Looking back upon it now, it was a wonderful piece of work, carried out without any very serious hitches. To transfer a population of nearly ten millions, and to distribute five millions of that over a wide area of England—for this was the only way in which houseroom could be found for them—was a gigantic task. Fabulous sums were expended in finding living-room for the refugees in the houses of residents throughout England; and eventually all of them had roofs over their heads, in private dwellings, in converted halls or in commandeered hotels.
Meanwhile, in Glasgow itself, the ever-growing Nitrogen Area was surrounded with military pickets which prevented the mingling of newcomers and the old population. This precaution of Nordenholt’s was mainly directed against the possibility of rioting; for the feeling between the expelled inhabitants and the incomers was extremely bitter: but it served another purpose in that it tended to surround the Nitrogen Area with a certain atmosphere of mystery. This was heightened by the stoppage of all telegraphic and telephonic communication between Glasgow and the South. Soon the only information obtainable in England with regard to affairs in the Clyde Valley came from emigrants; and with the end of the exodus, even the mails ceased and an impenetrable veil fell between the two parts of the island.
A similar screen had fallen between England and Ireland at a slightly earlier date. All postal and telegraphic communication was broken off, and no vessels were permitted to trade with the Irish ports. It was by this means that the knowledge of the great Raid was kept secret. Nordenholt was almost ready to disclose his hand; and the Raid could not be postponed if any cattle were to be obtained alive. By a series of lightning sweeps, the military rounded up all the available livestock in the island and drove them to the nearest ports, where ships were awaiting them. Bitter guerrilla warfare raged along the tracks of the columns; and the last pages in Irish history were marked with bloodshed. Not that it mattered much, since all were to die in any case before very long.
But I am now coming to the last stages of the exodus. All the required food, all the available machinery and all the Nitrogen Volunteers had been sent up into the Clyde Valley. Without warning, after a secret session, Parliament had resolved to transfer itself to Glasgow. Now came the final moves. On the last day, only pickets of the Military Volunteers—the Labour Defence Force, as Nordenholt had renamed them—were left behind in every important town.
During that night a carefully-planned course of destruction was followed. Every telegraph and telephone exchange was gutted; the remaining artillery was rendered useless; all the printing machinery of newspapers was wrecked; every aeroplane destroyed and practically all aerodromes burned: and as the trains and motors went northward in the night, bridge after bridge on the line or road was blown up. When morning came, there was a complete stoppage of all the normal channels of communication; and up to the Border, the railways had been put out of action for months. It was the second step in Nordenholt’s plan.
Hitherto, I have chronicled his successes; but now I must deal with his single failure. He had intended to persuade the King to take refuge in the Clyde Valley, and had even, I believe, found a residence for him near Glasgow. Here, however, he met with a rebuff. I never learned the details of the interview; but it appears that the King refused to save himself. He felt it his duty to share the fate of his people. Nordenholt pleaded that if the King himself would not come, at least the Prince of Wales might be sent; but here also he failed to carry his point. The Prince point-blank rejected the suggestion. Knowing Nordenholt, I could hardly conceive that his persuasive proposals could fail to take effect; but it was evident that he met with no success.
“He understood perfectly,” Nordenholt said to me later. “Both of them thoroughly understood what it meant. I think they felt that a Crown rescued at that price wouldn’t be worth wearing. At any rate, they refused to come North.”
VIII
The Clyde Valley
Hitherto my narrative has had a certain unity; for I have been describing a chain of events, each of which followed naturally from its forerunners; but now comes a bifurcation. I have explained how the Clyde Valley had been isolated, step by step, from the rest of the country; and when the last food-stores and troops had been brought into the Nitrogen Area, communications between the two districts ceased. From that moment, the two regions had different histories; and I cannot deal with them in an intertwined chronological sequence. I shall therefore continue my account of the Clyde Valley experiment now; and shall deal later with the collapse of civilisation in England.
When planning his colony, Nordenholt decided to occupy a belt of country between the Forth and Clyde which contained all the required materials in the form of coal and iron. Other things, such as copper, he brought into the region in quantities which he believed would suffice for months.
The frontier included something like a thousand square miles of territory; and within the boundary lay the whole industrial tract of mid-Scotland with its countless pits, mines, foundries, factories, shipbuilding yards and other resources.
Under Congleton’s arrangements, as many ships as possible had been brought into the Clyde and Forth at the last moment; and thereafter the Navy blocked the entrances with minefields upon an enormous scale. Nothing, either surface craft or submarine, could have penetrated either estuary.
Aerial defence was a secondary matter. No invasion in force would come by that road; and the destruction of the aerodromes
