In the Nitrogen Area
I have no wish to dwell overmuch upon my own affairs in this narrative;
for they formed a mere ripple on the surface of the torrent of events
which was bearing all of us along in its course. Yet to exclude them
entirely would be to omit something which is of importance; for they
must have influenced my outlook upon the situation as a whole and
possibly made me view it through eyes different from those which I had
used before.
My dreams and desires had come to the ground almost ere they were in
being; and what made it more bitter to me was that I felt they had been
crushed, not on their merits, but merely as subsidiaries which had
shared in the collapse of a more central matter. I guessed that Elsa
had, to some extent, at any rate, shared my feelings; and it was this
which made the downfall of my hopes all the harder to bear.
Try as I would, I could find no reason behind her attitude; and even
now, looking back upon that time, I cannot appreciate her motives.
In the whole affair of the Nitrogen Area I had been guided by purely
intellectual considerations. Nordenholt himself had advised me to keep
a tight rein upon any feelings which might divert me from this course.
And I was thus, perhaps, less able to appreciate her standpoint then
than I would have been a few months earlier.
On her side emotion, and not intellect, was the guiding star. The
picture of starving millions which had broken upon her without warning
had overpowered her normally clear brain. Thus there lay between us
a gulf which nothing seemed capable of filling. I thought, and still
believe, that emotion is a will-o’-the-wisp by which alone no man can
steer a course; but it is useless to deny its power when once it has
laid its influence upon a mind. Even had she given me a chance, I doubt
if I would have tried to reason with her; and she gave me no chance. I
never saw her alone; and when she met me perforce or by accident, she
treated me practically as a stranger. All the long evenings of planning
and dreaming had gone out of our lives.
As soon as I could make an opportunity, I questioned Nordenholt as to
the state of affairs. He answered me perfectly frankly.
“Elsa has never said a word to me about the South. I think she shrinks
from the idea even in her own mind; and she shrinks from me because
of it, as I can see. But she sticks to her work, even if she loathes
coming into contact with me daily; and I keep her as hard at it as I
can. The less time she has to think, the better for her; and I don’t
mean to leave her any time to brood over the affair. Poor girl, you
mustn’t feel hard about her, Jack. I can understand what it means to
her; and to you also: and her part is the saddest. She simply hates me
now; I can feel it. And neither of us can help her, that’s the worst of
it.”
To Nordenholt himself the situation must have been a terrible one; for
Elsa was closer to him than any other human being could ever be: and
the position now was worse even than if he had lost her entirely. I am
sure that he had never felt anything more than affection for her; but
she had become more to him, perhaps, just for that reason. I often used
to think that they formed natural complements for one another: he with
his great build and powerful personality, she with her slender grace
and her character, strong as his own, perhaps, but in a far different
sphere.
* * * * *
It was about this period _B. diazotans_ began to die out from the
face of the world which it had wrecked. I have already told how
Nordenholt had given me the news when it was still a possibility of
the future. From their studies upon isolated colonies of the microbe,
the bacteriologists had predicted its end. They had found a rapid
falling-off in its power of multiplication; and the segregation of a
number of the pests soon led to their perishing.
When it became clear that _B. diazotans_ was doomed, Nordenholt began
to send out scouting aeroplanes to collect samples of soil from various
districts and bring them back to the laboratories of the Nitrogen Area
where they could be examined. All told the same tale of extinction.
Gradually, the aeroplanes were sent further and further on their
journeys into the stricken lands; and at last it became clear that as
far as a large part of Europe was concerned, the terror was at an end.
The soil, of course, was completely ruined; but there was little to
fear in the way of a recrudescence of the blight.
It seems, nowadays, very strange that we had not already foreseen this
result; for the cause of it lay upon the surface of things. Once the
denitrifying bacteria had destroyed all the nitrogen compounds in the
soil, there was nothing left for them to live upon; and they perished
of starvation in their turn, following in the track of all the larger
organisms which their depredations had ruined.
As soon as Nordenholt had established the definite decease of _B.
diazotans_ in the accessible parts of the European continent, he sent
out the news to the whole remaining world with which he was in touch
through his wireless installation; and after some time had been spent
in various centres in which the remnants of humanity were gathered
together, word came back from the most widely-separated areas that
all over the world _B. diazotans_ had ceased to exist. In many places
it had even left no traces of any kind behind it; for as some of the
bacteria died their bodies, being nitrogenous, had served as food for
those still living; until at last the merest trace of their organisms
was all that could be found in the soil.
So this plague passed from the world as swiftly as it came; and its
passing left the future more certain than seemed possible in the early
stages of its career.
* * * * *
But if our gravest danger was thus removed, we in the Nitrogen Area
had other troubles which were nearer to us at that time. In his very
earliest calculations, Nordenholt, as I have told, had foreseen that
disease would be prevalent owing to the monotony of the diet which was
entailed by our conditions. The lack of fresh vegetables and the use
of salted meat gave rise to scurvy, which we endeavoured to ward off
by manufacturing a kind of synthetic lime juice for the population.
The success of this was not complete, however, and the disease caused
a very marked falling-off in the productive power of our labour. For
a time it seemed as though we were actually losing ground in our
factories, just at the moment when the destruction of the denitrifying
bacteria had raised our hopes to a high degree.
Nor was scurvy our only trouble. The debilitated health of the people
laid them open to all sorts of minor diseases, with their concomitant
decline in physical energy. Of these, the most serious was a new type
of influenza which ravaged the Nitrogen Area and caused thousands
of deaths. Here again, a fall in output coincided with the growth
and spread of the disease; but since the death-roll was a heavy one,
the number of mouths diminished markedly as well; so that it almost
appeared as though the two factors might balance each other. If there
were less food in the future, there would be fewer people to consume it.
I think the period of the influenza epidemic was one of the most trying
of all in the Nitrogen Area. As the reported cases increased in number,
individual medical attention became impossible; for many doctors died
of the scourge, and we could not risk the total annihilation of the
medical profession. Treatment of the disease was standardised as far as
possible and committed to the care of rapidly-trained laymen. Possibly
this led to many deaths which might have been avoided with more
efficient methods; but it was the only means which would leave us with
a supply of trained medical men who would be required in the future.
* * * * *
On the heels of the influenza epidemic, and possibly produced by it,
came a period of labour unrest in the Area. It was only what I had
always anticipated; for the strain which we were putting upon the
workers had now increased almost to the breaking point. There was no
way out of the difficulty, however; for unless the work was done, the
safety of the whole community would be imperilled. None the less, I
could not help finding excuses in my mind for those toiling millions.
To them, the connection between the factories and the food-supply must
have been difficult to trace; for they could hardly follow all the
ramifications in the lines between the coal in the pits and the next
harvest which was not even sown.
Nordenholt succeeded in stifling most of the disaffection by means of
a fresh newspaper campaign of propaganda. He had given his journals
a long period of rest in this direction, purposely, I believe, in
order that he might utilise them more effectively when this new
emergency arose. But though he certainly produced a marked effect by
his efforts, there remained among the workers an under-current of
discontent which could not be exorcised. It was not a case of open
disaffection which could have been dealt with by drastic methods; the
Intelligence section were unable to fasten upon any clear cases of what
in the old days would have been called sedition. It was rather a change
for the worse in the general attitude and outlook of the labouring part
of the community: an affair of atmosphere which left nothing solid
for Nordenholt to grasp firmly. Though I was out of direct touch with
affairs at the time, even I could not help the feeling that things were
out of joint. The demeanour of the workers in the streets was somehow
different from what it had been in the earlier days. There was a
sullenness and a tinge of aggressiveness in the air.
And in Nordenholt himself I noticed a corresponding change. He seemed
to me by degrees to be losing his impersonal standpoint. The new
situation appeared to be making him more and more dictatorial as time
went by. He had always acted as a Dictator; but in his personal contact
with men he had preserved an attitude of aloofness and certainty which
had taken the edge off the Dictatorship. Now, I noticed, his methods
were becoming more direct; and he was making certain test-points into
trials of strength, open and avowed, between himself and those who
opposed him. He always won, of course; but it was a different state of
things from that which had marked the inception of the Nitrogen Area.
There was more of the master and less of the comrade about him now.
Yet, looking back upon it all, I cannot but admit that his methods
were justified. The disaffection was noticeable; and only a strong
hand could put it down. Nordenholt’s tactics were probably the best
under the circumstances; but nevertheless they brought him into a
fresh orientation with regard to the workers. Instead of leading them,
he began more and more openly to drive them along the road which he
wished them to take.
* * * * *
I see that I have omitted to mention the attempted invasion of the
Nitrogen Area from the coasts of Europe which took place just before
this. To tell the truth, it was so complete a fiasco that it had almost
passed from my mind; but a few words may be devoted to it here.
When the Famine had done its work in Germany there still remained for
a time a number of inhabitants who had seized the food in the country
by force and who were thus enabled to prolong their existence while
their fellows died out. They belonged mainly to the old military class.
When they in turn ran short of supplies, their natural thought was to
plunder someone weaker than themselves; and learning of the existence
of the Clyde Valley colony, they determined that it furnished the most
probable source of loot. Apparently they imagined that the Fleet in the
Firth of Forth was deserted; for in order to excite no suspicion they
had kept their airships at long-range in the reconnaissances which they
undoubtedly made in advance of their actual onset; and it seems most
probable that they imagined they had nothing to fear beyond the risks
incident to the invasion of an unprotected country. At least, so it
appears to me; and there were no survivors of the expedition from whom
the truth might have been discovered.
Under cover of night, they seem to have put most of their men on board
merchant ships and sailed for the British coast at a time which would
have brought them off the land in the early hours of the morning when,
no doubt, they expected to get ashore without attracting attention,
since they must have supposed all the coastal inhabitants had perished.
Actually, however, their manœuvres had been followed by the seaplane
patrol which cruised in the North Sea; and as soon as they left port,
the Fleet was got into a state of preparedness. The two forces met
somewhere on the high seas; the German squadron, utterly defenceless,
was sunk without any resistance worthy of the name.
This was the only actual attempt at invasion which the Nitrogen Area
had to repel; for Nordenholt’s aeroplane propaganda had checked any
desire on the part of the survivors of the Famine in this country to
approach the Clyde Valley under any conditions.
* * * * *
Though Nordenholt succeeded in suppressing the outward manifestations
of labour unrest at this period, I think it is fairly clear that he
was unable to reach down to the sources of the trouble. At the root of
things lay a vague dissatisfaction with general conditions, which it
was impossible to exorcise; and this peculiar spirit manifested itself
in all sorts of sporadic forms which gave a good deal of trouble before
they could be got under control.
For example, at about this time, there was an outbreak of something
akin to the dancing mania which I had seen in London. It began by a
rapid extension of normal dancing in the halls of the city; but from
this it soon passed into revelry in the public squares at night; and
finally took the form of corybantic displays in the streets. As soon
as it began to demoralise the people, Nordenholt applied the drastic
treatment of a fire-hose to the groups of dancers; and, between this
method and ridicule, he succeeded in stamping out the disease before it
had attained dangerous proportions.
But this was only one of the symptoms of the grave troubles which were
menacing the success of Nordenholt’s plans. I do not doubt that he had
foreseen the condition into which affairs had drifted; but it seems to
me that he recognised the impossibility of eradicating the roots of the
discontent. Its origin lay in the actual material and moral states of
affairs; and without abandoning his whole scheme it was impossible to
change these things.
I know that during these months he stiffened the discipline of the
Labour Defence Force considerably in view of eventualities; and he had
frequent conferences with the officers in command of its various units.
I guessed, from what I saw, that in future he intended to drive the
population into safety if he could not lead them there; and I confess
that at times I took a very gloomy view of our chances of success.
* * * * *
It was during this trying period, I think, that Nordenholt’s young
men were his greatest source of strength. He was always in touch
with them; and in some way he seemed to draw encouragement from them
while spurring them on to further efforts. They seemed to lean on him
and yet to support him in his work; and often I felt that without
some comradeship as this our whole plans would have been doomed to
failure. The Nordenholt Gang practically occupied all the posts of any
responsibility in the Nitrogen Area; and this, I expect, rendered the
working of the machine much smoother than it would otherwise have been.
Since my new work brought me into touch with many fresh departments, my
acquaintance with Nordenholt’s men increased; and I was amazed to find
the ramifications of his system and the super-excellence of the human
material in which he had dealt. They were all young, hardly any were
over thirty-five and most were younger; yet they seemed to have a fund
of moral courage and self-reliance which struck me especially in those
dark times. They never seemed to doubt that in the end things would
come right. It was not that they blindly trusted in Nordenholt to the
exclusion of common sense: for they all seemed to face the facts quite
squarely. But behind their even weighings of the situation I detected
an unspoken yet whole-hearted belief that Nordenholt would bring us
through without a hitch. Hero-worship has its uses, when it is soundly
based; and all of them, it was easy to see, had made Nordenholt their
hero. When I thought over the many-sided nature of their activities and
the differences of personality among them, I could not help finding
my view of Nordenholt himself expanding. They were all picked men,
far above the average; their minds worked on different lines; their
interests were as divergent as the Poles: and yet, one and all, they
recognised Nordenholt as their master. I do not mean that he excelled
them in their own special lines: for I doubt, in many cases, whether
he had even a grip of the elements of the subjects which they had made
their own. But he had been able to impress upon all these various
intellects the feeling that he was in a class by himself; and that
effect implied immense personality in him.
Despite their widely different fields of activity, there was a very
strong _esprit de corps_ among them all; and it was not for some time
that I felt myself to be received on equal terms with the rest. I think
they felt that I was outside their particular circle, at first. But the
real passport into it was efficiency; and when I had had time to show
my power of organisation, they accepted me at once as one of themselves.
Of them all, I think Henley-Davenport interested me most, though I
can hardly put into words the reasons which led to this attraction. I
never learned how Nordenholt had discovered him originally; but I found
that when Henley-Davenport began to open up the subject of induced
radioactivity, Nordenholt had stepped in and bought up for him a huge
supply of various radioactive materials which he required in his work
and which he had despaired of acquiring on account of their enormous
cost.
What struck me most about him was his fearlessness. Once he gave me,
incidentally in the course of a talk upon something else, a suggestion
of the risks which his work entailed. It seemed to me that I would have
faced half a dozen other kinds of death rather than that one. Purely
as a matter of physiological interest, he told me that the effect of
radioactive materials on a large scale upon the human body would exceed
the worst inventions of mediæval torturers.
“The radiations, you know,” he said, drawing at his cigarette. “The
radiations have a knack of destroying tissue; but they don’t produce
immediate effects. The skin remains quite healthy, to all appearances,
for days after the damage is done. Then you get festering sores
appearing on the affected parts.
“Well, on a large scale, the affected parts will be the whole surface
of the body; so that in itself will be pretty bad, as you can see. Poor
old Job will have to take a back seat after this.
“Then, again, I expect enormous quantities of radioactive gas will be
evolved; and probably one will breathe some of it into one’s lungs.
The result of that will be rather worse than the external injuries, of
course. I doubt if a man will last half an hour under that treatment;
but that half-hour will be the limit in pain.”
“Can’t you use a mask or some lead protection?” I asked. “Or could you
not fix up the whole thing in a bomb-proof case which would keep the
rays from things outside?”
“Well, that’s the first thing one thinks of, naturally; but to tell the
truth it’s impracticable for various reasons. Some of them are implicit
in the nature of the processes I’m using; but even apart from that,
look at the state of affairs when the thing does go off with a bang. It
will be one of the biggest explosions, considering the amounts I have
to use; and if I’m going to be flung about like a child’s toy, I prefer
to fly light and not have a sheet of lead mail to go along with me and
crush me when I strike anything. As to a mask, nothing would stick on.
You would simply be asking to have your face driven in, if you wore
anything of the kind.
“No, I’ve been lucky so far. I’ve only lost three fingers in a minor
burst-up. And I’m going to stake on my luck rather than risk certain
damage. But if I can only pull it off, Flint.... Nordenholt thinks a
lot of it; and I don’t want to disappoint him if I can help it. If I do
go to glory, I’ll at least leave something behind me which will make it
more than worth while.”
Nordenholt, I learned later, _did_ “think a lot of it.” I spoke to him
on the subject one day; and I was astonished to find how much stress he
laid on the Henley-Davenport work.
“You don’t realise it, Jack; but it’s just on the cards that our
whole future turns on Henley-Davenport. I see things coming. They’re
banking up on the horizon already; and if the storm bursts, nothing but
Henley-Davenport can save us. And the worst of it is that he doesn’t
seem to be getting ahead much at present. It’s no fault of his. No
one could work harder; and the other two--Struthers and Anderson--are
just as keen. But it doesn’t come out, somehow. And the tantalising
thing is that he has proved it _can_ be done; only at present it isn’t
economical. He gets energy liberated, all right; but where we need a
ton of gunpowder, he can only give us a percussion cap, so to speak. If
only he can hit on it in time....”
* * * * *
For my own part, that period was depressing. All the joy had gone out
of my work. Only after I had lost her did I realise how great a part
Elsa had played in my planning of the future. Her disappearance cast
a shade over all my schemes; and soon I gave up entirely the side of
the reconstruction in which we had collaborated. I could not bear to
think over again the lines along which we had worked so intimately in
common. I simply put them out of my mind and concentrated my attention
exclusively upon the material aspects of the problem.
I have said this quite freely; though possibly the reader may look
upon me as a weak man for allowing such factors to enter into so vast
a matter. Had I been superhuman, no doubt, I could have shut my mind
to the past; and gone forward without flinching. But I never imagined
that I was a super-man; and at this time especially I felt anything but
superhuman. I was wounded to the quick; and all I desired was to avoid
the whole subject of Elsa in my thoughts. And when I come to think of
it, it seems quite probable that I did my best work in this way. If I
had continued to dream of Fata Morgana and all its wonders, I should
simply have drugged myself with a mental opiate and my work would have
suffered on other sides.
Elsa’s whole attitude to Nordenholt and myself had been a puzzle. I
could not understand why she should have been so bitter against us; for
try as I could, I failed to see anything discreditable in our doings.
The logic of events had thrust us into the position we occupied, it
seemed to me; and I could not appreciate her view of the situation.
Nordenholt kept silence on the subject for some days after our trip
up Loch Lomond; but he finally gave me his views in reply to urgent
questioning.
“I think it’s something like this, Jack: from what I know of Elsa in
the past, she’s got a vivid imagination, very vivid; and it happens to
be the pictorial imagination. Give her a line of description, and she
has the power of calling up the scene in her mind, filling in missing
details and producing something which impresses her profoundly.”
“Well, I don’t see what that’s got to do with calling me a brute,” I
said. “It doesn’t seem to help me much.”
“It’s quite clear to me. The few details she got from that confounded
missorted form were enough to start her imagination. She instinctively
called up a vision of starving people, suffering children and all the
rest of the affairs in the South. And you know, Jack, these visions
of hers are wonderfully clear and sharp. It wasn’t you who built Fata
Morgana on these afternoons; it was her imagination that did it and you
followed in her track.”
“Yes, you’re quite right, Nordenholt. I don’t think I would have so
much as thought of dream-cities if she hadn’t led the way. And she
certainly had the knack of making them seem concrete.”
“Very well; assume she had this vision of starving humanity. You know
her type of mind--everything for others? What sort of effect would that
picture produce upon her? A tremendous revulsion of feeling, eh? Her
whole emotional side would be up in arms; and she has strong emotions,
though she doesn’t betray them. Her intellectual side didn’t get a
chance against the combination of that picture and her ideals. It was
simply swept out at once.
“But in spite of all her emotions, she’s level-headed. Sooner or later
she’ll begin to think more calmly. And she’s very just, too. That ought
to help, I think. Oh, I don’t despair about her; or rather, I wouldn’t
despair about her if it weren’t for some things that are coming yet.
I’m not going to buoy you up with any hopes, Jack, for I believe in
dealing straight. I can’t let you hope for much; we’ve both lost
enormously in her eyes. But I’ve seen cases in which her imagination
misled her before and her reason came out in the end. It may be so this
time. But don’t expect anything, Jack; and don’t try to gain anything.
She’s a very straight girl, and if she finds she has been wrong she
won’t hesitate to come and admit it to you without any encouragement
on your part. But it has been a horrible affair for her; and you must
remember that, if you think hardly of her at times.”
“_I_ think hardly of her! You don’t know me, Nordenholt, or you
wouldn’t say that.”
“Well, for both our sakes, I hope her intellect will get control of her
feelings. I hate to see her going about her work and know that she has
lost all faith in me now. She was the one creature in the world that
loved me, you know, Jack; and it’s hard.”
Then he laughed contemptuously, as though at his own weakness.
“It’s quite evident I’m not the man I was, Jack. But somehow, in this
affair we’re both in the same boat to some extent; and I let that slip
out. You see that Elsa hasn’t the monopoly of an emotional temperament!”
* * * * *
All great undertakings with uncertain ends appear to run the same
course. First there is the period of inception, a time of high hopes
and eager toil and self-sacrifice; then, as the novelty wears away,
there follows a stage in which the first enthusiasm has died down and
an almost automatic persistence takes the place of the great emotional
driving-force of the early days; later still, when enthusiasm has
vanished, there comes a time when the meaner side of human nature
reasserts itself. My narrative has reached the point of junction
between these last two divisions; and the pages which I have yet to
write must perforce deal mainly with the troubles which beset us in the
period of lassitude and nerve-strain which followed naturally upon the
other phases of the situation.
I have thrown this chapter into a series of isolated sections; for I
believe that such a treatment best suggests the state of things at the
time. We had lost the habit of connected thought, as far as the greater
events were concerned. Our daily round absorbed our attention; and it
was only occasionally that we were jarred out of our grooves by some
event of salient importance.
The whole atmosphere which surrounded us was depressing; and it slowly
and surely made its impression upon our minds and formed the background
upon which our thoughts moved. The gloom of the smoke-filled sky had
its reaction upon our psychology. The old sunlight seemed to have
vanished from our lives. And at this time we were all beginning to pay
the price for the feverish activity of the earlier days in the Area.
Our work, whether mental or physical, wearied us sooner than before;
and its monotony irritated our nerves. Such recreations as we had--and
they were few enough at this time--failed to relieve the tension. Among
the labouring classes, in particular, this condition of lassitude
showed itself in a marked degree.
Nordenholt, with his finger on the pulse of things, grew more and more
anxious as time went on. On the surface, he still appeared optimistic;
but from chance phrases here and there I deduced that his uneasiness
was increasing; and that he anticipated something which I myself could
not foresee. Knowing what I do now, it seems to me that in those days
I must have been blind indeed not to understand what was before us;
but I frankly confess that I missed the many signs which lay in our
path from day to day. When the disaster came upon us, it took me almost
completely by surprise.