VII
Nordenholt’s Million
Of all the incidents in that afternoon, I think the sight of these placards brought home to me most forcibly two of the salient characteristics of Nordenholt’s many-sided mind: his foresight and his self-reliance. Their appearance in the streets at that moment showed that they formed part of a plan which had been decided upon several days in advance, since time had to be allowed for printing and distributing them; whilst the fact that they were being posted up within two hours of the close of the meeting proved that Nordenholt had never had the slightest doubt of his success in dominating the Ministers.
Later on, I became familiar with these posters. They were not identical by any means; and I learned to expect a difference in their wording according to the district in which they were posted up. The methods of varied personal appeal had long been familiar to the advertising world; but I found that Nordenholt had broken away from tradition and had staked everything upon his knowledge of the human mind. In these advertisements his psychological instinct was developed in an uncanny degree which was clear enough to me, who knew the secret; but I doubt if any man without my knowledge would have seen through the superficial aspect of them quite so readily.
In this first stage of his campaign he had to conceal his hand. The advertisements were merely the first great net which he spread in order to capture every man who would be at all likely to be useful to him, while the meshes had to be left wide enough to allow the undesirable types to slip through. The proclamations—for they really took this form—set forth concisely the exact danger which threatened the food-supply of the country; explained why it was essential that immense masses of nitrogenous material must be manufactured; and called for the immediate enrolment of volunteers from selected trades and professions.
As a primary inducement, the scale of remuneration offered was far above the normal pay in any given line. It was, in fact, so high that I fell at once to calculating the approximate total of wages which would be payable weekly; and the figures took me by surprise when I worked them out. No single private fortune, however gigantic, could have kept the machinery running for even a few months at the uttermost. When I pointed this out to Nordenholt he seemed amused and rather taken aback; but his surprise was at my obtuseness and not at my calculations.
“Well, I’m slightly astonished, Flint. I thought you would have seen deeper into it than that. Hasn’t it occurred to you that within six weeks money, as we understand it, will be valueless? If we pay up during the time we are getting things arranged, that will be all that is required. Once the colony is founded, there will be no trade between it and the outside world, naturally; and inside our own group we could arrange any type of currency we choose. But, as a matter of fact, we shall go on just as usual; and Treasury notes sufficient for the purpose are already being printed.”
But the cash inducement was not the only one upon which he relied even in his preliminary moves. Patriotism, the spirit of public service, the promise of opportunities for talent and many other driving forces were enlisted in the campaign. These more specialised appeals were mainly sent out in the form of advertisements in the newspapers—great whole-page announcements which appeared in unusual places in the journals. I suppose to a man of enormous wealth most things are possible, especially when the wealth is coupled with a personality like Nordenholt’s; but it certainly amazed me to find his advertisements taking the place of the normal “latest news” space in many papers. Nor was this the only way in which his influence made itself felt. The editorial comments, and even the news columns of the journals, dealt at length with his scheme; and he secured the support of papers which were quite above any suspicion of being amenable to outside influence. On the face of it, of course, his plans—so far as they were made public—were obviously sound; but I cannot help feeling that below this almost unanimous chorus of praise in the leading articles there must be some influence at work beyond mere casual approbation. Very probably Nordenholt had seen his way to enlist the sympathy of editors by some more direct methods, possibly by calling the controllers of policy together and utilising his magnetic personality and persuasive powers.
In my own field of work at the first I found some difficulties in my dealings with the Trades Union officials, who were suspicious of our methods. They feared that we contemplated dilution on a huge scale; and they were anxious to know the details of our plans. I consulted Nordenholt on the point and found him prepared.
“Of course that was bound to arise as soon as we began to move on a big scale. Well, you can assure them that we shall act strictly according to the law of the matter. Promise them that as far as working conditions go, we shall begin by letting the men fix their own hours of work; and if any man is dissatisfied with these, we will pay him on the spot a bonus of six months’ wages and let him leave instantly if he so desires.
“Point out to them that, in the cases of some trades, I may have to enlist the majority of the Unionists in the country; and that I am not going to tie their hands by any previous arrangements: they shall settle the matter for themselves. If that doesn’t satisfy them, you may tell them definitely—and put it in writing if they wish—that under no circumstances will I expect my employees to work for longer hours or less pay than any other Trades Unionist in the country.”
I jotted the phrase down in my pocketbook.
“I may as well tell you, Flint, that I have given instructions to the recruiting offices. No Trades Union Leader will be engaged by me under any circumstances whatever. It’s real working men that I want; and I don’t think much of the Union leaders from the point of view of actual work.”
He looked at me for a moment and I saw a faint smile on his face.
“It seems to me, Flint, that even yet you haven’t managed to see this thing in perspective. You must really get into your mind the fact that there is going to be a clean break between the old system and the new one we are making. Look at the thing in all its bearings. Once we are up North, men shall work for me as I choose and for what I choose. There will be no Factory Acts and Trades Union regulations or any other hindrance to our affairs. They come here and try to put a spoke in my wheel? I don’t mind that at all. But I do see that they are trying, whether wilfully or through sheer ignorance, to hamper this work which is essential to the race. Therefore I propose to meet them with fair words. It’s not for me to enlighten their ignorance if it has persisted up to now in the face of all this. I make them that promise, and if they can’t understand its meaning, that is no affair of mine. We know, if they’re too dense to see it, that in a few months there won’t be a Trades Unionist left in the country, outside the colony! There will be no wages drawn outside our frontier; so even if I paid our men nothing, still I should be keeping my promise to the strict letter.”
“I see your point,” I said; “all’s fair and so forth?”
“Also, we shall have trouble, up there, I have no doubt. Probably there will be a ca’ canny party among our recruits. They will have every chance at first. I won’t interfere with them. But once the situation clears up a little, I shall deal with them—and I shall do it by the hand of their own fellows. They won’t last long. Now get along and promise these officials exactly what I have told you.”
I offered no criticisms of his methods. His brain was far better than mine. When I remember that he must have drafted the outlines of his scheme and arranged most of the preliminaries of its execution in less time than it would have taken me to decide upon a new factory-site, I am still lost in amazement at the combination of wide outlook and tremendous concentration of thought which the task involved.
Despite the carefully-planned deterrents which appeared in the proclamations, the recruiting was enormous from the first. “Nordenholt’s Million”—as the popular phrase ran—was not really a million at all; but Nordenholt knew the influence of a round figure upon the public imagination and it was near enough for all practical purposes. He had looked on the thing in the broadest possible lines at the start, and had drawn up a rough classification for the use of the recruiting stations. To begin with, he limited the enlistment to men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five; though exceptional cases received special consideration. On this basis, he expected to get all the men he required. Three-quarters of a million of these were to be married men with an upper limit of four children, preferably between the ages of six and twelve. In addition to this, he was prepared to accept half a million young unmarried men. Half a million unmarried girls were also selected. The net result of this was that in the end he obtained in round numbers the following classes:
Husbands
750,000
Wives
750,000
Children
2,250,000
Bachelors
500,000
Girls
500,000
Total
4,750,000
That left a margin of a quarter of a million below his original estimate of five millions; and this he kept free for the time being, partly because some of the number would be made up by specialists who did not come under the general recruitment organisation and partly, possibly, for taking in at the last moment any cases which might be specially desirable.
At a later date I had an opportunity of questioning him as to his reasons in laying down this classification: and they struck me as sound.
“In the first place, I want a solid backbone to this enterprise. I get that by selecting the married men. They have got a stake in the thing already in their wives, and especially in their children. I know that the children mean the consumption of a vast quantity of food for which we shall get no direct return in the form of labour; but I believe that the steadying effect introduced by them will be worth the loss. We are going to put this colony under a strain which is about as great as human nature can bear; and I want everything on our side that can be brought there.
“Then again, they will help to form a sort of public opinion. Don’t forget that the ultimate aim of this affair is to carry on the race. I could have done that by selecting bachelors and girls in equal numbers and simply going ahead on that basis. But we must have discipline; and unless you have some established order we should simply have ended by a Saturnalia. You couldn’t have prevented it, considering the nervous strain we are going to put on these people. I have no use for that sort of thing; so I chose a majority of men with families, whose natural instincts are to keep down the bacchanalian element among the unmarried.
“But in addition to these married men, I needed others who had a free hand and who had only their own lives to risk. In certain lines, the unmarried man can be relied upon where the married man shivers in his shoes to some extent. That accounts for the bachelor element.
“But, since a preponderance of males over females would be bound to lead to trouble, I had to enrol enough girls to bring up the balance. Possibly they may also serve to spur on the younger men to work; and they will be able to help in the actual task before us in a good many ways, like the Munition girls of the War period.”
It seemed to me then the only possible solution of the problem; and it worked in practice. We can’t tell how things would have fared if any other arrangements had been made, so I must leave it at that. Anyway, I think Nordenholt enlisted two of the strongest instincts of humanity on his side in addition to the fear of hunger: and that was a definite gain.
“Nordenholt’s Million” was, of course, a microcosm of the national industries. It would serve no purpose to catalogue the trades which were represented in it. Miners, iron- and steelworkers, electricians and makers of electrical machinery preponderated; but Nordenholt had looked ahead to agriculture and the needs of the population after the danger of famine was past.
In the early stages, the statistical branch—recruited from the great insurance companies—was perhaps the hardest worked of all. The most diverse problems presented themselves for treatment; and they could only be handled in the most rough-and-ready fashion until we were able to bring calculation to bear. Without the help of the actuaries, I believe that there would have been a collapse at various points, in spite of all our foresight.
I have not attempted to do more than indicate in outline the activities which engrossed us at that time. In my memory, it lives as a period of frantic and often very successful improvisation. New problems cropped up at every turn. The decision of one day might entail a recasting of plans in some field which at first sight seemed totally divorced from the question under consideration. Each line of that complex system had to be kept abreast of the rest, so that there was no disjunction, no involuntary halt for one section to come up with the remainder, no clash between two departments of the organisation. And yet, somehow, it seemed to work with more smoothness than we had expected. Behind us all, seated at the nucleus of that complex web of activities, there was Nordenholt, seldom interfering but always ready to give a sharp decision should the need arise. And I think the presence of that cool intelligence behind us had a moral effect upon our minds. He never lessened our initiative, never showed any sign of vexation when things began to go wrong. He treated us all as colleagues, though we knew that he was our master. And under his examination, difficulties seemed to fade away in our hands.
It was not until the meeting of Parliament that the Government connection with Nordenholt’s scheme became known to the public; but on the first day of the session the Prime Minister introduced a Bill which subsequently became the Billeting Act; and this brought to light the fact that Nordenholt was not working merely as a private individual. Under the Act, the Government took powers to house the Nitrogen Volunteers, as they were termed, in any locality which might be found necessary. The wording of the Act gave them the fullest power in this matter; but it was so contrived that no one suspected the establishment of only a single Nitrogen Area.
In his speech on the second Reading, the Premier excelled all his previous tactical exercises. He explained very clearly the nature of the peril which threatened the country; and he pointed out that the measure was necessary in order to cope with the danger. The new Nitrogen work would entail great shiftings of labour hither and thither, as the new factories grew up; and it was essential to provide dwellings for the artisans engaged in the industry. Everything must give way to this; and since houses could not be built in the short time available, some sort of arrangement must be made which would, he hoped, be merely temporary. He explained that the Government had empowered Nordenholt to carry out the early arrangements; and he was able to give statistics showing the progress which had already been made during the last few days.
At the same time, he introduced a second Bill, somewhat on the lines of the old Defence of the Realm Act, which enabled the Government to cope with circumstances as they arose without the necessity of prolonged Parliamentary debates.
So ingeniously did he handle the matter that there was practically no opposition to either measure. It must be remembered that the influence of the Press had been exerted almost entirely in favour of Nordenholt’s scheme. The previous clamour for action had been succeeded by a chorus of praise; and the bold initiative shown in the Nitrogen plans had been acclaimed throughout the country.
Meanwhile, Nordenholt was making the best of two worlds. Nominally, he was engaged in a private enterprise over which the Government had no control; actually, he had the whole State machinery at his back to assist him in his operations. This dual nature of the matter enabled him to carry out his work with a minimum of interference from red taped officials, while at the same time he was able to command the resources of State Departments in any line wherein they could be of service to him. After the passing of the two Acts, the Government adjourned Parliament, to avoid the putting of awkward questions; so that during the ensuing weeks the Nitrogen undertaking could progress without any fear of interference or undue publicity.
Transport was the first problem which occupied Nordenholt’s attention. It was in this connection that I caught my first glimpse of the “Nordenholt Gang” at work. The executive staffs of the railways were left intact, but one day there descended upon them a quiet little man in spectacles with full authority in his pocket. Grogan had apparently never been connected with railways in his life, as far as I knew, but he took control of the whole system in the country without showing the faintest sign of hesitation. How he acquired his knowledge, I never learned; but I gathered that he had originally made his mark by his investigations of the effect of trade-routes upon commerce.
His work was to indicate the broad outlines of the scheme, and the railway officials then filled in the details. Yet I was told that he seemed to know to a truck the demands which his projects would entail upon the railways; and he never put forward anything which led to a breakdown. I think he had that type of mind which sees straight through the details to the core of an undertaking and which yet retains in due perspective the minutiæ of the machinery.
And it was not only the railways which he had in his charge. All the motor services were brought under his control as well. It was a bewilderingly complex affair; and he had to act as a kind of liaison centre between the two departments, clearing up any troubles which arose and coordinating the twin methods of transport. I think he had the power of mental visualisation developed to an abnormal extent; and his memory must have been quite out of the common. To assist him, he had the largest railway map I have ever seen—it covered a whole floor—and on it were placed blocks of metal showing the exact situation of every truck, carriage and locomotive in the kingdom. These were moved from time to time by his assistants in accordance with telegraphic information; and if he doubted his recollections at any moment he could go and study the groupings upon it.
I remember seeing him once when things had got slightly out of gear, his hands full of telegraph forms, his feet encased in felt slippers to avoid marking the surface of the map, studying a point in the Welsh system where a number of trucks had been stranded in sidings. With the briefest consideration he seemed to come to a decision, for he gave his orders to an assistant:
“Locomotive, Newport to Crumlin, via Tredegar Junction. (It can’t go through Abercarne, because the 3:46 is on the line now and I don’t want to waste time shunting.) Then on to Cwm—C-w-m—to pick up twenty-seven trucks in the siding. All right. After that, back to Aberbeeg—b-double-e-g—since the line is blocked at Victoria by No. 702. Then Blaina—B-l-a-i-n-a—and Abergavenny. All right. … Stop a moment. Map-measure, please. Motor Fleet 37 will be at Abergavenny about then with some stores for the North. Hold train at Abergavenny and wire them to stop No. 37 as it passes. That will fill up ten trucks, I think. All right. Train Hereford, Birmingham, via Leominster. Load twelve trucks Birmingham. Tamworth, pick up five truck-loads—food, that red block there—then North behind No. 605. All right. Then wire Abergavenny to send No. 37 to Monmouth. They’ll get their orders there. All right.”
So it went on, I am told, hour after hour, throughout the day. Even the details of the diurnal traffic were not sufficient; for as he went along, he planned the night-operations as well. When he retired for the short sleep-time which he took, every point had been regulated for the ensuing five hours.
At first, everything culminated in the word “North”; but almost immediately the whirling traffic on the south going rails had to be considered also, as it grew in volume. How he managed it, I do not know; but he seemed to have some subconscious faculty of drawing a balance-sheet of the traffic at any moment; so that he knew if he was sending too much North or too little South. Personally, I imagine that he owed his success to a power akin to that of the professional chess-player who can play a dozen blindfold games at one time. Everybody has the faculty of mental visualisation developed in a greater or less degree; but in Grogan, as far as traffic was concerned, it seems to have attained supernormal proportions. I believe that he actually “saw” in his mind the whole of England covered with his trains and motor fleets and that he had by some means established time-scales which enabled him to calculate the moments at which any train or fleet would pass a series of given points. It was, of course, an immensely more difficult affair than blindfold chess-playing; but I think it clearly depended upon cognate processes.
Congleton, the Shipping Director, had a much easier task. For him there was no trouble of blocked rails or interleaving traffic. His main difficulty arose from berthing accommodation, which was a comparatively simple affair. Most of the food-supplies were transferred North on board ship; and a certain amount of the shifting of population was also done in this way, especially the removal of the Glasgow inhabitants.
I can only give the merest outline of these great operations; for the details are too intricate to be described here. Nordenholt’s first step was to commandeer most of the public halls in the country, which were then fitted up with partitions, etc., in order to convert them into temporary dwelling-places for families. Thereafter, he began to move his Nitrogen Volunteers into the Clyde Valley step by step; and simultaneously, under the Billeting Act, he evicted the local population to make room for his men. There was a considerable outcry; and at times the military had to be employed to persuade the reluctant to move out of their homes; but after the first few cases of obstruction had been dealt with firmly, the people recognised that it was useless to protest. Edinburgh was also treated in the same way; for Nordenholt had planned to occupy a belt of country running from coast to coast. He had to find room for a population of five millions; and it was evidently going to be a difficult matter.
Looking back upon it now, it was a wonderful piece of work, carried out without any very serious hitches. To transfer a population of nearly ten millions, and to distribute five millions of that over a wide area of England—for this was the only way in which houseroom could be found for them—was a gigantic task. Fabulous sums were expended in finding living-room for the refugees in the houses of residents throughout England; and eventually all of them had roofs over their heads, in private dwellings, in converted halls or in commandeered hotels.
Meanwhile, in Glasgow itself, the ever-growing Nitrogen Area was surrounded with military pickets which prevented the mingling of newcomers and the old population. This precaution of Nordenholt’s was mainly directed against the possibility of rioting; for the feeling between the expelled inhabitants and the incomers was extremely bitter: but it served another purpose in that it tended to surround the Nitrogen Area with a certain atmosphere of mystery. This was heightened by the stoppage of all telegraphic and telephonic communication between Glasgow and the South. Soon the only information obtainable in England with regard to affairs in the Clyde Valley came from emigrants; and with the end of the exodus, even the mails ceased and an impenetrable veil fell between the two parts of the island.
A similar screen had fallen between England and Ireland at a slightly earlier date. All postal and telegraphic communication was broken off, and no vessels were permitted to trade with the Irish ports. It was by this means that the knowledge of the great Raid was kept secret. Nordenholt was almost ready to disclose his hand; and the Raid could not be postponed if any cattle were to be obtained alive. By a series of lightning sweeps, the military rounded up all the available livestock in the island and drove them to the nearest ports, where ships were awaiting them. Bitter guerrilla warfare raged along the tracks of the columns; and the last pages in Irish history were marked with bloodshed. Not that it mattered much, since all were to die in any case before very long.
But I am now coming to the last stages of the exodus. All the required food, all the available machinery and all the Nitrogen Volunteers had been sent up into the Clyde Valley. Without warning, after a secret session, Parliament had resolved to transfer itself to Glasgow. Now came the final moves. On the last day, only pickets of the Military Volunteers—the Labour Defence Force, as Nordenholt had renamed them—were left behind in every important town.
During that night a carefully-planned course of destruction was followed. Every telegraph and telephone exchange was gutted; the remaining artillery was rendered useless; all the printing machinery of newspapers was wrecked; every aeroplane destroyed and practically all aerodromes burned: and as the trains and motors went northward in the night, bridge after bridge on the line or road was blown up. When morning came, there was a complete stoppage of all the normal channels of communication; and up to the Border, the railways had been put out of action for months. It was the second step in Nordenholt’s plan.
Hitherto, I have chronicled his successes; but now I must deal with his single failure. He had intended to persuade the King to take refuge in the Clyde Valley, and had even, I believe, found a residence for him near Glasgow. Here, however, he met with a rebuff. I never learned the details of the interview; but it appears that the King refused to save himself. He felt it his duty to share the fate of his people. Nordenholt pleaded that if the King himself would not come, at least the Prince of Wales might be sent; but here also he failed to carry his point. The Prince point-blank rejected the suggestion. Knowing Nordenholt, I could hardly conceive that his persuasive proposals could fail to take effect; but it was evident that he met with no success.
“He understood perfectly,” Nordenholt said to me later. “Both of them thoroughly understood what it meant. I think they felt that a Crown rescued at that price wouldn’t be worth wearing. At any rate, they refused to come North.”