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