answered his questions. My other guest said very little and spoke slowly with some
difficulty. But I got a very favorable impression of him. He seemed to be a man who
was carrying a load beyond human strength and carrying it heroically.
There followed the longest period in my life. It was actually only a little
longer than a week, but every minute of it had that split-second intensity of
imminent disaster that comes just before a car crash. The President was using the
time to try to avert the need to use the dust. He had two face-to-face television
conferences with the new Fuehrer. The President spoke German fluently, which should
have helped. He spoke three times to the warring peoples themselves, but it is
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doubtful if very many on the Continent were able to listen, the police regulations
there being what they were.
The Ambassador from the Reich was given a special demonstration of the
effect of the dust. He was flown
out over a deserted stretch of Western prairie and ~ lowed to see what a single
dusting would do to a he] of steers. It should have impressed him and I thu that it
did-nobody could ignore a visual demonstr tion!-but what report he made to his
leader we nev knew.
The British Isles were visited repeatedly during the wait by bombing attacks
as heavy as any of the war was safe enough but I heard about them, and I cou see the
effect on the morale of the officers with who I associated. Not that it frightened
them-it ma~ them coldly angry. The raids were not directed p1 manly at dockyards or
factories, but were ruthless d struction of anything, particularly villages.
“I don’t see what you chaps are waiting for,” a fig commander complained to
me. “What the Jerri need is a dose of their own shrecklichkeit, a lesson their own
Aryan culture.”
I shook my head. “We’ll have to do it our own way He dropped the matter, but
I knew how he and F brother officers felt. They had a standing toast, as s cred as
the toast to the King: “Remember Coventry! Our President had stipulated that the R.
A. F. w not to bomb during the period of negotiation, but th bombers were busy
nevertheless. The continent w showered, night after night, with bales of leaflets,
p~ pared by our own propaganda agents. The first of the called on the people of the
Reich to stop a useless w and promised that the terms of peace would not vindictive.
The second rain of pamphlets showed ph tographs of that herd of steers. The third
was a simf direct warning to get out of cities and to stay out. As Manning put it,
we were calling “Halt!” thr times before firing. I do not think that he or the Pre
dent expected it to work, but we were morally ob gated to try.
The Britishers had installed for me a televisor, of the Simonds-Yarley
nonintercept type, the sort where the receiver must “trigger” the transmitter in
order for the transmission to take place at all. It made assurance of privacy in
diplomatic communication for the first time in history, and was a real help in the
crisis. I had brought along my own technician, one of the F. B. I.’s new corps of
specialists, to handle the scrambler and the trigger.
He called to me one afternoon. “Washington signaling.
I climbed tiredly out of the cabin and down to the booth on the hangar
floor, wondering if it were another false alarm.
It was the President. His lips were white. “Carry out your basic
instructions, Mr. DeFries.”
“Yes, Mr. President!”
The details had been worked out in advance and, once I had accepted a
receipt and token payment from the Commandant for the dust, my duties were finished.
But, at our instance, the British had invited military observers from every
independent nation and from the several provisional governments of occupied nations.
The United States Ambassador designated me as one at the request of Manning.
Our task group was thirteen bombers. One such bomber could have carried all
the dust needed, but it was split up to insure most of it, at least, reaching its