He wrote innumerable letters, he
sent messages, he went desperate journeys, he enlisted whatever support
he could find; no one was too humble for an ally or too obstinate
for his advances; through the terrible autumn of the last wars this
persistent little visionary in spectacles must have seemed rather like a
hopeful canary twittering during a thunderstorm. And no accumulation of
disasters daunted his conviction that they could be ended.
For the whole world was flaring then into a monstrous phase of
destruction. Power after Power about the armed globe sought to
anticipate attack by aggression. They went to war in a delirium of
panic, in order to use their bombs first. China and Japan had assailed
Russia and destroyed Moscow, the United States had attacked Japan, India
was in anarchistic revolt with Delhi a pit of fire spouting death and
flame; the redoubtable King of the Balkans was mobilising. It must
have seemed plain at last to every one in those days that the world
was slipping headlong to anarchy. By the spring of 1959 from nearly
two hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the
unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs, the flimsy
fabric of the world's credit had vanished, industry was completely
disorganised and every city, every thickly populated area was starving
or trembled on the verge of starvation.
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