e tried quickly, often in batches, rarely acquitted; and sentences of
death were executed before nightfall so as to conserve both prison space
and rations.

In rural life the descent was neither so fast nor so far. There was no
gasoline to run cars or tractors, but carefully husbanded
storagebatteries still provided enough electricity to catch the news on
the radio or allow the washingmachine to do the week's laundry. To a
great extent the farmer gave up his dependence on manufactured goods,
except when he could barter his surplus eggs or milk for them, and
instead went back to the practices of his forefather, becoming for all
intents and purposes practically selfsufficient. Soap from woodashes and
leftover kitchen grease might scratch his skin and a jacket of rabbit or
wolverine hide make him selfconscious, but he went neither cold nor
hungry nor dirty while his urban counterpart, for the most part, did.

One contingency the countrydweller prepared grimly against: roaming
hordes of the hungry from the towns, driven to plunder by starvation
which they were too shiftless to alleviate by purchasing concentrates,
for sale everywhere. Shotguns were loaded, corncribs made tight, stock
zealously guarded. But except rarely the danger had been overestimated.
The undernourished proletariat lacked the initiative to go out where the
food came from. Generations had conditioned them to an instinctive
belief that bread came from the bakery, meat from the butcher, butter
from the grocer. Driven by desperation they broke into scantily supplied
food depots, but seldom ventured beyond the familiar pavements. Famine
took its victims in the streets; the farmers continued to eat.

I arrived in New York on the clipper from London in mid-January of this
dreadful winter. I had boarded the plane at Croydon, only subconsciously
aware of the drive from London through the traditionally neat
hedgerows, of the completely placid and lawabiding England around me,
the pleasant officials, the helpful yet not servile porters. Long Island
shocked me by contrast. It had come to its present condition by slow
degrees, but to the returning traveler the collapse was so woefully
abrupt it seemed to have happened overnight.

Tension and hysteria made everyone volatile. The customs officials,
careless of the position of those whom they dealt with, either inspected
every cubic inch of luggage with boorish suspicion and resultant damage
or else waved the proffer