The World Set Free Read online

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  Section 4

  The state of mind of the dispossessed urban population which

  swarmed and perished so abundantly over the country-side during

  the dark days of the autumnal months that followed the Last War,

  was one of blank despair. Barnet gives sketch after sketch of

  groups of these people, camped among the vineyards of Champagne,

  as he saw them during his period of service with the army of

  pacification.

  There was, for example, that 'man-milliner' who came out from a

  field beside the road that rises up eastward out of Epernay, and

  asked how things were going in Paris. He was, says Barnet, a

  round-faced man, dressed very neatly in black-so neatly that it

  was amazing to discover he was living close at hand in a tent

  made of carpets-and he had 'an urbane but insistent manner,' a

  carefully trimmed moustache and beard, expressive eyebrows, and

  hair very neatly brushed.

  'No one goes into Paris,' said Barnet.

  'But, Monsieur, that is very unenterprising,' the man by the

  wayside submitted.

  'The danger is too great. The radiations eat into people's

  skins.'

  The eyebrows protested. 'But is nothing to be done?'

  'Nothing can be done.'

  'But, Monsieur, it is extraordinarily inconvenient, this living

  in exile and waiting. My wife and my little boy suffer

  extremely. There is a lack of amenity. And the season advances.

  I say nothing of the expense and difficulty in obtaining

  provisions… When does Monsieur think that something will be

  done to render Paris-possible?'

  Barnet considered his interlocutor.

  'I'm told,' said Barnet, 'that Paris is not likely to be possible

  again for several generations.'

  'Oh! but this is preposterous! Consider, Monsieur! What are

  people like ourselves to do in the meanwhile? Iam a costumier.

  All my connections and interests, above all my style, demand

  Paris…'

  Barnet considered the sky, from which a light rain was beginning

  to fall, the wide fields about them from which the harvest had

  been taken, the trimmed poplars by the wayside.

  'Naturally,' he agreed, 'you want to go to Paris. But Paris is

  over.'

  'Over!'

  'Finished.'

  'But then, Monsieur-what is to become-of ME?'

  Barnet turned his face westward, whither the white road led.

  'Where else, for example, may I hope to find-opportunity?'

  Barnet made no reply.

  'Perhaps on the Riviera. Or at some such place as Homburg. Or

  some plague perhaps.'

  'All that,' said Barnet, accepting for the first time facts that

  had lain evident in his mind for weeks; 'all that must be over,

  too.'

  There was a pause. Then the voice beside him broke out. 'But,

  Monsieur, it is impossible! It leaves-nothing.'

  'No. Not very much.'

  'One cannot suddenly begin to grow potatoes!'

  'It would be good if Monsieur could bring himself--'

  'To the life of a peasant! And my wife--You do not know the

  distinguished delicacy of my wife, a refined helplessness, a

  peculiar dependent charm. Like some slender tropical

  creeper-with great white flowers… But all this is foolish

  talk. It is impossible that Paris, which has survived so many

  misfortunes, should not presently revive.'

  'I do not think it will ever revive. Paris is finished. London,

  too, Iam told-Berlin. All the great capitals were

  stricken…'

  'But--! Monsieur must permit me to differ.'

  'It is so.'

  'It is impossible. Civilisations do not end in this manner.

  Mankind will insist.'

  'On Paris?'

  'On Paris.'

  'Monsieur, you might as well hope to go down the Maelstrom and

  resume business there.'

  'I am content, Monsieur, with my own faith.'

  'The winter comes on. Would not Monsieur be wiser to seek a

  house?'

  'Farther from Paris? No, Monsieur. But it is not possible,

  Monsieur, what you say, and you are under a tremendous

  mistake… Indeed you are in error… I asked merely for

  information…'

  'When last I saw him,' said Barnet, 'he was standing under the

  signpost at the crest of the hill, gazing wistfully, yet it

  seemed to me a little doubtfully, now towards Paris, and

  altogether heedless of a drizzling rain that was wetting him

  through and through…'

  Section 5

  This effect of chill dismay, of a doom as yet imperfectly

  apprehended deepens as Barnet's record passes on to tell of the

  approach of winter. It was too much for the great mass of those

  unwilling and incompetent nomads to realise that an age had

  ended, that the old help and guidance existed no longer, that

  times would not mend again, however patiently they held out. They

  were still in many cases looking to Paris when the first

  snowflakes of that pitiless January came swirling about them. The

  story grows grimmer…

  If it is less monstrously tragic after Barnet's return to

  England, it is, if anything, harder. England was a spectacle of

  fear-embittered householders, hiding food, crushing out robbery,

  driving the starving wanderers from every faltering place upon

  the roads lest they should die inconveniently and reproachfully

  on the doorsteps of those who had failed to urge them onward…

  The remnants of the British troops left France finally in March,

  after urgent representations from the provisional government at

  Orleans that they could be supported no longer. They seem to have

  been a fairly well-behaved, but highly parasitic force

  throughout, though Barnet is clearly of opinion that they did

  much to suppress sporadic brigandage and maintain social order.

  He came home to a famine-stricken country, and his picture of the

  England of that spring is one of miserable patience and desperate

  expedients. The country was suffering much more than France,

  because of the cessation of the overseas supplies on which it had

  hitherto relied. His troops were given bread, dried fish, and

  boiled nettles at Dover, and marched inland to Ashford and paid

  off. On the way thither they saw four men hanging from the

  telegraph posts by the roadside, who had been hung for stealing

  swedes. The labour refuges of Kent, he discovered, were feeding

  their crowds of casual wanderers on bread into which clay and

  sawdust had been mixed. In Surrey there was a shortage of even

  such fare as that. He himself struck across country to

  Winchester, fearing to approach the bomb-poisoned district round

  London, and at Winchester he had the luck to be taken on as one

  of the wireless assistants at the central station and given

  regular rations. The station stood in a commanding position on

  the chalk hill that overlooks the town from the east…

  Thence he must have assisted in the transmission of the endless

  cipher messages that preceded the gathering at Brissago, and

  there it was that the Brissago proclamation of the end
of the war

  and the establishment of a world government came under his hands.

  He was feeling ill and apathetic that day, and he did not realise

  what it was he was transcribing. He did it mechanically, as a

  part of his tedious duty.

  Afterwards there came a rush of messages arising out of the

  declaration that strained him very much, and in the evening when

  he was relieved, he ate his scanty supper and then went out upon

  the little balcony before the station, to smoke and rest his

  brains after this sudden and as yet inexplicable press of duty.

  It was a very beautiful, still evening. He fell talking to a

  fellow operator, and for the first time, he declares, 'I began to

  understand what it was all about. I began to see just what

  enormous issues had been under my hands for the past four hours.

  But I became incredulous after my first stimulation. "This is

  some sort of Bunkum," I said very sagely.

  'My colleague was more hopeful. "It means an end to

  bomb-throwing and destruction," he said. "It means that

  presently corn will come from America."

  ' "Who is going to send corn when there is no more value in

  money?" I asked.

  'Suddenly we were startled by a clashing from the town below. The

  cathedral bells, which had been silent ever since I had come into

  the district, were beginning, with a sort of rheumatic

  difficulty, to ring. Presently they warmed a little to the work,

  and we realised what was going on. They were ringing a peal. We

  listened with an unbelieving astonishment and looking into each

  other's yellow faces.

  ' "They mean it," said my colleague.

  ' "But what can they do now?" I asked. "Everything is broken

  down…" '

  And on that sentence, with an unexpected artistry, Barnet

  abruptly ends his story.

  Section 6

  From the first the new government handled affairs with a certain

  greatness of spirit. Indeed, it was inevitable that they should

  act greatly. From the first they had to see the round globe as

  one problem; it was impossible any longer to deal with it piece

  by piece. They had to secure it universally from any fresh

  outbreak of atomic destruction, and they had to ensure a

  permanent and universal pacification. On this capacity to grasp

  and wield the whole round globe their existence depended. There

  was no scope for any further performance.

  So soon as the seizure of the existing supplies of atomic

  ammunition and the apparatus for synthesising Carolinum was

  assured, the disbanding or social utilisation of the various

  masses of troops still under arms had to be arranged, the

  salvation of the year's harvests, and the feeding, housing, and

  employment of the drifting millions of homeless people. In

  Canada, in South America, and Asiatic Russia there were vast

  accumulations of provision that was immovable only because of the

  breakdown of the monetary and credit systems. These had to be

  brought into the famine districts very speedily if entire

  depopulation was to be avoided, and their transportation and the

  revival of communications generally absorbed a certain proportion

  of the soldiery and more able unemployed. The task of housing

  assumed gigantic dimensions, and from building camps the housing

  committee of the council speedily passed to constructions of a

  more permanent type. They found far less friction than might have

  been expected in turning the loose population on their hands to

  these things. People were extraordinarily tamed by that year of

  suffering and death; they were disillusioned of their traditions,

  bereft of once obstinate prejudices; they felt foreign in a

  strange world, and ready to follow any confident leadership. The

  orders of the new government came with the best of all

  credentials, rations. The people everywhere were as easy to

  control, one of the old labour experts who had survived until the

  new time witnesses, 'as gangs of emigrant workers in a new land.'

  And now it was that the social possibilities of the atomic energy

  began to appear. The new machinery that had come into existence

  before the last wars increased and multiplied, and the council

  found itself not only with millions of hands at its disposal but

  with power and apparatus that made its first conceptions of the

  work it had to do seem pitifully timid. The camps that were

  planned in iron and deal were built in stone and brass; the roads

  that were to have been mere iron tracks became spacious ways that

  insisted upon architecture; the cultivations of foodstuffs that

  were to have supplied emergency rations, were presently, with

  synthesisers, fertilisers, actinic light, and scientific

  direction, in excess of every human need.

  The government had begun with the idea of temporarily

  reconstituting the social and economic system that had prevailed

  before the first coming of the atomic engine, because it was to

  this system that the ideas and habits of the great mass of the

  world's dispossessed population was adapted. Subsequent

  rearrangement it had hoped to leave to its successors-whoever

  they might be. But this, it became more and more manifest, was

  absolutely impossible. As well might the council have proposed a

  revival of slavery. The capitalist system had already been

  smashed beyond repair by the onset of limitless gold and energy;

  it fell to pieces at the first endeavour to stand it up again.

  Already before the war half of the industrial class had been out

  of work, the attempt to put them back into wages employment on

  the old lines was futile from the outset-the absolute shattering

  of the currency system alone would have been sufficient to

  prevent that, and it was necessary therefore to take over the

  housing, feeding, and clothing of this worldwide multitude

  without exacting any return in labour whatever. In a little while

  the mere absence of occupation for so great a multitude of people

  everywhere became an evident social danger, and the government

  was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative work

  in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles,

  fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand

  scale to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying

  wages to the younger adults for attendance at schools that would

  equip them to use the new atomic machinery… So quite

  insensibly the council drifted into a complete reorganisation of

  urban and industrial life, and indeed of the entire social

  system.

  Ideas that are unhampered by political intrigue or financial

  considerations have a sweeping way with them, and before a year

  was out the records of the council show clearly that it was

  rising to its enormous opportunity, and partly through its own

  direct control and partly through a series of specific

  committees, it was planning a new common social order for the

  entire population of the earth. 'There can be no real social

  stability or any general human happiness while
large areas of the

  world and large classes of people are in a phase of civilisation

  different from the prevailing mass. It is impossible now to have

  great blocks of population misunderstanding the generally

  accepted social purpose or at an economic disadvantage to the

  rest.' So the council expressed its conception of the problem it

  had to solve. The peasant, the field-worker, and all barbaric

  cultivators were at an 'economic disadvantage' to the more mobile

  and educated classes, and the logic of the situation compelled

  the council to take up systematically the supersession of this

  stratum by a more efficient organisation of production. It

  developed a scheme for the progressive establishment throughout

  the world of the 'modern system' in agriculture, a system that

  should give the full advantages of a civilised life to every

  agricultural worker, and this replacement has been going on right

  up to the present day. The central idea of the modern system is

  the substitution of cultivating guilds for the individual

  cultivator, and for cottage and village life altogether. These

  guilds are associations of men and women who take over areas of

  arable or pasture land, and make themselvesresponsible for a

  certain average produce. They are bodies small enough as a rule

  to be run on a strictly democratic basis, and large enough to

  supply all the labour, except for a certain assistance from

  townspeople during the harvest, needed upon the land farmed. They

  have watchers' bungalows or chalets on the ground cultivated, but

  the ease and the costlessness of modern locomotion enables them

  to maintain a group of residences in the nearest town with a

  common dining-room and club house, and usually also a guild house

  in the national or provincial capital. Already this system has

  abolished a distinctively 'rustic' population throughout vast

  areas of the old world, where it has prevailed immemorially. That

  shy, unstimulated life of the lonely hovel, the narrow scandals

  and petty spites and persecutions of the small village, that

  hoarding, half inanimate existence away from books, thought, or

  social participation and in constant contact with cattle, pigs,

  poultry, and their excrement, is passing away out of human

  experience. In a little while it will be gone altogether. In the

  nineteenth century it had already ceased to be a necessary human

  state, and only the absence of any collective intelligence and an