The Mouse That Roared: eBook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 1) by Wibberley Leonard

Author:Wibberley, Leonard [Wibberley, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: The Duchy of Grand Fenwick
Published: 2015-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

The Secretary of Defence decided to call off the great air raid alert of the east coast after only six hours, and that for a number of reasons. The most potent of these was that the people would not stand for it lasting any longer, and he really had no choice in the matter. No portion of a nation, which in all its long history had been dedicated to individualism, to the proposition that there should be the least amount of law to govern the greatest number of people, would submit to being arbitrarily and indefinitely shut up in houses and in cellars, in subways and in shelters, forbidden the comforts of radios, of television, of refrigerators and iced drinks, of cups of coffee, and of slugs of whisky or glasses of beer.

Risk of death after a while became preferable to this, which was, for such a people, a form of living death. Mothers who had been separated from their children, stood the separation for two hours, and then would stand it no more. All the pleadings of wardens, all the threats of police, all the appeals to their patriotism and the assurance that their offspring were being as well cared for as if they were in their own homes would not solace them. At the risk of being reduced to a spoonful of ashes on the moment, they left their homes, to demand, with that appalling anger of which only women are capable, to be taken to their children immediately.

Against their wrath, the forces of the Civil Defence Organization were of no avail. The women won, and in the suburbs and residential areas, the air-raid alert, though still officially on, faded gradually away. This happened, not only in the New York area, but in Boston and Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island. For the first time in the history of the United States, if not in the world, women, in effect, cancelled a war.

The rebellion was slower in getting started in the downtown areas of the cities, where most of those caught in the air-raid were men. Perhaps because generations of active participation in warfare had conditioned men to the necessity for being herded, it was three or four hours before there was any active rebellion against being enclosed in places of safety. In New York there had been the rumour that the city was being invaded by men from Mars, who had landed in flying saucers. The first effect of this, as already told, was panic. The panic was followed by a kind of false courage, or bravado, manifested in the singing of “Mairzy Doats,”

“The Little Doggie in the Window,” and “Abide with Me” in the subways. This turned to impatience that nothing appeared to be happening. And the impatience became, in a little while, active rebellion in which those in the subways demanded to be let out to go to their homes.

The Secretary of Defence had done all he could to keep the situation

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