Transportation of food loomed out of the chaos, most vital problem of all. Storms were wrecking the established air lines. But that supreme thing--food for our millions--must not be wrecked. Industry was at a standstill, but no one cared. The world’s northern harvests were neglected; the southern countries stopped all thought of the spring planting. No one cared. That was the future. This was now, a vital crisis; a matter of days, or hours. A passenger air-liner coming from London was wrecked in a hurricane which on August 17 swept the Northern Atlantic. The news was ignored--save that such futile transportation was commanded to discontinue. There would be droughts in the future. If the oceans emptied, what of our rainfall? New desert areas would spring up, to alter all our agriculture. What of it? That was the future. This chaos was now. New supplies of fresh water would have to be found. The scientists thought so--but they weren’t sure. No one knew anything or cared anything beyond this week, or next--to-day, and to-morrow. Every government in the world was in a turmoil. And private endeavor was inadequate, futile; upon the governments alone lay the burden. Ah, in the serene times of normality, big business decries its government! But when trouble comes--business stands helpless and says: “Tell us what to do!” * * * * * In the midst of the welter our war department faced the possibility of an enemy lurking in the ocean depths which the falling water was laying bare. Plans must be made--defense against an enemy inhuman, or at least so strange, so unknown that to plan intelligently to fight it seemed impossible. An army to equip--to fight whom? And where? And under what conditions? No one could say. Polly remained at the Plantet home on the Maine coast, those days following August 15. The news-tape was in the instrument room; the radio-phones and mirrors were there to carry her with sound and vision to distant lands; the sky was overhead, and the falling sea lay before her. I fancy she saw as much of the whole as any one; her experience was typical. She sat for hours in the instrument room with the maelstrom of recorded events surging around her. The mind dulls under such a plethora of impressions. Vast ocean currents appearing. A gigantic drift to the Pacific. Rushing ocean past all our Pacific islands and continental coasts. Storms, floods, disasters everywhere. Unusual volcanic and seismic activity. It soon began to have little meaning. And soon, too, the reports grew vague. There was no one to measure the falling tides; no passing planes to sight many of the icebergs coming down with a rush from the polar regions; no one to record the water temperatures, to reveal the polar seas moving into the warm Pacific. Polly was busy answering calls for her father; taking messages; fending them off; weeding them out and relaying them to Washington. But there were hours when she was free.