
backward into the pit. " If we don't kill them,"
said one of the sharpshooters, " they'll blow us
to rags. They've gone down that hatchway.
Come ! . . .
" Here they are. Hands up ! 1 say. Hold
your light while I shoot. . . ."
8
It was still quite dark when his valet and
Firmin came together and told the ex-king
Egbert that the business was settled.
He started up into a sitting position on the
side of his bed.
" Did he go out ? " asked the ex-king.
" He is dead," said Firmin. " He was shot."
The ex-king reflected. " That's about the
best thing that could have happened," he said.
" Where are the bombs ? In that farmhouse on
the opposite hillside ! Why ! the place is in
sight ! Let us go. I'll dress. Is there any one
in the place, Firmin, to get us a cup of coffee ? "
Through the hungry twilight of the dawn
the ex-king's automobile carried him to the
farmhouse 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
farmyard. There he found the hay lorries drawn
out from the barn with the dreadful bombs still
THE ENDING OF WAR 191
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 farmyard five bodies were
lying neatly side by side, and Pestovitch had an
expression of surprise on his face and the king
was chiefly identifiable by his long white hands
and his blonde moustache. The wounded
aeronaut had been carried down to the inn.
And after the ex- king had given directions in
what manner the bombs were to be taken to the
new special laboratories above Zurich, where they
could be unpacked in an atmosphere of chlorine,
he turned to these five still shapes.
Their five pairs of feet stuck out with a curious
stiff" unanimity. . . .
" What else was there to do ? " he said in
answer to some internal protest.
" I wonder, Firmin, if there are any more of
them ? "
" Bombs, sir ? " asked Firmin.
" No, such kings. . . .
" The pitiful folly of it ! " said the ex-king,
following his thoughts. " Firmin, as an ex-
professor of International Politics, I think it falls
to you to bury them. There ? . . . No, don't
put them near the well. People will have to
drink from that well. Bury them over there
some way off in the field."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
THE NEW PHASE
I
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 organization upon the new footing
that the swift accelerated advance of human know-
ledge had rendered necessary. The council was
gathered together with the haste of a salvage ex-
pedition, 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 civilization destroying itself down
THE NEW PHASE 193
to a level at which modern apparatus could no
longer be produced, or by human nature adapting
itself in its institutions to the new conditions. It
was for the latter alternative that the assembly-
existed.
Sooner or later this choice would have con-
fronted 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 imagina-
tion 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 admir-
ably fitted to make him that cultivator, that
o
i 9 4 THE WORLD SET FREE
cattle-minder, who was for twice ten thousand
years the normal man.
And, unpremeditated, undesired, out of the
accumulations of his tilling came civilization.
Civilization 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 specu-
lation and philosophy and science and the begin-
ning 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 con-
sequences. 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 realized at last that he
was living the old life less and less and a new life
more and more.
Already before the release of atomic energy
the tensions between the old way of living and
the new were intense. They were far intenser
than they had been even at the collapse of the
Roman imperial system. On the one hand was
THE NEW PHASE 195
the ancient life of the family and the small com-
munity 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 under-
standing 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
196 THE WORLD SET FREE
upon. These bombs did but accentuate and
dramatize an already developing problem.
'
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 specialized, 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 conse-
quent directness that gave it a general distinction.
There was of course a noble simplicity about
Leblanc, but even of him it may be asked
whether he was not rather good and honest-
minded than in the fuller sense great.
The ex-king had wisdom and a certain
romantic dash, he was a man among thousands
even if he was not a man among millions, but his
memoirs and indeed his decision to write memoirs,
THE NEW PHASE 197
give the quality of himself and his associates.
The book makes admirable but astonishing read-
ing. Therein he takes the great work the
council was doing for granted as a little child
takes God. It is as if he had no sense of it at all.
He tells amusing trivialities about his cousin
Wilhelm and his secretary Firmin, he pokes fun
at the American president, who was indeed
rather a little accident of the political machine
than a representative American, and he gives a
long description of how he was lost for three days
in the mountains in the company of the only
Japanese member, a loss that seems to have
caused no serious interruption of the work of the
council. . . .
The Brissago conference has been written
about time after time as though it were a gather-
ing 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 reason-
able to compare it to one of those enforced meet-
ings 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.
198 THE WORLD SET FREE
It was stripped of the accumulations 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.
3
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 extra-
ordinarily limited when one measures it by later
standards, and it was now in a state of the direst
confusion and distress.
It must be remembered that at this time men
had still to spread into enormous areas of the
land surface of the globe. There were vast
mountain wildernesses, forest wildernesses, sandy
deserts, and frozen lands. Men still clung
closely to water and arable soil in temperate or
sub- tropical climates, they lived abundantly only
in river valleys, and all their great cities had
grown upon large navigable rivers or close to
ports upon the sea. Over great areas even of
THE NEW PHASE 199
this suitable land flies and mosquitoes, armed with
infection, had so far defeated human invasion, and
under their protection the virgin forests remained
untouched. Indeed the whole world even in its
most crowded districts was filthy with flies and
swarming with needless insect life to an extent
which is now almost incredible. A population
map of the world in 1950 would have followed
seashore and river course so closely in its darker
shading as to give an impression that homo sapiens
was an amphibious animal. His roads and rail-
ways lay also along the lower contours, only here
and there to pierce some mountain barrier or
reach some holiday resort did they clamber above
3000 feet. And across the ocean his traffic
passed in definite lines ; there were hundreds of
thousands of square miles of ocean no ship ever
traversed except by mischance.
Into the mysteries of the solid globe under his
feet he had not yet pierced for five miles, and it
was still not forty years since with a tragic
pertinacity he had clambered to the poles of the
earth. The limitless mineral wealth of the Arctic
and Antarctic circles was still buried beneath vast
accumulations of immemorial ice, and the secret
riches of the inner zones of the crust were un-
tapped and indeed unsuspected. The higher
mountain regions were known only to a sprink-
ling of guide-led climbers and the frequenters of
a few gaunt hotels, and the vast rainless belts of
200 THE WORLD SET FREE
land that lay across the continental masses, from
Gobi to Sahara and along the backbone of
America, with their perfect air, their daily baths
of blazing sunshine, their nights of cool serenity
and glowing stars, and their reservoirs of deep-
lying water, were as yet only desolations of fear
and death to the common imagination.
And now under the shock of the atomic
bombs, the great masses of population which had
gathered into the enormous dingy town centres
of that period were dispossessed and scattered
disastrously over the surrounding rural areas.
It was as if some brutal force, grown im-
patient at last at man's blindness, had with the
deliberate intention of a rearrangement of popu-
lation 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
THE NEW PHASE 201
and panthers that preyed upon the emaciated
survivors crawled back infected into the jungle
to perish. Large areas of China were a prey to
brigand bands. . . .
It is a remarkable thing that no complete
contemporary account of the explosion of the
atomic bombs survives. There are of course
innumerable allusions and partial records, and it
is from these that subsequent ages must piece
together the image of these devastations.
The phenomena, it must be remembered,
changed greatly from day to day and even
from hour to hour as the exploding bomb
shifted its position, threw off fragments or
came into contact with water or a fresh texture of
soil. Barnet, who came within forty miles of
Paris early in October, is concerned chiefly with
his account of the social confusion of the country-
side and the problems of his command, but he
speaks of heaped cloud masses of steam " All
along the sky to the south-west " and of a red
glare beneath these at night. Parts of Paris were
still burning, and numbers of people were camped
in the fields even at this distance watching over
treasured heaps of salvaged loot. He speaks too
of the distant rumbling of the explosion " like
trains going over iron bridges."
Other descriptions agree with this ; they all
speak of the " continuous reverberations," or of
the "thudding and hammering," or some such
202 THE WORLD SET FREE
phrase ; and they all testify to a huge pall of
steam, from which rain would fall suddenly in
torrents and amidst which lightning played.
Drawing nearer to Paris an observer would have
found the salvage camps increasing in number
and blocking up the villages, and large numbers
of people, often starving and ailing, camping
under improvised tents because there was no
place for them to go. The sky became more and
more densely overcast until at last it blotted out
the light of day and left nothing but a dull red
glare " extraordinarily depressing to the spirit." In
this dull glare, great numbers of people were still
living, clinging to their houses and in many cases
subsisting in a state of partial famine upon the
produce in their gardens and the stores in the
shops of the provision dealers.
Coming in still closer the investigator would
have reached the police cordon, which was trying
to check the desperate enterprise of those who
would return to their homes or rescue their more
valuable possessions within the " zone of imminent
danger."
That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If
our spectator could have got permission to enter
it, he would have entered also a zone of uproar,
a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange
purplish-red light, and quivering and swaying
with the incessant explosion of the radio-active
substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight
THE NEW PHASE 203
and burning fiercely, the trembling ragged flames
looking pale and ghastly and attenuated in com-
parison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond.
The shells of other edifices already burnt rose
pierced by rows of window sockets against the
red-lit mist.
Every step further 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 destruc-
tion 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 halfway to the sea.
Moreover the air in this infernal inner circle
of red-lit ruins had a peculiar dryness and a
blistering quality, so that it set up a soreness of
the skin and lungs that was very difficult to
heal. . . .
Such was the last state of Paris, and such on
a larger scale was the condition of affairs in
Chicago, and the same fate had overtaken Berlin,
204 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 up-
roar 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.
4
The state of mind of the dispossessed urban
population which swarmed and perished so
abundantly over the countryside 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
THE NEW PHASE 205
people, camped among the vineyards of Cham-
pagne, as he saw them during his period of
service with the army of pacification.
There was, for example, that " man-milliner "
who came out from a field beside the road that
; I
rises up eastward out of Epernay, and asked how
things were going in Paris. He was, says
Barnet, a round-faced man dressed very neatly
in black so neatly that it was amazing to
discover he was living close at hand in a tent
made of carpets and he had " an urbane but
insistent manner," a carefully trimmed moustache
and beard, expressive eyebrows and hair very
neatly brushed.
" No one goes into Paris," said Barnet.
" Bu.t, Monsieur, that is very unenterprising,"
the man by the wayside submitted.
"The danger is too great. The radiations
eat into people's skins."
The eyebrows protested. " But is nothing
to be done ? "
" Nothing can be done."
" But, Monsieur, it is extraordinarily incon-
venient, 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 ? "
2o6 THE WORLD SET FREE
Barnet considered his interlocutor.
" I'm told," said Barnet, " that Paris is not
likely to be possible again for several genera-
tions."
" Oh ! but this is preposterous ! Consider,
Monsieur ! What are people like ourselves to
do in the meanwhile ? I am a costumier. All
my connections and interests, above all my style,
demand Paris. . . ."
Barnet considered the sky, from which a
light rain was beginning to fall, the wide fields
about them from which the harvest had been
taken, the trimmed poplars by the wayside.
" Naturally," he agreed, " you want to go to
Paris. But Paris is over."
Over ! "
" Finished."
" But then, Monsieur what is to become
of me? "
Barnet turned his face westward whither the
white road led.
"Where else, for example, may I hope to
find opportunity ? "
Barnet made no reply.
" Perhaps on the Riviera. Or at some such
place as Homburg. Or some plage perhaps."
"All that," said Barnet, accepting for the
first time facts that had lain evident in his mind
for weeks ; " all that must be over too."
There was a pause. Then the voice beside
THE NEW PHASE 207
him broke out. "But, Monsieur, it is impos-
sible ! It leaves nothing."
" No. Not very much."
" One cannot suddenly begin to grow
potatoes ! "
" It would be good if Monsieur could bring
himself "
" To the life of a peasant ! And my wife .
You do not know the distinguished delicacy of
my wife, a refined helplessness, a peculiar
dependent charm. Like some slender tropical
creeper with great white flowers. . . . But
all this is foolish talk. It is impossible that
Paris, which has survived so many misfortunes,
should not presently revive."
" I do not think it will ever revive. Paris
is finished. London too, I am told Berlin. All
the great capitals were stricken. . . ."
" But ! Monsieur must permit me to
differ."
"It is so."
" It is impossible. Civilizations do not end
in this manner. Mankind will insist."
" On Paris ? "
" On Paris."
" Monsieur, you might as well hope to go
down the Maelstrom and resume business
there."
" I am content, Monsieur, with my own
faith."
208 THE WORLD SET FREE
" The winter comes on. Would not Monsieur
be wiser to seek a house ? ' '
" Further from Paris ? No, Monsieur. But
it is not possible, Monsieur, what you say, and
you are under a tremendous mistake. . . .
Indeed you are in error. ... I asked merely
for information. . . ."
"When last 1 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. . . ."
5
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 realize
that an age had ended, that the old help and
guidance existed no longer, that times would
not mend again however patiently they held
out. They were still in many cases looking to
Paris when the first snowflakes of that pitiless
January came swirling about them. The story
grows grimmer. . . .
If it is less monstrously tragic after Barnet's
return to England it is, if anything, harder.
THE NEW PHASE 209
England was a spectacle of fear -embittered
householders, hiding food, crushing out robbery,
driving the starving wanderers from every
faltering place upon the roads lest they should
die inconveniently and reproachfully on the
doorsteps of those who had failed to urge them
onward. . . .
The remnants of the British troops left
France finally in March, after urgent representa-
tions 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 Bar net
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
p
210 THE WORLD SET FREE
a shortage of even such fare as that. He himself
struck across country to Winchester, fearing to
approach the bomb-poisoned district round
London, and at Winchester he had the luck
to be taken on as one of the wireless assistants
at the central station and given regular rations.
The station stood in a commanding position on
the chalk hill that overlooks the town from
the east. . . .
Thence he must have assisted in the trans-
mission of the endless cypher messages that
preceded the gathering at Brissago, and there
it was that the Brissago proclamation of the
end of the war and the establishment of a world
government came under his hands.
He was feeling ill and apathetic that day, and
he did not realize what it was he was transcribing.
He did it mechanically, as a part of his tedious
duty.
Afterwards there came a rush of messages
arising out of the declaration that strained him
very much, and in the evening when he was
relieved, he ate his scanty supper and then went
out upon the little balcony before the station, to
smoke and rest his brains after this sudden and
as yet inexplicable press of duty. It was a very
beautiful still evening. He fell talking to a
fellow operator, and for the first time, he declares,
" I began to understand what it was all about. I
began to see just what enormous issues had been
THE NEW PHASE 211
under my hands for the past four hours. But
I became incredulous after my first stimulation.
1 This is some sort of Bunkum,' I said very
sagely.
" My colleague was more hopeful. * It
means an end to bomb-throwing and destruction,'
he said. * It means that presently corn will come
from America.'
" ' Who is going to send corn when there is
no more value in money ? ' I asked.
" Suddenly we were startled by a clashing
from the town below. The cathedral bells,
which had been silent ever since I had come
into the district, were beginning, with a sort of
rheumatic difficulty, to ring. Presently they
warmed a little to the work, and we realized
what was going on. They were ringing a peal.
We listened with an unbelieving astonishment
and looking into each other's yellow faces.
" * They mean it,' said my colleague.
" * But what can they do now ? ' I asked.
* Everything is broken down. . . ."
And on that sentence, with an unexpected
artistry, Barnet abruptly ends his story.
6
From the first the new government handled
affairs with a certain greatness of spirit. Indeed
it was inevitable that they should act greatly.
212 THE WORLD SET FREE
From the first they had to see the round globe as
one problem ; it was impossible any longer to
deal with it piece by piece. They had to secure
it universally from any fresh outbreak of atomic
destruction, and they had to ensure a permanent
and universal pacification. On this capacity to
grasp and wield the whole round globe their
existence depended. There was no scope for any
further performance.
So soon as the seizure of the existing supplies
of atomic ammunition and the apparatus for
synthesizing Carolinum was assured, the disband-
ing or social utilization 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 im-
movable 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
THE NEW PHASE 213
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 emer-
gency rations, were presently, with synthesizers,
fertilizers, actinic light and scientific direction, in
excess of every human need.
The government had begun with the idea
2i 4 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 capitalistic 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 world-wide 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 manufac-
ture of hand-woven textiles, fruit-growing, flower-
growing and landscape gardening on a grand
THE NEW PHASE 215
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 re-
organization of urban and industrial life, and
indeed of the entire social system.
Ideas that are unhampered by political intrigue
or financial considerations have a sweeping way
with them, and before a year was out the records
of the council show clearly that it was rising to its
enormous opportunity, and partly through its own
direct control and partly through a series of
specific committees, it was planning a new common
social order for the entire population of the earth.
"There can be no real social stability or any
general human happiness while large areas of the
world and large classes of people are in a phase of
civilization different from the prevailing mass.
It is impossible now to have great blocks of popu-
lation 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
organization of production. It developed a scheme
2i6 THE WORLD SET FREE
for the progressive establishment throughout the
world of the c modern system ' in agriculture, a
system that should give the full advantages of a
civilized 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 krge 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
THE NEW PHASE 217
cattle, pigs, poultry and their excrement is passing
away out of human experience. In a little while
it will be gone altogether. In the nineteenth
century it had already ceased to be a necessary
human state, and only the absence of any collective
intelligence and an imagined need for tough and
unintelligent soldiers and for a prolific class at a
low level, prevented its systematic replacement at
that time. . . .
And while this settlement of the country was
in progress, the urban camps of the first phase of
the council's activities were rapidly developing,
partly through the inherent forces of the situation
and partly through the council's direction, into a
modern type of town. . . .
7
It is characteristic of the manner in which
large enterprises forced themselves upon the
Brissago council, that it was not until the end of
the first year of their administration and then only
with extreme reluctance that they would take up
the manifest need for a lingua franca for the world.
They seem to have given little attention to the
various theoretical universal languages which were
proposed to them. They wished to give as little
trouble to hasty and simple people as possible, and
the world-wide distribution of English gave them
2i 8 THE WORLD SET FREE
a bias for it from the beginning. The extreme
simplicity of its grammar was also in its favour.
It was not without some sacrifices that the
English-speaking peoples were permitted the
satisfaction of hearing their speech used uni-
versally. 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
systematized 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
THE NEW PHASE 219
not count at all in the ordinary week. So the
weeks and the months were brought into correspon-
dence. 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 civilization came as a simplification of ancient
complications ; the history of the calendar through-
out the world is a history of inadequate adjust-
ments, of attempts to fix seedtime 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 innova-
tions, no strange names for the months and no
alteration in the numbering of the years.
The world had already been put upon one
universal monetary basis. For some months
after the accession of the council the world's
affairs had been carried on without any sound
currency at all. Over great regions money was
still in use, but with the most extravagant varia-
tions 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
220 THE WORLD SET FREE
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
organization 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 satis-
factorily. 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. . . .
8. ,,..
As the Brissago council came to realize that
what it had supposed to be temporary camps of
THE NEW PHASE 221
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 then on-agricultural popu-
lation in the hands of a compactor and better
qualified special committee. That committee is
now, far more than the council or 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 re-
cessions of populations, as aimless and mechanical
as the trickling of spilt water, which was the sub-
stance 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
222 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 occupa-
tion. They lie out in the former deserts, these
long wasted sunbaths of the race, they tower
amidst eternal snows, they hide in remote islands
and bask on broad lagoons. For a time the whole
tendency of mankind was to desert the river
valleys in which the race had been cradled for
half a million years, but now that the War
against Flies has been waged so successfully that
this pestilential branch of life is nearly extinct,
they are returning thither with a renewed appetite
for gardens laced by watercourses, for pleasant
living amidst islands and houseboats and bridges,
and for nocturnal lanterns reflected by the
sea.
Man who is ceasing to be an agricultural
animal becomes more and more a builder, a
traveller and a maker. How much he ceases to
be a cultivator of the soil the returns of the Redis-
tribution 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
THE NEW PHASE 223
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.
9
The early years of the World Republic wit-
nessed a certain recrudescence of political adven-
ture. 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
224 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 dis-
location of the coinage, gave a vehicle and a
method of organization to these complaints. At
first the council disregarded this developing
opposition, and then it recognized it with an
entirely devastating frankness.
Never of course had there been so provisional
a government. It was of an extravagant illegality.
It was indeed hardly more than a club, a club of
about a hundred persons. At the outset there
were ninety-three, and these were increased after-
wards by the issue of invitations which more than
balanced its deaths, to as many at one time as
one hundred and nineteen. Always its constitu-
tion has been miscellaneous. At no time were
THE NEW PHASE 225
these invitations issued with an admission that
they recognized a right. The old institution or
monarchy had come out unexpectedly well in the
light of the new regime. 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-presi-
dents of republics, no member of the council had
even the shade of a right to his participation in
its power. It was natural, therefore, that its
opponents should find a common ground in a
clamour for representative government, and build
high hopes upon a return to parliamentary
institutions.
The council decided to give them everything
they wanted, but in a form that suited ill with
their aspirations. It became at one stroke a repre-
sentative 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
Q
226 THE WORLD SET FREE
recall ; but the elections, which were held quin-
quennially, were arranged to add fifty members
on each occasion. The method of proportional
representation with one transferable vote was
adopted, and the voter might also write upon his
voting paper in a specially marked space the
name of any of his representatives that he wished
to recall. A ruler was recallable by as many
votes as the quota by which he had been elected,
and the original members by as many votes in
any constituency as the returning quotas in the
first election.
Upon these conditions the council submitted
itself very cheerfully to the suffrages of the
world. None of its members were recalled, and
its fifty new associates, which included twenty-
seven which it had seen fit to recommend, were
of an altogether too miscellaneous quality to
disturb the broad trend of its policy. Its freedom
from rules or formalities prevented any obstruc-
tive proceedings, and when one of the two newly
arrived Home Rule members for India sought
for information how to bring in a bill, they learnt
simply that bills were not brought in. They
asked for the speaker, and were privileged to hear
much ripe wisdom from the ex- king Egbert,
who was now consciously among the seniors of
the gathering. Thereafter they were baffled
men. . . .
But already by that time the work of the
THE NEW PHASE 227
council was drawing to an end. It was con-
cerned not so much for the continuation of its
construction as for the preservation of its accom-
plished work from the dramatic instincts of the
politician.
The life of the race becomes indeed more and
more independent of the formal government.
The council in its opening phase was heroic in
spirit ; a dragon-slaying body, it slashed out of
existence a vast knotted tangle of obsolete ideas
and clumsy and jealous proprietorships ; it secured
by a noble system of institutional precautions,
freedom of enquiry, 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 con-
stitutional 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
228 THE WORLD SET FREE
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.
10
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
THE NEW PHASE 229
occupation, and has become at most a subdued
and hidden and discredited thing. Contentious
professions cease to be an honourable employ-
ment for men. The peace between nations is
also a peace between individuals. We live in
a world that comes of age. Man the warrior,
man the lawyer, and all the bickering aspects of
life, pass into obscurity ; the grave dreamers,
man the curious learner and man the creative
artist, come forward to replace these barbaric
aspects of existence by a less ignoble adventure.
There is no natural life of man. He is and
always has been a sheath of varied and even
incompatible possibilities, a palimpsest of in-
herited 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 indi-
vidually absorbing, it became apparent that there
was in the vast mass of people a long smothered
230 THE WORLD SET FREE
passion to make things. The world broke out
into making, and at first mainly into aesthetic
making. This phase of history, which has been
not inaptly termed the "Efflorescence," is still
to a large extent with us. The majority of our
population consists of artists, and the bulk of
activity in the world lies no longer with
necessities but with their elaboration, decoration
and refinement. There has been an evident
change in the quality of this making during
recent years. It becomes more purposeful than
it was, losing something of its first elegance and
prettiness and gaining in intensity ; but that is
a change rather of hue than of nature. That
comes with a deepening philosophy and a sounder
education. For the first joyous exercises of fancy
we perceive now the deliberation of a more
constructive imagination. There is a natural
order in these things, and art comes before
science as the satisfaction of more elemental needs
must come before art, and as play and pleasure
come in a human life before the development
of a settled purpose. . . .
For thousands of years this gathering impulse
to creative work must have struggled in man
against the limitations imposed upon him by his
social ineptitude. It was a long smouldering
fire that flamed out at last in all these things.
The evidence of a pathetic, perpetually thwarted
urgency to make something, is one of the most
THE NEW PHASE 231
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, uncomfort-
able, 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
232 THE WORLD SET FREE
struggled up towards the light. That god of
joyous expression our poor fathers ignorantly
sought, our freedom has declared to us. ...
In the old days the common ambition of
every simple soul was to possess a little property,
a patch of land, a house uncontrolled by others,
an " independence " as the English used to put
it. And what made this desire for freedom and
prosperity so strong, was very evidently the
dream of self-expression, of doing something with
it, of playing with it, of making a personal
delightfulness, a distinctiveness. Property was
never more than a means to an end, nor avarice
more than a perversion. Men owned in order
to do freely. Now that everyone has his own
apartments and his own privacy secure, this dis-
position 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.
THE NEW PHASE 233
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 enjoy-
ments that reassure them that they are alive.
They help, it may be, by reception and reverbera-
tion, and they hinder nothing. . . .
!
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
hare 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
234 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 respect-
able poor, or the constant personal violence, the
squalor and naive passions of the lowest stratum.
Yet there were no real differences of blood and
inherent quality between these worlds ; their
differences were all in circumstances, suggestion,
and habits of mind. And turning to more
individual instances the constantly observed
difference between one portion of a life and
another consequent upon a religious conversion
were a standing example of the versatile possibilities
of human nature.
The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which
shook men out of cities and businesses and
economic relations shook them also out of their
old established habits of thought, and out of the
lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down
to them from the past. To borrow a word from
the old-fashioned chemists, men were made
nascent ; they were released from old ties ; for
good or evil they were ready for new associations.
THE NEW PHASE 235
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
realization 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 realize new aspira-
tions, 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 teach-
ing was already in the schools, a new faith in
the young. The worthy man who forestalled
the building of a research city for the English
upon the Sussex downs by buying up a series of
estates, was dispossessed and laughed out of court
when he made his demand for some preposterous
compensation ; the owner of the discredited Dass
patents makes his last appearance upon the scroll of
history as the insolvent proprietor of a paper called
The Cry for Justice, in which he duns the world for a
236 THE WORLD SET FREE
hundred million pounds. That was the ingenuous
Dass's idea of justice, that he ought to be paid about
five million pounds annuallybecause 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 to conspiracy mania in a
private hospital at Nice. Both of these men would
probably have ended their days enormously wealthy
and of course ennobled in the England of the
opening twentieth century, and it is just this
novelty of their fates that marks the quality of
the new age.
The new government early discovered the
need of an 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 organizations 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 conse-
quences 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
THE NEW PHASE 237
now the elementary common-places of human
intercourse seemed to the councillors of Brissago,
when first they dared to proclaim them, marvel-
lously daring discoveries, not untouched by doubt,
that flushed the cheek and fired the eye.
The council placed all this educational recon-
struction in the hands of a committee of men and
women, which did its work during the next few
decades with remarkable breadth and effective-
ness. 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 grey. He was
238 THE WORLD SET FREE
at all times an impatient and sometimes an angry
man, but this was forgiven him because of the hot
wire of suffering that was manifestly thrust through
his being. At the end of his life his personal
prestige was very great. To him far more than
to any contemporary is it due that self-abnegation,
self-identification with the world spirit, was made
the basis of universal education. That general
memorandum to the teachers which is the key-
note of the modern educational system was
probably entirely his work.
" Whosoever would save his soul shall lose
it," he wrote. " That is the device upon the seal
of this document and the starting point of all we
have to do. It is a mistake to regard it as any-
thing but a plain statement of fact. It is the basis
for your work. You have to teach self-forgetful-
ness, 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 NEW PHASE 239
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. . . ."
12
As things round themselves off and accom-
plish 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 dis-
connected, and things that were once condemned
as harsh and aimless are seen to be but factors in
the statement of a gigantic problem. An enormous
bulk of the sincerer writing of the eighteenth,
nineteenth and twentieth centuries falls together
now into an unanticipated unanimity ; one sees
it as a huge tissue of variations upon one theme,
the conflict of human egotism and personal passion
and narrow imaginations on the one hand against
the growing sense of wider necessities and a
possible, more spacious life.
That conflict is in evidence in so early a work
as Voltaire's Candide^ for example, in which the
2 4 o THE WORLD SET FREE
desire for justice as well as happiness beats against
human contrariety and takes refuge at last in a
forced and inconclusive contentment with little
things. Candide was but one of the pioneers of a
literature of uneasy complaint that was presently an
innumerable multitude of books. The novels
more particularly of the nineteenth century, if one
excludes the mere story-tellers from our considera-
tion, witness to this uneasy realization of changes
that call for effort and of the lack of that effort.
In a thousand aspects, now tragically, now comi-
cally, now with a funny affectation of divine
detachment, a countless host of witnesses tell their
story of lives fretting between dreams and limita-
tions. Now one laughs, now one weeps, now one
reads with a blank astonishment at this huge and
almost unpremeditated record of how the grow-
ing 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. . . .
THE NEW PHASE 241
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 organizations 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 begin-
nings 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 reve-
rence, 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 perspec-
tives of the new dawn. . . .
But if we return to our novels for our evidence
of the spirit of the times it becomes evident as
one reads them in their chronological order, so far
as that is now ascertainable, that as one comes to
242 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 uncom-
fortable 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
THE NEW PHASE 243
drift. And all their stories lead in the end either
to happiness missed or happiness won, to disaster
or salvation. The clearer their vision and the
subtler their art, the more certainly do these novels
tell of the possibility of salvation for all the world.
For any road in life leads to religion for those
upon it who will follow it far enough. . . .
It would have seemed a strange thing to the
men of the former time that it should be an open
question as it is to-day whether the world is
wholly Christian or not Christian at all. But
assuredly we have the spirit, and as surely have
we left many temporary forms behind. Chris-
tianity was the first expression of world religion,
the first complete repudiation of tribalism and
war and disputation. That it fell presently into
the ways of more ancient rituals cannot alter that.
The common sense of mankind has toiled through
two thousand years of chastening experience to
find at last how sound a meaning attaches to the
familiar phrases of the Christian faith. The
scientific thinker as he widens out to the moral
problems of the collective life comes inevitably
upon the words of Christ, and as inevitably does
the Christian, as his thought grows clearer, arrive
at the world republic. As for the claims of the
sects, as for the use of a name and successions,
we live in a time that has shaken itself free from
such claims and consistencies.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN
i
THE second operation upon Marcus Karenin was
performed at the new station for surgical work
at Paran, high in the Himalayas above the Sutlej
gorge where it comes down out of Thibet.
It is a place of such wildness and beauty as no
other scenery in the world affords. The granite
terrace which runs round the four sides of the low
block of laboratories looks out in every direction
upon mountains. Far below in the hidden depths
of a shadowy blue cleft, the river pours down in
its tumultuous passage to the swarming plains of
India. No sound of its roaring haste comes up
to those serenities. Beyond that blue gulf, in
which whole forests of giant deodars seem no
more than small patches of moss, rise vast
precipices of many-coloured rock, fretted above,
lined by snowfalls and jagged into pinnacles.
These are the northward wall of a towering
wilderness of ice and snow which clambers
southward higher and wilder and vaster to the
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 245
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 un-
tempered 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 east-
ward and westward rise peaks behind peaks,
against the dark blue Himalayan sky. Far away
below to the south the clouds of the Indian rains
pile up abruptly and are stayed by an invisible
hand.
Hither it was that with a dreamlike swift-
ness Karenin flew high over the irrigations of
Raj pu tana and the towers and cupolas of the
ultimate Delhi ; and the little group of buildings,
albeit the southward wall dropped nearly five
hundred feet, seemed to him as he soared down to it
like a toy lost among these mountain wildernesses.
No road came up to this place ; it was reached
only by flight.
His pilot descended to the great courtyard,
and Karenin assisted by his secretary clambered
down through the wing fabric and made his
246 THE WORLD SET FREE
4
way to the officials who came out to receive
him.
In this place, beyond infections and noise and
any distractions, surgery had made for itself a
house of research and a healing fastness. The
building itself would have seemed very wonderful
to eyes accustomed to the flimsy architecture of
an age when power was precious. It was made
of granite, already a little roughened on the out-
side 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 at-
tendants. ...
The first man to greet Karenin was Ciana,
the scientific director of the institution. Beside
him was Rachel Borken, the chief organizer.
" You are tired ? " she asked, and old Karenin
shook his head. " Cramped," he said. " I have
wanted to visit such a place as this."
He spoke as if he had no other business with
them.
There was a little pause.
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 247
" How many scientific people have you got
here now ? " he asked.
"Just three hundred and ninety-two," said
Rachel Borken.
" And the patients and attendants and so on ? "
" Two thousand and thirty."
" I shall be a patient," said Karenin. " I shall
have to be a patient. But I should like to see
things first. Presently I will be a patient."
" You will come to my rooms ? " suggested
Ciana.
" And then I must talk to this doctor of
yours," said Karenin. " But I would like to see
a bit of this place and talk to some of your
people before it comes to that."
He winced and moved forward.
" 1 have left most of my work in order," he
said.
" You have been working hard up to now ? "
asked Rachel Borken.
" Yes. And now I have nothing more to do
and it seems strange. . . . And it's a bother,
this illness and having to come down to oneself.
This doorway and that row of windows is well
done ; the grey granite and just the line of gold
and then those mountains beyond through that
arch. It's very well done. ..."
248 THE WORLD SET FREE
2
Karenin lay on the bed with a soft white rug
about him, and Fowler who was to be his surgeon
sat on the edge of the bed and talked to him.
An assistant was seated quietly in the shadow be-
hind the bed. The examination had been made
and Karenin knew what was before him. He was
tired but serene.
" So I shall die," he said, " unless you
operate ? "
Fowler assented.
" And then," said Karenin smiling, " probably
I shall die."
" Not certainly."
" Even if I do not die ; shall I be able to
work?"
"There is just a chance. ..."
" So firstly I shall probably die, and if I do
not, then perhaps I shall be a useless invalid ? "
" I think if you live, you may be able to go
on as you do now."
" Well then, I suppose I must take the risk of
it. Yet couldn't you, Fowler, couldn't you drug
me and patch me instead of all this vivisection ?
A few days of drugged and active life and then
the end ? "
Fowler thought. " We are not sure enough
yet to do things like that," he said.
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 249
" But a day is coming when you will be
certain."
Fowler nodded.
" You make me feel as though I was the last
of deformity. Deformity is uncertainty
inaccuracy. My body works doubtfully, it is not
even sure that it will die or live. I suppose the
time is not far off when such bodies as mine will
no longer be born into the world."
"You see," said Fowler after a little pause,
" it is necessary that spirits such as yours should
be born into the world."
" I suppose," said Karenin, " that my spirit
has had its use. But if you think that is because
my body is as it is I think you are mistaken.
There is no peculiar virtue in defect. I have
always chafed against all this. If I could have
moved more freely and lived a larger life in
health I could have done more. But some day
perhaps you will be able to put a body that is
wrong altogether right again. Your science is
only beginning. It's a subtler thing than physics
and chemistry and it takes longer to produce its
miracles. And meanwhile a few more of us must
die in patience."
" Fine work is being done and much of it,'*
said Fowler. " I can say as much because I
have nothing to do with it. I can understand a
lesson, appreciate the discoveries of abler men
and use my hands, but those others, Pigou,
250 THE WORLD SET FREE
Masterton, Lie and the others, they are clearing
the ground fast for the knowledge to come.
Have you had time to follow their work ? "
Karenin shook his head. " But I can imagine
the scope of it," he said.
" We have so many men working now," said
Fowler. " I suppose at present there must be
at least a thousand thinking hard, observing,
experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen
hundred."
"Not counting those who keep the records ? "
" Not counting those. Of course the present
indexing of research is in itself a very big work
and it is only now that we are getting it properly
done. But already we are feeling the benefit of
that. Since it ceased to be a paid employment
and became a devotion we have had only those
people who obeyed the call of an aptitude at work
upon these things. Here I must show you it
to-day because it will interest you we have our
copy of the encyclopaedic index every week
sheets are taken out and replaced by fresh
sheets with new results that are brought to us by
the aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is
an index of knowledge that grows continually, an
index that becomes continually truer. There was
never anything like it before."
" When I came into the education committee,"
said Karenin, " that index of human know-
ledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 251
produced a chaotic mountain of results, in a
hundred languages and a thousand different types
of publication. . . ." He smiled at his memories.
" How we groaned at the job ! "
" Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly
done. You shall see."
" I have been so busy with my own work .
Yes, I shall be glad to see."
The patient regarded the surgeon for a time
with interested eyes.
"You work here always ?" he asked abruptly.
" No," said Fowler.
cc But mostly you work here ? "
" I have worked about seven years out of the
past ten. At times I go away down there.
One has to. At least I have to. There is a sort
of greyness comes over all this, one feels hungry
for life, real personal passionate life, love-making,
eating and drinking for the fun of the thing,
jostling crowds, having adventures, laughter
above all laughter ."
"Yes," said Karenin understandingly.
"And then one day, suddenly one thinks of
these high mountains again. . . ."
" That is how I would have lived, if it had
not been for my defects," said Karenin.
" Nobody knows but those who have borne it the
exasperation of abnormality. It will be good
when you have nobody alive whose body cannot
live the wholesome everyday life, whose spirit
252 THE WORLD SET FREE
cannot come up into these high places as it
wills."
"We shall manage that soon," said Fowler.
" For endless generations man has struggled
upward against the indignities of his body and
the indignities of his soul. Pains, incapacities,
vile fears, black moods, despairs. How well I've
known them. They've taken more time than all
your holidays. It is true, is it not, that every
man is something of a cripple and something of a
beast ? I've dipped a little deeper than most ;
that's all. It's only now when he has fully learnt
the truth of that, that he can take hold of himself
to be neither beast nor cripple. Now that he
overcomes his servitude to his body, he can for
the first time think of living the full life of his
body. . . . Before another generation dies you'll
have the thing in hand. You'll do as you please
with the old Adam and all the vestiges from the
brutes and reptiles that lurk in his body and
spirit. Isn't that so ? "
" You put it boldly," said Fowler.
Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution. . . .
" When," asked Karenin suddenly, " when
will you operate ? "
" The day after to-morrow," said Fowler.
" For a day I want you to drink and eat as I
shall prescribe. And you may think and talk as
you please."
" I should like to see this place."
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 253
" 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.
3
The next morning Karenin got up early and
watched the sun rise over the mountains, and
breakfasted lightly, and then young Gardener, his
secretary, came to consult him upon the spending
of his day. Would he care to see people ? Or
was this gnawing pain within him too much to
permit him to do that ?
"I'd like to talk," said Karenin. "There
must be all sorts of lively-minded people here.
Let them come and gossip with me. It will
distract me and I can't tell you how interesting
it makes everything that is going on to have seen
the dawn of one's own last day."
" Your last day ! "
" Fowler will kill me."
" But he thinks not."
" Fowler will kill me. If he does not he will
not leave very much of me. So that this is my
last day anyhow, the days afterwards if they come
at all to me, will be refuse. I know. . . ."
Gardener was about to speak when Karenin
went on again.
254 THE WORLD SET FREE
" 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 dis-
counted or set right afterwards will get the better
of me. I shall be peevish. I may lose my grip
upon my own egotism. It's never been a very
firm grip. No, no, Gardener, don't say that !
You know better, you've had glimpses of it.
Suppose I came through on the other side of this
affair, belittled, vain and spiteful, using the
prestige I have got among men by my good
work in the past just to serve some small invalid
purpose. . . ."
He was silent for a time, watching the mists
among the distant precipices change to clouds of
light, and drift and dissolve before the searching
rays of the sunrise.
" Yes," he said at last, " I am afraid of these
anaesthetics 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. . . .
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 255
" 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 forgetful-
ness 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. ,
4
Presently, in accordance with his wish, people
came to talk to him, and he could forget himself
again. Rachel Borken sat for a long time with
him and talked chiefly of women in the world,
and with her was a girl named Edith Haydon
who was already very well known as a cytologist.
And several of the younger men who were work-
ing 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
256 THE WORLD SET FREE
chance suggestions determined. But soon after-
wards Gardener wrote down notes of things he
remembered, and it is possible to put together
again the outlook of Karenin upon the world and
how he thought and felt about many of the
principal things in life.
" Our age," he said, " has been so far an age
of scene-shifting. We have been preparing a
stage, clearing away the setting of a drama that
was played out and growing tiresome. ... If I
could but sit out the first few scenes of the new
spectacle. . . .
" How encumbered the world had become !
It was ailing as I am ailing with a growth of
unmeaning things. It was entangled, feverish,
confused. It was in sore need of release, and I
suppose that nothing less than the violence of
those bombs could have released it and made it a
healthy world again. I sruppose they were neces-
sary. 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 organizations 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 great 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
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KAREN IN 257
the needs of the new time. . . . You who are
younger cannot imagine the mixture of desperate
hope and protesting despair in which we who
could believe in the possibilities of science lived
in those years before atomic energy came. . . .
" It was not only that the mass of people
would not attend, would not understand, but that
those who did understand lacked the power of
real belief. They said the things, they saw
the things, and the things meant nothing to
them. . . .
" I have been reading some old papers lately.
It is wonderful how our fathers bore themselves
towards science. They hated it. They feared it.
They permitted a few scientific men to exist and
work a pitiful handful. ... f 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 some-
thing 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. . . .
s
258 THE WORLD SET FREE
" While I lie here they are clearing up what
is left of the bombs in London," he said. " Then
they are going to repair the ruins and make it all
as like as possible to its former condition before
the bombs fell. Perhaps they will dig out the
old house in St. John's Wood to which my father
went after his expulsion from Russia. . . .
That London of my memories seems to me
like a place in another world. For you younger
people it must seem like a place that could never
have existed."
" Is there much left standing ? " asked Edith
Haydon.
" Square miles that are scarcely shaken in the
south and north-west, they say ; and most of the
bridges and large areas of dock. Westminster,
which held most of the government offices,
suffered badly from the small bomb that destroyed
the Parliament, there are very few traces of the
old thoroughfare of Whitehall or the Government
region thereabout, but there are plentiful drawings
to scale of its buildings, and the great hole in the
east of London scarcely matters. That was a
poor district and very like the north and the
south. ... It will be possible to reconstruct
most of it. ... It is wanted. Already it
becomes difficult to recall the old time even for
us who saw it."
" It seems very distant to me," said the
girl. . . .
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 259
" 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 -carry ing 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
260 THE WORLD SET FREE
used to fall dead for want of air in the crowded
ways. The irritation of London, internal and
external, must have been maddening. It was a
maddened world. It is like thinking of a sick
child. One has the same effect of feverish
urgencies and acute irrational disappointments.
" All history," he said, " is a record of a
childhood. . . .
" And yet not exactly a childhood. There is
something clean and keen about even a sick child
and something touching. But so much of the
old time makes one angry. So much they did
seems grossly stupid, obstinately, outrageously
stupid, which is the very opposite to being fresh
and young.
" I was reading only the other day about
Bismarck, that hero of nineteenth century politics,
that sequel to Napoleon, that god of blood and
iron. And he was just a beery, obstinate,
dull man. Indeed that is what he was, the
commonest, coarsest man who ever became great.
I looked at his portraits, a heavy, almost froggish
face, with projecting eyes and a thick moustache
to hide a poor mouth. He aimed at nothing but
Germany, Germany emphasized, indurated, en-
larged ; 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
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KAREN1N 261
world, in the whole world, no man ever left so
deep a mark on it, because everywhere there were
gross men to resonate to the heavy notes he
emitted. He trampled on ten thousand lovely
things, and a kind of malice in these louts made it
pleasant to them to see him trample. No he
was no child ; the dull national aggressiveness he
stood for, no childishness. Childhood is promise.
He was survival.
"All Europe offered its children to him, it
sacrificed education, art, happiness and all its
hopes of future welfare to follow the clatter of
his sabre. The monstrous worship of that old
fool's * blood and iron ' passed all round the earth.
Until the atomic bombs burnt our way to freedom
again. . . ."
" One thinks of him now as one thinks of the
megatherium," said one of the young men.
" From first to last mankind made three
million big guns and a hundred thousand com-
plicated great ships for no other purpose but
war."
" Were there no sane men in those days,"
asked the young man, " to stand against that
idolatry ? "
" In a state of despair," said Edith Haydon.
"He is so far off and there are men alive
still who were alive when Bismarck died ! " . . .
said the young man
262 THE WORLD SET FREE
5
" And yet it may be I am unjust to Bismarck,"
said Karenin, following his own thoughts. " You
see men belong to their own age ; we stand upon
a common stock of thought and we fancy we
stand upon the ground. I met a pleasant man
the other day, a Maori, whose great-grandfather
was a cannibal. It chanced he had a Daguerreo-
type 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 child-
hood ; the humiliations of Napoleon's victories,
the crowded crowning victory of the Battle of the
Nations. . . . Everybody in those days, wise or
foolish, believed that the division of the world
under a multitude of governments was inevitable,
and that it was going on for thousands of years
more. It was inevitable until it was impossible.
Anyone who had denied that inevitability publicly
would have been counted oh ! a silly fellow.
Old Bismarck was only just a little forcible, on
the lines of the accepted ideas. That is all. He
thought that since there had to be national
governments he would make one that was strong
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 263
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, down-trodden member of the
Russian Intelligenza, a conspirator, a prisoner or
an assassin. You, my dear, would have been
breaking dingy windows as a suffragette. "
" Never,' said Edith stoutly. . . .
For a time the talk broke into humorous
personalities, and the young people gibed at each
other across the smiling old administrator, and
then presently one of the young scientific men
gave things a new turn. He spoke like one who
was full to the brim.
" You know, sir, I've a fancy it is hard to
prove such things that civilization 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
264 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 enquiry. 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 dis-
order. . . . The rails might have rusted on the
disused railways by now, the telephone poles
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 265
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 civilizations. 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 re-
action ended so certainly in 1940 ? Is it all so
very far away even now ? "
" It seems far enough away now," said Edith
Haydon.
" But forty years ago ? "
"No," said Karenin with his eyes upon the
mountains, " I think you underrate the available
intelligence in those early decades of the twentieth
century. Officially, I know, politically, that
intelligence didn't tell, but it was there. And
I question your hypothesis. I doubt if that
discovery could have been delayed. There is
a kind of inevitable logic now in the progress
of research. For a hundred years and more
thought and science have been going their own
way regardless of the common events of life.
You see, they have got loose. If there had been
no Holsten there would have been some similar
266 THE WORLD SET FREE
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, Alex-
andria, these were the first rough experiments
in association that made a security, a breathing-
space, in which enquiry 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 civiliza-
tion 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 next. 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. . . ."
6
About eleven Karenin had his midday meal,
and afterwards he slept among his artificial furs
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 267
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 Green-
land 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. . . .
7
For a time Karenin said very little, and Kahn,
the popular poet, talked of passionate love. He
said that passionate personal love had been the
abiding desire of humanity since ever humanity
had begun, and now only was it becoming a
possible experience. It had been a dream that
generation after generation had pursued, that
always men had lost on the verge of attainment.
To most of those who had sought it obstinately
it had brought tragedy. Now, lifted above sordid
268 THE WORLD SET FREE
distresses, men and women might hope for
realized and triumphant love. This age was the
Dawn of Love. . . .
Karenin remained downcast and thoughtful
while Kahn said these things. Against that
continued silence Kahn's voice presently seemed
to beat and fail. He had begun by address-
ing Karenin, but presently he was including
Edith Haydon and Rachel Borken in his appeal.
Rachel listened silently ; Edith watched Karenin
and very deliberately avoided Kahn's eyes.
" I know," said Karenin at last, " that many
people are saying this sort of thing. I know that
there is a vast release of love-making in the
world. This great wave of decoration and
elaboration that has gone about the world, this
Efflorescence, has of course laid hold of that.
I know that when you say that the world is
set free, you interpret that to mean that the
world is set free for love-making. Down there,
under the clouds, the lovers foregather. I
know your songs, Kahn, your half-mystical songs,
in which you represent this old hard world
dissolving into a luminous haze of love sexual
love. ... I don't think you are right or true in
that. You are a young imaginative man, and
you see life ardently with the eyes of youth.
But the power that has brought man into these
high places under this blue-veiled blackness of
the sky and which beckons us on towards the
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 269
immense and awful future of our race, is riper and
deeper and greater than any such emotions. . . .
" All through my life it has been a necessary
part of my work I have had to think of this
release of sexual love and the riddles that perfect
freedom and almost limitless power will put to
the soul of our race. I can see now, all over the
world, a beautiful ecstasy of waste ; * Let us sing
and rejoice and be lovely and wonderful.' . . .
The orgy is only beginning, Kahn. ... It was
inevitable but it is not the end of man-
kind. . . .
"Think what we are. It is but a yesterday
in the endlessness of time that life was a dream-
ing 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 dominat-
ing will, a question and an aspiration that
270 THE WORLD SET FREE
reaches to the stars. . . . Hunger and fear and
this that you make so much of, this sex, are
but the elementals of life out of which we have
arisen. All these elementals, I grant you, have
to be provided for, dealt with, satisfied, but all
these things have to be left behind."
" But Love," said Kahn.
" I speak of sexual love and the love of intimate
persons. And that is what you mean, Kahn."
Karenin shook his head. "You cannot stay
at the roots and climb the tree," he said. . . .
" No," he said after a pause, " this sexual
excitement, this love story, is just a part of
growing up and we grow out of it. So far
literature and art and sentiment and all our
emotional forms have been almost altogether
adolescent, plays and stories, delights and hopes,
they have all turned on that marvellous discovery
of the love interest, but life lengthens out now
and the mind of adult humanity detaches itself.
Poets who used to die at thirty live now to
eighty-five. You too, Kahn ! There are end-
less years yet for you and all full of learn-
ing. . . . We carry an excessive burthen 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
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 271
its anvil, it plunges through human life. You
poets, you young people want to turn it to
delight. Turn it to delight. That may be one
way out. In a little while, if you have any
brains worth thinking about, you will be satisfied
and then you will come up here to the greater
things. The old religions and their new offsets
want still I see to suppress all these things. Let
them suppress. If they can suppress. In their
own people. Either road will bring you here
at last to the eternal search for knowledge and
the great adventure of power."
" But incidentally," said Rachel Borken ;
"incidentally you have half of humanity, you
have womankind, very much specialized for for
this love and reproduction that is so much less
needed than it was."
"Both sexes are specialized for love and
reproduction," said Karenin.
" But the women carry the heavier burthen."
" Not in their imaginations," said Edwards.
" And surely," said Kahn, " when you speak
of love as a phase isn't it a necessary phase ?
Quite apart from reproduction the love of the
sexes is necessary. Isn't it love, sexual love,
which has released the imagination ? Without
that stir, without that impulse to go out from
ourselves, to be reckless of ourselves and
wonderful, would our lives be anything more
than the contentment of the stalled ox ? "
272 THE WORLD SET FREE
" The key that opens the door," said Karenin,
" is not the goal of the journey."
<( But women ! " cried Rachel. " Here we
are ! What is our future as women ? Is it
only that we have unlocked the doors of the
imagination for you men ? Let us speak of this
question now. It is a thing constantly in my
thoughts, Karenin. What do you think of us ?
You who must have thought so much of these
perplexities."
Karenin seemed to weigh his words. He
spoke very deliberately. " I do not care a rap
about your future as women. I do not care
a rap about the future of men as males. I
want to destroy these peculiar futures. I care
for your future as intelligences, as parts of and
contribution to the universal mind of the race.
Humanity is not only naturally overspecialized
in these matters, but all its institutions, its
customs, everything, exaggerate, intensify this
difference. I want to unspecialize women. No
new idea. Plato wanted exactly that. I do not
want to go on as we go now, emphasizing this
natural difference ; I do not deny it, but 1 want
to reduce it and overcome it."
" And we remain women," said Rachel
Borken.
" Need you remain thinking of yourselves
as women ? "
" It is forced upon us," said Edith Haydon.
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 273
" I do not think a woman becomes less of
a woman because she dresses and works like a
man," said Edwards. " You women here, I
mean you scientific women, wear white clothing
like the men, twist up your hair in the simplest
fashion, go about your work as though there was
only one sex in the world. You are just as much
women, even if you are not so feminine, as the
fine ladies down below there in the plains who
dress for excitement and display, whose only
thoughts are of lovers, who exaggerate every
difference. . . . Indeed we love you more. ..."
"But we go about our work," said Edith
Haydon.
" So does it matter ? " asked Rachel.
" If you go about your work and if the men
go about their work then for Heaven's sake be as
much woman as you wish," said Karenin. " When
I ask you to unspecialize, 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
T
274 THE WORLD SET FREE
was the drama, that was life. And the jealousy
of these demands was the master motive in the
world. You said, Kahn, a little while ago that
sexual love was the key that let one out from
the solitude of self, but I tell you that so far
it has only done so in order to lock us all up
again in a solitude of two. . . . All that may
have been necessary but it is necessary no longer.
All that has changed and changes still very
swiftly. Your future, Rachel, as women, is a
diminishing future."
" Karenin ? " asked Rachel, " do you mean
that women are to become men ? "
" Men and women have to become human
beings."
" You would abolish women ? But, Karenin,
listen ! There is more than sex in this. Apart
from sex we are different from you. We take
up life differently. Forget we are females,
Karenin, and still we are a different sort of
human being with a different use. In some
things we are amazingly secondary. Here am
I in this place because of my trick of manage-
ment, 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
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 275
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 role for us ? As important
perhaps as yours ? Equally important. We
hold the world up, Karenin, though you may
have raised it."
" You know very well, Rachel, that I believe
as you believe. I am not thinking of the
abolition of woman. But I do want to abolish
the heroine, the sexual heroine. I want to
abolish the woman whose support is jealousy
and whose gift possession. I want to abolish
the woman who can be won as a prize or locked
up as a delicious treasure. And away down
there the heroine flares like a divinity."
" In America," said Edwards, " men are
fighting duels over the praises of women
and holding tournaments before Queens of
Beauty."
" I saw a beautiful girl in Lahore," said Kahn,
" she sat under a golden canopy like a goddess
and three fine men armed and dressed like the
ancient paintings sat on steps below her to show
276 THE WORLD SET FREE
their devotion. And they wanted only her
permission to fight for her."
"That is the men's doing," said Edith
Haydon.
" I said" cried Edwards, " that man's im-
agination was more specialized for sex than the
whole being of woman. What woman would do
a thing like that ? Women do but submit
to it or take advantage of it."
" There is no evil between men and women
that is not a common evil," said Karenin. "It
is you poets, Kahn, with your love songs which
turn the sweet fellowship of comrades into this
woman-centred excitement. But there is some-
thing in women, in many women, which responds
to these provocations ; they succumb to a
peculiarly self-cultivating egotism. They become
the subjects of their own artistry. They develop
and elaborate themselves as scarcely any man
would ever do. They look for golden canopies.
And even when they seem to react against that,
they may do it still. I have been reading in the
old papers of the movements to emancipate
women that were going on before the discovery
of atomic force. These things which began with
a desire to escape from the limitations and
servitude of sex, ended in an inflamed assertion
of sex, and women more heroines than ever.
Helen of Holloway was at last as big a nuisance
in her way as Helen of Troy, and so long as you
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 277
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 con-
sequence. You have to learn to think of your-
selves 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.
8
" These questions are the next questions to
which research will bring us answers," said
Karenin. " While we sit here and talk idly and
inexactly of what is needed and what may be,
there are hundreds of keen-witted men and
women who are working these things ou.t, dis-
passionately and certainly, for the love of know-
ledge. 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
2 7 8 THE WORLD SET FREE
that seem so fixed will dissolve, all these incom-
patibles will run together, and we shall go on to
mould our bodies and our bodily feelings and
personal reactions as boldly as we begin now to
carve mountains and set the seas in their places
and change the currents of the wind."
" It is the next wave," said Fowler, who had
come out upon the terrace and seated himself
silently behind Karenin's chair.
" Of course in the old days," said Edwards,
" men were tied to their city or their country,
tied to the homes they owned or the work they
did. . . ."
"I do not see," said Karenin, "that there
is any final limit to man's power of self-modifi-
cation."
" There is none," said Fowler walking forward
and sitting down upon the parapet in front of
Karenin so that he could see his face. " There is no
absolute limit to either knowledge or power. . . .
I hope you do not tire yourself talking."
" I am interested," said Karenin. " I suppose
in a little while men will cease to be tired. I
suppose in a little time you will give us some-
thing that will hurry away the fatigue products
and restore our jaded tissues almost at once.
This old machine may be made to run without
slacking or cessation."
" That is possible, Karenin. But there is
much to learn."
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 279
" And all the hours we give to digestion and
half living ; don't you think there will be
some way of saving these ? "
Fowler nodded assent.
"And then sleep again. When man with
his blazing lights made an end to night in his
towns and houses it is only a hundred years or
so ago that that was done then it followed he
would presently resent his eight hours of use-
lessness. Shan't we presently take a tabloid or
lie in some field of force that will enable us to
do with an hour or so of slumber and rise
refreshed again ? "
" Frobisher and Ameer Ali have done work
in that direction."
" And then the inconveniences of age and
those diseases of the system that come with
years ; steadily you drive them back and you
lengthen and lengthen the years that stretch
between the passionate tumults of youth and the
contractions of senility. Man who used to
weaken and die as his teeth decayed now looks
forward to a continually lengthening, continually
fuller term of years. And all those parts of him
that once gathered evil against him, the vestigial
structures and odd treacherous corners of his
body, you know better and better how to deal
with. You carve his body about and leave it
re-modelled and unscarred. The psychologists
are learning how to mould minds, to reduce and
280 THE WORLD SET FREE
remove bad complexes of thought and motive, to
relieve pressures and broaden ideas. So that
we are becoming more and more capable of
transmitting what we have learnt and preserving
it for the race. The race, the racial wisdom,
science, gather power continually to subdue the
individual man to its own end. Is that not
so ? "
Fowler said that it was, and for a time he was
telling Karenin of new work that was in progress
in India and Russia. "And how is it with
heredity ? " asked Karenin.
Fowler told them of the mass of enquiry
accumulated and arranged by the genius of Tchen,
who was beginning to define clearly the laws of
inheritance and how the sex of children and the
complexions and many of the parental qualities
could be determined.
" He can actually do f "
" It is still so to speak a mere laboratory
triumph," said Fowler, " but to-morrow it will be
practicable."
" You see," cried Karenin, turning a laughing
face to Rachel and Edith, " while we have been
theorising about men and women, here is science
getting the power for us to end that old dispute
for ever. If woman is too much for us, we'll
reduce her to a minority, and if we do not like
any type of men and women, we'll have no more
of it. These old bodies, these old animal
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 281
limitations, all this earthy inheritance of gross
inevitabilities falls from the spirit of man like the
shrivelled cocoon from an imago. And for my
own part when I hear of these things I feel like
that like a wet crawling new moth that still
fears to spread its wings. Because where do
these things take us ? "
"Beyond humanity," said Kahn.
" No," said Karenin. " We can still keep
our feet upon the earth that made us. But the
air no longer imprisons us, this round planet is no
longer chained to us like the ball of a galley
slave. . . .
" In a little while men who will know how to
bear the strange gravitations, the altered pressures,
the attenuated unfamiliar gases and all the fearful
strangenesses of space will be venturing out from
this earth. This ball will be no longer enough
for us ; our spirit will reach out. . . . Cannot
you see how that little argosy will go glittering up
into the sky, twinkling and glittering smaller and
smaller until the blue swallows it up. They may
succeed out there ; they may perish, but other
men will follow them. . . .
" It is as if a great window opened," said
Karenin. . . .
9
As the evening drew on Karenin and those
who were about him went up upon the roof of the
282 THE WORLD SET FREE
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 imagina-
tion. He asked the surgeons many questions
upon the detailed possibilities of their science, and
he was keenly interested and excited by the things
they told him.
And as they talked the sun touched the
mountains, and became very swiftly a blazing and
indented hemisphere of liquid flame and sank.
Karenin looked blinking at the last quivering
rim of incandescence, and shaded his eyes and
became silent.
Presently he gave a little start.
" What ? " asked Rachel Borken.
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 283
" I had forgotten," he said.
" What had you forgotten ? "
" I had forgotten about the operation to-
morrow. I have been so interested as Man
to-day that I have nearly forgotten Marcus
Karenin. Marcus Karenin must go under your
knife to-morrow, Fowler, and very probably
Marcus Karenin will die." He raised his slightly
shrivelled hand. "It does not matter, Fowler.
It scarcely matters even to me. For indeed is it
Karenin who has been sitting here and talking ; is it
not rather a common mind, Fowler, that has
played about between us ? You and I and all of
us have added thought to thought, but the thread
is neither you nor me. What is true we all have ;
when the individual has altogether brought himself
to the test and winnowing of expression then the
individual is done. I feel as though I had already
been emptied out of that little vessel, that Marcus
Karenin, which in my youth held me so tightly
and completely. Your beauty, dear Edith, and
your broad brow, dear Rachel, and you Fowler,
with your firm and skilful hands, are now almost
as much to me as this hand that beats the arm of
my chair. And as little me. And the spirit that
desires to know, the spirit that resolves to do,
that spirit that lives and has talked in us to-day,
lived in Athens, lived in Florence, lives on, I
know, for ever. . . .
" And you, old Sun, with your sword of flame
284 THE WORLD SET FREE
searing these poor eyes of Marcus for the last
time of all, beware of me ! You think I die
and indeed I am only taking off one more coat
to get at you. I have threatened you for ten
thousand years, and soon I warn you I shall be
coming. When I am altogether stripped and my
disguises thrown away. Very soon now, old Sun,
I shall launch myself at you, and I shall reach
you and I shall put my foot on your spotted
face and tug you about by your fiery locks.
One step I shall take to the moon, and then I
shall leap at you. I've talked to you before, old
Sun, I've talked to you a million times, and now
I am beginning to remember. Yes, long ago,
long ago, before I had stripped off a few thousand
generations, dust now and forgotten, I was a hairy
savage and I pointed my hand at you and clearly
I remember it ! I saw you in a net. Have you
forgotten that, old Sun ? . . .
" Old Sun, I gather myself together out of the
pools of the individual that have held me dispersed
so long. I gather my billion thoughts into science
and my million wills into a common purpose.
Well may you slink down behind the mountains
from me, well may you cower. . . ."
10
Karenin desired that he might dream alone for
a little while before he returned to the cell in
LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN 285
which he was to sleep. He was given relief for a
pain that began to trouble him and wrapped
warmly about with furs, for a great coldness was
creeping over all things, and so they left him and
he sat for a long time watching the afterglow give
place to the darkness of night.
It seemed to those who had to watch over
him unobtrusively lest he should be in want of
any attention, that he mused very deeply.
The white and purple peaks against the golden
sky sank down into cold blue remoteness, glowed
out again and faded again, and the burning cressets
of the Indian stars, that even the moon-rise
cannot altogether quench, began their vigil. The
moon rose behind the towering screen of dark
precipices to the east, and long before it emerged
above these, its slanting beams had filled the deep
gorges below with luminous mist and turned the
towers and pinnacles of Lio Porgyul to a magic
dreamcastle of radiance and wonder. . . .
Came a great uprush of ghostly light above
the black rim of rocks, and then like a bubble that
is blown and detaches itself the moon floated oflf
clear into the unfathomable dark sky. . . .
And then Karenin stood up. He walked a
few paces along the terrace and remained for a
time gazing up at that great silver disc, that
silvery shield that must needs be man's first
conquest in outer space. . . .
Presently he turned about and stood with his
286 THE WORLD SET FREE
hands folded behind him, looking at the north-
ward stars. . . .
At length he went to his own cell. He lay
down there and slept peacefully till the morning.
And early in the morning they came to him and
the anaesthetic was given him and the operation
performed.
It was altogether successful, but Karenin was
weak and he had to lie very still ; and about
seven days later a blood clot detached itself from
the healing scar and travelled to his heart, and he
died in an instant in the night.
THE END
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Daily Telegraph. " Miss Montgomery is thoroughly interested
in her subject, and writes a thoughtful, individual story."
Liverpool Daily Post. "Miss Montgomery's simple charm of
diction and of construction is too well known to the majority of
readers to require comment, and it will be sufficient to say of her
present story that it is just as attractive as Misunderstood, and
contains exactly the same qualities."
Review of Reviews. "A picture of the ups and downs of the life
of a governess and the troubles of her little charges, intermingled
with a pleasantly romantic love story."
JOAN'S GREEN YEAR: LETTERS FROM
THE MANOR FARM TO HER BROTHER IN INDIA.
By E. L. DOON. Extra crown 8vo. 6*.
Bookman. "The story told in this series of letters has the
supreme merits of simplicity and naturalness, and the letters also
abound in pleasant anecdotes and in happy turns of phrase. We
congratulate Miss Doon upon a very likeable piece of work."
Westminster Gazette. " It touches many interests, and has
points in it which will appeal to almost every reader."
T. P.'i Weekly. "There is real love of the country and under-
standing of it in every page."
Birmingham Post. "The book is written with great taste and
charm, and breathes a delightful sense of quiet humour, sanity of
outlook, and a fine spirit of camaraderie."
Works by
Rabindranath Tagore
27TH THOUSAND.
GITANJALI (SONG OFFERINGS). A
COLLECTION OF PROSE TRANSLATIONS MADE
BY THE AUTHOR.
With an Introduction by W. B. Yeats and a
Portrait by W. Rothenstein. Crown 8vo. 4*. 6</.
net.
Nation. " Only the classics of mystical literature provide a
standard by which this handful of ' Song Offerings ' can be
appraised or understood."
IOTH THOUSAND.
THE GARDENER. LYRICS OF LOVE
AND LIFE.
Translated by the Author. With Portrait. Crown
8vo. 45. bd. net.
Daily Mail. " Flowers as fresh as sunrise. . . . One cannot tell
what they have lost in the translation, but as they stand they are
of extreme beauty."
7TH THOUSAND.
THE CRESCENT MOON. CHILD-
POEMS.
Translated by the Author. With 8 Illustrations
in Colour. Pott 410. 4*. 6d. net.
Globe. "Rabindranath Tagore 's revelation of the child-mind 5s
richer, more complete, more convincing, than any of which we
have had previous knowledge."
7TH THOUSAND.
SADHANA : THE REALISATION OF
LIFE. LECTURES.
Extra crown 8vo. 5*. net.
Daily Telegraph. " Contains, in little and with a commendable
freedom from decoration, the essence of Mr. Tagore 's message to
the Western world."
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
K. Clay and Sons, Ltd., Brunswick St., S.E.
PR Wells, Herbert George
5774. The world set free
W6
19U
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