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London, Jack, 1876-1916

"Revolution, and Other Essays"

He
did this, not from a sense of patriotism, but for the invading
foreign devils because they paid him a daily wage of fifty cents. He
is not frightened by war. He accepts it as he does rain and
sunshine, the changing of the seasons, and other natural phenomena.
He prepares for it, endures it, and survives it, and when the tide of
battle sweeps by, the thunder of the guns still reverberating in the
distant canyons, he is seen calmly bending to his usual tasks. Nay,
war itself bears fruits whereof he may pick. Before the dead are
cold or the burial squads have arrived he is out on the field,
stripping the mangled bodies, collecting the shrapnel, and ferreting
in the shell holes for slivers and fragments of iron.
The Chinese is no coward. He does not carry away his doors amid
windows to the mountains, but remains to guard them when alien
soldiers occupy his town. He does not hide away his chickens and his
eggs, nor any other commodity he possesses. He proceeds at once to
offer them for sale.


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