Year of the Locust

"The land is as the garden of Eden before them and behind them a desolate wilderness . . . Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoured the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array . . . The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble; the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining."

Like the prophet Joel, the Iranians, who reported 90 swarms of locusts invading their country last week, saw them as an enemy army. Into the attack went an Iranian task force of 28 motorized teams of 68 soldiers each, supported by six C-47 planes, radio jeeps, two squadrons of 80 camels each and 150 technicians. Their objective: to lay poisoned bran over 2,000 square miles.

But the enemy was already threatening to occupy a hundred times that area. Iran's Premier Hussein Ala called the plague the worst in 80 years. Several other Middle East countries were suffering from the locust invasion, which might bring widespread famine in its train. The Israeli government announced over the Jerusalem radio that every adult and every vehicle in that country would be mobilized if locust swarms headed in that direction. In Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, in the Sudan, the Gold Coast, French Equatorial Africa, locust-control officers had been warned.

Last July London's Anti-Locust Research Centre forecast the coming locust cycle and urged the countries concerned to raise funds to fight it. Two international anti-locust conferences (New Delhi, November 1950; Cairo, March 1951) have discussed the problem. One obstacle to effective anti-locust action is that some groups have a pro-locust attitude. When the locust swarms entered India, a group of Jains, whose religion demands strict respect for animal life, built a causeway across a stream to help the locusts on their way.

The military capabilities of locusts are impressive. With favorable winds, they can travel 1,500 miles nonstop. One swarm of locusts can cover 200 square miles, do as much damage to crops in a day as several atomic bombs. Their discipline is proverbial: "The locusts have no king, yet they go forth all of them by bands."

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