PART ONE

FOREWORD: In this strange story of another day, the author has"dipped into the future"and viewed with his mind's eye the ultimate effect of America's self-satisfied complacency, and her persistent refusal to heed the lessons of Oriental progress. I can safely promise the reader who takes up this unique recital of the twentieth century warfare, that his interest will be sustained to the very end by the interesting deductions and the keen insight into the possibilities of the present trend of international affairs exhibited by the author.—Bernarr Macfadden.

"Kindly be prepared to absent yourself at a moment's notice."It was Goyu speaking, blundering, old fool. He was standing in the doorway with his kitchen-apron on, and an iron spoon in his hand.

"What on earth is the matter?"asked Ethel Calvert, tossing aside her French novel in alarm, for such a lack of deference in Goyu meant vastly more than appeared upon the surface.

"I am informed,"replied Goyu, gravely,"that there has been an Anti-foreign riot and that many are killed."

"And father?"gasped Ethel.

"He was upon the grain boat,"said Goyu.

"But where is he now?"

"I do not know,"returned Goyu, locking nervously over his shoulder."But I fear he has not fared well—the boat was dynamited—that's what started the trouble."

With a gasp Ethel recalled that an hour before she had heard an explosion which she had supposed to be blasting. Faint with fear, she staggered toward a couch and fell forward upon the cushions.

When the girl regained consciousness the house was dark. Slowly she recalled the event that had culminated the uneventful day. She wondered if Goyu had been lying or had gone crazy. The darkness was not reassuring—her father always came home before dark, and his absence now confirmed her fears. She wondered if the old servant had deserted her. He was a poor stick anyway; Japanese men who had pride or character no longer worked as domestics in the households of foreigners.

Ethel Calvert was the daughter of an American grain merchant who represented the interests of the North American Grain Exporters Association at the seaport of Otaru, in Hokaidi, the North Island of Japan. Three years before her mother had died of homesickness and a broken heart—although the Japanese physician had called it tuberculosis, and had prescribed life in a tent! Had they not suffered discomforts enough in that barbarous country without adding insult to injury?

Ethel was bountifully possessed of the qualities of hothouse beauty. Her jet black hair hung over the snowy skin of her temples in striking contrast. Her form was of a delicate slenderness and her movement easy and graceful with just a little of that languid listlessness considered as a mark of well-bred femininity. She knew that she was beautiful according to the standards of her own people and her isolation from the swirl of the world's social life was to her gall and wormwood.

The Calverts had never really"settled"in Japan, but had merely remained there as homesick Americans indifferent to, or unjustly prejudiced against the Japanese life about them. Now, in the year 1958, the growing anti-foreign feeling among the Japanese had added to their isolation. Moreover, the Japanese bore the grain merchant an especial dislike, for every patriotic Japanese was sore at heart over the fact that, after a century of modern progress, Japan was still forced to depend upon foreigners to supplement their food supply.

In fact, they had oft heard Professor Oshima grieve over the statistics of grain importation, as a speculator might mourn his personal losses in the stock market.

For a time Ethel lay still and listened to the faint sound of voices from a neighboring porch. Then the growing horror of the situation came over her with anewed force; if her father was dead, she was not only alone in the world, but stranded in a foreign and an unfriendly country; for there were but few Americans left in the city.

The girl arose and crept nervously into the dining-room. She turned on the electric light; everything seemed in order. She hurried over to Goyu's room, and knocked. The re was no answer. Then slowly opening the door, she peered in—the room was empty and disordered. Plainly the occupant had bundled together his few belongings and flown.

Ethel stole back through the silent house and tremblingly took down the telephone receiver. In vain she called the numbers of the few American families of the city. Last on the list was the American Consulate, and this time she received the curt information that the consul had left the city by aeroplane"with the other foreigners."The phrase struck terror into her heart. If the European population had flown in such haste as to overlook her, clearly there was danger. A great fear grew upon her. Afraid to remain where she was, she tried to think of ways of escape. She could not steer an Aeroplane even if she were able to obtain one. Otaru was far from the common ways of international traffic and the ships lying at anchor in the harbor were freighters, Japanese owned and Japanese manned.

Ethel looked at her watch—it was nine-twenty. She tiptoed to her room.

An hour later she was in the street dressed in a tailored suit of American make and carrying in her hand-bag a few trinkets and valuables she had found in the house. Passing hurriedly through quiet avenues, she was soon in the open country. The road she followed was familiar to her, as she had traveled it many times by auto.

For hours she walked rapidly on. Her unpracticed muscles grew tired and her feet jammed forward in high-heeled shoes were blistered and sore. But fear lent courage and as the first rays of the morning sun peeked over the hill-tops, the refugee reached the outskirts of the city of Sapporo.

Ethel made straightway for the residence of Professor Oshima, the Soil Chemist of the Imperial Agricultural College of Hokiado—a Japanese gentleman who had been educated and who had married abroad, and a close friend of her father's. As she reached the door of the Professor's bungalow, she pushed the bell, and sank exhausted upon the stoop.

Some time afterward she half-dreamed and half realized that she found herself neatly tucked between white silk sheets and lying on a floor mattress of a Japanese sleeping-porch. A gentle breeze fanned her face through the lattice work and low slanting sunbeams sifting in between the shutters fell in rounded blotches upon the opposite straw matting wall. For a time she lay musing and again fell asleep.

When she next awakened, the room was dimly lighted by a little glowing electric bulb and Madame Oshima was sitting near her. Her hostess greeted her cordially and offered her water and some fresh fruit.

Madame Oshima was fully posted upon the riots and confirmed Ethel's fears as to the fate of her father.

'But Have I Lost My Figure?'Inquired the Lithe Madame Oshima.

"You will be safe here for the present,"her hostess assured her."Professor Oshima has been called to Tokio; when he returns we will see what can be done concerning your embarking for America."

Madame Oshima was of French descent but had fully adopted Japanese customs and ways of thinking.

As soon as Ethel was up and about, her hostess suggested that she exchange her American-made clothing for the Japanese costume of the time. But Ethel was inclined to rebel.

"Why,"she protested,"if I discarded my corsets I would lose my figure."

"But have I lost my figure?"inquired the lithe Madame Oshima, striking an Attitude.

To this Ethel did not reply, but continued,"And I would look like a man,"for among the Japanese people tight-belted waists and flopping skirts had long since been replaced by the kimo, a single-piece garment worn by both sexes and which fitted the entire body with comfortable snugness.

"And is a man so ill-looking?"asked her companion, smiling.

"Why, no, of course not, only he's different. Why, I couldn't wear a kimo—people would see—my limbs,"stammered the properly-bred American girl.

"Why, no, they couldn't,"replied Madame Oshima."Not if you keep your kimo on."

"But they would see my figure."

"We ll, I thought you just said that was what you were afraid they wouldn't see."

"But I don't mean that way—they—they could see the shape of my—my legs,"said Ethel, blushing crimson.

"Are you ashamed that your body has such vulgar parts?"returned the older woman.

"No, of course not,"said Ethel, choking back her embarrassment."But it's wicked for a girl to let men know such things."

"Oh, they all know it,"replied Madame Oshima,"they learn it in school."

At this the highly strung Ethel burst into sobs.

"The re, there now,"said her companion, regretting that she had spoken sarcastically."I forget that I once had such ideas also. We'll talk some more about it after while. You are nervous and worried now and must have more rest."

The next day Madame Oshima more tactfully approached the subject and showed her protege that while in Rome it was more modest to do as the Romans do; and that, moreover, it was necessary for her own good and theirs that she attract as little attention as possible, and to those that recognized her Caucasian blood appear, superficially, at least, as a naturalized citizen of Japan.

So, amid blushes and tears, protestations and laughter, Ethel accepted the kimo, or one-piece Japanese garment, and the outer flowing cloak to be worn on state occasions when freedom of bodily movement was not required. Her feather-adorned hat was discarded altogether and her ill-shapen high-heeled boots replaced by airy slippers of braided fiber.

Her rather short stature and her hair—which fortunately enough was black—served to lessen her conspicuousness, especially when dressed in the fashion followed by Japanese girls; and with the leaving off of the use of cosmetics and the spending of several hours a day in the flower garden even her pallid complexion suffered rapid change.

It was about a fortnight before Professor Oshima returned from Tokio. Upon his arrival Ethel at once pleaded with him to be sent to America, but the scientist slowly shook his head.

"It is too late,"he said;"there is going to be a war."

Thus it happened that Ethel Calvert was retained in the Professor's family as a sort of English tutor to his children, and introduced as a relative of his wife, and no one suspected that she was one of the hated Americans.

The trouble between Japan and the United States dated back to the early part of the century. It was deep-seated and bitter, and was not only the culmination of a rivalry between the leading nations of the great races of mankind, but a rivalry between two great ideas or policies that grew out in opposite directions from the age of unprecedented mechanical and scientific progress that marked the dawn of the twentieth century.

The pages of history had been turned rapidly in those years. The United States, long known as the richest country, had also become the most populous nation of the Caucasian world—and wealth and population had made her vain.

But with all her material glory, there was not strength in American sinews, nor endurance in her lungs, nor vigor in the product of her loins. Her people were herded together in great cities, where they slept in gigantic apartment houses, like mud swallows in a sand bank. They overate of artificial food that was made in great factories. They over-dressed with tight-fitting unsanitary clothing made by the sweated labor of the diseased and destitute. They over-drank of old liquors born of ancient ignorance and of new concoctions born of prostituted science. They smoked and perfumed and doped with chemicals and cosmetics—the supposed virtues of which were blazoned forth on earth and sky day and night.

The wealth of the United States was enormous, yet it was chiefly in the hands of the few. The laborers went forth from their rookeries by subway and monorail, and served their shifts in the mills of industry.

In turn, others took their places, and the mills ground night and day.

Even the farm lands had been largely taken over by corporate control. Crops on the plains were planted with power machinery. The rough lands had all been converted into forests or game preserves for the rich. Agriculture had been developed as a science, but not as a husbandry. The forcing system had been generally applied to plants and animals. Wonder-working nitrogenous fertilizers made at Niagara and by the wave motors of the coast made all vegetation to grow with artificial luxury. Corn-fed hogs and the rotund carcasses of stall-fed cattle were produced on mammoth ranches for the edification of mankind, and fowl were hatched by the billions in huge incubators, and the chicks reared and slaughtered with scarcely a touch of a human hand. And all this was under the control of concentrated business organization. The old, sturdy, wasteful farmer class had gone out of existence.

Only the rich who owned aeroplanes could afford to live in the country. The poor had been forced to the cities where they could be sheltered en masse, and fed, as it were, by machinery. New York had a population of twenty-three millions. Manhattan Island had been extended by filling in the shallows of the bay, until the Battery reached almost to Staten Island. The aeroplane stations that topped her skyscrapers stood, many of them, a quarter of a mile from the ground.

As the materially greatest nation in the world, the United States had an enormous national patriotism based on vanity. The larger patriotism for humanity was only known in the prattle of her preachers and idealists. America was the land of liberty—and liberty had come to mean the right to disregard the rights of others.

In Japan, too, there had been changes, but Japan had received the gifts of science in a far different spirit. With her, science had been made to serve the more ultimate needs of the race, rather than the insane demand for luxuries.

The Japanese had applied to the human species the scientific principles of heredity, nutrition and physical development, which in America had been confined to plants and animals. The old spirit of Japanese patriotism had grown into a semi-religious worship of racial fitness and a moral pride developed which eulogized the sacrifice of the liberties of the individual to the larger needs of the people. Legal restrictions of the follies of fashion in dress and food, the prohibition of alcohol and narcotics, the restriction of unwise marriages, and the punishments of immorality were stoically accepted, not as the blue laws of religious fanaticism, but as requisites of racial progress and a mark of patriotism.

And while Japan showed no signs of the extravagant wealth seen in America, she was far from being poor. She had gained little from centralized and artificial industry, but she had wasted less in insane competition and riotous luxury.

But in Japanese life there was one unsolved problem. That was her food supply. Intensive culture would do wonders and the just administration of wealth and the physical efficiency of her people had eliminated the waste of supporting the non-productive, but an Acre is but a small piece of land at most, and Japan had long since passed the point where the number of her people exceeded the number of her acres. A quarter of an Acre would produce enough grain and coarse vegetables to keep a man alive, but the Japanese wanted eggs and fruit and milk for their children; and they wanted cherry trees and chrysanthemums, lotus ponds and shady gardens with little waterfalls.

In the Nineteenth Month of The War, The Emblem Of The Rising Sun Was Hoisted over Manila.

Now if the low birth rate that had resulted when the examinations for parenthood were first enforced had continued, Japan would not have been so crowded, but after the first generation of marriage restriction the percentage of those who reached the legal standard of fitness was naturally increased. The scientists and officials had from time to time considered the advisability of increasing the restrictions—and yet why should they? The Japanese people had submitted to the prohibition of the marriage of the unfit, but they loved children; and, with their virile outdoor life, the instinct of procreation was strong within them. True, the assignable lands in Japan continued to grow smaller, but what reason was there for stifling the reproductive instincts of a vigorous people in a great unused world half populated by a degenerate humanity?