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Anticipations Chapter 2 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter two B of Anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Anticipations
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  Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Chapter two B. In the first place,
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  Speaker 1: there are a group of forces that will diminish in strength.
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  Speaker 1: There is at present the greater convenience of shopping within
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  Speaker 1: a short radius of the center of the great city,
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  Speaker 1: a very important consideration indeed to many wives and mothers.
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  Speaker 1: All the inner and many of the outer suburbs of
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  Speaker 1: London obtain an enormous proportion of the ordinary household goods
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  Speaker 1: from half a dozen huge furniture, grocery and drapery firms,
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  Speaker 1: each of which has been enabled by the dearness and
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  Speaker 1: inefficiency of the parcels distribution of the post office and
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  Speaker 1: railways to elaborate a now very efficient private system of
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  Speaker 1: taking orders and delivering goods. Collectively, these great businesses have
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  Speaker 1: been able to establish a sort of monopoly of suburbs
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  Speaker 1: urban trade, to overwhelm the small suburban general tradesman, a
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  Speaker 1: fate that was inevitable for him in some way or other,
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  Speaker 1: and which is a positive world wide misfortune to overwhelm.
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  Speaker 1: Also many highly specialized shops and dealers of the central district.
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  Speaker 1: Suburban people nowadays get their wine and their novels, their
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  Speaker 1: clothes and their amusements, their furniture, and their food from
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  Speaker 1: some one vast, indiscriminate shop or store full of respectable
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  Speaker 1: mediocre goods, as excellent a thing for housekeeping as it
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  Speaker 1: is disastrous to taste and individuality footnote. Their temporary suppression
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  Speaker 1: of the specialist is indeed carried to such an extent
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  Speaker 1: that one may see even such things as bronze ornaments
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  Speaker 1: and personal jewelry listed in messieurs omniums lists, and stored
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  Speaker 1: in lists designs and pattern and their assistance will inform
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  Speaker 1: you that their brooch number one seventy five is now
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  Speaker 1: very much worn without either blush or smile end footnote.
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  Speaker 1: But it is doubtful if the delivery organization of these
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  Speaker 1: great stores is any more permanent than the token coinage
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  Speaker 1: of the tradespeople of the last century. Just as it
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  Speaker 1: was with that interesting development, so now it is with
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  Speaker 1: parcels distribution. Private enterprise supplies in a partial manner a
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  Speaker 1: public need, and with the organization of a public parcels
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  Speaker 1: and goods delivery on cheap and sane lines in the
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  Speaker 1: place of our present complex, stupid, confusing, untrustworthy and fantastically
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  Speaker 1: costly chaos of post office, railways and carriers. It is
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  Speaker 1: quite conceivable that Messieur's omnium will give place again to
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  Speaker 1: specialized shops. It must always be remembered how timid, tentative,
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  Speaker 1: and dear the postal and telephone services of even the
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  Speaker 1: most civilized countries still are, and how inexorably the needs
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  Speaker 1: of revenue, public profit and convenience fight in these departments
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  Speaker 1: against the tradition of official leisure and dignity. There is
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  Speaker 1: no reason now, except that the thing is not yet
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  Speaker 1: properly organized, why a telephone call from any point in
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  Speaker 1: such a small country as England to any other should
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  Speaker 1: cost much more than a postcard. There is no reason now,
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  Speaker 1: save railway rivalries and retail ideas obstacles some able and
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  Speaker 1: active man is certain to sweep away sooner or later,
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  Speaker 1: why the post office should not deliver parcels anywhere with
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  Speaker 1: an a radius of one hundred miles in a few
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  Speaker 1: hours at a penny or less for a pound and
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  Speaker 1: a little over put our newspapers in our letterboxes direct
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  Speaker 1: from the printing office, and in fact hand in nearly
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  Speaker 1: every constant need of the civilized household, except possibly butcher's meat, coals,
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  Speaker 1: green grocery and drink. Footnote. The present system of charging
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  Speaker 1: parcels by the pound, when goods are sold by the pound,
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  Speaker 1: and so getting a miserly profit in the packing, is
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  Speaker 1: surely one of the absurdest disregards of the obvious. It
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  Speaker 1: is possible to imagine end footnote. And since there is
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  Speaker 1: no reason but quite movable obstacles to prevent this development
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  Speaker 1: of the post office, I imagine it will be doing
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  Speaker 1: all these things within the next half century, when it
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  Speaker 1: is this particular centripetal pull at any rate, will have
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  Speaker 1: altogether ceased to operate. A second important centripetal consideration at
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  Speaker 1: present is the desirability of access to good schools and
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  Speaker 1: to the doctor to leave the great centers as either
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  Speaker 1: to abandon one's children or to buy air for them
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  Speaker 1: at the cost of educational disadvantages. But access, be it noted,
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  Speaker 1: is another word for transit. It is doubtful of these
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  Speaker 1: two needs will so much keep people close to the
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  Speaker 1: great city centres as draw them together about secondary centers
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  Speaker 1: new centers. They may be compare Hindhead, for example, in
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  Speaker 1: many cases, but also it may be in many cases
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  Speaker 1: the more healthy and picturesque of the existing small towns
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  Speaker 1: will develop a new life. Already, in the case of
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  Speaker 1: the London area, such once practically autonomous places are Guildford,
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  Speaker 1: Tunbridge Wells and Godalming have become economically the centers of
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  Speaker 1: lax suburbs, and the same fate may very probably overtake,
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  Speaker 1: for example, Shrewsbury, Stratford and Exeter and remoter and yet
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  Speaker 1: remoter townships. Indeed, for all that this particular centripetal force
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  Speaker 1: can do, the confluent residential suburbs of London, of the
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  Speaker 1: Great Lancashire, Yorkshire City, and of the Scotch City may
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  Speaker 1: quite conceivably replace the summer lodging house watering places of
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  Speaker 1: today and extend themselves right round the coast of Great
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  Speaker 1: Britain before the end of the next century, and every
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  Speaker 1: open space of mountain and heather be dotted not too
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  Speaker 1: thickly with clumps of prosperous houses about school, doctor, engineers,
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  Speaker 1: book and provision shops. A third centripetal force will not
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  Speaker 1: be set aside so easily the direct antagonist. It is
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  Speaker 1: to that love of nature that drives people out to
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  Speaker 1: moor and mountain. One may call it the love of
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  Speaker 1: the crowd. Allied to it is that love of the
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  Speaker 1: theater which holds so many people in bondage to the strand.
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  Speaker 1: Charles Lamb was the Richard Jeffreys of this group of tendencies,
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  Speaker 1: and the current disposition to exaggerate the opposition force, especially
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  Speaker 1: among English speaking peoples, should not bind us to the
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  Speaker 1: reality of their strength. Moreover, interweaving with these influences that
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  Speaker 1: draw people together are other more egotistical and intenser motives,
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  Speaker 1: ardent in youth, and by no means to judge by
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  Speaker 1: the folkston lees extinct in age, the love of dress,
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  Speaker 1: the love of the crush, the hot passion for the promenade. Here,
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  Speaker 1: no doubt what one may speak of loosely as racial
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  Speaker 1: characteristics count for much. The common actor and actress of
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  Speaker 1: all nationalities, the Neapolitan, the modern Roman, the Parisian, the Hindu,
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  Speaker 1: I am told, and that new and interesting type, the
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  Speaker 1: rich and liberated Jew, emerging from his ghetto and free,
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  Speaker 1: now absolutely to show what stuff he is made of.
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  Speaker 1: Flame out most glorybiously in this direction. To a certain extent,
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  Speaker 1: this group of tendencies may lead to the formation of
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  Speaker 1: new secondary centres within the available area, theatrical and musical centres,
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  Speaker 1: centres of extreme fashion and selectness, centres of smartness and
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  Speaker 1: opulent display. But it is probable that for the large
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  Speaker 1: number of people throughout the world who cannot afford to
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  Speaker 1: maintain households in duplicate, these will be for many years
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  Speaker 1: yet strictly centripetal forces, and will keep them within the
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  Speaker 1: radius marked by whatever will be the future equivalent and
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  Speaker 1: length of, say the present two shilling cab ride in London.
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  Speaker 1: And after all, for all such shopping as one cannot
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  Speaker 1: do by telephone or postcard, it will still be natural
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  Speaker 1: for the shops to be gathered together in some central place,
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  Speaker 1: and shopping needs refreshment and may culminate in relaxation, so
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  Speaker 1: that Bond Street and Regent Street, the Boulevard decapution, the
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  Speaker 1: Corso and Broadway will still be brilliant and crowded for
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  Speaker 1: many years. For all the diffusion that is here forecast,
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  Speaker 1: all the more brilliant and crowded, perhaps for the lack
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  Speaker 1: of a thronging horse traffic down their central ways, but
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  Speaker 1: the very fact that the old nucleus is still to
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  Speaker 1: be the best place for all who trade in a
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  Speaker 1: concourse of people, for novelty shops and art shops and
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  Speaker 1: theaters and business buildings. By keeping up the central ground
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  Speaker 1: values will operate against residents there and shift the masses outwardly.
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  Speaker 1: How once people have been driven into cab, train or omnibus,
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  Speaker 1: the only reason they should get out to a residence
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  Speaker 1: here rather than there is the necessity of saving time,
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  Speaker 1: and such a violent upward gradient of fairs as will
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  Speaker 1: quite outbalance the downward gradient of ground values. We have, however,
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  Speaker 1: already forecast a swift, varied, and inevitably competitive suburban traffic.
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  Speaker 1: And so though the center will probably still remain the
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  Speaker 1: center and town, it will be essentially a bazaar, a
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  Speaker 1: great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous,
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  Speaker 1: a pedestrian in place, its pathways reinforced by lifts and
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  Speaker 1: moving platforms, and shielded from the weather, and altogether a
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  Speaker 1: very spacious, brilliant and entertaining agglomeration. Enough now has been
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  Speaker 1: said to determine the general nature of the expansion of
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  Speaker 1: the great cities in the future. So far as the
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  Speaker 1: more prosperous classes are concerned, it will not be a
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  Speaker 1: regular diffusion, like the diffusion of a gas, but a
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  Speaker 1: process of throwing out the homes and of segregating various
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  Speaker 1: types of people. The omens seem to point pretty unmistakably
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  Speaker 1: to a wide and quite unprecedented diversity in the various
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  Speaker 1: suburban townships and suburban districts. Of that aspect of the
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  Speaker 1: matter a later paper must treat. It is evident that
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  Speaker 1: from the outset racial and national characteristics will tell in
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  Speaker 1: this diffusion we are getting near the end of the
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  Speaker 1: great democratic, wholesale or homogeneous phase in the world's history.
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  Speaker 1: The sport loving Englishmen, the sociable Frenchman, the vehement American
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  Speaker 1: will each diffuse his own great city in his own way.
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  Speaker 1: And now, how will the increase in the facilities of
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  Speaker 1: communication we have assumed affect the condition of those whose
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  Speaker 1: circumstances are more largely dictated by economic forces. The mere
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  Speaker 1: diffusion of a large proportion of the prosperous and relatively free,
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  Speaker 1: and the multiplication of various types of road and mechanical traction,
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  Speaker 1: means of course that in this way alone, a perceptible
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  Speaker 1: diffusion of the less independent classes will occur to the
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  Speaker 1: subsidiary centres. Will be drawn doctor and schoolmaster, and various
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  Speaker 1: dealers in fresh provisions, baker, grosser, butcher or if they
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  Speaker 1: are already established there, they will flourish more and more,
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  Speaker 1: and about them. The convenient home of the future, with
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  Speaker 1: its numerous electrical and mechanical appliances, and the various bicycles,
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  Speaker 1: motor cars, photographic and phonographic apparatus that will be included
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  Speaker 1: in its equipment, will gather a population of repairers, accessory dealers,
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  Speaker 1: and working engineers, a growing class from which its necessary
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  Speaker 1: intelligence and numbers will play a very conspicuous part in
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  Speaker 1: the social development of the twentieth century. The much more
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  Speaker 1: elaborate post office and telephone services will also bring intelligent
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  Speaker 1: ingredients to these suburban nuclei. These restorations of the old
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  Speaker 1: villages and country towns, and the sons of the cottager
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  Speaker 1: within the affected area will develop into the skilled vegetable
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  Speaker 1: or flower gardeners, the skilled ostler with some veterinary science,
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  Speaker 1: and so forth, for whom also there will evidently be
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  Speaker 1: work and a living, and dotted at every convenient position
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  Speaker 1: along the new roads availing themselves. No doubt, whenever possible,
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  Speaker 1: of the picturesque inns that the old coaching days have
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  Speaker 1: left us will be wayside restaurants and tea houses, and
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  Speaker 1: motor and cycle stores and repair places, so much diffusion
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  Speaker 1: is practically inevitable. In addition, as we have already intimated,
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  Speaker 1: many Londoners in the future may abandon the city office altogether,
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  Speaker 1: preferring to do their business in more agreeable surroundings. Such
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  Speaker 1: a business as book publishing, for example, has no unbreakable
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  Speaker 1: bonds to keep it in the region of high rent
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  Speaker 1: and congested streets. The days when the financial fortunes of
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  Speaker 1: books depended upon the colloquial support of influential people in
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  Speaker 1: a small society are past. Neither publishers nor authors as
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  Speaker 1: a class have any relation to society at all, and
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  Speaker 1: actual access to newspaper offices is necessary only to the
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  Speaker 1: rank of forms of literary imposture. That personal intercourse between
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  Speaker 1: publishers and the miscellaneous race of authors, which once justified
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  Speaker 1: the central position, has I am told long since ceased,
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  Speaker 1: And the withdrawing publishers may very well take with them
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  Speaker 1: the printers and binders and attract about them their illustrators
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  Speaker 1: and designers. So as a typical instance, one now urban
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  Speaker 1: trade may detach itself. Publishing is, however, only one of
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  Speaker 1: the many similar trades equally profitable and equally likely to
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  Speaker 1: move outward to secondary centers. With the development and cheapening
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  Speaker 1: of transit. It is all a question of transit limitation
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  Speaker 1: of transit contracts the city facilitation expands and disperses it all.
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  Speaker 1: This case for diffusion so far is built up entirely
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  Speaker 1: on the hypothesis we attempted to establish in the first
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  Speaker 1: paper that transit of persons and goods alike is to
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  Speaker 1: become easier, swifter, and altogether better organized than it is
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  Speaker 1: at present, the telephone will almost certainly prove a very
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  Speaker 1: potent auxiliary indeed to the forces making for diffusion. At present,
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  Speaker 1: that convenience is still needlessly expensive in Great Britain, and
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  Speaker 1: a scandalously stupid business conflict between telephone company and post
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  Speaker 1: office delays, complicates and makes costly and exasperating all trunk communications.
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  Speaker 1: But even under these disadvantages, the thing is becoming a
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  Speaker 1: factor in the life of ordinary villadem Consider all that
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  Speaker 1: lies within its possibilities. Take first the domestic and social side,
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  Speaker 1: almost all the labor of ordinary shopping can be avoided.
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  Speaker 1: Goods nowadays can be ordered and sent, either as sold
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  Speaker 1: outright or on approval, to any place within a hundred
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  Speaker 1: miles of London, and in one day they can be examined, discussed,
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  Speaker 1: and returned at any rate. In theory, the mistress of
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  Speaker 1: the house has all her local tradesmen, all the great
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  Speaker 1: London shops, the circulating library, the theater, box office, the
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  Speaker 1: post office and cab rank, the nurse's institute, and the
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  Speaker 1: doctor within reach of her hand. The instrument we may
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  Speaker 1: confidently expect to improve. But even now speech is perfectly
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  Speaker 1: clear and distinct. Over several hundred miles of wire, appointments
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  Speaker 1: and invitations can be made, and at a cost varying
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  Speaker 1: from a penny to two shillings, any one within two
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  Speaker 1: hundred miles of home may speak day or night into
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  Speaker 1: the air of his or her household. Were it not
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  Speaker 1: for that unmitigated public nuisance, the practical control of our
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  Speaker 1: post office by non dismissible civil servants appointed so young
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  Speaker 1: as to be entirely ignorant of the unofficial world, it
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  Speaker 1: would be possible now to send urgent messages at any
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  Speaker 1: hour of the day or night to any part of
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  Speaker 1: the world, and even our sacred institution of the civil
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  Speaker 1: service can scarcely prevent this desirable consummation for many years more.
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  Speaker 1: The business man may then sit at home in his
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  Speaker 1: library and bargain, discuss, promise, hint, threaten, tell such lies
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  Speaker 1: as he dare not write, and in fact do everything
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  Speaker 1: that once demanded a personal encounter. Already for a great
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  Speaker 1: number of businesses, it is no longer necessary that the
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  Speaker 1: office should be in London, and only habit, tradition and
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  Speaker 1: minor considerations keep it there. With a steady cheapening and
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  Speaker 1: the steady increase in efficiency of postal and telephonic facilities
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  Speaker 1: and of goods transit, it seems only reasonable to anticipate
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  Speaker 1: the need for that expensive office in the irksome daily
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  Speaker 1: journey will steadily decline. In other words, what will still
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  Speaker 1: be economically the city, as distinguished from the agricultural population,
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  Speaker 1: will probably be free to extend. In the case of
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  Speaker 1: all the prosperous classes not tied to large establishments in
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  Speaker 1: need of personal supervision, far beyond the extreme limits of
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  Speaker 1: the daily hour journey. But the diffusion of the prosperous
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  Speaker 1: independent and managing classes involves in itself a very considerable
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  Speaker 1: diffusion of the purely working classes. Also, their centers of
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  Speaker 1: occupation will be distributed, and their freedom to live at
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  Speaker 1: some little distance from their work will be increased. Whether
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  Speaker 1: this will mean dotting the country with dull, ugly little
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  Speaker 1: streets slum villages like buckfast Lee and Devon, for example,
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  Speaker 1: or whether it may result in entirely different and novel aspects,
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  Speaker 1: is a point for which at present we are not ready.
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  Speaker 1: But it bears upon the question that ugliness and squalor
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  Speaker 1: upon the main road will appeal to the more prosperous
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  Speaker 1: for a remedy with far more vigor than when they
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  Speaker 1: are stowed compactly in a slum. Enough has been said
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  Speaker 1: to demonstrate that old town and city will be, in
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  Speaker 1: truth terms as obsolete as male coach. For these new
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: areas that will grow out of them, we want a term,
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  Speaker 1: and the administrative urban district presents itself with a convenient
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  Speaker 1: air of suggestion, we may, for our present purposes call
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  Speaker 1: these coming town provinces urban regions. Practically, by a process
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  Speaker 1: of confluence, the whole of Great Britain south of the
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Highlands seems destined to become such an urban region, lay
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  Speaker 1: stall together not only by railway and telegraph, but by
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  Speaker 1: novel roads such as we forecast in the former chapter,
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  Speaker 1: and by a dense network of telephones, parcels, the livery tubes,
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  Speaker 1: and the light, nervous and arterial connections. It will certainly
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  Speaker 1: be a curious and varied region, far less monotonous than
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: our present English world, still in its thinner regions, at
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  Speaker 1: any rate, wooded, perhaps rather more abundantly wooded, breaking continually
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  Speaker 1: into park and garden, and with everywhere a scattering of houses.
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  Speaker 1: These will not, as a rule, I should fancy follow
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  Speaker 1: the fashion of the vulgar ready built villas of the
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  Speaker 1: existing suburb, because the freedom people will be able to
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: exercise in the choice of a site will rob the
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  Speaker 1: building estate promoter of his local advantage. In many cases,
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  Speaker 1: the houses may very probably be personal homes built for themselves,
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  Speaker 1: as much as the Tudor manor houses were, and even
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  Speaker 1: in some cases as esthetically right. Each district, I am
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  Speaker 1: inclined to think, will develop its own differences of type
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  Speaker 1: and style. As one travels through the urban region, one
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: will traverse open, breezy horsey suburbs, smart white gates, and
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  Speaker 1: palings everywhere, good turf, a grand stand shining pleasantly, districts
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  Speaker 1: all set with gables and roses, holly hedges and emerald lawns,
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  Speaker 1: pleasant homes among heathery moorlands and golf links, and river
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  Speaker 1: districts with gaily painted boat houses peeping from the ossiers.
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  Speaker 1: Then presently a gathering of houses closer together, and a promenade,
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  Speaker 1: and a whiff of band and dresses. And then perhaps
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  Speaker 1: a little island of agriculture hops or strawberry gardens, field
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  Speaker 1: of gray plumed outer chokes, white painted orchard, or brightly
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  Speaker 1: neat poultry farm. Through the varied country, the new wide
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  Speaker 1: roads will run, here, cutting through a crest, and there,
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  Speaker 1: running like some colossal aqueduct across a valley, swarming always
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  Speaker 1: with a multitudinous traffic of bright, swift and not necessarily
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  Speaker 1: ugly mechanisms. And everywhere, amidst the fields and trees, linking
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  Speaker 1: wires will stretch from pole to pole. Ever and again
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  Speaker 1: there will appear a cluster of cottages, cottages into which
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  Speaker 1: we shall presently look more closely about some works or
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: workings works. It may be, with the smoky chimney of
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  Speaker 1: to day replaced by a gaily painted wind wheel or
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  Speaker 1: water wheel to gather and store the forces for the machinery.
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  Speaker 1: And ever and again will come a little town with
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  Speaker 1: its cherished ancient church or cathedral, its school buildings and museums,
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  Speaker 1: its railway station, perhaps its fire station, its inns and restaurants,
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  Speaker 1: and with all the wires of the countryside converging to
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  Speaker 1: its offices. All that is pleasant and fair of our
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: present country side may conceivably still be there. Among the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: other things. There is no reason why the essential charm
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: of the country should disappear. The new roads will not
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: supersede the present high roads, which will still be necessary
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: for horses and subsidiary traffic, And the lanes and hedges,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the field paths, and wild flowers will still have their
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: ample justification. A certain lack of solitude there may be, perhaps,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: and will conspicuous advertisements play any part in the landscape.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: But I find my pen is running ahead. An imagination
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: prone to realistic constructions, is struggling to paint a picture
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: altogether Prematurely, there is very much to be weighed and
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: decided before we can get from our present generalization to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the style of architecture. These houses will show and to
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the power and nature of the public taste. We have
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: laid down now the broad lines of road, railway and
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: sea transit in the coming century, and we have got
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: this general prophecy of urban regions established, and for the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: present that much must suffice. And as for the world
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: beyond our urban regions, the same line of reasoning that
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: leads to the expectation that the city will diffuse itself
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: until it has taken up considerable areas and many of
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: the characteristics, the greenness, the fresh air of what is
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: now country leads us to suppose also that the country
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: will take to itself many of the qualities of the city.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: The old antithesis will deed cease, The boundary lines will
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: altogether disappear. It will become, indeed, merely a question of
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: more or less populous. There will be a horticulture and
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: agriculture going on within the urban regions, and urbanity without them. Everywhere, Indeed,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: over the land of the globe, between the frozen circles,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the railway and the new roads will spread the network
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: of communication wires and safe and convenient ways to receive
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the daily paper a few hours late, to wait a
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: day or so for goods one has ordered will be
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the extreme measure of rusticity, save in a few remote
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: islands and inaccessible places. The character of the measures in
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: that wider network of roads that will be the country,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: as distinguished from the urban district, will vary with the soil,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the climate, and the tenure of the land will vary
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: too with the racial and national differences. But throughout all
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: that follows, this mere relativity of the new sort of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: town to the new sort of country over which the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: new sorts of people we are immediately to consider will
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: be scattered, must be borne in mind. At the risk
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: of insistence, I must repeat that so far I have
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: been studiously taking no account of the fact that there
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: is such a thing as a boundary line or a
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: foreigner in the world. It will be far the best
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: thing to continue to do this until we can get
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: out all that will probably happen universally or generally, and
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: in particular the probable changes in social forces, social apparatus,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and internal political methods. We shall then come to the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: discussion of language, nationality, and international conflicts, equipped with such
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: an array of probabilities and possibilities as will enable us
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: to guess at these special issues with an appearance of
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: far more precision than would be the case if we
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: considered them now. End of Chapter two B recording by
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: John Trevivick,