population which had gathered into the enormous dingy town
centres of that period were dispossessed and scattered
disastrously over the surrounding rural areas. It was as if some
brutal force, grown impatient at last at man's blindness, had
with the deliberate intention of a rearrangement of population
upon more wholesome lines, shaken the world. The great
industrial regions and the large cities that had escaped the
bombs were, because of their complete economic collapse, in
almost as tragic plight as those that blazed, and the
country-side was disordered by a multitude of wandering and
lawless strangers. In some parts of the world famine raged, and
in many regions there was plague… The plains of north India,
which had become more and more dependent for the general welfare
on the railways and that great system of irrigation canals which
the malignant section of the patriots had destroyed, were in a
state of peculiar distress, whole villages lay dead together, no
man heeding, and the very tigers and panthers that preyed upon
the emaciated survivors crawled back infected into the jungle to
perish. Large areas of China were a prey to brigand bands…
It is a remarkable thing that no complete contemporary account of
the explosion of the atomic bombs survives. There are, of
course, innumerable allusions and partial records, and it is from
these that subsequent ages must piece together the image of these
devastations.
The phenomena, it must be remembered, changed greatly from day to
day, and even from hour to hour, as the exploding bomb shifted
its position, threw off fragments or came into contact with water
or a fresh texture of soil. Barnet, who came within forty miles
of Paris early in October, is concerned chiefly with his account
of the social confusion of the country-side and the problems of
his command, but he speaks of heaped cloud masses of steam. 'All
along the sky to the south-west' and of a red glare beneath these
at night. Parts of Paris were still burning, and numbers of
people were camped in the fields even at this distance watching
over treasured heaps of salvaged loot. He speaks too of the
distant rumbling of the explosion-'like trains going over iron
bridges.'
Other descriptions agree with this; they all speak of the
'continuous reverberations,' or of the 'thudding and hammering,'
or some such phrase; and they all testify to a huge pall of
steam, from which rain would fall suddenly in torrents and amidst
which lightning played. Drawing nearer to Paris an observer
would have found the salvage camps increasing in number and
blocking up the villages, and large numbers of people, often
starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents because there
was no place for them to go. The sky became more and more
densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day
and left nothing but a dull red glare 'extraordinarily depressing
to the spirit.' In this dull glare, great numbers of people were
still living, clinging to their houses and in many cases
subsisting in a state of partial famine upon the produce in their
gardens and the stores in the shops of the provision dealers.
Coming in still closer, the investigator would have reached the
police cordon, which was trying to check the desperate enterprise
of those who would return to their homes or rescue their more
valuable possessions within the 'zone of imminent danger.'
That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If our spectator could
have got permission to enter it, he would have entered also a
zone of uproar, a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange
purplish-red light, and quivering and swaying with the incessant
explosion of the radio-active substance. Whole blocks of
buildings were alight and burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged
flames looking pale and ghastly and attenuated in comparison with
the full-bodied crimson glare beyond. The shells of other
edifices already burnt rose, pierced by rows of window sockets
against the red-lit mist.
Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a descent
within the crater of an active volcano. These spinning, boiling
bomb centres would shift or break unexpectedly into new regions,
great fragments of earth or drain or masonry suddenly caught by a
jet of disruptive force might come flying by the explorer's head,
or the ground yawn a fiery grave beneath his feet. Few who
adventured into these areas of destruction and survived attempted
any repetition of their experiences. There are stories of puffs
of luminous, radio-active vapour drifting sometimes scores of
miles from the bomb centre and killing and scorching all they
overtook. And the first conflagrations from the Paris centre
spread westward half-way to the sea.
Moreover, the air in this infernal inner circle of red-lit ruins
had a peculiar dryness and a blistering quality, so that it set
up a soreness of the skin and lungs that was very difficult to
heal…
Such was the last state of Paris, and such on a larger scale was
the condition of affairs in Chicago, and the same fate had
overtaken Berlin, Moscow, Tokio, the eastern half of London,
Toulon, Kiel, and two hundred and eighteen other centres of
population or armament. Each was a flaming centre of radiant
destruction that only time could quench, that indeed in many
instances time has still to quench. To this day, though indeed
with a constantly diminishing uproar and vigour, these explosions
continue. In the map of nearly every country of the world three
or four or more red circles, a score of miles in diameter, mark
the position of the dying atomic bombs and the death areas that
men have been forced to abandon around them. Within these areas
perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries, galleries of
masterpieces, and a vast accumulation of human achievement, whose
charred remains lie buried, a legacy of curious material that
only future generations may hope to examine…
Section 4
The state of mind of the dispossessed urban population which
swarmed and perished so abundantly over the country-side during
the dark days of the autumnal months that followed the Last War,
was one of blank despair. Barnet gives sketch after sketch of
groups of these people, camped among the vineyards of Champagne,
as he saw them during his period of service with the army of
pacification.
There was, for example, that 'man-milliner' who came out from a
field beside the road that rises up eastward out of Epernay, and
asked how things were going in Paris. He was, says Barnet, a
round-faced man, dressed very neatly in black-so neatly that it
was amazing to discover he was living close at hand in a tent
made of carpets-and he had 'an urbane but insistent manner,' a
carefully trimmed moustache and beard, expressive eyebrows, and
hair very neatly brushed.
'No one goes into Paris,' said Barnet.
'But, Monsieur, that is very unenterprising,' the man by the
wayside submitted.
'The danger is too great. The radiations eat into people's