Once a score or so of women, with a tall, frantic girl as their leader, stood for hours at the edge of the wire entanglement and called on the soldiers to shoot—if they would not feed them, to shoot. Then, receiving only silence as answer, the tall girl cried out that, by God, the soldiers should be forced to shoot! and led her companions—some cumbered with children—to tear and hurl themselves across the stretch of barbed and twisted wire. As they scrambled over, bleeding, crying and their clothes in rags, they were seized by the wrists and hustled to the gate of the camp—some limp and effortless, others kicking and writhing to get free. When the gate was closed and barred on them they beat on it—then lay about wretchedly … and at last shambled wretchedly away. …
More dreadful even than the women who dragged with them children they could not feed, were those who sought to bribe the possessors of food with the remnant of their feminine attractions; who eyed themselves anxiously in streams, pulled their sodden clothes into a semblance of jauntiness and made piteous attempts at flirtation. Money being worthless, since it could buy neither safety nor food, the price for those who traded their bodies was paid in a hunk of bread or meat. … Those women suffered most who had no man of their own to forage and fend for them, and were no longer young enough for other men to look on with pleasure. They—as humanity fell to sheer wolfishness and the right of the strongest—were beaten back and thrust aside when it came to the sharing-out of spoil.
He remembered very clearly a day when news that was authentic reached them from the outside world; an aeroplane came down with engine-trouble in a field on the edge of the camp, and the haggard-faced pilot, beset with breathless questions, laughed roughly when they asked him of London—how lately he had been there, what was happening? “Oh yes, I was over it a day or two ago. You’re no worse off than they are down south—London’s been on the run for days.” He turned back to his engine and whistled tunelessly through the silence that had fallen on his hearers. … Theodore said it over slowly to himself, “London’s been on the run for days.” If so—if so—then what, in God’s name, of Phillida?
Hitherto he had fought back his dread for Phillida, denying to himself, as he denied to others, the rumour that disaster was widespread and general, and insisting that she, at least, was safe. If there was one thing intolerable, one thing that could not be, it was Phillida vagrant, Phillida starving—his dainty lady bedraggled and grovelling for her bread … like the haggard women who had beaten with their hands on the gate. …
“It must stop,” he choked suddenly, “it must stop—it can’t go on!”
The pilot broke off from his whistling to stare at the distorted face.
“No,” he said grimly, “it can’t go on. What’s more, it’s stopping, by degrees—stopping itself; you mayn’t have noticed it yet, but we do. Taking ’em all round they’re leaving off, not coming as thick as they did. And”—his mouth twisted ironically—“we’re leaving off and for the same reason.”
“The same reason?” someone echoed him.
“Because we can’t go on. … You don’t expect us to carry on long in this, do you?” He shrugged and jerked his head towards a smoke cloud on the western skyline. “That’s what ran us—gone up in smoke. Food and factories and transport and Lord knows what beside. The things that ran us and kept us going … We’re living on our own fat now—what there is of it—and so are the people on the other side. We can just keep going as long as it lasts; but it’s getting precious short now, and when we’ve finished it—when there’s no fat left! …” He laughed unpleasantly and stared at the rolling smoke cloud.
Someone else asked him about the rumour ever-current of negotiation—whether there was truth in it, whether he had heard anything?
“Much what you’ve heard,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders. “There’s talk—there always is—plenty of it; but I don’t suppose I know any more than you do. … It stands to reason that someone must be trying to put an end to it—but who’s trying to patch it up with who? … And what is there left to patch? Lord knows! They say the real trouble is that when governments have gone there’s no one to negotiate with. No responsible authority—sometimes no authority at all. Nothing to get hold of. You can’t make terms with rabble; you can’t even find out what it wants—and it’s rabble now, here, there, and everywhere. When there’s nothing else left, how do you get hold of it, treat with it? Who makes terms, who signs, who orders? … Meanwhile, we go on till we’re told to stop—those of us that are left. … And I suppose they’re doing much the same—keeping on because they don’t know how to stop.”
Theodore asked what he meant when he spoke of “no government.” “You can’t mean it literally? You can’t mean … ?”
“Why not?” said the pilot. “Is there any here?”—and jerked his head, this time towards the road. Its long white ribbon was spotted with groups and single figures of vagrants—scarecrow vagrants—crawling onward they knew not whither.
“See that,” he said, “see that—does anyone govern it? Make rules for it, defend it, keep it alive? … And that’s everywhere.”
Someone whispered back “Everywhere” under his breath; the rest stared in silence at the spotted white ribbon of road.
“You can’t mean … ?” said Theodore again.
The airman shrugged his shoulders and laughed roughly.
“I believe,” he said, “there are still some wretched people
