. The anecdotes of his sudden appearance
in typhusridden camps, mute and gaunt, hastening with water for the
feverish, quieting the terrified with a light touch, praying silently
beside the dying, sound improbable to me, but I mention them for what
they are worth.

_65._ When winter came again, the Canadian government petitioned the
Parliament at Westminster for crowncolony status and the assent of the
Queen's Privy Council was given to the ending of the premier Dominion.
All that was left of the largest landmass within the British
Commonwealth was eastern and northern Quebec, the Maritime Provinces and
part of the Northwest Territories.

The United States and more than half of Mexico had been wiped from the
map. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, from Nome to Veracruz stretched a
new Sargasso Sea of _Cynodon dactylon_. A hundred and eighty million
men, women, and children had been thrust from their homes by a despised
weed.

I cannot say life on the other continents--and I could call any of them,
except possibly Africa, my home--was undisturbed by the disappearance of
the United States. American competition gone, the tempo of businesslife
seemed to run slower and slower. Production dwindled, prices rose;
luxury articles were made in abundance, but manufacturers hesitated to
adopt American methods of massproduction for necessities.

Russia, after her new revolution, was a quiet backwater economically,
although politically she caused turmoil by giving a home to the Fourth
International. Germany became the leading iron and steel country, but it
was not an aggressive leadership, rather it was a lackadaisical
acceptance of a fortuitous role; while Britain, often on deathbed but
never a corpse, without question took the lead in international affairs.

Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Industries was now, if not the largest,
certainly one of the largest companies in the world. We purchased sheep
in Australia, beef and wheat and corn in South America, rice and millet
and eggs in Asia, fruit and sugar and milo in Africa, and what the
farmers of Europe could spare, to process and ship back in palatable,
concentrated form to a world which now constituted our market. Besides
all this we had of course our auxiliary concerns, many of which
dominated their respective fields. Ministers of finance consulted me
before proposing new budgets and there was not a statesman--outside the
Socialist Union--who didnt listen respectfully to