and Japan had assailed
Russia and destroyed Moscow, the United States had attacked Japan, India
was in anarchistic revolt with Delhi a pit of fire spouting death and
flame; the redoubtable King of the Balkans was mobilising. It must
have seemed plain at last to every one in those days that the world
was slipping headlong to anarchy. By the spring of 1959 from nearly
two hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the
unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs, the flimsy
fabric of the world's credit had vanished, industry was completely
disorganised and every city, every thickly populated area was starving
or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital cities of
the world were burning; millions of people had already perished, and
over great areas government was at an end. Humanity has been compared
by one contemporary writer to a sleeper who handles matches in his sleep
and wakes to find himself in flames.

For many months it was an open question whether there was to be found
throughout all the race the will and intelligence to face these new
conditions and make even an attempt to arrest the downfall of the social
order. For a time the war spirit defeated every effort to rally the
forces of preservation and construction. Leblanc seemed to be protesting
against earthquakes, and as likely to find a spirit of reason in the
crater of Etna. Even though the shattered official governments now
clamoured for peace, bands of irreconcilables and invincible patriots,
usurpers, adventurers, and political desperadoes, were everywhere in
possession of the simple apparatus for the disengagement of atomic
energy and the initiation of new centres of destruction. The stuff
exercised an irresistible fascination upon a certain type of mind.
Why should any one give in while he can still destroy his enemies?
Surrender? While there is still a chance of blowing them to dust? The
power of destruction which had once been the ultimate privilege
of government was now the only power left in the world--and it was
everywhere. There were few thoughtful men during that phase of
blazing waste who did not pass through such moods of despair as Barnet
describes, and declare with him: 'This is the end....'

And all the while Leblanc was going to and fro with glittering glasses
and an inexhaustible persuasiveness, urging the manifest reasonableness
of his view upon ears that ceased presently to be inattentive. Nev