Lea was of the opinion that Germany and Britain were rushing headlong into an industrial war on an unprecedented scale. But while Lea was correct in foreseeing World War I, many of his theories on Germany’s global ambitions were more relevant to World War II. Lea predicted the creation of a greater Reich, swallowing Austria while attempting to install puppet regimes in the Low Countries and Denmark. On Britain’s defense, he rejected the maxim of naval supremacy, suggesting that the country’s land forces were grossly undermanned as a consequence of following a policy laid out in Horatio Nelson’s age a century before. Again, showing an understanding of the causes that would result in the horrors of World War II, Lea highlighted the notions of national supremacy and ethnic purity with which both Germany and Japan were increasingly obsessed. He also suggested that a modernizing Russia, regardless of political dogma, would eventually seek to dominate both Europe and Asia. At the time of his death, Lea was working on a third book, provocatively titled The Swarming of the Slav.

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In the autumn of 1911, Lea was still in London when he received news that a new revolutionary effort was being prepared in China. He cabled Sun to prepare for action and then departed for Marseille, France, to catch a boat bound for Shanghai in November. Before departing, Lea, whose already frail constitution had been further tried by several bouts of illness, was given a stern warning that the voyage might prove fatal. Throwing caution to the winds, he pressed on, adamant that he would be there at the birth of the Chinese republic. During the 30-day voyage, he completed The Day of the Saxon.

Sun, Lea and the many millions of Chinese who had fought long and hard for democracy finally realized their dream at Nanking on January 1, 1912. China became a republic, with Sun Yat-sen its first president. True to his word, he made Lea a full general and his chief of staff. Within months of that moment of triumph, however, Lea suffered a massive stroke and returned to the U.S. West Coast — ironically, aboard the Japanese liner Shinyo Maru. Back home, Lea saw his book The Day of the Saxon published. Reviews were poor, and only 7,000 copies were sold; however, one of those to obtain a copy was Karl Haushofer, who consulted with Adolf Hitler when the latter was writing Mein Kampf, a work that encapsulated all of Homer Lea’s warnings on the Teutonic obsession with racial purity. By 1933 — just when the book was needed most — The Day of the Saxon was out of print.

Proud of his achievements in China but embittered by the lack of success with his books, Lea succumbed to illness at age 35. On November 1, 1912, one of the United States’ most forward-thinking geopolitical strategists, and a leading light in the Chinese republic’s first struggle to introduce democracy, was buried in his bejeweled general’s uniform.

Those who had known Lea frequently fell under his spell. He was a small man with staggering self-belief and an iron will. And yet, like many brilliant leaders, he suffered from deep personality flaws. Prone to self-aggrandizement and theatrics, he could, to the casual observer, seem pompous and self-absorbed. And his one major field command was anything but glorious. Yet when other commanders would have thrown in the towel, Lea kept up the struggle, traveling the globe to secure funds for his cause. That the Chinese republican cause eventually succeeded was, in a sense, his greatest achievement.

Lea’s books are a more controversial matter. Some commentators see very little of the clairvoyant about them — the clash of empires, the rise of supernationalism and the horrors of ethnocide were underlying tensions that would have been obvious to anyone with a good understanding of geopolitics at the beginning of the 20th century. But that misses the point. Homer Lea did not want to preach to the converted; he was trying to shake the United States out of the grip of its own isolationists and pacifists. In spite of its amazing foresight, however, The Valor of Ignorance’s message proved to be too extreme to capture the public’s imagination. For its Japanese readers, quite the contrary — they were pleased indeed to find a work highlighting the tactics and plans that they would happily implement when fighting the United States.

This article was written by Simon Rees and originally published in the October 2004 issue of Military History magazine.

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