We should have been able to carry on. There was no reason why not. We could have gone back to our jobs. The farmers were still on the farms, the grocers and clerks were still around.
We could have done such a bang-up job of it. We could have pointed to that ten years with pride, and said, "You see! Our recorded history of thousands of years of avarice, cruelty and hate isn't the whole story. For ten years were good and clean and noble. For ten years we were brothers!"
Unfortunately, it wasn't that way.
The farmers didn't want to go back to their farms, and the grocers didn't want to return to their groceries. Oh, some did. Many did, for a while. But not for long. Everyone talked about high ideals, but it was just talk, just like before.
For six months Jane and I struggled along, not getting much to eat, frightened by the mobs that surged around New York. Finally, we decided to move out. We joined the exodus leaving New York, drifted through Pennsylvania, and headed North.
The country was disrupted, but it pulled itself together again, after a fashion. Thousands were starving, then millions. Some had food, but they weren't very willing to share it. They were figuring what they'd do for ten years, if they shared their food. Money they'd still hand out in basketfuls. It wasn't worth anything. In nine months a million dollars wouldn't buy a rotten turnip.
As time passed, fewer and fewer stayed on the job. The money they got wouldn't buy anything. Besides, why work when the end was so near? Why work for someone else?
In about a year there was the Bulgaria incident. An American in Sophia disappeared. He just vanished. The American Embassy complained. They were told to go home. The Bulgarians didn't want any interference for their last nine years of existence. Besides, they added that they didn't know where the man was. Maybe they were telling the truth. People vanish even here.
Anyhow, after our third ultimatum we bombed them. The attack coincided with a bombing launched on us by China, who decided we were interfering with her trade with Japan.
Great Britain was bombed, and bombed someone else. Everyone started bombing everyone else.