was the characteristic of the American imagination. For the
Americans also were among the simple peoples by whom the world
was saved. He won over the American president and the American
government to his general ideas; at any rate they supported him
sufficiently to give him a standing with the more sceptical
European governments, and with this backing he set to work-it
seemed the most fantastic of enterprises-to bring together all
the rulers of the world and unify them. 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. Most of the
capital cities of the world were burning; millions of people had
already perished, and over great areas government was at an end.
Humanity has been compared by one contemporary writer to a
sleeper who handles matches in his sleep and wakes to find
himself in flames.
For many months it was an open question whether there was to be
found throughout all the race the will and intelligence to face
these new conditions and make even an attempt to arrest the
downfall of the social order. For a time the war spirit defeated
every effort to rally the forces of preservation and
construction. Leblanc seemed to be protesting against
earthquakes, and as likely to find a spirit of reason in the
crater of Etna. Even though the shattered official governments
now clamoured for peace, bands of irreconcilables and invincible
patriots, usurpers, adventurers, and political desperadoes, were
everywhere in possession of the simple apparatus for the
disengagement of atomic energy and the initiation of new centres
of destruction. The stuff exercised an irresistible fascination
upon a certain type of mind. Why should any one give in while he
can still destroy his enemies? Surrender? While there is still
a chance of blowing them to dust? The power of destruction which
had once been the ultimate privilege of government was now the
only power left in the world-and it was everywhere. There were
few thoughtful men during that phase of blazing waste who did not
pass through such moods of despair as Barnet describes, and
declare with him: 'This is the end…'
And all the while Leblanc was going to and fro with glittering
glasses and an inexhaustible persuasiveness, urging the manifest
reasonableness of his view upon ears that ceased presently to be
inattentive. Never at any time did he betray a doubt that all
this chaotic conflict would end. No nurse during a nursery
uproar was ever so certain of the inevitable ultimate peace.
From being treated as an amiable dreamer he came by insensible
degrees to be regarded as an extravagant possibility. Then he
began to seem even practicable. The people who listened to him in
1958 with a smiling impatience, were eager before 1959 was four
months old to know just exactly what he thought might be done.
He answered with the patience of a philosopher and the lucidity
of a Frenchman. He began to receive responses of a more and more
hopeful type. He came across the Atlantic to Italy, and there he
gathered in the promises for this congress. He chose those high
meadows above Brissago for the reasons we have stated. 'We must
get away,' he said, 'from old associations.' He set to work
requisitioning material for his conference with an assurance that
was justified by the replies. With a slight incredulity the
conference which was to begin a new order in the world, gathered
itself together. Leblanc summoned it without arrogance, he
controlled it by virtue of an infinite humility. Men appeared
upon those upland slopes with the apparatus for wireless
telegraphy; others followed with tents and provisions; a little
cable was flung down to a convenient point upon the Locarno road
below. Leblanc arrived, sedulously directing every detail that
would affect the tone of the assembly. He might have been a
courier in advance rather than the originator of the gathering.
And then there arrived, some by the cable, most by aeroplane, a
few in other fashions, the men who had been called together to
confer upon the state of the world. It was to be a conference
without a name. Nine monarchs, the presidents of four republics,
a number of ministers and ambassadors, powerful journalists, and
such-like prominent and influential men, took part in it. There
were even scientific men; and that world-famous old man, Holsten,
came with the others to contribute his amateur statecraft to the