In Rizal’s list, the United States of America stood out as the most probable aggressor. Rizal was proven correct. McKinley’s America did invade the "Pearl of the Orient" and dismantled the Malolos-based Philippine Republic. The American Occupation cost one million Filipino souls.

Rizal’s prediction was published in 1889-1890; the US war of aggression occurred in 1899.

Rizal’s forecast came true a second time with another aggressor on his list. Hirohito’s Japan also invaded the Philippines in 1941 and occupied it until 1945. Rizal’s hundred-year coverage hit the mark again in 52 years.

Who would have benefited from Rizal’s foretelling? Don Emilio Aguinaldo was president of the Malolos Republic, and he failed to stop the American sneak attack in Manila in February 1899. Worse, he allowed himself to be captured a day after his birthday in 1901 by a special unit of the enemy army. Manuel Luis Quezon was president of the Philippine Commonwealth, and, unlike the hapless Aguinaldo, he was alert to the likelihood of a Japanese invasion.

Quezon knew that war was coming soon. In his autobiography, he related, "For several months, I had been almost certain that war with Japan was inevitable in view of the positive stand taken by the United States vis-a-vis the so-called ‘China Incident’ and the announced Greater East Asia policy of Japan." ["The Good Fight." New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1946, p. 183]

Quezon was a competent chief executive and he prepared his people for the coming conflagration as best as he could. Alas, the Filipino leader’s efforts were stymied by the lackadaisical policies and management of the Americans who sat as the colonial masters of the Philippine Islands.

The Americans did not lack scenarios of coming conflicts with the Mikado’s minions. As early as 1907, the Joint Army and Navy Board of the United States began drawing up contingency plans for a war against Japan. A year later, Homer Lea published "The Valor of Ignorance," arguing that a state of war already existed between the US and Japan.

In 1914, one American, an indefatigable writer of novels and short stories, published his own outline of a fictional future war. Jack London, better known as the author of "White Fang" (1906) and "The Call of the Wild" (1903), wrote "The Unparalleled Invasion" wherein he correctly extrapolated the trajectory of Japanese aggression in Asia. To wit:

"Having decisively thrashed the great Russian Empire, Japan promptly set about dreaming a colossal dream of empire for herself. Korea she had made into a granary and a colony; treaty privileges and vulpine diplomacy gave her the monopoly of Manchuria. But Japan was not satisfied. She turned her eyes upon China. There lay a vast territory, and in that territory were the hugest deposits in the world of iron and coal - the backbone of industrial civilization."

The Russo-Japanese War was won by the latter ten years before Jack London’s story. Tokyo’s formal annexation of Korea was in 1910, and back in 1895, Imperial Japan had taken Formosa, the Penghu Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula from the Qing Dynasty of China.

In World War I, Japan seized German holdings in East Asia, including the Chinese territory of Kiaochow. And with its infamous "Twenty-One Demands," Tokyo forced the Chinese acceptance of extended Japanese influence in China.

World War I ended 1918, the same year when Tokyo’s Imperial Defense Policy designated the US as the potential enemy number one of Japan.

Jack London’s sci-fi tale came out in the same year that World War I erupted. But Japan’s invasion of North China took place 17 years later when the Kwantung Army, under Japanese Lt. Gen. Honjo Shigeru, seized Shenyang and Mukden, Manchuria on September 18, 1931. And on July 7, 1937, Hirohito’s Japan used the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" in Beijing to launch its wholesale invasion of China.

In the real world, Hirohito’s hordes would rampage across Asia-Pacific during World War Two. But in Jack London’s scenario, the Sino-Japanese War "occurred in 1922, and in seven bloody months Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa were taken away from her (Japan) and she was hurled back, bankrupt, to stifle in her tiny, crowded islands. Exit Japan from the world drama."

It was China that became the real danger to the world, not because of a large standing army, but due to the "fecundity of her loins." With her hundreds of millions, this China overran Southeast Asia in 1970-75, wresting Indo-China from France, Burma and the Malay Peninsula from Britain, and the Kingdom of Siam.

How did it happen? "The process was simple. First came the Chinese immigration (or, rather, it was already there, having come there slowly and insidiously during the previous years). Next came the clash of arms and the brushing away of all opposition by a monster army of militia-soldiers, followed by their families and household baggage. And finally came their settling down as colonists in the conquered territory. Never was there so strange and effective a method of world conquest."

In Jack London’s world, "there were two Chinese for every white-skinned human...There was no combating China’s amazing birth rate." What happened next?