MEDITATION ON DISASTER
When the earth shudders

Faced with such cataclysms, good people are wont to cry out. “We are nothing in anything” They are quite right. Before nature's mother and father, we are ridiculous microbes. What is this earthquake that shakes a powerful empire to its depths? Remember what we were taught at school about the size of mountains compared to that of the planet. This reduced to the dimensions of an orange, the highest mountains would not reach even the faint dents of the fruit.
An earthquake would be reduced to an imperceptible tremor, which would not be discernible to the naked eye. This slight thrill is what has just killed hundreds of thousands of men and wiped out colossal wealth.
On the other hand, see the marvelous effort of the frail human creature struggling in the midst of terrible misfortune? You all admired the T.S.F. operator. from Tomioka. a brave man named Taki Yonemura. This hero remained at his post while the earth gave way beneath him; he braved all the shocks; his device was damaged and he repaired it no matter what. For three days, say the newspapers, without sleep and without food, broadcasting radio after radio throughout the world, giving the only authentic news of the catastrophe, calling for help from his unfortunate fellow citizens, he remained calm, courteous, tireless.
Let us love him, this puny human insect, enveloped in ruins, continually threatened with death, and now in contact with ships at sea, with all the peoples of the planet!
It is obvious that the catastrophe would have been very considerable in whatever situation the Japanese nation found itself. However, it is greatly aggravated by what I called, in an already old article, published here, the pitfalls of progress.
In its journey through the unknown, humanity improves. her destiny as she can, but with every improvement comes dangers. often wonderful. Thus, large-scale industry puts almost the whole of Western Europe at the mercy of economic crises and these crises are more and more distressing. Neither England, nor Germany, nor Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy are safe from vast famines resulting from immense unemployment. Industry has developed alcoholism, it tends until now to stunt men: the modern English type is physically inferior to the English type of the past. The German discomfiture was a trap of progress: the Teutons had exaggerated confidence in their economic superiority.... And Japan's misfortune was considerably aggravated by the enormous development of industry.
Neither Yokohama nor Tokyo would have suffered as much - far from it - without their growth so rapid and, in many respects, so reckless. There would have been far fewer deaths. As for the destruction of wealth (which always affects the fate of men), it would have been incomparably reduced.
These brief reflections are not inspired by pessimistic views. The path that man has followed since prehistoric times is fatal; I don't know if happiness grew on earth (happiness is perhaps just an empty word), but I admire that the fragile vertical beast was able to emerge from the cave, create the Egyptian civilizations, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, finally the frightening modern world.
Man speaks to man across the oceans, he has conquered the road to heaven after that of earth and water, he uses energies at the cost of which he is only an insect, he penetrates the infinitesimal and counts millions of stars that his eye alone would be powerless to see. Our poor destiny has something prodigious, and to live a few years, it is better to live in power. But all the same, a slight tremor of the ground, a few degrees of heat and even tiny organisms control our existence... We have great reasons for pride and greater reasons for humility.

J.-H. ROSNY AINE de l'Académie Goncourt