he neverdiscarded vision
of utilizing it beneficially.

_81._ Meanwhile life went on with a smoothness strange and gratifying to
those of us born into a period of strife and restlessness. No more wars,
strikes, riots, agitation for higher wages or social experiments by
wildeyed fanatics. Those whose limitations laid out a career of toil
performed their function with as much efficiency as one could expect and
we others who had risen and separated ourselves from the herd carried
our responsibilities and accepted the rewards which went with them. The
ships of the World Congress continued patrolling the coasts of the
deserted continents and restrictions were so far relaxed as to permit
planeflights over the area to take motionpictures and confirm the Grass
had lost none of its vigor. Beyond this, the generality of mankind
forgot the weed and the regions it covered, living geographically as
though Columbus had never set forth from Palos.

It was at this time a new philosophic idea was advanced--giving the lie
to Miss Francis' dictum that no new thoughts were being thought--which
was, briefly, that the Grass was essentially a good thing in itself;
that the world had not merely made the best of a bad situation, but had
been brought to a beneficent condition through the loss of the Western
Hemisphere. Mankind had desperately needed a brake upon its heedless
course; some instrumentality to limit it and bring it to realization of
its proper province. The Grass had acted as such an agent and now,
rightly chastised, man could go about his fit business.

This concept gained almost immediate popular support, so far as it
filtered down to the masses at all; prominent schoolmen endorsed it
wholeheartedly; statesmen gave it qualified approval--"in
principle"--and the Pope issued an encyclical calling for a return of
Christian resignation and submission. Hardly was the ink dry upon the
expressions of thanksgiving for the punishment which had brought about a
new and better frameofmind than the philosophy was suddenly and
dramatically tested by events.

The island of Juan Fernandez, Robinson Crusoe's island, a peak pushed
out of the waters of the Pacific 400 miles west of Chile, densely
populated with refugees and a base for patrolboats, was overrun by the
Grass. It was an impossible happening. Every inhabitant had had personal
experience of the Grass and was fearfully alert against its appearance.
The patrols covered the sea between