e the fragmentary scenes: the crashing fall of buildings
that come crumbling and thundering down, myself crawling like an
insect across the wreckage--it is slippery and wet where the stones
are red, and I stumble, then see the torn and mangled thing that has
caused me to fall.... A face regards me from another mound. I see the
dust of powdered masonry still settling upon it: the dark hair is
hardly disturbed about the face, so peaceful, so girlishly serene: I
am still wondering dully why there is only the head of that girl
resting on the shattered stone, as I lie there exhausted and watch the
next torpedo crash a block behind me.... The air is shrill with flying
fragments. I wonder why my hands are stained and sticky as I run and
crawl on my way. The red rocks are less slippery now, and the rats,
from the sewers of Paris!--they have come out to feed!

Fragments of pictures--and the worst of them gone! I know that night
came--red night, under a cloud of smoke--and I found myself on the
following day descending from a fugitive peasant's cart and plodding
onward toward the markings of a commercial aerodrome.

They could not be everywhere, those red vultures of the sky, and they
had other devils'-work to do. I had money, and I paid well for the
plane that carried me through that day and a night to the Municipal
Airport of New York.

* * * * *

The Red Army of occupation was halfway across communist Germany,
hailed as they went as the saviors of the world. London had gone the
way of Paris; Rome had followed; the countries of France and England
and Italy were beaten to their knees.

"We who rule the air rule the world!" boasted General Vornikoff. The
Russian broadcasting station had the insolence to put on the air his
message to the people of America. I heard his voice as plainly as if
he stood in my office; and I was seeing again the coming of that
endless stream of aerial torpedoes, and the red cruisers hanging in
the heights to pick up control and dash the messengers of death upon a
helpless city. But I was visioning it in New York.

"The masses of the American people are with us," said the complacently
arrogant voice. "For our fellow-workers we have only brotherly
affection; it is your capitalist-dominated Government that must
submit. And if it does not--!" I heard him laugh before he went on:

"We are coming to the rescue of you, our brothers across the sea. Now
we have work to do i