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Anticipations Chapter 5 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter five B of anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Anticipations
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  Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Chapter five B. Now, patriotism is
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  Speaker 1: not a thing that flourishes in the void. One needs
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  Speaker 1: a foreigner. A national and patriotic party is an anti
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  Speaker 1: foreign party. The altar of the modern god democracy will
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  Speaker 1: cry aloud for the stranger men. Simply to keep in power,
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  Speaker 1: and out of no love of mischief, the government of
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  Speaker 1: the party machine will have to insist upon dangers and
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  Speaker 1: national differences to keep the voter to the poll by alarms,
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  Speaker 1: seeking ever, to taint the possible nucleus of any competing
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  Speaker 1: organization with the scandal of external influence. The party press
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  Speaker 1: will play the watchdog and allay all internal dissensions with
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  Speaker 1: its warning bay at some adjacent pa and the adjacent peoples,
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  Speaker 1: for reasons to be presently expanded, will be continually more
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  Speaker 1: sensitive to such baying. Already one sees country yelping at
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  Speaker 1: country all over the modern world, not only in the
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  Speaker 1: matter of warlike issues, but with a note of quite
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  Speaker 1: furious commercial rivalry quite furious and indeed quite insane, since
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  Speaker 1: its ideal of trading enormously with absolutely ruined and tradeless foreigners,
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  Speaker 1: exporting everything and importing nothing, is obviously outside reason. Altogether,
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  Speaker 1: the inexorable doom of these governments based on the gray
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  Speaker 1: is to foster enmity between people and people even their
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  Speaker 1: alliances are but sacrifices to intenser antagonisms, and the phases
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  Speaker 1: of the democratic sequence are simple and pure. Forced on
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  Speaker 1: by a relentless competition, the tone of the outcries will
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  Speaker 1: become fiercer and fiercer, the occasions of excitement, the perilous moments,
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  Speaker 1: the ingenuities of annoyance, more and more dramatic. From the
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  Speaker 1: mere emptiness and disorder of the general mind. Jealousies and
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  Speaker 1: anti foreign enactments, tariff manipulations and commercial embitterment, destructive, foolish,
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  Speaker 1: exasperating obstructions that benefit no human being will minister to
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  Speaker 1: this craving without completely allaying it. Nearer and even nearer,
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  Speaker 1: the politicians of the coming time will force one another
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  Speaker 1: towards the verge, not because they want to go over it,
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  Speaker 1: not because anyone wants to go over it, but because
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  Speaker 1: they are by their very nature compelled to go that way,
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  Speaker 1: because to go in any other direction is to break
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  Speaker 1: up and lose power. And consequently, the final development of
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  Speaker 1: the democratic system, so far as intrinsic forces go, will
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  Speaker 1: be not the rule of the boss, nor the rule
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  Speaker 1: of the trust, nor the rule of the newspaper. No rule, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: but international rivalry, international competition, international exasperation and hostility, and
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  Speaker 1: at last, irresistible and overwhelming, the definite establishment of the
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  Speaker 1: rule of that most stern and educational of all masters. War.
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  Speaker 1: At this point there opens a tempting path, and along
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  Speaker 1: it historical precedents, like a forest of notice boards, urge
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  Speaker 1: us to go. At the end of the vista poses
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  Speaker 1: the figure of Napoleon, with Caesarism written beneath it, disregarding
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  Speaker 1: certain alien considerations for a time, assuming the free working
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  Speaker 1: out of democracy to its conclusion, we perceive that in
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  Speaker 1: the case of our generalized state, the party machine, together
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  Speaker 1: with the nation entrusted to it, must necessarily be forced
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  Speaker 1: into passionate national war. But having blundered into war, the
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  Speaker 1: party machine will have an air of having accomplished its destiny.
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  Speaker 1: A party machine or a popular government is surely as
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  Speaker 1: likely a thing to cause a big disorder of war,
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  Speaker 1: and as unlikely a thing to conduct it, as the
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  Speaker 1: wit of man will looking solely to that end, could
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  Speaker 1: ever have devised. I have already pointed out why we
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  Speaker 1: can never expect an elected government of the modern sort
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  Speaker 1: to be guided by any fire reaching designs. It is
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  Speaker 1: constructed to get office and keep office, not to do
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  Speaker 1: anything in office. The conditions of its survival are to
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  Speaker 1: keep appearances up and taxes down, and the care and
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  Speaker 1: management of army and navy is quite outside its possibilities.
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  Speaker 1: Footnote One striking illustration of the distinctive possibilities of democratic
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  Speaker 1: government came to light during the last term of offers
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  Speaker 1: for the present patriotic British government. As a demonstration of patriotism,
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  Speaker 1: large sums of money were voted annually for the purpose
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  Speaker 1: of building warships, and the patriotic common man paid the
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  Speaker 1: taxes gladly, with a dream of irresistible naval predominance to
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  Speaker 1: sweeten the payment. But the money was not spent on warships.
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  Speaker 1: Only a portion of it was spent, and the rest
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  Speaker 1: remained to make a surplice and warm the heart of
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  Speaker 1: the common man in his tawn paying capacity. This artful
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  Speaker 1: dodge was repeated for several years. The artful dodger is
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  Speaker 1: now a peer, no doubt abjectly respected, and nobody in
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  Speaker 1: the most patriotic party so far evolved is a bit
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  Speaker 1: the worse for it. In the organizing expedients of all
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  Speaker 1: popular governments, as in the prospectus of unsound companies, the
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  Speaker 1: disposition is to exaggerate the nominal capital at the expense
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  Speaker 1: of the working efficiency. Democratic armies and navies are always short,
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  Speaker 1: and probably will always be short of ammunition, paint, training,
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  Speaker 1: and reserve stores. Battalions and ships, since they counters, units
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  Speaker 1: are over numerous and go shorthanded, and democratic army reform
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  Speaker 1: almost invariably works out for some device for multiplying units
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  Speaker 1: by fission and counting men three times instead of twice
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  Speaker 1: in some ingenious and plausible way. And this must be
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  Speaker 1: so because the sort of men who come inevitably to
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  Speaker 1: power under democratic conditions are men trained, by all the
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  Speaker 1: conditions of their lives to so set appearances before realities,
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  Speaker 1: as at last to become utterly incapable of realities. End footnote.
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  Speaker 1: The military and naval professions in our typical modern state
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  Speaker 1: will subsist very largely upon tradition. The ostensible government will
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  Speaker 1: interfere with rather than direct them, and there will be
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  Speaker 1: no force in the entire scheme to check the corrupting
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  Speaker 1: influence of a long peace, to insist upon adequate exercises
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  Speaker 1: for the fighting organization, or ensure an adequate adaptation to
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  Speaker 1: the new and perpetually changing possibilities of untried apparatus. Incapable
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  Speaker 1: but confident and energetic persons having political influence will have
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  Speaker 1: been permitted to tamper with the various arms of the service.
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  Speaker 1: The equipment will be largely devised to create an impression
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  Speaker 1: of efficiency in times of peace in the minds of
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  Speaker 1: the general voting public, and the really efficient soldiers will
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  Speaker 1: either have fretted themselves out of the army or have
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  Speaker 1: been driven out as political non effectives, troublesome innovating persons
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  Speaker 1: anxious to spend money upon fads so armed. The new
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  Speaker 1: democracy will blunder into war, and the opening stage of
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  Speaker 1: the next Great war will be the catastrophic breakdown of
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  Speaker 1: the former armies, shame and disasters, and a disorder of
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  Speaker 1: conflict between more or less equally matched masses of stupefied, scared,
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  Speaker 1: and infuriated people. Just how far the thing may rise
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  Speaker 1: from the value of an alarming and edifying incident to
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  Speaker 1: a universal catastrophe depends upon the special nature of the conflict,
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  Speaker 1: but it does not alter the fact that any considerable
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  Speaker 1: war is bound to be a bitter, appalling, highly educational,
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  Speaker 1: and constitution shaking experience for the modern democratic state. Now
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  Speaker 1: foreseeing this possibility, it is easy to step into the
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  Speaker 1: trap of the Napoleonic precedent. One hastens to foretell that,
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  Speaker 1: either with the pressure of coming war or in the
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  Speaker 1: hour of defeat, there will arise the man. He will
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  Speaker 1: be strong in action, epigrammatic in manner, personally handsome, and
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  Speaker 1: continually victorious. He will sweep aside parliaments and demagogues, carry
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  Speaker 1: the nation to glory, reconstructed as an empire, and hold
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  Speaker 1: it together by circulating his profile and organizing further successes.
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  Speaker 1: He will i gather this from chance, lights upon contemporary anticipations,
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  Speaker 1: codify everything, rejuvenate the papacy or at any rate galvanized Christianity,
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  Speaker 1: organize learning and meet intriguing academies of little men, and
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  Speaker 1: prescribe a wonderful educational system. The grateful nations will once
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  Speaker 1: more deify a lucky and aggressive egotism, and there the
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  Speaker 1: vision loses breath. Nothing of the sort is going to happen,
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  Speaker 1: or at any rate, if it happens, it will happen
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  Speaker 1: as an interlude, as no necessary part in the general
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  Speaker 1: progress of the human drama. The world is no more
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  Speaker 1: to be recast by chance individuals than a city is
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  Speaker 1: to be lit by skyrockets. The purpose of things emerges
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  Speaker 1: upon spacious issues, and the day of individual leaders is past.
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  Speaker 1: The analogies and precedents that lead one to forecast the
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  Speaker 1: coming of military one man dominions the coming of such
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  Speaker 1: other parodies of Caesar's career as that misapplied and speedily
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  Speaker 1: futile chess champion Napoleon the first contrived are false. They
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  Speaker 1: are false because they ignore two correlated things. First, the
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  Speaker 1: steady development of a new and quite unprecedented educated class
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  Speaker 1: as a necessary aspect of the expansion of science and mechanism,
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  Speaker 1: and secondly, the absolute revolution in the art of war
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  Speaker 1: that science and mechanism are bringing about. This latter consideration
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  Speaker 1: the next chapter will expand, But here, in the interests
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  Speaker 1: of this discussion, we may, in general terms, anticipate its jest.
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  Speaker 1: War in the past has been a thing entirely different
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  Speaker 1: in its nature from what war war with the apparatus
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  Speaker 1: of the future will be. It has been showy, dramatic, emotional,
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  Speaker 1: and restricted. War in the future will be none of
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  Speaker 1: these things. War in the past was a thing of
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  Speaker 1: days and heroisms, battles and campaigns rested in the hand
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  Speaker 1: of the great commander. He stood out against the sky,
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  Speaker 1: picturesquely on horseback, visibly controlling it all. War in the
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  Speaker 1: future will be a question of preparation, of long years
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  Speaker 1: of foresight and disciplined imagination. There will be no decisive victory,
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  Speaker 1: but a vast diffusion of conflict. It will depend less
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  Speaker 1: and less on controlling personalities and driving emotions, and more
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  Speaker 1: and more upon the intelligence and personal quality of a
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  Speaker 1: great number of skilled men. All this the next chapter
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  Speaker 1: will expand, and either before or after, but at any rate,
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  Speaker 1: in the shadow of war, it will become apparent, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: even suddenly, that the whole apparatus of power in the
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  Speaker 1: country is in the hands of a new class of
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  Speaker 1: intelligent and scientifically educated men. They will, probably, under the
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  Speaker 1: development of wall extresses, be discovered they will discover themselves,
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  Speaker 1: almost surprisingly, with roads and railways, carts and cities, drains,
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  Speaker 1: food supplies, electrical supply, and water supply, and with guns
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  Speaker 1: and such implements of destruction and intimidation as men scarcely
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  Speaker 1: dream of, yet gathered in their hands. And they will
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  Speaker 1: be discovered too, with a growing common consciousness of themselves
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  Speaker 1: as distinguished from the gray confusion, a common purpose, and
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  Speaker 1: implication that this fearless analysis of science is already bringing
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  Speaker 1: to light. They will find themselves with bloodshed and horrible
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  Speaker 1: disasters ahead, and the material apparatus of control entirely within
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  Speaker 1: their power. Suppose, after all, they will say, we ignore
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  Speaker 1: these very eloquent and showy governing persons above, and this
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  Speaker 1: very confused and in effectual multitude below. Suppose now we
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  Speaker 1: put on the brakes and try something a little more
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  Speaker 1: stable and orderly. These people in possession have, of course
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  Speaker 1: all sorts of established rites and prescriptions. They have squared
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  Speaker 1: the law to their purpose, and the constitution does not
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  Speaker 1: know us. They can get at the judges, they can
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  Speaker 1: get at the newspapers. They can do all sorts of
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  Speaker 1: things except avoid a smash. But for our part, we
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  Speaker 1: have these really most ingenious and subtle guns. Suppose, instead
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  Speaker 1: of out turning them and our valuable selves in a
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  Speaker 1: fool's quarrel against the ingenious and subtle guns of other
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  Speaker 1: men akin to ourselves, we use them in the cause
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  Speaker 1: of the higher sanity and clear that jabbering war tumult
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  Speaker 1: out of the streets. There may be no dramatic moment
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  Speaker 1: for the expression of this idea, no moment when the
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  Speaker 1: new Cromwellism and the new Iron Sides will come visibly
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  Speaker 1: face to face with talk and baubles, flags and patrionic
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  Speaker 1: dinner bells. But with or without dramatic moments, the idea
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  Speaker 1: will be expressed and acted upon. It will be made
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  Speaker 1: quite evident then what is now indeed only a pious opinion,
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  Speaker 1: namely that wealth is after all no ultimate power at all,
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  Speaker 1: but only an influence among aimless, police guarded men. So
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  Speaker 1: long as there is peace, the class of capable men
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  Speaker 1: may be mitigated and gagged and controlled, and the ostensible
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  Speaker 1: present order may flourish still in the hands of that
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  Speaker 1: other class of men which deals with the appearances of things.
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  Speaker 1: But as some supersaturated solution will crystallize out with the
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  Speaker 1: mere shaking of its Beaker, so must the new order
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  Speaker 1: of men come into visibly organized existence through the concussions
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  Speaker 1: of war. The Charlatans can escape everything except war, but
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  Speaker 1: to the cant and violence of nationality, to the sustaining
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  Speaker 1: force of international hostility, they are ruthlessly compelled to cling.
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  Speaker 1: And what is now their chief support must become at
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  Speaker 1: last their destruction. And so it is I infer that,
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  Speaker 1: whether violently as a revolution or quietly and slowly, this
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  Speaker 1: gray confusion, that his democracy must pass away, invariably by
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  Speaker 1: its own inherent conditions, as the twilight passes, as that
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  Speaker 1: embryonic confusion of the cocoon creature passes into the higher stage,
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  Speaker 1: into the higher organism, the world state of the coming years.
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  Speaker 1: End of Chapter five B recording by John Trevivick,