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London, Jack, 1876-1916

"Revolution, and Other Essays"

The
infusion of other blood, Malay, perhaps, has made the Japanese a race
of mastery and power, a fighting race through all its history, a race
which has always despised commerce and exalted fighting.
To-day, equipped with the finest machines and systems of destruction
the Caucasian mind has devised, handling machines and systems with
remarkable and deadly accuracy, this rejuvenescent Japanese race has
embarked on a course of conquest the goal of which no man knows. The
head men of Japan are dreaming ambitiously, and the people are
dreaming blindly, a Napoleonic dream. And to this dream the Japanese
clings and will cling with bull-dog tenacity. The soldier shouting
"Nippon, Banzai!" on the walls of Wiju, the widow at home in her
paper house committing suicide so that her only son, her sole
support, may go to the front, are both expressing the unanimity of
the dream.
The late disturbance in the Far East marked the clashing of the
dreams, for the Slav, too, is dreaming greatly. Granting that the
Japanese can hurl back the Slav and that the two great branches of
the Anglo-Saxon race do not despoil him of his spoils, the Japanese
dream takes on substantiality.


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