(Found) War Q. SF short story, 1960s/70s, time travel?

[Ray Zdybrow]

I think I read this short story in a "Best Of" anthology in the 70s. (Time?) Traveller arrives in a post-apocalyptic world, sees graffiti saying "War Q" all over the place, thinks that people have had to name wars with letters rather than numbers (eg WWA, WWB...), before working out that it actually means "Beware! Infection!"
Not such a great story as I recall but it's stayed with me and I've tried for years to find it with no luck. It bugs me!
...I think the phrase "hateful bacillus" was in the last sentence

 

[Orcadian]

@Ray Zdybrow This story is in a book of short stories by Eric Frank Russell, called Second Genesis. I managed to download it from a Cyrillic website: Second Genesis [Short stories] | Russell, Eric Frank | download. It's a text file, only 57kb. If you can't get it to come down, I can email it to you.

 

[Ray Zdybrow]

@Ray Zdybrow This story is in a book of short stories by Eric Frank Russell, called Second Genesis. I managed to download it from a Cyrillic website: Second Genesis [Short stories] | Russell, Eric Frank | download. It's a text file, only 57kb. If you can't get it to come down, I can email it to you.

Thanks very much! I'll try the link now

 

[Ravensquawk]

A Shaggy God Story!

I didn't know of this term until this week; thought I might have learned it from this post, because I didn't know about this story.

Thanks!

Tempted to change my profile custom title to "hateful bacillus".