twelve o'clock
To do so might perhaps stop the war , and that would , at first sight , be conferring a great blessing upon humanity ; but , on the other hand , it might have the very reverse effect upon the millions of men whose blood was now inflamed with the lust of battle . Again it was one thing to convince the rulers of the nations and the scientists of the world that the coming catastrophe was inevitable ; but to convince the people who made up those nations would be a very different matter . The end of the world had been predicted hundreds of times already , mostly by charlatans , who made a good living out of it , but sometimes by the most august authorities . He had read his history , and he had not forgotten the awful conditions in which the people of Europe fell during the last months of the year 1000 , when the Infallible Church had solemnly proclaimed that at twelve o'clock on the night of the 31st of December Satan , chained for a thousand years , would be let loose ; that on the morning of the 1st of January 1001 the order of Nature would be reversed , the sun would rise in the west and the reign of Anti-Christ begin . Then the remnants of the European nations had gradually awakened to the fact that Holy Church was wrong , since nothing happened save the results of the madness which her prophesies had produced . But the catastrophe of which he would have to be the prophet would be worse even than this , and , moreover , as far as human science could tell , it was a mathematical certainty . There would be no miracle , nothing of the supernatural about it -- it would happen just as certainly as the earth would revolve on its axis ; and yet how many millions of the earth 's inhabitants would believe it until with their own eyes they saw the approaching Fate ?