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 proffered handbags airily aside with false geniality. The highways, repeating a pattern I had cause to know so well, were nearly impassable with brokendown cars and other litter. The streets of Queens, cluttered with wreckage and refuse, were bounded by houses in a state of apathetic disrepair whose filthy windows refused to look upon the scene before them. The great bridges over the East River were not being properly maintained as an occasional snapped cable, hanging over the water like a drunken snake, showed; it was dangerous to cross them, but there was no other way. The ferryboats had long since broken down. At the door of my hotel, where I had long been accustomed to just the right degree of courteous attention, a screaming mob of men and boys wrapped in careless rags to keep out the cold, their unwashed skins showing where the coverings had slipped, begged abjectly for the privilege of carrying my bags. The carpet in the lobby was wrinkled and soiled and in the great chandeliers half the bulbs were blackened. Though the building was served by its own powerstation, the elevators no longer ran, and the hot water was rationed, as in a fifthrate French pension. The coverlet on the bed was far from fresh, the window was dusty and there was but one towel in the bathroom. I was glad I had not brought my man along for him to sneer silently at an American luxury hotel.