A Present to His Royal Highness - The Prince of Wales — Page 86
86 which he had received from on high that diseases would multiply and that lives would be lost: and then he proclaimed that God had told him that there would spread in this country (India) a new kind of epidemic to which the people of this country were strangers and that men would ask with wonder what was going to happen and that there would appear a severe and fearful kind of plague which would spread in India as well as other countries and would strike men with terror and that this pestilence would particularly visit Europe and other Christian countries. The last influenza epidemic was a mighty fulfilment of this prophecy. Nearly twenty million men died of it. The epidemic first appeared in Europe and then spread into other countries mostly Christian or ruled over by Christians. It cannot be said that it is not a new disease, for many of its symptoms are entirely new and it has already appeared in several novel forms. Every attack of the epidemic begins in Europe, and even at the present moment Germany, France and England are being ravaged by it. In London alone two hundred men had died of it in the week preceding the writing of this book. And recent cables indicate that at some places more than one-third of the medical men are down with it and that tramcar and other transport services are affected by it. Even the Pope ∗ is laid up with it. Nor can it be said how long this prophecy will continue to be fulfilled and how long men will continue to fall victims to this epidemic. ∗ Subsequent cables report his death.