"The credit for the discovery of this plot goes to Dr. Hallam of Vancouver, Canada, who is here in this room. He first suspected it and one of his associates, an American and former member of the United States Army Medical Corps, had the courage and good fortune to capture the first piece of vital evidence which proves this theory. It was an aerosol bomb, in the hands of men posing as recent immigrants to North America. By an extraordinary coincidence, and shrewd deduction, this gentleman was able to point to the ship that brought these men ashore. In fact his boat was in collision with the vessel as was subsequently proved by comparing paint scars and analysing the chemical composition of the paint from the two vessels. This gave us enough evidence to put our agents in Russia to work, with the result I have mentioned. If it were not for Dr. Hallam's deductions about the nature of the disease, and the early use of anti-serum, we should today be in an almost hopeless situation. "As a result of this bacteriological, or rather virus warfare, we estimate that at least eighty percent of the population of India, China, the East Indies and Africa has died or will die from measlepox. There is no natural immunity. Our reports show that it has gained in virulence and shortened its incubation period as it spread and the mortality is reported as one hundred percent of those it attacks. Only pneumonic plague has ever equalled its deadliness and that died out after a while. The great increase in density of populations and in transportation facilities in the past fifty years, plus the artificial stimulation to further spread, has made this disease far more horrible. As you know already, all travel off this continent is now halted and nobody is allowed to enter by sea until a compulsory quarantine period outside the three mile limit has passed. Air traffic is under military orders. All troops and dependents overseas in threatened areas such as Korea, are already evacuated to quarantine zones in safe territory. A few members of advisory groups are staying behind, on a voluntary basis, to help our allies. Other garrisons, for example in Okinawa, are ready to leave." There was a mixed reaction to this information, obvious in nods or shakes of heads. "I realize this may leave our bases open to occupation by the enemy," the President continued, "but such would be open aggression and I do not believe they will risk it, especially if they think we are beaten already; they will be expecting to take over in their own good time." He stopped to drink from his water glass. "In the West we have a different problem. The enemy, hoping we would not be unduly alarmed by what seemed little worse than an epidemic of colds, infected us with sterility flu. The plan was to sterilize most of our male population before we became alert to the danger. It almost succeeded.