" he muttered, "afraid not. I don't blame you,
Albert. Men are as God created them ... or environment, as the socialist
fellers say ... you didnt put the mark on your forehead ... Not
successful ... Joe (I called him George but he was Joe all the time)
wanted to go to West Point afterall ... First Symphony in the fire ...
_I_ burned Joe's First Symphony ... Do you understand me, Albert? Though
I refuse, I am still guilty ... Cannibal Thario, they said ... Chronos
would be better ... classical allusion escapes the enlistedman...."

He walked out, still mumbling inarticulately and I sat there saddened
that a man once alert and vigorous as the general should have come at
last to senility and an enfeebled mind.

_84._ The defection of General Thario threw a great burden of work upon
my shoulders. Preblesham was able enough in his own sphere, but his
vision was not sufficiently broad to operate at the highest levels. The
process of closing down our plants was more complicated than had been
anticipated and Thario's military mind would have been more useful than
Preblesham's theological one. The employees, conceiving through some
fantastic logic that their jobs were as much their property as the mills
or mines or factorybuildings were mine, rioted and had to be
pacified--the first time such a tactic was resorted to in years. In some
places these misguided men actually took possession of the places where
they worked and tried to operate them, but of course they were balked by
their own inefficiency. Human nature being what it is, they tried to
blame their helplessness on my control of their sources of raw material
and their consequent inability to obtain vital supplies; as well as the
cutting off of light and power from the seized plants, but this was mere
buckpassing, always noticeable when some radical scheme fails.

But the setting up of depots in the Sahara, as General Thario had
suggested, and by extension, in Arabia, was a different matter. Here
Preblesham's genius shone. He flew our whole Australian store of raw
materials out without a loss. He recruited gangs of Chinese coolies
with an efficiency which would have put an oldtime blackbirder to shame.
He argued, cajoled, bullied, sweated for twentyfour hours a day and when
in six months he had completed his task, we had seven depots, two in
Arabia and five in Africa, complete with four factories, with enough
concentrates on hand to feed the world for a year--if the wor