CHAPTER XIVWinter in the Outer World
Mynarrative has hitherto been confined to affairs in the British Isles; but to give a complete picture of the time I must now deal, even though very briefly, with the effects ofB. diazotansin other parts of the globe. My account will, of necessity, be incomplete: because our knowledge of that period is at best a scanty one.
I have already indicated the part which the great air-ways played in distribution ofB. diazotansover the world; but once it had been planted in the new centres to which the aeroplanes carried it, other factors came into action. From South-western Europe, the North-East Trade Winds bore the bacilli across the Atlantic and spread them upon the seaboard of South America, especially around the mouths of the Amazon. The winds on the coast of North America caught up the germs and drove them eventually to Scandinavia and even further east. New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra and the other islands of the chain were devastated from the Australian centres. Madagascar was contaminated also, though the point of origin in this case is not definitely known. Probably the ocean currents played their part, as they certainly did in the destruction of Polynesian vegetation.
Climate had a considerable influence upon the development of the bacilli, once they were scattered. In the Tropics, they multiplied with even greater rapidity than they had done in the North Temperate Zone. On the Congoand in the Amazonian forests they seem to have undergone a process of reproduction almost inconceivably swift. Those which drifted up into the frigid regions of the North and South, however, appear to have perished almost without a struggle: either on account of the low temperature or the lack of nitrogenous material, they produced very little effect in either of these districts. The sea-plants seem to have been unaffected by them there; and one of the strangest results of this inactivity was the complete change in habits of various fishes, which now sought in the freezing North the feeding and breeding-grounds which suited them best. The herring left the North Sea and the cod quitted the Banks in search of purer water. On the other hand, the great masses of weed in the Sargasso Sea were almost completely destroyed, along with the other accumulations south-east of New Zealand and in the North Pacific.
It must not be assumed, however, that wherever the colonies ofB. diazotansalighted, devastation followed as a matter of course. For some reason, which has never been made clear, certain areas proved themselves immune from attack; so that they remained like oases of cultivable land amid the surrounding deserts. The areas thus preserved from sterility were not of any great size; usually they amounted only to a few hundred acres in extent, though in isolated cases larger tracts were found unaffected here and there.
With the recognition of the world-wide influence ofB. diazotans, the land became divided into two sections: the food-producing districts and the consuming but non-productive areas. Nowhere was there sufficient grain to make safety a certainty. In America, most of the available food-stuffs were still in or near their places of origin when the panic began to grow.
In the matter of meat, things were much in the same state. Those countries which produced great supplies ofcattle prohibited exports; and the beasts were hurriedly slaughtered and the carcases salted to preserve them, as soon as the failure of the grass made it impossible to conserve live-stock.
Each country offered features of its own in thedébâcle; but I can only deal with one or two outstanding cases here.
The European conditions were so similar to those which I have already depicted in the case of Britain that I need not describe them at all. Southern Russia fared better than her neighbours; for after the Famine there were still some remnants of her population left alive; and it seems probable that the lower density of the Russian population retarded the extinction of humanity in this region long after the worst period had been reached in the western area.
In Africa and India, the course of the devastation was marked by risings in which all Europeans seem to have perished. Thus we have no descriptions of the later stages of the disaster in either case.
In China, the inhabitants of the densely-populated rice-growing districts of Eastern China were the first to have the true position of affairs forced upon their notice; and, leaving their useless fields, they began to move westwards. At first the stirrings were merely sporadic; but gradually these isolated movements reinforced one another until some millions of Chinese were drifting into Western China and setting up reactions among the populations which they encountered on their way. From Manchuria, great masses of them forced their way up the Amur Valley into Transbaikalia. Others, sweeping over Pekin on the road, emerged upon the banks of the Hoang Ho. The inhabitants of the Honan Province moved westward, increasing in numbers as they recruited from the local populationsen route. A massacre of foreigners took place all over China.
In its general character, this huge wandering of theMongol races recalls the movements which led eventually to the downfall of the Roman Empire; but the parallel is illusory. In the days of Gengis Khan, the Eastern hordes could always find food to support them on their line of march, either in the form of local supplies which they captured, or in the herds which they drove with them as they advanced. But in this new tumultuous outbreak, food was unprocurable; and the irruption melted away almost before the confines of China had been reached. Some immense bands descended from Yunnan into Burmah; but they appear to have perished among the rotting vegetation. Another series of smaller bodies penetrated into Thibet, where they died among the snows. The furthest stirrings of the wave appear to have been felt in Chinese Turkestan; and apparently Kashgar and Yarkand were centres from which other waves might have spread: but it seems probable that these westernmost movements were checked by the tangle of the Pamirs and Karakorams. Nothing appears to have reached Samarkand. But here, again, it is difficult to discover what actually did occur. Any survivors who have been interrogated are of the illiterate class, who had no definite conception of the route which they followed in their wanderings.
The history of Japan under the influence ofB. diazotansis of especial interest, since it presents the closest parallel to our own experiences. At the outbreak of the Famine, the practical minds of the Japanese statesmen seem to have acted with the promptitude which Nordenholt had shown. They had not his psychological insight, it is true; but they had a simpler problem before them, since they could ignore public opinion entirely. Fairly complete accounts of their operations are in existence, so far as the outer manifestations of their policy are concerned, though we know little as yet of the inner history of the events.
Kiyotome Zada appears to have been the JapaneseNordenholt. Under his direction, two great expeditions raided Manchuria and Eastern China with the object of capturing the largest possible quantity of food-stuffs. It is probable that these two invasions, with the consequent loss of food-supplies, led to the great stirrings among the population of China. A Nitrogen Area was set up in the South Island, the Kobe shipyards being its nucleus. Thereafter the history follows very closely upon that of the Clyde Valley experiment, except in its last stages.
Among the other Pacific communities the Famine proved almost completely destructive. I have already told of the spreading ofB. diazotansthrough the chain of islands between Australia and Burmah. In Australia itself no attempt was made to found a nitrogen-producing plant on a sufficiently large scale.
One curious episode deserves mention. In the earlier days of the Famine, news reached the Australian ports that certain of the Polynesian islands were still free from the scourge; and a frenzied emigration followed. But each ship carried with it the freight ofB. diazotans, so that this exodus merely served to spread the bacilli into spots which otherwise they might not have reached. Before very long the whole of Polynesia was involved in the disaster. Some diaries have been discovered on board deserted vessels; and in every case the history is the same: the long search through devastated islands, the discovery at last of some untouched spot in the ocean wilderness, the rejoicings, the landing, and then, a few days later, the realisation that here also the bacillus had made its appearance. What seems most curious is the fact that in many cases it was weeks before the ship’s company grasped the apparently obvious truth that their own appearance coincided with the arrival of the fatal germs. It never seems to have occurred to any of them that they bore with them the very thing which they were trying to escape. So they went from island toisland, seeking refuge from a plague which stood ever at their elbow, until at last their stores failed.
On the West Coast of South America a new phenomenon appeared. The huge deposits of nitrates in Bolivia and South Peru formed the best breeding-ground forB. diazotanswhich had yet been detected, with the result that nitrogen poured into the atmosphere in unheard-of volumes. In most places the winds were sufficient to disperse these invisible clouds of gas; but in some spots the arrival of the bacilli coincided with a dead calm, so that the nitrogen remained in the neighbourhood in which it was generated. The great salt swamp in the Potosi district furnished the best example of this phenomenon. The whole surface frothed and boiled for days together; and the atmosphere in the neighbourhood became so heavily charged with nitrous fumes that the air was almost unbreatheable. All the inhabitants of the district fled before this, to them, inexplicable danger; and the effects extended as far as Llica and the railway junction at Uyuni. In this “caliche” district, the destruction of combined nitrogen probably attained its maximum; and the propagation ofB. diazotansnever reached such a level in any other part of the world.
But with this enormous multiplication of the bacilli, other events followed. Carried north and east by winds, these huge quantities of the germs found their way into the headwaters of the Amazon and its tributaries, and were thus carried eastward into the very heart of the tropical forests, where they continued to breed with almost inconceivable rapidity. Soon the whole of the vegetation in this region was in a decline; and the Amazon valley degenerated into a swamp choked with dead and dying plants. Humanity was driven out long before the end came. Animal life could not persist in the midst of this noisome wilderness.
The same phenomena appeared, though in a different form, over the southern part of South America. Here alsothe great rivers formed the main distributing agencies for the bacilli; and the whole cattle-raising district was devastated. The stock was slaughtered on a huge scale as soon as it became clear that vegetation had perished; but owing to mismanagement and transport difficulties the preservatives necessary to make the best of the meat thus obtained were not procurable in sufficient quantities. Nevertheless, by converting as much as possible into biltong, more than sufficient was preserved to keep a very large part of the population alive during the Famine; and in later days, by trading their surplus dried meat for cereals and nitrogenous compounds, they succeeded in rescuing a greater proportion of lives than might have been anticipated.
To complete this survey of the world at that period, the effect ofB. diazotansupon North America still remains to be told. I have already given some information with regard to the spread of the Blight across the Middle West; but I must mention that it was in this part of the world especially that these curious isolated immune areas were observed, wherein the bacillus seemed to make no headway. Thousands of acres in all were found to be untouched by the denitrifying organisms.
At the time of the Famine the civilisation of North America was in a curious condition, mainly owing to the influx of a foreign element which had taken place to a greater and greater extent after the War. The immigrants had come in such numbers that assimilation of them was impossible, and in this way the stability of the central Government was weakened. To a great extent the Southern States had fallen into the hands of the negroes, but similar segregations were to be found in other parts of the country. Germans accumulated in one State, Italians in another, East Europeans and Slavs in yet other areas. Thus Congress became subject to the group system of government, with all the weaknesses which such a system brings in its train.
WhenB. diazotansfirst made its appearance in the Continent the Government in power was composed of feeble men, without character and unfitted for bold decisions. The prohibition of cereal exports was a measure arising from panic rather than foresight; and once this had been put in operation, the Government rested on its oars and awaited the turn of events.
Thus at this period the United States presented the spectacle of a series of unsympathetic communities united by the slender bonds of a weak central Government, and divided amongst themselves by the very deepest cleavages. The grain-growing districts regarded the cities as parasites upon the food-supply which had been raised; while the city population, having only secured a certain amount of the available food-stuffs, looked upon the Middle Westerners as an anti-social group of hoarders. But even within these two large groups, minor cleavages had come to light. The poorer classes, appalled at the rise in prices, had begun to cry out against the rich. Hasty and ill-considered legislation was passed which, instead of curing the troubles, merely served to augment them; and soon the whole country was seething with undercurrents of hatred for government of any kind.
With so much inflammable material, an outbreak was only a question of time; and soon something almost akin to anarchy prevailed. Food at any price became the cry. Those who controlled great stores of grain had to defend them; those who lacked sustenance had no reason to wait in patience. Civil war of the most bitter type broke out almost simultaneously throughout the country.
Hostilities took a form which had never been imagined in any previous fighting. In the old days one of the main objectives in the siege of an area was the shutting out of supplies from the besieged garrison. In this American war, however, the exact opposite held good. A starving populationencircled the areas in which food was stored and endeavoured to force its way in; while the defenders were well supplied with rations. Nor was this all. It was well recognised among the besiegers that the supplies within the besieged area were insufficient to meet the demands which would be made upon them if the attacking force as a whole broke through the line of the defence; and therefore each individual attacker felt that his comrades were also his competitors, whom he had no great desire to see survive. Again, in the previous history of warfare, any loss on the part of the garrison was irreparable, since no reinforcements could penetrate the encircling lines of enemies; but in this new form of combat any member of the attacking force was willing to secede to the garrison if they would allow him to do so, since by this means he could secure food. Thus the casualties of the garrison could be made good simply by admitting besiegers to take the place of those who had been killed.
In the main, these sieges took place at points where the harvested grain, such as it was, had been accumulated for transport; but even the areas which had proved immune from the attacks ofB. diazotanswere attacked by far-sighted men who looked beyond the immediate future and who wished to control these remaining fertile areas in view of next year’s supplies.
I have before me the diary of a combatant in one of these operations; and it appears to me that I can best give an idea of the prevailing conditions by summarising his narrative.
At the time of the outbreak he resided in Omaha; and the earlier pages of his journal are occupied by a description of some rioting which occurred in that city, ending with its destruction by fire. During the upheaval he became possessed, in some way which he does not describe, of a rifle, a considerable amount of ammunition, a certain store of food. Thus equipped, and accompanied by four friends similarly provided,young Hinkinson was able to get away in a Ford car from Omaha in advance of the main body of citizens who were now left houseless. Rumours of food-supplies led them towards Cedar Falls; but at Ackley they discovered the error of their information and were for a time at fault. Turning southward, they followed various indications and finally located a fertile area in the triangle Mexico-Moberly-Hannibal. At Palmyra, their motor broke down permanently; and they were forced to abandon it. Collecting as much of their equipment as they could carry, they tramped along the railway line and eventually reached Monroe City, which was very close to the outer edge of the contest raging around the fertile area.
From indications in the diary, it seems clear that Hinkinson and his companions expected to find at Monroe City some sort of headquarters of the attacking forces; but as they were unable to discover anything of the kind, they continued their march, being joined by a small band of other armed men who had arrived at Monroe City about the same time as themselves.
Almost before they were aware of it, they blundered into the firing-line. Apparently they had already been much surprised to find no signs of a controlling spirit in charge of the operations; but their actual coming under fire seems to have astounded them. They had expected to find a vast system of trench-warfare in existence; and had been keenly on the look-out for signs of digging which would indicate to them that they had reached the rear positions of the attacking force. What they actually found, as bullets began to whistle around them, was a thin line of civilians with rifles and bandoliers who were lying flat on the grass and firing, apparently aimlessly into the distance. At times, some of the riflemen would get up, run a few yards and then lie down again; but there seemed to be no discipline or ordered activity traceable in their methods. It appeared to be a purely individualistic form of warfare.
Hinkinson added himself to the skirmishing line, more from a desire for personal safety than with any understanding of what was happening. It appears that he lay there most of the afternoon, firing occasionally into the distance from which the bullets came. His four friends were also engaged in his immediate vicinity.
Later in the day his neighbour in the skirmishing line spoke to him and suggested that he might form a sixth in the party. Hinkinson learned from this man that during the night the attackers generally fought among themselves for any food which there might be; and he proposed that the Hinkinson party should stand watch about during the darkness, so as to avoid robbery. They agreed to this; as it seemed the best policy: though Hinkinson himself, in the entry he made at the end of the day, seems to throw doubt upon the likelihood of such proceedings.
Fortunately, they did not entirely trust their new comrade; and one of the five kept awake while pretending to sleep. When the night grew dark they heard movements in the skirmishing line, rifles were still blazing intermittently up and down the front, and here and there they caught the groans of the wounded. But in addition to these sounds, to which they had by this time grown accustomed, they heard scuffles, cries of anger, hard breathing and all the noises of men wrestling with each other. It was a cloudy, moonless night and nothing could be seen. At last, long before dawn, they discovered their friend of the afternoon engaged in rifling one of their food-bags. Finding himself discovered, he fled into the darkness and they never saw him again.
It was not until well on in the next day that Hinkinson made any further discoveries; but fresh surprises were awaiting him. He learned that the firing-line to which he was opposed was not a portion of the defence of the area at all, but was part of the attacking group. This puzzled him for a day or two, to judge from the remarks which he made in his journal;but at length he seems to have understood that his fellow-attackers were almost as much to be feared as the actual defenders.
He gives a sketch on one page of his diary showing the situation as he understood it. In the centre lies the actual fertile area, surrounded by an elaborate system of entrenchments. This zone he terms the Defence Zone. About a mile outside this, but coming much closer in parts, lies what he describes as the Offensive-Defensive Circle. When he reached this section, as we learn from a later part of his journal, he found it very roughly entrenched, the main works being rifle-pits rather than connected trench-lines. This Offensive-Defensive Circle was occupied by part of the attacking force; but the actual fighting in it was upon both front and rear. The holders of this Circle wished to force their way into the Defence Zone; but having gained a start upon the late comers whose firing-line lay still further to the rear, they proposed to retard as far as possible any advance in force from the outermost lines. Thus the combatants of the Circle, as soon as they had forced their way into it, devoted their attention to sniping new-comers who might follow them up; then seizing any opportunity, they made their way forward toward the centre and joined the inner skirmishing line which directed its fire upon the entrenchments of the actual Defence Zone. The outermost region, in which Hinkinson and his friends found themselves, was composed of men who had either arrived late on the field or failed to struggle forward in face of the sniping from the Circle.
In both the outer ring and the Circle the dominating idea was food. There was no commissariat and no central directing body of any kind. When a man joined the outer ring, he knew that he had only the supplies which he carried with him; beyond that, he could count upon nothing except what he could steal from his neighbours. The only chance of life was to fight a way up to the centre as soonas possible and take the chance of being recruited by the garrison.
While the Hinkinson group remained intact, they were able to protect themselves from food-thieves; but on the fourth day in the skirmishing line one of the five was severely wounded; and, knowing how little care was given to wounded men, he shot himself. Two more were killed by snipers on the fifth day. Three days later, Hinkinson managed to establish himself in a rifle-pit of the Circle; and he thus lost sight of his remaining friend.
Life in the Circle was lived under appalling conditions, for it was within range of both the Defence Zone and the outer skirmishing line; and there was very little chance of exercise even at night. Food was scarcer here than in the outer ring; and consequently raids for food were almost incessant during the hours of darkness. Ammunition was also very scarce; and Hinkinson was only able to keep up his supply by searching the bodies which lay in his neighbourhood. After two days in the rifle-pit he seems to have suffered from some form of influenza. The only thing which he notes with satisfaction is the fact that there was no artillery in the whole action. It was a case of rifle-fire from beginning to end.
After his third day in the rifle-pit, he succeeded in making his way into the inner firing-line of the Circle, so that at last he was actually in contact with the Defence Zone. He was astonished to find that the defenders were using up ammunition much faster than the attacking forces; and it is clear that this puzzled him, as he could see no reason for it. He had expected to find them running short.
His entry into the Defence Zone was due, apparently, to a stroke of good luck. On the day which brought him face to face with the defenders, he saw an attack made from the Circle upon the entrenchments before him. It was an utterly haphazard affair: first one man ran forward,then two or three others joined him; and finally the force of suggestion brought the major part of the attackers to their feet and hurled them upon the trenches before them, which at this point were only a few hundred yards away. Despite its random character, it seems to have been successful to some extent. A considerable number went down before a bombing attack made from the trenches; but despite this a fairly large band surmounted the parapet and disappeared beyond. A confused sound of rifle-firing was followed by a short silence; and then a regular volley seemed to have been fired. None of the attacking party reappeared.
According to Hinkinson’s reading of the situation, a number of the defenders had been killed in the hand-to-hand struggle in the trenches; and he concluded that this was his best opportunity to endeavour to gain a footing among the defence force, which would now be weakened slightly and possibly anxious for recruits.
At this point, his diary is illegible and I can throw no light upon the subjects included in the hiatus. When it becomes readable again, I find him a member of the defending group.
Apparently on this side of the debatable land discipline was as marked as it was absent from the other side. The death penalty was inflicted for the slightest error. Once or twice Hinkinson seems to have run considerable risks in this direction through no great fault of his own.
He found that the defence problem was in some ways a complex one, whilst in other directions it was simplified considerably by the unique conditions of the new warfare. Owing to the enormous perimeter which had to be defended, the garrison was almost wholly used up in forming a very thin firing-line which was liable to be rushed at any point by strong bodies of the attacking force, as, indeed, he had already seen himself. Given sufficient spontaneous co-operation for a raid, the trenches could be entered withoutany real difficulty by the survivors of a charge. But once within the defended lines, the attackers were accepted as part of the defence force, provided that their numbers were not in excess of the casualties produced by their onset. Thus thepersonnelof the trench-lines changed from day to day, dead defenders being replaced by successful raiders whose main interest had changed sides. Under such conditions, the maintenance of discipline was a matter which required the sternest measures. The garrison was always up to full strength; but its members were not a military body in the usual sense, since they changed from time to time as new recruits took the places of the killed. Ofesprit de corpsin the usual meaning of the words there was not a trace; but its place was taken by the instinct of self-preservation, which seems to have made not a bad substitute.
As to the question of ammunition-supply, which had puzzled Hinkinson so much during his experiences in the outer zones, it became simple when once he was inside the trench-lines. There appears to have been a regular traffic by aeroplane between the food-area and the outer world, munitions being imported by air in exchange for food which the air-craft took back on their return trips.
Readers can now picture for themselves the state of the world after the Famine had done its worst. The great cities which marked the culmination of civilisation had all shared the fate of London; and most of the towns had gone the same road. All the vast and complex machinery which mankind had so laboriously gathered together in these teeming areas had been destroyed by fire.
Here and there—in Scotland, in Japan, and in a couple of American centres—Nitrogen Areas were in full activity; and the traditions of pre-Famine times were being kept alive, though with profound modifications; but outside the boundaries of these regions the only human beings left inthe world were a mere handful, scattered up and down the globe and existing hazardously upon chance discoveries of food-stuffs here and there. The Esquimaux had a better prospect of survival than most of these relics of civilisation.
But the trifling changes involved in the downfall of humanity were overshadowed by the effects ofB. diazotansupon the face of the earth. All that had once been arable land became a desert strewn with the bones of men. The vast virgin forests of America, Northern Europe and tropical Africa became mere heaps of rotting vegetation: pestilential swamps into which no man could penetrate and survive. Apart from these regions, the land-surface was sandy, except where boulder-clay deposits kept it together. Water ebbed away in these thirsty deserts; and with its disappearance the climate changed over vast areas of the world.
Those who went out in the early aeroplane exploring expeditions across these stricken and barren lands came to understand, as they had never done before, the meaning of the abomination of desolation.