would, of course, be turned only against soldiers. Bombs, atomics, germs and, in short, science, it maintained, were being used unhealthily and that, soon enough, a person here and there who was no party to the front line sortie was liable to get injured or dusty; it also spoke of populations being affected boomerang fashion by weapons devised for own governments to use.

Certainly all this was heresy enough in that quiet world of 1939, and since that time, it is only fair to state, the author has served here and there and has gained enough experience to see the error of his judgment.

There have been two or three stories modeled on FINAL BLACKOUT. I am flattered. It is just a story. And as the past few years have fortunately proven, it cannot possibly happen.

L. Ron Hubbard Hollywood, 1948

L. Ron Hubbard

THE LIEUTENANT.

He was born in an air-raid shelter—and his first wail was drowned by the shriek of bombs, the thunder of falling walls and the coughing chatter of machine guns raking the sky.

He was taught in a countryside where A was for Anti-aircraft and V was for victory. He knew that Vickers Wellington bombers had flown non-stop clear to China. But nobody thought to tell him about a man who had sailed a carack as far in the opposite direction—a chap called Columbus.

War-shattered officers had taught him the arts of battle on the relief maps of Rugby. Limping sergeants had made him expert with rifle and pistol, light and heavy artillery. And although he could not conjugate a single Latin verb, he was graduated as wholly educated at fourteen and commissioned the same year.

His father was killed on the Mole at Kiel. His uncle rode a flamer in at Hamburg. His mother, long ago, had died of grief and starvation in the wreckage which had been London.

When he was eighteen he had been sent to the front as a subaltern. At twenty-three he was commanding a brigade.

In short, his career was not unlike that of any other high-born English lad born after the beginning of that conflict which is sometimes known as the War of Books—or the War of Creeds, or the War Which Ended War or World wars two, three, four and five. Like any other war, with the exception that he lived through it.

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