“Never thought of it that way,” Henry admitted. “I was only thinking about Civil Defense. Atom bombs. I get a lot of what the Government calls ‘Material.’ Even psychology stuff. It’s all about how people will act. It’s all based on studies of how they did act in other disasters. But if people have unconscious minds, how in Sam Hill can any psychologist figure what they’d do, facing utterly new terrors?”
“Some psychologists know a lot about how even the unconscious mind works—and why.”
“Not the ones the Government hires! All their birds are mighty chirky about the American people. Think they’d do fine if it rained brimstone. I’m not so sure. I’m far from sure!
I suspect the worst thing you can do, sometimes, is to keep patting people’s backs. Keep promising them they’re okay because they’ll do okay in a crisis. Makes ’em that much more liable to skittishness, to loss of confidence, if the crisis rolls around and they find they’re not doing letter perfect.”
Coley nodded. “I’ll buy that. It’s like the armed forces. Always calculating what’s going to happen on the basis of what happened before. Trying to convince themselves, even now, that an atom bomb is just another explosion—when it’s that, times a million, plus an infinite number of side effects, and not counting the human factor. The factor you call ‘unconscious’-and rightly.” The editor nodded. “They ought to look back over the military panics that have followed novel weapons. Next, they ought to reckon on how much less a civilian is set for uproar than troops. People go nuts, easy.”
“And then,” Henry went on slowly, “what about the people that are nuts? Seems to me I’ve read someplace that about a third of all the folks think they’re sick are merely upset in their heads. That’s a powerful lot of people, to begin with. Then, a tenth of us are more or less cracked. Neurotic, alcoholic, dope-takers, emotionally unstable, psycopaths, all that sort. Plus the fact that half the folks in hospital beds this very day are out-and-out nuts!”
“What’s your procedure with them?”
Henry shook his head. “What can it be? They’re uneducatable. Can’t teach ’em to behave properly in normal situations. How’n hell you teach ’em to face atom bombing? A tenth of the whole population is worse than a dead loss. It’s a dangerous handicap, come real trouble.”
The editor smiled. “Only a tenth, Henry? More likely a third of the people are neurotic.
Already over-anxious, fearful, insecure. What about the have-not people? People with hate in their hearts? People who never were free, who never had an even and equal chance? What would they do, if things blew sky-high? Stand firm and co-operate? Like hell!”
“I know,” Henry murmured.
“And the merely poor people! With a feeling they’ve heen gypped. And look! Five per cent of the total population of River City and Green Prairie, like the people in every city, are folks with criminal records. Not just unpredictable. You can predict that—sure—a few will become noble in a disaster. lust as sure, you know the most of ’em will keep on being criminal and take advantage of every chance. Loot, for instance. Kill, if they’re that type. Rape, if they’re in that sex-offense category. Everything! What’s procedure there?”
“Green Prairie has a lot of volunteer auxiliary police and the cops train ’em. River City?
You tell me how they’d handle things. They’ve got nothing.”
“What’s Federal policy?” Coley persisted. “After all, the Government must realize that somewhere between a quarter and a half of your big-city people aren’t what could be called at all emotionally stable. They’re pushovers for panic and naturals for improper reaction.”
“No policy,” the other replied. “Except force. Police effort. How can there be?”
“And psychological contagion?”
“Meaning what?”
“If the nuts, the near-nuts, the neurotic, the criminal, the have-not people and the repressed minorities go haywire—why, how many of the rest will catch it? What’s more catching than panic?”
“You got me,” Henry said. He sighed and stood. “All I believe is, the more people face what might happen, ahead of time, without being deluded about how ‘firm’ they are, the fewer’ll go wild.” He glanced around the office as if it symbolized something he cherished and had reluctantly hurt. ‘‘I’m sorry to come up here with all this on my mind, Coley….”
“I know.”
“Guess you do. Well…!”
They shook hands warmly.
When the lights had been turned on, when Henry Conner had gone, saying it was past his bedtime, chuckling, walking out with square shoulders, Coley Borden sat a while and then buzzed for Mrs. Berwyn. She came in—red hair piled high, greenish eyes mapped out as usual with mascara, all her brains and kindness and unanchored tenderness concealed in the outlandish aspect of her homely face and big body. (After Nan died, he thought, I should have married Beatrice; she’d be terrific—you’d only have to have it dark.)
“Get your book, Bea,” he said over his shoulder. He was standing again, looking along shelves for a volume which, presently, he took down. When he turned, she was sitting; she had brought her pencils and stenographic notebook with the first buzz.
“How old are you, Bea?” he asked, opening the book and looking from page to page. “You never asked me that.” Her voice was clear and rather high.
“Asking now.”
“Fifty-three.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“Why? Didn’t a woman ever tell you her right age before?”
He gazed at her and his lips twitched. “Sure. Once. I thought it was going to land me in prison, too. She was seventeen.”
“Your dissolute ways!” the green eyes flickered.
“I was kind of surprised,” he said quietly, “because you’re a year older than me. That’s all.”
“Oh.” She looked at the Door. “From you, that’s a compliment.”
“Right. We’re going to do some work. An editorial.”
“For morning? The page is in.”
“Yeah. If it comes out right, it’ll be for morning. I’m kind of rusty, Bea. But I’ll take a crack at it and maybe I’ll run it. Ready?”
She nodded.
He began to walk in front of his desk and to dictate:
“Ten years ago and more, this nation hurled upon its Jap foe a new weapon, a weapon cunningly contrived from the secrets of the sun. Since that day the world has lived in terror.
“Every year, every month, every hour, terror has grown. It is terror compounded of every fear. Fear of War. Fear of Defeat. Fear of Slavery. These fears are great, but they are common to humanity. Man in his sorrow has sustained them hitherto. But there are other fears in the composition of man’s present terror. These are fears that his cities may be reduced to rubble, his civilization destroyed, humanity itself wiped out; in sum, fear that man’s world will end. And this last fear has been augmented through the long, hideous years by hints from the laboratories that, indeed, the death of life is possible—and even the incineration of the planet may soon be achievable, by scientific design or by careless accident.
“Fears of mortal aggression and human crimes are tolerable, however dreadsome. But men have never borne with sanity a fear that their world will end. To all who accept as likely that special idea, reason becomes inaccessible; their minds collapse; madness invades their sensibilities. What they then do no longer bears reasonably upon their peril, however apt they deem their crazed courses. They are then puppets of their terror. And it is as such puppets that we Americans have acted for ten years, and more.”