-which
had risen and fallen through the years, was quickened among those not
enamored of the Grass. There must be some intrinsic virtue in this land
which had not only been immune to inoculation by the Metamorphizer, but
kept the encroaching weed from invading its borders in spite of its long
continued proximity across Bering Strait and the Aleutians. The Grass
had jumped gaps thousands of ocean miles and yet it had not bridged that
narrow strip of water. It would have been a shock to these people had
they known, as I knew and as the World Government had vainly tried to
tell them, what Moscow had recently and reluctantly admitted: the Grass
had long since crossed into Siberia and was now working its will from
Kamchatka to the Lena River.

The people of Japan, caught between the jaws of a closing vise,
responded in a manner peculiar to themselves. The Christians, now
forming a majority, declared the Grass a punishment for the sins of the
world and hoped, by their steadfastness in the face of certain death, to
earn a national martyr's crown and thus perhaps redeem those still
benighted. The Shintoists, on the other hand, agreed the Grass was a
punishment--but for a different crime. Had the doctrine of the Eight
Corners of the World never been abandoned the Japanese would never have
permitted the Grass to overwhelm the Yamato race. The new emperor's
reign name, Saiji, they argued, ought not to mean rule by the people as
it was usually interpreted, but rule of the people and they called for
an immediate Saiji Restoration, under which the subjects of the Mikado
would welcome death on the battlefield in a manner compatible with
bushido, thus redeeming previous aberrations for which they were now
being chastised. Both parties agreed that under no circumstances would
any Japanese demean himself by leaving Nippon and the world was
therefore spared an additional influx from these islands.

But the Japanese were the only ones who refused to join the westward
stampede plunging the world daily deeper into barbarism. We in England
had cause to congratulate ourselves on our unique position. The Channel
might have been a thousand miles wide instead of twenty. The turmoil of
the Continent and of Africa was but dimly reflected. There was still a
skeletal vestige of trade, the dole kept the lazy from starvation,
railways still functioned on greatly reduced schedules, and the wireless
continued to operate from, "Good morning, everybody, t