armpit
December 25th 07, 08:43 PM
of any
of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier,
Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong Kong, containing within it about a fifth of
the population of the earth. It is for the possession of these thickly-
populated regions, and of the northern ice-cap, that the three powers are
constantly struggling. In practice no one power ever controls the whole of
the disputed area. Portions of it are constantly changing hands, and it is
the chance of seizing this or that fragment by a sudden stroke of treachery
that dictates the endless changes of alignment.
All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of
them yield important vegetable products such as rubber which in colder
climates it is necessary to synthesize by comparatively expensive methods.
But above all they contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever
power controls equatorial Africa, or the countries of the Middle East, or
Southern India, or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of the bodies
of scores or hundreds of millions of ill-paid and hard-working coolies. The
inhabitants of these areas, reduced more or less openly to the status of
slaves, pass continually from conqueror to conqueror, and are expended like
so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more
territory, to control more labour power, to turn out more armaments, to
capture more territory, and so on indefinitely. It should be noted that the
fighting never really moves beyond the edges of the disputed areas. The
frontiers of Eurasia flow back and forth between the basin of the Congo and
the northern shore of the Mediterranean; the islands of the Indian Ocean
and the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by Oceania or
by Eastasia; in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and Eastasia is
never
of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier,
Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong Kong, containing within it about a fifth of
the population of the earth. It is for the possession of these thickly-
populated regions, and of the northern ice-cap, that the three powers are
constantly struggling. In practice no one power ever controls the whole of
the disputed area. Portions of it are constantly changing hands, and it is
the chance of seizing this or that fragment by a sudden stroke of treachery
that dictates the endless changes of alignment.
All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of
them yield important vegetable products such as rubber which in colder
climates it is necessary to synthesize by comparatively expensive methods.
But above all they contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever
power controls equatorial Africa, or the countries of the Middle East, or
Southern India, or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of the bodies
of scores or hundreds of millions of ill-paid and hard-working coolies. The
inhabitants of these areas, reduced more or less openly to the status of
slaves, pass continually from conqueror to conqueror, and are expended like
so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more
territory, to control more labour power, to turn out more armaments, to
capture more territory, and so on indefinitely. It should be noted that the
fighting never really moves beyond the edges of the disputed areas. The
frontiers of Eurasia flow back and forth between the basin of the Congo and
the northern shore of the Mediterranean; the islands of the Indian Ocean
and the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by Oceania or
by Eastasia; in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and Eastasia is
never