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versus the logical, pragmatic male, the text dramatizes their oppositional in- terpretations of events. While Elsa can only see starving millions and think of dying children, Flint explains that allowing most of the population to die en- sures some can be saved.68 During their debate, Elsa is shown as illogical and emotional, unsuited to making what are presented as rational choices in a time of crisis. In this way, the text associates opposition to Nordenholt’s actions with a naïve, illogical and emotional response rather than reasoned thought. Elsa’s standpoint, whilst ostensibly appealing, actually serves to strengthen the prag- matic position taken by Nordenholt and Flint. Nordenholt’s banishment of the unskilled and the unwilling from his Clyde area is a social Darwinist strategy that accelerates the natural winnowing of the population begun by the disaster and extended by the virulent influenza that follows the blight. Early in the novel Nordenholt remarks that it was nature that passed sentence on humanity and in this context his own extreme responses are necessary in an extreme situation and are no worse than the ruthlessness of nature itself.69 With such justifications Nordenholt does not shy away from utilising violence and manipulation to achieve his aims. His propaganda cam- paign, for example, is designed to raise and then shatter the hopes of the pop- ulation in order to crush dissent and render the population fractured and fright- ened. The novel presents the use of propaganda for the purposes of terror as necessary – a manifestation of his “master morality” – rather than cruel. Once the immediate danger has passed, the anti-democratic ideology of the novel is maintained and naturalised: democracy is not restored. Nordenholt tells Flint that in the Nitrogen Area there is “no gabble about democracy, no laws a man can’t understand”.70 Thus, Nordenholt’s Million promotes autocratic leadership as essential for, and central to, its own form of social progress. As is common amongst pre-war secular disaster novels, catastrophe facilitates what is pre- sented as positive social change.71 Following the cataclysm, Nordenholt’s direc- tion of the “collective attempts in rearing and educating” results in “children who throng [the streets of the newly built cities] happier and more intelligent than their fathers in their day”. These children “are also part of our work”, Flint explains, “taught and trained in the ideals that inspired us”.72 Their education signals the ongoing social aims of Nordenholt’s legacy. 68 Connington 1923, 220–223. 69 Connington 1923, 62. 70 Connington 1923, 138. 71 Woodward 2017, 43–47, provides an overview of how pre-war science fiction disaster novels used imagined cataclysms to realise wish-fulfilment fantasies. 72 Connington 1923, 198. Totalitarian Opportunism | 63www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 51–68