Here, too, the invaders, despite their grown power, moved slowly, cautiously. They cut districts from each other, and occupied them one by one systematically, making united action by the population impossible even had it been feasible. By the simple method of disorganizing all the accustomed political and governmental affiliations, they turned to their purpose the ever-present lack of coherence between State governments and city governments, township authorities and County authorities. The machinery fell apart; and the enemy dealt with the bits as he chose. _The Conquest Complete_ The few big cities of the three States could offer no resistance. Within a few days the conquest of all New England was complete. Not a word came out of it to the rest of the United States. The City of New York was equally sealed. Nothing was permitted to pass out of the gagged and fettered town. The messages that stormed at it were delivered to censors who did what they pleased with them, and passed practically none to the persons for whom they had been destined. In this sealed city, for the first time in men’s memory, there were no crowds on the streets. Broadway from 59th Street to the Battery was almost naked of people by day and by night. Its electric signs were dark. Its hotels and theaters were all but dark. Whenever, by chance, people found themselves in a given block in numbers sufficient to make a throng, there always was a hasty scattering, as if they feared to touch each other. As these little knots scattered, they cast swift glances of apprehension at the high roofs. There had been an official notice on the front pages of all the New York newspapers on the morning after the occupation: ALL ASSEMBLAGES OR GATHERINGS ON THE STREETS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN By Order of the Military Government.[152] There was no threat as to penalty for infraction. None was needed. The machine guns in all the towers and sky-scrapers were sufficient warning. The shape of the island on which the Borough of Manhattan lay, with immensely long straight streets running north and south through its narrow width, made it a simple matter to isolate all sections in which there were populations who might become unruly. The crowded tenement districts of the East Side were cut off from those in the West. They were separated into units within themselves. Very soon, the soldiers moved around the city with the ease of careless visitors. Officers, mounted and in automobiles, went where they pleased. They paid apparently no attention to the people, and these, in turn, could not guess anything that the conquerors had in mind or what would be their next act in the next minute. _Surrounded by the Unknown_