“Here are your instructions, Flint. Everything has been foreseen, I think, for the start. Follow them implicitly as far as they go; and after that I trust you to carry out the further steps which you will see are required.”
As he was shaking hands with me, another thought seemed to strike him.
“By the way, of course you understand that the whole of this scheme depends for success on our being able to exterminate these bacilli? If we cannot do that, they will simply attack any nitrogenous manure which we use. I am putting my bacteriologists on to the problem at once; but in any case the nitrogen scheme must go ahead. Without it, no success is possible, even if we destroyed B. diazotans. So go ahead.”
His car awaited me at the door. On the drive home, I saw in the streets crowds gathered around hoarding after hoarding and staring up at enormous placards which had just been posted. The smaller type was invisible to me; but gigantic lettering caught my eye as I passed.
NITROGEN
ONE MILLION MEN WANTED
Nordenholt
CHAPTER VII
Nordenholt’s Million
Of all the incidents in that afternoon, I think the sight of these placards brought home to me most forcibly two of the salient characteristics of Nordenholt’s many-sided mind: his foresight and his self-reliance. Their appearance in the streets at that moment showed that they formed part of a plan which had been decided upon several days in advance, since time had to be allowed for printing and distributing them; whilst the fact that they were being posted up within two hours of the close of the meeting proved that Nordenholt had never had the slightest doubt of his success in dominating the Ministers.
Later on, I became familiar with these posters. They were not identical by any means; and I learned to expect a difference in their wording according to the district in which they were posted up. The methods of varied personal appeal had long been familiar to the advertising world; but I found that Nordenholt had broken away from tradition and had staked everything upon his knowledge of the human mind. In these advertisements his psychological instinct was developed in an uncanny degree which was clear enough to me, who knew the secret; but I doubt if any man without my knowledge would have seen through the superficial aspect of them quite so readily.
In this first stage of his campaign he had to conceal his hand. The advertisements were merely the first great net which he spread in order to capture every man who would be at all likely to be useful to him, while the meshes had to be left wide enough to allow the undesirable types to slip through. The proclamations—for they really took this form—set forth concisely the exact danger which threatened the food-supply of the country; explained why it was essential that immense masses of nitrogenous material must be manufactured; and called for the immediate enrolment of volunteers from selected trades and professions.