Plague as a Weapon of War
The possibility of the spread of the plague in the earth by an organized effort of men, devoting themselves to the purpose of introducing it and facilitating its ravages in large centers of population, is one that the public have not contemplated in their forecast of future events, yet it is one which, according to reports from one of the storm-centers of Europe, they have now to face. We have become accustomed to rely with much assurance upon the protection from this source of danger afforded by modern sanitary science; but what assurance of safety can be felt when deadly disease germs become a weapon of warfare against mankind in the hands of desperate men. A London dispatch says:— A dispatch to the Daily News from Sofia reiterates the story published a few days ago that the Macedonian revolutionary leaders threaten to use Indian plague bacilli to cause an outbreak of that disease, if their demands are not conceded. The inception of this plan is ascribed to Boris Sarafoff, the notorious Macedonian leader. The correspondent says that the threat will certainly be carried out within a few days after the rebel chiefs issue a final warning. The Sophiska Vedomosti, a newspaper published in Sofia, which supports the Macedonian cause, prints a long, sympathetic article on the subject, in the course of which it justifies such actions of vengeance as the explosions at Salonica, and predicts the future destruction of banks, commercial houses, railways, and other property owned by European capitalists. Dealing with what it describes as the terrific means contemplated by the Macedonian patriots to secure their aims, the paper says that a supply of bubonic bacilli sufficient to spread death and panic in Constantinople, Salonica, and many other places has been in readiness for a long time. In the dirt of Constantinople and Salonica the plague germs once set free would multiply by millions. The sultan would take flight, and his palaces, built with the blood and tears of Bulgarian laborers, would be deserted. The plague would demoralize the Turkish army and disperse it. As for the Macedonians, they may save themselves as their fathers always did when a plague visits the land. They will take refuge in the3mountains, while the Turks in the towns fall victims to the disease, or seek safety in flight to Anatolia. In the mountains the Macedonians can subsist for a long time on their flocks of sheep and goats, and can even grow corn without venturing into the plague-stricken plains. Who can say that this deadly menace, now threatened against the Turk, will not ere long be seized upon by those who war against society and civilization, as a more secret and more deadly agency than dynamite and the like weapons which they have heretofore been accustomed to use?