Tags:
the first of May; 1907 short story,
Jack London; biological warfare against China; depopulation
The first of May as imagined by Jack London in 1907.
I came across the first of the following paragraphs on
the fifth of March 2020 from an article posted on James
Fetzer’s website. I thought that it would be fitting to quote this
abominably evil excerpt from a short story written in 1907 by Jack London
as it is set on the first of May, but in the year 1976 – that is, two
hundred years after an important event happened in Bavaria, Germany, on the same date (i.e. on the first of
May: swisscows
search engine; duckduckgo
search engine).
I must say that I have certainly not read the short story
in its entirety because the excerpt I am giving below is sufficiently evil
to my liking. However, I am quoting it because it takes place within what
some have called the ‘Season of Sacrifice’ (see my weblog).
The central theme is DEPOPULATION, a topic I hope to come back to in
future entries. The short story which was called ‘The Unparalleled Invasion’ was published in the July
edition of Mc Clure’s Magazine (1910). Here is the excerpt
(p.312 in the original pagination; 117
in the pdf):
But on May 1, 1976, had
the reader been in the imperial city of Peking, with its population of
11,000,000, 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 he would have
identified as an aeroplane. From this aeroplane, as it curved its flight
back and forth over the city, fell missiles—strange, harmless-looking
missiles, tubes of fragile glass that shattered into thousands of
fragments on the streets and housetops. But there was nothing deadly
about these tubes of glass. Nothing happened. There were no explosions.
It is true that several 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 fishpond 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 mosquitos 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 aeroplanes, despatched from the warships, contained only
two men each, and over all cities, towns, and villages they wheeled and
curved, one man directing the ship, the other throwing the glass tubes.
Had the reader been in Peking again six weeks later, he
would have looked in vain for the 11,000,000 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-wagons. 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.
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
marshaling of the world hosts, the flights of the tiny aeroplanes, and
the rain of the tubes of glass. The proclamations of the Government were
in vain. They could not stop the 11,000,000 plague-stricken wretches
fleeing from the one city of Peking to spread disease through all the
land. 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.
Link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=London++%22The+Unparalleled+Invasion%22
Lausanne, 1st of May 2021
