by Robert Reed
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 Japa-
nese 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- pano-
plied, 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 civiliza-
tion . 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 .
THE UNPARALLELED INVASION, by Jack London | 236
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 under-
stood 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 com-
mon, 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 advan-
tages 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 engi-
neers of Japan deepened and widened the intricate system of canals,
THE UNPARALLELED INVASION, by Jack London | 237
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 of-
fice 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 suc-
ceeded . 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 awaken-
ing, 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
THE UNPARALLELED INVASION, by Jack London | 238
of toil, but access to the highest and most scientific mach
ine-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 Ja-
pan . 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 now requited by
China. Japan was thanked for her kindly aid and flung out bag and
baggage by her gigantic protege . The Western nations chuckled . Ja-
pan’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 consummat-
ing 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 territo-
ries adjacent to China had been grumbling at Chinese immigration;
but now it suddenly came home to the world that China’s population
THE UNPARALLELED INVASION, by Jack London | 239
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 ter-
ritory, 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 sub-
sistence 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 im-
perial 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 spill-
ing 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
THE UNPARALLELED INVASION, by Jack London | 240
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 mil-
lion 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 di-
rections, 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 pro-
cess 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, fol-
lowed 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 .
THE UNPARALLELED INVASION, by Jack London | 241
Napal and Bhutan were overrun, and the whole northern
bound-
ary of India pressed against by this fearful tide of life . To the west,
Bokhara, and, even to the south and west, Afghanistan, were swal-
lowed 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 mil-
lions, 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 imme-
diately, 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 West-
ern 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 pur-
poses . We do not care for the sea . Our strength is in our population,
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