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“That then, is the only alternative. It is, as the Prime Minister has said, a death sentence on by far the greater part of the people in these islands; but I see no way out of the difficulties in which we are involved. It is not we who have passed that sentence. Nature has done it; and all that we can achieve is the rescue of a certain number of the victims. With your help, I propose to undertake that work of rescue.”

I doubt if those sitting round the table had more than the vaguest glimpse of what all this meant. When a death-roll reaches high figures, the mind refuses to grasp its implications. Very few people have any concrete idea of what the words “one million” stand for. We only understood that there was impending a human catastrophe on a scale which dwarfed all preceding tragedies. Beyond that, I know that I, for one, could not force my mind.

“We are thus left with five million survivors,” Nordenholt continued. “But this does not reach the crux of the matter. The nitrogen of the soil has vanished; and it must be replaced if the earth is ever again to bring forth fruits. That task devolves upon mankind, for Nature works too slowly for our purposes. In order to feed these five million mouths—or what is left of them when the food supply runs out—we have to raise crops next year; and to raise these crops we must supply the soil with the necessary nitrogenous material.