It was in the year 1976 that the trouble between the
world and China reached its culmination. It was because of this
that the celebration of the Second Centennial of American Liberty
was deferred. Many other plans of the nations of the earth were
twisted and tangled and postponed for the same reason. The world
awoke rather abruptly to its danger; but for over seventy years,
unperceived, affairs had been shaping toward this very end.
The year 1904 logically marks the beginning of the development
that, seventy years later, was to bring consternation to the whole
world. The Japanese-Russian War took place in 1904, and the
historians of the time gravely noted it down that that event marked
the entrance of Japan into the comity of nations. What it really
did mark was the awakening of China. This awakening, long expected,
had finally been given up. The Western nations had tried to arouse
China, and they had failed. Out of their native optimism and
race-egotism they had therefore concluded that the task was
impossible, that China would never awaken.
What they had failed to take into account was this: THAT BETWEEN
THEM AND CHINA WAS NO COMMON PSYCHOLOGICAL SPEECH. Their thought-
processes were radically dissimilar. There was no intimate
vocabulary. The Western mind penetrated the Chinese mind but a
short distance when it found itself in a fathomless maze. The
Chinese mind penetrated the Western mind an equally short distance
when it fetched up against a blank, incomprehensible wall. It was
all a matter of language. There was no way to communicate Western
ideas to the Chinese mind. China remained asleep. The material
achievement and progress of the West was a closed book to her; nor
could the West open the book. Back and deep down on the tie-ribs of
consciousness, in the mind, say, of the English-speaking race, was
a capacity to thrill to short, Saxon words; back and deep down on
the tie-ribs of consciousness of the Chinese mind was a capacity to
thrill to its own hieroglyphics; but the Chinese mind could not
thrill to short, Saxon words; nor could the English-speaking mind
thrill to hieroglyphics. The fabrics of their minds were woven from
totally different stuffs. They were mental aliens. And so it was
that Western material achievement and progress made no dent on the
rounded sleep of China.
Came Japan and her victory over Russia in 1904. Now the Japanese
race was the freak and paradox among Eastern peoples. In some
strange way Japan was receptive to all the West had to offer. Japan
swiftly assimilated the Western ideas, and digested them, and so
capably applied them that she suddenly burst forth, full-
panoplied, a world-power. There is no explaining this peculiar
openness of Japan to the alien culture of the West. As well might
be explained any biological sport in the animal kingdom.
Having decisively thrashed the great Russian Empire, Japan
promptly set about dreaming a colossal dream of empire for herself.
Korea she had made into a granary and a colony; treaty privileges
and vulpine diplomacy gave her the monopoly of Manchuria. But Japan
was not satisfied. She turned her eyes upon China. There lay a vast
territory, and in that territory were the hugest deposits in the
world of iron and coal - the backbone of industrial civilization.
Given natural resources, the other great factor in industry is
labour. In that territory was a population of 400,000,000 souls -
one quarter of the then total population of the earth. Furthermore,
the Chinese were excellent workers, while their fatalistic
philosophy (or religion) and their stolid nervous organization
constituted them splendid soldiers - if they were properly managed.
Needless to say, Japan was prepared to furnish that management.
But best of all, from the standpoint of Japan, the Chinese was a
kindred race. The baffling enigma of the Chinese character to the
West was no baffling enigma to the Japanese. The Japanese
understood as we could never school ourselves or hope to
understand. Their mental processes were the same. The Japanese
thought with the same thought-symbols as did the Chinese, and they
thought in the same peculiar grooves. Into the Chinese mind the
Japanese went on where we were balked by the obstacle of
incomprehension. They took the turning which we could not perceive,
twisted around the obstacle, and were out of sight in the
ramifications of the Chinese mind where we could not follow. They
were brothers. Long ago one had borrowed the other's written
language, and, untold generations before that, they had diverged
from the common Mongol stock. There had been changes,
differentiations brought about by diverse conditions and infusions
of other blood; but down at the bottom of their beings, twisted
into the fibres of them, was a heritage in common, a sameness in
kind that time had not obliterated.
And so Japan took upon herself the management of China. In the
years immediately following the war with Russia, her agents swarmed
over the Chinese Empire. A thousand miles beyond the last mission
station toiled her engineers and spies, clad as coolies, under the
guise of itinerant merchants or proselytizing Buddhist priests,
noting down the horse-power of every waterfall, the likely sites
for factories, the heights of mountains and passes, the strategic
advantages and weaknesses, the wealth of the farming valleys, the
number of bullocks in a district or the number of labourers that
could be collected by forced levies. Never was there such a census,
and it could have been taken by no other people than the dogged,
patient, patriotic Japanese.
But in a short time secrecy was thrown to the winds. Japan's
officers reorganized the Chinese army; her drill sergeants made the
mediaeval warriors over into twentieth century soldiers, accustomed
to all the modern machinery of war and with a higher average of
marksmanship than the soldiers of any Western nation. The engineers
of Japan deepened and widened the intricate system of canals, built
factories and foundries, netted the empire with telegraphs and
telephones, and inaugurated the era of railroad- building. It was
these same protagonists of machine-civilization that discovered the
great oil deposits of Chunsan, the iron mountains of Whang-Sing,
the copper ranges of Chinchi, and they sank the gas wells of
Wow-Wee, that most marvellous reservoir of natural gas in all the
world.
In China's councils of empire were the Japanese emissaries. In
the ears of the statesmen whispered the Japanese statesmen. The
political reconstruction of the Empire was due to them. They
evicted the scholar class, which was violently reactionary, and put
into office progressive officials. And in every town and city of
the Empire newspapers were started. Of course, Japanese editors ran
the policy of these papers, which policy they got direct from
Tokio. It was these papers that educated and made progressive the
great mass of the population.
China was at last awake. Where the West had failed, Japan
succeeded. She had transmuted Western culture and achievement into
terms that were intelligible to the Chinese understanding. Japan
herself, when she so suddenly awakened, had astounded the world.
But at the time she was only forty millions strong. China's
awakening, with her four hundred millions and the scientific
advance of the world, was frightfully astounding. She was the
colossus of the nations, and swiftly her voice was heard in no
uncertain tones in the affairs and councils of the nations. Japan
egged her on, and the proud Western peoples listened with
respectful ears.
China's swift and remarkable rise was due, perhaps more than to
anything else, to the superlative quality of her labour. The
Chinese was the perfect type of industry. He had always been that.
For sheer ability to work no worker in the world could compare with
him. Work was the breath of his nostrils. It was to him what
wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure had
been to other peoples. Liberty, to him, epitomized itself in access
to the means of toil. To till the soil and labour interminably was
all he asked of life and the powers that be. And the awakening of
China had given its vast population not merely free and unlimited
access to the means of toil, but access to the highest and most
scientific machine-means of toil.
China rejuvenescent! It was but a step to China rampant. She
discovered a new pride in herself and a will of her own. She began
to chafe under the guidance of Japan, but she did not chafe long.
On Japan's advice, in the beginning, she had expelled from the
Empire all Western missionaries, engineers, drill sergeants,
merchants, and teachers. She now began to expel the similar
representatives of Japan. The latter's advisory statesmen were
showered with honours and decorations, and sent home. The West had
awakened Japan, and, as Japan had then requited the West, Japan was
not requited by China. Japan was thanked for her kindly aid and
flung out bag and baggage by her gigantic protege. The Western
nations chuckled. Japan's rainbow dream had gone glimmering. She
grew angry. China laughed at her. The blood and the swords of the
Samurai would out, and Japan rashly went to war. This occurred in
1922, and in seven bloody months Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa were
taken away from her and she was hurled back, bankrupt, to stifle in
her tiny, crowded islands. Exit Japan from the world drama.
Thereafter she devoted herself to art, and her task became to
please the world greatly with her creations of wonder and
beauty.
Contrary to expectation, China did not prove warlike. She had no
Napoleonic dream, and was content to devote herself to the arts of
peace. After a time of disquiet, the idea was accepted that China
was to be feared, not in war, but in commerce. It will be seen that
the real danger was not apprehended. China went on consummating her
machine-civilization. Instead of a large standing army, she
developed an immensely larger and splendidly efficient militia. Her
navy was so small that it was the laughing stock of the world; nor
did she attempt to strengthen her navy. The treaty ports of the
world were never entered by her visiting battleships.
The real danger lay in the fecundity of her loins, and it was in
1970 that the first cry of alarm was raised. For some time all
territories adjacent to China had been grumbling at Chinese
immigration; but now it suddenly came home to the world that
China's population was 500,000,000. She had increased by a hundred
millions since her awakening. Burchaldter called attention to the
fact that there were more Chinese in existence than white-skinned
people. He performed a simple sum in arithmetic. He added together
the populations of the United States, Canada, New Zealand,
Australia, South Africa, England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria,
European Russia, and all Scandinavia. The result was 495,000,000.
And the population of China overtopped this tremendous total by
5,000,000. Burchaldter's figures went round the world, and the
world shivered.
For many centuries China's population had been constant. Her
territory had been saturated with population; that is to say, her
territory, with the primitive method of production, had supported
the maximum limit of population. But when she awoke and inaugurated
the machine-civilization, her productive power had been enormously
increased. Thus, on the same territory, she was able to support a
far larger population. At once the birth rate began to rise and the
death rate to fall. Before, when population pressed against the
means of subsistence, the excess population had been swept away by
famine. But now, thanks to the machine-civilization, China's means
of subsistence had been enormously extended, and there were no
famines; her population followed on the heels of the increase in
the means of subsistence.
During this time of transition and development of power, China
had entertained no dreams of conquest. The Chinese was not an
imperial race. It was industrious, thrifty, and peace-loving. War
was looked upon as an unpleasant but necessary task that at times
must be performed. And so, while the Western races had squabbled
and fought, and world-adventured against one another, China had
calmly gone on working at her machines and growing. Now she was
spilling over the boundaries of her Empire - that was all, just
spilling over into the adjacent territories with all the certainty
and terrifying slow momentum of a glacier.
Following upon the alarm raised by Burchaldter's figures, in
1970 France made a long-threatened stand. French Indo-China had
been overrun, filled up, by Chinese immigrants. France called a
halt. The Chinese wave flowed on. France assembled a force of a
hundred thousand on the boundary between her unfortunate colony and
China, and China sent down an army of militia-soldiers a million
strong. Behind came the wives and sons and daughters and relatives,
with their personal household luggage, in a second army. The French
force was brushed aside like a fly. The Chinese militia-soldiers,
along with their families, over five millions all told, coolly took
possession of French Indo-China and settled down to stay for a few
thousand years.
Outraged France was in arms. She hurled fleet after fleet
against the coast of China, and nearly bankrupted herself by the
effort. China had no navy. She withdrew like a turtle into her
shell. For a year the French fleets blockaded the coast and
bombarded exposed towns and villages. China did not mind. She did
not depend upon the rest of the world for anything. She calmly kept
out of range of the French guns and went on working. France wept
and wailed, wrung her impotent hands and appealed to the dumfounded
nations. Then she landed a punitive expedition to march to Peking.
It was two hundred and fifty thousand strong, and it was the flower
of France. It landed without opposition and marched into the
interior. And that was the last ever seen of it. The line of
communication was snapped on the second day. Not a survivor came
back to tell what had happened. It had been swallowed up in China's
cavernous maw, that was all.
In the five years that followed, China's expansion, in all land
directions, went on apace. Siam was made part of the Empire, and,
in spite of all that England could do, Burma and the Malay
Peninsula were overrun; while all along the long south boundary of
Siberia, Russia was pressed severely by China's advancing hordes.
The process was simple. First came the Chinese immigration (or,
rather, it was already there, having come there slowly and
insidiously during the previous years). Next came the clash of arms
and the brushing away of all opposition by a monster army of
militia-soldiers, followed by their families and household baggage.
And finally came their settling down as colonists in the conquered
territory. Never was there so strange and effective a method of
world conquest.
Napal and Bhutan were overrun, and the whole northern boundary
of India pressed against by this fearful tide of life. To the west,
Bokhara, and, even to the south and west, Afghanistan, were
swallowed up. Persia, Turkestan, and all Central Asia felt the
pressure of the flood. It was at this time that Burchaldter revised
his figures. He had been mistaken. China's population must be seven
hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knew how many
millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were
two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world, Burchaldter
announced, and the world trembled. China's increase must have begun
immediately, in 1904. It was remembered that since that date there
had not been a single famine. At 5,000,000 a year increase, her
total increase in the intervening seventy years must be
350,000,000. But who was to know? It might be more. Who was to know
anything of this strange new menace of the twentieth century -
China, old China, rejuvenescent, fruitful, and militant!
The Convention of 1975 was called at Philadelphia. All the
Western nations, and some few of the Eastern, were represented.
Nothing was accomplished. There was talk of all countries putting
bounties on children to increase the birth rate, but it was laughed
to scorn by the arithmeticians, who pointed out that China was too
far in the lead in that direction. No feasible way of coping with
China was suggested. China was appealed to and threatened by the
United Powers, and that was all the Convention of Philadelphia came
to; and the Convention and the Powers were laughed at by China. Li
Tang Fwung, the power behind the Dragon Throne, deigned to
reply.
"What does China care for the comity of nations?" said Li Tang
Fwung. "We are the most ancient, honourable, and royal of races. We
have our own destiny to accomplish. It is unpleasant that our
destiny does not tally with the destiny of the rest of the world,
but what would you? You have talked windily about the royal races
and the heritage of the earth, and we can only reply that that
remains to be seen. You cannot invade us. Never mind about your
navies. Don't shout. We know our navy is small. You see we use it
for police purposes. We do not care for the sea. Our strength is in
our population, which will soon be a billion. Thanks to you, we are
equipped with all modern war-machinery. Send your navies. We will
not notice them. Send your punitive expeditions, but first remember
France. To land half a million soldiers on our shores would strain
the resources of any of you. And our thousand millions would
swallow them down in a mouthful. Send a million; send five
millions, and we will swallow them down just as readily. Pouf! A
mere nothing, a meagre morsel. Destroy, as you have threatened, you
United States, the ten million coolies we have forced upon your
shores - why, the amount scarcely equals half of our excess birth
rate for a year."
So spoke Li Tang Fwung. The world was nonplussed, helpless,
terrified. Truly had he spoken. There was no combating China's
amazing birth rate. If her population was a billion, and was
increasing twenty millions a year, in twenty-five years it would be
a billion and a half - equal to the total population of the world
in 1904. And nothing could be done. There was no way to dam up the
over-spilling monstrous flood of life. War was futile. China
laughed at a blockade of her coasts. She welcomed invasion. In her
capacious maw was room for all the hosts of earth that could be
hurled at her. And in the meantime her flood of yellow life poured
out and on over Asia. China laughed and read in their magazines the
learned lucubrations of the distracted Western scholars.
But there was one scholar China failed to reckon on - Jacobus
Laningdale. Not that he was a scholar, except in the widest sense.
Primarily, Jacobus Laningdale was a scientist, and, up to that
time, a very obscure scientist, a professor employed in the
laboratories of the Health Office of New York City. Jacobus
Laningdale's head was very like any other head, but in that head
was evolved an idea. Also, in that head was the wisdom to keep that
idea secret. He did not write an article for the magazines.
Instead, he asked for a vacation. On September 19, 1975, he arrived
in Washington. It was evening, but he proceeded straight to the
White House, for he had already arranged an audience with the
President. He was closeted with President Moyer for three hours.
What passed between them was not learned by the rest of the world
until long after; in fact, at that time the world was not
interested in Jacobus Laningdale. Next day the President called in
his Cabinet. Jacobus Laningdale was present. The proceedings were
kept secret. But that very afternoon Rufus Cowdery, Secretary of
State, left Washington, and early the following morning sailed for
England. The secret that he carried began to spread, but it spread
only among the heads of Governments. Possibly half-a-dozen men in a
nation were entrusted with the idea that had formed in Jacobus
Laningdale's head. Following the spread of the secret, sprang up
great activity in all the dockyards, arsenals, and navy-yards. The
people of France and Austria became suspicious, but so sincere were
their Governments' calls for confidence that they acquiesced in the
unknown project that was afoot.
This was the time of the Great Truce. All countries pledged
themselves solemnly not to go to war with any other country. The
first definite action was the gradual mobilization of the armies of
Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Then began the
eastward movement. All railroads into Asia were glutted with troop
trains. China was the objective, that was all that was known. A
little later began the great sea movement. Expeditions of warships
were launched from all countries. Fleet followed fleet, and all
proceeded to the coast of China. The nations cleaned out their
navy-yards. They sent their revenue cutters and dispatch boots and
lighthouse tenders, and they sent their last antiquated cruisers
and battleships. Not content with this, they impressed the merchant
marine. The statistics show that 58,640 merchant steamers, equipped
with searchlights and rapid-fire guns, were despatched by the
various nations to China.
And China smiled and waited. On her land side, along her
boundaries, were millions of the warriors of Europe. She mobilized
five times as many millions of her militia and awaited the
invasion. On her sea coasts she did the same. But China was
puzzled. After all this enormous preparation, there was no
invasion. She could not understand. Along the great Siberian
frontier all was quiet. Along her coasts the towns and villages
were not even shelled. Never, in the history of the world, had
there been so mighty a gathering of war fleets. The fleets of all
the world were there, and day and night millions of tons of
battleships ploughed the brine of her coasts, and nothing happened.
Nothing was attempted. Did they think to make her emerge from her
shell? China smiled. Did they think to tire her out, or starve her
out? China smiled again.
But on May 1, 1976, had the reader been in the imperial city of
Peking, with its then population of eleven millions, he would have
witnessed a curious sight. He would have seen the streets filled
with the chattering yellow populace, every queued head tilted back,
every slant eye turned skyward. And high up in the blue he would
have beheld a tiny dot of black, which, because of its orderly
evolutions, he would have identified as an airship. From this
airship, as it curved its flight back and forth over the city, fell
missiles - strange, harmless missiles, tubes of fragile glass that
shattered into thousands of fragments on the streets and house-
tops. But there was nothing deadly about these tubes of glass.
Nothing happened. There were no explosions. It is true, three
Chinese were killed by the tubes dropping on their heads from so
enormous a height; but what were three Chinese against an excess
birth rate of twenty millions? One tube struck perpendicularly in a
fish-pond in a garden and was not broken. It was dragged ashore by
the master of the house. He did not dare to open it, but,
accompanied by his friends, and surrounded by an ever-increasing
crowd, he carried the mysterious tube to the magistrate of the
district. The latter was a brave man. With all eyes upon him, he
shattered the tube with a blow from his brass-bowled pipe. Nothing
happened. Of those who were very near, one or two thought they saw
some mosquitoes fly out. That was all. The crowd set up a great
laugh and dispersed.
As Peking was bombarded by glass tubes, so was all China. The
tiny airships, dispatched from the warships, contained but two men
each, and over all cities, towns, and villages they wheeled and
curved, one man directing the ship, the other man throwing over the
glass tubes.
Had the reader again been in Peking, six weeks later, he would
have looked in vain for the eleven million inhabitants. Some few of
them he would have found, a few hundred thousand, perhaps, their
carcasses festering in the houses and in the deserted streets, and
piled high on the abandoned death-waggons. But for the rest he
would have had to seek along the highways and byways of the Empire.
And not all would he have found fleeing from plague-stricken
Peking, for behind them, by hundreds of thousands of unburied
corpses by the wayside, he could have marked their flight. And as
it was with Peking, so it was with all the cities, towns, and
villages of the Empire. The plague smote them all. Nor was it one
plague, nor two plagues; it was a score of plagues. Every virulent
form of infectious death stalked through the land. Too late the
Chinese government apprehended the meaning of the colossal
preparations, the marshalling of the world-hosts, the flights of
the tin airships, and the rain of the tubes of glass. The
proclamations of the government were vain. They could not stop the
eleven million plague-stricken wretches, fleeing from the one city
of Peking to spread disease through all the land. The physicians
and health officers died at their posts; and death, the all-
conqueror, rode over the decrees of the Emperor and Li Tang Fwung.
It rode over them as well, for Li Tang Fwung died in the second
week, and the Emperor, hidden away in the Summer Palace, died in
the fourth week.
Had there been one plague, China might have coped with it. But
from a score of plagues no creature was immune. The man who escaped
smallpox went down before scarlet fever. The man who was immune to
yellow fever was carried away by cholera; and if he were immune to
that, too, the Black Death, which was the bubonic plague, swept him
away. For it was these bacteria, and germs, and microbes, and
bacilli, cultured in the laboratories of the West, that had come
down upon China in the rain of glass.
All organization vanished. The government crumbled away. Decrees
and proclamations were useless when the men who made them and
signed them one moment were dead the next. Nor could the maddened
millions, spurred on to flight by death, pause to heed anything.
They fled from the cities to infect the country, and wherever they
fled they carried the plagues with them. The hot summer was on -
Jacobus Laningdale had selected the time shrewdly - and the plague
festered everywhere. Much is conjectured of what occurred, and much
has been learned from the stories of the few survivors. The
wretched creatures stormed across the Empire in many-millioned
flight. The vast armies China had collected on her frontiers melted
away. The farms were ravaged for food, and no more crops were
planted, while the crops already in were left unattended and never
came to harvest. The most remarkable thing, perhaps, was the
flights. Many millions engaged in them, charging to the bounds of
the Empire to be met and turned back by the gigantic armies of the
West. The slaughter of the mad hosts on the boundaries was
stupendous. Time and again the guarding line was drawn back twenty
or thirty miles to escape the contagion of the multitudinous
dead.
Once the plague broke through and seized upon the German and
Austrian soldiers who were guarding the borders of Turkestan.
Preparations had been made for such a happening, and though sixty
thousand soldiers of Europe were carried off, the international
corps of physicians isolated the contagion and dammed it back. It
was during this struggle that it was suggested that a new plague-
germ had originated, that in some way or other a sort of
hybridization between plague-germs had taken place, producing a new
and frightfully virulent germ. First suspected by Vomberg, who
became infected with it and died, it was later isolated and studied
by Stevens, Hazenfelt, Norman, and Landers.
Such was the unparalleled invasion of China. For that billion of
people there was no hope. Pent in their vast and festering
charnel-house, all organization and cohesion lost, they could do
naught but die. They could not escape. As they were flung back from
their land frontiers, so were they flung back from the sea.
Seventy-five thousand vessels patrolled the coasts. By day their
smoking funnels dimmed the sea-rim, and by night their flashing
searchlights ploughed the dark and harrowed it for the tiniest
escaping junk. The attempts of the immense fleets of junks were
pitiful. Not one ever got by the guarding sea-hounds. Modern war-
machinery held back the disorganized mass of China, while the
plagues did the work.
But old War was made a thing of laughter. Naught remained to him
but patrol duty. China had laughed at war, and war she was getting,
but it was ultra-modern war, twentieth century war, the war of the
scientist and the laboratory, the war of Jacobus Laningdale.
Hundred-ton guns were toys compared with the micro- organic
projectiles hurled from the laboratories, the messengers of death,
the destroying angels that stalked through the empire of a billion
souls.
During all the summer and fall of 1976 China was an inferno.
There was no eluding the microscopic projectiles that sought out
the remotest hiding-places. The hundreds of millions of dead
remained unburied and the germs multiplied themselves, and, toward
the last, millions died daily of starvation. Besides, starvation
weakened the victims and destroyed their natural defences against
the plagues. Cannibalism, murder, and madness reigned. And so
perished China.
Not until the following February, in the coldest weather, were
the first expeditions made. These expeditions were small, composed
of scientists and bodies of troops; but they entered China from
every side. In spite of the most elaborate precautions against
infection, numbers of soldiers and a few of the physicians were
stricken. But the exploration went bravely on. They found China
devastated, a howling wilderness through which wandered bands of
wild dogs and desperate bandits who had survived. All survivors
were put to death wherever found. And then began the great task,
the sanitation of China. Five years and hundreds of millions of
treasure were consumed, and then the world moved in - not in zones,
as was the idea of Baron Albrecht, but heterogeneously, according
to the democratic American programme. It was a vast and happy
intermingling of nationalities that settled down in China in 1982
and the years that followed - a tremendous and successful
experiment in cross-fertilization. We know to-day the splendid
mechanical, intellectual, and art output that followed.
It was in 1987, the Great Truce having been dissolved, that the
ancient quarrel between France and Germany over Alsace-Lorraine
recrudesced. The war-cloud grew dark and threatening in April, and
on April 17 the Convention of Copenhagen was called. The
representatives of the nations of the world, being present, all
nations solemnly pledged themselves never to use against one
another the laboratory methods of warfare they had employed in the
invasion of China.
-- Excerpt from Walt Mervin's "CERTAIN ESSAYS IN HISTORY."
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