Miss Holroyd locked herself in the library at about 5.30 pm yesterday in protest against the headmaster's order to remove certain pagan-oriented books from the shelves.
'She did it quite without warning,' headmaster William Barker told our reporter. 'She did not even ask me to reconsider my order – merely barricaded herself in and sent one of the pupils to me with a note.
'Next morning, hundreds of pupils set up a mass picket-line, with banners and placards already prepared. Miss Holroyd had clearly incited these children, for whom she shared responsibility, into deliberate, organized rebellion against authority.
'And for what? In an attempt to keep morally poisonous material on the library shelves'
Quentin White made the most of it.
'The tip of the iceberg, Mr Speaker. Or should I say the crack in the sewer? For while honourable members debate whether or not to give His Majesty's Government the powers it seeks, the bearers of moral infection are busy below the surface, gnawing at the fabric of our civilization. Because one headmaster was on the watch, and took action, the underground menace – at one point only – took fright and struck. The result? Physical damage, certainly – to an important school and to the bodies of innocent children and adults. But who can calculate the moral and psychological damage?
'More important, Mr Speaker – I have already emphasized that this has happened at one point only, where the spark of one man's integrity and one woman's breach of professional ethics – to say the very least – have detonated an explosion. Who can calculate the extent of the danger which is still concealed, still undetonatcd? At what point could local disaster erupt into national disaster?
'I believe, sir, that the answer stares honourable members in the face. The moral threat could erupt uncontrollably, if we suffered just one more natural calamity like the wave of earth tremors from which we have barely recovered. The experts cannot assure us that it will not happen. They cannot even assure us that the next earthquake would not be incalculably worse.
'If that should happen – and happen without warning -His Majesty's Government will be fighting on two fronts. Against physical disruption on an unheard-of scale – and against the spiritual saboteurs who would seize on that disruption with eagerness.
'Mr Speaker, new as I am to this Mother of Parliaments, I urge honourable members to waste no time in arming His Majesty's Government with the powers that it must have, before the crisis which may break upon us any day, any hour'
For the Prime Minister to rise, seeking the Speaker's eyes, in the middle of a maiden speech was so unthinkable that a tremor of astonishment ran through the House. Quentin White, quick-witted but still unsure of procedure, bowed towards the Premier and sat down in mid-sentence.
'Mr Speaker,' the Prime Minister said, 'I must apologize to the honourable member, and to the House, for what must appear to be a quite unprecedented breach of courtesy. But I am sure the whole House, including the honourable and eloquent gentleman I was obliged to interrupt – with your permission, sir – will wish to be informed immediately of the news item which has just been handed to me… The whole of North America, and the northern part of South America, has in the past half-hour suffered widespread earth tremors of uneven distribution and varying intensity. Information is still incomplete, of course, but the Associated Press describe the disaster as being similar to, and at least as destructive as, that which recently affected Europe and parts of Asia.'
As the Premier sat down again, Quentin White made no attempt to continue his speech; he knew he had no need.
Under cover of the general commotion, the Premier whispered to the Chancellor of the Exchequer: 'Bertie, we're home and dry.'
An hour later, the Commons passed the Emergency Powers Bill by 652 votes to eleven.
8
The American media being less compact and amenable to control than the British, the cables that flowed into AP's Beehive office in the first hour or two after the Western Hemisphere tremors were uninhibited. Eugene and Tonia's job was purely newsgathering for the New York office; the AP tape service to British customers was still put out by the Fleet Street bureau, but all that bureau's inflow and outflow was duplicated by teleprinters in the Beehive office, to keep it fully in the picture. Fortunately, some humane colleague in New York had found time to check with the London staff's next-of-kin, and to cable reassurance as replies came in; so within half an hour of the news breaking, Eugene and Tonia received a service message MAC-ALLISTER AND LYND FAMILIES OKAY HOMES UNDAMAGED, which at least made the trauma of national disaster slightly less personal. Only slightly; homes might be undamaged but home had been shaken to its foundations; families might be safe, but friends? – hundreds of them, from coast to coast?… Even Gene, normally a model of lofty composure, was pale and trembling, and Tonia doubted if she looked any better. Having nothing to do but read made it worse for them; what British news there was seemed, for the moment, confined to Surface.
The pattern of the incoming reports increased their frustration. The uninhibited phase did not last and unfortunately it coincided with the period when the information was provisional, confused and incomplete. As soon as hard facts and figures began to emerge, Tonia's professional instincts told her that the security blanket was beginning to operate. The trend towards clarity was suddenly reversed and imposed vagueness replaced mere unavoidable uncertainty.
Nevertheless, some kind of overall picture had materialized. As in Europe, the tremors seemed partly related to natural features and partly and mysteriously unrelated. A major quake had hit the Colorado River all the way from the Gulf of California through the Grand Canyon and up into Utah; early cables quoted unconfirmed reports of serious damage to the great dams but these were not referred to again. Another tremor line, apparently less serious, ran up the Snake River valley from about Pocatcllo right into the Blue Mountains. The Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas reported a confusing pattern of minor tremors with only localized damage. Chicago, Detroit and the Great Lakes seemed unaffected, but from the Adirondacks to Maine and across the Canadian border to the St Lawrence, damage was heavier but still localized. Quebec was hit and hard news continued to arrive direct from Canada for some time after the States security clamp-down; initial estimates spoke of thirty dead in Quebec and twelve in Montreal, though northwards and westwards of that, Canada – and Alaska – were apparently unaffected.
Down the Atlantic seaboard from Boston to Georgia, everywhere east of the Appalachians seemed to have escaped entirely; but from Florida all the way round the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean the emphasis was on freak tides and flooding. One AP cable, about earth tremor reports from Nicaragua and Costa Rica, stopped in the middle of a folio; the teleprinter was silent for fifteen seconds, then suddenly clattered out: CANCEL FOREGOING PARA, without explanation. Later, on the Lloyds' teleprinter, Tonia spotted PANAMA CANAL CLOSED ALL TRAFFIC FURTHER NOTICE – also without explanation, and no reference to the Canal appeared on the AP tape. Nor were the Mohowatt stations mentioned at any time.
Early reports which included northern South America in the outbreak of tremors were said to have been premature and based on nervous misreading of local seismographs when the scale of the North American phenomenon was first realized. Beyond Venezuela, the coastal flooding rapidly died out, and although Colombia and Ecuador reported a few mountain landslides, only faint echoes of the disaster seemed to have been felt south of the equator.
Gene and Tonia kept an eye on the Reutcr and UP tapes but they added nothing of significance. There was some British official reaction on the PA printer, but it was mostly formal sympathy, unoriginal and unmemorable.