The War Of The Worlds by H. G. Wells

At the time there was a strong feeling in the streets that the authorities were to blame for their incapacity to dispose of the invaders without all this inconvenience.

The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran--a grotesque mingling of profit and panic. 

The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts.

Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals.

"It's a pity they make themselves so unapproachable," he said. "It would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might learn a thing or two."


Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements.

A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.

Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.

"What ugly brutes!" he said. "Good God! What ugly brutes!"

A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder.

They do not seem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete demoralisation and the destruction of any opposition.

Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins.

I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. With us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away.

By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain. 

Statue of a The War of the Worlds tripod, erected as a tribute to H. G. Wells in the centre of the town of Woking, England

"This must be the beginning of the end," he said, interrupting me. "The end! The great and terrible day of the Lord!