"Olaf Stapledon - Last And First Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

previous war, its author would have been ridiculed, execrated, perhaps even
murdered. But since those days, much had happened. Increased communication,
increased cultural intercourse, and a prolonged vigorous campaign for
cosmopolitanism, had changed the mentality of Europe. Even so, when, after a
brief discussion, the Government ordered this unique message to be sent, its
members were awed by their own act. As one of them expressed it, they were
uncertain whether it was the devil or the deity that had possessed them, but
possessed they certainly were.
That night the people of London (those who were left) experienced an
exaltation of spirit. Disorganization of the city's life, overwhelming
physical suffering and compassion, the consciousness of an unprecedented
spiritual act in which each individual felt himself to have somehow
participated -- these influences combined to produce, even in the bustle and
confusion of a wrecked metropolis, a certain restrained fervour, and a deep
peace of mind, wholly unfamiliar to Londoners.
Meanwhile the undamaged North knew not whether to regard the
Government's sudden pacificism as a piece of cowardice or as a superbly
courageous gesture. Very soon, however, they began to make a virtue of
necessity, and incline to the latter view. Paris itself was divided by the
message into a vocal party of triumph and a silent party of bewilderment. But
as the hours advanced, and the former urged a policy of aggression, the latter
found voice for the cry, "_Viva l'Angleterre, viva l'humanit├й._" And so strong
by now was the will for cosmopolitanism that the upshot would almost certainly
have been a triumph of sanity, had there not occurred in England an accident
which tilted the whole precarious course of events in the opposite direction.
The bombardment had occurred on a Friday night. On Saturday the
repercussions of England's great message were echoing throughout the nations.
That evening, as a wet and foggy day was achieving its pallid sunset, a French
plane was seen over the western outskirts of London. It gradually descended,
and was regarded by onlookers as a messenger of peace. Lower and lower it
came. Something was seen to part from it and fall. In a few seconds an immense
explosion occurred in the neighbourhood of a great school and a royal palace.
There was hideous destruction in the school. The palace escaped. But, chief
disaster for the cause of peace, a beautiful and extravagantly popular young
princess was caught by the explosion. Her body, obscenely mutilated, but still
recognizable to every student of the illustrated papers, was impaled upon some
high park-railings beside the main thoroughfare toward the city. Immediately
after the explosion the enemy plane crashed, burst into flame, and was
destroyed with its occupants.
A moment's cool thinking would have convinced all onlookers that this
disaster was an accident, that the plane was a belated straggler in distress,
and no messenger of hate. But, confronted with the mangled bodies of
schoolboys, and harrowed by cries of agony and terror, the populace was in no
state for ratiocination. Moreover there was the princess, an overwhelmingly
potent sexual symbol and emblem of tribalism, slaughtered and exposed before
the eyes of her adorers.
The news was flashed over the country, and distorted of course in such a
manner as to admit no doubt that this act was the crowning deviltry of sexual
fiends beyond the Channel. In an hour the mood of London was changed, and the
whole population of England succumbed to a paroxysm of primitive hate far more