The War of the Worlds: Book 1, Chapter 1, The Eve of the War
And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such
apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
Somewhere between the ads and the final credits, it's probably worth remembering that the Tasmanian genocide provided one of the models for HG Wells' Martians.
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