Quotation from: The Strength of the Strong

Written by: Jack London


Outraged France was in arms. She hurled fleet after fleet against
the coast of China, and nearly bankrupted herself by the effort.
China had no navy. She withdrew like a turtle into her shell. For
a year the French fleets blockaded the coast and bombarded exposed
towns and villages. China did not mind. She did not depend upon
the rest of the world for anything. She calmly kept out of range
of the French guns and went on working. France wept and wailed,
wrung her impotent hands and appealed to the dumfounded nations.
Then she landed a punitive expedition to march to Peking. It was
two hundred and fifty thousand strong, and it was the flower of
France. It landed without opposition and marched into the
interior. And that was the last ever seen of it. The line of
communication was snapped on the second day. Not a survivor came
back to tell what had happened. It had been swallowed up in
China's cavernous maw, that was all.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.