Herbert Wells

"No Englishman would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by a civilization as great as our Europe's, and far more ruthless than our own; that as men of London and Manchester busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency our ships went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over the seas. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to remote regions danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of them as curious and improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. Yet on the remotest regions of the Earth, minds that were to our minds as strange and alien beasts are to ours, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this our blessed isles with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."

Herbert Wells, "Memoirs of a Survivor."