You walk across a sandy plain in the heat of the midday sun and you return the same way the next morning after a rainy night--what has happened? The ground which yesterday looked so parched and barren is now covered with millions of tiny blades. Where has this sudden life come from? It was there all the time. There is always latent life beneath the surface, but it is invisible. And as soon as a fertilizing rain comes, it springs up, and everyone perceives what has been slumbering beneath the crust. In the dense jungles from which the sacred Nile receives its waters, there stands a tent and before it a saddled horse. From the tent steps forth a man with large glowing eyes, dressed all in white, who is greeted by his followers with fanatical cries of Allah, Allah! He mounts his steed, the camels rise, and the long caravan swings slowly out of sight and disappears in the bush. Once more dead silence reigns in the African jungle. Whither are they going? You don't know; you see only a rider dressed in a white burnoose, only a few dozen men hailing a prophet, but in the very same moment in which you see only a sheik riding off, millions know that the Caliph, the Blessed of Allah, has started on his journey through the lands whose inhabitants he intends to lead either to victory or to destruction. In the same moment millions of hearts from Mogador to Cape Guardafui, from Tripoli to the burning salt deserts of Kalahari, rejoice in the thought that the hour of deliverance has come for the peoples of Islam. A victorious feeling of buoyant hope arises in the hearts of the Faithful simply because a plain Arabian sheik has started on the road pointed out by Allah. How they happen to know it and all at the same time, will forever remain a mystery to the white man, as much of a mystery as the secret inner life of the yellow races of Asia. "Never speak of it, but think of it always," had been the watchword, and everything that had transpired, even the apparently inconsistent and senseless things, had been ruled by it. The world could not be deceived about the things that were plainly visible; all the Japanese had to do was to make sure that the world would deceive itself as it had done during the preparations for Port Arthur. A perfectly equipped army could be seen by all on the fields of Nippon, Hokkaido and Kiushiu, and the fleet was surely not hidden from view. It was the world's own fault that it could not interpret what it saw, that it imagined the little yellow monkey would never dare attack the clumsy polar-bear. Because the diplomatic quill-drivers would only see what fitted into their schemes, because they were capable only of moving in a circle about their own ideas, they could not understand the thoughts of others, and the few warning voices died away unheeded. It was not Japan's fault that the roads at Port Arthur roused the world out of its slumber. What business had the world to be asleep?