"Would you like some tea, Mr Weener?" asked Constance.
"Tea! He looks like a secret cocacola guzzler to me! Are you an American
Mr Uh?" Mama demanded fiercely, deigning for the first time to address
me.
"I was born in California, Mrs Thario," I assured her.
"Pity. Pity. Damned shame," she muttered.
I was partially relieved from my uneasiness by the appearance of George
Thario, who bounded in, waved lightly at his sisters and kissed his
mother just below her hairline. "My respectful duty, Mama," he greeted.
"Damned hypocrisy. You did your duty youd be in the army."
"Bloodpressure," warned Constance.
"Have they made you thoroughly miserable, Mr Weener? Don't mind
them--there's something wrong with all the Tharios except the Old Man.
Blood gone thin from too much intermarriage."
"Just like incest," exclaimed Winifred. "Don't you think incest's
fascinating, Mr Weener? Eugene O'Neill and all that sort of thing?"
"Morbid," objected Constance.
"Damned nonsense," grunted Mama.
"Cream or lemon, Mr Weener?" inquired Constance. Mama, moved by a
hospitable reflex, filled a grudging cup.
"Cream, please," I requested.
"Turn it sour," muttered Mama, but she poured the cream and handed the
cup to Constance who passed it to Pauline who gave it to me with a
gracious smile.
"You just mustnt forget to keep Pauline in mind, Mr Weener; she would be
a terrific help when you become horribly rich and have to do a lot of
stuffy entertaining."
"Really, Winifred," protested Constance.
"Help him to the poorhouse and a damned good riddance."
I spent another uneasy fifteen minutes before I could decently make my
departure, wondering whether I hadnt made a mistake in becoming involved
with the Tharios at all. But there being no question of the solidity of
the general's position, I decided, since it was not afterall incumbent
upon me to continue a social connection with them, to bear with it and
confine my acquaintance as far as possible to Joe and his father.
_42._ As soon as the contracts were awarded the struggle began to obtain
necessary labor and raw materials. We were straining everything to do a
patriotic service to the country in time of war, but we came up against
the competition for these essentials by ruthless capitalists who had no
thought but to milk the government by selling them supplies at an
enormous profit. Even with the wholehearted assistance of General Thario
it was an endless and painful task to comply with, break through, or
evade the restrictions and regulations thrown up by an uncertain and
slowmoving administration, restrictions designed to aid our competitors
and hamper us. Yet we got organized at last and by the time three
Russian marshals had been purged and the American highcommand had been
shaken up several times, we had doubled the capacity of our plant and
were negotiating the purchase of a new factory in Florida.
I set aside a block of stock for the general, but its transfer was a
delicate matter on account of the indefatigable nosiness of the
government and I approached his son for advice. "Alberich!" exclaimed
Joe incomprehensibly. "Just wrap it up and mail it to him. Mama, God
bless her, takes care of all financial transactions anyway." And
doubtless with great force, I thought.
Such directness, I pointed out, might have embarrassing repercussions
because of inevitably smallminded interpretation if the facts ever
became public. We finally solved the problem by putting the gift in
George Thario's name, he making a will leaving it to the general. I
informed his father in a guarded letter of what we had done and he
replied at great length and somewhat indiscreetly, as the following
quotation may show:
"... In spite of pulling every handy and unhandy wire I am still
billeted on this ridiculous desk. The General Staff is the most
incompetent set of blunderers ever to wear military uniform since Bull
Run. They've never heard of Foch, much less of Falkenhayn and Mackensen,
to say nothing of Rommel, Guderian or Montgomery. They rest idly behind
their Washington breastworks when the order of the day should be attack,
attack, and again attack; keeping the combat entirely verbal, weakening
the spirit of our forces and waiting supinely for the enemy to bring the
war to us...."
Although I was too much occupied with the press of business to follow
the daytoday progress of hostilities, there was little doubt the general
was justified in his strictures. The war was entirely static. With fear
of raids by marauding aircraft allayed, the only remaining uneasiness of
the public had been whether the words "heavier than air craft" covered
robot or V bombs. But when weeks had passed without these dreadful
missiles whistling downward, this anxiety also went and the country
settled down to enjoy a wartime prosperity as pleasant, notwithstanding
the fiftyhour week, rationing, and the exorbitant incometax, as the
peacetime panic had been miserable. In my own case Consolidated Pemmican
was quoted at 38 and I was on my way, in spite of all hampering
circumstances, to reap the benefits of foresight and industry. Unique
among great combats, not a shot had so far been exchanged and everyone,
except cranks, began to look upon the academic conflict as an unalloyed
benefit.
Gradually the war began leaving the frontpages, military analysts found
themselves next to either the chessproblems, Today's Selected Recipe, or
the weekly horoscope; people once more began to concern themselves with
the grass. It now extended in a vast sweep from a point on the Mexican
coast below the town of Mazatlan, northward along the slope of the Rocky
Mountains up into Canada's Yukon Province. It was wildest at its point
of origin, covering Southern California and Nevada, Arizona and part of
New Mexico, and it was narrowest in the north where it dabbled with
delicate fingers at the mouth of the Mackenzie River. It had spared
practically all of Alaska, nearly all of British Columbia, most of
Washington, western Oregon and the seacoast of northern California.
Why it surged up to the Rockies and not over them when it had conquered
individually higher mountains was not understood, but people were quick
once more to take hope and remember the plant's normal distaste for cold
or think there was perhaps something in the rarefied atmosphere to
paralyze the seeds or inhibit the stolons, so preventing further
progress. Even through the comparatively low passes it came at such a
slow pace methods tried fruitlessly in Los Angeles were successful in
keeping it back. Everyone was quite ready to wipe off the Far West if
the grass were going to spare the rest of the country.
General Thario's indiscreet letters kept coming. If anything, they
increased in frequency, indiscretion, and length as his continued
frustration in securing a field command was added to his helpless wrath
at the generalstaff's ineptitude. "... They have got hold of that odd
female scientist, Francis," he wrote, "and have made her turn over her
formula for making grass go crazy. It's to be used as a war weapon, but
how or where I don't know. Just the sort of silly rot a lot of armchair
theorists would dream up...."
Later he wrote indignantly: "... They are sending a group of picked men
to Russia to inoculate the grasses on the steppes with this Francis
stuff. Sheer waste of trained men; bungling incompetence. Why not send a
specially selected group of hypnotists to persuade the Russians to sue
for peace? It would be better to have given them Mills bombs and let
them blow up the Kremlin. Time and effort and good men thrown away ..."
Still later he wrote with unconcealed satisfaction: "... Well, that
silly business of inoculating the steppes came to exactly nothing. Our
fellows got through of course and did their job, but nothing happened to
the grass. Either Francis gave them the wrong formula (possibly mislaid
the right one in her handbag) or else what worked in California wouldn't
do elsewhere. She is busy trying to explain herself to a military
commission right now. For my part they can either shoot her or put her
in charge of the WAC. It's of no moment. You can't fight a determined
enemy with sprayguns and formulas. Attack with infantry by way of
Siberia ..."
_43._ While everyone, except possibly General Thario and others in
similar position, was enjoying the new comradeinarms atmosphere the
abortive war had brought on, a sudden series of submarine attacks on the
Pacific Fleet provided a disagreeable jolt and ended the bloodless stage
of the conflict. Tried and proved methods of detection and defense
became useless; the warships were nothing more than targets for the
enemy's torpedoes.
In quick succession the battleships _Montana_, _Louisiana_, _Ohio_, and
_New Hampshire_ were sunk, as were the carriers _Gettysburg_,
_Antietam_, _Guadalcanal_, and _Chapultepec_ as well as the cruisers
_Manitowoc_, _Baton Rouge_, _Jackson_, _Yonkers_, _Long Beach_,
_Evanston_ and _Portsmouth_, to say nothing of the countless destroyers
and other craft. Never had the navy been so crippled and the people,
presaging correctly a forthcoming invasion, suffered a new series of
terrors which was only relieved by the news of the Russian landings on
the California coast at Cambria, San Simeon and Big Sur.
"... What did I tell you? What did I tell them, the duffers and
dunderheads? We could have been halfway across Asia by now; instead we
waited and hemmed and hawed till the enemy, from the sheer weight of our
inertia, was forced to attack. The whole crew should be courtmartialed
and made to study the campaigns of Generals Shafter and Wheeler as
punishment." General Thario's always precise handwriting wavered and
trembled with the violence of his disgust.
An impalpable war, pregnant with annihilating scientific devices and
other unseen bogies was one thing; actual invasion of the sacred soil
over which Old Glory flew, and by presumptuous foreigners who couldnt
even speak English, was quite another. At once the will of the nation
stiffened and for the first time something approaching enthusiasm was
manifest. Cartoonists, moved by a common impulse, unanimously drew
pictures of Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeves and preparing to give the
pesky interlopers a good trouncing before hurling them back into the
Pacific.
Unfortunately the presence of the grass prevented quick eviction of the
unwelcome visitors. Only a small portion of the armed forces was based
on the Pacific coast, because of the logistical problems presented by
inadequacies of supply and transportation. Of these only a fraction
could be sent to the threatened places for fear dispersions of the main
body would prove disastrous if the landings were feints. Thus the enemy
came ashore practically unopposed at his original landingpoints and
secured small additional beachheads at Gorda, Lucia, Morro Bay and
Carmel.
East of the grass there were whole armies who had completed basic
training, fit and supple. The obvious answer to the invasion was to load
them on transports and ship them to the theater of operations.
Unfortunately the agreement not to use heavierthanaircraft was an
insuperable bar to this action.
That the pact had never been designed to prevent nations from defending
their soil against an invader was certain; thousands of voices urged
that we keep the spirit of the treaty and disregard the letter. No one
could expect us to sit idly by and let our homeland be invaded because
of overfinicky interpretation of a diplomatic document.
But in spite of this clear logic, the American people were swept by a
wave of timidity. "If we use airplanes," they argued, "so will the
Russians; airplanes mean bombs; bombs mean atombombs. Better to let the
Russians hold what advantage their invasion has given them than to have
our cities destroyed, our population wiped out, our descendants--if
any--born with six heads or a dozen arms as a result of radioactivity."
According to General Thario, for a while it was touchandgo whether the
President would yield to the men of vision or the others. But in the end
apprehension and calculation ordained that every effort must be made to
reinforce the defense of the West Coast--except the effective one.
Of course every dirigible was commandeered and work speeded up on those
under construction; troopships, heedless of their vulnerability, rushed
for the Panama Canal; while negotiations were opened with Mexico,
looking toward transporting divisions over its territory to a point
south of the weed.
While confusion and defeatism took as heavy a toll of the country's
spirit as an actual defeat on the battlefield, the Russians slowly
pushed their way inland and consolidated their positions. The American
units offered valiant resistance, but little by little they were driven
northward until a fairly fixed front was established south of San
Francisco from the ocean to the bay and a more fluid one from the bay to
the edge of the grass. Army men, like the public, were suspicious of the
enemy's apparent contentment with this line, for they reasoned it
presaged further landings to the north.
General Thario's jubilation contrasted with the common gloom. "At last
the blunderers have given me active duty. I have a brigade in the Third
Army--finest of all. Can't write exactly where I'm stationed, but it is
not far from a wellknown city noted for its altitude, located in a
mining state. Brigade is remarkably fit, considering, and the men are
rearing to go. Keep your ear open for some news--it won't be long...."
_44._ The news was of the heroic counterlandings. The entire fleet,
disdainful of possible submarine action, stood off from the rear of the
Russian positions, bombarding them for fortyeight hours preliminary to
landing marines who fought their way inland to recapture nearly half the
invaded territory. Simultaneously the army below San Francisco pushed
the Russians back and made contact at some points with the marines. The
enemy was reduced to a mere foothold.
But the whole operation proved no more than a rearguard action. As
General Thario wrote, "We are fighting on the wrong continent." Joe was
even broader and more emphatic. "It's a putup job," he complained, "to
keep costplus plants like this operating. If they called off their silly
war (Beethoven down in the cellar during the siege of Vienna expresses
the right attitude) and went home, the country would fall back into
depression, we'd have some kind of revolution and everybody'd be better
off."
I had suspected him of being some kind of parlor radical and although he
would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions, it made me uneasy to have
a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his ideas strictly
to himself and not leave any more memopads scribbled over with clef
signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended
his father's goodwill--the general's assignment to a fieldcommand hadnt
altered the status of our contracts--and we had too many unscrupulous
competitors to rely solely upon merit for the continuance of our sales.
George Thario's attitude was symptomatic of the demoralization of the
country, apparent even during our momentary success. There was no will
to victory, and the generalstaff, if one could believe General Thario,
was too unimaginative and inflexible to meet the peculiar conditions of
a war circumscribed and shaped by the alien glacier dividing the country
and diverting normal operations into novel channels.
So the new landings at Astoria and Longview, though anticipated and
indeed precisely indicated by the flimsiness of the Russian resistance
to the counteroffensive, caught the highcommand by surprise. "Never was
a military operation more certain," wrote General Thario, "and never was
less done to meet the certainty. Albert, if a businessman conducted
himself like the military college he would be bankrupt in six months."
Wherever the fault lay, the American gains were wiped out and the
invaders swept ahead to occupy all of the country west of the grass.
Boastfully, they sent us newsreels of their entries into Portland and
Seattle. They established headquarters in San Francisco and paraded
forty abreast down Market Street--renamed Krassny Prospekt. The Russians
also renamed Montgomery Street and Van Ness after Mooney and Billings
respectively, but for some reason abandoned these designations almost
immediately.
But for all their celebrations and 101 gun salutes, this was as far as
they could go; the monstrous growth which had clogged our defense now
sealed the invaders off and held them in an evershrinking sector. Now
came another period of quiescence in the war, but a period radically
different in temper from the first. There were many, perhaps
constituting a majority, who like George Thario wanted a peace, almost
any kind of peace, to be made. Others attempted to ignore the presence
of a war entirely and to conduct their lives as though it did not exist.
Still others seemed to regard it as some kind of game, a contest carried
on in a bloodless vacuum, and from these to the newspapers and the
Wardepartment came the hundreds of plans, nearly all of them entirely
fantastic, for conquering an enemy now unassailably entrenched.
But while pessimism and lassitude governed the United States the
intruders were taking energetic measures to increase their successes. "I
have been present at the questioning of two spies," reported General
Thario, "and I want to tell you the enemy is not going to miss a single
opportunity, unlike ourselves. What they have in mind I cannot guess;
they can't fly over the grass any more than we can as long as they want
to conciliate world opinion and I doubt if they can tunnel under it, but
that they intend to do _something_ is beyond question."
Often the obvious course is the surprising one; since the Russians
couldnt go over or under the grass they decided to march on top of it.
They had heard of our prewar snowshoe excursions on its surface and so
they equipped a vast army with this clumsy footgear and set it in motion
with supplytrains on wide skis pulled by the men themselves. Russian
ingenuity, boasted the Kremlin, would succeed in conquering the grass
where the decadent imperialists had failed.
"It is unbelievable--you might even call it absurd, but at least they
are doing something, not sitting twiddling their thumbs. My men would
give six months' pay to be as active as the enemy. To be sure they are
grotesque and inefficient--so was the Army of Italy. Imagine sending an
army--or armies if our reports are correct--on a six hundred mile march
without an airforce, without artillery, without any mechanized
equipment whatsoever. Unless, like the Army of Italy, they have a
Bonaparte concealed behind their lunacy they have no chance at all of
success, but by the military genius of Joseph Eggleston Johnston, if I
were a younger man and not an American I would like to be with them just
for the fun they are having."
By its very nature the expedition was composed exclusively of infantry
divisions carrying the latest type of automatic rifle. The field
commissaries, the ambulances, the baggagetrains, had to be cut to the
barest minimum and General Thario wrote that evidently because of the
impossibility of taking along artillery the enemy had also abandoned
their light and heavy machineguns. Against this determined threat,
behind the wall of the Rockies, the American army waited with field
artillery, railway guns, bazookas and flamethrowers. For the first time
there was belief in a Russian defeat if not in eventual American
victory.
But the waiting Americans were not to be given the opportunity for
handtohand combat. Since planes could not report the progress of the
snowshoers over the grass, dirigibles and free balloons drifting with
the wind gave minutetominute reports. Though many of the airships were
shot down and many more of the balloons blown helplessly out of the
area, enough returned to give a picture of the rapid disintegration of
the invading force.
Nothing like it had happened to an army since 1812. The snowshoes,
adequate enough for short excursions over the edge of the grass, became
suicidal instruments on a march of weeks. Starting eastward from their
bases in northern California, Oregon and Washington, in military
formation, singing triumphantly in minor keys, the Slavic steamroller
had presented an imposing sight. Americans in the occupied area, seeing
column after column of closely packed soldiers tramping endlessly up and
over the grass, said it reminded them of old prints of Pickett's charge
at Gettysburg.
The first day's march went well enough, though it covered no more than a
few miles. At night they camped upon great squares of tarpaulin and in
the morning resumed their webfooted way. But the night had not proved
restful, for over the edges of every tarpaulin the eager grass had
thrust impatient runners and when the time came to decamp more than half
the canvases had been left in possession of the weed. The second day's
progress was slower than the first and it was clear to the observers the
men were tiring unduly. More than one threw away his rifle to make the
marching easier, some freed themselves of their snowshoes and so after a
few yards sank, inextricably tangled into the grass; others lay down
exhausted, to rise no more. The men in the balloons could see by the way
the feet were raised that the inquisitive stolons were more and more
entangling themselves in the webbing.
Still the Soviet command poured fresh troops onto the grass. Profiting
perhaps by the American example, they transported new supplies to the
army by dirigibles, replacing the lost tarpaulins and rifles, daringly
sending whole divisions of snowshoers by parachute almost to the eastern
edge. This last experiment proved too reckless, for enough of these
adventurers were located to permit their annihilation by longrange
artillery.
"Their endurance is incredible, magnificent," eulogized General Thario
enthusiastically. "They are contending not only with the prospect of
meeting fresh, unworn troops on our side, but against a tireless enemy
who cannot be awed or hurt and even more against their own feelings of
fear and despair which must come upon them constantly as they get
farther into this green desert, farther from natural surroundings,
deeper into the silence and mystery of the abnormal barrier they have
undertaken to cross. They are supermen and only supernatural means will
defeat them."
But there was plenty of evidence that the general credited the foe with
a stronger spirit than they possessed. Their spirit was undoubtedly
high, but it could not stand up against the relentless harassment of the
grass. The weary, sodden advance went on, slower and slower; the toll
higher and higher. There were signs of dissatisfaction, mutiny and
madness. Some units turned about to be shot down by those behind, some
wandered off helplessly until lost forever. The dwindling of the great
army accelerated, airborne replacements dependent on such erratic
transport failed to fill the gaps.
The marchers no longer fired at the airships overhead; they moved their
feet slowly, hopelessly, stood stockstill for hours or faltered
aimlessly. Occasional improvised white flags could be seen, held
apathetically up toward the balloonists. Long after their brave start
the crazed and starving survivors began trickling into the American
lines where they surrendered. They were dull and listless except for one
strange manifestation: they shied away fearfully from every living plant
or growth, but did they see a bare patch of soil, a boulder or stretch
of sand, they clutched, kissed, mumbled and wept over it in a very
frenzy.
_45._ But the catastrophic loss of their great armies was not all the
enemy had to endure. As the grass had stood our ally and swallowed the
attackers, helping us in a negative fashion as it were, it now turned
and became a positive force in our relief. Unnoticed for months, it had
crept northwestward, filching precious mile after mile of the hostile
foothold. Now it spurted ahead as it had sometimes done before, at a
furious pace, to take over the coast as far north as the Russian River,
which now doubled the irony of its name, and added thousands of square
miles to its area at the enemy's expense. It surged directly westward
too, making what was left of the invader's foothold precarious in the
extreme.
The stockmarket boomed and the country went wild with joy at the news of
the Soviet defeats. At the darkest moment we had been delivered by
forces outside ourselves, but still indubitably American. Hymns of
praise were sung to the grass as the savior of the nation and in a burst
of gratitude it was declared a National Park, forever inviolate.
Rationing restrictions were eased and many industries were sensibly
returned to private ownership. Good old Uncle Sam was unbeatable
afterall.
But if the Americans were jubilant, the Russians were cast into deepest
gloom. Accustomed to tremendous wartime losses of manpower, they had at
first taken the news stoically, interpreting it as just another defeat
to be later redeemed by pouring fresh troops and then more fresh troops
after those which had gone down. But when they realized they had lost
not divisions but whole armies, that they had suffered a greater blow
than any in their history, that their reserve power was little greater
than the armies remaining to the Americans, and finally that the grass,
the foe which had dealt all these grievous blows, was rapidly wiping out
what remained of their bridgehead, they began to murmur against the war
itself.
"Under our dear little Uncle Stalin," they said, "this would never have
taken place. Our sons and brothers would not have been sent to die so
far away from Holy Mother Russia. Down with the enemies of Stalin. Down
with the warmongering bureaucracy."
The Kremlin hastened to assure the population it was carrying out the
wishes of the sainted Stalin. It convinced them of the purity of its
motives by machinegunning all demonstrators and executing after public
trials all Trotskyite-fascist-American saboteurs and traitors. For some
reason these arguments failed to win over the people and on November 7 a
new slogan was heard, "Long live Stalin and Trotsky," which proved so
popular that in a short time the entire bureaucracy was liquidated, the
Soviet Union declared an unequivocal workers' state, the army replaced
by Redguards, the selling of Soviet bonds decreed a contravention of
socialist economy, wages of all were equalized, and the word
stakhanovism erased from all Russian dictionaries.
No formal peace was ever made. Neither side had any further appetite for
war and though newspapers like the _Daily Intelligencer_ continued for
months to clamor for the resumption of hostilities, even to using
aircraft now that there was less danger of reprisal, both countries
seemed content to return quietly to the status quo. The only results of
the war, aside from the tremendous losses, was that in America the grass
had been unmolested for a year, and the Soviet Union had a new
constitution. One of the peculiar provisions of this constitution was
that political offenders--and the definition was now severely limited,
leaving out ninetynine percent of those formerly jeoparded--should
henceforth expiate their crimes by spending the term of their sentence
gazing at the colossal and elaborate tomb of Stalin which occupied the
center of Red Square.
_46._ General Stuart Thario, rudely treated by an ungrateful republic,
had the choice of a permanent colonelcy or retirement. I have always
thought it was his human vanity, making him cling to the title of
general, which caused him to retire. At any rate there was no difficulty
in finding a place for him in our organization, and if his son's salary
and position were reduced in consequence, it was all in the family, as
the saying goes.
One of the happy results of our unique system of free enterprise was the
rewarding of men in exact proportion to their merits and abilities. The
war, bringing disruption and bankruptcy to so many shiftless and
shortsighted people, made of Consolidated Pemmican one of the country's
great concerns. The organization welcoming General Thario was far
different from the one which had hired his son. I now had fourteen
factories, stretching like a string of lustrous pearls from Quebec down
to Montevideo, and I was negotiating to open new branches in Europe and
the Far East. I had been elected to the directorship of several
important corporations and my material possessions were enough to
constitute a nuisance--for I have always remained a simple, literary
sort of fellow at heart--requiring secretaries and stewards to look
after them.
It is a depressing sidelight on human nature that the achievement of
eminence brings with it the malice and spite of petty minds and no one
of prominence can avoid becoming the target of stupid and unscrupulous
attack. It would be pointless now to go into those carping and unjust
accusations directed at me by irresponsible newspaper columnists.
Another man might have ignored these mean assaults, but I am naturally
sensitive, and while it was beneath my dignity to reply personally I
thought it perhaps one of the best investments I could make to add a
newspaper to my other properties.
Now I am certainly not the sort of capitalist portrayed by cartoonists
in the early part of the century who would subvert the freedom of the
press by handpicking an editor and telling him what to say. I think the
proof of this as well as of my broadmindedness is to be found in the
fact that the paper I chose to buy was the _Daily Intelligencer_ and the
editor I retained was William Rufus Le ffaçasé. The _Intelligencer_ had
lost both circulation and money since it had, so to speak, no home base.
But moved perhaps by sentiment, I was not deterred from buying it for
this reason, and anyway it was purchasable at a more reasonable figure
on this account.
Small circulation or no, it--or rather Le ffaçasé himself--still
possessed that intangible thing called prestige and I was satisfied with
my bargain. Le ffaçasé showed no reluctance--as why indeed should
he?--to continue as managingeditor and acted toward me as though there
had never been any previous association, but I did not object to this
harmless eccentricity as a smallerminded person might have.
As publisher I named General Thario. I never knew exactly what purpose a
publisher serves, but it seemed necessary for every newspaper to have
one. Whatever the duties of the office, it left the general plenty of
time to attend to the concerns of Consolidated Pemmican. I fed the paper
judiciously with money and it was not long before it regained most of
the circulation it had lost.
_47._ There was no doubt the grass, our ally to such good purpose in the
war, had definitely slowed down; now it was looked upon as a fixture, a
part of the American heritage, a natural phenomenon which had outlived
its sensational period and come to be taken for granted. Botanists
pointed out that _Cynodon dactylon_, despite its ability to sheathe
itself against a chill, had never flourished in cold areas and there was
no reason to suppose the inoculated grass, even with its abnormal
metabolism, could withstand climates foreign to its habit. It was true
it had touched, in one place, the arctic tundra, but it was confidently
expected this excursion would soon cease. The high peaks of the Rockies
with the heavy winter snowdrifts lying between them promised no
permanent hospitality, and what seeds blew through the passes and
lighted on the Great Plains were generally isolated by saltbands, and
since they were confined to comparatively small clumps they were easily
wiped out by salt or fire. To all appearance the grass was satiated and
content to remain crouching over what it had won.
Only a minority argued that in its new form it might be infinitely
adaptable. Before, when stopped, it had produced seeds capable of
bearing the parent strain. So now, they argued, it would in time
acclimate itself to more rigorous temperatures. Among these pessimists,
Miss Francis, emerging from welldeserved obscurity, hysterically ranged
herself. She prophesied new sudden and sweeping advances and demanded
money and effort equal to that expended in the late war be turned to
combating the grass. As if taxes were not already outrageously high.
Those in authority, with a little judicious advice from persons of
standing, quite properly disregarded her querulous importunities. The
whole matter of dealing with the weed was by now in the hands of a
permanent body, the Federal Disruptions Commission. This group had spent
the first six months of its existence exactly defining and asserting its
jurisdiction, which seemed to spread just as the vegetation calling it
into being did; and the second six months wrangling with the Federal
Trade Commission over certain "Cease and Desist" orders issued to firms
using allusions to the grass on the labels of their products, thereby
implying they were as vigorous, or of as wide application, as the
representation. The Disruptions Commission had no objection in principle
to this castigation; they merely thought it should have come from their
regulatory hands.
But with the end of the war a new spirit animated the honorable members
of the commission and as a token of revived energy they issued a stern
directive that no two groups engaged in antigraminous research were to
pool their knowledge; for competition, the commission argued in the
sixtyseven page order, spurred enthusiasm and the rivalry between
workers would the sooner produce a solution. Having settled this
basically important issue they turned their attention to investigating
the slower progress of the grass to determine whether it was permanent
or temporary and whether its present sluggishness could be turned to
good account. As a sort of side project--perhaps to show the wideness of
their scope--they undertook as well to study the reasons for the failure
of the wartime inoculation of the steppes as contrasted with the
original too successful California one. They planned a compilation of
their findings, tentatively scheduled to cover a hundred and fortyseven
foliovolumes which would remain the basic work for all approaching the
problem of attacking the grass; and as an important public figure who
had some firsthand knowledge of the subject they requested me to visit,
at my own expense, the newest outposts of the weed and favor them with
my observations. I was not averse to the suggestion, for the authority
of the commission would admit me to areas closed to ordinary citizens
and I was toying with the idea it might be possible in some way to use
the devilgrass as an ingredient in our food products.
_48._ George Thario having shown in many ways he was growing stale on
the job and in need of a vacation, I decided to take him with me.
Besides, if the thought of using the weed as a source of cheap
rawmaterial came to anything, the engagement of his interest at an early
stage would increase his usefulness. Before setting out for the field I
read reports of investigators on the spot and was disquieted to note a
unanimous mention of new stirrings on the edges of the green glacier. I
decided to lose no time and we set out at once in my personal plane for
a mountain lodge kindly offered by a business acquaintance. Here, for
the next few weeks, keeping in touch with my manifold affairs only by
telephone, Joe and I devoted ourselves to observing the grass.
Or rather I did. George Thario's idea of gathering data differed
radically from mine--I feel safe to say, as well as from that of almost
any other intelligent man. In a way he reminded me of the cameraman
Slafe in his brooding obliviousness to everything except the grass; but
Slafe had been doing a job for which he was being paid, whereas Joe was
only yielding to his own mood. For hours he lay flat on his belly,
staring through binoculars; at other times he wandered about the edge,
looking at, feeling, and smelling it and once I saw him bend down and
nibble at it like a sheep.
"You know, A W," he observed enthusiastically--he always called me "A W"
with just enough of a curious intonation to make it doubtful whether the
use of the initials was respectful or satirical--"you know, A W, I
understand those fellows who went and chucked themselves into the grass.
It's sublime; it has never happened in nature before. Ive read newspaper
and magazine accounts and either the writers have no eyes or else they
lie for the hell of it. They talk about the 'dirty brown' of the
flowers, but A W, Ive seen the flowers myself and theyre a vivid
glorious purple. Have you noticed the iridescent sparkle when the wind
ripples the blades? All the colors of the spectrum against the
background of that marvelous green."
"There's nothing marvelous about it," I told him a little irritably.
"It used to be really green, a bright, even color, but up here where
it's high and cold it doesnt look much different from ordinary
devilgrass--dirty and ugly." I thought his enthusiasm distinctly out of
place in the circumstances.
He did not seem to hear me, but went on dreamily, "And the sounds it
makes! My God, A W, a composer'd give half the years of his life to
reproduce those sounds. High and piercing; soft and muted; creating
tonepoems and études there in its lonely grandeur."
I have spoken before of the noise produced by the weed, a thunderous
crackling and snapping attributable to its extraordinary rate of growth.
During its dormancy the sound had ceased and, in the mountains at least,
was replaced by different notes and combinations of notes as the wind
blew through its culms and scraped the tough stems against each other.
Occasionally these ululations produced reflections extremely pleasing,
more often it hurt the ears with a shrieking discordance; but even at
its best it fell far short, to my mind--and I suppose I may say I'm as
sensitive to beauty as anybody--of meriting Joe's extravagant
rhapsodies.
But he was entranced beyond the soberness of commonsense. He filled
notebooks, those thick pulppapered volumes which children are supposed
to use in school but never do, with his reactions. In idle moments when
he was away, I glanced through them, but for the most part they were
incoherent. Meterless poems, lists of adjectives, strained
interpretations of the actions of the grass, and many musical notations
which seemed to get no farther than a repetitive and faltering start.
I reproduce a few pages of the less chaotic material for what it is
worth: "The iceage drove the Cromagnon from the caves which prophesied
Cnossus and Pithom and the Temple of Athena in the Acropolis. This
grass, twentiethcentury ice, drives magnates from their twentyroom
villas to their twentyroom duplexes. The loss was yesterday's. Walt
Whitman.
"For it is the animals. Cows and pigs, horses, goats, sheep and rabbits
abandoned by the husbandman, startled, puzzled; the clock with the
broken mainspring running backward. The small game: deer, antlered,
striped, and spotted; wildsheep, _ovis poli_, TeddyRooseveltshot and
Audubonprinted, mountaingoats leaping in terror to hazardous safety on
babel's top, upward to the pinpoint where no angels dance. But not
alone.
"Meat and meateater, food and feeder, predator and prey; foxes, lynx,
coyotes, wolves, wildcats, mountainlion (the passengerpigeon's gone, the
dung they pecked from herds thick as man born and man yet to be born
lies no more on the plains, _night and day we traveled, but the birds
overhead gave cover from the sun and the buffalo before us stretched
from the river to the hills_), driven by the ice not ice, but living
green, up and up. Pause here upon this little shelf to nibble bark, to
mate and bear; to snarl and claw and rend and suck hot blood from moving
jugularvein; and then move again upward with docile hoof or else retreat
with lashing tail and snarling fang. Biter and bitten transfused with
fear, the timberline behind, the snow alone welcoming, ironically the
glacier meets another glacier and only glacier gives refuge to glacier's
hunted.
"Here little islands on the peaks. Vegetation's sea is death creeping
upward to end at the beginning. The carnivores, whippedtailed, seek the
top, ambition's pinnacle, surveying nothing. Tomorrow is for man, the
lower mind is reasonable and ponders food and dung and lust, so
obstinate the padclaw prowls higher till nothing's left but pedestal and
would then wing, but being not yet man can only turn again.
"The ruminants, resigned, nibble at the edges of their death, converting
death to life, chewing, swallowing, digesting, regurgitating and
digesting again inescapable fate. Reluctant sustenance. Emptybellied,
the pointed teeth descend again to take their food at secondhand, to go
back sated, brown blood upon the snow and bits of hide and hair,
gnawedat bones, while fellows, forgetting fear, remaining stoic, eat,
stamp and stamp without impatience and eat again of that which has
condemned them.
"Learned doctor, your addingmachine gives you the answer: so many
carnivores, so many herbivores, the parallel dashes introduce
extinction. Confusedly the savor of Abel's sacrifice was sweet to His
nostrils, not Cain's fruits. So is the mind confounded. Turning and
devouring each other over prostrate antlers the snarlers die, their
furry hides bloat and then collapse on rigid bones to make a place for
curious sniffings and quick retreat in trampled snow. There is no
victory without harshness, no hope in triumph. The placid ruminants
live--the conquerors have conquered nothing.
"The grass comes to the edge of the snow; they eat and fill their meager
bellies, they chew the cud and mate and calve and live in wretched
unawareness of the heat of glory and death. So is justice done and mercy
and yet not justice and yet not mercy. Who was victor yesterday is not
victor today, but neither is he victim. Who was victim yesterday is not
victor, but neither is he victim...."
_49._ In all this confused rambling I thought there might be a curious
and interesting little observation about animal migration--if one could
trust the accuracy of an imagination more romantic than factual--and I
reduced it to some kind of coherence and added it not only to my report
for the Federal Disruptions Commission, but for the dispatches I found
time to send in to the _Intelligencer_. I hardly suppose it is necessary
to mention that by now my literary talents could no longer be denied or
ignored and that these items were not edited nor garbled but appeared
exactly as I had written them, boxed and doubleleaded on page one.
Though the matter was really trivial and in confessing it I don't mind
admitting all of us are subject to petty vanities I was gratified to
notice too that Le ffaçasé had the discernment to realize how much the
public appreciated my handling the news about the grass, for he
advertised my contributions lavishly.
In my news stories I could tell no less than the full truth, which was
that the grass, after remaining patriotically dormant throughout the war
except for the spurt northward to destroy the remnants of the invading
host, had once more set out upon the march. The loss of color I had
pointed out to Joe was less apparent each day of our stay as the old
vividness revived with its renewed energy and the sweet music which
entranced him gave place to the familiar crackling, growing louder with
each foot it advanced down the slope, culminating every so often in
thunderous explosions.
For down the thousand mile incline of the Mississippibasin it was
pouring with accelerating tempo, engulfing or driving everything before
it. It was the old story of the creeping stolons, the steppedup tangled
mass and the great, towering bulk behind; the falling forward and then
the continued headway. Once more the eastbound trains and highways
clogged with refugees.
My affairs not permitting a longer stay, I returned to New York, but I
could not pry Joe from his preoccupation. "A W," he argued, "I'd be no
more use to Consolidated Pemmican right now than groundglass in a ham
sandwich. My backside might be in a swivelchair, but my soul would be
right up here. It's Whitman translated visibly and tangibly, A W, 'Come
lovely and soothing death, undulate round and round.' Besides, youve got
the Old Man now, he's worth more to you than I ever will be; he loves
business. It's just like the army--without a doddering old generalstaff
to pull him back every time he gets enthusiastic."
If anyone else in my organization had talked like this I would have
fired him immediately, but I was sure down underneath his aesthetic
poses and artistic pretensions there was a foundation of good
commonsense inherited from the general. Give the boy his head, I
thought; let him stay here and rhapsodize till he gets sick of it; he'll
come back the better executive for having got it out of his system.
Also, as he himself pointed out, I had his father to rely on and he was
a man to whip up production if ever there was one.
_50._ The chief purpose of my visit to the grass was, at least
momentarily, a failure. There was little point sampling and analyzing
the weed for its possible use as an ingredient in a food concentrate if
it were impossible to set up a permanent place to gather and process it.
I won't say I considered my time wasted, but its employment had not been
profitable.
But even immersed in the everexpanding affairs of Consolidated Pemmican
and Allied Industries, as we now called the parent company, I could not
get away from the grass. Each hour's eastward thrust was reported in
detail by an hysterical radio and every day the newspapers printed maps
showing the newly overrun territory. Once more the grass was the most
prominent thought in men's minds, not only over the land of its being,
but throughout the world. Scientists of every nationality studied it at
firsthand and only strict laws and rigid searches by customs inspectors
prevented the importation of specimens for dissection in their own
laboratories.
The formula of Miss Francis, now at length revealed in its entirety, was
discussed by everyone. There was hardly a man, woman or child who did
not dream of finding some means to destroy or halt the grass and thereby
make of himself an unparalleled benefactor. A new crop of suggestions
was harvested by the _Intelligencer_; in addition to the old they
included such expedients as reinoculating the grass with the
Metamorphizer in the hope either of its cannibalistically feeding upon
itself or becoming so infected with giantism as to blow up and
burst--the failure of the experiment on the Russian steppes was ignored
or forgotten by these contributors; building barriers of dryice; and the
use of infrared lamps.
One of the proposals which tickled the popular imagination was a plan
for vast areas to be roofed and glassenclosed, giant greenhouses to
offer refuge for mankind in the very teeth of the grass. Artesian wells
could be sunk, it was argued, power harnessed to the tides of the sea
and piped underground, the populace fed by means of concentrates or
hydroponic farming. Everyone--except those in authority, the ones who
would have to approve the expenditure of the vast sums necessary--thought
there was something in the idea, but nothing was done about it.
Many, believing physical means could be of little avail, suggested
metaphysical ones, and these were always punctiliously printed by the
_Intelligencer_. They ranged from disregarding the existence of the weed
and carrying on ordinary life as though it presented no threat, through
Holding the Correct Thought, praying daily for its miraculous
disappearance, preferably at a simultaneous moment, to reorganizing the
spiritual concepts of the human totality.
_51._ But even without the newspapers George Thario would have kept me
informed. "Piteous if not too comprehensive for small emotions," he
wrote in a letter only a little more intelligible than the stuff in his
notebooks. "Yesterday I stopped by a small farm or ranch as local
grandiloquence everseeking purple justification has it here. Submarginal
land the tabulating minds of governmentofficials (spectacles precise on
nosebridge, daily ration of exlax safe in briefcase) would have labeled
it, sitting in expectant unease on hilltops and the uncomfortable slopes
between. Dryfarming; the place illegally acquired from cattlerange (more
proper and more profitable) by nester grandsire; surviving drought and
duststorm, locust, weevil, and straying herds; feeding rachitic kids,
dull women and helpless men for halfacentury.
"The Farm Resettlement Administration would have moved them to fatter
ground a hundred times, but blindly obstinate they held to what was
theirs and yet not theirs. In the frontseat the man and wife and what
remained of quick moments of dropjawed ecstasy, in back unwieldly
chickencoop, slats patched with bits of applebox and wire, weathered
gray; astonished cocks crowing out of time and hens heads down. Hitched
behind, the family cow, stiffribbed and emptyuddered. The grass, deaf
lover, had seized the shack, its fingers curled the solid door, body
pressed forward for joyful rape. The nesters don't look back but pant
ahead; the bumping of the car accommodates the cow.
"Ive had to leave the lodge of course and spend my nights in a thin
house with a roof shaped like two playingcards, with the misleading
sign, in punishment crippled, half fallen from its support, 'Tourists
Accommodated' (if accommodation be empty spaces with mottoes and
porcelain pisspots then punishment was unrighteous). I shall move on
soon, perhaps for the worse since there is green now, beneath the blue.
"If I can ever come away I shall, but I'd not miss this gladiator show,
this retiarii swing.
"Give my best to the Old Boy--tell him I'd write direct, but family
feeling makes it hard. Joe."
I showed the letter to the general, expecting him perhaps to be annoyed
by Joe's instability, but he merely said, "Boy shouldnt be wasting his
talents ... put it in sound ... orchestrate it."
Just as Joe's enthusiasm covered only one aspect of the grass so his
retreat from lodge to wayside hostel, to city hotel, embraced only a
minute sector of the great advance. Neither moral nor brute force slowed
the weed. It clutched the upper reaches of the Rio Grande and ran down
its course to the Gulf of Mexico like quicksilver in a broken
thermometer. It went through Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas; it nibbled
at the forks of the Platte; it left behind the Great Salt Lake like a
chip diamond lost in an enormous setting.
There is no benefit to be derived from looking at the darker side of
things and indeed it is a universal observation that there is no
misfortune without its compensation. The loss of the great cattlegrazing
areas of the West increased the demand for our concentrated foods by the
hundredfold. We paid no duty on the products shipped in from our South
American factories for they competed only with ourselves and we did the
country the humanitarian service of preventing a famine by rushing
carload after carload westward, rising above all thoughts of petty gain
by making no increase whatever in our prices despite the expanding
demand.
_52._ About this time it became indisputable that Button Gwynnet Fles
was no longer of value to Consolidated Pemmican. His Yankee shrewdness
and caution which enabled him to run the corporation when it was merely
a name and a quotation on the stockmarket had the limits of its virtues.
He was extraordinarily provincial in outlook and quite unable to see the
concern on a world scale. In view of our vast expansion such narrowness
had become an unbearable hindrance.
I had permitted him to hold a limited number of shares and to act
nominally as secretary in order to comply with the regulations of the
Security and Exchange Commission, but now it was expedient to add to our
officers directors of other companies whose fields were complementary to
ours. Besides, in General Thario I had a much abler assistant and so,
perhaps reluctantly because of my oversensitivity, I displaced Fles and
making the general president of the corporation I accepted the post of
chairman of the board.
I must say he took a perfectly natural business move with unbecoming
illgrace. "It was mine, Mr Weener, you know it was mine and I did not
protest when you stole it; I worked loyally and unselfishly for you. It
isnt the money, Mr Weener, really it isnt--it's the idea of being thrown
out of my own business. At least let me stay on the Board of Directors;
youll never have any trouble from me, I promise you that."
It distressed me to reject his abject plea, but my hands were tied by my
devotion to the welfare of the company. Besides, he annoyed me by his
palpably untrue reference to what had been a legitimate transaction,
never giving a thought to my generosity in not exposing his chicanery,
nor the fact that the dummy he manipulated bore no resemblance whatever
to the firm I had brought by my own effort to its present size.
Leaving matters in the able hands of General Thario, after warning Joe
he had better soon return to his father's assistance, I went abroad to
arrange for wider European representation. There I found a curious
eagerness to be of help to me and almost fawning servility antipathetic
to my democratic American notions. Oddly enough, the Europeans looked
upon the United States as a doomed country, thinking I, like some
members of our wealthier classes, had come to escape disruption and
dislocation at home. Only in England did I find the belief prevalent
that the Americans would somehow muddle through because afterall theyre
the same sort of chaps we are, you know.
After a highly successful trip I returned home the same day the Grass
reached the headwaters of the Mississippi.
_53._ William Rufus Le ffaçasé astonished me, as well as every
newspaperman in the country by resigning as editor of the _Daily
Intelligencer_, a post he had held before many of its reporters were
born. When I phoned him to come to my office and explain himself he
refused, in tones and manner I had not heard from any man since the days
when I had wasted my talents as a subordinate. Having none of the
pettiness of pride which makes some men fearful of their position, since
he would not come to my office, I went to his. There he shocked me for
the third time: a high, glossy collar, a flowing and figured cravat
concealed the famous diamond stud, while instead of the snuffbox his
hands hovered over a package of cheap cigarettes.
"Weener," he rasped, jettisoning all those courtesies to which I had
become accustomed, "I never thought I'd be glad to see your vapid face
again, unless on a marble slab in some city morgue, but now youre here,
moneybags slapping the insides of your thighs in place of the scrotum
for which you could have no possible use, I am delighted to tell you in
person to take my paper--my paper, sir, note that well, for all your
dirty pawings could not make it anything but mine--and supposit it. I
hope it frets you, Weener, for the sake of your sniveling but immortal
soul, I sincerely hope it rasps you like a misplaced hairshirt. You will
get some miserable lickspittle to take my place, some mangy bookkeeping
pimp with a permanentwaved wife and three snottynosed brats, but the
spirit and guts of the _Intelligencer_ depart with W R Le ffaçasé."
I disregarded both his illmanners and his bombast. "What's the matter,
Bill?" I asked kindly, "Is it more money? You can write your own ticket,
you know. Within reason, of course."
His fingers looked for the snuffbox, but found only the cigarettes which
he inspected puzzledly. "Weener, no man could do you justice. You are
the bloody prototype of all the arselickers, panders, arsonists,
kidnapers, cutthroats, pickpockets, abortionists, pilferers, cheats,
forgers, sneakthieves, sharpers and blackmailers since Jacob swindled
his brother. Do not fawn upon me little man, I am too old to want women
or money. The sands are running out and I shall never now read the
immortable Hobbes, but I'll not die in your bloody harness. In me you do
not see the man who picked up the torch of Franklin and Greeley and Dana
where Henry Watterson dropped it. Loose of your gangrenous chains, you
behold the freelance correspondent of the North American Newspaper
Alliance, the man who will devote his declining years to reporting in
the terse and vivid prose for which he is justly famous the progress of
the grass which strangles the country as you have tried to strangle me."
Again I put personal feelings aside. "If your mind is really made up,
we'll want your stuff for the _Intelligencer_, Bill."
"Sir, you may want. I hope the condition persists."
There being no profit in arguing with a madman, I made arrangements to
replace him immediately. I reproduce here, not for selfjustification,
which would be superfluous, but merely for what amusement it may afford,
one of his accounts which appeared in the columns of so many third and
fourth rate newspapers. I won't say it shows the decay of a once
possibly great mind, but it certainly reveals that the _Intelligencer_
suffered no irreparable loss.
"Today at Dubuque, Iowa, the Mississippi was crossed. Not by redmen in
canoes, nor white on logs or clumsy rafts, nor yet by multiwheeled
locomotives gliding over steel bridges nor airplanes so high the wide
stream was a thread below. Nature and devastation, hand in hand, for the
moment one and the same, crossed it today as Quantrell or Kirby Smith or
Nathan Bedford Forrest crossed it, sabers glittering, so many forgotten
years ago. But if the men in gray and butternut raided a store or burned
a tavern they thought it a mighty victory and went home rejoicing; the
green invader is an occupier and colonizer, come to remain for all time,
leaving no town, no road, no farm where it has passed.
"A few weeks ago Dubuque was still here, quiet, old and pleasant, the
butt of affectionate jokes, the Grass still miles away, the population
still hopeful of salvation. And then, because of the panic, the frantic
scurry to save things once valuable and now only valued, no one noticed
when a betraying wind blew seeds beyond the town, over the river, to
find receptive soil on the Wisconsin side. The seeds germinated, the
clump flourished. It cut the highway and reached down the banks into the
Mississippi, waiting. And while it waited it built up greater bulk for
itself, behind and beside. Each day it pushed a little farther toward
midstream, drowning its own foremost runners so those behind might have
solidity to advance upon.
"Meanwhile from the west the continent imposed upon a continent came
closer. The other day Dubuque went, its weathered bricks and immature
stucco alike obliterated. The Grass ran out like a bather on a cold
morning, hastening to the water before timidity halts him. Although I
was watching I could not tell you at what exact instant the gap was
closed, at what moment the runners from one clump intertwined with those
of the other. But such a moment did occur, and shedding water like a
surfacing whale the united bodies rose from the riverbed to form a
verdant bridge.
"You could not walk across it, at least no man I know would want to try,
but it gives the illusion of permanency no work of man, stone or steel
or concrete, has ever given and it is a dismaying thing to see man's
trade taken over by nature in this fashion.
"The bridge is a dam also. All the debris from the upper reaches
collects against it and soon there will be floods to add to the other
distress the Grass has brought. More than half the country is gone now:
the territories pillaged from Mexico, argued from Britain, bought from
France, have all been lost. Only the original states and Florida remain.
Shall we be more successful in defending our basic land than all the
acquisitions of a century and a half?"
But why add any more? Dry, senile, without feeling, my only wonder was
that his stuff was printed, even in the obscure media where it appeared.
_54._ With twothirds of the country absorbed and a hundred fifty million
people squeezed into what was left, economic conditions became worse
than ever. No European ghetto was as crowded as our cities and no
overpopulated countryside farmed so intensively to so little purpose. An
almost complete cessation of employment except in the remnant of the
export trade, valueless money--English shillings and poundnotes
illegally circulated being the prized medium of exchange--starvation
only irritated rather than relieved by the doles of food seized from the
farmers and grudgingly handed out to the urban dwellers.
Each election saw another party in power, the sole demand of the voters
being for an administration capable of stopping the Grass. Since none
was successful, the dissatisfaction and anger grew together with the
panic and dislocation. Messiahs and fuehrers sprang up thickly. Riots in
all cities were daily occurrences, rating no more than obscure
paragraphs, while in many areas gangs of hoodlums actually maintained
themselves in power for weeks at a time, ruling their possessions like
feudal baronies and exacting tribute from all travelers through their
domain.
Immigration had long ago been stopped, but now the government, in order
to preserve what space was left for genuine Americans, canceled the
naturalization of all foreignborn and ordered them immediately deported.
All Jews who had been in the country less than three generations were
shipped to Palestine and the others deprived of political rights in
order to encourage them to leave also. The Negroes, who except for a
period less than a decade in length had never had any political or civil
rights, planned a mass migration to Africa, a project enthusiastically
spurred by such elder statesmen as the learned Maybank and the judicious
Rankin. This movement proved abortive when statisticians showed there
were not enough liquid assets among the colored population to pay a
profit on their transportation.
An attempt to oust all Catholics failed also, for the rather odd reason
that many of the minor Protestant sects joined in a body to oppose it.
The Latterday Saints--now busy building New Deseret in Central
Australia--and the Church of Christ, Scientist, as well as the
Episcopalians, Doweyites, Shakers, Christadelphians, and the
congregation of the Chapel of the Former and Latter Rains presented a
united front for tolerance and equity.
An astonishing byproduct of the national despair and turmoil was the
feverish activity in all fields of creative endeavor. Novels streamed
from the presses, volumes of poetry became substantial items on
publishers' lists and those which failed to find a publisher were
mimeographed and peddled to a receptive public, while painters working
with Renascence enthusiasm turned out great canvases as fast as their
brushes could spread the oils. We had suddenly become a nation madly
devoted to the arts. When Orpheus Crisodd's Devilgrass Symphony was
first played in Carnegie Hall an audience three times as great as that
admitted had to be accommodated outside with loudspeakers and when the
awesome crescendo of horns, drums, and broken crockery rubbed over slate
surfaces announced the climax of the sixth movement, the crowds wept.
Even for Mozart the hall was full, or practically full.
In the lively arts the impact of the Grass was more overt. On the
comicpage, Superman daily pushed it back and there was great regret his
activities were limited to a fourcolor process, while Terry Lee and
Flash Gordon, everinspirited by the sharp outlines of mammaryglands,
also saved the country. Even Lil Abner and Snuffy Smith battled the
vegetation while no one but Jiggs remained absolutely impervious. The
_Greengrass Blues_ was heard on every radio and came from every
adolescent's phonograph until it was succeeded by _Itty Bitty Seed Made
Awfoo Nasty Weed_.
Perhaps the most notable feature of this period was a preoccupation with
permanency. Jerrybuilding, architectural mode since the first falsefront
was erected over the first smalltown store, practically disappeared. The
skyscrapers were no longer steel skeletons with thin facings of stone
hung upon them like a slattern's apron, while the practice of daubing
mud on chickenwire hastily laid over paper was discontinued. Everyone
wanted to build for all time, even though the Grass might seize upon
their effort next week. In New York the Cathedral of St John the Divine
was finally completed and a new one dedicated to St George begun. The
demand for enduring woods replaced the market for green pine and men
planned homes to accommodate their greatgrandchildren and not to attract
prospective buyers before the plaster cracked.
Naturally, forwardlooking men like Stuart Thario and myself, though we
had every respect for culture, were not swamped by this sudden urge to
encourage the effervescent side of life. Our feet were still upon the
ground and though we knew symphonies and novels and cathedrals had their
place, it was important not to lose sight of fundamentals; while we
approved in principle the desire for permanency, we took reality into
account. We had every faith in the future of the country, being certain
a way would be found before long to stop the encroachments of the weed;
nevertheless, as a proper precaution--a safeguarding counterbalance to
our own enthusiastic patriotism--we invested our surplus funds in
Consols and European bonds, while hastening our plans for new factories
on other continents.
I'm sure George Thario must have been a great cross to his father
although the general never spoke of him save in the most affectionate
terms. Living like a tramp--he sent a snapshot once showing him with a
long starveling beard, dressed in careless overalls, his arm over the
shoulder of a slovenly looking girl--he stayed always on the edge of the
advancing weed, moving eastward only when forced. He wrote from Galena:
"Eagle forgotten. The rejected accepted, for yesterday's eagle is
today's, the hero is man and man his own hero. I was with him when he
died and when he died again and a hundred miles to the south is another
eagle forgotten and all the prairies, green once more, will be as they
were before men insulted them. O eagle forgotten. O stained prairie, O
gallows, thirsty mob, knife, torch, revolver. Contumely, parochialism,
the shortvision forever gone; and the long vision too, the eagle
forgotten is the national bird, the great merging with the greater, so
gained too late a vision and saw the hope that was despair.
"I named the catalogue of states and the great syllables rolled from my
tongue to echo silence. My sister, my bride. Gone and gone; the
Conestoga wagons have no more faint ruts to follow, the Little Big Horn
is a combination of letters, the marking sunflowers exist no more. We
destroyed, we preempted; we are destroyed and we have been thrust out.
Illinois admitted to the Union on suchandsuch a date, the Little Giant
rubbed stubby fingers through pompous hair heavy with beargrease, the
Honorable Abe in Springfield's most expensive broadcloth, necktie in the
latest mode but pulled aside to free an eager adamsapple; the drunken
tanner, punctual with the small man's virtues, betrayed and dying
painfully with so much blood upon his hands; and the eagle himself,
forgotten and now again forgotten.
"I move once more. Step by step I give it up, the land we took and the
land we made. Each foot I resign leaves the rest more precious. O
precious land, O dear and fruitful soil. Its clods are me, I eat them,
give them back; the bond is indissoluble. Even the land gone is still
mine, my bones rest in it, I have eaten of its fruits and laid my mark
on it...."