The gasoline wagons came around and refilled the fuel tanks of the planes.  Mechanics inspected the engines carefully and replaced defective parts.  The rice cakes and soyu brought from Japan, had been replaced by a diet of wheat and maize products and fresh fruits and vegetables taken from the captured stores and gardens.  Such captured foods, however, had all been inspected by the dieteticians, and those of doubtful wholesomeness destroyed or placed under lock and key to be used only as a last resort.

Thus weeks passed.  The green things of Japanese planting had poked their tender shoots through the black American soil.  There had been no fighting except in few cases, where a company of foolhardy militia or a local posse had tried to attach the Japanese outposts.  American aeroplanes had wisely staid away.

But the fight was yet to come.  The Federal Government had recalled its ships from Panama and was bringing back the soldiers from California.  On the great flat prairie between Galveston and Houston, a mighty military camp was being established.  Aeroplane sheds were erected and repair shops built.  Long lines of army tents were pitched in close proximity.  Army canteens were established that the thirsty soldiers might get pure liquor and good tobacco and a few rods away—­over the line—­other grog shops were opened wherein were sold similar goods not so guaranteed.  Gambling sharks arrived and set up shell games and bedraggled prostitutes—­outcasts from urban centers of debauchery—–­came and camped nearby and made night hideous with their obscene revelry.

So the American soldier prepared for battle against the enemy who, fifty miles away, slept undisturbed in the midst of gardens beneath the wings of their aeroplanes.

Never since Roman phalanx moved against the hordes of disorganized barbarians had such extremes of method in warfare been pitted against each other.  Indeed it is doubtful if the invasion of the Japanese should be called war at all.  They were not blood-thirsty.  In fact, the Japanese invaders had sent word to the American Government asserting their peaceful intentions if they were unmolested, though threatening dire vengeance by firing cities and poisoning water supplies if they were attacked.

Madame Oshima shook her head.  “Such talk is only pretense,” she said, “the Japanese intend to live in America and would never so embitter the people—­and it will not be necessary.”

Ethel was in doubt.  She pictured the Japanese planes flying above the unprotected inland cities dropping conflagration bombs upon shingled roof or casks of prussic acid into open reservoirs.  She wished she were out of it all.  She wanted to escape and yet she knew not how.

The Americans made no hasty attacks.  They feared the threats of the Japanese and awaited the gathering of many hundred thousand soldiers.  At the end of four weeks the American army was spread in a giant semi-circle surrounding the Japanese encampment from coast to coast.  Along the Gulf Coast was also a line of American battleships, so that the Japanese encampment was entirely surrounded with an almost continuous line of aeroplane destroying guns.