Chapter IX
A FORTY-EIGHT-HOUR BALANCE
A steamer is lying at the pier taking in cargo. Long-legged cranes are taking hold of bales and barrels and boxes and lowering them through the ship's hatches with a rattle of chains. Wooden cases bound with steel ropes and containing heavy machinery are being hoisted slowly from the lorries on the railway tracks; the swaying burden is turning round and round in the air, knocking against the railing with a groaning noise, and tearing off large splinters of wood. The overseer is swearing at the men at the windlass and comparing his papers with the slips of the customs officer, the one making a blue check on the bill of lading and the other taking note of each article on his long list. Suddenly a small box comes to light, which has been waiting patiently since yesterday under the sheltering tarpaulin. "A box of optical instruments," says the customs officer, making a blue check. "A box of optical instruments," repeats the overseer, making a mark with his moistened pencil-stump: "Careful!" he adds, as a workman is on the point of tipping the heavy box over. Then the hook of the crane seizes the loop in the steel rope and with a stuttering rattling sound the wheels of the windlass set to work, the steel wire grips the side of the box tightly, the barrel beside it is pushed aside, and a wooden case enclosing a piece of cast-iron machinery is scraped angrily over the slippery cobble-stones. Heave ho, heave ho, chant the men, pushing with all their might. To the accompaniment of splashing drops of oily water, puffs of steam, groans of the windlass and the yells and curses of the stevedores, the whole load, including the box of optical instruments, at last disappears in the hold of the ship. It is placed securely between rolls of cardboard next to some nice white boxes filled with shining steel goods. But when the noise up above has died down, when with the approach of darkness the rattling of the chains and the groaning of the windlasses has ceased, when only the slow step of the deck-watch finds an echo—then it can be heard. Inside the box you can hear a gentle but steady tick, tick, tick. The clock-work is wound up and set to the exact second. Tick, tick, tick it goes. When the ship is far out at sea and the passengers are asleep and the watch calls out: "Lights are burning. All's well!" then the works will have run down, the spring will stop and loosen a little hammer. Ten kilograms of dynamite suffice. A quarter of an hour later there'll be nothing left of the proud steamer but a few boats loaded down with people and threatening every moment to be engulfed in the waves.
Tick, tick, tick, it goes down in the hold; the clock is set. Tick, tick, tick, it goes on unceasingly, till the unknown hour arrives. No one suspects the true nature of a piece of the cargo which certainly looked innocent enough. Yet the hour is bound to come sooner or later, but no one knows just when.
Nor had the country at large recognized that the hour was at hand. In the time that it took the short hand of the clock to complete its round four times, our country had completely changed its complexion, and the balance drawn by the press on Tuesday morning after an interval of forty-eight hours, had a perfectly crushing effect. Of course the appearance of the enemy in the West at once produced a financial panic in New York. On Monday morning the Wall Street stock-quotations of the trans-continental railroads fell to the lowest possible figure, rendering the shares about as valuable as the paper upon which they were printed. Apparently enormous numbers of shares had been thrown on the market in the first wild panic, but an hour after the opening of the Stock Exchange, after billions had changed hands in mad haste, a slight rise set in as a result of wholesale purchases by a single individual. Yet even before this fact had been clearly recognized, the railway magnates of the West had bought up all the floating stock without exception. They could afford to wait for the millions they would pocket until the American army had driven the enemy from the country.
At the same time selling orders came pouring in from the other side by way of London. The Old World lost no time in trying to get rid of its American stocks, and the United States were made to realize that in the hour of a political catastrophe every nation has to stand on its own feet, and that all the diplomatic notes and the harmless sentimentalities of foreign states will avail nothing. So it was after the terrible night of Port Arthur and so it was now.
It was of course as yet impossible to figure out in detail how the Japanese had managed to take possession of the Pacific States within twenty-four hours. But from the dispatches received from all parts of the country during the next few days and weeks the following picture could be drawn. The number of Japanese on American soil was in round numbers one hundred thousand. The Japanese had not only established themselves as small tradesmen and shopkeepers in the towns, but had also settled everywhere as farmers and fruit-growers; Japanese coolies and Mongolian workmen were to be found wherever new buildings were going up as well as on all the railways. The yellow flood was threatening to destroy the very foundations of our domestic economy by forcing down all wage-values. The yellow immigrant who wrested spade and shovel, ax and saw, from the American workman, who pushed his way into the factory and the workshop and acted as a heartless strike breaker, was not only found in the Pacific States but had pushed his way across the Rockies into the very heart of the eastern section. And scarcely had he settled anywhere, before, with the typical Tsushima grin, he demanded his political rights. The individual Jap excited no suspicion and did not become troublesome, but the Mongolians always managed to distribute their outposts on American soil in such a way that the Japanese element never attracted undue attention in any one particular spot. Nevertheless they were to be found everywhere.
We had often been told that every Japanese who landed on the Pacific Coast or crossed the Mexican or Canadian borders was a trained soldier. But we had always regarded this fact more as a political curiosity or a Japanese peculiarity than as a warning. We never for a moment realized that this whole immigration scheme was regulated by a perfect system, and that every Japanese immigrant had received his military orders and was in constant touch with the secret military centers at San Francisco, who at stated periods sent out Japanese traders and agents—in reality they were officers of the general staff, who at the same time made important topographical notes for use in case of war—to control their movements. Both the lumber companies in the State of Washington, which brought hundreds of Japanese over from Canada, and the railways which employed Japanese workmen were equally ignorant of the fact that they had taken a Japanese regiment into their employ.
Thus preparations for the coming war were conducted on a large scale during the year 1907, until the ever-increasing flow of Japanese immigrants finally led to those conflicts with which we are familiar. At the time we regarded it as a triumph of American diplomacy when Japan, in the face of California's threatening attitude, apparently gave in after a little diplomatic bickering and issued the well-known proclamation concerning emigration to Hawaii and the Pacific States, at the same time dissolving several emigration companies at home.