Nordenholt succeeded in stifling most of the disaffection by means of a fresh newspaper campaign of propaganda. He had given his journals a long period of rest in this direction, purposely, I believe, in order that he might utilise them more effectively when this new emergency arose. But though he certainly produced a marked effect by his efforts, there remained among the workers an undercurrent of discontent which could not be exorcised. It was not a case of open disaffection which could have been dealt with by drastic methods; the Intelligence section were unable to fasten upon any clear cases of what in the old days would have been called sedition. It was rather a change for the worse in the general attitude and outlook of the labouring part of the community: an affair of atmosphere which left nothing solid for Nordenholt to grasp firmly. Though I was out of direct touch with affairs at the time, even I could not help the feeling that things were out of joint. The demeanour of the workers in the streets was somehow different from what it had been in the earlier days. There was a sullenness and a tinge of aggressiveness in the air.
And in Nordenholt himself I noticed a corresponding change. He seemed to me by degrees to be losing his impersonal standpoint. The new situation appeared to be making him more and more dictatorial as time went by. He had always acted as a Dictator; but in his personal contact with men he had preserved an attitude of aloofness and certainty which had taken the edge off the Dictatorship. Now, I noticed, his methods were becoming more direct; and he was making certain test-points into trials of strength, open and avowed, between himself and those who opposed him. He always won, of course; but it was a different state of things from that which had marked the inception of the Nitrogen Area. There was more of the master and less of the comrade about him now.
Yet, looking back upon it all, I cannot but admit that his methods were justified. The disaffection was noticeable; and only a strong hand could put it down. Nordenholt’s tactics were probably the best under the circumstances; but nevertheless they brought him into a fresh orientation with regard to the workers. Instead of leading them, he began more and more openly to drive them along the road which he wished them to take.
I see that I have omitted to mention the attempted invasion of the Nitrogen Area from the coasts of Europe which took place just before this. To tell the truth, it was so complete a fiasco that it had almost passed from my mind; but a few words may be devoted to it here.
When the Famine had done its work in Germany there still remained for a time a number of inhabitants who had seized the food in the country by force and who were thus enabled to prolong their existence while their fellows died out. They belonged mainly to the old military class. When they in turn ran short of supplies, their natural thought was to plunder someone weaker than themselves; and learning of the existence of the Clyde Valley colony, they determined that it furnished the most probable source of loot. Apparently they imagined that the Fleet in the Firth of Forth was deserted; for in order to excite no suspicion they had kept their airships at long-range in the reconnaissances which they undoubtedly made in advance of their actual onset; and it seems most probable that they imagined they had nothing to fear beyond the risks incident to the invasion of an unprotected country. At least, so it appears to me; and there were no survivors of the expedition from whom the truth might have been discovered.
Under cover of night, they seem to have put most of their men on board merchant ships and sailed for the British coast at a time which would have brought them off the land in the early hours of the morning when, no doubt, they expected to get ashore without attracting attention, since they must have supposed all the coastal inhabitants had perished. Actually, however, their manoeuvres had been followed by the seaplane patrol which cruised in the North Sea; and as soon as they left port, the Fleet was got into a state of preparedness. The two forces met somewhere on the high seas; the German squadron, utterly defenceless, was sunk without any resistance worthy of the name.
This was the only actual attempt at invasion which the Nitrogen Area had to repel; for Nordenholt’s aeroplane propaganda had checked any desire on the part of the survivors of the Famine in this country to approach the Clyde Valley under any conditions.
Though Nordenholt succeeded in suppressing the outward manifestations of labour unrest at this period, I think it is fairly clear that he was unable to reach down to the sources of the trouble. At the root of things lay a vague dissatisfaction with general conditions, which it was impossible to exorcise; and this peculiar spirit manifested itself in all sorts of sporadic forms which gave a good deal of trouble before they could be got under control.
For example, at about this time, there was an outbreak of something akin to the dancing mania which I had seen in London. It began by a rapid extension of normal dancing in the halls of the city; but from this it soon passed into revelry in the public squares at night;
