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The World Set Free Chapter 2 - The Last War Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter two of the World Set Free by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Adam Rcitage, June two
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Speaker 1: thousand nine, Alexandria, Virginia, The World Set Free by H. G. Wells,
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Speaker 1: Chapter the second The Last War, Section one. Viewed from
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Speaker 1: the standpoint of a sane and ambitious social order, it
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Speaker 1: is difficult to understand and it would be tedious to
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Speaker 1: follow the motives that plunged mankind into the war that
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Speaker 1: fills the histories of the middle decades of the twentieth century.
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Speaker 1: It must always be remembered that the political structure of
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Speaker 1: the world at the time was everywhere extraordinarily behind the
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Speaker 1: collective intelligence that is the central fact of that history.
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Speaker 1: For two hundred years, there had been no great changes
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Speaker 1: in political or legal methods and pretensions. The utmost change
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Speaker 1: had been a certain shifting of boundaries and slight readjustment
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Speaker 1: of procedure, while in nearly every other aspect of life
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Speaker 1: there had been fundamental revolutions, gigantic releases, and an enormous
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Speaker 1: enlargement of scope and outlook. The absurdities of courts and
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Speaker 1: the indignities of representative parliamentary government, coupled with the opening
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Speaker 1: of vast fields of opportunity in other directions, had withdrawn
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Speaker 1: the best intelligences more and more from public affairs. The
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Speaker 1: ostensible governments of the world in the twentieth century were
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Speaker 1: following in the wake of the ostensible religions. They were
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Speaker 1: ceasing to command the services of any but second rate men.
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Speaker 1: After the middle of the eighteenth century, there are no
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Speaker 1: more great ecclesiastics upon the world's memory. After the opening
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Speaker 1: of the twentieth no more statement. Everywhere one finds an energetic, ambitious,
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Speaker 1: short sighted commonplace types in the seats of authority, blind
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Speaker 1: to the new possibilities, and litigiously reliant upon the traditions
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Speaker 1: of the past. Perhaps the most dangerous of those outworn
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Speaker 1: traditions were the boundaries of the various sovereign states and
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Speaker 1: the conception of a general predominance in human affairs on
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Speaker 1: the part of some one particular state. The memory of
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Speaker 1: the empires of Rome and Alexander squatted an unlaid carnivorous
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Speaker 1: ghost in the human imagination. It bored into the human
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Speaker 1: brain like some grisly parasite, and filled it with disordered
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Speaker 1: thoughts and violent impulses. For more than a century the
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Speaker 1: French system exhausted its vitality in belligerent convulsions, and then
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Speaker 1: the infection passed to the German speaking peoples, who were
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Speaker 1: the hard and center of Europe, and from them onward
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Speaker 1: to the Slavs. Later ages were to store and neglect
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Speaker 1: the vast, insane literature of this obsession. The intricate treaties,
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Speaker 1: the secret agreements, the infinite knowingness of the political writer,
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Speaker 1: the cunning refusals to accept plain facts, the strategic devices,
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Speaker 1: the tactical maneuvers, the records of mobilizations and counter mobilizations.
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Speaker 1: It ceased to be credible almost as soon as it
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Speaker 1: ceased to happen. But in the very dawn of a
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Speaker 1: new age, their state craftsmen sat with their historical candles burning, and,
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Speaker 1: in spite of strange new reflections and unfamiliar lights and shadows,
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Speaker 1: still wrangling and planning to rearrange the maps of Europe
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Speaker 1: and the world. It was to become a matter for
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Speaker 1: subtle inquiry how far the millions of men and women
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Speaker 1: outside the world of these specialists sympathized and agreed with
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Speaker 1: their portentous activities. One school of psychologists inclined to minimize
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Speaker 1: this participation, but the balance of evidence goes to show
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Speaker 1: that there were massive responses to these suggestions of the
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Speaker 1: belligerent schemer. Primitive man had been a fiercely combative animal,
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Speaker 1: Innumerable generations had passed their lives in tribal warfare, and
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Speaker 1: the weight of tradition, the example of history, the ideals
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Speaker 1: of loyalty and devotion fell in easily enough with the
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Speaker 1: incitements of the international mischief maker. The political ideas of
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Speaker 1: the common man were picked up haphazard. There was practically
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Speaker 1: nothing in such education as he was given that was
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Speaker 1: ever intended to fit him for citizenship. As such, that
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Speaker 1: conception only appeared, indeed, with the development of modern state ideas,
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Speaker 1: and it was therefore a comparatively easy matter to fill
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Speaker 1: his vacant mind with the sounds and fury of exasperated
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Speaker 1: suspicion and national aggression. For example, Barney describes the London
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Speaker 1: crowd as noisily patriotic, when presently his battalion came up
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Speaker 1: from the depot to London to in train for the
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Speaker 1: French frontier. He tells of children and women, and lads
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Speaker 1: and old men, cheering and shouting, of the streets and
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Speaker 1: rows hung with the flags of the Allied powers, of
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Speaker 1: a real enthusiasm even among the destitute and unemployed. The
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Speaker 1: labor bureaus were now partially transformed into enrollment offices, and
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Speaker 1: were centers of hotly patriotic excitement. At every convenient place
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Speaker 1: upon the line. On either side of the Channel tunnel,
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Speaker 1: there were enthusiastics, spectators, and the feeling in the regiment,
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Speaker 1: if a little stiffened and darkened by grim anticipations, was
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Speaker 1: nonetheless warlike. But all this emotion was the fickle emotion
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Speaker 1: of minds without established ideas. It was with most of them,
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Speaker 1: Barney says, as it was with himself, a natural response
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Speaker 1: to collective movement, and to martial sounds and colors, and
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Speaker 1: the axhilarating challenge of vague dangers. And people had been
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Speaker 1: so long oppressed by the threat and preparation for war
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Speaker 1: that its arrival came with an effect of positive relief.
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Speaker 1: Section two. The plan of campaign of the Allies assigned
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Speaker 1: the defense of the lower Meious to the English, and
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Speaker 1: the troop trains were run direct from the various British
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Speaker 1: depots to the points in the Ardanns where they were
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Speaker 1: intended to trench themselves. Most of the documents bearing upon
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Speaker 1: the campaign were destroyed during the war. From the first
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Speaker 1: scheme of the Allies seems to have been confused, but
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Speaker 1: it is highly probable that the formation of an aerial
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Speaker 1: park in this region, from which attacks could be made
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Speaker 1: upon the vast industrial plant of the Lower Rhine, and
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Speaker 1: a flanking raided through Holland upon the German naval establishments
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Speaker 1: at the mouth of the Alba, were integral parts of
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Speaker 1: the original project. Nothing of this was known to such
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Speaker 1: pawns in the game as Barney and his company, whose
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Speaker 1: business it was to do what they were told by
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Speaker 1: the mysterious intelligences at the direction of things in Paris,
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Speaker 1: to which the city the Whitehall staff had also been transferred.
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Speaker 1: From first to last, these directing intelligences remained mysterious to
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Speaker 1: the body of the army veiled under the name of orders.
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Speaker 1: There was no Napoleon, no Caesar to embody enthusiasm. Barney says,
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Speaker 1: we talked of them. They are sending us to Luxembourg.
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Speaker 1: They are going to turn the central European Right behind
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Speaker 1: the veil of this vagueness, the little group of more
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Speaker 1: or less worthy men which constituted Headquarters was beginning to
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Speaker 1: realize the enormity of the thing it was supposed to control.
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Speaker 1: In the great Hall of the War Control, whose windows
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Speaker 1: looked out across the Seine to the Trocadero and the
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Speaker 1: palaces of the Western Quarter, a series of big scale
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Speaker 1: relief maps were laid out upon tables to display the
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Speaker 1: whole seat of war, and the staff officers of the
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Speaker 1: Control were continually busy shifting the little blocks which represented
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Speaker 1: the contending troops as the reports and intelligence came drifting
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Speaker 1: into the various telegraphic bureaus in the adjacent rooms. In
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Speaker 1: other smaller apartments there were maps of a less detailed sort,
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Speaker 1: upon which, for example, the reports of the British Admiralty
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Speaker 1: and of the slav commanders were recorded as they kept
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Speaker 1: coming to hand. Upon these maps, as upon chessboards. Marshal Dubois,
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Speaker 1: in consultation with General Viard and the Earl of Delhi,
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Speaker 1: was to play the great game for world supremacy against
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Speaker 1: the central European powers. Very probably he had a definite
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Speaker 1: idea of his game very probably he had a coherent
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Speaker 1: and admirable plan what he had reckoned without a proper
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Speaker 1: estimate either of the new strategy of aviation or of
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Speaker 1: the possibilities of atomic energy that Holston had opened for mankind.
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Speaker 1: While he planned in entrenchments and invasions in a frontier war,
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Speaker 1: the central European generalship was striking at the eyes and
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Speaker 1: the brain. And while with a certain diffident hesitation, he
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Speaker 1: developed his gambit that night upon the lines laid down
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Speaker 1: by Napoleon and Moltke, his own scientific corpse, in a
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Speaker 1: state of mutinous activity, was preparing a blow for Berlin.
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Speaker 1: Those old fools was the key in which the Scientific
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Speaker 1: Corps was thinking the war. Control in Paris on the
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Speaker 1: night of July the second was an impressive display of
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Speaker 1: the paraphernalia of scientific military organization as the first half
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Speaker 1: of the twentieth century understood it. To one human being,
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Speaker 1: at least, the consulting commanders had the likeness of world
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Speaker 1: wielding gods. She was a skilled typist, capable of nearly
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Speaker 1: sixty words a minute, and she had been engaged in
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Speaker 1: relay with other similar women to take down orders in
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Speaker 1: duplicate and hand them over to the Junie your officers
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Speaker 1: in attendance, to be forwarded and filed. There had come
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Speaker 1: a lull, and she had been sent out from the
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Speaker 1: dictating room to take the air upon the terrace before
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Speaker 1: the Great Hall, and to eat such scanty refreshment as
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Speaker 1: she had brought with her until her services were required again.
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Speaker 1: From her position upon the terrace, this young woman had
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Speaker 1: of view not only of the wide sweep of the
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Speaker 1: river below her, and on the eastward side of Paris,
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Speaker 1: from the Arc de Triomphe to Saint Cloud, great blocks
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Speaker 1: and masses of black or pale darkness with pink and
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Speaker 1: golden flashes of illumination and endless interlacing bands of dotted
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Speaker 1: lights under a still and starless sky. But also the
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Speaker 1: whole spacious interior of the Great Hall, with its slender
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Speaker 1: pillars and gracious arching and clustering lamps, was visible to her.
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Speaker 1: There Over a wilderness of tables lay the huge maps,
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Speaker 1: done on so large a scale that one might fancy
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Speaker 1: them small countries. The messengers and attendants went and came,
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Speaker 1: perpetually altering, moving the little pieces that signified hundreds and
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Speaker 1: thousands of men, and the great Commander and his two
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Speaker 1: consultants stood amidst all these things, and near where the
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Speaker 1: fighting was nearest. Scheming directing, they had but to breathe
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Speaker 1: a word, and presently away there in the world of reality,
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Speaker 1: the punctual myriads moved, men rose up and went forward
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Speaker 1: and died. The fate of nations lay behind the eyes
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Speaker 1: of these three men. Indeed they were like gods. Most
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Speaker 1: godlike of the three was Dubois. It was for him
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Speaker 1: to decide. The others at most might suggest her. Woman's
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Speaker 1: soul went out to this grave, handsome, still old man
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Speaker 1: in a passion of instinctive worship. Once she had taken
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Speaker 1: words of instruction from him direct she had awaited them
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Speaker 1: in an ecstasy of happiness and fear. For her exaltation
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Speaker 1: was made terrible by the dread that some error might
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Speaker 1: dishonor her. She watched him now through the glass with
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Speaker 1: all the unpenetrating minuteness of an impassioned woman's observation. He
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Speaker 1: said little, she remarked, He looked but little at the maps.
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Speaker 1: The tall englishman beside him was manifestly troubled by a
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Speaker 1: swarm of ideas, conflicting ideas. He craned his neck at
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Speaker 1: every shifting of the little red, blue, black and yellow
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Speaker 1: pieces on the board, and wanted to draw the commander's
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Speaker 1: attention to this and that. Du Bois listened, nodded, emitted
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Speaker 1: a word, and became still again, brooding like the National eagle.
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Speaker 1: His eyes were so deeply sunken under his white eyebrows
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Speaker 1: that she could not see his eyes. His mustache overhung
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Speaker 1: the mouth from which those words of decision came. Gerrard, too,
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Speaker 1: said little. He was a dark man, with the drooping
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Speaker 1: head and melancholy, watchful eyes. He was more intent upon
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Speaker 1: the French right, which was feeling its way now through
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Speaker 1: Alsace to the Rhine. He was she knew, an old
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Speaker 1: colleague of Dubois. He knew him better. She decided he
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Speaker 1: trusted him more than this unfamiliar Englishman. Not to talk,
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Speaker 1: to remain impassive, and as far as possible in profile.
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Speaker 1: These were the lessons that old Dubois had mastered years ago.
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Speaker 1: To seem to know all, to betray no surprise, to
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Speaker 1: refuse to hurry itself a confession of miscalculation. By attention
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Speaker 1: to these simple rules, Dubois had built up a steady
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Speaker 1: reputation from the days when he had been a promising
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Speaker 1: junior officer, a still almost abstracted young man, deliberate but ready.
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Speaker 1: Even then men had looked at him and said he
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Speaker 1: will go far. Through fifty years of peace, he had
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Speaker 1: never once been found wanting and at maneuvers. His impassive
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Speaker 1: persistence had perplexed and hypnotized and defeated many a more
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Speaker 1: actively intelligent man. Deep in his soul, Dubois had hidden
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Speaker 1: his one profound discovery about the modern art of warfare,
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Speaker 1: the key to his career, and this discovery was that
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Speaker 1: nobody knew that to act therefore was to blunder, that
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Speaker 1: to talk was to confess, and that the man who
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Speaker 1: acted slowly and steadfastly and above all silently had the
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Speaker 1: best chance of winning. Through Meanwhile, one fed the men.
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Speaker 1: Now by this same strategy, he hoped to shatter those
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Speaker 1: mysterious unknowns of the Central European Command. Delhi might talk
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Speaker 1: of a great flank march through Holland, with all the
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Speaker 1: British submarines and hydroplanes and torpedo craft pouring up the
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Speaker 1: Rhine in support of it. Viard might crave for brilliance
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Speaker 1: with the motor bicycles, aeroplanes and ski men among the
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Speaker 1: Swiss mountains, and a sudden swoop upon Vienna. The thing
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Speaker 1: was to listen and to wait for the other side
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Speaker 1: to begin experimenting. It was all experimenting. And meanwhile he
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Speaker 1: remained in profile with an air of assurance, like a
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Speaker 1: man who sits in an automobile after the chauffeur has
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Speaker 1: had his directions. And every one about him was a
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Speaker 1: stronger and surer for that quiet face, that air of
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Speaker 1: knowledge and unruffled confidence. The clustering lights threw a score
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Speaker 1: of shadows of him upon the maps, great bunches of him,
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Speaker 1: versions of commanding presence, lighter or darker, dominated the field
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Speaker 1: and pointed in every direction. Those shadows symbolized his control.
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Speaker 1: When a messenger came from the wireless room to shift
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Speaker 1: this or that piece in the game to replace under
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Speaker 1: amended reports one central European regiment by a score, to
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Speaker 1: draw back or thrust out or distribute this or that
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Speaker 1: force of the allies, the Marshal would turn his head
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Speaker 1: and seem not to see or look in, nods slightly
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Speaker 1: as a master nods who approves a pupil's self correction. Yes,
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Speaker 1: that's better. How wonderful he was thought the woman at
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Speaker 1: the window. How wonderful it all was. This was the
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Speaker 1: brain of the Western This was Olympus, with the warring
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Speaker 1: earth at its feet, and he was guiding France, France,
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Speaker 1: so long a resentful exile from imperialism, back to her
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Speaker 1: old predominance. It seemed to her, beyond the desert of
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Speaker 1: a woman, that she should be privileged to participate. It
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Speaker 1: is hard to be a woman full of the stormy
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Speaker 1: impulse to personal devotion, and to have to be impersonal, abstract, exact, punctual.
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Speaker 1: She must control herself. She gave herself up to fantastic dreams,
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Speaker 1: dreams of the days when the war would be over,
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Speaker 1: and victory and throne. Then perhaps this harshness, this armor,
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Speaker 1: would be put aside, and the gods might unbend. Her
18:50
Speaker 1: eyelids drooped. She roused herself with a start. She became
18:55
Speaker 1: aware that the night outside was no longer still, that
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Speaker 1: there was excitement down below on the bridge, and a
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Speaker 1: running in the street, and a flickering of searchlights among
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Speaker 1: the clouds from some high place beyond the trocadero. And
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Speaker 1: then the excitement came surging up past her and invaded
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Speaker 1: the hall. Within one of the sentinels from the terrace
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Speaker 1: stood at the upper end of the room, gesticulating and
19:21
Speaker 1: shouting something, and all the world had changed a kind
19:26
Speaker 1: of throbbing. She couldn't understand. It was as if all
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Speaker 1: the water pipes and concealed machinery and cables of the
19:34
Speaker 1: ways beneath were beating as pulses beat, and about her
19:39
Speaker 1: blew something like a wind, a wind that was dismay.
19:43
Speaker 1: Her eyes went to the face of the Marshal, as
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Speaker 1: a frightened child might look towards its mother. He was
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Speaker 1: still serene. He was frowning slightly, she thought, But that
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Speaker 1: was natural enough, for the Earl of Delhi, with one hand,
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Speaker 1: gauntly gesticulating, had taken him by the arm, and was
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Speaker 1: all too manifestly disposed to drag him towards the great
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Speaker 1: door that opened on the terrace. And Virard was hurrying
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Speaker 1: towards the huge windows, and doing so in the strangest
20:15
Speaker 1: of attitudes. Bent forward and with eyes upturned something up here,
20:22
Speaker 1: and then it was as if thunder broke overhead. The
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Speaker 1: sound struck her like a blow. She crouched together against
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Speaker 1: the masonry and looked up. She saw three black shapes
20:35
Speaker 1: swooping down through the torn clouds, and from a point
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Speaker 1: a little below two of them there had already started
20:43
Speaker 1: curling trails of red. Everything else in her being was paralyzed.
20:49
Speaker 1: She hung through moments that seemed infinities, watching those red
20:53
Speaker 1: missiles whirl down towards her. She felt torn out of
20:57
Speaker 1: the world. There was nothing else in the world but
21:00
Speaker 1: a crimson purple glare and sound, deafening, all embracing, continuing sound.
21:07
Speaker 1: Every other light had gone out about her, and against
21:11
Speaker 1: this glare hung slanting walls, pirouetting pillars, projecting fragments of cornices,
21:17
Speaker 1: and a disorderly flight of huge angular sheets of glass.
21:22
Speaker 1: She had an impression of a great ball of crimson
21:25
Speaker 1: purple fire, like a madden living thing, that seemed to
21:29
Speaker 1: be whirling about very rapidly, amidst a chaos of falling
21:34
Speaker 1: masonry that seemed to be attacking the earth furiously, that
21:38
Speaker 1: seemed to be burrowing into it like a blazing rabbit.
21:43
Speaker 1: She had all the sensations of waking up out of
21:46
Speaker 1: a dream. She found she was lying face downward on
21:50
Speaker 1: a bank of mold, and that a little rivulet of
21:53
Speaker 1: hot water was running over one foot. She tried to
21:57
Speaker 1: raise herself and found her leg was very, very painful.
22:01
Speaker 1: She was not clear whether it was neither day nor
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Speaker 1: where she was. She made a second effort, wincing and groaning,
22:09
Speaker 1: and turned over and got into a sitting position and
22:12
Speaker 1: looked about her. Everything seemed very silent. She was, in
22:17
Speaker 1: fact in the midst of a vast uproar, but she
22:21
Speaker 1: did not realize this because her hearing had been destroyed.
22:25
Speaker 1: At first, she could not join on what she saw
22:28
Speaker 1: to any previous experience. She seemed to be in a
22:33
Speaker 1: strange world, a soundless, ruinous world, a world of heaped,
22:37
Speaker 1: broken things. And it was lit, and somehow this was
22:42
Speaker 1: more familiar to her mind than any other fact about her.
22:46
Speaker 1: By a flickering purplish crimson light then close to her,
22:51
Speaker 1: rising above a confusion of debris, she recognized the trocadero.
22:56
Speaker 1: It was changed, something had gone from it, but its
22:59
Speaker 1: outline and was unmistakable. It stood out against a streaming,
23:05
Speaker 1: whirling uprush of red lit steam, And with that she
23:09
Speaker 1: recalled Paris and the Seine, and the warm, overcast evening,
23:14
Speaker 1: and the beautiful, luminous organization of the war control. She
23:19
Speaker 1: drew herself a little way up the slope of earth
23:22
Speaker 1: on which she lay, and examined her surroundings with an
23:26
Speaker 1: increasing understanding. The earth on which she was laying projected
23:32
Speaker 1: like a cape into the river. Quite close to her
23:35
Speaker 1: was a brimming lake of dammed up water, from which
23:39
Speaker 1: these warm rivulets and torrents were trickling. Wisps of vapor
23:44
Speaker 1: came into circling existence a foot or so from its
23:47
Speaker 1: mirror surface. Nearer at hand, and reflected exactly in the water,
23:52
Speaker 1: was the upper part of a familiar looking stone pillar.
23:56
Speaker 1: On the side of her. Away from the water, the
23:59
Speaker 1: heaped ruins rose steeply in a confused slope up to
24:03
Speaker 1: a glaring crest. Above and reflecting this glare towered pillowed
24:09
Speaker 1: masses of steam, rolling swiftly upward to the zenith. It
24:14
Speaker 1: was from this crest that the livid glow that lit
24:18
Speaker 1: the world about her proceeded, and slowly her mind connected
24:22
Speaker 1: this mound with the vanished buildings of the war control my.
24:28
Speaker 1: She whispered and remained with staring eyes, quite motionless for
24:32
Speaker 1: a time, crouching close to the warm earth. Then, presently,
24:37
Speaker 1: this dim, broken human thing began to look about it again.
24:42
Speaker 1: She began to feel the need of fellowship. She wanted
24:46
Speaker 1: to question, wanted to speak, wanted to relate her experience,
24:51
Speaker 1: and her foot hurt her atrociously. There ought to be
24:54
Speaker 1: an ambulance. A little gust of querulous criticisms blew across her. Mi.
25:01
Speaker 1: This surely was a disaster. Always after a disaster there
25:05
Speaker 1: should be ambulances and helpers moving about. She craned her head.
25:10
Speaker 1: There was something there, but everything was so still. Monchieur,
25:15
Speaker 1: she cried her ears. She noted felt queer, and she
25:20
Speaker 1: began to suspect that all was not well with them.
25:24
Speaker 1: It was terribly lonely in this chaotic strangeness. And perhaps
25:29
Speaker 1: this man, if it was a man, for it was
25:32
Speaker 1: difficult to see, might, for all his stillness, be merely insensible.
25:38
Speaker 1: He might have been stunned. The leaping glare beyond sent
25:42
Speaker 1: a ray into his corner, and for a moment every
25:45
Speaker 1: little detail was distinct. It was martial dubois. He was
25:50
Speaker 1: lying against a huge slab of the war map. To
25:53
Speaker 1: it there stuck, and from it their dangled little wooden objects,
25:59
Speaker 1: the symbols of infantry and cavalry and guns. As they
26:03
Speaker 1: were disposed upon the frontier. He did not seem to
26:06
Speaker 1: be aware of this. At his back, he had an
26:09
Speaker 1: effect of inattention, not indifferent attention, but as if he
26:15
Speaker 1: were thinking. She could not see the eyes beneath his
26:18
Speaker 1: shaggy brows, but it was evident he frowned. He frowned slightly.
26:24
Speaker 1: He had an air of not wanting to be disturbed.
26:27
Speaker 1: His face still bore that expression of assured confidence, that
26:32
Speaker 1: conviction that if things were left to him, France might
26:36
Speaker 1: obey in security. She did not cry out to him again,
26:41
Speaker 1: but she crept a little nearer. A strange surmise made
26:44
Speaker 1: her eyes dilate. With a painful wrench. She pulled herself
26:49
Speaker 1: up so that she could see completely over the intervening
26:52
Speaker 1: lumps of smashed up masonry. Her hand touched something wet,
26:57
Speaker 1: and after one convulsive movement, she came rigid. It was
27:02
Speaker 1: not a whole man there. It was a piece of
27:05
Speaker 1: a man, the head and shoulders of a man, that
27:08
Speaker 1: trailed down into a ragged darkness and pool of shining black.
27:13
Speaker 1: And even as she stared, the mound above her swayed
27:17
Speaker 1: and crumpled, and a rush of hot water came pouring
27:20
Speaker 1: over her. Then it seemed to her that she was
27:23
Speaker 1: dragged downward. Section three. When the rather brutish young aviator
27:32
Speaker 1: with the bullet head and the black hair close cropped
27:35
Speaker 1: and brass, who was in charge of the French Special
27:39
Speaker 1: Scientific Corps, heard presently of this disaster to the war control,
27:44
Speaker 1: he was so wanting in imagination in any sphere but
27:48
Speaker 1: his own, that he laughed, small matter to him that
27:53
Speaker 1: Paris was burning. His mother and father and sister lived
27:57
Speaker 1: at Cotabay, and the only sweet he had ever had,
28:02
Speaker 1: and it was poor love making then was a girl
28:05
Speaker 1: in Rowe. He slapped his second in command on the shoulder. Now,
28:12
Speaker 1: he said, there's nothing on earth to stop us going
28:15
Speaker 1: to Berlin and giving them tit for tat strategy and
28:19
Speaker 1: reasons of state. Thereover come along, my boy, and we'll
28:24
Speaker 1: just show these old women what we can do when
28:26
Speaker 1: they've let us have our heads. He spent five minutes telephoning,
28:31
Speaker 1: and then he went out into the courtyard of the
28:34
Speaker 1: chateau in which he had been installed and shouted for
28:37
Speaker 1: his automobile. Things would have to move quickly, because there
28:42
Speaker 1: was scarcely an hour and a half before dawn. He
28:45
Speaker 1: looked at the sky and noted with satisfaction, a heavy
28:49
Speaker 1: bank of clouds athwart the pallid east. He was a
28:53
Speaker 1: man of infinite shrewdness, and his material and airplanes were
28:58
Speaker 1: scattered all over the countryside, stuck away in barns, covered
29:02
Speaker 1: with hay, hidden in woods. A hawk could not have
29:06
Speaker 1: discovered any of them without coming within reach of a gun.
29:11
Speaker 1: But that night he only wanted one of the machines,
29:14
Speaker 1: and it was handy and quite prepared, under a tarpaulin
29:18
Speaker 1: between two ricks, not a couple of miles away. He
29:22
Speaker 1: was going to Berlin with that and just one other man.
29:26
Speaker 1: Two men would be enough for what he meant to do.
29:30
Speaker 1: He had in his hands the black compliment to all
29:33
Speaker 1: those other gifts. Science was urging upon unregenerate mankind the
29:39
Speaker 1: gift of destruction. And he was adventurous rather than a
29:43
Speaker 1: sympathetic type. He was a dark young man, with something
29:47
Speaker 1: negroid about his gleaming face. He smiled like one who
29:51
Speaker 1: is favored and anticipates great pleasures. There is an exotic richness,
29:56
Speaker 1: a chuckling flavor about the voice in which he gave
30:00
Speaker 1: his orders, and he pointed his remarks with the long
30:04
Speaker 1: finger of a hand that was Harry and exceptionally big.
30:08
Speaker 1: Will give them tit for tat, he said, We'll give
30:12
Speaker 1: them tit for tat, no time to lose boys. And presently,
30:17
Speaker 1: over the cloud banks that lay above Westphalia and Saxony,
30:22
Speaker 1: the swift aeroplane, with its atomic engine as noiseless as
30:26
Speaker 1: a dancing sunbeam and its phosphorescent gyroscopic compass, flew like
30:32
Speaker 1: an arrow to the heart of the Central European hosts.
30:36
Speaker 1: It did not soar very high. It skimmed a few
30:39
Speaker 1: hundred feet above the bank darkness of cumulus that hid
30:43
Speaker 1: the world, ready to plunge at once into their wet
30:46
Speaker 1: obscurities should some hostile flier range into vision. The tense
30:52
Speaker 1: young Steersman divided his attention between the guiding stars above
30:57
Speaker 1: and the level, tumbled surfaces of vapor strata that hid
31:01
Speaker 1: the world below over great spaces. Those banks lay even
31:06
Speaker 1: as a frozen lava flow, and almost as still. And
31:10
Speaker 1: then they were rent by ragged areas of translucency, pierced
31:16
Speaker 1: by clear chasms, so that dim patches of the land
31:19
Speaker 1: below gleamed remotely through abysses. Once he saw quite distinctly
31:25
Speaker 1: the plan of a big railway station outlined in lamps
31:29
Speaker 1: and signals, and once the flames of a burning rick
31:32
Speaker 1: showed livid through a boiling drift of smoke on the
31:36
Speaker 1: side of some great hill. But if the world was masked,
31:40
Speaker 1: it was alive with sounds. Up through that vapor floor
31:44
Speaker 1: came the deep roar of trains, the whistles of horns
31:48
Speaker 1: of motor cars, a sound of rifle fire away to
31:51
Speaker 1: the south, and as he drew near his destination, the
31:55
Speaker 1: crowing of cocks. The sky above the indistinct herrizons of
32:00
Speaker 1: this cloud sea was at first starry and then paler,
32:04
Speaker 1: with a light that crept from north to east. As
32:07
Speaker 1: the dawn came on, the milky way was invisible in
32:11
Speaker 1: the blue, and the lesser stars vanished. The face of
32:16
Speaker 1: the adventure at the steering wheel darkly visible ever and
32:20
Speaker 1: again by the oval greenish glow of the compass. Face
32:24
Speaker 1: had something of that firm beauty which all concentrated purpose gives,
32:30
Speaker 1: and something of the happiness of an idiot child that
32:33
Speaker 1: has at last got hold of the matches. His companion,
32:37
Speaker 1: a less imaginative type, sat with his legs spread wide
32:41
Speaker 1: over the long coffin shaped box which contained in its
32:46
Speaker 1: compartments the three atomic bombs, the new bombs that would
32:50
Speaker 1: continue to explode indefinitely, in which no one so far
32:55
Speaker 1: had ever seen in action. Hitherto carolinium, their essential substance
33:01
Speaker 1: had been tested only in almost infinitesimal quantities within steel chambers,
33:08
Speaker 1: embedded in lead beyond the thought of great destruction, slumbering
33:12
Speaker 1: in the black spheres between his legs, and a keen
33:16
Speaker 1: resolve to follow out very exactly the instructions that had
33:20
Speaker 1: been given him. The man's mind was a blank. His
33:24
Speaker 1: aqualine profile against the starlight expressed nothing but a profound gloom.
33:30
Speaker 1: The sky below grew clearer as the central European capital
33:35
Speaker 1: was approached. So far they had been singularly lucky, and
33:39
Speaker 1: had been challenged by no airplanes at all. The frontier
33:43
Speaker 1: scouts they must have passed in the night, probably these
33:47
Speaker 1: were mostly under the clouds. The world was wide, and
33:50
Speaker 1: they had lucky in not coming close to any soaring sentinel.
33:55
Speaker 1: Their machine was painted a pale gray that lay almost
33:59
Speaker 1: invisibly over the cloud levels below. But now the east
34:03
Speaker 1: was flushing with the near ascent of the sun. Berlin
34:06
Speaker 1: was but a score of miles ahead, and the luck
34:09
Speaker 1: of the Frenchman, held by imperceptible degrees. The clouds below
34:14
Speaker 1: dissolved away to the northeastward in a cloudless pool of
34:20
Speaker 1: gathering light, and with all its nocturnal illuminations still blazing,
34:25
Speaker 1: was Berlin, the left finger of the steersman, verified roads
34:30
Speaker 1: and open spaces. Below upon the mica covered square of
34:34
Speaker 1: map that was fastened by his wheel. There, in a
34:39
Speaker 1: series of lake like expansions, was the havel Away to
34:43
Speaker 1: the right, over by those forests must be Sponndau. There
34:48
Speaker 1: the river split about the Potsdam Island, and right ahead
34:53
Speaker 1: was Charlottenburg, cleft by a great thoroughfare that fell like
34:58
Speaker 1: an indicating beam of light straight to the Imperial headquarters. There,
35:04
Speaker 1: plain enough was the Thier Garden. Beyond rose the Imperial Palace,
35:10
Speaker 1: and to the right those tall buildings, those clustering, beflagged,
35:15
Speaker 1: bemastered roofs, must be the offices in which the Central
35:20
Speaker 1: European staff was housed. He was all coldly clear and
35:24
Speaker 1: colorless in the dawn. He looked up suddenly as a
35:28
Speaker 1: humming sound grew out of nothing and became swiftly louder.
35:32
Speaker 1: Nearly overhead, a German aeroplane was circling down from an
35:36
Speaker 1: immense height to challenge him. He made a gesture with
35:40
Speaker 1: his left arm to the gloomy man behind, and then
35:43
Speaker 1: gripped his little wheel with both hands, crouched over it,
35:47
Speaker 1: and twisted his neck to look upward. He was attentive,
35:51
Speaker 1: tightly strung, but quite contemptuous of their ability to hurt him.
35:55
Speaker 1: No German alive, he was assured, could outfly him, or
35:59
Speaker 1: indeed any one of the best Frenchmen. He imagined, they
36:04
Speaker 1: might strike at him as a hawk strikes. But they
36:07
Speaker 1: were men coming down out of the bitter cold up there,
36:11
Speaker 1: in a hungry, spiritless morning mood. They came slanting down
36:16
Speaker 1: like a sword slung by a lazy man, and not
36:19
Speaker 1: so rapidly, but that he was able to slip away
36:22
Speaker 1: from under them and get between them and Berlin. They
36:26
Speaker 1: began challenging him in German with a megaphone. When they
36:30
Speaker 1: were still perhaps a mile away. The words came to him,
36:35
Speaker 1: rolled up into a mere blob of hoarse sound. Then,
36:39
Speaker 1: gathering alarm from his grim silence, they gave chase and
36:43
Speaker 1: swept down a hundred yards above him perhaps, and a
36:47
Speaker 1: couple of hundred behind they were beginning to understand what
36:51
Speaker 1: he was. He ceased to watch them and concentrated himself
36:55
Speaker 1: on the city ahead, And for a time the two
36:58
Speaker 1: aeroplanes raced. A bullet came through the air by him,
37:03
Speaker 1: as though some one was tearing paper. A second followed,
37:07
Speaker 1: something tapped the machine. It was time to act. The
37:11
Speaker 1: broad avenues the park, the palaces below rushed widening out,
37:17
Speaker 1: nearer and nearer to them. Ready, said the steersman. The
37:22
Speaker 1: gaunt face hardened to grimness, and with both hands the
37:26
Speaker 1: bomb thrower lifted the big atomic bomb from the box
37:29
Speaker 1: and steadied it against the side. It was a black
37:33
Speaker 1: sphere two feet in diameter. Between its handles was a
37:37
Speaker 1: little celluloid stud, and to this he bent his head
37:41
Speaker 1: until his lips touched it. Then he had to bite
37:45
Speaker 1: in order to let the air in. Upon the inductive
37:49
Speaker 1: shure of its accessibility, he craned his neck over the
37:52
Speaker 1: side of the aeroplane and judged his pace and distance.
37:57
Speaker 1: Then very quickly he bent forward at the stud and
38:01
Speaker 1: hoisted the bomb over the side. Round He whispered inaudibly.
38:07
Speaker 1: The bomb flashed, blinding scarlet in mid air and fell
38:12
Speaker 1: a descending column of blaze, eddying spirally in the midst
38:15
Speaker 1: of a whirlwind. Both the aeroplanes were tossed like shuttlecocks
38:20
Speaker 1: hurled high and sideways, and the steersman, with gleaming eyes
38:25
Speaker 1: and set teeth, found in a great banking curves for
38:28
Speaker 1: a balance. Both the aeroplanes were tossed like shuttlecocks, hurled
38:34
Speaker 1: high and sideways, and the steersmen, with gleaming eyes and
38:38
Speaker 1: set teeth, fought in great banking curves for a balance.
38:43
Speaker 1: The gaunt man clung tight with his hand and knees,
38:47
Speaker 1: his nostrils dilated, his teeth, biting his lips. He was
38:51
Speaker 1: firmly strapped. When he could look down again, it was
38:56
Speaker 1: like looking down upon the crater of a small volcano.
39:00
Speaker 1: In the open garden before the imperial castle, a shuddering
39:03
Speaker 1: star of evil splendor spurted and poured up smoke and
39:08
Speaker 1: flame towards them, like an accusation. They were too high
39:12
Speaker 1: to distinguish people clearly, or to mark the bomb's effect
39:16
Speaker 1: upon the building, until suddenly the facade tottered and crumbled
39:21
Speaker 1: before the glare as sugar dissolves in water. The man
39:25
Speaker 1: stared for a moment, showed all his long teeth, and
39:29
Speaker 1: then staggered into the cramped standing position. His straps permitted,
39:34
Speaker 1: hoisted out and bit another bomb and sent it down
39:38
Speaker 1: after its fellow. The explosion came, this time more directly
39:43
Speaker 1: underneath the airplane and shot it upward edgeways. The bomb
39:47
Speaker 1: box tipped to the point of disgorgement, and the bomb
39:51
Speaker 1: thrower was pitched forward upon the third bomb, with his
39:55
Speaker 1: face close to its celluloid stud. He clutched its handles, and,
40:00
Speaker 1: with a sudden gust of determination that the thing should
40:04
Speaker 1: not escape him, bid its stud before he could hurl
40:08
Speaker 1: it over. The monoplane was slipping sideways. Everything was falling sideways. Instinctively,
40:15
Speaker 1: he gave himself up to gripping his body holding the
40:19
Speaker 1: bomb in its place. Then that bomb had exploded also,
40:24
Speaker 1: and the steersmen, thrower and airplane were just flying rags
40:28
Speaker 1: and splinters of metal and drops of moisture in the air,
40:33
Speaker 1: and a third column of fire rushed eddying down upon
40:36
Speaker 1: the doomed buildings below. Section four. Never before in the
40:44
Speaker 1: history of warfare had there been a continuing explosive. Indeed,
40:50
Speaker 1: up to the middle of the twentieth century, the only
40:52
Speaker 1: explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely to
40:58
Speaker 1: their instantaneous and these atomic bombs which science burst upon
41:04
Speaker 1: the world that night were strange even to the men
41:08
Speaker 1: who used them. Those used by the Allies were lumps
41:12
Speaker 1: of pure carolinum painted on the outside with unoxidized sye
41:18
Speaker 1: donator inducive, enclosed hermetically in a case of membraneum. A
41:24
Speaker 1: little celluloid stud between the handles by which the bomb
41:28
Speaker 1: was lifted was arranged so as to be easily torn
41:32
Speaker 1: off and admit air into the indusive, which at once
41:37
Speaker 1: became active and set up radioactivity in the outer layer
41:41
Speaker 1: of the carolinum sphere. This liberated fresh inducive, and so
41:46
Speaker 1: in a few minutes the whole bomb was a blazing,
41:50
Speaker 1: continual explosion. The Central European bombs were the same, except
41:55
Speaker 1: that they were larger and had a more complicated arrangement
41:59
Speaker 1: for anime the inducive. Always before in the development of warfare,
42:05
Speaker 1: the shells and rockets fired had been but momentarily explosive.
42:10
Speaker 1: They had gone off in an instant once and for all,
42:14
Speaker 1: and if there was nothing living or valuable within reach
42:18
Speaker 1: of the concussion, and the flying fragments. Then they were
42:22
Speaker 1: spent and over. But carolinum, which belonged to the beta
42:27
Speaker 1: group of hillslops so called suspended degenerator elements, once its
42:33
Speaker 1: degenerative process had been induced, continued a furious radiation of energy,
42:39
Speaker 1: and nothing could arrest it. Of all hillslops artificial elements,
42:45
Speaker 1: carolinum was the most heavily stored with energy and the
42:48
Speaker 1: most dangerous to make and handle. To this day it
42:53
Speaker 1: remains the most potent degenerator known what the earlier twentieth
42:58
Speaker 1: century chemists call all. Its half period was seventeen days.
43:03
Speaker 1: That is to say, it poured out half of the
43:06
Speaker 1: huge store of energy in its great molecules in the
43:09
Speaker 1: space of seventeen days. The next seventeen days emission was
43:14
Speaker 1: a half of that first period's outpouring, and so on.
43:18
Speaker 1: As with all radioactive substances, this carolinum, though every seventeen
43:25
Speaker 1: days its powers had, though constantly it diminishes towards the imperceptible,
43:31
Speaker 1: is never entirely exhausted, and to this day the battlefields
43:36
Speaker 1: and bomb fields of that frantic time and human history
43:39
Speaker 1: are sprinkled with radiant matter and so centers of inconvenient rays.
43:45
Speaker 1: What happened when the celluloid stud was opened was that
43:49
Speaker 1: the inducive oxidized and became active. Then the surface of
43:54
Speaker 1: the carolinum began to degenerate. This degeneration passed only slowly
44:00
Speaker 1: into the substance of the bomb. A moment or so
44:04
Speaker 1: after its explosion began, it was still mainly an inert
44:08
Speaker 1: sphere exploding superficially, a big, inanimate nucleus wrapped in flame
44:14
Speaker 1: and thunder. Those that were thrown from aeroplanes fell in
44:19
Speaker 1: this state. They reached the ground, still mainly solid and
44:24
Speaker 1: melting soil and rock in their progress bored into the
44:27
Speaker 1: earth there. As more and more of a carolinum became active,
44:33
Speaker 1: the bomb spread itself out into a monstrous cavern of
44:37
Speaker 1: fiery energy at the base of what became very speedily
44:42
Speaker 1: a miniature active volcano. The carolinum, unable to disperse freely,
44:49
Speaker 1: drove into and mixed up with the boiling confusion of
44:53
Speaker 1: molten soil and superheated steam, and so remained spinning furiously
44:59
Speaker 1: and maintaining an eruption that lasted for years or months
45:03
Speaker 1: or weeks, according to the size of the bomb employed
45:07
Speaker 1: and the chances of its dispersal. Once launched, the bomb
45:12
Speaker 1: was absolutely unapproachable and uncontrollable until its forces were nearly exhausted,
45:19
Speaker 1: and from the crater that burst open above it, puffs
45:22
Speaker 1: of heavy inconditioned vapor and fragments of viciously punitive rock
45:28
Speaker 1: and mud saturated with carolinum, and each a center of
45:33
Speaker 1: scorching and blistering energy, were flung high and far. Such
45:39
Speaker 1: was the crowning triumph of military science, the ultimate explosive
45:44
Speaker 1: that was to give the decisive touch to war.