"
To say that the United States was stunned is but to expose the
inadequacy of language. The whole world was stunned. It confronted
that blight of the human brain, the unprecedented. Human endeavour
was a jest, a monstrous futility, when a lunatic on a lonely island,
who owned a yacht and an exposed village, could destroy five of the
proudest fleets of Christendom. And how had he done it? Nobody
knew. The scientists lay down in the dust of the common road and
wailed and gibbered. They did not know. Military experts committed
suicide by scores. The mighty fabric of warfare they had fashioned
was a gossamer veil rent asunder by a miserable lunatic. It was too
much for their sanity. Mere human reason could not withstand the
shock. As the savage is crushed by the sleight-of-hand of the witch
doctor, so was the world crushed by the magic of Goliah. How did he
do it? It was the awful face of the Unknown upon which the world
gazed and by which it was frightened out of the memory of its
proudest achievements.
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