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Anticipations Chapter 6 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter six 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. Recording
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Speaker 1: by Christopher Taylor Anticipations by H. G. Wells, Chapter six B.
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Speaker 1: Such adventures may rescue pride and honor, may cause momentary
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Speaker 1: dismay in the victor in palliate disaster, but they will
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Speaker 1: not turn back the advance of the victors, or twist
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Speaker 1: inferiority and to victory. Presently, the advance will resume. With
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Speaker 1: that advance, the phase of indecisive contests will have ended,
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Speaker 1: and the second phase of the new war, the business
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Speaker 1: of forcing submission, will begin. This should be more easy
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Speaker 1: in the future, even than it has proved in the past,
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Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that central governments are now
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Speaker 1: elusive and small bodies of rifle armed guerrillas far more
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Speaker 1: formidable than ever before. It will probably be brought about
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Speaker 1: in the civilized country by the seizure of the vital
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Speaker 1: opurt sparatus of the urban regions, the water supply, the
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Speaker 1: generating stations for electricity, which will supply all the heat
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Speaker 1: and warmth of the land and the chief ways used
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Speaker 1: in food distribution. Through these expedients, even while the former
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Speaker 1: war is still in progress, an irresistible pressure upon the
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Speaker 1: local population will be possible, and it will be easy
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Speaker 1: to subjugate or to create a fresh local authorities who
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Speaker 1: will secure the invader from any danger of a guerrilla
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Speaker 1: warfare upon his rear. Through that sort of an expedient,
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Speaker 1: an even very obdurate loser will be got down to
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Speaker 1: submission area by area, with the destruction of its military
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Speaker 1: apparatus and the prospective loss of its water and food supply. However,
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Speaker 1: the defeated civilized state will probably be willing to seek
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Speaker 1: terms as a whole and bring the war to a
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Speaker 1: formal close. In cases where instead of contiguous frontiers, the
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Speaker 1: combatants are separated by the sea, the aerial struggle will
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Speaker 1: probably be preceded or accompanied by a struggle for the
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Speaker 1: command of the sea. Of this warfare, there been many
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Speaker 1: forecasts in this as in all the warfare of the
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Speaker 1: coming time, Imaginative foresight, a perpetual alteration of tactics, a
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Speaker 1: perpetual production of unanticipated devices will count enormously. Other things
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Speaker 1: being equal, victory will rest with the force mentally most active.
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Speaker 1: What type of ship may chance to be prevalent when
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Speaker 1: the great naval wars comes is hard guessing, But I
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Speaker 1: incline to think that the naval architects of the ablest
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Speaker 1: peoples will concentrate more and more upon speed, and upon
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Speaker 1: range and penetration, and above all upon precision of fire.
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Speaker 1: I seem to see a light type of ironclad, armored
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Speaker 1: thickly only over its engines and magazines, murderously equipped, and
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Speaker 1: with ram as alert and deadly as a striking snake.
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Speaker 1: In the battles of the open She will have little
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Speaker 1: to fear from the slow, fumbling treacheries of the submarine.
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Speaker 1: She will take as little heed of the chance of
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Speaker 1: a torpedo as a barefooted man in battle does of
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Speaker 1: the chance of a fallen dagger in his path. Unless
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Speaker 1: I know nothing of my own blood. The English and
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Speaker 1: Americans will prefer to catch their enemies in ugly weather
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Speaker 1: or at night, and then they will fight to ram.
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Speaker 1: The struggle on the high seas between any two naval powers,
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Speaker 1: except perhaps the English and American, who have both quite
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Speaker 1: unparalleled opportunities for coaling, will not last more than a
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Speaker 1: week or so, when or other force will be destroyed
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Speaker 1: at sea, driven into its ports and blockaded there, or
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Speaker 1: cut off from its supply of coal or other force generator,
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Speaker 1: and hunted down to fight or surrender. An inferior fleet
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Speaker 1: that tries to keep elusively at sea will always find
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Speaker 1: a superior fleet between itself and coal, and will either
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Speaker 1: have to fight at once or be shot into surrender
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Speaker 1: as it lies helpless on the water. Some commerce destroying
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Speaker 1: enterprise on the part of the loser may go on,
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Speaker 1: but I think the possibilities of that sort of thing
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Speaker 1: are greatly exaggerated. The world grows smaller and smaller, the
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Speaker 1: telegraph and telephone go everywhere, wireless telegraphy opens wider and
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Speaker 1: wider possibilities to the imagination. And how the commerce destroyer
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Speaker 1: is to go on for long without being marked down,
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Speaker 1: headed off, cut off from coal, and forced to fight
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Speaker 1: or surrender, I do not see. The commerce destroyer will
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Speaker 1: have a very short run. It will have to be
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Speaker 1: an exceptionally good and costly ship in the first place,
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Speaker 1: it will be finally sunk or captured, And altogether I
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Speaker 1: do not see how that sort of thing will pay
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Speaker 1: when once the command of the sea is assured a
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Speaker 1: few weeks, will carry the effective frontier of the stronger
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Speaker 1: power up to the coastline of the weaker, and permit
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Speaker 1: the secure resumption of the oversea trade of the former,
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Speaker 1: and then will open a second phase of naval warfare
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Speaker 1: in which the submarine may play a larger part. I
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Speaker 1: must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring,
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Speaker 1: refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but
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Speaker 1: suffocate its crew and founder at sea. It must involve
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Speaker 1: physical inconvenience of the most demoralizing sort. Simply to be
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Speaker 1: in one for any length of time. A first rate
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Speaker 1: man who has been breathing carbonic acid and oil vapor
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Speaker 1: under a pressure of four atmospheres becomes presently a second
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Speaker 1: rate man. Imagine yourself in a submarine that has ventured
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Speaker 1: a few miles out of port. Imagine that you have
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Speaker 1: a headache nausea, and that some ship of the cobra
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Speaker 1: type is flashing itself and its searchlights about whenever you
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Speaker 1: come up to the surface, and promptly tearing down on
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Speaker 1: your descending bubbles with a ram trailing, perhaps a tail
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Speaker 1: of grapples or a net as well. Even if you
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Speaker 1: get their boat, these nicely aerated men you are fighting
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Speaker 1: know they have a four to one chance of living,
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Speaker 1: while for your submarine to be got is certain death.
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Speaker 1: You may, of course throw out a torpedo or so
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Speaker 1: with as much chance of hitting vitally as you would
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Speaker 1: have if you were blindfolded, turn round three times and
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Speaker 1: told the fire revolver shots at a charging elephant. The
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Speaker 1: possibility of sweeping for a submarine with a sane would
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Speaker 1: be vividly present in the minds of a submarine crew.
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Speaker 1: If you are near shore, you will probably be near rocks,
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Speaker 1: an unpleasant complication. In a hurry dive, there would probably
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Speaker 1: very soon be boats out too, seeking with a machine
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Speaker 1: gun or pom pom for a chance that your occasionally
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Speaker 1: emergent conning tower. In no way can a submarine be
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Speaker 1: more than purblind. It will be, in fact practically blind.
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Speaker 1: Given a derelict ironclad on a still night within sight
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Speaker 1: of land, a carefully handled submarine might succeed in groping
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Speaker 1: its way to it and destroying it. But then it
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Speaker 1: would be much better to attack such a vessel and
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Speaker 1: capture it boldly, with a few desperate men on a tug.
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Speaker 1: At the utmost, the submarine will be used in narrow waters,
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Speaker 1: in rivers, or to fluster or destroy ships in harbor,
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Speaker 1: or with poor spirited crews. That is to say, it
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Speaker 1: will simply be an added power in the hands of
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Speaker 1: the nation that is predominant at sea, and even then
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Speaker 1: it can be merely destructive. While a sane and high
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Speaker 1: spirited fighter will always be dissatisfied if with an indisputable
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Speaker 1: superiority of force he fails to take foot note. A
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Speaker 1: curious result might very possibly follow a success of submarines
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Speaker 1: on the part of a naval power. Finally found to
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Speaker 1: be weaker and defeated. The Victoria's power might decide that
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Speaker 1: a narrow sea was no longer under the new conditions
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Speaker 1: a comfortable boundary line, and might insist on marking its
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Speaker 1: boundaries along the high water mark of its adversaries adjacent
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Speaker 1: coasts end footnote No, the naval warfare of the future
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Speaker 1: is for light, swift ships, almost recklessly, not defensive, and
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Speaker 1: with splendid guns and gunners. They will hit hard and
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Speaker 1: ram and warfare which is taken to cover on land
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Speaker 1: will abandon it at sea, and the captain and the
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Speaker 1: engineer and the gunner will have to be all of
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Speaker 1: the same sort of men, capable headlong, men with brains
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Speaker 1: and no ascertainable social position. They will differ from the
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Speaker 1: officers of the British Navy in the fact that the
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Speaker 1: whole male sex of the nation will have been ransacked
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Speaker 1: to get them. The incredible stupidity that closes all but
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Speaker 1: a menial position in the British Navy to the sons
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Speaker 1: of those who cannot afford to pay a hundred a
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Speaker 1: year for them for some years necessarily brings the individual
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Speaker 1: quality of the British naval officer below the highest possible.
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Speaker 1: Quite apart from the deficiencies that must exist on account
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Speaker 1: of the badness of secondary education in England, the British
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Speaker 1: naval officer and engineer are not made the best of
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Speaker 1: good as they are. Indisputably, they might be infinitely better,
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Speaker 1: both in quality and training. The smaller German Navy, probably
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Speaker 1: as an ampler pick of men, relatively, is far better educated,
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Speaker 1: less confident, and more strenuous. But the abstract navy I
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Speaker 1: am here writing of will be superior to either of these, and,
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Speaker 1: like the American in the absence of any distinction between
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Speaker 1: officers and engineers, the officer will be an engineer the
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Speaker 1: military advantages of the command of the sea will probably
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Speaker 1: be greater in the future than they have been in
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Speaker 1: the past. A fleet with aerial supports would be able
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Speaker 1: to descend upon any portion of the adversary's coast to chose,
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Speaker 1: and to dominate the country inland for several miles with
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Speaker 1: its gunfire. All the enemy's seacoast towns would be at
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Speaker 1: its mercy. It would be able to effect landing and
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Speaker 1: send raids of cyclist marksmen inland whenever a weak point
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Speaker 1: was discovered. Landings will be enormously easier than they have
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Speaker 1: ever been before. Once a wedge of marksmen has been
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Speaker 1: driven inland, they would have all the military advantages of
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Speaker 1: the defense. When it came to eject them, they might,
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Speaker 1: for example, encircle and block some fortified post and force
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Speaker 1: costly and disastrous attempts to relieve it. The defensive country
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Speaker 1: would stand at bay, tethered against any effective counter blow,
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Speaker 1: keeping guns, supplies, and men in perpetual and distressing movement
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Speaker 1: to and fro along its sea frontiers. Its soldiers would
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Speaker 1: get uncertain rest, irregular feeding, unhealthy conditions of all sorts,
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Speaker 1: and hastily made camps. The attacking fleet would divide and reunite,
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Speaker 1: break up, and vanish amazingly reappear. The longer the defender's coasts,
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Speaker 1: the more wretched his lot. Never before in the world's
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Speaker 1: history was the command of the sea worth what it
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Speaker 1: is now. But the command of the sea is, after all,
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Speaker 1: like military predominance on land, to be insured only by
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Speaker 1: superiority of equipment in the hands of a certain type
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Speaker 1: of man, a type of man that it becomes more
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Speaker 1: and more impossible to improvise, that a country must live
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Speaker 1: for through many years, and that no country on Earth
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Speaker 1: at present can be said to be doing its best
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Speaker 1: possible to make all. This elaboration of warfare lengthens the
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Speaker 1: scale between theoretical efficiency and absolute unpreparedness. There was a
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Speaker 1: time when any tribe that had men and spears was
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Speaker 1: ready for war, and any tribe that had some cunning
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Speaker 1: or emotion at command might hope to discount any little
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Speaker 1: disparity in numbers between itself and its neighbor. Luck and stubbornness,
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Speaker 1: and the incalculable counted for much. It was half the
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Speaker 1: battle not to know you were beaten. And it is
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Speaker 1: so still even today. A great nation, it seems, may
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Speaker 1: still make its army the plaything of its gentlefolk, a
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Speaker 1: bandon and important military appointments, to feminine intrigue and trust,
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Speaker 1: cheerfully to the homesickness and essential modesty of its influential people,
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Speaker 1: and the simpler patriotism of its colonial dependencies. When it
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Speaker 1: comes at last to the bloody and wearisome business of
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Speaker 1: meddling through. But these days of the happy, go lucky
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Speaker 1: optimist are near their end. War is being drawn into
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Speaker 1: the field of exact sciences. Every additional weapon, every new
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Speaker 1: complication of the art of war, intensifies the need of
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Speaker 1: deliberate preparation and darkens the outlook of a nation of amateurs.
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Speaker 1: Warfare in the future, on sea or land alike will
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Speaker 1: be much more one sided than it has ever been
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Speaker 1: in the past, much more of a foregone conclusion. Save
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Speaker 1: for national lunacy. It will be brought about by the
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Speaker 1: side that will win, And because that side knows that
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Speaker 1: it will win more and more, it will have the
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Speaker 1: quality of surprise, of pitiless revelation. Instead of the seesaw
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Speaker 1: the wickering interchange of battles of the old time will
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Speaker 1: come swiftly and amazingly, blow and blow and blow, no pause,
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Speaker 1: no time for recovery, disasters cumulative and irreparable. The fight
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Speaker 1: will never be in practice between equal sides, never be
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Speaker 1: that theoretical deadlock we have sketched, but a fight between
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Speaker 1: the more efficient and the less efficient, between the more
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Speaker 1: inventive and the more traditional. While the victors, disciplined and
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Speaker 1: grimly intent, full of the somber yet glorious delight of
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Speaker 1: a great thing well done, will, without shouting or confusion,
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Speaker 1: be fighting like one great national body. The losers will
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Speaker 1: be taking that pitiless exposure of the helplessness in such
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Speaker 1: manner as their natural culture and character may determine. War
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Speaker 1: for the losing side will be an unspeakable, pitiable business.
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Speaker 1: There will be, first of all the coming of the war,
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Speaker 1: the wave of excitement, the belligerent shouting of the unemployed, inefficients,
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Speaker 1: the flag waving, the secret doubts, the eagerness for hopeful news,
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Speaker 1: the impatience of the warning voice. I seem to see,
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Speaker 1: almost as if he were symbolic, the gray old general,
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Speaker 1: the general who learnt his art of war away in
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Speaker 1: the vanished nineteenth century, the altogether too elderly general, with
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Speaker 1: his apaulets and decorations, his uniform that has still its
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Speaker 1: historical value, his spurs and his sword, riding along on
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Speaker 1: his obsolete horse by the side of his doomed column.
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Speaker 1: Above all things, he is a gentleman, and the column
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Speaker 1: looks at him lovingly with its countless boys's faces. And
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Speaker 1: the boy's eyes are infinitely trustful, for he has won
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Speaker 1: battles in the old time. They will believe in him
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Speaker 1: to the end. They have been brought up in their
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Speaker 1: schools to believe in him in his class. Their mothers
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Speaker 1: have mingled respect for the gentlefolk with the simple doctrines
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Speaker 1: of their faith. Their first lesson on entering the army
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Speaker 1: was the salute. The smart helmets his majesty or some
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Speaker 1: such unqualified person chose for them lie hotly on their
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Speaker 1: young brows, and over their shoulders slope their obsolete, carelessly
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Speaker 1: sighted guns. Tramp tramp. They march, doing what they have
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Speaker 1: been told to do, incapable of doing anything they have
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Speaker 1: not been told to do, trustful and pitiful, marching to
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Speaker 1: wounds and disease, hunger, hardship, and death. They know nothing
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Speaker 1: of what they are going to meet, nothing of what
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Speaker 1: they will have to do. Religion and the ratepayer and
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Speaker 1: the rights of the parent, working through the instrumentality of
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Speaker 1: the best club in the world, have kept their souls
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Speaker 1: and minds, if not untainted, at least only harmlessly veneered
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Speaker 1: with the thinnest sham of training or knowledge. Tramp, tramp
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Speaker 1: they go, boys who will never be men, rejoicing patriotically
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Speaker 1: in the nation that has thus sent them forth, badly armed,
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Speaker 1: badly clothed, badly led to be killed in some avoidable
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Speaker 1: quarrel by men unseen and beside them, an absolute stranger
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Speaker 1: to them, a stranger even inhabits a speech and thought,
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Speaker 1: and at any rate to be shot with them fairly
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Speaker 1: and squarely, marches the subaltern, the son of the school
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Speaker 1: working shareholding class, a slightly taller sort of boy, as
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Speaker 1: ill taught as they are, and all that concerns the
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Speaker 1: realities of life, Ignorant of how to get food, how
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Speaker 1: to get water, how to keep fever down and strength up,
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Speaker 1: Ignorant of his practical equality with the men beside him,
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Speaker 1: carefully trained under the clerical headmaster to use a crib,
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Speaker 1: play cricket rather nicely, look all right whatever happens, believe
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Speaker 1: in his gentility, and avoid talking shop. The major you see,
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Speaker 1: is a man of the world, and very pleasantly meets
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Speaker 1: the Gray general's eye. He is, one may remark, by
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Speaker 1: the way, something of an army reformer, without offense, of course,
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Speaker 1: to the court people or the government people. His prospects,
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Speaker 1: if if only he were not going to be shot,
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Speaker 1: are brilliant enough. He has written quite cleverly on the
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Speaker 1: question of recruiting, and advocated as much as two pence
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Speaker 1: more a day and billiard rooms under the chaplain's control.
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Speaker 1: He has invented a military bicycle with a will of
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Speaker 1: solid iron that can be used as a shield, and
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Speaker 1: a war correspondent. And indeed, anyone who writes even the
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Speaker 1: most casual and irresponsible article on military questions is a
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Speaker 1: person worth his cultivating. He is the very life and
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Speaker 1: soul of army reform, as it is known to the
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Speaker 1: governments of the Gray, that is to say, army reform
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Speaker 1: without a single step towards a social revolution. So the
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Speaker 1: gentlemanly old general, the polished drover to the shambles, rides
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Speaker 1: and is doomed to call in march by. In this
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Speaker 1: vision that haunts my mind, I cannot foresee what such
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Speaker 1: a force will even attempt to do. Against modern weapons,
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Speaker 1: nothing can happen but the needless and most wasteful for
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Speaker 1: killing of these poor lads who make up the infantry
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Speaker 1: battalions the main mass of all the European armies of
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Speaker 1: to day. Whenever they come against a sanely organized army,
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Speaker 1: there is nowhere they can come in. There is nothing
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Speaker 1: they can do. The scattered, invisible marksmen with their supporting
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Speaker 1: guns will shatter their masses, pick them off individually, cover
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Speaker 1: their line of retreat, and force them into wholesale surrenders.
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Speaker 1: It will be more like herding sheep than actual fighting.
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Speaker 1: Yet the bitterest and cruelest things will have to happen.
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Speaker 1: Thousands and thousands of poor boys will be smashed in
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Speaker 1: all sorts of dreadful ways, given over to every conceivable
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Speaker 1: form of avoidable hardship and painful disease. Before the obvious
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Speaker 1: fact that war is no longer a business for half
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Speaker 1: trained lads in uniform led by parson bread six form
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Speaker 1: boys and men of pleasure and old men, but an
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Speaker 1: exhaustive demand upon very carefully educated adults, for the most
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Speaker 1: strenuous best that is in them will get its practical recognition. Footnote.
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Speaker 1: There comes to hand as I correct these proofs a
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Speaker 1: very typical illustration of the atmosphere of really almost imbecile
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Speaker 1: patronage in which the British private soldier lives. It is
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Speaker 1: a circular from someone at Lydd, someone who evidently cannot
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Speaker 1: even write English, but who is nevertheless begging for an
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Speaker 1: iron hut in which to inflict lessons on our soldiers
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Speaker 1: at present, says this circular. It is pretty to see
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Speaker 1: in the home a group of gunners busily occupied in
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Speaker 1: wool work or learning basket making, whilst one of their
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Speaker 1: number scenes or recites, and others are playing games or
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Speaker 1: letter writing. But even quite recently the members of the
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Speaker 1: Bible Reading Union and one of the ladies might have
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Speaker 1: been seen painfully crowded behind screens, choosing the Golden Text
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Speaker 1: with lowered voices and trying to pray without distraction, whilst
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Speaker 1: at the other end of the room men were having supper,
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Speaker 1: and half way down a dozen Irish militia who don't
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Speaker 1: care to read but our Quina's story, were gathered round
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Speaker 1: another lady who was telling them an amusing temperance tale,
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Speaker 1: trying to speak so that the Bible readers should not
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Speaker 1: hear her, and yet the linstures should was a difficulty,
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Speaker 1: But when the irishmen begged for a song, difficulty became
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Speaker 1: impossibility and their friend had to say no. Yet this
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Speaker 1: is just the double work required in soldiers' homes, and
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Speaker 1: above all at Lydd, where there is so little safe
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Speaker 1: amusement to be had in camp and none in the village.
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Speaker 1: These poor youngsters go from this safe amusement under the
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Speaker 1: loving care of lady workers, this life of limitation. Make
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Speaker 1: believe in spiritual servitude that a self respecting negro would
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Speaker 1: find intolerable into a warfare that exacts initiative and a
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Speaker 1: freely acting intelligence from all who take part in it
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Speaker 1: under the bitterest penalties of shame and death? What can
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Speaker 1: you expect of them? And how can you expect any
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Speaker 1: men of capacity and energy, any men even of mediocre
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Speaker 1: self respect, to knowingly place themselves under the tutelage of
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Speaker 1: the sort people who dominate these organized degradations. I am
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Speaker 1: amazed the army gets so many capable recruits as it does.
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Speaker 1: And while the private lives under these conditions, there would
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Speaker 1: be capable officers stifles amidst equally impossible surroundings. He must
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Speaker 1: associate with the uneducated products of the public schools and
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Speaker 1: listen to their chatter about the sports that delight them.
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Speaker 1: Suffer social indignities from the army. Women worry and waste
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Speaker 1: money on needless clothes, and expect to end by being
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Speaker 1: shamed or killed by some unfairly promoted incapable. Nothing illustrates
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Speaker 1: the intellectual blankness of the British Army better than its
20:35
Speaker 1: absolute dearth of military literature. No one would dream of
20:38
Speaker 1: gaining any profit by writing or publishing a book upon
20:41
Speaker 1: such a subject, for example, as mountain warfare in England,
20:45
Speaker 1: because not a dozen British officers would have the sense
20:47
Speaker 1: to buy such a book. And yet the British Army
20:50
Speaker 1: is continually getting into scrapes and mountain districts. A few
20:53
Speaker 1: unselfish men like Major Peach find time to write an
20:56
Speaker 1: essay or so, and that is all. On the other hand,
20:59
Speaker 1: I find no less than five works in French on
21:02
Speaker 1: this subject in M. M. Shapleton Sea's list alone on
21:06
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare again and after two years of South Africa.
21:09
Speaker 1: While there is nothing in English but some scattered papers
21:12
Speaker 1: by doctor T. Miller Maguire, there are nearly a dozen
21:15
Speaker 1: good books in French. As a supplement to these facts
21:18
Speaker 1: is the spectacle of the officers of the Guards telegraphing
21:21
Speaker 1: to Sir Thomas Lipton on the occasion of the defeat
21:24
Speaker 1: of his Shamrock two hard luck, be of good cheer.
21:28
Speaker 1: Brigade of Guards, wish you every success. This is not
21:32
Speaker 1: the foolish enthusiasm of one or two subalterns. It is collective.
21:36
Speaker 1: They followed that yacht race with emotion is a really
21:40
Speaker 1: important thing to them, No doubt, the whole mess was
21:43
Speaker 1: in a state of extreme excitement. How can capable and
21:47
Speaker 1: active men be expected to live and work between this
21:49
Speaker 1: upper and that nether millstone? The British Army not only
21:53
Speaker 1: does not attract ambitious, energetic men, it repels them. I
21:57
Speaker 1: must confess that I see no hope I've are in
22:00
Speaker 1: the rulers, the traditions, or the manhood of the British
22:03
Speaker 1: Regular Army. The forecasts escaped from the bog of ignorance
22:06
Speaker 1: and negligence in which it wallows far better than any
22:10
Speaker 1: of projected reforms. Would it be to let the existing
22:12
Speaker 1: army severely alone, to cease to recruit, for it to
22:16
Speaker 1: retain at the expense of its officers, assisted perhaps by
22:20
Speaker 1: subscriptions from Ascendant to people like Sir Thomas Slipton, its messes,
22:25
Speaker 1: its uniforms, its games, bans, entertainments and splendid memories, as
22:31
Speaker 1: an appendage of the court, and to create, in absolute
22:34
Speaker 1: independence of it, battalions and batteries of efficient professional soldiers
22:38
Speaker 1: without social prestige or social distinctions, without bands, dress, uniforms, colors, chaplains,
22:45
Speaker 1: or honorary colonels, and to embody these as a real
22:48
Speaker 1: marching army perpetually en route throughout the Empire, a reading, thinking,
22:53
Speaker 1: experimenting army under an absolutely distinct war office, with its
22:57
Speaker 1: own colleges, depots, and trains, many camps, perpetually ready for war.
23:02
Speaker 1: I cannot help but think that if a hint were
23:05
Speaker 1: taken from the Turbinia Syndicate, a few enterprising persons of
23:09
Speaker 1: means and intelligence might do much by private experiment to
23:13
Speaker 1: supplement and replace the existing state of affairs end footnote. Well,
23:20
Speaker 1: in the Ampler prospect, even this haunting tragedy of innumerable
23:24
Speaker 1: avoidable deaths is but an incidental thing. They die, and
23:28
Speaker 1: their troubles are over. The larger fact, after all, is
23:31
Speaker 1: the inexorable tendency in things to make a soldier a
23:34
Speaker 1: skilled and educated man, and to link him in sympathy
23:37
Speaker 1: and organization with the engineer and the doctor, and all
23:40
Speaker 1: the continually developing mass of scientifically educated men that the
23:44
Speaker 1: advance of science and mechanism is producing. We are dealing
23:47
Speaker 1: with the interplay of two worldwide forces that work through
23:51
Speaker 1: distinctive and contrasted tendencies to a common end. We have
23:55
Speaker 1: the force of invention, insistent upon progress of the peace organization,
24:00
Speaker 1: which tends on the one hand to throw out great
24:03
Speaker 1: useless masses of people, the people of the abyss, and
24:06
Speaker 1: on the other hand, to develop a sort of adipocity
24:09
Speaker 1: of functionless wealthy, a speculative elephantiasis, and to promote the
24:14
Speaker 1: development of a new social order of efficiens, only very
24:17
Speaker 1: painfully and slowly amidst these growing and yet disintegrating masses.
24:23
Speaker 1: And on the other hand we have the warlike drift
24:25
Speaker 1: of such a social body, the inevitable intensification of international
24:28
Speaker 1: animosities in such a body, the absolute determination evident in
24:32
Speaker 1: the scheme of things to smash such a body, to
24:36
Speaker 1: smash it just as far as it is such a
24:38
Speaker 1: body under the hammer of war, that must finally bring about,
24:42
Speaker 1: rapidly and under pressure, the same result as that to
24:45
Speaker 1: which the peaceful evolution slowly tends. While we are as
24:49
Speaker 1: yet only thinking of a physiological struggle of complex reactions
24:53
Speaker 1: and slow absorptions, comes war with the surgeon's knife. War
24:57
Speaker 1: comes to simplify the issue and line out the thing
25:00
Speaker 1: with knife like cuts. The law that dominates the future
25:05
Speaker 1: is glaringly plain. A people must develop and consolidate its educated,
25:09
Speaker 1: efficient classes, or be beaten in war, and give way
25:12
Speaker 1: upon all points where its interests conflict with the interests
25:16
Speaker 1: of more capable people. It must foster and accelerate that
25:20
Speaker 1: natural segregation which has been discussed in the third and
25:23
Speaker 1: fourth chapters of these Anticipations, or perish. The war of
25:28
Speaker 1: the coming time will really be one in schools and
25:31
Speaker 1: colleges and universities wherever men write and read and talk together.
25:36
Speaker 1: The nation that produces, in the near future the largest
25:39
Speaker 1: proportional development of educated and intelligent engineers and agriculturists, of doctors,
25:45
Speaker 1: school masters, professional soldiers, and intellectually active people of all sorts.
25:51
Speaker 1: The nation that most resolutely picks over educates, sterilizes, exports,
25:57
Speaker 1: or poisons its people of the abyss. The nation that
26:00
Speaker 1: succeeds most subtly in checking gambling and the moral decay
26:04
Speaker 1: of women and homes that gambling inevitably entails. The nation that,
26:09
Speaker 1: by wise interventions, death duties, and the like, contrives to
26:13
Speaker 1: expropriate and extinguish incompetent rich families, while leaving individual ambitions free.
26:20
Speaker 1: The nation, in a word, that turns the greatest proportion
26:23
Speaker 1: of its irresponsible adapocity into social muscle will certainly be
26:27
Speaker 1: the nation that will be the most powerful in warfare
26:30
Speaker 1: as in peace, will certainly be the ascendant or dominant
26:34
Speaker 1: nation before the year two thousand. In the long run,
26:38
Speaker 1: No heroism and no accidents can alter that. No flag waving,
26:42
Speaker 1: no patriotic leagues, no visiting of essentially petty imperial personages
26:48
Speaker 1: hither and thither, no smashing of the windows of outspoken people,
26:52
Speaker 1: nor seizures of papers and books will arrest the march
26:55
Speaker 1: of national defeat. And this issue is already so plain
26:59
Speaker 1: and simple. The alternatives are becoming so piteously clear that
27:02
Speaker 1: even in the stupidest court and the stupidest constituencies, it
27:06
Speaker 1: must presently begin in some dim way to be felt.
27:09
Speaker 1: A time will come when so many people will see
27:13
Speaker 1: this issue clearly that it will gravely affect political and
27:16
Speaker 1: social life. The patriotic party, the particular gang that is
27:20
Speaker 1: of lawyers, brewers, landlords and railway directors, that wishes to
27:24
Speaker 1: be dominant, will be forced to become an efficient party,
27:28
Speaker 1: and profession at least will be forced to stimulate and
27:31
Speaker 1: organize that educational and social development that may, at last
27:35
Speaker 1: even bring patriotism under control. The rulers of the gray,
27:39
Speaker 1: the democratic politician and the democratic monarch, will be obliged
27:43
Speaker 1: year by year by the very nature of things, to
27:45
Speaker 1: promote the segregation of colors within the gray, to foster
27:49
Speaker 1: the power that will finally supersede democracy and monarchy altogether,
27:53
Speaker 1: the power of the scientifically educated, disciplined specialist, and that
27:57
Speaker 1: finally is the power of saints, the power of the
27:59
Speaker 1: thing that is provably right. It may be delayed, but
28:03
Speaker 1: it cannot be defeated. In the end, it must arrive,
28:06
Speaker 1: if not today and among our people, then tomorrow and
28:10
Speaker 1: among another people who will triumph in our overthrow. This
28:14
Speaker 1: is the lesson that must be learnt that some tongue
28:17
Speaker 1: and kindred of the coming time must inevitably learn but
28:21
Speaker 1: what tongue it will be, and what kindred that will
28:23
Speaker 1: first attain? This new development opens far more complex and
28:27
Speaker 1: far less certain issues than any we have hitherto considered.
28:32
Speaker 1: End of Chapter six B recording by Christopher Taylor