The whole human race will be at war, and either East or West will be simply wiped out.

These new Benninschein explosives will make certain of that." "But is it absolutely certain that the East has got them ?" "Absolutely.

Benninschein sold them simultaneously to East and West; then he died, luckily for him." Mabel had heard this kind of talk before, but her imagination simply refused to grasp it.

A duel of East and West under these new conditions was an unthinkable thing.

There had been no European war within living memory, and the Eastern wars of the last century had been under the old conditions.