Astounding Stories, June, 1931, Page 3
Various
Holocaust
_By Charles Willard Diffin_
It passed beneath the planes, that were motionless bycontrast.]
[Sidenote: The extraordinary story of "Paul," who for thirty days wasDictator of the World.]
I am more accustomed to the handling of steel ingots and thefabrication of ships than to building with words. But, if I cannotwrite history as history is written, perhaps I can write it the way itis lived, and that must suffice.
This account of certain events must have a title, I am told. I haveused, as you see: "Holocaust." Inadequate!--but what word can telleven faintly of that reign of terror that engulfed the world, of thoseterrible thirty days in America when dread and horror gripped thenation and the red menace, like a wall of fire, swept downward fromthe north? And, at last--the end!
It was given to me to know something of that conflict and of itsending and of the man who, in that last day, took command of Earth'sevents and gave battle to Mars, the God of War himself. It was againstthe background of war that he stood out; I must tell it in that way;and perhaps my own experience will be of interest. Yet it is of theman I would write more than the war--the most hated man in the wholeworld--that strange character, Paul Stravoinski.
You do not even recognize the name. But, if I were to say instead theone word, "Paul"--ah, now I can see some of you start abruptly insudden, wide-eyed attention, while the breath catches in your throatsand the memory of a strange dread clutches your hearts.
'Straki,' we called him at college. He was never "Paul," except to mealone; there was never the easy familiarity between him and the crowdat large, whose members were "Bill" and "Dick" and other nicknamesunprintable.
But "Straki" he accepted. "_Bien, mon cher ami_," he told me--he wasas apt to drop into French as Russian or any of a dozen otherlanguages--"a name--what is it? A label by which we distinguish onepackage of goods from a thousand others just like it! I am unlike: forme one name is as good as another. It is what is here thatcounts,"--he tapped his broad forehead that rose high to the tangle ofblack hair--"and here,"--and this time he placed one hand above hisheart.
"It is for what I give to the world of my head and my heart that Imust be remembered. And, if I give nothing--then the name, it is lessthan nothing."
* * * * *
Dreamer--poet--scientist--there were many Paul Strakis in that oneman. Brilliant in his work--he was majoring in chemistry--he was amathematician who was never stopped. I've seen him pause, puzzled bysome phase of a problem that, to me, was a blank wall. Only a moment'shesitation and he would go way down to the bed-rock of mathematics andcome up with a brand new formula of his own devising. Then--"_Voila!C'est fini!_ let us go for a walk, friend Bob; there is some poetrythat I have remembered--" And we would head out of town, while hespouted poetry by the yard--and made me like it.
I wish you could see the Paul Straki of those days. I wish I couldshow him to you; you would understand so much better the "Paul" ofthese later times.
Tall, he seemed, though his eyes were only level with mine, for hisreal height was hidden beneath an habitual stoop. It let him conceal,to some extent, his lameness. He always walked with a noticeable limp,and here was the cause of the only bitterness that, in those days, wasever reflected in his face.
"Cossacks!" he explained when he surprised a questioning look upon myface. "They went through our village. I was two years old--and theyrode me down!"
But the hard coldness went from his eyes, and again they crinkledabout with the kindly, wise lines that seemed so strange in his youngface. "It is only a reminder to me," he added, "that such things areall in the past; that we are entering a new world where savagebrutality shall no longer rule, and the brotherhood of man will be thebasis upon which men shall build."
And his face, so homely that it was distinctive, had a beauty all itsown when he dared to voice his dreams.
* * * * *
It was this that brought about his expulsion from college. That was in1935 when the Vornikoff faction brought off their coup d'etat andsecured a strangle hold on Russia. We all remember the campaign ofpropaganda that was forced into the very fibre of every country, toweaken with its insidious dry-rot the safe foundations of our verycivilization. Paul was blinded by his idealism, and he dared to speak.
He was conducting a brilliant research into the structure of the atom;it ended abruptly with his dismissal. And the accepted theories ofscience went unchallenged, while men worked along other lines thanPaul's to attempt the release of the tremendous energy that is latentin all matter.
I saw him perhaps three times in the four years that followed. He hada laboratory out in a God-forsaken spot where he carried on hisresearch. He did enough analytical work to keep him from actualstarvation, though it seemed to me that he was uncomfortably close tothat point.
"Come with me," I urged him; "I need you. You can have the run of ourlaboratories--work out the new alloys that are so much needed. Youwould be tremendously valuable."
He had mentioned Maida to me, so I added: "And you and Maida can bemarried, and can live like a king and queen on what my outfit can payyou."
He smiled at me as he might have done toward a child. "Like a king andqueen," he said. "But, friend Bob, Maida and I do not approve of kingsand queens, nor do we wish to follow them in their follies.
"It is hard waiting,"--I saw his eyes cloud for a moment--"but Maidais willing. She is working, too--she is up in Melford as you know--andshe has faith in my work. She sees with me that it will mean therelease of our fellow-men and women from the poverty that grinds outtheir souls. I am near to success; and when I give to the world thesecret of power, then--" But I had to read in his far-seeing eyes thevisions he could not compass in words.
* * * * *
That was the first time. I was flying a new ship when next I droppedin on him. A sweet little job I thought it then, not like the oldbusses that Paul and I had trained in at college, where the top speedwas a hundred and twenty. This was an A. B. Clinton cruiser, and the"A.B.C.'s" in 1933 were good little wagons, the best there were.
I asked Paul to take a hop with me and fly the ship. He could flybeautifully; his lameness had been no hindrance to him. In hisslender, artist hands a ship became a live thing.
"Are you doing any flying?" I asked, but the threadbare suit made hisanswer unnecessary.
"I'll do my flying later," he said, "and when I do,"--he wavedcontemptuously toward my shining, new ship--"you'll scrap that pieceof junk."
The tone matched the new lines in his face--deep lines and bitter.This practical world has always been hard on the dreamers.
Poverty; and the grinding struggle that Maida was having; theexpulsion from college when he was assured of a research scholarshipthat would have meant independence and the finest of equipment to workwith--all this, I found, was having its effect. And he talked in a wayI didn't like of the new Russia and of the time that was near at handwhen her communistic government should sweep the world of its curse ofcapitalistic control. Their propaganda campaign was still going on,and I gathered that Paul had allied himself with them.
I tried to tell him what we all knew; that the old Russia was gone,that Vornikoff and his crowd were rapacious and bloodthirsty, thattheir real motives were as far removed from his idealism as one polefrom the other. But it was no use. And I left when I saw the light inhis eyes. It seemed to me then that Paul Stravoinski had driven hissplendid brain a bit beyond its breaking point.
* * * * *
Another year--and Paris, in 1939, with the dreaded First of Maydrawing near. There had been rumors of demonstrations in every land,but the French were prepared to cope with them--or so theybelieved.... Who could have coped with the menace of the north thatwas gathering itself for a spring?
I saw Paul there. It lacked two days of the First of May, and he wasseated with a group of industrious talkers at a secluded
table in acafe. He crossed over when he saw me, and drew me aside. And I noticedthat a quiet man at a table nearby never let us out of his sight. Pauland his companions, I judged, were under observation.
"What are you doing here _now_?" he asked. His manner was casualenough to anyone watching, but the tense voice and the look in hiseyes that bored into me were anything but casual.
My resentment was only natural. "And why shouldn't I be here attendingto my own affairs? Do you realize that you are being rather absurd?"
He didn't bother to answer me directly. "I can't control them," hesaid. "If they would only wait--a few weeks--another month! God, how Iprayed to them at--"
He broke off short. His eyes never moved, yet I sensed a furtivenessas marked as if he had peered suspiciously about.
Suddenly he laughed aloud, as if at some joking remark of mine; Iknew it was for the benefit of those he had left and not for the quietman from the _Surete_. And now his tone was quietly conversational.
"Smile!" he said. "Smile, Bob!--we're just having a friendly talk. Iwon't live another two hours if they think anything else. But, Bob, myfriend--for God's sake, Bob, leave Paris to-night. I am taking themidnight plane on the Transatlantic Line. Come with me--"
One of the group at the table had risen; he was sauntering in ourdirection. I played up to Paul's lead.
"Glad I ran across you," I told him, and shook his extended hand thatgripped mine in an agony of pleading. "I'll be seeing you in New Yorkone of these days; I am going back soon."
* * * * *
But I didn't go soon enough. The unspoken pleading in PaulStravoinski's eyes lost its hold on me by another day. I had work todo; why should I neglect it to go scuttling home because someone whofeared these swarming rats had begged me to run for cover? And theFrench people were prepared. A little rioting, perhaps; a pistol shotor two, and a machine-gun that would spring from nowhere and sweep thestreet--!
We know now of the document that the Russian Ambassador delivered tothe President of France, though no one knew of it then. He handed itto the portly, bearded President at ten o'clock on the morning ofApril thirtieth. And the building that had housed the Russianrepresentatives was empty ten minutes later. Their disguises must havebeen ready, for if the sewers of Paris had swallowed them they couldhave vanished no more suddenly.
And the document? It was the same in substance as those delivered inlike manner in every capital of Europe: twenty-four hours were givenin which to assure the Central Council of Russia that the FrenchGovernment would be dissolved, that communism would be established,and that its executive heads would be appointed by the CentralCouncil.
And then the bulletins appeared, and the exodus began. Papers floatedin the air; they blew in hundreds of whirling eddies through thestreets. And they warned all true followers of the glorious Russianfaith to leave Paris that day, for to-morrow would herald the dawn ofa new heaven on earth--a Communistic heaven--and its birth would comewith the destruction of Paris....
I give you the general meaning though not the exact words. And, likethe rest, I smiled tolerantly as I saw the stream of men and women andfrightened children that filtered from the city all that day andnight; but I must admit that our smiles were strained as morning cameon the First of May, and the hour of ten drew near.
Paris, the beautiful--that lovely blossom, flowering on the sturdystalk that was _La Belle France_! Paris, laughing to cover itsunspoken fears that morning in May, while the streets thudded to thefeet of marching men in horizon blue, and the air above was vibrantwith the endless roar of planes.
This meant war; and mobilization orders were out; yet still the deadlymenace was blurred by a feeling of unreality. A hoax!--a hugejoke!--it was absurd, the thought of a distant people imposing theirwill upon France! And yet ... and yet....
* * * * *
There were countless eyes turned skyward as a thousand bells rang outthe hour of ten; and countless ears heard faintly the sound of gunfirefrom the north.
My work had brought me into contact with high officials of the FrenchGovernment; I was privileged to stand with a group of them where ahigh-roofed building gave a vantage point for observation. With them Isaw the menacing specks on the horizon; I saw them come on with deadlydeliberation--come on and on in an ever-growing armada that filled thesky.
Wireless had brought the report of their flight high over Germany; itwas bringing now the story of disaster from the northern front. Aheavy air-force had been concentrated there; and now the steady streamof radio messages came on flimsy sheets to the group about me, whilethey clustered to read the incredible words. They cursed and glared atone another, those French officials, as if daring their fellows tobelieve the truth; then, silent and white of face, they reached numblyfor each following sheet that messengers brought--until they knew atlast that the air-force of France was no more....
The roar of the approaching host was deafening in our ears. Red--redas blood!--and each unit grew to enormous proportions. Armoredcruisers of the air--dreadnaughts!--they came as a complete surprise.
"But the city is ringed with anti-aircraft batteries," a uniformed manwas whispering. "They will bring the brutes down."
The northern edge of the city flamed to a roaring wall of fire; thebatteries went into action in a single, crashing harmony that sangtriumphantly in our ears. A few of the red shapes fell, but for eachof these a hundred others swept down in deadly, directed flight.
A glass was in my hand; my eyes strained through it to see the silverycylinders that fell from the speeding ships. I saw the red cruiserssweep upward before the inferno of exploding bombs raged toward themfrom below. And where the roar of batteries had been was onlysilence.
* * * * *
The fleet was over the city. We waited for the rain of bombs that mustcome; we saw the red cloud move swiftly to continue the annihilationof batteries that still could fire; we saw the armada pass on and loseitself among cloud-banks in the west.
Only a dozen planes remained, high-hung in the upper air. We stared inwonderment at one another. Was this mercy?--from such an enemy? It wasinconceivable!
"Mercy!" I wonder that we dared to think the word. Only an instanttill a whistling shriek marked the coming of death. It was a singleplane--a giant shell--that rode on wings of steel. It came from thenorth, and I saw it pass close overhead. Its propeller screamed aninsolent, inhuman challenge. Inhuman--for one glance told the story.Here was no man-flown plane: no cockpit or cabin, no gunmounts. Only aflying shell that swerved and swung as we watched. We knew that itscourse was directed from above; it was swung with terrible certaintyby a wireless control that reached it from a ship overhead.
Slowly it sought its target: deliberately it poised above it. An instant,only, it hung, though the moment, it seemed, would never end--thendown!--and the blunt nose crashed into the Government buildings where atthat moment the Chamber of Deputies was in session ... and where thosebuildings had been was spouting masonry and fire.
A man had me by the arm; his fingers gripped into my flesh. With hisother hand he was pointing toward the north. "Torpedoes!" he wassaying. "Torpedoes of a size gigantic! _Ah, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_ Saveus for we are lost!"
They came in an endless stream, those blood-red projectiles; theyannounced their coming with shrill cries of varying pitch; and theyswung and swerved, as the ships above us picked them up, to rake thecity with mathematical precision.
Incendiary, of course: flames followed every shattering burst. Betweenus and the Seine was a hell of fire--a hell that contained unnumberedthousands of what an instant before had been living folk--men andwomen clinging in a last terrified embrace--children whose white faceswere hidden in their mothers' skirts or buried in bosoms no longer arefuge for childish fears. I saw it as plainly as if I had been giventhe far-reaching vision of a god ... and I turned and ran withstumbling feet where a stairway awaited....
* * *
* *
Of that flight, only a blurred recollection has stayed with me. I prayGod that I may never see it more clearly. There are sights that mortaleyes cannot behold with understanding and leave mortal brain intact.It is like an anaesthetic at such times, the numbness that blocks offthe horrors the eyes are recording--like the hurt of the surgeon'sscalpel that never reaches to the brain.
Dimly I see the fragmentary scenes: the crashing fall of buildingsthat come crumbling and thundering down, myself crawling like aninsect across the wreckage--it is slippery and wet where the stonesare red, and I stumble, then see the torn and mangled thing that hascaused me to fall.... A face regards me from another mound. I see thedust of powdered masonry still settling upon it: the dark hair ishardly disturbed about the face, so peaceful, so girlishly serene: Iam still wondering dully why there is only the head of that girlresting on the shattered stone, as I lie there exhausted and watch thenext torpedo crash a block behind me.... The air is shrill with flyingfragments. I wonder why my hands are stained and sticky as I run andcrawl on my way. The red rocks are less slippery now, and the rats,from the sewers of Paris!--they have come out to feed!
Fragments of pictures--and the worst of them gone! I know that nightcame--red night, under a cloud of smoke--and I found myself on thefollowing day descending from a fugitive peasant's cart and ploddingonward toward the markings of a commercial aerodrome.
They could not be everywhere, those red vultures of the sky, and theyhad other devils'-work to do. I had money, and I paid well for theplane that carried me through that day and a night to the MunicipalAirport of New York.
* * * * *
The Red Army of occupation was halfway across communist Germany,hailed as they went as the saviors of the world. London had gone theway of Paris; Rome had followed; the countries of France and Englandand Italy were beaten to their knees.
"We who rule the air rule the world!" boasted General Vornikoff. TheRussian broadcasting station had the insolence to put on the air hismessage to the people of America. I heard his voice as plainly as ifhe stood in my office; and I was seeing again the coming of thatendless stream of aerial torpedoes, and the red cruisers hanging inthe heights to pick up control and dash the messengers of death upon ahelpless city. But I was visioning it in New York.
"The masses of the American people are with us," said the complacentlyarrogant voice. "For our fellow-workers we have only brotherlyaffection; it is your capitalist-dominated Government that mustsubmit. And if it does not--!" I heard him laugh before he went on:
"We are coming to the rescue of you, our brothers across the sea. Nowwe have work to do in Europe; our gains must be consolidated and theconquests of our glorious air-force made secure. And then--! We warnyou in advance, and we laugh at your efforts to prepare for ourcoming. We even tell you the date: in thirty days the invasion begins.It will end only at Washington when the great country of America, itscruel shackles cast off from the laboring masses, joins theBrotherhood--the Workers of the World!"
There was a man from the War Department who sat across from me at mydesk; my factories were being taken over; my electric furnaces mustpour out molten metal for use in war. He cursed softly under hisbreath as the voice ceased.
"The dirty dog!" he exclaimed. "The lying hypocrite! He talks ofbrotherhood to us who know the damnable inquisition and reign ofterror that he and his crowd have forced on Russia! Thirty days! Well,we have three thousand planes ready for battle to-day; there'll bemore in thirty days! Now, about that vanadium steel--"
But I'll confess I hardly heard him; I was hearing the roar of anarmada of red craft that ensanguined the sky, and I was seeing thecurving flight of torpedoes, each an airplane in itself....
* * * * *
Thirty days!--and each minute of each hour must be used. In closetouch with the War Department, I knew much that was going on, and allthat I knew was the merest trifle in the vast preparations fordefense. My earlier apprehensions were dulled; the sight I had of thewhole force of a mighty nation welded into one driving power workingto one definite end was exhilarating.
New York and Washington--these, it was felt, would be the points offirst attack; they must be protected. And I saw the flights of planesthat seemed endless as they converged at the concentration camps.Fighters, at first--bombers and swift scouts--they came in from allparts of the land. Then the passenger planes and the big mail-ships.Transcontinental runs were abandoned or cut to a skeleton service of aship every hour for the transport of Government men. Even the slowercraft of the feeder lines were commandeered; anything that could flyand could mount a gun.
And the three thousand fighting ships, as the man from Washington hadsaid, grew to three times that number. Their roaring filled the skieswith thunder, and beneath them were other camps of infantry andartillery.
The Atlantic front was an armed camp, where highways no longer carriedthousands of cars on pleasure bent. By night and day I saw thosefamiliar roads from the air; they were solid with a never-ending lineof busses and vans and long processions of motorized artillery andtanks, whose clattering bedlam came to me a thousand feet above.
Yes, it was an inspiring sight, and I lost the deadly oppression andthe sense of impending doom--until our intelligence service told us ofthe sailing of the enemy fleet.
* * * * *
They had seized every vessel in the waters of Europe. And--God pitythe poor, traitorous devils who manned them--there were plenty tooperate the ships. Two thousand vessels were in that convoy. Ringed inas they were by a guard of destroyers and fighting craft of manykinds, whose mast-heads carried the blood-red flag now instead oftheir former emblems, our submarines couldn't reach them.
But our own fleet went out to measure their strength, and a thousandNavy planes took the air on the following day.
Uppermost in my own mind, and in everyone's mind, I think, was thequestion of air-force.
Would they bring the red ships? What was their cruising range? Couldthey cross the Atlantic with their enormous load of armored hull, ormust they be transported? Were the air-cruisers with the fleet, orwould they come later?
How Vornikoff and his assassins must have laughed as they built themonsters, armored them, and mounted the heavy guns so much greaterthan anything they would meet! The rest of us--all the rest of theworld!--had been kept in ignorance.... And now our own fliers weresweeping out over the gray waters to find the answer to our questions.
I've tried to picture that battle; I've tried to imagine the feelingsof those men on the dreadnaughts and battle-cruisers and destroyers.There was no attempt on the enemy's part to conceal his position; hiswireless was crackling through the air with messages that ourintelligence department easily decoded. Our Navy fliers roared outover the sea, out and over the American fleet, whose every bow was aline of white that told of their haste to meet the oncoming horde.
The plane-carriers threw their fighters into the air to join thecavalcade above--and a trace of smoke over the horizon told that thegiant fleet was coming into range.
* * * * *
And then, instead of positions and ranges flashed back from our own swiftscouts, came messages of the enemy's attack. Our men must have seen themfrom the towers of our own fleet; they must have known what the red swarmmeant, as it came like rolling, fire-lit smoke far out in the sky--andthey must have read plainly their own helplessness as they saw ourthousand planes go down. They were overwhelmed--obliterated!--and the redhorde of air-cruisers was hardly checked in its sweep.
Carnage and destruction, those blue seas of the north Atlantic haveseen; they could tell tales of brave men, bravely going to their deathin storm and calm but never have they seen another such slaughter asthat day's sun showed.
The anti-aircraft guns roared vainly; some few of our own planes thathad escaped returned to add their futile, puny blows. The waters aboutthe ships were torn to foam, while
the ships themselves were changedto furnaces of bursting flame--until the seas in mercy closed abovethem and took their torn steel, and the shattered bodies that theyheld, to the silence of the deep....
We got it all at Washington. I sat in a room with a group ofwhite-faced men who stared blindly at a radiocone where a quiet voicewas telling of disaster. It was Admiral Graymont speaking to us fromthe bridge of the big dreadnaught, _Lincoln_, the flagship of thecombined fleet. Good old Graymont! His best friend, Bill Schuler,Secretary of the Navy, was sitting wordless there beside me.
"It is the end," the quiet voice was saying; "the cruiser squadronsare gone.... Two more battleships have gone down: there are only fiveof us left.... A squadron of enemy planes is coming in above. Our menhave fought bravely and with never a chance.... There!--they've gotus!--the bombs! Good-by, Bill, old fellow--"
The radiocone was silent with a silence that roared deafeningly in ourears. And, beside me, I saw the Secretary of the Navy, a Navy nowwithout ships or men, drop his tired, lined face into his hands, whilehis broad shoulders shook convulsively. The rest of us remained in ourchairs, too stunned to do anything but look at one another in horror.
* * * * *
We expected them to strike at New York. I was sent up there, and itwas there that I saw Paul again. I met him on lower Broadway, and Iwent up to him with my hand reaching for his. I didn't admire Paul'saffiliations, but he had warned me--he had tried to save my life--andI wanted to thank him.
But his hand did not meet mine. There was a strange, wild look in hiseyes--I couldn't define it--and he brought his gaze back from far offto stare at me as if I were a stranger.
Then: "Still got that A.B.C. ship?" he demanded.
"Yes," I answered wonderingly.
"Junk it!" he said. And his laugh was as wild and incomprehensible ashis look had been. I stared after him as he walked away. I waspuzzled, but there were other things to think of then.
A frenzy of preparation--and all in vain. The enemy fooled us; theradio brought the word from Quebec.
"They have entered the St. Lawrence," was the message it flashed.Then, later: "The Red fleet is passing toward Montreal. Enemy planeshave spotted all radio towers. There is one above us now--" And thatended the message from Quebec.
But we got more information later. They landed near Montreal; theywere preparing a great base for offensive operations; the country wasoverrun with a million men; the sky was full of planes by night andday; there was no artillery, no field guns of any sort, but there weretorpedo-planes by tens of thousands, which made red fields of waitingdeath where trucks placed them as they took them from the ships.
And there were some of us who smiled sardonically in recollection ofthe mammoth plants the Vornikoff Reds had installed in Central Russia,and the plaudits that had greeted their plans for nitrogen fixation.They were to make fertilizers; the nitrates would be distributedwithout cost to the farms--this had pacified the Agrarians--and herewere their "nitrates" that were to make fertile the fields of Russia:countless thousands of tons of nitro-explosives in these flyingtorpedoes!
* * * * *
But if we smiled mirthlessly at these recollections we worked while wechewed on our cud of bitterness. There came an order: "Evacuate NewEngland," and the job was given to me.
With planes--a thousand of them--trucks, vans, the railroads, wegathered those terrified people into concentration camps, and tookthem over the ground, under the ground, and through the air to thedistributing camp at Buffalo, where they were scattered to otherpoints.
I saw the preparations for a battle-front below me as I skimmed overConnecticut. Trenches made a thin line that went farther than I couldsee! Here was the dam that was expected to stop the enemy columns fromthe north. I think no one then believed that our air-force could checkthe assault. The men of the fighting planes were marked for death; oneread it in their eyes; but who of us was not?
How those giant cruisers would be downed no man could say, but weworked on in a blind desperation; we would hold that invading army aslong as men could sight a gun; we would hold them back; and somehow,someway, we must find the means to repel the invasion from the air!
I saw the lines of track that made a network back to the trenches.Like the suburban lines around New York, they would carry thousands ofsingle cars, each driven at terrific speed by the air plane propellerat its bow. With these, the commanders could shift their forces towhatever sector was hardest pressed. They would be bombed, of course,but the hundreds of tracks would not all be destroyed--and the linemust be held!
The line! it brought a strangling lump to my throat as I saw thosethin markings of trenches, the marching bodies of troops, the brave,hopeless, determined men who went singing to their places in thatline. But my planes were winging past me; my job was ahead, where amultitude still waited and prayed for deliverance.
* * * * *
We never finished the job; in two days the red horde was upon us.Their swarming troops were convoyed by planes, but no effort was madeto fly over our lines and launch an attack. Were they feeling theirway? Did they think now that they would find us passive andunresisting? Did they want to take our cities undamaged? Oh, we askedourselves a thousand questions with no answer to any--except theknowledge that a million men were marching from the north; that theirfleet of planes would attack as soon as the troops encounteredresistance; that our batteries of anti-aircraft guns would harry themas they came, and our air-fleet, held back in reserve, would take whatthe batteries left....
My last planes with their fugitive loads passed close to the lines ofred troops. There were red planes overhead, but they let us passunhindered. Fleeing, driving wildly toward the south, we wereunworthy, it seemed, of even their contemptuous attention. But I wassick to actual nausea at sight of the villages and cities where only apart of the population had escaped. The roads, in front of the redcolumns, were jammed with motors and with men and women and childrenon foot: a hopeless tangle.
I was watching the pitiful flight below me, cursing my own impotenceto be of help, when a shrill whistling froze me rigid to my controls.I had heard it before--there could be no mistaking the cry of thatoncoming torpedo--and I saw the damnable thing pass close to my ship.
I was doing two hundred--my motor was throttled down--but this inhumanmonster passed me as if my ship were frozen as unmoving as myself. Ittore on ahead. I saw an enemy plane above it some five thousand feet.The torpedo was checked; I saw it poise; then it curved over and down.And the screaming motor took up its cry that was like a thousanddevils until its sound was lost in the screams from below and theinfernal blast of its own explosion.
Only a trial flight--an experiment to test their controls! No need forme to try to tell you of the thoughts that tore me through and throughwhile I struggled to bring my ship to an even keel in the hurricane ofexplosion that drove up at me from below. But I spat out the one word:"Brotherhood!" and I prayed for a place in the front line where Imight send one shot at least against so beastly a foe.
* * * * *
That was somewhere in Massachusetts. Their foremost columns were closebehind. They came to a stop some fifty miles from our waiting line ofbattle: I learned this when I got to Washington. And the reason, too,was known; it was published in all the papers. There had been messagesto the President, broadcast to the world from an unknown source:
"To the President of the United States--warning! This war must end.You, as Commander-in-Chief of the American forces can bring it to aclose. I have prevailed upon the Red Army of the Brotherhood to halt.They have listened to me. You, also, must take heed.
"You will issue orders at once to withdraw all resistance. You willdisband your army, ground all your planes; bring all your artilleryinto one place and prepare to turn the government of this country overto the representatives of the Central Council. You will act at once."
"This war is ended.
All wars are ended forevermore. I have spoken."
And the strange message was signed "Paul."
The wild words of a maniac, it was thought at first. Yet the factremained that the enemy's advance had ceased. Who was this "Paul" whohad "prevailed upon the Red Army" to halt?
And then the obvious answer occurred; it was a ruse on the part of theReds. They feared to attack; their strength was not as great as we hadthought--officers and men of all branches of the service took newheart and plunged more frenziedly still into the work of preparation.
There were direction-finders that had taken the message from severalstations; their pointers converged upon one definite location insouthern Ohio. Over an area of twenty square miles, that place wascombed for a sending radio where the message could haveoriginated--combed in vain.
* * * * *
The next demand came at ten on the following morning.
"To the President of the United States: You have disregarded mywarning. You will not do so again; I have power to enforce my demands.I had hoped that bloodshed and destruction might cease, but it isplain that only that will save you from your own headstrong folly. Imust strike. At noon to-day the Capitol in Washington will bedestroyed. See that it is emptied of human life. I have spoken. Paul."
A maniac, surely; yet a maniac with strange powers. For the graphs ofthe radio direction-finders showed a curve. And when they wereassembled the reading could only mean that the instrument that hadsent the threat had moved over fifty miles during the few minutes ofits sending. This, I think, was what brought the order to vacate thebig domed building in Washington.
Of course the Capitol Building had been searched; there was not a nooknor corner from roof to basement but had been gone over in search ofan explosive machine. And now it was empty, and a guard of soldiersmade a solid cordon surrounding it. No one could approach upon theground; and, above, a series of circling patrol-planes, one squadronabove another, guarded against approach by air. With such a defensethe Capitol and its grounds seemed impregnable.
My watch said 11:59; I held it in my hand and watched the seconds tickslowly by. The city was hushed; it seemed that no man was so much asbreathing ... 11:59 :60!--and an instant later I heard the shriek ofsomething that tore the air to screaming fragments. I saw it as itcame on a straight, level line from the east; a flash like a meteor ofglistening white. It passed beneath the planes, that were motionlessby contrast, drove straight for the gleaming Capitol dome, passedabove it, and swept on in a long flattened curve that bent outward andup.
It was gone from my sight, though the shrieking air was still tearingat my ears, when I saw the great building unfold. Time meant nothing;my racing mind made slow and deliberate the explosion that lifted theroofs and threw the walls in dusty masses upon the ground. So slow itseemed!--and I had not even seen the shell that the white meteor-shiphad fired. Yet there was the beautiful building, expanding,disintegrating. It was a cloud of dust when the concussion reached meto dash me breathless to the earth....
* * * * *
The white meteor was the vehicle of "Paul," the dictator. From it hadcome the radio message whose source had moved so swiftly. I saw thisall plainly.
There was a conference of high officials at the War DepartmentBuilding, and the Secretary summed up all that was said:
"A new form of air-flight, and a new weapon more destructive than anywe have known! That charge of explosive that was fired at the Capitolwas so small as to be unseen. We can't meet it; we can only fight.Fight on till the end."
A message came in as we sat there, a message to the Commander-in-Chiefwho had come over from the White House under military guard.
"Surrender!" it demanded; "I have shown you my power; it isinexhaustible, unconquerable. Surrender or be destroyed; it is thedawn of a new day, the day of the Brotherhood of Man. Let bloodshedcease. Surrender! I command it! Paul."
The President of the United States held the flimsy paper in his hand.He rose slowly to his feet, and he read it aloud to all of usassembled there; read it to the last hateful word. Then:
"Surrender?" he asked. He turned steady, quiet eyes upon the big flagwhose red and white and blue made splendid the wall behind him--andI'll swear that I saw him smile.
* * * * *
We have had many presidents since '76; big men, some of them; tall,handsome men; men who looked as if nature had moulded them for a highplace. This man was small of stature; the shortest man in all thatroom if he had stood, but he was big--big! Only one who is great canlook deep through the whirling turmoil of the moment to find theeternal verities that are always underneath--and smile!
"Men must die,"--he spoke meditatively; in seeming communing withhimself, as one who tries to face a problem squarely andhonestly--"and nations must pass; time overwhelms us all. Yet there isthat which never dies and never surrenders."
He looked about the room now, as if he saw us for the first time.
"Gentlemen," he said quietly, "we have here an ultimatum. It is backedby power which our Secretary of War says is invincible. We are facedby an enemy who would annihilate these United States, and this newpower fights on the side of the enemy.
"Must we go the way of England, of France, of all Europe? It wouldseem so. The United States of America is doomed. Yet each one of uswill meet what comes bravely, if, facing our own end, we know that theprinciples upon which this nation is founded must go on; if only theStars and Stripes still floats before our closing eyes to assure usthat some future day will see the resurrection of truth and of honorand kindness among men.
"We will fight, as our Secretary of War has said--fight on to the end.We will surrender--never! That is our answer to this one who callshimself 'Paul.'"
We could not speak; I do not know how long the silence lasted. But Iknow that I left that room a silent man among many silent men, inwhose eyes I saw a reflection of the emotion that filled my own heart.It was the end--the end of America, of millions of American homes--butthis was better than surrender to such a foe. Better death thanslavery to that race of bloodthirsty oppressors.
* * * * *
But who was "Paul?" This question kept coming repeatedly to my mind.The press of the country echoed the President's words, then dippedtheir pens in vitriol to heap scorching invective upon the head ofthe tyrant. The power of the Reds we might have met--or so it wasfelt--but this new menace gave the invaders a weapon we could notcombat. It was power!--a means of flight beyond anything known!--anexplosive beside which our nitro compounds were playthings for achild.
"Who is Paul?" It was not only myself who asked the question throughthose next long hours, but perhaps I was the only one in whose mindwas a disturbing certainty that the answer was mine if I could butgrasp it.
I was remembering Paris; I was thinking of that peaceful, happy citybefore the First of May, before the world had gone mad and a raging,red beast had laid it waste and overrun it. And of PaulStravoinski--my friend "Straki" of college days--who had warned me. Hehad known what was coming. He himself had said that he had prayed to"them" for delay; that in a few weeks he would do--what?... Andsuddenly I knew.
Paul had succeeded; his research had ended in the dissection of theatom; he had unleashed the sub-atomic power of matter. Only this couldexplain the wild flight through the sky, the terrific explosion at theCapitol. It was Paul--my friend, Paul Stravoinski--who was imposinghis will upon the world.
I said nothing as I took off; the swiftest plane was at my command. Imight be wrong; I must not arouse false hopes; but I must find Paul.And the papers were black with scareheads of another threat as I leftWashington:
"You have twenty-four hours to surrender. There shall be one last dayof grace." Signed: "Paul."
There was more of the wild talk of the beauties of this newdispensation--a mixture of idealistic folly and of threats ofdestruction. I needed no more to prove the truth of my suspicions. Noone b
ut the Paul I had known could cling so tenaciously to his dreams;no one but he could be so blind to the actual horror of the newoligarchy he would impose upon the world.
I flew alone; no one but myself must try to hunt him out. I paid noattention to the radio direction of the last message; he would fly farafield to send it; distance meant nothing to one who held his power. Imust look for him at his laboratory, that cluster of desertedbuildings that stood all alone by a distant railway siding; it wasthere he had worked.
* * * * *
He met me with a pistol in his hand--a tiny gun that fired only a .22calibre bullet.
"Put down your pop-gun," I told him and brushed through the open doorinto the room that had been his laboratory. "I am unarmed, and I'mhere to talk business.
"You are 'Paul'!" I shot the sentence at him as if it were a bulletthat must strike him down.
He did not answer directly; just nodded in confirmation of someunspoken thought.
"You have found me," he said slowly; "you were the only one I feared."
Then he came out with it, and his eyes blazed with a maniacal light.
"Yes, I am Paul! and this 'pop-gun' in my hand is the weapon thatdestroyed your Capitol at Washington. The bullet contained less than agrain of tritonite; that is the name I have given my explosive."
He aimed the little pistol toward me where I stood. "These bullets aremore lightly charged--they are to protect myself--and the oneten-thousandth of a milligram in the end of each will blow you intobits! Sit down. I will not be checked now. You will never leave thisplace alive!"
"Less than a grain of tritonite!"--and I had seen a great building godown to dust at its touch! I sat down in the chair where he directed,and I turned away from the fanatical glare of Paul's eyes to lookabout me.
There was poverty here no longer; no makeshift apparatus greeted myeyes, but the finest of laboratory equipment. Paul read my thoughts.
"They have been liberal," he told me; "the Central Council hasfinanced my work--though I have kept my whereabouts a secret even fromthem. But they would not wait. I told you in Paris, and you did notbelieve. And now--now I have succeeded! the research is done!"
* * * * *
He half turned to pick up a flake of platinum no larger than one'sfinger-nail; it was a weight that was used on a delicate balance.
"Matter is matter no longer," he said; "I have resolved it intoenergy. I hold here in my hand power to destroy an army, or to drive afleet of ships. I, Paul, will build a new world. I will give to man asurcease from labor; I will give him rest; I will do the work of theworld. My tritonite that can destroy can also create; it shall be usedfor that alone. This is the end of war. Here is wealth; here is power;I shall give it to mankind, and, under the rule of the Brotherhood, aunited world will arise and go forward to new growth, to a greatercivilization, to a building of a new heaven on earth."
He was pacing up and down the room. His hands were shaking; themuscles of his face that twitched and trembled were moulded into deeplines. I sat there and realized that within that room, directly beforemy eyes, was the Dictator of the World. It was true--I could not doubtit--Paul Straki of college days had made his dreams come true; hisresearch was ended. And this new "Paul" who held in those tremblinghands the destinies of mankind, at whose word kings and presidentstrembled, was utterly mad!
I tried to talk and tell him of the truth we knew was true. He wouldhave none of it; his dreams possessed him. In the bloody flag of thisnew Russia he could see only the emblem of freedom; the men whomarched beneath that banner were his brothers, unwitting in thedestruction they wrought. It was all that they knew. But they foughtfor the right. They would cease fighting now, and would join him inthe work of moulding a new race. And even their leaders, who hadsometimes opposed--were they not kind at heart? Had they not checkedthe advance of an irresistible army to give him and his new weapon anopportunity to open the eyes of the people? Theirs was no wish todestroy; their hearts ached for their victims who refused to listenand could be convinced only by force.
And as he talked on there passed before my eyes the vision of anaerial torpedo and a blood-red ship above, where these "kindly" menwho were Paul's allies turned the instrument of death upon huddled,screaming folk--and laughed, no doubt, at such good sport.
* * * * *
I thought of many things. I was tensed one moment to throw myself uponthe man; and an instant later I was searching my mind for someargument, some gleam of reason, with which I could tear aside theillusions that held him. I saw him cross the room where a radio stood,and he switched on the instrument for the news-broadcast service. Theshouting of an excited voice burst into the room.
"The Reds have advanced," said the voice. "Their armies have crossedthe Connecticut line. They are within ten miles of the Americanforces. The twenty-four hours of grace promised by the tyrant 'Paul'was a lie. The battle is already on."
I saw the tall figure of Paul sink to its former stoop; the lamenessthat had vanished in the moment of his exaltation had returned. Helimped a pace or two toward me.
"They said they would wait!" His voice was a hoarse whisper. "GeneralVornikoff himself gave me his promise!"
I was on my feet, then. "What matter?" I shouted. "What differencedoes it make--a few hours or a day? Your damned patriots, your dearbrothers in arms--they are destroying us this instant! And not one ofour men but is worth more than the whole beastly mob!"
I was wild with the picture that came so clear and plain before myeyes. I had my pistol in my hand; I was tempted to fire. It was hiswhisper that stopped me.
"They have crossed Massachusetts! And Maida is there in Melford!"
* * * * *
There was no resisting his strength that tore my weapon from me. Histritonite pistol was pressed into my side, and his hand upon my collarthrew me ahead of him toward a rear room, then out into a huge shed. Ihad only a quick glimpse of the airplane that was housed there. It wasa white cylinder, and the stern that was toward me showed afunnel-shaped port.
I was thrown by that same furious strength through a door of the ship;I saw Paul Stravoinski seat himself before some curious controls. Theship that held me rose; moved slowly through an opened door; and witha screech from the stern it tore off and up into the air.
I have said Paul could fly; but the terrific flight of the screamingthing that held us seemed beyond the power of man to control. I wasstunned with the thundering roar and the speed that held me down andback against a cabin wall.
How he found Melford, I cannot know; but he found it as a homingpigeon finds its loft. He checked our speed with a sickening swiftnessthat made my brain reel. There were red ships above, but they let thewhite ship pass unchallenged. There were no Red soldiers on theground--only the marks where they had passed.
From the distance came a never-ceasing thunder of guns. The villagewas quiet. It still burned, blazing brightly in places, againsmouldering sluggishly and sending into the still air smoke cloudswhose fumes were a choking horror of burned flesh. There were bodiesin grotesque scattering about the streets; some of them were black andcharred.
Paul Stravoinski took me with him as he dashed for a house that theflames had not touched. And I was with him as he smashed at the doorand broke into the room.
* * * * *
There was splintered furniture about. A cabinet, whose glass doors hadbeen wantonly smashed, leaned crazily above its fallen books, nowtorn, scuffed and muddy upon the floor. Through a shattered window inthe bed-room beyond came a puff of the acrid smoke from outside tostrangle the breath in my throat. On the floor in a shadowed cornerlay the body of a woman--a young woman as her clotted tangle of goldenhair gave witness. She stirred and moaned half-consciously.... And thelined face of Paul Stravoinski was a terrible thing to see as he wentstumblingly across the room to gather that body into his arms.
I had kn
own Maida; I had seen their love begin in college days. I hadknown a laughing girl with sunshine in her hair, a girl whose softeyes had grown so tenderly deep when they rested upon Paul--but thisthat he took in his arms, while a single dry sob tore harshly at histhroat, this was never Maida!
There were red drops that struck upon his hands or fell sluggishly tothe floor; the head and face had taken the blow of a clubbed rifle ora heavy boot. The eyes in that tortured face opened to rest uponPaul's, the lips were moving.
"I told them of you," I heard her whisper. "I told them that you wouldcome--and they laughed." Unconsciously she tried to draw her torn clothingabout her, an instinctive reaction to some dim realization of hernakedness. She was breathing feebly. "And now--oh, Paul!--Paul!--you--havecome--too late!"
* * * * *
I hardly think Paul knew I was there or sensed that I followed wherehe carried in his arms the bruised body that had housed the spirit ofMaida. He flew homeward like a demon, but he moved as one in a dream.
Only when I went with him into the room where he had worked, did heturn on me in sudden fury.
"Out!" he screamed. "Get out of my sight! It is you who have donethis--your damned armies who would not do as I ordered! If you had notresisted, if you had--"
I broke in there.
"Did we do that?" I outshouted him, and I pointed to the torn body ona cot. His eyes followed my shaking hand. "No, it was yourbrothers--your dear comrades who are bringing the brotherhood of meninto the world! Well, are you proud? Are you happy and satisfied--withwhat your brothers do with women?"
It must be a fearful thing to have one's dreams turn bitter andpoisonous. Paul Stravoinski seemed about to spring upon me. He wascrouched, and the muscles of his thin neck were like wire; his facewas a ghastly thing, his eyes so staring bright, and the sensitivemouth twisting horribly. But he sprang at last not at me but towardthe door, and without a word from his tortured lips he opened it andmotioned me out.
Even there I heard echoes of distant guns and the heavier, thuddingsounds that must be their aerial torpedoes. My feet were leaden as Istrained every muscle to hurry toward my ship. Through my mind wasrunning the threat of the Russian, Vornikoff: "We even tell you thedate: in thirty days." And this was the thirtieth day--thirty daysthat a state of war had existed.
* * * * *
The battle was on; the radio had spoken truly. I saw its raging firesas I came up from our rear where the gray-like smoke clouds shiveredin the unending blast. But I saw stabbing flames that struck upwardfrom the ground to make a wall of sharp, fiery spears, and I knew thatevery darting flame was launching a projectile from our anti-aircraftguns.
The skies were filled with the red aircraft of the enemy, but theirway was an avenue of hell where thousands of shells filled the airwith their crashing explosions. There were torpedoes, the unmannedairships whose cargo was death, and they were guided to their marksdespite the inferno that raged about the red ships above.
I saw meteors that fell, the red flames that enveloped them no redderthan the bodies of the ships. And, as I leaped from my plane that Ihad landed back of our lines, I sensed that the enemy was withdrawing.
There was a colonel of artillery--I had known him in days ofpeace--and he threw his arms around me and executed a crazy dance."We've beaten them back, Bob!" he shouted, and repeated it over andover in a delirium of joy.
I couldn't believe it; not those cruisers that I had seen over Paris.Another brief moment showed my fears were all too rational.
A shrieking hailstorm of torpedoes preceded them; the ships weredirecting them from afar. And, while some of the big shells went wildand overshot our lines, there were plenty that found their mark.
I was smashed flat by a stunning concussion. Behind me the place whereColonel Hartwell had stood was a smoking crater; his battery of gunshad been blasted from the earth. Up and down the whole line, farbeyond the range of my sight, the eruption continued. The ground was avolcano of flame, as if the earth had opened to let through theinterior fires, and the air was filled with a litter of torn bodiesand sections of shattered guns.
No human force could stand up under such a bombardment. Like othersabout me, I gripped tight upon something within me that was myself-control, and I marveled that I yet lived while I waited for theend.
* * * * *
Beyond the smoke clouds was a hillside, swarming with figures in red;solid masses of troops that came toward us. Above was the red fleet,passing safely above our flame-blasted lines; there were bombs fallingupon those batteries here and there whose fire was unsilenced. Andthen, from the south, came a roar that pierced even the bedlam aboutme. The sun shone brightly there where the smoke-clouds had notreached, and it glinted and sparkled from the wings of a myriad of ourplanes.
There was something that pulled tight at my throat; I know I tore atit with fumbling hands, as if that something were an actual band thathad clamped down and choked me, while I stared at that true line ofsharp-pointed V's. The air-force of the United States had been orderedin; and they were coming, coming--to an inevitable death!
I tried to tear my eyes away from that oncoming fleet, but I could notmove. I saw their first contact with the enemy; so small, they were,in contrast with the big red cruisers. They attacked in formations;they drove down and in; and they circled and whirled before theyfluttered to earth....
Dimly, through the stupor that numbed my brain, I heard men about meshouting with joy. I felt more than saw the fall of a monster redcraft; it struck not far away. The voices were thanking God--for what?Another red ship fell--and another; and through all the roaringinferno a sound was tearing--a ripping, terrible scream that went onand on. And above me, when I forced my eyes upward, was a flash ofwhite.
It darted like a live thing among the red ones whose guns blazedmadly--and the red ships in clotted groups fell away and over and downas the white one passed. They had been burst open where some power hadblasted them, and their torn hulls showed gaping as they fell.
For a time the air was silent and empty above; the white, flashingthing had passed from sight, for the line of red ships was long. Thenagain it returned, and it threw itself into the mad whirl in the southwhere the air-force of the American people was fighting its lastfight.
I was screaming insanely as I saw it come back. The white ship!--theblast of vapor from its funneled stern--It was Paul!--PaulStravoinski!--Paul the Dictator!--and he was fighting on our side!
* * * * *
His ship had been prepared; I had seen the machine-guns on her bow.Paul was working them from within, and every bullet was tipped withthe product of his brain--the deadly tritonite!
The white flash swung wide in a circle that took it far away. It cameback above the advancing army of the Reds. It swerved once wildly,then settled again upon its course, and the raging hell that the Redshad turned loose upon our lines was as nothing to the destruction thatpoured upon the Red troops from above.
A messenger of peace, that ship; I knew well why Paul had painted itwhite. And, instead of peace--!
He was flying a full mile from our lines, yet the torn earth and greatboulders crashed among us even then. There were machine-guns firingceaselessly from the under side of the ship. What charges of tritonitehad the demented man placed in those shells?
Below and behind it, as it flashed across our view, was a fearful,writhing mass where the earth itself rose up in unending, convulsiveagony. A volcano of fire followed him, a fountain of earth that rippedand tore and stretched itself in a writhing, tortured line across theland as the white ship passed.
No man who saw that and lived has found words to describe the progressof that monstrous serpent; the valley itself is there for men to see.The roar was beyond the limit of men's strained nerves. I found myselfcowering upon the ground when the white ship came back; I followed itfearfully with my eyes until I saw it swoop falteringly down. Suc
hpower seemed not for men but for gods; I could not have met PaulStravoinski then but in a posture of supplication. But I leaped to myfeet and raced madly across the torn earth as I saw the white shiptouch the ground--rise--fall again--and end its flight where itploughed a furrow across a brown field....
* * * * *
I raised Paul Stravoinski's head in my arms where I found him in theship. An enemy shell had entered that cabin; it must have come earlyin the fight, but he had fought gamely on. And the eyes that looked upinto mine had none of the wild light I had seen. They were the eyes ofPaul Straki, the comrade of those few long years before, and he smiledas he said: "_Voila_, friend Bob: _c'est fini!_ And now I go for along, long walk. We will talk of poetry, Maida and I...."
But his dreams were still with him. He opened his eyes to stareintently at me. "You will see that it is not in vain?" he questioned;then smiled as one who is at peace, as he whispered: "Yes, I know youwill--my friend, Bob--"
And his fixed gaze went through and beyond me, while he tried, inbroken sentences, to give the vision that had been his. So plain itwas to him now.
"The wild work--of a mistaken people. America will undo it.... A worldat peace.... The vast commerce--of the skies--I see it--so clearly....It will break down--all barriers.... A beautiful, happy world...."
His lips moved feebly at the last. I could not speak; could not evencall him by name; I could only lean my head closer to hear.
One whispered word; then another: a fragment of poetry! I had heardhim quote it often. But the whispered words were not for me. Paul wasspeaking to someone beside him--someone my blind, human eyes could notsee....
* * * * *
I am writing these words at my desk in the great TransportationBuilding in New York. It stands upon the site of the Chrysler Buildingthat towered here--until one of the flying torpedoes came over to huntit out. They landed several in New York; how long ago it all seemsthat the threat of utter destruction hung over the whole nation--thewhole world.
And now from my window I see the sparkling flash of ships. The air isfilled with them; I am still unaccustomed to their speed. But a wispof vapor from each bell-shaped stern throws them swiftly on their way;it marks the continuous explosion of that marvel of a newage--tritonite! There are tremendous terminals being built; theair-transport lines are being welded into efficient units that circlethe world; and the world is becoming so small!
The barriers are gone; all nations are working as one to use wiselythis strange new power for the work of this new world. No morepoverty; no more of the want and desperate struggle that leads a wholepeople into the insane horrors of war; it is a glorious world of whichwe dream and which is coming slowly to be....
But I think we must dream well and work well to bring to actuality thebeautiful visions in those far-seeing eyes of the man calledPaul--Dictator, one time, of the whole world.
LISTENING TO ANTS
Two scientists of the University of Pittsburgh recently perfected anapparatus for detecting the sounds of underground communications amongants. A block of wood was placed upon the diaphragm of an ordinarytelephone transmitter, which in turn was connected through batteriesand amplifiers to a pair of earphones. When the termites crawled overthe block of wood the transmitter was agitated, resulting in soundvibrations which were clearly heard by the listener at the headset.
When the ants became excited over something or other their soldierswere found to hammer their heads vigorously on the wood. This actioncould be clearly seen and heard at the same time. The investigatorsfound that the ants could hear sound vibrations in the air very poorlyor not at all, but were extremely sensitive to vibrations underground.For this reason it was thought that the head hammering was a method ofcommunication.
Because of this sensitivity to substratum vibrations, ants are seldomfound to infest the ties of railroads carrying heavy traffic, orbuildings containing machinery.
