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Anticipations Chapter 8 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight A 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 eight A. The larger Synthesis.
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  Speaker 1: We have seen that the essential process, arising out of
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  Speaker 1: the growth of science and mechanism, and more particularly out
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  Speaker 1: of the still developing new facilities of locomotion and communication
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  Speaker 1: science has afforded, is the deliquescence of the social organizations
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  Speaker 1: of the past, and the synthesis of ampler and still
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  Speaker 1: ampler and more complicated and still more complicated social unities.
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  Speaker 1: The suggestion is powerful, the conclusion is hard to resist
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  Speaker 1: that through whatever disorders of danger and conflict, whatever centuries
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  Speaker 1: of misunderstanding and bloodshed, men may still have to pass.
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  Speaker 1: This process nevertheless aims, finally and will attain to the
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  Speaker 1: establishment of one world state at peace within itself. In
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  Speaker 1: the economic sense, indeed, a world state is already established
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  Speaker 1: even today. We do all buy and sell in the
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  Speaker 1: same markets. Albeit the owners of certain ancient rights levy
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  Speaker 1: their tolls here and there, and the Hindo starves. The
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  Speaker 1: Italian feels the pinch before the Germans or the English
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  Speaker 1: go short of bread. There is no real autonomy anymore
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  Speaker 1: in the world, no simple right to an absolute independence,
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  Speaker 1: such as formerly the Swiss could claim. The nations and
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  Speaker 1: boundaries of today do no more than marked claims to exemptions, privileges,
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  Speaker 1: and corners in the market, claims valid enough to those
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  Speaker 1: whose minds and souls are turned towards the past, but
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  Speaker 1: absurdities to those who look to the future as the
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  Speaker 1: end and justification of our present stresses. The claim to
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  Speaker 1: political liberty amounts, as a rule, to no more than
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  Speaker 1: the claim of a man to live in a parish
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  Speaker 1: without observing sanitary precautions or paying rates because he had
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  Speaker 1: an excellent great grandfather. Against all these old isolations, these
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  Speaker 1: obsolescent particularisms, the forces of mechanical and scientific development fight
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  Speaker 1: and fight irresistibly, and upon the general recognition of this conflict,
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  Speaker 1: upon the intelligence and courage with which its inflexible conditions
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  Speaker 1: are negotiated, depends very largely the amount of bloodshed and
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  Speaker 1: avoidable misery the coming years will hold the final attainment
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  Speaker 1: of this great synthesis, Like the social deliquescence and reconstruction
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  Speaker 1: dealt with in the earlier of these anticipations has an
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  Speaker 1: air of being a process independent of any collective or
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  Speaker 1: conscious will in man, as being the expression of a
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  Speaker 1: greater will. It is working now, and may work out
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  Speaker 1: to its end vastly, and yet at times almost imperceptibly,
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  Speaker 1: as some huge secular movement in nature, the raising of
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  Speaker 1: a continent, the crumbling of a mountain chain goes on
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  Speaker 1: to its appointed culmination. Or one may compare the process
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  Speaker 1: to a net that has surrounded and that is drawn
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  Speaker 1: continually closer and closer upon a great and varied multitude
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  Speaker 1: of men. We may cherish animosities, we may declare imperishable distances.
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  Speaker 1: We may plot and counterplot, make war and fight to
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  Speaker 1: a finish the net Titans. For all that already, the
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  Speaker 1: need of some synthesis at least ampler than existing national
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  Speaker 1: organizations is so apparent in the world that at least
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  Speaker 1: five spacious movements of coalescence exist today. There is the
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  Speaker 1: movement called Anglo Saxonism, the allied but finally very different
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  Speaker 1: movement of British imperialism, the Pan Germanic movement Pan Slavism,
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  Speaker 1: and the conception of a great union of the Latin
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  Speaker 1: peoples under the outrageous treatment of the white peoples. An
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  Speaker 1: idea of unifying the yellow peoples is pretty certain to
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  Speaker 1: become audibly and visibly operative before many years. These are
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  Speaker 1: all deliberate and justifiable suggestions, and they all aim to
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  Speaker 1: sacrifice minor differences in all or to like to like
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  Speaker 1: in greater matters, and so secure, if not physical predominance
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  Speaker 1: in the world, at least an effective defensive strength for
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  Speaker 1: their racial, moral, customary, or linguistic differences against the aggressions
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  Speaker 1: of other possible coalescences. But these syntheses or other similar
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  Speaker 1: synthetic conceptions, if they do not contrive to establish a
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  Speaker 1: rational social unity by sanely negotiated unions, will be forced
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  Speaker 1: to fight for physical predominance in the world. The whole
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  Speaker 1: trend of forces in the world is against the preservation
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  Speaker 1: of local social systems, however greatly and spaciously conceived. Yet
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  Speaker 1: it is quite possible that several or all of the
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  Speaker 1: cultures that will arise out of the development of these
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  Speaker 1: pan this and that movements may in many of their
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  Speaker 1: features survive as the culture of the Jews has survived
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  Speaker 1: political obliteration, and may disseminate themselves as the Jewish system
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  Speaker 1: has disseminated itself over the whole world. City unity, by
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  Speaker 1: no means involves homogeneity. The greater the social organism, the
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  Speaker 1: more complex and varied its parts, the more intricate and
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  Speaker 1: varied the interplay of culture and breed and character within it.
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  Speaker 1: It is doubtful if either the Latin or the pre
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  Speaker 1: Slavic idea contains the promise of any great political unification.
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  Speaker 1: The elements of the Latin synthesis are dispersed in South
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  Speaker 1: and Central America and about the Mediterranean basin in a
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  Speaker 1: way that offers no prospect of an economic unity between them.
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  Speaker 1: The best elements of the French people lie in the
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  Speaker 1: western portion of what must become the greatest urban region
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  Speaker 1: of the Old World, the Rhine Netherlandish region. The interests
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  Speaker 1: of North Italy draw that region away from the Italy
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  Speaker 1: of Rome and the South towards the Swiss and South Germany.
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  Speaker 1: And the Spanish and Portuguese speaking half breeds of South
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  Speaker 1: America have not only their own coalescences to arrange, but
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  Speaker 1: they lie already under the political tutelage of the United States. Nowhere,
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  Speaker 1: except in France and North Italy is there any price
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  Speaker 1: prospect of such an intellectual and educational evolution as is
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  Speaker 1: necessary before a great scheme of unification can begin to
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  Speaker 1: take effect. And the difficulties in the way of the
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  Speaker 1: pan Slavic dream are far graver. Its realization is enormously
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  Speaker 1: hampered by the division of its languages, and the fact
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  Speaker 1: that in the Bohemian language, in Polish, and in Russian
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  Speaker 1: there exist distinct literatures almost equally splendid in achievement, but
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  Speaker 1: equally insufficient in quantity and range to establish a claim
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  Speaker 1: to replace all other Slavonic dialects. Russia, which should form
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  Speaker 1: the central mass of this synthesis, stagnates relatively to the
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  Speaker 1: Western States under the rule of reactionary intelligences. It does
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  Speaker 1: not develop, and does not seem likely to develop the
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  Speaker 1: merest beginnings of that great educated middle class with which
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  Speaker 1: the future so enormously rests. The Russia of today is
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  Speaker 1: indeed very little more than a vast breeding ground for
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  Speaker 1: an illiterate peasantry, and the forecasts of its future greatness
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  Speaker 1: entirely ignored, or that dwindling significance of mere numbers in warfare,
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  Speaker 1: which is the clear and necessary consequence of mechanical advance.
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  Speaker 1: To a large extent, I believe the Western Slavs will
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  Speaker 1: follow the Prussians and Lithuanians and be incorporated in the
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  Speaker 1: urbanization of Western Europe. And the remoter portions of Russia
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  Speaker 1: seemed destined to become are indeed becoming abyss, a wretched
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  Speaker 1: and disorderly abyss that will not even be formidable to
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  Speaker 1: the armed and disciplined peoples of the new civilization. The
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  Speaker 1: last quarter of the earth, perhaps where a barbaric or
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  Speaker 1: absentee nobility will shadow the squalid and unhappy destinies of
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  Speaker 1: a multitude of hopeless and unmeaning lives. To a certain extent,
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  Speaker 1: Russia may play the part of a vaster Ireland in
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  Speaker 1: her failure to keep pace with the educational and economic
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  Speaker 1: progress of nations which have come into economic unity with her.
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  Speaker 1: She will be an ireland without emigration, a place for famines.
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  Speaker 1: And while Russia delays to develop anything but a fecund
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  Speaker 1: orthodoxy and this simple peasant life, the grooves and channels
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  Speaker 1: are growing ever deeper along which the currents of trade,
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  Speaker 1: of intellectual and moral stimulus must presently flow towards the West.
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  Speaker 1: I see no region where anything like the comparatively dense
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  Speaker 1: urban regions that are likely to arise about the Rhineland
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  Speaker 1: and over the Eastern States of America, for example, can
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  Speaker 1: develop in Russia with railways planned boldly, it would have
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  Speaker 1: been possible, it might still be possible to make about
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  Speaker 1: Odessa a parallel to Chicago, but the existing railways run
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  Speaker 1: about Odessa as though Asia were unknown. And when at
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  Speaker 1: last the commercial awakening of what is now the Turkish
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  Speaker 1: Empire comes, the railway lines will probably run not north
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  Speaker 1: or south, but from the urban region of the more
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  Speaker 1: scientific Central Europeans down to Constantinople. The long route land
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  Speaker 1: communications in the future will become continually more swift and
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  Speaker 1: efficient than Baltic navigation, and it is unlikely therefore that
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  Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg has any great possibilities of growth. It was
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  Speaker 1: founded by a man whose idea of the course of
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  Speaker 1: trade and civilization was the sea wholly and solely, and
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  Speaker 1: in the future the sea must necessarily become more and
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  Speaker 1: more a last resort, with its spacious prospects, its architectural magnificence,
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  Speaker 1: its political quality, its desertion by the new commerce, and
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  Speaker 1: its terrible peasant hinterland. It may come about that a
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  Speaker 1: striking analogy between Saint Petersburg and Dublin will finally appear.
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  Speaker 1: So much for the Pan Slavic synthesis, it seems improbable
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  Speaker 1: that it can prevail against the forces that make for
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  Speaker 1: the linguistic and economic annexation of the greater part of
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  Speaker 1: European Russia and of the minor Slavonic masses to the
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  Speaker 1: great western European urban region. The political center of gravity
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  Speaker 1: of Russia, in its resistance to these economic movements, is
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  Speaker 1: palpably shifting eastward even today, but that carries it away
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  Speaker 1: from the central European synthesis only towards the vastly more
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  Speaker 1: enormous attracting center of China. Politically, the Russian government may
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  Speaker 1: come to dominate China in the coming decades, but the
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  Speaker 1: reality beneath any such formal predominance will be the absorption
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  Speaker 1: of Russia beyond the range of the European poll by
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  Speaker 1: the synthesis of Eastern Asia. Neither the Russian literature, nor
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  Speaker 1: the Russian language and writing, nor the Russian civilization as
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  Speaker 1: a whole have the qualities to make them irresistible to
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  Speaker 1: the energetic and intelligent millions of the far East. The
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  Speaker 1: chances seem altogether against the existence of a great Slavonic
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  Speaker 1: power in the world at the beginning of the twenty
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  Speaker 1: first century. They seem at first glance to lie just
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  Speaker 1: as heavily in favor of an aggressive Pan Germanic power
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  Speaker 1: struggling towards a great and commanding position athwart Central Europe
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  Speaker 1: and Western Asia, and turning itself at last upon the
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  Speaker 1: defeated Slavonic disorder. There can be no doubt that at
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  Speaker 1: present the Germans, with the doubtful exception of the United States,
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  Speaker 1: have the most efficient middle class in the world. Their
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  Speaker 1: rapid economic progress is to a very large extent, indeed
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  Speaker 1: a triumph of intelligence, and their political and probably their
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  Speaker 1: military and naval services are still conducted with a capacity
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  Speaker 1: and breadth of view that find no parallel in the world.
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  Speaker 1: The very efficiency of the German as a German today,
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  Speaker 1: and the habits and traditions of victory he has accumulated
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  Speaker 1: for nearly forty years, may prove in the end a
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  Speaker 1: very doubtful blessing to Europe as a whole, or even
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  Speaker 1: to his own grandchildren. Geographical contours, economic forces, the trend
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  Speaker 1: of invention and social development point to a unification of
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  Speaker 1: all Western Europe, but they certainly do not point to
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  Speaker 1: its Germanization. I have already given reasons for anticipating that
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  Speaker 1: the French language may not only hold its own, but
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  Speaker 1: prevail against German in Western Europe. And there are certain
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  Speaker 1: other obstacles in the way even of the union of
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  Speaker 1: indisputable Germans. One element in Germany's present efficiency must become
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  Speaker 1: more and more of an encumbrance as the years pass.
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  Speaker 1: The Germanic idea is deeply interwoven with the traditional empire
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  Speaker 1: and with the martinet methods of the Prussian monarchy. The
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  Speaker 1: intellectual development of the Germans is defined to a very
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  Speaker 1: large extent by a court directed officialdom. In many things,
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  Speaker 1: that court is still inspired by the nobles traditions of
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  Speaker 1: education and discipline that come from the days of German adversity,
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  Speaker 1: and the predominance of the imperial will does no doubt
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  Speaker 1: give a unity of purpose to German policy and action
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  Speaker 1: that adds greatly to its efficacy. But for a capable ruler,
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  Speaker 1: even more than for a radiantly stupid monarch, the price
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  Speaker 1: a nation must finally pay is heavy. Most energetic and
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  Speaker 1: capable people are a little intolerant of unsympathetic capacity, are
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  Speaker 1: apt on the underside of their egotism to be jealous, assertive,
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  Speaker 1: and aggressive. In the present Empire of Germany, there are
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  Speaker 1: no other great figures to balance the imperial personage, and
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  Speaker 1: I do not see how other great figures are likely
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  Speaker 1: to arise. A great number of fine and capable persons
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  Speaker 1: must be failing to develop, failing to tell under the
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  Speaker 1: shadow of this too prepotent monarchy. There are certain limiting
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  Speaker 1: restrictions imposed upon Germans through the imperial activity that must
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  Speaker 1: finally be bad for the intellectual atmosphere, which is Germany's
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  Speaker 1: ultimate strength. For example, the Emperor professes a violent and
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  Speaker 1: grotesque Christianity with which a ferocious pro teutonic father and
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  Speaker 1: a negligible son, and the public mind is warped into
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  Speaker 1: conformity with the finally impossible cant of this eccentric creed.
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  Speaker 1: His Imperial Majesty's disposition to regard criticism as hostility stifles
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  Speaker 1: the public thought of Germany. He interferes in university affairs
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  Speaker 1: and in literary and artistic matters with a quite remarkable
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  Speaker 1: confidence and incalculable consequences. The inertia of a century carries
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  Speaker 1: him and his Germany onward from success to success. But
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  Speaker 1: for all that, one may doubt whether the extraordinary intellectuality
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  Speaker 1: that distinguished the German atmosphere in the early years of
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  Speaker 1: the century, and in which such men as Blumenthal and
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  Speaker 1: Moltke grew to greatness, in which Germany grew to greatness,
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  Speaker 1: is not steadily fading in the heat and blaze of
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  Speaker 1: the Imperial sunshine. Discipline and education have carried Germany far.
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  Speaker 1: They are essential things, but an equally essential need for
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  Speaker 1: the coming time is a free play for men of
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  Speaker 1: initiative and imagination. Is Germany to her utmost possibility making
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  Speaker 1: capable men? That, after all is the vital question, and
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  Speaker 1: not whether her policy is wise or foolish, or her
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  Speaker 1: commercial development inflated or sound, Or is Germany doing no
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  Speaker 1: more than cash the promises of those earlier days. After all,
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  Speaker 1: I do not see that she is in a greatly
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  Speaker 1: stronger position than was France in the early sixties, And indeed,
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  Speaker 1: in many respects her present predominance is curiously analogous to
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  Speaker 1: that of the French Empire in those years. Death at
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  Speaker 1: any time may end the career of the present ruler
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  Speaker 1: of Germany. There is no certain insurance of one single life.
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  Speaker 1: This withdrawal would leave Germany organized entirely with reference to
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  Speaker 1: a court, and there is no trustworthy guarantee that the
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  Speaker 1: succeeding royal personality may not be something infinitely more vain
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  Speaker 1: and aggressive, or something weakly self indulgent or unpatriotic and
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  Speaker 1: morally indifferent. Much has been done in the past of Germany,
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  Speaker 1: the infinitely less exacting past, by means of the Tutor,
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  Speaker 1: the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, the wide seeing power beyond the throne,
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  Speaker 1: who very unselfishly intrigued his monarch in the way that
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  Speaker 1: he should go. But that sort of thing is remarkably
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  Speaker 1: like writing a letter by means of a pen held
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  Speaker 1: in lazy tongs instead of the hand. A very easily
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  Speaker 1: imagined series of accidents may place the destinies of Germany
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  Speaker 1: in such lazy tongues again, when that occasion comes, will
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  Speaker 1: the new class of capable men on which we have
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  Speaker 1: convinced ourselves in these anticipations. The future depends will it
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  Speaker 1: be ready for its enlarged responsibilities, or will the flower
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  Speaker 1: of its possible members be in prison for Les majeste
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  Speaker 1: or naturalized Englishmen or naturalized Americans, or troublesome privates under
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  Speaker 1: officers of indisputably aristocratic birth, or well broken labourers one
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  Speaker 1: back to the land under the auspices of an agrarian league.
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  Speaker 1: In another way, the intensely monarchical and aristocratic organization of
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  Speaker 1: the German Empire will stand in the way of the
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  Speaker 1: political synthesis of Greater Germany. Indispensable factors in that synthesis
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  Speaker 1: will be Holland and Switzerland, little advantageously situated peoples saturated
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  Speaker 1: with ideas of personal freedom. One can imagine a German
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  Speaker 1: Swiss at any rate merging himself in a great pan
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  Speaker 1: Germanic republican state. But to bow the knee to the
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  Speaker 1: luridly decorated god of his Imperial Majesty's fathers will be
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  Speaker 1: an altogether more difficult exploit for a self respecting man. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: before Germany can unify to the east, she must fight
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  Speaker 1: the Russian, and to unify to the west, she must
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  Speaker 1: fight the French and perhaps the English, and she may
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  Speaker 1: have to fight a combination of these powers. I think
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  Speaker 1: the military strength of France is enormously underrated. Upon this matter.
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  Speaker 1: M Bloch should be read Indisputably, the French were beaten
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy. Indisputably they have fallen behind in their
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  Speaker 1: long struggle to maintain themselves equal with the English on
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  Speaker 1: the sea. But neither of these things efface the future
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  Speaker 1: for the French. The disasters of eighteen seventy were probably
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  Speaker 1: of the utmost benefit to the altogether too sanguine French imagination.
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  Speaker 1: They cleared the French mind of the delusion that personal
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  Speaker 1: imperialism is the way to do the desirable thing, a
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  Speaker 1: delusion many Germans, and it would seem a few queer
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  Speaker 1: Englishmen and still queerer Americans entertain. The French have done
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  Speaker 1: much to demonstrate the possibility of a stable military republic.
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  Speaker 1: They have disposed of crown and court and held themselves
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  Speaker 1: in order for thirty good years. They have dissociated their
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  Speaker 1: national life from any form of religious profession. They have
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  Speaker 1: contrived a freedom of thought and writing that, in spite
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  Speaker 1: of much conceit to the contrary, is quite impossible among
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  Speaker 1: the English speaking peoples. I find no reason to doubt
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  Speaker 1: the implication of m. Bloch that on land today the
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  Speaker 1: French are relatively far stronger than they were in eighteen seventy,
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  Speaker 1: that the evolution of military expedients has been all in
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  Speaker 1: favor of the French character and intelligence, and that even
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  Speaker 1: a single handed war between France and Germany today might
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  Speaker 1: have a very different issue from that former struggle. In
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  Speaker 1: such a conflict, it will be Germany and not France
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  Speaker 1: that will have pawned her strength to the English speaking
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  Speaker 1: peoples on the high seas, and France will not fight alone.
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  Speaker 1: She will fight for Switzerland, or Luxembourg or the mouth
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  Speaker 1: of the Rhine. She will fight with the gravity of
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  Speaker 1: remembered humiliations, with the whole awakened slav Race at the
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  Speaker 1: back of her antagonist, and very probably with the support
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  Speaker 1: of the English speaking peoples. It must be pointed out
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  Speaker 1: how strong seems the tendency of the German Empire to
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: repeat the history of Holland upon a larger scale. While
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  Speaker 1: the Dutch poured out all their strength upon the seas
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  Speaker 1: in a conflict with the English that at the utmost
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  Speaker 1: could give them only trade, they let the possibilities of
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  Speaker 1: a great Low German synthesis pass utterly out of being.
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  Speaker 1: In those days Low Germany stretched to Aras and Duet.
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  Speaker 1: They positively dragged the English into the number of their enemies.
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  Speaker 1: And today the Germans invade the sea with threat and
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  Speaker 1: intention that will certainly create a countervailing American navy, fundamentally
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  Speaker 1: modify the policy of Great Britain such as it is,
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  Speaker 1: and very possibly go far to effect the synthesis of
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  Speaker 1: the English speaking peoples so involved. I do not see
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  Speaker 1: that the existing Germanic synthesis is likely to prevail in
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  Speaker 1: the close economic unity the urban region that will arise
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  Speaker 1: in Western I imagine that the German Empire, that is
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  Speaker 1: the organized expression of German aggression today, will either be
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  Speaker 1: shattered or weakened to the pitch of great compromises by
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  Speaker 1: a series of wars by land and sea. It will
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  Speaker 1: be forced to develop the autonomy of its rational middle
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  Speaker 1: class in the struggles that will render these compromises possible,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and it will be finally not imperial German ideas, but
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Central European ideas, possibly more akin to Swiss conceptions, a
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: civilized republicanism, finding its clearest expression in the French language,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: that will be established upon a bilingual basis throughout Western
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Europe and increasingly predominant over the whole European mainland and
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the Mediterranean Basin. As the twentieth century closes, the splendid
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: dream of a federal Europe which opened the nineteenth century
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: for France, may perhaps, after all, come to something like
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: realization at the opening of the twenty first. But just
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: how long these things take, just how easily or violently
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: they are brought about, depends, after all entirely upon the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: rise in general intelligence in Europe. An ignorant, a merely trained,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: or a merely cultured people will not understand These coalescences,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: will fondle old animosities and stage hatreds. And for such
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a people there must needs be disaster, forcible conformities and war.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Europe will have her Irelands as well as her Scotland's,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: her Irelands of unforgettable wrongs, kicking, squalling, bawling, most desolatingly
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: for nothing that anyone can understand. There will be great
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: scope for the shareholding dilettante, great opportunities for literary quacks
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: in national movements, language leagues, picturesque plotting, and the invention
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: of such national costumes as the world has never seen.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: The cry of the little Nations will go up to Heaven,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: asserting the inalienable right of all little nations to sit
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: down firmly in the middle of the high road, in
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the midst of the thickening traffic, and with all their
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: dear little toys about them, play and play just as
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: they used to play before the road had come. End
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of Chapter eight a