Latest / Bullet Proof / War That Will End War-H. G. Wells

Transcript

War That Will End War-H. G. Wells · Bullet Proof

0:00
Speaker 1: Chapter one of the War That Will End War. This
0:03
Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the
0:06
Speaker 1: public domain. For more information, aught to Volunteer of Jesus
0:10
Speaker 1: at LibriVox dot org. Recording by Peter Tomlinson. The War
0:16
Speaker 1: That Will End War by Herbert George Wells, Chapter one,
0:21
Speaker 1: Why Britain went to war A clear exposition of what
0:27
Speaker 1: we are fighting for. The Cause of a war and
0:31
Speaker 1: the object of a war are not necessarily the same.
0:35
Speaker 1: The cause of this war was the invasion of Luxembourg
0:38
Speaker 1: and Belgium. We declared war because we were bound by
0:42
Speaker 1: treaty to declare war. We have been pledged to protect
0:46
Speaker 1: the integrity of Belgium since the Kingdom of Belgium has existed.
0:51
Speaker 1: If the Germans had not broken the guarantees they shared
0:54
Speaker 1: with us to respect the neutrality of these little states,
0:58
Speaker 1: we should certainly not be at war at the present time.
1:02
Speaker 1: The fortified eastern frontier of France could have been held
1:06
Speaker 1: against any attack without any help from us. We had
1:10
Speaker 1: no obligations and no interest there. We were pledged to
1:14
Speaker 1: France simply to protect her from a naval attack by sea.
1:18
Speaker 1: But the Germans had already given us an undertaking not
1:21
Speaker 1: to make such an attack. It was our Belgium treaty
1:25
Speaker 1: and sudden outrage on Luxembourg that precipitated us into this conflict.
1:32
Speaker 1: No power in the world would have respected our flag
1:35
Speaker 1: or accepted our national word again if we had not
1:38
Speaker 1: fought so much for the immediate cause of the war.
1:43
Speaker 1: But now we come to the object of this war.
1:46
Speaker 1: We began to fight because our honor and our pledge
1:49
Speaker 1: obliged us. But so soon as we are embarked upon
1:52
Speaker 1: the fighting, we have to ask ourselves what is the
1:56
Speaker 1: end which our fighting aims. We cannot simply foot the
2:00
Speaker 1: Germans back over the Belgian border and told them not
2:03
Speaker 1: to do it again. We find ourselves at war with
2:06
Speaker 1: that huge military empire with which we have been doing
2:09
Speaker 1: our best to keep the peace since first it rose
2:12
Speaker 1: upon the ruins of French imperialism in eighteen seventy one,
2:17
Speaker 1: and war is mortal conflict. We have now either to
2:20
Speaker 1: destroy or be destroyed. We have not sought this reckoning.
2:26
Speaker 1: We have done our utmost to avoid it. But now
2:29
Speaker 1: that it has been forced upon us, it is imperative
2:32
Speaker 1: that it should be a thorough reckoning. This is a
2:35
Speaker 1: war that touches every man and every home in each
2:38
Speaker 1: of the combatant countries. It is a war, as mister
2:42
Speaker 1: Sidney Lowe has said, not a soldier's butt, of whole peoples.
2:46
Speaker 1: And it is a war that must be fought to
2:49
Speaker 1: such a finish that every man in each of the
2:52
Speaker 1: nations engaged understands what has happened. There can be no
2:58
Speaker 1: diplomatic settlement that will lead German imperialism free to explain
3:02
Speaker 1: away its failure to its people and start new preparations.
3:07
Speaker 1: We have to go on until we are absolutely done for,
3:11
Speaker 1: or until the Germans as a people know that they
3:14
Speaker 1: are beaten and are convinced that they have had enough
3:17
Speaker 1: of war. We are fighting Germany, but we are fighting
3:21
Speaker 1: without any hatred of the German people. We do not
3:25
Speaker 1: intend to destroy either their freedom or their unity. But
3:29
Speaker 1: we have to destroy an evil system of government and
3:32
Speaker 1: the mental and material corruption that has got hold of
3:36
Speaker 1: the German imagination and taken possession of German life. We
3:41
Speaker 1: have to smash the Prussian imperialism as thoroughly as Germany
3:45
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy one, smash the rotten imperialism of Napoleon
3:49
Speaker 1: the Third and also we have to learn from the
3:52
Speaker 1: failure of that victory to avoid a vindictive triumph. This
3:58
Speaker 1: Prussian imperialism has been for forty years an intolerable nuisance
4:04
Speaker 1: in the earth. Ever since the crushing of the French
4:08
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy one, the evil thing has grown and
4:13
Speaker 1: cast its spreading shadow over Europe. Germany has preached a
4:18
Speaker 1: propaganda of ruthless force and political materialism to the whole
4:23
Speaker 1: uneasy world. Blood and iron, she boasted was the cement
4:28
Speaker 1: of her unity, and almost as openly, the little, mean,
4:33
Speaker 1: aggressive statesmen and professors who have guarded her destinies to
4:37
Speaker 1: this present conflict have professed cynicism and an utter disregard
4:42
Speaker 1: of any ends but nationally selfish ends, as though it
4:46
Speaker 1: were religion. Evil, just as much as good may be
4:50
Speaker 1: made into a cant, physical and moral brutality has indeed
4:55
Speaker 1: become a cant in the German mind and spread from
4:59
Speaker 1: Germany through the world. I could wish it were possible
5:03
Speaker 1: to say that English and American thought had altogether escaped
5:07
Speaker 1: its corruption. But now at last we shake ourselves free
5:12
Speaker 1: and turn upon this boasting wickedness that rid the world
5:16
Speaker 1: of it. The whole world is tired of it, and
5:20
Speaker 1: God got so perpetually invoked. God indeed must be very
5:26
Speaker 1: tired of it. This is already the vastest war in history.
5:32
Speaker 1: It is war not of nations, but of mankind. It
5:37
Speaker 1: is a war to exercise a world madness and end
5:41
Speaker 1: and age. And note how this cant of public rottenness
5:45
Speaker 1: has had its secret side. The man who preaches cynicism
5:50
Speaker 1: in his own business transactions had better keep a detective
5:54
Speaker 1: and a cash register for his clerks. And it is
5:58
Speaker 1: the most natural thing in the world to find that
6:00
Speaker 1: this system, which is outwardly vile, is also inwardly rotten.
6:07
Speaker 1: Beside the Kaiser stands the firm of Krupp. A second
6:11
Speaker 1: head to the state, on the very steps of the
6:15
Speaker 1: throne is the armament trust that organized scoundrelism, which has
6:21
Speaker 1: in its relentless propaganda for profit, mind all the security
6:25
Speaker 1: of civilization, brought up and dominated a press, ruled a
6:30
Speaker 1: national literature, and corrupted universities. Consider what the Germans have
6:37
Speaker 1: been and what the Germans can be. Here is a
6:40
Speaker 1: race which has for its chief fault docility and a
6:43
Speaker 1: belief in teachers and rulers. For the rest, as all
6:48
Speaker 1: who know it intimately will testify. It is the most
6:52
Speaker 1: amiable of people's. It is naturally kindly, comfort loving, child loving, musical, artistic,
6:59
Speaker 1: in intelligent, in countless respects. German homes, in towns and
7:04
Speaker 1: countrysides are the most civilized in the world. But these
7:08
Speaker 1: people did a little lose their heads after the victories
7:12
Speaker 1: of the sixties and seventies, and there began a propaganda
7:16
Speaker 1: of national vanity and national ambition. It was organized by
7:21
Speaker 1: a stupidly forceful statesman. It was fostered by folly upon
7:26
Speaker 1: the throne. It was guarded from wholesale criticism by an
7:30
Speaker 1: intolerant censorship. It never gave sanity a chance. A certain
7:36
Speaker 1: patriotic sentimentality lent itself only too readily to the suggestion
7:41
Speaker 1: of the flatterer. And so there grew up this monstrous
7:45
Speaker 1: trade in weapons. German patriotism became an interest, the greatest
7:52
Speaker 1: of the interests. It developed a vast advertisement propaganda. It
7:58
Speaker 1: subsidized navy leagues and aerial leagues, threatening the world. Mankind,
8:04
Speaker 1: we saw, too late, had been guilty of an incalculable
8:08
Speaker 1: folly in permitting private men to make a profit out
8:12
Speaker 1: of the dreadful preparations for war. But the evil was started.
8:18
Speaker 1: The German imagination was captured and enslaved on every other
8:22
Speaker 1: European country that valued its integrity. There will thrust the
8:26
Speaker 1: overwhelming necessity to arm and drill, and still to arm
8:32
Speaker 1: and drill. Money was withdrawn from education, from social progress,
8:37
Speaker 1: from business, enterprise, and art and scientific research, and from
8:42
Speaker 1: every kind of happiness. Life was drilled and darkened, so
8:47
Speaker 1: that the harvest of this darkness comes now almost as
8:51
Speaker 1: a relief. And it is a grim satisfaction in our
8:55
Speaker 1: discomforts that we can at last look across the raw
8:58
Speaker 1: and torment of battlefield fields to the possibility of an
9:02
Speaker 1: organized peace. For this is now a war for peace.
9:07
Speaker 1: It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement
9:12
Speaker 1: that shall stop this sort of thing forever. Every soldier
9:16
Speaker 1: who fights against Germany now is a crusader against war. This,
9:22
Speaker 1: the greatest of all wars, is not just another war.
9:26
Speaker 1: It is the last war. England, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain
9:31
Speaker 1: and all the little countries of Europe are heartily sick
9:35
Speaker 1: of war. The Czar has expressed a passionate hatred of war.
9:39
Speaker 1: The most of Asia is unwarlike the United States, has
9:43
Speaker 1: no illusions about war, and never was war begun so joyously,
9:47
Speaker 1: and never was war begun with so grim a resolution.
9:51
Speaker 1: In England, France, Belgium and Russia, there is no thought
9:55
Speaker 1: of glory. We know we face unprecedented slaughter and agon
10:00
Speaker 1: We know that for neither side will there be easy
10:04
Speaker 1: triumphs or prancing victories. Already in that warring sea of
10:09
Speaker 1: men there is famine as well as hideous butchery, and
10:13
Speaker 1: soon there must come disease. Can it be otherwise? We
10:18
Speaker 1: face perhaps the most awful winter that mankind has ever faced.
10:22
Speaker 1: But we English and our allies, who did not seek
10:25
Speaker 1: this catastrophe, face it with anger and determination rather than despair.
10:31
Speaker 1: Through this war we have to march through pain, through
10:35
Speaker 1: agonies of the spirit, worse than pain, through seas of
10:39
Speaker 1: blood and filth. We English have not had things kept
10:43
Speaker 1: from us. We know what war is. We have no delusions.
10:48
Speaker 1: We have read books that tell us of the stench
10:50
Speaker 1: of battlefields and the nature of wounds, books that Germany
10:55
Speaker 1: suppressed and hid from her people. And we face these
10:58
Speaker 1: horrors to make an end of them. There shall be
11:01
Speaker 1: no more cauisers. There should be no more craps. We
11:05
Speaker 1: are resolved that foolery shall end, and not simply the
11:09
Speaker 1: present belligerents must come into the settlement. All America, Italy, China,
11:15
Speaker 1: the Scandinavian powers must have a voice in the final
11:19
Speaker 1: readjustment and set their hands to the ultimate guarantees. I
11:24
Speaker 1: do not mean that they need to fire a single
11:26
Speaker 1: shot or load a single gun, but they must come in,
11:30
Speaker 1: and in particular to the United States. Do we look
11:33
Speaker 1: to play a part in that pacification of the world
11:38
Speaker 1: for which our whole nation is working, and for which
11:42
Speaker 1: by the thousand men are now laying down their lives.
11:48
Speaker 1: End of Chapter one recording by Peter Tomlinson. Chapter two
11:58
Speaker 1: of The War That Will Lear by Herbert George Wells.
12:03
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
12:08
Speaker 1: Peter Tomlinson. The Sword of Peace. Every sword that is
12:13
Speaker 1: drawn against Germany now is a sword drawn for peace.
12:18
Speaker 1: Europe is at war. The monstrous vanity that was begotten
12:23
Speaker 1: by the easy victories of seventy and seventy one has
12:27
Speaker 1: challenged the world, and Germany prepares to reap the harvest.
12:31
Speaker 1: Bismarck sowed that trampling, drilling, foolery in the heart of
12:35
Speaker 1: Europe that has arrested civilization and darkened the hopes of
12:40
Speaker 1: mankind for forty years, German imperialism, German militarism has struck
12:47
Speaker 1: its inevitable blow. The victory of Germany will mean the
12:51
Speaker 1: permanent enthronement of the war god over all human affairs.
12:57
Speaker 1: The defeat of Germany may open the way to disarmour
13:00
Speaker 1: and peace throughout the earth. To those who love peace,
13:04
Speaker 1: there can be no other hope in the present conflict
13:07
Speaker 1: than the defeat, the utter discrediting of the German legend,
13:11
Speaker 1: the ending for good and all of the blood and
13:15
Speaker 1: iron superstition of Krupp flag waving, Teutonic kipflingism, and all
13:21
Speaker 1: that criminal sham efficiency that centers in Berlin. Never was
13:26
Speaker 1: war so righteous as war against Germany. Now never has
13:30
Speaker 1: any state in the world so clamored for punishment. But
13:34
Speaker 1: be it remembered that Europe's quarrel is with the German state,
13:39
Speaker 1: not the German people, with a system, and not with
13:43
Speaker 1: a race. The older tradition of Germany is a pacific
13:48
Speaker 1: and civilizing tradition. The temperament of the mass of German
13:53
Speaker 1: people is kindly sane and amiable disaster to the German army,
14:00
Speaker 1: if it is unaccompanied by any such memorable wrong as
14:03
Speaker 1: dismemberment or intolerable indignity, will mean the restoration of the
14:09
Speaker 1: greatest people in Europe to the fellowship of Western nations.
14:15
Speaker 1: The role of England in this huge struggle is plain
14:19
Speaker 1: as daylight. We have to fight, if only on account
14:23
Speaker 1: of the Luxembourg outrage. We have to fight. If we
14:27
Speaker 1: do not fight, England will cease to be a country
14:30
Speaker 1: to be proud of. It will be a dirt bath
14:33
Speaker 1: to escape from. But it is inconceivable that we should
14:37
Speaker 1: not fight. And having fought, then in the hour of victory,
14:42
Speaker 1: it will be for us to save the liberated Germans
14:46
Speaker 1: from vindictive treatment, to secure for this great people their
14:50
Speaker 1: right as one united German speaking state to a place
14:56
Speaker 1: in the sun. First we have to save ourselves and Europe,
15:00
Speaker 1: and then we have to stand between German on the
15:03
Speaker 1: one hand and the Cossack and revenge on the other.
15:07
Speaker 1: For my own part, I do not doubt that Germany
15:10
Speaker 1: and Austria are doomed to defeat in this war. It
15:14
Speaker 1: may not be catastrophic defeat, though even that is possible.
15:20
Speaker 1: But it is defeat. There is no destiny in the stars,
15:23
Speaker 1: and every sign is false. If this is not so,
15:27
Speaker 1: they have provoked an overwhelming combination of enemies. They have
15:32
Speaker 1: underrated France. They are hampered by a bad social and
15:36
Speaker 1: military tradition. The German is not naturally a good soldier.
15:41
Speaker 1: He is orderly and obedient, but he is not nimble
15:44
Speaker 1: nor quick witted. Since his sole considerable military achievement, his
15:50
Speaker 1: not very lengthy march to Paris in eighteen seventy and
15:53
Speaker 1: seventy one, the conditions of modern warfare have been almost
15:57
Speaker 1: completely revolutionized, and in a direction that subordinates the massed
16:03
Speaker 1: fighting of unintelligent men to the rapid initiative of individualized soldiers.
16:10
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, since those years of disaster,
16:13
Speaker 1: the Frenchman has learnt the lesson of humility. He is
16:17
Speaker 1: prepared now sombrely for a somber struggle. He is the
16:21
Speaker 1: gravity that precedes astonishing victories in the air, in the
16:25
Speaker 1: open field, with guns and machines. It is doubtful if
16:29
Speaker 1: anyone fully realizes the superiority of his quality to the German,
16:36
Speaker 1: this sudden attack may take him aback for a week
16:40
Speaker 1: or so, though I doubt even that. But in the
16:43
Speaker 1: end I think he will hold his own even without us,
16:46
Speaker 1: he will hold his own and with us. Then I
16:49
Speaker 1: venture to prophecy that within three months from now his
16:53
Speaker 1: tricola will be over the Rhine. And even suppose his
16:56
Speaker 1: line gets broken by the first rush, even then I
17:00
Speaker 1: do not see how the Germans are to get to Paris,
17:03
Speaker 1: or anywhere near Paris. I do not see how, against
17:07
Speaker 1: the strength of the modern defensive and the stinging power
17:10
Speaker 1: of an intelligent enemy in retreat of which we had
17:14
Speaker 1: a little foretaste in South Africa, the exploit of Sedan
17:18
Speaker 1: can be repeated. A retiring German army, on the other hand,
17:22
Speaker 1: will be far less formidable than a retiring French army,
17:26
Speaker 1: because it has less devil in it, because it is
17:30
Speaker 1: made up of men taught to obey in masses, because
17:34
Speaker 1: its intelligence is concentrated in its aristocratic officers, because it
17:39
Speaker 1: is dismayed when it breaks ranks. The German army is
17:43
Speaker 1: everything the conscriptionists dreamt of making our people. It is
17:48
Speaker 1: in fact an army about twenty years behind the requirements
17:52
Speaker 1: of contemporary conditions. On the Eastern frontier, the issue is
17:59
Speaker 1: more doubt because of the uncertainty of Russian things. The
18:03
Speaker 1: peculiar military strength of Russia, a strength it was not
18:08
Speaker 1: able to display in Manchuria, lies in its vast resources
18:13
Speaker 1: of mounted men. A set invasion of Prussia may be
18:18
Speaker 1: a matter of many weeks, but the raiding possibilities in
18:21
Speaker 1: eastern Germany are enormous. It is difficult to guess how
18:26
Speaker 1: far the Russian attack will be guided by intelligence and
18:30
Speaker 1: how far Russia will blunder. But Russia will have to
18:34
Speaker 1: blunder very disastrously, indeed, before she can be put upon
18:39
Speaker 1: the defensive. A Russian raid is far more likely to
18:43
Speaker 1: threaten Berlin than a German raid to reach Paris. Meanwhile,
18:49
Speaker 1: there is the struggle on the sea, in that I
18:52
Speaker 1: am prepared for some rude shocks. The Germans have devoted
18:56
Speaker 1: an amount of energy to the creation of an aggressive
18:59
Speaker 1: no that would have been spent more wisely in consolidating
19:04
Speaker 1: their European position. It is probably a thoroughly good navy
19:09
Speaker 1: and ship for ship the equal of our own. But
19:12
Speaker 1: the same lack of invention, the same relative uncreatedness that
19:17
Speaker 1: has kept the German behind the Frenchman in things aerial,
19:21
Speaker 1: has made him regardless of his shallow seas follow our
19:25
Speaker 1: lead in naval matters. And if we have erred, and
19:29
Speaker 1: I believe we have heard in overrating the importance of
19:33
Speaker 1: the big battleship, the German has at least very obligingly
19:37
Speaker 1: fallen in with our error. The safest, most effective place
19:42
Speaker 1: for the German fleet at the present time is the
19:45
Speaker 1: Baltic Sea, on this side of the Keel Canal. Unless
19:49
Speaker 1: I overrate the powers of the water plane. There is
19:52
Speaker 1: no safe harbor for it. If it goes into port anywhere,
19:57
Speaker 1: that port can be ruined, and the up ships can
20:01
Speaker 1: be destroyed at leisure by aerial bombs. So that if
20:05
Speaker 1: they are on this side of the Keel Canal, they
20:08
Speaker 1: must keep the sea and fight if we let them
20:11
Speaker 1: before their cold runs. Short battle in the open sea
20:15
Speaker 1: in this case is their only chance. They will fight
20:19
Speaker 1: against odds, and with every prospect of a smashing, albeit
20:23
Speaker 1: we shall certainly have to pay for that victory in
20:26
Speaker 1: ships and men in the Vaultic We shall not be
20:29
Speaker 1: able to get at them without the participation of Denmark,
20:34
Speaker 1: and they may have a considerable use against Russia. But
20:39
Speaker 1: in the end, even their mind an aeroplane and destroyer
20:43
Speaker 1: should do their work. So I reckon that Germany will
20:46
Speaker 1: be held east and west, and she will get her
20:49
Speaker 1: fleet practically destroyed. We ought also to be able to
20:53
Speaker 1: sweep her shipping off the seas and lower her flag
20:57
Speaker 1: forever in Africa and Asia and the Pacific. All the probabilities,
21:03
Speaker 1: it seems to me point to that there is no
21:07
Speaker 1: reason why Italy should not stick to her present neutrality,
21:12
Speaker 1: and there is considerable inducement close at hand for both
21:16
Speaker 1: Denmark and Japan to join in directly they are convinced
21:22
Speaker 1: of the failure of the first Big Rush on the
21:25
Speaker 1: part of Germany. All these issues will be more or
21:28
Speaker 1: less definitely decided within the next two or three months.
21:33
Speaker 1: By that time, I believe German imperialism will be shattered,
21:38
Speaker 1: and it may be possible to anticipate the end of
21:41
Speaker 1: the armaments phase of European history. France, Italy, England and
21:48
Speaker 1: all the smaller powers of Europe are now Pacific countries. Russia,
21:55
Speaker 1: after this huge war will be too exhausted for further adventure.
22:00
Speaker 1: Germany will be a revolutionary Germany, as sick of uniforms
22:05
Speaker 1: and the imperialist idea as France was in eighteen seventy one,
22:10
Speaker 1: as disillusioned about predominance as Bulgaria is today. The way
22:15
Speaker 1: will be open at last for all these Western powers
22:18
Speaker 1: to organize peace. That is why I, with my declared
22:23
Speaker 1: horror of war, have not signed any of these stopped
22:26
Speaker 1: the war appeals and declarations that have appeared in the
22:30
Speaker 1: last few days. Every sword that is drawn against Germany
22:34
Speaker 1: now is a sword drawn for peace. End of Chapter
22:41
Speaker 1: two recording by Peter Tomlinson. Chapter three of The War
22:50
Speaker 1: That Will End War by Herbert George Wells. This LibriVox
22:54
Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Recording by Peter Tomlinson.
23:00
Speaker 1: Cha three, Hands off the People's Food. This is a
23:06
Speaker 1: war torn article, a convalescent article. It is characteristic of
23:11
Speaker 1: the cheerful gallantry of the time that, after being left
23:16
Speaker 1: for dead on Saturday evening, this article should be able
23:20
Speaker 1: in an only very slightly bandaged condition, to take its
23:24
Speaker 1: place in the firing line again on Thursday morning. It
23:28
Speaker 1: was first written late on Friday night. It was written
23:32
Speaker 1: in a mood of righteous excitement, and it was an
23:35
Speaker 1: extremely ineffective article. In the night I could not sleep
23:39
Speaker 1: because of its badness, and because I did so vehemently
23:43
Speaker 1: want to hit hard and get its effect. I turned
23:47
Speaker 1: out about two o'clock in the morning and redrafted it,
23:51
Speaker 1: and the next day I wrote it all over again,
23:54
Speaker 1: differently and carefully, and I think better. In the afternoon
23:59
Speaker 1: it was blown up up by the discovery that mister
24:01
Speaker 1: Runciman had anticipated its essential idea. He had brought in
24:07
Speaker 1: and the House had passed, through all its stages a
24:09
Speaker 1: bill to give the Board of Trade power to requisition
24:13
Speaker 1: and deal with hoarded or reserved food. That was exactly
24:17
Speaker 1: the demand of my article. My article about to Die
24:21
Speaker 1: saluted this most swift and decisive government of ours. Then
24:26
Speaker 1: I perceived that there were still many things to be
24:28
Speaker 1: said about this requisitioning of food. The Board of Trade
24:32
Speaker 1: has got its powers, but apparently they have still to
24:35
Speaker 1: be put into operation. It is extremely desirable there should
24:40
Speaker 1: be a strong public opinion supporting and watching the exercise
24:44
Speaker 1: of these powers, and that they should be applied at
24:47
Speaker 1: the proper point immediately. The powers mister Runtsimen has secured
24:52
Speaker 1: so rapidly for the Board of Trade has to be
24:55
Speaker 1: put into operation. There must be an equally rapid development
24:59
Speaker 1: of local commit It is the commandos to carry out
25:01
Speaker 1: this idea. The shortage continues. It is not over. The
25:07
Speaker 1: common people who are sending their boys so bravely and
25:11
Speaker 1: uncomplainingly to the front, must be relieved at once from
25:15
Speaker 1: the intolerable hardships which a certain section of the prosperous classes,
25:19
Speaker 1: a small section, but an actively mischievous section, is causing them.
25:25
Speaker 1: It is a right, not a demand for charity. It
25:28
Speaker 1: is ridiculous to treat the problem in any other way.
25:33
Speaker 1: So far, the poorer English have displayed an amazing and
25:36
Speaker 1: exemplary patience in this crisis, a humility and courage that
25:41
Speaker 1: may one the prouder for being also English, apart from
25:45
Speaker 1: any failure of employment. At the present time, it must
25:48
Speaker 1: be plain to anyone who has watched the present rise
25:51
Speaker 1: of prices, and who knows anything either at first hand
25:55
Speaker 1: of poor households or by reading such investigations as those
26:00
Speaker 1: of missus Pember reeves upon the family budgets of the poor,
26:04
Speaker 1: that the rank and file of our population cannot now
26:08
Speaker 1: be getting enough to eat. They are suffering needless deprivations,
26:13
Speaker 1: and also they are suffering needless vexation. And there is
26:17
Speaker 1: no atom of doubt why they are suffering these distresses.
26:21
Speaker 1: It is that pretentious section of the prosperous classes, the
26:25
Speaker 1: section we might hit off with the phrase automobile driving
26:30
Speaker 1: villadon the tariff reform and damn Lloyd George and Keir
26:35
Speaker 1: Hardy class, the most pampered and least public spirities of
26:39
Speaker 1: any stratum in the community, which has grabbed at the food.
26:44
Speaker 1: It has given way to an inglorious panic. It has
26:47
Speaker 1: broken ranks and stampeded to the stores, and made the
26:51
Speaker 1: one discreditable exception in the splendid spectacle of our national solidarity.
26:58
Speaker 1: While the attention of all decent English folk has been
27:01
Speaker 1: concentrated upon the preparations for our supreme blow at Prussian
27:06
Speaker 1: predominance in Europe, Villadom has been swarming to the shops,
27:11
Speaker 1: buying up the food of the common people, carrying it
27:14
Speaker 1: off in the family car, adorned, of course, with a
27:18
Speaker 1: fluttering little union. Jack Father has given a day from business.
27:23
Speaker 1: Mother has helped, even though shiny headed nuts. The suns
27:28
Speaker 1: have condescended to assist. And now Villadom, feeling a little safer,
27:34
Speaker 1: is ready with the dinner bell, its characteristic instrument of
27:37
Speaker 1: music to mafic at the too spoil and Villadom promoted
27:43
Speaker 1: and distended villadom in luck, turned millionaire villadom on a
27:49
Speaker 1: scale that can buy a peerage and write you its
27:52
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds check for a showy subscription list has
27:56
Speaker 1: been true to its origins. Lord Maffick, emulating mister and
28:02
Speaker 1: missus Maffick, swept the district clean of flower. Let the
28:07
Speaker 1: thing go down to history. Lord Maffick now explains that
28:11
Speaker 1: he brought it to distribute among his poorer neighbors. That
28:16
Speaker 1: is going to be the stock excuse of these people.
28:20
Speaker 1: But that sort of buying is just exactly as bad
28:23
Speaker 1: for prices as buying for Lord Maffick's personal interior. The
28:28
Speaker 1: sooner that Flower gets out of the houses of Lord
28:31
Speaker 1: Maffick and Horatio maffic Esquire and young mister Maffick and
28:36
Speaker 1: the rest of them, and into the houses of the
28:39
Speaker 1: poorer neighbors, the better for them and the country. The
28:43
Speaker 1: greatest danger to England at the present time is neither
28:46
Speaker 1: the German army nor the German fleet, but this morally
28:51
Speaker 1: rotten section of our community. Now, it is no use
28:54
Speaker 1: scolding these people. It is no use appealing to their
28:58
Speaker 1: honor and patriotism. Honor they have none, and their idea
29:02
Speaker 1: of patriotism is to tax the foreigner wave, union jacks
29:07
Speaker 1: and clamor for the application to England of just that
29:10
Speaker 1: universal compulsory service which leads straight to those crowded, in
29:15
Speaker 1: effective massacres of common soldiers that are beginning upon the
29:20
Speaker 1: German warfront. Exhortation may sway the ninety and nine, but
29:25
Speaker 1: the one mean man in one hundred will spoil the lot.
29:29
Speaker 1: The thing to do now is to get to work
29:31
Speaker 1: at once in every locality requisitioning all excessive private stores
29:36
Speaker 1: of food or gold coins. They can be settled for
29:40
Speaker 1: after the war, not only the stores of the private
29:44
Speaker 1: food grabbers, but also the stores of the speculative wholesalers
29:48
Speaker 1: who are holding up prices to the retail shops. Only
29:52
Speaker 1: in that way can the operations of this intolerable little
29:55
Speaker 1: minority be completely checked. Under every county council food committees
30:01
Speaker 1: should be formed at once to report on the necessities
30:04
Speaker 1: of the general mass and conduct inquiries into hoarding and
30:08
Speaker 1: the seizure and distribution of hoardes small and great. Now.
30:14
Speaker 1: This is a public work calling for the most careful
30:16
Speaker 1: and open methods. Food distribution in England is partly in
30:20
Speaker 1: the hands of great systems of syndicated shops, and partly
30:24
Speaker 1: still in the hands of one shop local tradesmen. It
30:27
Speaker 1: is imperative that the brightest light should be kept upon
30:31
Speaker 1: the operations of both small and large provision dealers. The
30:35
Speaker 1: big firms are in the control of men whose business
30:39
Speaker 1: successes have received, in many instances marks of the signal
30:43
Speaker 1: favor and trust of our rulers. Lord Devenport, for example,
30:48
Speaker 1: is a peer. Sir Thomas Lipton is a baronet. They
30:51
Speaker 1: are not to be regarded as mere private traders, but
30:54
Speaker 1: as men honored by association with the hierarchy of our
30:58
Speaker 1: national life. On a ca ount of their distinguished share
31:02
Speaker 1: in the public food service. It will help them in
31:05
Speaker 1: their aquasi public duties to give them support of our attention.
31:09
Speaker 1: Are they devoting their enormous economic advantages to keeping prices
31:14
Speaker 1: at a reasonable level? Or are those various systems of
31:18
Speaker 1: syndicated provision shops also putting things up against the consumer?
31:24
Speaker 1: With concerted action on the part of these stores, the
31:27
Speaker 1: most perfect control of prices is possible everywhere, except in
31:32
Speaker 1: the case of a few out of the way villages.
31:35
Speaker 1: Is it being done? Nobody wants to see the names
31:38
Speaker 1: of Lord Devenport and Sir Thomas Lipton, or the various
31:42
Speaker 1: other rich men associated with them in the food supply
31:45
Speaker 1: flourishing about on Royal subscription lists. At the present time,
31:50
Speaker 1: their work lies closer at hand. What we all want
31:54
Speaker 1: is to feel that they are devoting their utmost resources
31:57
Speaker 1: to the public food service of which they consumer institute
32:00
Speaker 1: so important a part. Let me say at once that
32:03
Speaker 1: I have every reason to believe they are doing it,
32:06
Speaker 1: and that they are alive to the responsibilities of their positions.
32:10
Speaker 1: But we must keep the limelight on them and on
32:13
Speaker 1: their less honored and conspicuous fellow merchants. They are playing
32:17
Speaker 1: as important and vital a part. Indeed, they are called
32:21
Speaker 1: upon to play as brave and self sacrificing a part
32:25
Speaker 1: as any general at the front. If they fail us,
32:28
Speaker 1: it will be worse than the loss of many thousands
32:31
Speaker 1: of men in battle. Let us watch them, and I
32:35
Speaker 1: believe we shall watch them with admiration. But let us
32:38
Speaker 1: watch them, let us report their movements, ask them to
32:41
Speaker 1: reassure us, chronicle their visits to the Board of Trade.
32:45
Speaker 1: I will not expatiate upon the possible heroisms of the
32:50
Speaker 1: wholesale provision Trade I do but glance at the possibility
32:54
Speaker 1: of Lord Devenport or Sir Thomas Lipton, after the war
32:59
Speaker 1: live financially ruined but glorious in the little cottage. I
33:05
Speaker 1: gave back to the people in their hour of need
33:09
Speaker 1: what I made from them in their hours of plenty.
33:13
Speaker 1: He would say, I have suffered that thousands might not suffer.
33:18
Speaker 1: It is nothing think of the lads who died in Belgium.
33:24
Speaker 1: By all accounts, the small one shot provision dealers are
33:27
Speaker 1: behaving extremely well. In my own town of Dunmow. I
33:32
Speaker 1: know of two little shopkeepers who have dared to offend
33:35
Speaker 1: important customers rather than fulfilled panic orders. They deserve medals.
33:42
Speaker 1: In poor districts, many such men are giving credit, eking out,
33:46
Speaker 1: tiding over, and all the time running tremendous risks. Not
33:50
Speaker 1: all heroes are upon the battlefield, and some of the
33:53
Speaker 1: heroes of this war are now fighting gallantly for our
33:57
Speaker 1: land behind grossest counters and in village general shops, and
34:02
Speaker 1: may end, if not in the burial trench, in the
34:05
Speaker 1: bankruptcy court. Indeed, many of them are already on the
34:10
Speaker 1: verge of bankruptcy. The wholesalers have I know in many
34:14
Speaker 1: cases betrayed them, not simply by putting up prices, but
34:17
Speaker 1: by suddenly stopping customary credits. And this last week has
34:22
Speaker 1: seen some dismal nights of sleepless worry in the little
34:26
Speaker 1: bedrooms over the isolated grocery. While we look to the
34:30
Speaker 1: syndicated shops to do their duty. It is of the
34:34
Speaker 1: utmost importance also that we should not permit a massacre
34:38
Speaker 1: of the small tradespeople. A catastrophe of the small shopkeeper
34:42
Speaker 1: at the present time will not only throw a multitude
34:46
Speaker 1: of broken men upon public resources, but leave a gap
34:50
Speaker 1: in the homely give and take of backstreet and village
34:53
Speaker 1: economies that will not be easily repaired. So I suggest
34:58
Speaker 1: that the requisition stocks of fullestalling wholesalers there ought to
35:02
Speaker 1: be a great bulk of such food stuff already in
35:05
Speaker 1: the hands of the authorities, shall be sold in the
35:08
Speaker 1: first instance at halesale prices to the isolated shopkeepers, and
35:12
Speaker 1: not directly to the public. Only in the event of
35:15
Speaker 1: local failure of duty, should the direct course be taken.
35:20
Speaker 1: It must be remembered that the whole of the present
35:22
Speaker 1: stress for food is an artificial stress, due to the
35:25
Speaker 1: veheminent selfishness of vulgar minded prosperous people, and to the
35:30
Speaker 1: base cunning of quite exceptional merchants. But under the strange
35:34
Speaker 1: and difficult and planless conditions of today, quite a few
35:38
Speaker 1: people can start a rush and produce an almost irresistible pressure.
35:42
Speaker 1: The majority of people who have hoarded and forestalled have
35:45
Speaker 1: probably done so very unwillingly because others will do it.
35:51
Speaker 1: They would welcome any authoritative action that would enable them
35:55
Speaker 1: to disgorge without feeling that somebody else would instantly snatch
35:59
Speaker 1: what they had surrendered and profit by it. It is
36:03
Speaker 1: for that reason that we must at once organize the
36:06
Speaker 1: commandeering and requisitioning of hordes and reserve goods. The mere
36:12
Speaker 1: threat will probably produce a great relaxation of the situation,
36:16
Speaker 1: but the threat must be carried out to the point
36:18
Speaker 1: of having everything ready as soon as possible to seize
36:22
Speaker 1: and sell and distribute. Until that is done, this food
36:26
Speaker 1: crisis will wax and wane, but it will not cease.
36:30
Speaker 1: If we do not carry out mister Runciman's initiatives with
36:34
Speaker 1: a certain harsh promptness. Food trouble would be an intermittent
36:38
Speaker 1: wasting fever in the body politic until the end of
36:43
Speaker 1: the war and the business will not be over at
36:46
Speaker 1: the end of the war. The patience of the common
36:48
Speaker 1: people has been astonishing. In countless homes there must have
36:52
Speaker 1: been the extremest worry and misery. But except for a
36:56
Speaker 1: few trivial rows such as the smashing of the wind
37:00
Speaker 1: those of mister Moss at Hitchin, who was probably not
37:03
Speaker 1: a bit to blame, an attack on a bakery somewhere,
37:07
Speaker 1: and some not very bad behavior in the way of
37:09
Speaker 1: threats and demonstrations on the part of East End Jews,
37:13
Speaker 1: there has been no disorder at all. That is because
37:17
Speaker 1: the people are full of the first solemnity of war,
37:20
Speaker 1: eagerly trustful, and still well nourished. At the end, unless
37:26
Speaker 1: the more prosperous people pull themselves together, it will not
37:30
Speaker 1: be like that end of chapter three recording by Peter Tomlinson.
37:42
Speaker 1: Chapter four of The War That Will End War by
37:45
Speaker 1: Herbert George Wells. This littlevox recording is in the public domain.
37:51
Speaker 1: Recording by Peter Tomlinson, Chapter four concerning mister Maximilian Craft.
37:59
Speaker 1: I find myself enthusiastic for this war against Prussian militarism.
38:05
Speaker 1: We are, i believe, assisting at the end of a vast,
38:09
Speaker 1: intolerable oppression upon civilization. We are fighting to release Germany
38:15
Speaker 1: and all the world from the superstition that brutality and
38:19
Speaker 1: cynicism are the methods of success, that imperialism is better
38:24
Speaker 1: than free citizenship, and conscripts better soldiers than free men.
38:29
Speaker 1: And I find another writer who is also being He
38:32
Speaker 1: declares patriotically British. Indeed, he waives the Union Jack about
38:38
Speaker 1: to an extent from which my natural modesty recoils, because
38:43
Speaker 1: you see, I am English, become Irish, and save for
38:47
Speaker 1: the cross of Saint Andrew, that flag is mine. To
38:51
Speaker 1: wave it about, would I feel be just vulgar self assertion. He, however,
38:56
Speaker 1: is not English. He assumes a variety of men, and
39:00
Speaker 1: some are quite lovely old English names, but his favorite
39:04
Speaker 1: name is Maximilian Craft, and I understand he was born
39:10
Speaker 1: a Craft. He shoves himself into the affairs of this
39:13
Speaker 1: country with an extraordinary energy. He takes possession of my
39:18
Speaker 1: Union Jack as if Saint George was his father. At present,
39:23
Speaker 1: he is advising me very actively how to conduct this war,
39:27
Speaker 1: and telling me exactly what I ought to think about it.
39:30
Speaker 1: He is, in fact the English equivalent of those professors
39:34
Speaker 1: of welt politic who have guided the German mind to
39:38
Speaker 1: its present magnificent display of shrewd triumphant state craft. I
39:43
Speaker 1: suspect him of a distant cousinship with Professor Delbrook, and
39:48
Speaker 1: he is urging upon our attention now a magnificent coup
39:52
Speaker 1: with which I will shortly deal. In appearance, Craft is
39:57
Speaker 1: by no means completely anglicized himself. He is a large
40:02
Speaker 1: faced creature with enormous long features and a wooly head.
40:07
Speaker 1: He is heavy in build and with a back slightly hunched.
40:12
Speaker 1: He lifts slightly, and his manner is either insolently contemptuous
40:17
Speaker 1: or aggressively familiar. He thinks all born Englishmen, as distinguished
40:23
Speaker 1: from the naturalized Englishman, are also born fools. Always his
40:28
Speaker 1: manner is pervaded by a fate flavor of astonishment at
40:33
Speaker 1: the born foolishness of the born Englishman. But he thinks
40:38
Speaker 1: their empire a marvelous accident, a wonderful opportunity for cleverer people. So,
40:45
Speaker 1: with a kind of disinterested energy, he has been doing
40:49
Speaker 1: his best to educate Englishmen up to their imperial opportunities,
40:54
Speaker 1: to show them how to change luck into cunning. Take
40:57
Speaker 1: the wall of every other read and swagger foremost in
41:02
Speaker 1: the world. He cannot understand that English blood does not
41:06
Speaker 1: warm to such ambitions. When he has wealth, it is
41:10
Speaker 1: his nature to show it in watch chains and studs
41:14
Speaker 1: and signet rings. If he had a wife, she would
41:17
Speaker 1: dazzle in diamonds. The furniture of his flat is wonderfully good,
41:23
Speaker 1: all picked English pieces, and worth no end. He thinks
41:27
Speaker 1: it is just dullness and poorness of spirit that disregards
41:31
Speaker 1: these things. He came to England to instruct us in
41:35
Speaker 1: the arts of empire when he found that already there
41:38
Speaker 1: was a glut of his kind of wisdom in the
41:41
Speaker 1: German universities for years until this present outbreak. I followed
41:46
Speaker 1: his career with silent interest rather than affection. And the
41:50
Speaker 1: first thing he undertook to teach us was, I remember
41:54
Speaker 1: tariff reform, taxing the foreigner limitless wealthy. You get and
42:01
Speaker 1: you pay nothing. You get a huge national income in
42:04
Speaker 1: imported goods. And also, as your tariff prevents importation, you
42:09
Speaker 1: develop a tremendous internal trade. Two birds in quite opposite
42:15
Speaker 1: directions with the same stone. It seemed just plain common
42:19
Speaker 1: sense to him. Anyhow, he felt sure it was good
42:22
Speaker 1: enough for the born English. He saw a little incredulous
42:27
Speaker 1: of our refusal to accept that delightful idea. Meanwhile, his
42:32
Speaker 1: kind have dominated the more docile German intelligence altogether. They
42:38
Speaker 1: have listened to the whisper of Veldt politic or at
42:42
Speaker 1: least their rulers have attended. They have sown aspiration on
42:47
Speaker 1: every frontier, taken the wall, done all the showily aggressive
42:53
Speaker 1: and successful things. They were the pupils he should have
42:57
Speaker 1: taught a people at once teachable and spirited, almost tearfully.
43:03
Speaker 1: Craft has asked us to mark that glorious progress of
43:07
Speaker 1: a once philosophical, civilized, and kindly people. And indeed we
43:11
Speaker 1: have had to market and polish our weapons, and with
43:15
Speaker 1: a deepening resentment, get more and more weapons and keep
43:19
Speaker 1: our powder dry, when we would have been far rather
43:22
Speaker 1: occupied with other things. But amazingly enough, we would not
43:27
Speaker 1: listen to his suggestion of universal service. Craft and his
43:32
Speaker 1: kind believe in numbers. Even the bore War could not
43:36
Speaker 1: shake his natural aptitude for political arithmetic. He has tried
43:42
Speaker 1: to bring the situation home to us by diagrams showing
43:46
Speaker 1: us enormous figures colossal soldiers to represent the German forces,
43:52
Speaker 1: and tiny little British men, smaller than the army figures
43:55
Speaker 1: for Bulgaria and for Servia. He does not understand that
44:01
Speaker 1: there can be too many soldiers on a field of battle.
44:05
Speaker 1: He could as soon believe that one could have too
44:08
Speaker 1: much money. And so he thinks the armies of Russia
44:12
Speaker 1: must be more powerful than the French. When I deny
44:16
Speaker 1: that superiority, as I do, he simply notes the fact
44:20
Speaker 1: that I am unable to count. And when it comes
44:24
Speaker 1: to schemes of warfare, than a kind of delirium of
44:29
Speaker 1: cunning descends upon craft. He is full of devices such
44:34
Speaker 1: as we poor fools, cannot invent sudden attacks without a
44:40
Speaker 1: declaration of war, Vast schemes for spy systems at assassin
44:46
Speaker 1: like disguises, the cowing of a country by the wholesale
44:51
Speaker 1: shooting of uncivil non combatants, breaches of neutrality, national treacheries,
45:00
Speaker 1: altered dispatchers, forge's letters, diplomatic lies, a perfect world organization
45:08
Speaker 1: of super sneaks. Our poor cousin, Michael the German, has
45:13
Speaker 1: listened to such wisdom, only too meekly. Poor Michael, with
45:20
Speaker 1: his honest blue eyes wander lit, has tried his best
45:24
Speaker 1: to be a very devil and go where Craft's cousin, Bernardi,
45:30
Speaker 1: the military expert, has led him. So far, it has
45:34
Speaker 1: led him into the ditches of Liege and the gorgeous
45:38
Speaker 1: of the Ardennes, and much hunger and dirt and blood.
45:43
Speaker 1: And Craft over here has watched with an intolerable envy
45:48
Speaker 1: Berlin lying and bullying, and being the very superman of
45:52
Speaker 1: welt politic. He has been talking, writing, praying us to
45:58
Speaker 1: do likewise, to strike suddenly before the war was declared
46:02
Speaker 1: at the German fleet, to outrage the neutrality of Denmark,
46:07
Speaker 1: to seize Holland, to do something nationally dishonest and disgraceful.
46:13
Speaker 1: Daily he has raged at our milk and water methods.
46:17
Speaker 1: At times we have seemed to him more like a
46:20
Speaker 1: lot of Woodrow Wilson's than reasonable sane men. And he
46:26
Speaker 1: is still at it. Only a few days ago I
46:30
Speaker 1: took up the paper that has at last moved me
46:34
Speaker 1: to the very plain declarations of this article. It was
46:38
Speaker 1: an English daily paper, and Craft was telling us, as usual,
46:44
Speaker 1: and with his usual despairful sense of our stupidity, how
46:49
Speaker 1: to conduct this war. And what he said was this,
46:52
Speaker 1: that we have to starve Germany, not realizing that with
46:56
Speaker 1: her choked railways and her wasted crops, Germany may be
47:00
Speaker 1: trusted very rapidly to starve herself, and that if we
47:05
Speaker 1: do not prevent them, foodstus will go into Germany by
47:10
Speaker 1: way of Holland and Italy. So he wants us to
47:14
Speaker 1: begin at once a hostile blockade of Holland and Italy,
47:18
Speaker 1: or better perhaps to send each of these innocent and
47:21
Speaker 1: friendly countries and ultimatum forthwith. He wants it done at once,
47:28
Speaker 1: because otherwise the Berlin Crafts, some Delbrook or burn Hardie,
47:33
Speaker 1: or that egregorous young statesman the Crown Prince, may persuade
47:38
Speaker 1: the Prussians to get in their ultimatum first. Then we
47:43
Speaker 1: should have no chance of doing anything internationally idiotic at all,
47:48
Speaker 1: unless perhaps we seize the port in Norway. It might
47:52
Speaker 1: be rather a fine thing, he thinks, upon reflection, to
47:56
Speaker 1: seize a port in Norway. Now, let us, in wish
48:00
Speaker 1: make it clear once for all to the Craft and
48:04
Speaker 1: other kindred patriotic gentlemen from abroad who are showing us
48:09
Speaker 1: the really artful way to do things, that this is
48:13
Speaker 1: not our way of doing things. Into this war. We
48:17
Speaker 1: have gone with clean hands to end the reign of
48:20
Speaker 1: brutal and artful internationalism forever. Our hearts are heavy at
48:25
Speaker 1: the task before us, but our intention is grim. We
48:30
Speaker 1: mean to conquer. We are prepared for every disaster, for
48:34
Speaker 1: intolerable stresses, for bankruptcy, for hunger, for anything but defeat.
48:40
Speaker 1: Now that we have begun to fight, we will fight,
48:42
Speaker 1: if needful, until the children die of famine in our homes.
48:47
Speaker 1: We will fight though every ship we have is at
48:50
Speaker 1: the bottom of the sea. We mean to fight this
48:52
Speaker 1: war to its very finish, And that finish, we are
48:56
Speaker 1: absolutely resolved, must be the end of Craftism in the world.
49:01
Speaker 1: And we will come out of this war with hands
49:03
Speaker 1: as clean as they are now, unstained by any dirty
49:08
Speaker 1: tricks in field or council chamber, neutralities respected, and treaties kept.
49:15
Speaker 1: Then we will reckon once for all, with Craft and
49:18
Speaker 1: with his friends and supporters, the private dealers in armaments,
49:23
Speaker 1: and with all this monstrous, stupid brood of villainy that
49:27
Speaker 1: has brought this vast catastrophe upon the world. I say
49:31
Speaker 1: this plainly now for myself and for thousands of silent
49:35
Speaker 1: plain men, because the sooner Craft realizes how we feel
49:39
Speaker 1: in this matter, the better for him. He betrays at
49:42
Speaker 1: times a remarkable persuasion that at the final settling up
49:47
Speaker 1: of things, he will make himself invaluable to us at diplomacy.
49:52
Speaker 1: He knows he shines. Then the list being whisper has
49:57
Speaker 1: its use, and the studied insolence finish the fighting and
50:01
Speaker 1: then leave it to him. He really believes the born
50:06
Speaker 1: English will. He does not understand in the slightest degree
50:10
Speaker 1: the still passion of our streets. There never was less
50:14
Speaker 1: shouting and less demonstration in England, and never was England
50:18
Speaker 1: so quietly intent. This war is not going to end
50:22
Speaker 1: in diplomacy. It is going to end diplomacy. It is
50:26
Speaker 1: quite a different thought of war from any that have
50:29
Speaker 1: gone before it. At the end, there will be no
50:32
Speaker 1: conference of Europe on the old lines at all, but
50:35
Speaker 1: a conference of the world. It will be a conference
50:38
Speaker 1: for Craft to laugh at. He will run about buttonholding
50:42
Speaker 1: people about it, almost fitting in their faces with the
50:46
Speaker 1: eagerness of his derisive whispers. It will conduct its affairs
50:51
Speaker 1: with scandalous publicity and a deliberate simplicity. It will be
50:56
Speaker 1: worse than Woodrow Wilson, and it will make a peace
51:00
Speaker 1: that will put an end to Craft and the spirit
51:02
Speaker 1: of craft and craftism, and the private armament firms behind
51:07
Speaker 1: him forevermore, at which I imagine the head of craft
51:12
Speaker 1: going down between his shoulders, and his large hands going
51:16
Speaker 1: out like the wings of a cherub. Englishmen, liberals, fools, incurable.
51:25
Speaker 1: How can such things be? It is not how things
51:28
Speaker 1: are done, It is how they are going to be done,
51:32
Speaker 1: if this world is to be worth living in at all.
51:35
Speaker 1: After this war, when we fight Berlin, Craft, we fight you.
51:41
Speaker 1: An absolute end to you, yes, end of chapter four.
51:48
Speaker 1: Recording by Peter Tomlinson, Chapter five of The War That
51:57
Speaker 1: Will End War. This is a liberal recording. All LibriVox
52:01
Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information, ought
52:05
Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Peter Tomlinson,
52:11
Speaker 1: Chapter five, The most necessary measures in the world. In
52:15
Speaker 1: this smash up of empires and diplomacy, this utter disaster
52:20
Speaker 1: of international politics, certain things which would have seemed ridiculously
52:25
Speaker 1: utopian a few weeks ago has suddenly become reasonable and practical.
52:30
Speaker 1: One of these a thing that would have seemed fantastic
52:33
Speaker 1: until the very moment when we joined issue with Germany,
52:37
Speaker 1: and which may now be regarded as a sober possibility
52:41
Speaker 1: is the absolute abolition throughout the world of the manufacture
52:45
Speaker 1: of weapons for private gain. Whatever may be said of
52:49
Speaker 1: the practicability of national disarmament, there can be no dispute,
52:54
Speaker 1: not merely of the possibility, but of the supreme necessity
52:58
Speaker 1: of ending forever the day of private profit in the
53:02
Speaker 1: instruments of death. That is the real enemy, that is
53:07
Speaker 1: the evil thing at the very center of this trouble,
53:11
Speaker 1: at the very core of all this evil that has
53:15
Speaker 1: burst at loss in the world disaster lies, this crapism,
53:19
Speaker 1: this sordid, enormous trade in the instruments of death. It
53:23
Speaker 1: is the closest, most gigantic organization in the world. Time
53:28
Speaker 1: after time, this huge business, with its brought newspapers, its
53:33
Speaker 1: paid spies, its agents, its shareholders, its insane sympathizers, its
53:39
Speaker 1: vast ramification of open and concealed associates, has defeated attempts
53:45
Speaker 1: at pacification, has piled the heap of explosive material higher
53:50
Speaker 1: and higher, the heap that has toppled at last into
53:54
Speaker 1: this bloody welter in Belgium, in which the lives of
53:57
Speaker 1: four great nations are now being told and tormented and
54:02
Speaker 1: slaughtered and wasted, beyond counting, beyond imagining. I dare not
54:07
Speaker 1: picture it, thinking now of who may read. So long
54:11
Speaker 1: as the unstable peace endured, so long as the Emperor
54:15
Speaker 1: of the Germans, and the Crupp concern and the vanities
54:19
Speaker 1: of Prussia hung together, threatening but not assailing the peace
54:23
Speaker 1: of the world, so long as one could dream of
54:26
Speaker 1: holding off the crash and saving lives. So long was
54:31
Speaker 1: it impossible to bring this business to an end, or
54:34
Speaker 1: even to propose plainly to bring this business to an end,
54:39
Speaker 1: It was still possible to argue that to be prepared
54:42
Speaker 1: for war was the way to keep the peace. But
54:46
Speaker 1: now everyone knows better. The war has come. Preparation has exploded.
54:52
Speaker 1: Outrageous plunder has passed into outrageous bloodshed. All Europe is
54:56
Speaker 1: in revolt against this evil system. There is no go
55:00
Speaker 1: going back now to peace. Our men must die in heaps,
55:04
Speaker 1: in thousands. We cannot delude ourselves with dreams of easy victories.
55:09
Speaker 1: We must all suffer endless miseries and anxieties. Scarcely a
55:14
Speaker 1: human affair is there that will not be marred and
55:17
Speaker 1: darkened by this war. Out of it all must come
55:22
Speaker 1: one universal resolve that this iniquity must be plucked out
55:26
Speaker 1: by the roots. Whatever follies still lie ahead for mankind,
55:31
Speaker 1: this folly at least must end. There must be no
55:34
Speaker 1: more buying and selling of guns and warships and war machines.
55:39
Speaker 1: There must be no more gain in arms. Kings and
55:43
Speaker 1: kaisers must cease to be the commercial travelers of monstrous
55:47
Speaker 1: armament concerns. With the Gurban, the kaiser has made his
55:52
Speaker 1: last sale. Whatever arms the nations think they need, they
55:55
Speaker 1: must make for themselves and give to their own subjects.
55:59
Speaker 1: Beyond that, there must be no making of weapons in
56:02
Speaker 1: the earth. This is the clearest common sense. I do
56:07
Speaker 1: not need to argue what is manifest, what every German knows,
56:12
Speaker 1: what every intelligent, educated man in the world knows. The
56:17
Speaker 1: Croup concern and the tawdry imperialism of Berlin are linked
56:22
Speaker 1: like thief and receiver. The hands of the German princes
56:27
Speaker 1: are dirty with the trade. All over the world, statecraft
56:31
Speaker 1: and royalty have been approached and touched and tainted by
56:36
Speaker 1: these vast firms. But it is in Berlin that the
56:40
Speaker 1: corruption has centers. It is from Berlin that the intolerable
56:44
Speaker 1: pressure to arm and still to arm, has come It
56:48
Speaker 1: is at Berlin alone that the evil can be grappled
56:51
Speaker 1: and killed. Before this, there was no reaching it. It
56:55
Speaker 1: was useless to dream even of disarmament, while these people
56:59
Speaker 1: could still go on making their material uncontrolled, waiting for
57:03
Speaker 1: the moment of national passion, feeding the national mind with
57:06
Speaker 1: fears and suspicions through their subsidized press. But now there
57:11
Speaker 1: is a new spirit in the world. There are no
57:14
Speaker 1: more fears. The worst evil has come to pass. The
57:19
Speaker 1: ugly hatreds that nourished misconceptions of an armed peace begin
57:24
Speaker 1: already to give place to the mutual respect and pity
57:28
Speaker 1: and disillusionment of a universally disastrous war. We can at
57:33
Speaker 1: last deal with Crupps and the kindred firms throughout the
57:37
Speaker 1: world as one general problem, one worldwide accessible evil outside
57:44
Speaker 1: the circle of belligerent states, and the states which, like Denmark, Italy, Rumania,
57:49
Speaker 1: Norway and Sweden must necessarily be invited to take a
57:54
Speaker 1: share in the final resettlement of the world's affairs. There
57:59
Speaker 1: are only three systems of powers which need be considered
58:02
Speaker 1: in this matter, namely the English and Spanish speaking republics
58:07
Speaker 1: of America and China. None of these states is deeply
58:11
Speaker 1: involved in the armament's trade, several of them have every
58:15
Speaker 1: reason to hate a system that has linked the obligation
58:19
Speaker 1: to deal in armaments with every loan. The United States
58:24
Speaker 1: of America is now, more than ever it was, an
58:27
Speaker 1: anti militarist power. And it is not too much to
58:31
Speaker 1: say that the government of the United States of America
58:34
Speaker 1: holds in its hand the power to sanction or prevent
58:38
Speaker 1: this most urgent need of mankind. If the people of
58:41
Speaker 1: the United States will consider and grasp this tremendous question now,
58:46
Speaker 1: if they will make up their minds now that there
58:49
Speaker 1: shall be no more profit made in America or anywhere
58:52
Speaker 1: else upon the face of the earth, in raw material,
58:55
Speaker 1: If they will determine to put the vast moral, financial,
58:59
Speaker 1: and material influence United States will be able to exercise
59:03
Speaker 1: at the end of this war in the scale against
59:06
Speaker 1: a survival of crapism, then it will be possible to
59:10
Speaker 1: finish that vile industry forever. If through a failure of
59:14
Speaker 1: courage or imagination, they will not come into this thing,
59:18
Speaker 1: then I fear if it may be done. But I
59:21
Speaker 1: misjudge the United States, if in the end they abstain
59:25
Speaker 1: from so glorious and congenial an opportunity. Let me set
59:31
Speaker 1: out the suggestion very plainly. All the plant for the
59:35
Speaker 1: making of war material throughout the world must be taken
59:39
Speaker 1: over by the government of the state in which it exists,
59:44
Speaker 1: every gun factory, every rifle factory, every dockyard for the
59:48
Speaker 1: building of warships. It may be necessary to compensate the
59:52
Speaker 1: shareholders more or less completely. There may have to be
59:56
Speaker 1: a war indemnity to provide for that, but that is
1:00:00
Speaker 1: a question of detail. The thing is the conversion everywhere
1:00:05
Speaker 1: of arms making into a state monopoly, so that nowhere
1:00:09
Speaker 1: shall there be a hapath of avoidable private gain in it. Then,
1:00:13
Speaker 1: and then only will it become possible to arrange for
1:00:16
Speaker 1: the gradual dismantling of this industry which is destroying humanity,
1:00:20
Speaker 1: and the reduction of the armed forces of the world
1:00:23
Speaker 1: to reasonable dimensions. I would carry this suppression down even
1:00:27
Speaker 1: to the restriction of the manufacture and sale of every
1:00:31
Speaker 1: sort of gun, pistol and explosive. They should be made
1:00:35
Speaker 1: only in government workshops and sold only in government shops.
1:00:39
Speaker 1: There should not be a single rifle, not a browning pistol, unregistered, unrecorded,
1:00:45
Speaker 1: and untraceable in the world. But that may be a
1:00:48
Speaker 1: council of perfection. The essential thing is the world's suppression
1:00:53
Speaker 1: of this abominable traffic in the big gear of war,
1:00:57
Speaker 1: in warships and great guns. With this corruption cleared out
1:01:02
Speaker 1: of the way, with the armament's commercial traveler flung down
1:01:06
Speaker 1: the back stairs, he has haunted for so long and
1:01:10
Speaker 1: flung so hard, that he will be incapacitated forever, it
1:01:14
Speaker 1: will become possible to consider a scheme for the establishment
1:01:19
Speaker 1: of the peace of the world. Until that is done,
1:01:22
Speaker 1: any such scheme will remain an idle dream. But him
1:01:27
Speaker 1: disposed of the way is open for the association of
1:01:30
Speaker 1: armed nations, determined to stamp out at once every requdescence
1:01:35
Speaker 1: of aggressive war. They will not be totally disarmed powers.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: It is no good to disarm while any one single
1:01:42
Speaker 1: power is still in love with the dream of military glory.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: It is no good to disarm while the possibility of
1:01:49
Speaker 1: war fever is still in the human blood. The intelligence
1:01:53
Speaker 1: of the whole world must watch for febrile symptoms and
1:01:57
Speaker 1: prepare to allay them. But after this struggle, one may
1:02:01
Speaker 1: count on the pacific intentions of at least the following states,
1:02:05
Speaker 1: The British Empire, France, Italy and all the minor states
1:02:09
Speaker 1: of the North and West. The United States has always
1:02:12
Speaker 1: been a pacific power. Japan has had its lesson and
1:02:16
Speaker 1: is too impoverished for serious hostilities. China has humiliations for
1:02:21
Speaker 1: the German spirit will be warsick. The Spanish and Portuguese
1:02:25
Speaker 1: speaking republics of America are too busy developing materially to
1:02:30
Speaker 1: dream of war on the modern scale, and the same
1:02:34
Speaker 1: may presently be true of the Greek, Latin and slav
1:02:37
Speaker 1: communities of Southeast Europe. If as I hope and believe
1:02:41
Speaker 1: this war leads to the rational rearrangement of the Austro
1:02:45
Speaker 1: Hungarian Empire nineteen fifteen, will indeed find this world a
1:02:50
Speaker 1: strangely tamed and reasonable world. There's only one doubtful country, Russia,
1:02:56
Speaker 1: And for my part, I do not believe in the wickedness.
1:03:00
Speaker 1: I doubt the present power of that stupendous barbaric state
1:03:05
Speaker 1: Finland and a nascent Polish kingdom at least will be
1:03:08
Speaker 1: weight on the side of peace. It will be, indeed
1:03:11
Speaker 1: the phase of supreme opportunity for peace. If there is
1:03:15
Speaker 1: courage and honesty enough in Men, I believe it will
1:03:19
Speaker 1: be possible to establish a World Council for the Regulation
1:03:22
Speaker 1: of Armaments, as the natural outcome of this war. First,
1:03:26
Speaker 1: to trade in armaments must be absolutely killed. And the
1:03:30
Speaker 1: next supremely important measure to secure the peace of the
1:03:33
Speaker 1: world is the neutralization of the sea. It will lie
1:03:38
Speaker 1: in the power of England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, and
1:03:41
Speaker 1: the United States. If Germany and Austria are shattered in
1:03:44
Speaker 1: this war, to forbid the further building of any more
1:03:48
Speaker 1: ships of war at all, to persuade and if need be,
1:03:51
Speaker 1: to oblige the minor powers to sell their navies and
1:03:55
Speaker 1: to refuse the seas to armed ships not under the
1:03:59
Speaker 1: control of the Confederation. To launch an armed ship can
1:04:03
Speaker 1: be made an invasion of the common territory of the world.
1:04:07
Speaker 1: This will be an open possibility in nineteen fifteen. It
1:04:13
Speaker 1: will remain an open possibility until men recover from the
1:04:16
Speaker 1: shock of this conflict, as that begins to be forgotten,
1:04:20
Speaker 1: so this will cease to be a possibility again, perhaps
1:04:24
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. Already, human intelligence and honesty have
1:04:29
Speaker 1: contrived to keep the great American Lakes and the enormous
1:04:33
Speaker 1: Canadian frontier disarmed for a century. Warlike folly has complained
1:04:38
Speaker 1: of that, but it has never been strong enough to
1:04:40
Speaker 1: upset it. What is possible on that scale is possible universally,
1:04:45
Speaker 1: so soon as the armament trader is put out of mischief,
1:04:49
Speaker 1: and with the Confederated peace powers keeping the seas and
1:04:53
Speaker 1: guaranteeing the peaceful freedom of the seas to all mankind,
1:04:57
Speaker 1: treating the transport of armed men and war materials except
1:05:00
Speaker 1: between one detached part of a state and another as contraband,
1:05:05
Speaker 1: and impartially blockading all belligerents. Those who know best the
1:05:09
Speaker 1: significance of the sea power will realize best the reduction
1:05:13
Speaker 1: in the danger of extensive wars on land. This is
1:05:18
Speaker 1: no dream, This is the plain, common sense of the
1:05:21
Speaker 1: present opportunity. It may be urged that this is a
1:05:25
Speaker 1: premiature discussion, that this war is still undecided, But indeed
1:05:30
Speaker 1: there can be no decision to this war for France
1:05:33
Speaker 1: and England at any rate. But the defeat of Germany,
1:05:37
Speaker 1: the abandonment of German militarism, the destruction of the German fleet,
1:05:43
Speaker 1: and the creation of this opportunity. Nothing short of that
1:05:47
Speaker 1: is tolerable. We must fight on to extinction rather than
1:05:51
Speaker 1: submit to a dishonoring peace in defeat or to any
1:05:55
Speaker 1: premature settlement. The fate of the world under triumphant Prussianism
1:06:00
Speaker 1: and Crupism for the next two hundred years is not
1:06:03
Speaker 1: worth discussing. There is no conceivable conclusion to this war
1:06:08
Speaker 1: but submission at Berlin. There is no reasonable course before
1:06:13
Speaker 1: us now but to give all our strength for victory
1:06:16
Speaker 1: and the establishment of victory. The end must be victory
1:06:20
Speaker 1: or our effacement. What will happen after our effacement is
1:06:24
Speaker 1: for the Germans to consider a war that will merely
1:06:27
Speaker 1: beat Germany a little and restore the hateful tensions of
1:06:31
Speaker 1: the last forty years is not worth waging as an
1:06:34
Speaker 1: end to all our effort. It will be almost as
1:06:37
Speaker 1: intolerable as defeat. Yet, unless a body of definite ideas
1:06:41
Speaker 1: is formed and promulgated now, things may happen. So and
1:06:46
Speaker 1: so Now, while there is yet time, the liberalism of
1:06:50
Speaker 1: France and England must speak plainly and make its appeal
1:06:54
Speaker 1: to the liberalism of all the world, not to share
1:06:57
Speaker 1: our war, indeed, but to share the great ends for
1:07:00
Speaker 1: which we are so gladly waging this war. For indeed,
1:07:04
Speaker 1: sombarly enough, England and France and Belgium and Russia are
1:07:08
Speaker 1: glad of this day. The age of armed anxiety is over.
1:07:13
Speaker 1: Whatever retired, it must be an end, and there is
1:07:16
Speaker 1: no way of making it an end, but through these
1:07:19
Speaker 1: two associated decisions, the abolition of crapism and the neutralization
1:07:24
Speaker 1: of the sea. End of chapter five, recording by Peter Tomlinson.
1:07:35
Speaker 1: Chapter six of The War That Will End War by
1:07:38
Speaker 1: Herbert George Wells. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
1:07:42
Speaker 1: Recording by Peter Tomlinson, Chapter six, The need of a
1:07:47
Speaker 1: new map of Europe. At the moment of writing, the
1:07:51
Speaker 1: war has not lasted many days. Great battles by land
1:07:55
Speaker 1: and sea alike impend. Yet I find my steadfast anticipation
1:08:00
Speaker 1: that Prussianism, Bernardism, the whole theory and practice of the
1:08:05
Speaker 1: Empire of the Germans, is a rotten and condemned thing
1:08:09
Speaker 1: has already strengthened to an absolute conviction. Until seen accidents
1:08:14
Speaker 1: may happen. I say nothing of the sea, but the
1:08:18
Speaker 1: general and ultimate result seems to me now as certain
1:08:22
Speaker 1: as the rising of to morrow's sun. I do not
1:08:26
Speaker 1: know how much slaughter lies before Europe, before Germany realizes
1:08:30
Speaker 1: that she is fool led and fool poisoned. I do
1:08:34
Speaker 1: not know how long the swaggering Prussian officer will be
1:08:37
Speaker 1: able to drive his crowded men to massacre before they
1:08:41
Speaker 1: revolt against him, Nor do I know how far the
1:08:44
Speaker 1: inflated vanity of Berlin has made provision for defeat Germany
1:08:50
Speaker 1: on the defensive. For all we can tell may prove
1:08:53
Speaker 1: a very stubborn thing, and Russia's strength may be, and
1:08:57
Speaker 1: I think is overestimated. All that may delay, but it
1:09:01
Speaker 1: will not alter the final demonstration that Prussianism, as mister
1:09:07
Speaker 1: Bellock foretold so amazingly, took its mortal wound at the
1:09:11
Speaker 1: first onset before the trenches of Liege. We begin a
1:09:16
Speaker 1: new period of history. It is not Germany that has
1:09:20
Speaker 1: been defeated. Germany is still an unconquered country. Indeed, now
1:09:24
Speaker 1: it is a released country. It is a country glorious
1:09:28
Speaker 1: in history and with a glorious future. But never more,
1:09:31
Speaker 1: after this war has ended, will it march to the
1:09:34
Speaker 1: shout of the Prussian drill sergeant and strive to play
1:09:38
Speaker 1: bully to the world. The legend of Prussia is exploded.
1:09:42
Speaker 1: Its appeal was to one coarse criterion success, and it
1:09:47
Speaker 1: has failed. Never more will the harshness of Berlin overshadow
1:09:50
Speaker 1: the great and friendly civilization of southern and Western Germany.
1:09:55
Speaker 1: The work before a world in arms is to clean
1:09:58
Speaker 1: off the Prussian blue from the life and spirit of mankind.
1:10:03
Speaker 1: No European power has any real quarrel with Germany. Our
1:10:07
Speaker 1: quarrel is with the Empire of the Germans, not with
1:10:11
Speaker 1: a people, but with an idea. Let us, in all
1:10:14
Speaker 1: that follows, keep that clearly in our minds. It may
1:10:18
Speaker 1: be that the German repulse at Liege was but the
1:10:22
Speaker 1: beginning of a German disaster as great as that of
1:10:25
Speaker 1: France in eighteen seventy one. It may be that Germany
1:10:29
Speaker 1: has no second plan if her first plan fails, that
1:10:34
Speaker 1: she will go to pieces after her first defeat. It
1:10:37
Speaker 1: seems to me that this is so. I risked the prophecy,
1:10:41
Speaker 1: and I would have us prepare ourselves for the temptations
1:10:45
Speaker 1: of victory. And so to begin with, let us of
1:10:48
Speaker 1: the Liberal faith declare our fixed, unalterable conviction that it
1:10:52
Speaker 1: would be a sin to dismember Germany, or to allow
1:10:56
Speaker 1: any German speaking and German feeling territory to fall under
1:11:00
Speaker 1: a foreign yoke. Let us English make sure of ourselves
1:11:04
Speaker 1: in the matter. There may be restorations of alien territory Polish, French, Danish, Italian,
1:11:12
Speaker 1: But we have seen enough of racial subjugation now to
1:11:15
Speaker 1: be sure that we will tolerate no more of it.
1:11:18
Speaker 1: From the Rhine to East Prussia, and from the Baltic
1:11:20
Speaker 1: to the southern limits of German speaking Austria, the Germans
1:11:24
Speaker 1: are one people. Let us begin with the resolution to
1:11:27
Speaker 1: permit no new bitterness of conquered territories to come into
1:11:32
Speaker 1: existence to disturb the future peace of Europe. Let us
1:11:36
Speaker 1: see to it that at the ultimate settlement, the Germans,
1:11:39
Speaker 1: however great his overthrow may be, are all left free men.
1:11:44
Speaker 1: When the Prussians invaded Luxembourg, they tore up the map
1:11:47
Speaker 1: of Europe. To the redrawing of that map, a thousand
1:11:50
Speaker 1: complex forces will come. There will be much attempted overreaching
1:11:54
Speaker 1: in the business, and much greed. Few will come to
1:11:57
Speaker 1: negotiations with simple intentions. In a wrangle, all sorts of
1:12:02
Speaker 1: ugly and stupid things may happen. It is for us
1:12:05
Speaker 1: English to get ahead in that matter, to take counsel
1:12:08
Speaker 1: with ourselves and to determine what is just. It is
1:12:12
Speaker 1: for us who are in so many ways detached from
1:12:14
Speaker 1: an independent of the national passions of the continent. Not
1:12:19
Speaker 1: to be cunning or politic, but to contrive as unanimous
1:12:23
Speaker 1: a purpose as possible now, so that we may carry
1:12:27
Speaker 1: this war to its end with a clear conception of
1:12:30
Speaker 1: its end, and to use the whole of our strength
1:12:33
Speaker 1: to make an enduring peace in Europe. That means we
1:12:36
Speaker 1: have to redraw the map, so that there shall be,
1:12:39
Speaker 1: for just as far as we can see ahead, as
1:12:42
Speaker 1: little cause for warfare among US Western nations as possible.
1:12:48
Speaker 1: That means that we have to redraw it justly and
1:12:52
Speaker 1: very extensively. Is that an impossible proposal? I think not.
1:12:57
Speaker 1: There are indeed such things as non irritated frontiers. Witness
1:13:01
Speaker 1: the frontiers of Canada. Certain boundaries have served in Europe
1:13:05
Speaker 1: now for the better part of one hundred years, and
1:13:09
Speaker 1: grow less amenable to disturbance every year. Nobody, for example,
1:13:14
Speaker 1: wants to use force to readjust the mutual frontiers in
1:13:17
Speaker 1: Europe of Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. And
1:13:22
Speaker 1: none of these powers desired now to acquire the foreign
1:13:25
Speaker 1: possessions of any other of the group. They are powers
1:13:29
Speaker 1: permanently at peace. Will it not be possible now to
1:13:33
Speaker 1: make so drastic a readjustment as to secure the same
1:13:37
Speaker 1: practical contentment between all the European powers. Is not this
1:13:41
Speaker 1: war that crowning opportunity. It seems to me that in
1:13:45
Speaker 1: this matter it behoves asked to form an opinion sane
1:13:49
Speaker 1: and definite enough to meet the sudden impulses of belligerent
1:13:54
Speaker 1: triumph and override the secret councils of diplomacy. It is
1:13:59
Speaker 1: the thing to do forthwith. Let us decide what we
1:14:02
Speaker 1: are going on fighting for, and let us secure it
1:14:05
Speaker 1: and settle it. It is not an abstract, interesting thing
1:14:09
Speaker 1: to do. It is a duty of every English citizen
1:14:13
Speaker 1: now to study the problem of the map of Europe,
1:14:15
Speaker 1: so that we can make an end forever to that
1:14:18
Speaker 1: dark game of plots and secret treaties and clap trap
1:14:22
Speaker 1: synthetic schemes that has wasted the forces of civilization and
1:14:26
Speaker 1: made the fortunes of the Krapp family in the last
1:14:29
Speaker 1: forty years. We are fighting now for a new map
1:14:33
Speaker 1: of Europe. If we are fighting for anything at all,
1:14:37
Speaker 1: I could imagine that new map of Europe as if
1:14:40
Speaker 1: it were the flag of the allies who now prepare
1:14:43
Speaker 1: to press the Germans back towards their proper territory in
1:14:48
Speaker 1: the first place, I suggest that France must recover Lorraine
1:14:51
Speaker 1: and that Luxembourg must be linked in closer union with Belgium. Alsash,
1:14:57
Speaker 1: it seems to me, should be given a choice between
1:15:00
Speaker 1: France and an entry into the Swiss Confederation, it would
1:15:04
Speaker 1: possibly choose France. Denmark should have again the distinctly Danish
1:15:09
Speaker 1: part of her lost provinces restored to her Trieste and Trent,
1:15:13
Speaker 1: and perhaps also Polar should be restored to Italy. This
1:15:17
Speaker 1: will reunite several severed fragments of peoples to their more
1:15:21
Speaker 1: congenial associates. But these are minor changes compared with the
1:15:26
Speaker 1: new developments that are now in some form inevitable in
1:15:29
Speaker 1: the East of Europe, and for those we have to
1:15:32
Speaker 1: nerve our imaginations if this vast war and waste of
1:15:36
Speaker 1: men is to end in an enduring peace. The breakup
1:15:40
Speaker 1: of the Austrian Empire has hung over Europe like a
1:15:43
Speaker 1: curse for forty years. Let us break it up now
1:15:47
Speaker 1: and have done with it. What is to become of
1:15:49
Speaker 1: the non German regions of Austria Hungary, and what is
1:15:53
Speaker 1: to happen upon the Polish frontier of Russia. First, then
1:15:57
Speaker 1: I would suggest that the three fragments of Poland should
1:16:01
Speaker 1: be reunited and that the Tsar of Russia should be
1:16:03
Speaker 1: crowned King of Poland. I propose, then we define that
1:16:08
Speaker 1: as our national intention, that we use all the liberalizing
1:16:12
Speaker 1: influence this present war will give us in Russia to
1:16:15
Speaker 1: that end. And secondly, I propose that we set before
1:16:18
Speaker 1: ourselves as our policy the unification of that larger Rumania,
1:16:24
Speaker 1: which includes Transylvania, and the gathering together into a confederation
1:16:29
Speaker 1: of the Swiss type of all the Servian and quasi
1:16:32
Speaker 1: Servian provinces of the Austrian Empire. Let us, as the
1:16:37
Speaker 1: price Greater Servia will pay for its unity, exact the
1:16:40
Speaker 1: restoration to Bulgaria of any Bulgarian speaking districts that are
1:16:45
Speaker 1: now under Servian rule. Let us save Scutari from the
1:16:49
Speaker 1: iniquity of a nose slashing occupation by Montenegrins, and try
1:16:55
Speaker 1: to affect another Swiss confederation of the residual Bohemia, Slavic
1:17:00
Speaker 1: and Hungarian fragments. I am convinced that the time has
1:17:04
Speaker 1: come for the substitution of Swiss associations for the discredited
1:17:08
Speaker 1: imperialisms and kingdoms that have made Europe unstable for so long.
1:17:14
Speaker 1: Every emperor and every king we now perceive means a
1:17:18
Speaker 1: national ambition more organic, concentrated, and dangerous than is possible
1:17:23
Speaker 1: under republican conditions. Our own peculiar monarchy is the one
1:17:29
Speaker 1: exception that proves the rule. There is no reason why
1:17:32
Speaker 1: we should have multiplied these centers of aggression. Probably neither
1:17:36
Speaker 1: Bulgaria nor Servia would miss their kings very keenly, and anyhow,
1:17:41
Speaker 1: I do not see any need for more of these
1:17:43
Speaker 1: irritating ambition pimples upon the fair face of the world.
1:17:47
Speaker 1: Let us cease to give indigestible princes to the new
1:17:51
Speaker 1: states that we spights arise. Albania, particularly with its miscellaneous tribes,
1:17:57
Speaker 1: has certainly no use for monarchy, and the suggestion that
1:18:00
Speaker 1: has been made for its settlement as a confederation of
1:18:04
Speaker 1: small tribal cantons, is the only one I've ever heard
1:18:07
Speaker 1: that seemed to contain a ray of hope for that
1:18:09
Speaker 1: distracted patch of earth. There is certainly no reason why
1:18:13
Speaker 1: these people should be exploited by Italy, since Italy can
1:18:16
Speaker 1: claim a more legitimate gratification. There in a paragraph is
1:18:21
Speaker 1: a sketch of the map of Europe that may emerge
1:18:23
Speaker 1: from the present struggle. It is my personal idea of
1:18:26
Speaker 1: our purpose in this war. Quite manifestly, in all these matters,
1:18:30
Speaker 1: I am a fairly ignorant person. Quite manifestly, this is
1:18:34
Speaker 1: crude stuff, and I admit a certain sense of presumptuous
1:18:38
Speaker 1: absurdity as I sit here before the map of Europe
1:18:42
Speaker 1: like a carver before a duck, and take off a
1:18:45
Speaker 1: slice here and decide on a cut there. Nonetheless, it
1:18:48
Speaker 1: is what everyone of us has to do. I intend
1:18:51
Speaker 1: to go on redrawing the map of Europe with every
1:18:54
Speaker 1: intelligent person I meet. We are all more or less ignorant.
1:18:58
Speaker 1: It is unfortunate, but it does not alter the fact
1:19:01
Speaker 1: that we cannot escape either decisions or passive acquiescences in
1:19:06
Speaker 1: these matters. If we do not do our utmost to
1:19:08
Speaker 1: understand the new map, if we make no decisions, then
1:19:12
Speaker 1: still cruder things will happen. Europe will blunder into a
1:19:16
Speaker 1: new set of ugly complications and prepare a still more
1:19:19
Speaker 1: colossal armageddon than this that is now going on. No one,
1:19:23
Speaker 1: I hope, will suggest after this war that we should
1:19:25
Speaker 1: still leave things to the diplomatists. Yet the alternative to
1:19:29
Speaker 1: you and me is diplomacy. If you want to see
1:19:32
Speaker 1: where diplomacy and welt politic have landed Europe after forty
1:19:36
Speaker 1: years of anxiety and armament, you must go and look
1:19:39
Speaker 1: into the ditches of Liege. These bloody heaps are the
1:19:43
Speaker 1: mere first samples of the harvest. The only alternative to
1:19:47
Speaker 1: diplomacy is outspoken intelligence. Yours and mine and every articulate person's.
1:19:53
Speaker 1: We have all of us to undertake this redrawing of
1:19:56
Speaker 1: the map of Europe in the measure of our power
1:19:59
Speaker 1: and capacity. That our power and capacity are unhappily not
1:20:03
Speaker 1: very considerable does not absolve us. It is for us
1:20:07
Speaker 1: to secure a lasting settlement of all the European front
1:20:10
Speaker 1: as if we can. If we common intelligent people at
1:20:13
Speaker 1: large do not secure that, nobody will. If we have
1:20:17
Speaker 1: no intentions with regard to the map of Europe, we
1:20:20
Speaker 1: shall soon be going on with the war for nothing.
1:20:23
Speaker 1: In particular, the Prussian spirit has broken itself beyond repair,
1:20:28
Speaker 1: and the north coast of France and the integrity of
1:20:30
Speaker 1: Belgium are saved. All the fighting that is still to
1:20:33
Speaker 1: come will only be the confirmation and development of that.
1:20:37
Speaker 1: If we have no further plan before us, our task
1:20:40
Speaker 1: is at an end. If that is all, we may
1:20:43
Speaker 1: stand aside now with a good conscience and watch a
1:20:46
Speaker 1: slower war drag to an evil end. Left to herself.
1:20:51
Speaker 1: A victorious Russia is far more likely to help herself
1:20:54
Speaker 1: to East Prussia and set to work to Russianize its
1:20:58
Speaker 1: inhabitants than to risk and indigestion of more Poles. Italy
1:21:02
Speaker 1: may go into Albania and a new conflict with Servia.
1:21:06
Speaker 1: It is even conceivable that France may be ungenerous. She
1:21:11
Speaker 1: will have a good excuse for being ungenerous. Meanwhile, German
1:21:14
Speaker 1: speaking populations will find themselves under instead of upper dogs.
1:21:19
Speaker 1: In half the provinces of Austria, Hungary, mischievous little kings
1:21:23
Speaker 1: with chancellors and national policies and ambitions all complete, will
1:21:28
Speaker 1: rise and fluctuate and fall upon that slippery soil and
1:21:32
Speaker 1: a bloody and in bitter Germany, continually stung by the
1:21:36
Speaker 1: outcries of her subject, Kindred will sit down grimly to
1:21:40
Speaker 1: grow a new generation of soldiers and prepare for her revenge.
1:21:44
Speaker 1: That is why I think we liberal English should draw
1:21:46
Speaker 1: our new map of Europe now, first of all on paper,
1:21:49
Speaker 1: and then upon the face of the earth. We ought
1:21:52
Speaker 1: to draw that map now, and propagate the idea of it,
1:21:55
Speaker 1: and make it our national purpose, and call the intelligence
1:21:58
Speaker 1: and consciousnesses of the United States and France and Scandinavia
1:22:02
Speaker 1: to our help. Openly and plainly. We ought to discuss
1:22:06
Speaker 1: and decide and tell the world what we mean to do.
1:22:10
Speaker 1: The reign of brutality, cynicism, and secretive treachery is shattered
1:22:14
Speaker 1: in Europe over the ruins of the Prussian war Lordship. Reason,
1:22:18
Speaker 1: public opinion, justice, international good faith, and good intentions will
1:22:23
Speaker 1: be free to come back and rule the destinies of man.
1:22:27
Speaker 1: But things will not wait for reason and justice if
1:22:30
Speaker 1: just and reasonable men have neither energy nor unity. End
1:22:36
Speaker 1: of chapter six recording by Peter Tomlinson. Chapter seven of
1:22:47
Speaker 1: The War That Will End War by Herbert George Wells.
1:22:50
Speaker 1: This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
1:22:54
Speaker 1: Peter Tomlinson. The opportunity of liberalism. The opportunity of liberalism
1:23:05
Speaker 1: has come at last, an overwhelming opportunity. The age of
1:23:10
Speaker 1: militarism has rushed to its inevitable and yet surprising climax.
1:23:16
Speaker 1: The great soldier Empire made for war, which has dominated
1:23:20
Speaker 1: Europe for forty years, has pulled itself up by the
1:23:23
Speaker 1: roots and flung itself into the struggle for which it
1:23:26
Speaker 1: was made. Whether it win or lose, it will never
1:23:31
Speaker 1: put itself back again. All Europe following that lead is
1:23:36
Speaker 1: a field for war. The good harveststand neglected, the factories
1:23:42
Speaker 1: are idle. A thin, uncertain trickle of paper money replaces
1:23:47
Speaker 1: the chinking flow of commerce. Whichever betide defeat or deadlock,
1:23:52
Speaker 1: the capitalist military civilization uproots itself and ends the war.
1:23:57
Speaker 1: May burn itself out more quickly than those who regard
1:24:00
Speaker 1: its immensity think. But the war itself is the mere
1:24:04
Speaker 1: smash of the thing. The reality is the uprooting, the
1:24:09
Speaker 1: incurable dislocation. Try to map and measure that dislocation is
1:24:15
Speaker 1: rather like one's first effort to think in suns distances.
1:24:20
Speaker 1: It is to transfer one's mind to a new and
1:24:22
Speaker 1: overwhelming scale. Never did any time carry so swift a
1:24:27
Speaker 1: burden of change as this time. It is manifest that
1:24:32
Speaker 1: in a year or so the world of men is
1:24:34
Speaker 1: going to alter more than it has altered in the
1:24:37
Speaker 1: last century and a half. More. Indeed, than it ever
1:24:40
Speaker 1: altered before these last centuries since history began. Think of
1:24:44
Speaker 1: the mere geographical dislocation. There is scarcely a country in
1:24:49
Speaker 1: Europe that will not emerge from this struggle with entirely
1:24:52
Speaker 1: fresh frontiers. Sovereign powers will vanish from the map. New
1:24:57
Speaker 1: sovereign powers will come in the disorders that are upon us,
1:25:02
Speaker 1: and of which this war itself is the mere preliminary phase.
1:25:05
Speaker 1: In uniform Inevitably, there must be social reconstruction. Who can
1:25:11
Speaker 1: doubt it? Who can doubt the breakup of confidence and
1:25:15
Speaker 1: usage that is in progress? Plainly you can see famine
1:25:20
Speaker 1: coming in France, in Germany and Russia. Does anyone suppose
1:25:24
Speaker 1: that those sham efficient Germans have fully worked out the
1:25:28
Speaker 1: care and feeding of the madly distended hosts they have
1:25:31
Speaker 1: hurled at France? Does anyone dream that they have reckoned
1:25:36
Speaker 1: for a check and halt? Does anyone imagine their sanitary
1:25:40
Speaker 1: arrangements are perfect? There will be pestilence. And can one
1:25:45
Speaker 1: believe that whatever feats of financial fiction we contrive, their
1:25:50
Speaker 1: financial crash can be staved off, and that the bankers
1:25:54
Speaker 1: of Hamburg and Frankfort are likely to be shoveling gold
1:25:58
Speaker 1: next January. In a still methodical world, the German state
1:26:02
Speaker 1: machine has probably already done all that it was ever
1:26:06
Speaker 1: made to do. It stands now exhausted amidst the turmoil
1:26:10
Speaker 1: of its consequences. Its mobilization arrangements are said to have
1:26:15
Speaker 1: been astonishingly complete. Ten million men fore and against have
1:26:19
Speaker 1: been got into the field with ammunition. Prussian Germany has
1:26:24
Speaker 1: carried out its arrangements and committed the business to God.
1:26:29
Speaker 1: German foresight has exhausted itself. If God failed Germany, I
1:26:33
Speaker 1: do not believe that Germany has the remotest idea what
1:26:37
Speaker 1: to do next. For the most part, those millions will
1:26:40
Speaker 1: never get home any more. They will certainly never get
1:26:43
Speaker 1: back to their work again, because it will have disappeared.
1:26:47
Speaker 1: When I think of European state craft presently trying to
1:26:51
Speaker 1: put all these things back again, I am reminded of
1:26:54
Speaker 1: a story of a friend whose neighbors tried to cut
1:26:57
Speaker 1: his throat and then repented. He came round to her
1:27:01
Speaker 1: with a towel about his neck, making peculiar noises. It
1:27:05
Speaker 1: was a distressing but illuminating experience for her. She was
1:27:10
Speaker 1: a plucky and resourceful woman, and she did her best.
1:27:14
Speaker 1: There was such a lot of it, she said, I
1:27:17
Speaker 1: hadn't an idea things with packs so tight in us.
1:27:22
Speaker 1: It is characteristic of such times as this, that much
1:27:25
Speaker 1: of the world, and more particularly much of the minds
1:27:29
Speaker 1: of men, much that has seemed as invincible as the
1:27:33
Speaker 1: mountains and as deeply rooted as the sea, magically loses
1:27:36
Speaker 1: its solidity phades changes vanishes. When one looked at the
1:27:42
Speaker 1: map of Europe a month ago, most of the lines
1:27:45
Speaker 1: of its frontiers seemed almost as stable as the coastlines.
1:27:49
Speaker 1: Now they waver under one's eyes. When one thought of
1:27:53
Speaker 1: the heritage of the Crown Prince of Germany, it seemed
1:27:57
Speaker 1: as fixed as a constellation. And now in a little
1:28:01
Speaker 1: while it may be worth as little as a bloody
1:28:05
Speaker 1: rag in the trenches of Liege. In little things, as
1:28:09
Speaker 1: in great one is suddenly confronted by undreamt of instabilities.
1:28:15
Speaker 1: The Reform Club, which has been a cheerful and refreshing
1:28:18
Speaker 1: trickle of gold to me for years, now yields me
1:28:21
Speaker 1: reluctantly for my check two inartistic pound notes. My other
1:28:26
Speaker 1: club has ceased a kindly custom of cashing checks. Altogether,
1:28:30
Speaker 1: one is glad that poor Bagerhot did not live to
1:28:33
Speaker 1: see this day. Each day now I marveled awake and
1:28:37
Speaker 1: find I have still a banker. And I perceive too
1:28:41
Speaker 1: that if presently my bank had dissolved into the rest
1:28:43
Speaker 1: of this dissolving world, a thing I should have thought
1:28:46
Speaker 1: an unendurable calamity a months ago, I shall laugh and
1:28:49
Speaker 1: go on. Ideas that have ruled life as only with
1:28:53
Speaker 1: divine truths are being chased and slaughtered in the streets.
1:28:58
Speaker 1: The rights of property, for exact example, the sturdy virtues
1:29:01
Speaker 1: of individualism, all toleration of the rewards of abstinence, vanished
1:29:07
Speaker 1: last week. Suddenly, amidst the execrations of mankind, upon a
1:29:12
Speaker 1: hurrying motor car loaded with packages of sugar and flour,
1:29:16
Speaker 1: they bolted, leaving socialism and collectivism in possession. The state
1:29:22
Speaker 1: takes over flour mills and the food supply, not many
1:29:25
Speaker 1: for military purposes, but for the general welfare of the community.
1:29:30
Speaker 1: The state controls the railways with a sudden complete disregard
1:29:33
Speaker 1: of shareholders. There is not even a letter to the
1:29:36
Speaker 1: Times to object if the state sees fit to keep
1:29:39
Speaker 1: its hold upon these things for good, or loosens its
1:29:43
Speaker 1: hold only to improve its grip. I question if there
1:29:46
Speaker 1: is much left in the minds of men, even after
1:29:49
Speaker 1: the mere preliminary sweeping of the last two weeks to
1:29:53
Speaker 1: dispute possession. Society as we knew it a year ago
1:29:58
Speaker 1: has indeed already broken. It has lost all real cohesion.
1:30:03
Speaker 1: Only the absence of any attraction elsewhere keeps us bunched together.
1:30:08
Speaker 1: We keep our relative positions because there is no hither
1:30:11
Speaker 1: to stampede. Dazed, astonished people fill the streets, and we
1:30:17
Speaker 1: talk of the national calm. The more intelligent men thrown
1:30:21
Speaker 1: out of their jobs make for the recruiting offices because
1:30:24
Speaker 1: they have nothing else to do. We talk of the
1:30:27
Speaker 1: magnificent response to Lord Kitchener's appeal. Everybody is offering services.
1:30:33
Speaker 1: Everybody is looking for someone to tell him what to do.
1:30:36
Speaker 1: It is not organization. It is the first phase of dissolution.
1:30:42
Speaker 1: I am not writing prophecies now, and I am not
1:30:45
Speaker 1: displaying imagination. I am just running as hard as I
1:30:49
Speaker 1: can by the side of the marching facts and pointing
1:30:54
Speaker 1: to them. Institutions and conventions crumble about us and release
1:31:00
Speaker 1: to unprecedented power the two sorts of rebel that ordinary
1:31:04
Speaker 1: times suppress will and ideas the character of a new
1:31:09
Speaker 1: age that must come out of the catastrophes of this
1:31:12
Speaker 1: epoch will be no mechanical consequence of inanimate forces. Will
1:31:18
Speaker 1: and ideas will take a larger part in this swirl
1:31:22
Speaker 1: ahead of them than they've ever taken in any previous collapse.
1:31:27
Speaker 1: No doubt, the mass of mankind will still pour along
1:31:30
Speaker 1: the channels of chance. But the desire for a new
1:31:33
Speaker 1: world of a definite character will be a force, And
1:31:36
Speaker 1: if it is multitudinously unanimous enough, it may even be
1:31:41
Speaker 1: a guiding force in shaping the new time. The common
1:31:45
Speaker 1: man and base men are scared to docility. Rulers, pomposities,
1:31:52
Speaker 1: obstructives are suddenly apologetic, helpful, asking for help. This is
1:31:58
Speaker 1: a time of incalculable plasticity for the men who know
1:32:03
Speaker 1: what they want. The moment has come. It is a
1:32:07
Speaker 1: supreme opportunity, the test or condemnation of constructive liberal thought
1:32:12
Speaker 1: in the world. Now, what does liberalism mean to do?
1:32:18
Speaker 1: It has always been alleged against liberalism that it is
1:32:21
Speaker 1: carpingly critical, disorganized, dispersed, impracticable, fractious, readier to resign and
1:32:30
Speaker 1: rebel than help. That is the common excuse of all
1:32:34
Speaker 1: modern autocracies. Bureaucracies and dogmatisms. Are they right? Is liberal
1:32:42
Speaker 1: thought in this world crisis going to present the spectacle
1:32:45
Speaker 1: of a swarm of little wrangling men sweat before the
1:32:49
Speaker 1: mindless bosom of brute accident? Or shall we be able
1:32:53
Speaker 1: in this vast collapse or rebirth of the world to
1:32:56
Speaker 1: produce and express ideas that will rule. Has it all
1:33:01
Speaker 1: been talk or has it been planning? Is the new
1:33:05
Speaker 1: world in fact to be shaped by the philosophers or
1:33:08
Speaker 1: by the huns first? As in peace, do liberals realize
1:33:13
Speaker 1: that now is the time to plan the confederation and
1:33:17
Speaker 1: collective disarmament of Europe? Now is the time to redraw
1:33:20
Speaker 1: the map of Europe so that there may be no
1:33:23
Speaker 1: more rankling sores or unsatisfied national ambitions. Are the liberals
1:33:29
Speaker 1: as a body going to cry peace, peace and leave
1:33:33
Speaker 1: the questions alone? Or are they going to take hold
1:33:36
Speaker 1: of them? If liberalism throughout the world develops no plan
1:33:40
Speaker 1: of a pacified world until the diplomatists get to work,
1:33:44
Speaker 1: it will be too late. Peace may come to Europe
1:33:48
Speaker 1: this winter as swiftly and disastrously as the war and
1:33:53
Speaker 1: next as to social reconstruction, Do liberals realize that the
1:33:58
Speaker 1: individualist capitalist system is helpless. Now it may be picked
1:34:05
Speaker 1: up unresistingly. It is stunned. A new economic order may
1:34:10
Speaker 1: be improvised, and probably will, in some manner be improvised
1:34:14
Speaker 1: in the next two or three years. What are the
1:34:17
Speaker 1: intentions of liberalism? What will be the contribution of liberalism?
1:34:23
Speaker 1: One poor liberal, I perceive, is possessed to the exclusion
1:34:27
Speaker 1: of every other consideration by the idea that we were
1:34:31
Speaker 1: not legally bound to fight for Belgium. A pretty point,
1:34:35
Speaker 1: but a petty one. Liberalism is something greater than unfavorable
1:34:40
Speaker 1: comment on the deeds of active men. Let us set
1:34:44
Speaker 1: about defining our intentions. Let us borrow a little from
1:34:48
Speaker 1: the rash vigor of the types that have contrived this disaster.
1:34:53
Speaker 1: Let us make a truce of our finer feelings and
1:34:56
Speaker 1: control our dissensient passions. Let us read draw the matter
1:35:00
Speaker 1: of Europe boldly as we mean it to be redrawn,
1:35:04
Speaker 1: and let us replan society as we mean it to
1:35:06
Speaker 1: be reconstructed. Let us get to work, whether there it's
1:35:09
Speaker 1: still a little time left to us, or while our futile,
1:35:13
Speaker 1: fine intelligences are busy, each with its particular exquisitely felt
1:35:17
Speaker 1: point the north Cliffs and the diplomatists, the welt politic whisperers,
1:35:23
Speaker 1: and the financiers and militarists, the armament's interests, and the
1:35:28
Speaker 1: Cossacks are terrified by the inevitable red dawn of leaderless
1:35:32
Speaker 1: social democracy, by the beginning of the stupendous stampede that
1:35:37
Speaker 1: will follow this great jar and displacement will surely contrive
1:35:41
Speaker 1: some monstrous, blundering settlement, and the latter state of this
1:35:44
Speaker 1: world will be worse than the former. Now is the
1:35:48
Speaker 1: opportunity to do fundamental things that will otherwise not get
1:35:52
Speaker 1: done for hundreds of years. If liberals throughout the world,
1:35:57
Speaker 1: and in this matter, the liberalism of America is a
1:36:00
Speaker 1: stupendous possibility, will insist upon a world conference at the
1:36:05
Speaker 1: end of this conflict. If they refuse all partial settlements
1:36:09
Speaker 1: and merely European solutions, they may redraw every frontier they choose.
1:36:15
Speaker 1: They may reduce a thousand chafing conflicts of race and
1:36:18
Speaker 1: language and government to a minimum, and set up a
1:36:22
Speaker 1: peace league that will control the globe. The world will
1:36:25
Speaker 1: be ripe for it, and the world will be ripe
1:36:28
Speaker 1: too for the banishment of the private industry in armaments,
1:36:32
Speaker 1: and all the vast corruption that entails from the earth.
1:36:35
Speaker 1: Forever it is possible now to make an end to crapism,
1:36:40
Speaker 1: it may never be possible again. Henceforth, let us say
1:36:44
Speaker 1: weapons must be made by the state, and only by
1:36:47
Speaker 1: the state. There must be no more private profit in blood.
1:36:52
Speaker 1: That is the second great possibility for liberalism, linked to
1:36:55
Speaker 1: the first, and thirdly, we may turn our present social
1:36:59
Speaker 1: necessities to the most enduring social reorganization with an absolute
1:37:05
Speaker 1: minimum of effort. Now we may help to set going
1:37:08
Speaker 1: methods and machinery that will put the feeding and housing
1:37:12
Speaker 1: of the population, and the administration of the land out
1:37:15
Speaker 1: of the reach of private greed and selfishness forever. End
1:37:21
Speaker 1: of chapter seven, recording by Peter Tomlinson. Chapter eight of
1:37:31
Speaker 1: The War That Will End War by Herbert George Wells.
1:37:35
Speaker 1: This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
1:37:39
Speaker 1: Peter Tomlinson, Chapter eight, The Liberal Fear of Russia. It
1:37:46
Speaker 1: is evident that there is a very considerable dread of
1:37:49
Speaker 1: the power and intention of Russia in this country. It
1:37:53
Speaker 1: is well that the justification of this dread should be
1:37:56
Speaker 1: discussed now, for it is likely to affect the attitude
1:38:00
Speaker 1: of British and American liberalism very profoundly, both towards the
1:38:06
Speaker 1: continuation of the war and towards the ultimate settlement. It
1:38:12
Speaker 1: is I believe, an exaggerated dread rising out of our
1:38:16
Speaker 1: extreme ignorance of Russian realities. English people imagine Russia to
1:38:22
Speaker 1: be more purposeful than she is, more concentrated, more inimical
1:38:27
Speaker 1: of Western civilization. They think of Russian policy as if
1:38:32
Speaker 1: it were a diabolically clever spider in a dark place.
1:38:37
Speaker 1: They imagine that the tremendous unification of state and national
1:38:42
Speaker 1: pride and ambition which has made the German Empire at
1:38:46
Speaker 1: last insupportable, may presently be repeated upon an altogether more
1:38:52
Speaker 1: gigantic scale, that Pan Slavism will take the place of
1:38:56
Speaker 1: Pan Germanism as the ruling aggression of the world. This
1:39:02
Speaker 1: is a dread duw I am convinced to fundamental misconceptions
1:39:07
Speaker 1: and hasty parallelisms. Russia is not only the vastest country
1:39:12
Speaker 1: in the world, but the laxist She is incapable of
1:39:17
Speaker 1: that tremendous unification. Not for two centuries yet, if ever,
1:39:23
Speaker 1: will it be necessary for a reasonably united Western Europe
1:39:27
Speaker 1: to trouble itself. Once Prussianism has been disposed of about
1:39:32
Speaker 1: the risk of definite aggression from the East, I do
1:39:36
Speaker 1: not think it will ever have to trouble itself. Socially
1:39:40
Speaker 1: and politically. Russia is an entirely unique structure. It is
1:39:46
Speaker 1: the fashion to talk of Russia as being in the
1:39:49
Speaker 1: fourteenth century or in the sixteenth century. As a matter
1:39:54
Speaker 1: of fact, Russia, like everything else, is in the twentieth century,
1:40:00
Speaker 1: and it is quite impossible to find in any other
1:40:03
Speaker 1: age a similar social organization. In bulk, she is barbaric.
1:40:10
Speaker 1: Between eighty and ninety percent of her population is living
1:40:15
Speaker 1: at a level very little above the level of those
1:40:18
Speaker 1: agricultural Aryan races who were scattered over Europe before the
1:40:23
Speaker 1: beginning of written history. It is an illiterate population. It
1:40:28
Speaker 1: is superstitious in a primitive way, conservative and religious in
1:40:33
Speaker 1: a primitive way. It is incapable of protecting itself in
1:40:37
Speaker 1: the ordinary commerce of modern life against the business enterprise
1:40:42
Speaker 1: of better educated races. It has no weapon but a
1:40:46
Speaker 1: peasant's poor cunning. It is indeed a helpless, unawakened mass.
1:40:53
Speaker 1: Above these peasants come a few millions of fairly well
1:40:57
Speaker 1: educated and actively intelligent people. They are all that corresponds
1:41:03
Speaker 1: in any way to a Western community such as ours.
1:41:08
Speaker 1: Either they are officials, clerical or lay in the great
1:41:12
Speaker 1: government machine that was consolidated, chiefly by Peter the Great,
1:41:17
Speaker 1: to control the souls and bodies of the peasant mass.
1:41:20
Speaker 1: Or they are private persons more or less resentfully entangled
1:41:25
Speaker 1: in that machine. At the head of this structure, with
1:41:29
Speaker 1: powers of interference strictly determined by his individual capacity, is
1:41:35
Speaker 1: that tragic figure the Czarre. That briefly is the composition
1:41:41
Speaker 1: of Russia, and it is unlike any other state on Earth.
1:41:46
Speaker 1: It will follow laws of its own and have a
1:41:49
Speaker 1: destiny of its own. Involved with the affairs of Russia
1:41:54
Speaker 1: are certain less barbaric states. There is Finland, which is
1:41:59
Speaker 1: by comparison highly civilized, and Poland, which is not nearly
1:42:04
Speaker 1: so far in advance of Russia. Both these countries are
1:42:08
Speaker 1: perpetually uneasy under the blundering pressure of foolish attempts to
1:42:14
Speaker 1: Russianize them. In addition, in the south and East are
1:42:18
Speaker 1: certain provinces thick with Jews, whom Russia can neither contrive
1:42:22
Speaker 1: to tolerate nor assimilate, who have no comprehensible projects for
1:42:27
Speaker 1: the help or reorganization of the country, and who deafen
1:42:32
Speaker 1: all the rest of Europe with their bitter, unhelpful tale
1:42:36
Speaker 1: of griefances, so that it is difficult to realize how
1:42:40
Speaker 1: local and partial are their wrongs. There is a certain
1:42:45
Speaker 1: Russian idea, containing within itself all the factors of failure,
1:42:51
Speaker 1: inspiring the general policy of this vast and more for state.
1:42:57
Speaker 1: It found its completest expression in the works of the
1:43:01
Speaker 1: now defunct Pobedonostev, and it pervades the bureaucracy. It is obscurantist,
1:43:10
Speaker 1: denying the common people education. It is Orthodox forbidding free
1:43:16
Speaker 1: thought and preferring conformity to ability. It is bureaucratic and autocratic.
1:43:23
Speaker 1: It is pan Slavic, Russianizing and aggressive. It is this
1:43:29
Speaker 1: Russian idea that Western liberalism dreads, and, as I want
1:43:34
Speaker 1: to point out, dreads unreasonably. I do not want to
1:43:38
Speaker 1: plead that it is not a bad thing. It is
1:43:41
Speaker 1: a bad thing. I want to point out that, unlike Prussianism,
1:43:46
Speaker 1: it is not a great danger to the world at large.
1:43:50
Speaker 1: So long as this Russian idea, this Russian toryism, dominates
1:43:55
Speaker 1: Russian affairs Russia can never be really formidable, either to India,
1:44:01
Speaker 1: to China, or to the liberal nations of Western Europe.
1:44:06
Speaker 1: And whenever she abandons this toryism and becomes modern and formidable,
1:44:12
Speaker 1: she will see to be aggressive. That is my case.
1:44:16
Speaker 1: While Russia has the will to oppress the world, she
1:44:19
Speaker 1: will never have the power. When she has the power,
1:44:23
Speaker 1: she will cease to have the will. Let mistate my
1:44:27
Speaker 1: reasons for this belief as compactly as possible, because if
1:44:32
Speaker 1: I am right, a number of liberal minded people in
1:44:35
Speaker 1: Great Britain and America and Scandinavia, who may collectively have
1:44:41
Speaker 1: a very great influence upon the settlement of Europe that
1:44:44
Speaker 1: will follow this war, are wrong. They may want to
1:44:49
Speaker 1: bolster up a really dangerous and evil Austria, come Germany
1:44:54
Speaker 1: at the expense of France, Belgium and subject slav populations
1:45:00
Speaker 1: because of their dread of this Russia, which can never
1:45:03
Speaker 1: be at the same time evil and dangerous. Now, first,
1:45:09
Speaker 1: let me point out what the Boer War showed and
1:45:13
Speaker 1: what this tremendous conflict in Belgium is already enforcing. That
1:45:18
Speaker 1: the day of the unintelligent common soldier is past. That
1:45:22
Speaker 1: men who are animated and individualized can under modern conditions,
1:45:28
Speaker 1: fight better than men who are unintelligent and obedient. Soldiering
1:45:33
Speaker 1: is becoming more specialized. It is calling for the intelligent
1:45:37
Speaker 1: handling of weapons so elaborate and destructive that great masses
1:45:42
Speaker 1: of men in the field are an encumbrance rather than
1:45:46
Speaker 1: a power. Battles must spread out and leading give place
1:45:51
Speaker 1: to individual initiative. Consequently, Russia can only become powerful enough
1:45:57
Speaker 1: to overcome any highly civilized europe country by raising its
1:46:02
Speaker 1: own average of education and initiative. And this it can
1:46:06
Speaker 1: only do by abandoning its obscurantist methods, by liberalizing upon
1:46:12
Speaker 1: the Western European model. That is to say, it will
1:46:16
Speaker 1: have to teach its population to read, to multiply its schools,
1:46:20
Speaker 1: and increase its universities, and that will make an entirely
1:46:23
Speaker 1: different Russia from this one. We fear. It involves a
1:46:28
Speaker 1: relaxation of a grip of orthodoxy, an alteration of the
1:46:32
Speaker 1: intellectual outlook of officialdom, an abandonment of quasi religious autocracy.
1:46:38
Speaker 1: In short, the complete abandonment of the Russian idea as
1:46:42
Speaker 1: we know it, and it means also a great development
1:46:46
Speaker 1: of local self consciousness. Russia seems homogeneous now because in
1:46:51
Speaker 1: the mass it is so ignorant as to be unaware
1:46:55
Speaker 1: of its differences. But an educated Russia means a Russia
1:47:00
Speaker 1: in which Ruthenian and Great Russian Let and Tartar will
1:47:04
Speaker 1: be mutually critical and aware of one another. The existing
1:47:09
Speaker 1: Russian idea will need to give place to an entirely
1:47:13
Speaker 1: more democratic, tolerant, and cosmopolitan idea of Russia as a whole.
1:47:19
Speaker 1: If Russia is to merge from its barbarism and remain united,
1:47:25
Speaker 1: there is no cheap Deutschland. Deutschland uber allied sentiment ready
1:47:30
Speaker 1: made to hand. National quality is against it. Patience under
1:47:36
Speaker 1: patriotism is a German weakness. Russians could no more go
1:47:40
Speaker 1: on singing and singing Russia Russia over all than Englishmen
1:47:45
Speaker 1: could go on singing rule Britannia. It would bore them.
1:47:51
Speaker 1: The temperament of none of the Russian peoples justifies the
1:47:55
Speaker 1: belief that they will repeat on the larger scale, even
1:47:59
Speaker 1: as much much docility as the Germans have shown under
1:48:03
Speaker 1: the Prussians. No one who has seen the Russians, who
1:48:08
Speaker 1: has had the opportunities of comparing Berlin with Saint Petersburg
1:48:13
Speaker 1: or Moscow or who knows anything of Russian art or
1:48:17
Speaker 1: Russian literature will imagine this naturally wise, humorous and impatient people,
1:48:24
Speaker 1: reduplicating the self conscious, drill dulled, soulless culture of Germany,
1:48:30
Speaker 1: all the political vulgarities of Potsdam. This is a terrible world,
1:48:36
Speaker 1: I admit, But Prussianism is a sort of thing that
1:48:39
Speaker 1: does not happen twice. Russia is substantially barbaric, who can
1:48:46
Speaker 1: deny it state stuff rather than a state. But people
1:48:52
Speaker 1: in Western Europe are constantly writing of Russia and the
1:48:56
Speaker 1: Russians as though the quality is natural to barbarism, were
1:49:00
Speaker 1: qualities inherent in the Russian blood. Russia massacres, sometimes even
1:49:07
Speaker 1: with official connivance, But Russia, in all its history has
1:49:11
Speaker 1: no massacres so abominable as we gentle English were guilty
1:49:15
Speaker 1: of in Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Russia, too, russianizes,
1:49:23
Speaker 1: sometimes clumsily, sometimes rather successfully. But Germany has sought to
1:49:29
Speaker 1: Germanize in Bohemia and Poland, for instance, with conspicuous violence
1:49:35
Speaker 1: and failure. We anglicized Ireland. These forcible efforts to create
1:49:43
Speaker 1: uniformity are natural to a phase of social and political
1:49:47
Speaker 1: development from which no people on earth have yet fully emerged.
1:49:52
Speaker 1: And if we set ourselves now to create a reunited
1:49:56
Speaker 1: Poland under the Russian crown, if we bring all the
1:50:00
Speaker 1: great influence of the Western powers to bear upon the
1:50:03
Speaker 1: side of the liberalizing forces in Finland, if we do
1:50:07
Speaker 1: not try to thwart and stifle Russia by closing her
1:50:11
Speaker 1: legitimate outlet into the Mediterranean, we shall do infinitely more
1:50:16
Speaker 1: for human happiness than if we distrust her, check her,
1:50:20
Speaker 1: and force her back upon the barbarism from which, with
1:50:23
Speaker 1: a sort of blind pathetic wisdom she seeks to emerge.
1:50:28
Speaker 1: Is unfortunate for Russia that she has come into conspicuous
1:50:32
Speaker 1: conflict with the Jews. She has certainly treated them no
1:50:37
Speaker 1: worse than she has treated her own people, and she
1:50:40
Speaker 1: has treated them less atrociously than they were treated in
1:50:44
Speaker 1: England during the Middle Ages. The Jews, by their particularism,
1:50:50
Speaker 1: invite the resentment of all uncultivated humanity. Civilization and not
1:50:55
Speaker 1: revolt emancipates them. And while Russian reverses will throw back
1:51:00
Speaker 1: her civilization and intensify the sufferings of all her subject dues,
1:51:05
Speaker 1: Russian success in this alliance will inevitably spell westernization progress
1:51:12
Speaker 1: and amelioration for them. But unhappily this does not seem
1:51:16
Speaker 1: to be patent to many Jewish minds. They have been
1:51:19
Speaker 1: embittered by their wrongs, and in the English and still
1:51:23
Speaker 1: more in the American press, a heavy weight of grievance
1:51:26
Speaker 1: against Russia finds voice and distorts the issue of this.
1:51:31
Speaker 1: While we are still only in the opening phase of
1:51:34
Speaker 1: this struggle for life against the prussianized German Empire, this
1:51:38
Speaker 1: struggle to escape from the militarism that has been slowly
1:51:42
Speaker 1: strangling civilization, it is a huge misfortune that this racial resentment,
1:51:48
Speaker 1: which great as it is, is still a little thing
1:51:51
Speaker 1: beside the world issues involved, should break the united front
1:51:54
Speaker 1: of Western civilization, and that the confidence of Russia should
1:51:59
Speaker 1: be threatened, as it is threatened now by doubt and
1:52:03
Speaker 1: disparagement in the press. We are not so sure of
1:52:07
Speaker 1: victory that we can a strange an ally. We have
1:52:10
Speaker 1: to make up our minds to see all Poland reunited
1:52:14
Speaker 1: under the Russian crown. And if the Turks choose to
1:52:17
Speaker 1: play a foolish part, it is not for us to
1:52:20
Speaker 1: quarrel now about the fate of Constantinople. The Allies are
1:52:25
Speaker 1: not to be tempted into a quarrel about Constantinople. The
1:52:29
Speaker 1: balance of power in the Balkans, that is to say,
1:52:33
Speaker 1: incessant intrigue between Austria and Russia has arrested the civilization
1:52:38
Speaker 1: of Southeastern Europe for a century. Let it topple an
1:52:43
Speaker 1: unchallenged Russia will be a wholesome check and no great
1:52:47
Speaker 1: danger for the new Greater Servia and the new Greater
1:52:50
Speaker 1: Rumania and the enlarged and restored Bulgaria. This war renders
1:52:54
Speaker 1: possible one civilized country only does Russia really threaten, and
1:53:01
Speaker 1: that country is Sweden. Sweden has a vast wealth of
1:53:05
Speaker 1: coal and iron within reach of Russia's hands, and I
1:53:08
Speaker 1: confess I watched Scandinavia with a certain terror during these days.
1:53:13
Speaker 1: Sweden is the only European country in which there is
1:53:15
Speaker 1: a pro German militarist party. And she may be tempted,
1:53:21
Speaker 1: I do not know how strongly. She may not have
1:53:23
Speaker 1: been tempted already to drag herself and Norway into this
1:53:27
Speaker 1: struggle on the German side. If she does, our government
1:53:30
Speaker 1: will not be a little to blame for not having
1:53:33
Speaker 1: given her and induced Russia to give her the strongest
1:53:37
Speaker 1: joint assurances and guarantees of her integrity forever. But if
1:53:42
Speaker 1: the Scandinavian country has abstained from any participation in this
1:53:46
Speaker 1: present war, then I do not see what is to
1:53:49
Speaker 1: prevent us and France and Russia from making the most public,
1:53:53
Speaker 1: definite and binding declaration of our common interest in Sweden's
1:53:58
Speaker 1: integrity and our common determination to preserve it. Beyond that,
1:54:04
Speaker 1: I see no danger to civilization in Russia anywhere, at
1:54:08
Speaker 1: least no danger so considerable as the kaiser Krup power.
1:54:13
Speaker 1: We fight to finish this war, even if it brings
1:54:17
Speaker 1: us the utmost success, will still leave Russia face to
1:54:21
Speaker 1: face with a united and chastened Germany. For it must
1:54:25
Speaker 1: be remembered that the downfall of Prussianism and the breakup
1:54:29
Speaker 1: of the Austro Hungarian Empire will leave German Germany not smaller,
1:54:34
Speaker 1: but larger than she is now to India, decently governed
1:54:38
Speaker 1: and guarded, with an educational level higher than her own
1:54:43
Speaker 1: and three times her gross population. Russia can only be
1:54:47
Speaker 1: dangerous through the grossest misgovernment on our part, and her
1:54:51
Speaker 1: powers of intervention in China will be restricted for many years.
1:54:57
Speaker 1: But all our powers of intervention in China will be
1:55:01
Speaker 1: restricted for many years. A breathing space for Chinese reconstruction
1:55:05
Speaker 1: is one of the most immediate and least equivocal blessings
1:55:09
Speaker 1: of this war. Unless the Chinese are unteachable and only
1:55:14
Speaker 1: stupid people suppose them a stupid race, the China of
1:55:19
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four will not be a China for either
1:55:22
Speaker 1: US or Russia to meddle with. So where in all
1:55:25
Speaker 1: the world is this danger from Russia? The danger of
1:55:29
Speaker 1: a Krupp come Kaiser dominance of the whole world, on
1:55:33
Speaker 1: the other hand, is immediate defeat or even a partial
1:55:37
Speaker 1: victory for the Allies means nothing less than that. End
1:55:43
Speaker 1: of chapter eight recording by Peter Tomlinson. Chapter nine of
1:55:53
Speaker 1: The War That Will End War by Herbert George Wells.
1:55:57
Speaker 1: This Liverpox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
1:56:01
Speaker 1: Peter Tomlinson, Chapter nine An appeal to the American people.
1:56:07
Speaker 1: This appeal comes to you from England at war, and
1:56:10
Speaker 1: it is addressed to you because upon your nation rests
1:56:14
Speaker 1: the issue of this conflict. The influence of your states
1:56:19
Speaker 1: upon its nature and duration must needs be enormous, and
1:56:25
Speaker 1: at its ending you may play a part such as
1:56:28
Speaker 1: no nation has ever played since the world began. For
1:56:32
Speaker 1: it rest with you to establish and secure, or to refuse,
1:56:35
Speaker 1: to establish and secure the permanent peace of the world,
1:56:39
Speaker 1: the final ending of war. This appeal comes to you
1:56:43
Speaker 1: from England, but it is no appeal to ancient associations
1:56:47
Speaker 1: or racial affinities. Your common language is indeed English, but
1:56:52
Speaker 1: your nation has long since outgrown these early links. The
1:56:56
Speaker 1: blood of every people in Europe mingles in the unity
1:57:00
Speaker 1: of your states. And it is to the greatness of
1:57:03
Speaker 1: your future, rather than the accidents of your first beginnings,
1:57:08
Speaker 1: to the humanity in you, and not to the English
1:57:11
Speaker 1: and Irish and Scotch and Welsh in you, that this
1:57:13
Speaker 1: appeal is made. Half the world is at war, or
1:57:18
Speaker 1: on the very verge of war. It is impossible that
1:57:21
Speaker 1: you should disregard or turn away from this conflict. Unavoidably
1:57:26
Speaker 1: you have to judge us. Unavoidable is your participation in
1:57:30
Speaker 1: the ultimate settlement which will make or mar the welfare
1:57:34
Speaker 1: of mankind for centuries to come. We appeal to you
1:57:38
Speaker 1: to judge us, to listen patiently to our case, to
1:57:42
Speaker 1: exert the huge decisive power you hold in the balance,
1:57:45
Speaker 1: not hastily, not heedlessly, For we do not disguise from
1:57:50
Speaker 1: ourselves that you can shatter all our hopes in this conflict.
1:57:55
Speaker 1: You are a people more than twice as numerous as
1:57:58
Speaker 1: we are, and still you are only the beginning of
1:58:01
Speaker 1: what you are to be, with a clear prospect of
1:58:04
Speaker 1: expansion that mocks the limits of these little islands with
1:58:08
Speaker 1: illimitable and still scarcely tapped sources of wealth and power.
1:58:14
Speaker 1: I have already come to a stage when a certain
1:58:16
Speaker 1: magnanimity becomes you in your relation to European affairs. Now
1:58:21
Speaker 1: while you, because of your fortunate position, and because of
1:58:25
Speaker 1: the sane and brotherly relations that have become a fixed
1:58:28
Speaker 1: tradition along your northern boundary, we English had a share
1:58:32
Speaker 1: in securing that while you live free of the site
1:58:35
Speaker 1: and burthen of military preparations, free as it seems forever
1:58:41
Speaker 1: all Europe has, for more than half a century bent
1:58:43
Speaker 1: more and more wearily under a perpetually increasing burthen of armaments.
1:58:48
Speaker 1: For many years, Europe has been an armed camp, with
1:58:52
Speaker 1: millions of men continually under arms, with the fear of
1:58:55
Speaker 1: war universally poisoning its life, with its education impoverist, its
1:59:00
Speaker 1: social development retarded, with everything pinched but its equipment for war.
1:59:06
Speaker 1: It would be foolish to fix the blame for this
1:59:08
Speaker 1: state of affairs upon any particular nation. It has grown
1:59:13
Speaker 1: up as most great evils grow quietly unheeded. One may
1:59:18
Speaker 1: cast back in history to the Thirty Years War, to
1:59:21
Speaker 1: such names as Frederick the Great, Napoleon, the First Napoleon,
1:59:25
Speaker 1: the third Bismarck. What does it matter now who began
1:59:29
Speaker 1: the thing and which was most to blame. Here it is,
1:59:33
Speaker 1: and we have to deal with it. But we English
1:59:35
Speaker 1: do assert that it is the government of the German
1:59:38
Speaker 1: Emperor which has for the last forty years taken the
1:59:41
Speaker 1: lead and forced the pace of these matters, which has
1:59:44
Speaker 1: driven us English to add warship to worship in a
1:59:48
Speaker 1: pitiless competition to retain that predominance at sea upon which
1:59:52
Speaker 1: our existence as a free people depends, and which has
1:59:56
Speaker 1: strained the strength of France almost beyond the pitch of
2:00:00
Speaker 1: human endurance, so that the education and the welfare of
2:00:04
Speaker 1: her people has suffered greatly, so that Paris today is
2:00:08
Speaker 1: visibly an impoverished and overtaxed city. And this perpetual fear
2:00:12
Speaker 1: of the armed strength of Germany has forced upon France
2:00:16
Speaker 1: alliances and entanglements she would otherwise have avoided. Let us
2:00:21
Speaker 1: not attempt to deny the greatness of Germany and of
2:00:24
Speaker 1: Germany's contributions to science and art and literature and all
2:00:28
Speaker 1: that is good in human life. But evil influences may
2:00:33
Speaker 1: overshadow the finest peoples. And it is our case that
2:00:36
Speaker 1: since the victory is of eighteen seventy one, Germany has
2:00:39
Speaker 1: been obsessed by the worship of material power and glory,
2:00:43
Speaker 1: and scornful of righteousness, that she has been threatening and
2:00:47
Speaker 1: overbearing to all the world. There has been a propaganda's
2:00:51
Speaker 1: cynicism and national roughness, a declared contempt for treaties and pledges,
2:00:57
Speaker 1: so that all Europe has been uneasy and in and
2:01:00
Speaker 1: since none of us are saints, and certainly no nations
2:01:04
Speaker 1: are saintly we have been resentful. There is not a
2:01:07
Speaker 1: country in Europe that has not shown itself resentful under
2:01:11
Speaker 1: this perpetual menace of Germany. And now, at last, and
2:01:14
Speaker 1: suddenly the threatened thing has come to pass, and Germany
2:01:18
Speaker 1: is at war because of a murder committed by one
2:01:22
Speaker 1: of our own subjects. Austria made war upon Servia. Russia
2:01:26
Speaker 1: armed to protect a kindred country, and then with the
2:01:29
Speaker 1: swiftness of years of premeditation, Germany declared war upon Russia
2:01:34
Speaker 1: and struck at France, striking through the peaceful land of Belgium,
2:01:39
Speaker 1: a little country. We English had pledged ourselves to protect,
2:01:43
Speaker 1: a little country that has never given Germany the faintest
2:01:46
Speaker 1: pretext for hostility, and in the hope of finding France unready,
2:01:52
Speaker 1: of course, we went to war. If we had not
2:01:54
Speaker 1: done so, could we English have ever looked the world
2:01:58
Speaker 1: in the face again? And it is so is scarcely
2:02:00
Speaker 1: a dissentient voice that England is at war. Never were
2:02:04
Speaker 1: the British people so unanimous. All Ireland is with us
2:02:08
Speaker 1: and the conscience of all the world. And now this
2:02:12
Speaker 1: war has begun, we are resolved to put an end
2:02:15
Speaker 1: to militarism in the world forever more. We are not
2:02:19
Speaker 1: fighting to destroy Germany. It is the firm resolve of
2:02:23
Speaker 1: England to permit no fresh conquered provinces to darken the
2:02:27
Speaker 1: future of Europe. Whatever betired all German. Germany will come
2:02:31
Speaker 1: out of this war undivided, and German still her own conquests.
2:02:36
Speaker 1: She may have to relinquish her Poles and other subject peoples,
2:02:41
Speaker 1: but that is the utmost we shall exact of her.
2:02:44
Speaker 1: With the accession of Austria, Germany may even come out
2:02:47
Speaker 1: of this war a larger Germany than at the beginning.
2:02:51
Speaker 1: We have no hatred of things German and German people,
2:02:55
Speaker 1: but we are fighting to break this huge fighting machine forever,
2:02:58
Speaker 1: this fighting machine. It has been such an oppression as
2:03:02
Speaker 1: no native born American can dream of. To every other
2:03:05
Speaker 1: nation in Europe, we are fighting to end Kaiserriism and
2:03:09
Speaker 1: Crupism forever and ever. There shortly and plainly is our
2:03:14
Speaker 1: case and our object. Now that has come to the
2:03:18
Speaker 1: immediate substance of this appeal, we do not ask you
2:03:22
Speaker 1: for military help. Keep the peace which it is your
2:03:25
Speaker 1: unparalleled good fortune to enjoy so securely, but keep it fairly.
2:03:30
Speaker 1: Remember that we fight now for national existence, and that
2:03:34
Speaker 1: in the night, even as this is written, within one
2:03:37
Speaker 1: hundred miles or so of this place, the dark ships
2:03:41
Speaker 1: feel their way among the floating mines with which the
2:03:43
Speaker 1: Germans have strewn the North Sea. And our sons and
2:03:47
Speaker 1: the sons of Belgium and France go side by side,
2:03:50
Speaker 1: not by the hundred, nor by the thousand, but by
2:03:53
Speaker 1: the one hundred thousand. Rank after rank line beyond line
2:03:58
Speaker 1: to death. Even if this is written, the harvest of
2:04:02
Speaker 1: death is being reaped. Remember our tragic case. Europe is
2:04:05
Speaker 1: full of a joyless determination to end this evil forever.
2:04:09
Speaker 1: She plunges grimly and sadly into the cruel monstrosities of war,
2:04:14
Speaker 1: and assuredly there will be little shouting for the victors,
2:04:17
Speaker 1: whichever side may win. At the end, we do most
2:04:22
Speaker 1: firmly believe there will be established a new Europe, a
2:04:26
Speaker 1: era ridden of rankling oppressions, with a free Poland, a
2:04:30
Speaker 1: free Finland, a free Germany. The Balkan settled, the little
2:04:35
Speaker 1: nation safe and peace secure. And it is of supreme
2:04:39
Speaker 1: importance that we should ask you now, what are you
2:04:43
Speaker 1: going to do throughout the struggle? And what will you
2:04:46
Speaker 1: do at the end. One thing we are told in
2:04:49
Speaker 1: England that you mean to do a thing that has
2:04:52
Speaker 1: moved me to this appeal, for it is not only
2:04:54
Speaker 1: a strange thing in itself, but it may presently be
2:04:58
Speaker 1: followed by other similar ideas, come what may. All the
2:05:02
Speaker 1: liberal forces in England and France are resolved to respect
2:05:05
Speaker 1: the freedom of Holland. But the position of Holland is,
2:05:09
Speaker 1: as you may see in any atlas, a very peculiar
2:05:12
Speaker 1: one in this war. The Rhine runs along the rear
2:05:17
Speaker 1: of the long German line, as if it were a
2:05:20
Speaker 1: canal to serve that line with supplies, and then it
2:05:23
Speaker 1: passes into Holland, and so by Rosterdam to the sea,
2:05:28
Speaker 1: so that it is possible for any neutral power, such
2:05:31
Speaker 1: as you are, to pour a stream of food supplies
2:05:35
Speaker 1: and war material by way of Holland almost into the
2:05:38
Speaker 1: hands of the German combatant line. Even if we win
2:05:42
Speaker 1: our battles in the field, this will enormously diminish our
2:05:46
Speaker 1: chance of concluding this war, but we shall suffer it.
2:05:49
Speaker 1: It is within the rights of Holland to victual the
2:05:52
Speaker 1: Germans in this way, and we cannot prevent it without
2:05:55
Speaker 1: committing just such another outrage upon the laws of nations,
2:05:59
Speaker 1: as German and he was guilty of in invading Belgium.
2:06:03
Speaker 1: And here is where your country comes in. In your
2:06:07
Speaker 1: harbours lie a great number of big German ships that
2:06:10
Speaker 1: dare not venture to see because of our fleet. It
2:06:13
Speaker 1: is proposed we are told to arrange a purchase of
2:06:16
Speaker 1: these ships by American citizens, to facilitate by special legislation
2:06:21
Speaker 1: their transfer to your flag, and then load them with
2:06:24
Speaker 1: food and warm material and send them across the Atlantic
2:06:28
Speaker 1: and through the narrow seas sees that at the price
2:06:31
Speaker 1: of a cruiser and many men we have painfully cleared
2:06:35
Speaker 1: of German contact minds to get war prices in Rotterdam
2:06:39
Speaker 1: and supply our enemies. It is, we confess, a smart
2:06:43
Speaker 1: thing to do. It will give your people not only
2:06:47
Speaker 1: huge immediate profits, but a mercantile marine at one coup.
2:06:52
Speaker 1: It will certainly prolong the war, and so it will
2:06:55
Speaker 1: mean the killing and wounding of scores of thousands of
2:06:57
Speaker 1: young Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen and Belgium who might otherwise have escaped.
2:07:03
Speaker 1: It is within your legal rights, and we will tell
2:07:05
Speaker 1: you plainly now that we shall refuse to quarrel with
2:07:08
Speaker 1: you about it. But we ask you not to be
2:07:10
Speaker 1: too easily offended if we betray a certain lack of
2:07:13
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for this idea and begun such enterprises as this,
2:07:19
Speaker 1: what are you going to do for mankind and the
2:07:21
Speaker 1: ultimate peace of the world. You know that the Tsar
2:07:25
Speaker 1: has restored the freedom of Finland and promised to reunite
2:07:28
Speaker 1: the torn fragments of Poland into a free kingdom. But
2:07:31
Speaker 1: probably you do not know that he and England have
2:07:35
Speaker 1: engaged themselves to respect and protect from each other and
2:07:39
Speaker 1: all the world the autonomy of Norway and Sweden, and
2:07:43
Speaker 1: of Sweden's vast and tempting stores of mineral wealth close
2:07:47
Speaker 1: to the Russian boundary. We ask you not to be
2:07:50
Speaker 1: too cynical about the Tsar's promises, and to be prepared
2:07:54
Speaker 1: to help us and France and him to see that
2:07:56
Speaker 1: they become real. And this with regard to Scandinavia, is
2:08:00
Speaker 1: not only Russia's promise but ours. This is more than
2:08:04
Speaker 1: a war of armies. It is a great moral upheaval.
2:08:07
Speaker 1: And you must not judge of the spirit of Europe
2:08:10
Speaker 1: to day by the history of her diplomacies. When this
2:08:14
Speaker 1: war is ended, all Europe will cry for disarmament. Are
2:08:18
Speaker 1: you going to help then or are you going to
2:08:21
Speaker 1: thwart that cry? In Europe? We shall attempt to extinguish
2:08:25
Speaker 1: that huge private trade in war material, that crapism which
2:08:29
Speaker 1: lies so near the roots of all this monstrous calamity.
2:08:33
Speaker 1: We cannot do that unless you do it too. Are
2:08:37
Speaker 1: you prepared to do that? Are you prepared to come
2:08:41
Speaker 1: into a confidence at the end of this war to
2:08:43
Speaker 1: ensure the peace of the world, or Are you going
2:08:46
Speaker 1: to stand out, make difficulties for us out of our
2:08:50
Speaker 1: world perplexities, snatch advantages, carp from your infinite security at
2:08:57
Speaker 1: our allies, and perhaps, in the crisis of our struggle,
2:09:00
Speaker 1: pick a quarrel with us upon some secondary score. Are
2:09:05
Speaker 1: you indeed going to play the part of a merely
2:09:07
Speaker 1: numerous little people, acute trading, excitable people, or are you
2:09:12
Speaker 1: going to play the part of a great nation in
2:09:14
Speaker 1: this life and death struggle of the old world civilizations?
2:09:19
Speaker 1: Are you prepared now to take that lead among the
2:09:21
Speaker 1: nations to which your greatness and freedom point to you.
2:09:25
Speaker 1: It is not for ourselves we make this appeal to you.
2:09:28
Speaker 1: It is for the whole future of mankind. And we
2:09:30
Speaker 1: make it with the more assurance because already your government
2:09:34
Speaker 1: has stood for peace and the observation of treaties against
2:09:37
Speaker 1: base advantages. Already the wounds of our dead cry out
2:09:42
Speaker 1: to you. End of chapter nine, recording by Peter Tomlinson.
2:09:54
Speaker 1: Chapter ten of The War That Will End War by
2:09:56
Speaker 1: Herbert George Wells. This liver box, according is in the
2:10:00
Speaker 1: public domain. Recording by Peter Tomlinson, Chapter ten, Common Sense
2:10:07
Speaker 1: and the Vulcan States. The Vulcan States never have been
2:10:11
Speaker 1: a problem. They have only been a part of a problem.
2:10:15
Speaker 1: That is why no human being has ever yet produced
2:10:19
Speaker 1: even a paper solution acceptable to another human being. The
2:10:24
Speaker 1: attempt to settle Bulkan affairs with the Austro Hungarian Empire
2:10:29
Speaker 1: left out of the problem has been like an attempt
2:10:32
Speaker 1: to deal with a number of hospital cases in which
2:10:35
Speaker 1: the head and shoulders of one patient, the legs of another,
2:10:38
Speaker 1: the abdomen of a third had to be disregarded. The
2:10:42
Speaker 1: bulk of the Servian people and a great mass of
2:10:45
Speaker 1: the Roumanians were in the Austro Hungarian system, and it
2:10:49
Speaker 1: was the Austrian bar to any development of Servia towards
2:10:53
Speaker 1: the Adriatic that forced that country back into its unhappy
2:10:57
Speaker 1: conflict with Bulgaria. Now everything has altered. English people need
2:11:03
Speaker 1: trouble no longer about Austrian susceptibilities, and not merely our interests,
2:11:08
Speaker 1: but our urgent necessities march with the reasonable ambitions of
2:11:12
Speaker 1: the four Balkan nations. Let us begin by clearing away
2:11:17
Speaker 1: a certain amount of nonsense that is said and believed
2:11:21
Speaker 1: by many good people about two of these states. It
2:11:26
Speaker 1: is too much the custom to speak and write of
2:11:29
Speaker 1: Servia and Bulgaria as though they were almost hopelessly barbaric
2:11:34
Speaker 1: and criminal communities incapable of participation in the fellowship of
2:11:38
Speaker 1: European nations. The murder of the late King and Queen
2:11:42
Speaker 1: of Servia, the assassination of Sarajevo, the foolish onslaught of
2:11:47
Speaker 1: Bulgaria upon Servia that led to the break up of
2:11:50
Speaker 1: the Balkan League, and the endless cruelties and barbarities of
2:11:54
Speaker 1: the warfare in Macedonia are allowed to weigh too much
2:11:59
Speaker 1: against the clear needs of a reunited Greater Servia, a
2:12:03
Speaker 1: restored Bulgaria, and the reasonable prospect of a rehabilitated Balkan League.
2:12:10
Speaker 1: Now there is no getting over the hard facts of
2:12:12
Speaker 1: these crimes and cruelties, but they have to be kept
2:12:15
Speaker 1: in their proper proportion to the tremendous issues now before
2:12:19
Speaker 1: the world. Let us call in a few figures that
2:12:23
Speaker 1: will fix the scale. The Servian people number altogether over
2:12:27
Speaker 1: ten millions, the Rumanians as many. There are more than
2:12:31
Speaker 1: twenty million, Poles and perhaps seven millions Bulgarians. The Czechs
2:12:37
Speaker 1: and Slovenes total six or seven millions. The Magyars exceed
2:12:41
Speaker 1: ten millions, and the Ruthanians still under Austrian control four million.
2:12:47
Speaker 1: It is manifest to every reasonable Englishman now that very
2:12:51
Speaker 1: few of these sixty or seventy million people are likely
2:12:54
Speaker 1: to be socially and politically happy until they have got
2:12:57
Speaker 1: themselves disentangled from inter subjection to alien rulers speaking unfamiliar tongues.
2:13:04
Speaker 1: And it is equally manifest that until they are reasonably content,
2:13:09
Speaker 1: the peace of the rest of Europe will remain uncertain,
2:13:13
Speaker 1: so that it is upon these regions that the peace
2:13:16
Speaker 1: of England, France, Germany, Russia and Italy rests. The lives
2:13:21
Speaker 1: therefore of hundreds of millions of people must be affected,
2:13:24
Speaker 1: for good or evil, by the same remapping and pacification
2:13:29
Speaker 1: of southeastern Europe. In that same remapping and pacification, we are,
2:13:35
Speaker 1: in fact dealing with matters so gigantic that the mere
2:13:39
Speaker 1: assassination of this person or the murder of that dwindles
2:13:43
Speaker 1: almost to the vanishing point. It is surely preposterous that
2:13:47
Speaker 1: the murder of an unwise young king who subordinated his
2:13:51
Speaker 1: nation's destinies to a romantic love affair, a murder done
2:13:56
Speaker 1: not by a whole nation, not even by a mob,
2:13:59
Speaker 1: but by less than a hundred officers who were at
2:14:02
Speaker 1: least as patriotic as they were cruel, and even the
2:14:07
Speaker 1: net of conspiracy that killed the arch Duke Franz Ferdinand
2:14:11
Speaker 1: should stand in the way of the liberation and unity
2:14:15
Speaker 1: of millions of Serbs, who were as innocent of these
2:14:18
Speaker 1: things as any wheelchair farmer. All nations have had their
2:14:22
Speaker 1: criminal and sang urinary phase. The British and American people
2:14:27
Speaker 1: who professed such a horror of Servias murders and Bulgarias
2:14:31
Speaker 1: massacres must be blankly ignorant of the history of Scotland
2:14:34
Speaker 1: and Ireland and the darker side of the Red Indians destiny.
2:14:38
Speaker 1: If murder conspiracy was hatched in Servia, were there no
2:14:43
Speaker 1: Fenians in Ireland and America. We English, at any rate
2:14:47
Speaker 1: have not let the highly organized Phoenix Park murders drown
2:14:50
Speaker 1: the freedom of Ireland forever or cause a war with America.
2:14:55
Speaker 1: The sooner we English and Americans clear our minds of
2:14:59
Speaker 1: this self righteous cant against the whole Servian race because
2:15:03
Speaker 1: of a few horrors inevitable in the state of barbaric disturbance,
2:15:07
Speaker 1: the sooner we shall be able to help lead people
2:15:10
Speaker 1: forward to the freedom and security that alone can make
2:15:14
Speaker 1: such barbarities impossible. It would be just as reasonable to
2:15:19
Speaker 1: vow undying, hatred and pitied this vengeance against the whole
2:15:23
Speaker 1: German speaking race of seventy millions or so, because of
2:15:27
Speaker 1: the burning and killing in Liege. Stifled nations, outraged races
2:15:32
Speaker 1: are the fortresses of resentful cruelty. This war is no
2:15:37
Speaker 1: cinematograph melodrama. The death the Queen Draga and the Archduke
2:15:42
Speaker 1: Franz Ferdinand are scarcely in this picture at all. It
2:15:45
Speaker 1: is not the business of statecraft to avenge the past,
2:15:49
Speaker 1: but to deal with the possibilities of the present, and
2:15:52
Speaker 1: the hope of the future, and the open possibility of
2:15:55
Speaker 1: the present is for us to bring about a revival
2:15:59
Speaker 1: of the Balkan Lay and identify ourselves with the reasonable
2:16:02
Speaker 1: hopes of these runaiscent peoples. In that revival. England may
2:16:07
Speaker 1: play an active and directing part. The breakup of the
2:16:11
Speaker 1: First Balkan League was a deep disappointment to liberal opinion
2:16:15
Speaker 1: throughout the world, but it was not an irrevocable disaster.
2:16:20
Speaker 1: The wonder was indeed not the rupture, but the union,
2:16:24
Speaker 1: and the rupture itself was very largely due to the
2:16:27
Speaker 1: thwarting of Servia, not by her associates, but by Austria.
2:16:33
Speaker 1: Now Austria is out of consideration. For Roumania and for
2:16:37
Speaker 1: each of the three Balken powers, there is a plain,
2:16:40
Speaker 1: honorable and reasonable advantage in a common agreement and concerted
2:16:45
Speaker 1: action with US. Now there are manifest compensations for Greece
2:16:49
Speaker 1: in Epirus and the islands, and we can spare it Cyprus.
2:16:55
Speaker 1: For Bulgaria, there is a generous rectification of Macedonia. The
2:17:00
Speaker 1: natural expansion of the two northern states has been already indicated,
2:17:05
Speaker 1: and should Turkey be foolish and blunder at this crisis,
2:17:09
Speaker 1: then further, very natural and quite desirable readjustments become possible.
2:17:14
Speaker 1: What holds these states back from concerted action on our
2:17:19
Speaker 1: side now is merely the distrust and enities left over
2:17:22
Speaker 1: from the breakup of the First Balkan League. They will
2:17:26
Speaker 1: not readily trust one another again, but they would trust England.
2:17:31
Speaker 1: They would sit down now at a conference in which
2:17:33
Speaker 1: England and Russia and Italy were represented, and to which
2:17:37
Speaker 1: England and Russia and Italy would bring assurances of a
2:17:41
Speaker 1: permanent settlement and arrange every detail of their prospective boundaries.
2:17:46
Speaker 1: In a day, they would arrange a peace that would
2:17:49
Speaker 1: last a century. England could do more than reconcile, she
2:17:52
Speaker 1: could finance, and the attack upon Vienna and the German
2:17:58
Speaker 1: rear would then be reinf forced immediately by six or
2:18:01
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand seasoned soldiers. Moreover, it is scarcely possible
2:18:08
Speaker 1: that Italy could refuse to come into this war. If
2:18:12
Speaker 1: a reunited Balkan League did so. With the Serbians in Dalmatia,
2:18:18
Speaker 1: it would be scarcely possible to keep the Italians out
2:18:21
Speaker 1: of Trieste and Fiume. And long before that earnestly awaited
2:18:26
Speaker 1: Russian avalanche won its way to Berlin, this southern attack
2:18:31
Speaker 1: might be in Vienna. The time when the scope of
2:18:35
Speaker 1: this war could be restricted is passed long ago, and
2:18:39
Speaker 1: every fresh soldier who goes into action now shortens the
2:18:42
Speaker 1: agony of Europe. But it is not with the immediate
2:18:46
Speaker 1: military advantages of a Balkan League that I am most concerned.
2:18:51
Speaker 1: A Balkan League of peace for mutual protection will be
2:18:55
Speaker 1: an absolute necessity in a regenerated Europe. It is necessary
2:19:00
Speaker 1: for the tranquility of the world. It is necessary if
2:19:04
Speaker 1: the wiltship Farmer is to herd his sheep in peace.
2:19:07
Speaker 1: It is necessary if people are to be prosperous and
2:19:10
Speaker 1: happy in Chicago and Yokohama. Perhaps Balkan League is now
2:19:17
Speaker 1: an insufficiently extensive word, since Roumania is not in the
2:19:21
Speaker 1: Balkan Peninsula, and Italy must necessarily be involved in any
2:19:26
Speaker 1: enduring settlement. But it is clear that the settlement of
2:19:30
Speaker 1: Europe upon liberal lines involves the creation of these various
2:19:36
Speaker 1: ten to twenty million people states, none of them powerful
2:19:41
Speaker 1: enough to be secure alone, but amounting in the aggregate
2:19:45
Speaker 1: to the greatest power in Europe. And it is equally
2:19:48
Speaker 1: clear that they must be linked by some common bond
2:19:52
Speaker 1: and understanding. There can be no doubt that the very
2:19:56
Speaker 1: serious complication of all these possibilities by the jerry built
2:20:01
Speaker 1: dynastic interests that have been unhappily run up in these
2:20:05
Speaker 1: new states. It is unfortunate that we have to reckon
2:20:10
Speaker 1: not only with people's but kings. Such a monarchy as
2:20:14
Speaker 1: that of Servia or Bulgaria narrows, personifies, intensifies, and misrepresents
2:20:20
Speaker 1: national feeling, National hatreds, and national ambitions can no doubt
2:20:26
Speaker 1: be at times very malign influences in the world's affairs.
2:20:31
Speaker 1: But it is the greed and vanities of exceptional monarchs,
2:20:35
Speaker 1: of the Napoleons and Fredericks the Great and so forth
2:20:39
Speaker 1: that bring these vague, vast feelings to an edge and
2:20:43
Speaker 1: a crisis. And it will be these same concentrated and
2:20:48
Speaker 1: over individualized purposes, these little gods of the coin and
2:20:53
Speaker 1: postage stamp, that will stand most in the way of
2:20:57
Speaker 1: a reasonable vites arisation and pacification of Southeastern Europe. The
2:21:03
Speaker 1: more clearly this is recognized in Europe now, the less
2:21:08
Speaker 1: likely are they, the less able will they be to
2:21:11
Speaker 1: obstruct a sane settlement on our side. At least, this
2:21:16
Speaker 1: is a war of nations and not of princes. It
2:21:20
Speaker 1: is for that reason that we have to make the
2:21:23
Speaker 1: discussion of these national arrangements as open and public as
2:21:28
Speaker 1: we possibly can. This is not a matter for the
2:21:32
Speaker 1: quiet little deals of the diplomatists. This is no chance
2:21:37
Speaker 1: for kings. All the civilized peoples of the earth have
2:21:40
Speaker 1: to form an idea of the general lines upon which
2:21:44
Speaker 1: a pacific Europe can be established, an idea clear and
2:21:50
Speaker 1: powerful enough to prevent and override the maneuvers of the chancellis.
2:21:55
Speaker 1: The nations themselves have to become the custodians of the
2:21:59
Speaker 1: common peace in Italy. Indeed, this is already the case.
2:22:05
Speaker 1: The Italian monarchy is a strong and liberal monarchy, secure
2:22:10
Speaker 1: in the confidence of its people. But were it not so,
2:22:13
Speaker 1: it is a fairly evident fact that no betrayal by
2:22:18
Speaker 1: its rulers would induce the Italian people to make war
2:22:21
Speaker 1: upon France in the interests of Austria and Prussia. I
2:22:26
Speaker 1: doubt too, if the present King of Bulgaria can afford
2:22:30
Speaker 1: to blunder again. The world moves steadily away from the
2:22:35
Speaker 1: phase of court centered nationalism to the phase of a
2:22:39
Speaker 1: collective national purpose. It is for the whole strength of
2:22:44
Speaker 1: Western liberalism to throw itself upon the side of that movement.
2:22:48
Speaker 1: And in no direction can it make its strength so
2:22:51
Speaker 1: effective at the present time as in the open and
2:22:55
Speaker 1: energetic promotion of a new and greater Balkan League. End
2:23:02
Speaker 1: of chapter ten. Recording by Peter Tomlinson, Chapter eleven of
2:23:12
Speaker 1: The War That Will End War by Herbert George Wells.
2:23:17
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
2:23:21
Speaker 1: Peter Tomlinson, Chapter eleven, The War of the Mind. All
2:23:28
Speaker 1: the realities of this war are things of the mind.
2:23:32
Speaker 1: This is a conflict of cultures and nothing else in
2:23:36
Speaker 1: the world. All the world wide pain and weariness, fear
2:23:41
Speaker 1: and anxieties, the bloodshed and destruction, the innumerable torn bodies
2:23:46
Speaker 1: of men and horses, the stench of putrefaction, the misery
2:23:51
Speaker 1: of hundreds of millions of human beings, the waste of mankind,
2:23:55
Speaker 1: are but the material consequences of a false philosophy and
2:24:00
Speaker 1: foolish thinking. We fight not to destroy a nation, but
2:24:05
Speaker 1: a nest of evil ideas. We fight because a whole
2:24:09
Speaker 1: nation has become obsessed by pride, by the count of
2:24:13
Speaker 1: cynicism and the vanity of violence, by the evil suggestion
2:24:18
Speaker 1: of such third rate writers as Gobineaux and Stuart Chamberlain
2:24:24
Speaker 1: that they were a people of peculiar excellence, destined to
2:24:27
Speaker 1: dominate the earth. By the base offer of advantage in
2:24:31
Speaker 1: cunning and treachery held out by such men as Delbrook
2:24:35
Speaker 1: and Bernhardi, by the theatricalism of the Kaiser, and by two
2:24:40
Speaker 1: stirring songs about Deutschland and the Rhine. These things, interweaving
2:24:45
Speaker 1: with the tradesmen's activities of the armaments trust, and the
2:24:48
Speaker 1: common vanity and weaknesses of unthinking men, have been sufficient
2:24:53
Speaker 1: to release disaster. We do not begin to measure the
2:24:56
Speaker 1: magnitude of the disaster. On the back of it all,
2:25:00
Speaker 1: spurring it on are the idea among us, the base,
2:25:04
Speaker 1: spirited writing men, pretentious little professors in frock coats, scribbling colonels.
2:25:10
Speaker 1: They are the idea. They pointed the way and whispered go.
2:25:15
Speaker 1: They ride the world now to catastrophe. It is as
2:25:18
Speaker 1: if God, in a moment of world humor, had lent
2:25:21
Speaker 1: his whirlwinds for an outing to half a dozen fleas.
2:25:26
Speaker 1: And the real task before mankind is quite beyond the
2:25:29
Speaker 1: business of the fighting line, the simple awful business of
2:25:33
Speaker 1: discrediting and discouraging these stupidities by battleship, artillery, rifle, and
2:25:39
Speaker 1: the blood and courage of seven million men. The real
2:25:44
Speaker 1: task of mankind is to get better sense into the
2:25:47
Speaker 1: heads of these Germans and therewith, and thereby into the
2:25:51
Speaker 1: heads of humanity generally, and to end not simply a war,
2:25:57
Speaker 1: but the idea of war. What printing and writing and
2:26:01
Speaker 1: talking have done. Printing and writing and talking can undo.
2:26:06
Speaker 1: Let no man be fooled by Balkan matter. Rifles do
2:26:10
Speaker 1: but kill men, and freshmen are born to follow them.
2:26:14
Speaker 1: Our business is to kill ideas. The ultimate purpose of
2:26:17
Speaker 1: this war is propaganda, the destruction of certain beliefs and
2:26:21
Speaker 1: the creation of others. It is to this propaganda that
2:26:26
Speaker 1: reasonable men must address themselves. And when I write propaganda,
2:26:30
Speaker 1: I do not for a moment mean the propaganda with
2:26:32
Speaker 1: which the name of mister Norman Angel is associated. This
2:26:37
Speaker 1: great modern gospel that war does not pay. That is
2:26:41
Speaker 1: indeed the only decent and attractive thing that can be
2:26:45
Speaker 1: said for war. Nothing that is really worth having in
2:26:50
Speaker 1: life does pay. Men live in order that they may
2:26:54
Speaker 1: pay for the unpaying things. Love does not pay, art
2:26:58
Speaker 1: does not pay, Finish does not pay. Honesty is not
2:27:02
Speaker 1: the best policy. Generosity invites the ingratitude of the mean.
2:27:08
Speaker 1: What is the good of this huckster's argument? It revolts
2:27:13
Speaker 1: all honorable men. But war, whether it pay or not,
2:27:17
Speaker 1: is an atrociously ugly thing, cruel, destroying countless beauties. Who
2:27:22
Speaker 1: cares whether war pays or does not pay. When one
2:27:26
Speaker 1: thinks of some obstinate Belgian peasant woman being interrogated and
2:27:30
Speaker 1: shot by hectoring German officer, or of the weekly whimpering
2:27:34
Speaker 1: mess of some poor hovel with little children in it,
2:27:37
Speaker 1: struck by a shell. Even if war paid twelve and
2:27:40
Speaker 1: a half percent per annum forever on every pound it
2:27:44
Speaker 1: costs a wage, would it be anytheless a sickening abomination
2:27:49
Speaker 1: to every decent soul. And moreover, it is a bore.
2:27:54
Speaker 1: It is an unendurable boar. War and the preparation for war,
2:27:59
Speaker 1: the axes, the drilling, the interference with every free activity,
2:28:04
Speaker 1: the arrest and stiffening up of life, the obedience to
2:28:09
Speaker 1: third rate people in uniform of which Berlin struck Germans
2:28:13
Speaker 1: have been the implacable exponents, have become an unbearable nuisance
2:28:18
Speaker 1: to all humanity. Neither Belgium, nor France nor Britain is
2:28:22
Speaker 1: fighting now for glory or advantage. I do not believe
2:28:26
Speaker 1: Russia is doing so. We are all, I believe, fighting
2:28:31
Speaker 1: in a fury of resentment, because at last, after years
2:28:34
Speaker 1: of waste and worry to prevent it, we have been
2:28:37
Speaker 1: obliged to do so. Our grievance is the grievance of
2:28:41
Speaker 1: every decent life, loving German, of every German mother and
2:28:45
Speaker 1: sweetheart who watched her man go off under his incompetent
2:28:48
Speaker 1: leaders to hardship and mutilations and deaths. And our propaganda
2:28:53
Speaker 1: against the Prussian idea has to be no vile argument
2:28:57
Speaker 1: to the pocket, but an appeal to the common sense
2:29:00
Speaker 1: and common feelings of humanity. We have to clear the
2:29:03
Speaker 1: heads of the Germans and keep the heads of our
2:29:06
Speaker 1: own people clear about this war. Particularly is their need
2:29:10
Speaker 1: to dissuade our people against the dream of profit filching
2:29:14
Speaker 1: the war against German trade. We have to reiterate over
2:29:18
Speaker 1: and over again that we fight resolved that at the
2:29:22
Speaker 1: end no nationality shall oppress any nationality or language again
2:29:26
Speaker 1: in Europe forever. And by way of illustration, we want
2:29:31
Speaker 1: not those ingenious arrangements of figures that touch the angel imagination,
2:29:36
Speaker 1: but photographs of the Kaiser in his glory at a review,
2:29:39
Speaker 1: and photographs of the long, unintelligent, sidelong face of the
2:29:43
Speaker 1: Crown Prince his son, photographs of that great original crup
2:29:48
Speaker 1: taking his pleasures at Capri. And to set beside these
2:29:51
Speaker 1: photographs piteously showing men killed and horribly torn upon the battlefield,
2:29:56
Speaker 1: and men crippled, and women and men murdered, and homes burned,
2:29:59
Speaker 1: and to the verge of indecency, all the peculiar filthiness
2:30:03
Speaker 1: of war. And the case has thus to be stated
2:30:07
Speaker 1: has to be brought before the minds of the Germans,
2:30:10
Speaker 1: of Americans, of French people and english people, of Swedes
2:30:14
Speaker 1: and Russians and Italians, as are common evil, which, though
2:30:18
Speaker 1: it be at the expense of several governments, we have
2:30:20
Speaker 1: to end. Now, How is this literature to be spread?
2:30:26
Speaker 1: How are we to reach the common people of the
2:30:29
Speaker 1: Western European countries with these explanations, these assurances, these suggestions
2:30:35
Speaker 1: that are necessary for the proper ending of this war.
2:30:39
Speaker 1: I could wish we had a government capable of something
2:30:42
Speaker 1: more articulate than wait and see, a government that dared
2:30:47
Speaker 1: confess a national intention to all the world. For what
2:30:52
Speaker 1: a government says is audible to all the world. King
2:30:56
Speaker 1: George too has the ear of one thousand million people.
2:31:00
Speaker 1: If he saw fit to say simply and clearly what
2:31:03
Speaker 1: it is we fight for and what we seek, his
2:31:06
Speaker 1: voice would be heard universally throughout Germany, through all America.
2:31:12
Speaker 1: No other voice has such penetration he is. He has
2:31:16
Speaker 1: told us watching the war with interest. But that is
2:31:20
Speaker 1: not enough. We could have guessed that knowing his spirit.
2:31:24
Speaker 1: As a nation, we need expression that shall reach the
2:31:28
Speaker 1: other side. But our government is I fear one of
2:31:32
Speaker 1: those that obey necessity. It is only very reluctantly creative.
2:31:37
Speaker 1: It rests therefore with us, who outside all formal government,
2:31:42
Speaker 1: represent the national will and intention, to take this work
2:31:46
Speaker 1: into our hands by means of a propaganda of books,
2:31:50
Speaker 1: newspaper articles, leaflets, tracts in English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian,
2:31:57
Speaker 1: Chinese and Japanese. We have to spread this idea, repeat
2:32:02
Speaker 1: this idea, and impose upon this war the idea that
2:32:06
Speaker 1: this war must end war. We have to create a
2:32:11
Speaker 1: wide common conception of a remapped and pacified Europe, release
2:32:16
Speaker 1: from the abominable dangers of a private trade in armaments,
2:32:20
Speaker 1: largely disarmed and pledged to mutual protection. This conception has
2:32:26
Speaker 1: sprang up in a number of minds, and there have
2:32:28
Speaker 1: been proposals, at once most extraordinary and feasible for its realization.
2:32:34
Speaker 1: Projects of aeroplanes scattering leaflets across Germany, of armies distributing
2:32:39
Speaker 1: tracts as they advance, of prisoners of war much afflicted
2:32:44
Speaker 1: by such literature. These ideas have the absurdity of novelty,
2:32:48
Speaker 1: but otherwise they are by no means absurd. They will
2:32:52
Speaker 1: strike many soldiers as being indecent, But the world is
2:32:56
Speaker 1: in revolt against the standards of soldiering. As before has
2:33:00
Speaker 1: the world seen clearly, as it now sees clearly the
2:33:04
Speaker 1: role of thought in the making of war. This new
2:33:08
Speaker 1: conception carries with it the corollay of an entirely new campaign.
2:33:14
Speaker 1: How can we get at the minds of our enemies?
2:33:16
Speaker 1: How can we make explanation more powerful than armies and fleets?
2:33:20
Speaker 1: Failing an articulate voice at the head of our country,
2:33:24
Speaker 1: we must needs look for the resonating appeal we need
2:33:27
Speaker 1: in other quarters. We look to the church that takes
2:33:31
Speaker 1: for its purposes the name of the Prince of Peace.
2:33:35
Speaker 1: In England. Except for the smallest, meekest protest against war,
2:33:40
Speaker 1: any sort of war on the part of a handful
2:33:43
Speaker 1: of Quakers, Christianity is silent. Its universally present organization speaks,
2:33:51
Speaker 1: no coherent councils. Its workers, for the most part, are
2:33:56
Speaker 1: buried in the loyal manufacture of flannel garment and an
2:34:00
Speaker 1: inordinate quantity of bed socks for the wounded. It is
2:34:05
Speaker 1: an extraordinary thing to go now and look at one's
2:34:08
Speaker 1: parish church and note the pulpit, the orderly arrangements for
2:34:13
Speaker 1: the hearers the proclamations on the doors, to sit awhile
2:34:18
Speaker 1: on the stone wall, about the graves, and survey the
2:34:21
Speaker 1: comfortable vicarage, and to reflect that this is just the
2:34:25
Speaker 1: local representation of a universally present organization for the communication
2:34:31
Speaker 1: of ideas, that all over Europe there are such pulpits,
2:34:35
Speaker 1: such possibilities of gathering and saying, and that it gathers
2:34:39
Speaker 1: nothing and has nothing to say pacific patriotic sentiment. It utters, perhaps,
2:34:47
Speaker 1: but nothing that anyone can act upon, nothing to draw
2:34:51
Speaker 1: together will and make an end. It is strange to
2:34:54
Speaker 1: sit alive in the sunshine and realize that, and to
2:34:58
Speaker 1: think of how tragically that same realization came to another
2:35:02
Speaker 1: mind in Europe. Several things have happened during the past
2:35:06
Speaker 1: few weeks with the intensest symbolic quality, the murder of Jouris,
2:35:12
Speaker 1: for example. But surely nothing has occurred so wonderful and
2:35:15
Speaker 1: touching as the death of the Pope, that faithful, honest,
2:35:19
Speaker 1: simple old man. The war and the perplexity of the
2:35:23
Speaker 1: war darkened his last hours. Once the Church could have
2:35:27
Speaker 1: stopped this thing, he said, with a sense of thread's
2:35:30
Speaker 1: mists and controls that have slipped away it may be
2:35:33
Speaker 1: with a sense of vivifying help. Discouraged and refused, the
2:35:39
Speaker 1: Tribuna tells a story that, if not true, is marvelously invented,
2:35:45
Speaker 1: of the Austrian representative coming to ask him for a
2:35:48
Speaker 1: blessing on the Austrian arms. He feigned not to hear,
2:35:54
Speaker 1: or perhaps he did not hear. The Austrian asked again
2:35:58
Speaker 1: and again there was silence. Then at the third request,
2:36:01
Speaker 1: when he could be silent no longer, he broke out
2:36:05
Speaker 1: no bless peace. As the temperature of his weary body rose,
2:36:11
Speaker 1: his last clear moments were spent in attempts the word
2:36:14
Speaker 1: telegrams that should have some arresting hold upon the gigantic
2:36:18
Speaker 1: crash that was coming, And in his last delirium he
2:36:22
Speaker 1: lamented war and the impotence of the Church. Intellect without
2:36:27
Speaker 1: faith is the devil, but faith without intellect is a
2:36:32
Speaker 1: negligent angel with rusty weapons. This European catastrophe is the
2:36:37
Speaker 1: tragedy of the weak. Though righteous Christian will we begin
2:36:42
Speaker 1: to see that to be right and indolent, or write
2:36:45
Speaker 1: and scornfully silent, or write and abstinate from the conflict,
2:36:51
Speaker 1: is to be wrong. Righteousness has need to be as
2:36:54
Speaker 1: clear and efficient, and to do things as sedulously in
2:36:59
Speaker 1: the right place way as any evil doer. There is
2:37:03
Speaker 1: no meaning in the Christianity of a Christian who is
2:37:06
Speaker 1: not now a propagandist for peace, who is not now
2:37:10
Speaker 1: also a politician. There is no faith in the liberalism
2:37:14
Speaker 1: that merely carps at the manner of our entanglement in
2:37:17
Speaker 1: a struggle that must alter all the world forever. We
2:37:22
Speaker 1: need not only to call for peace, but to seek
2:37:25
Speaker 1: and show and organize the way of peace. One thinks
2:37:30
Speaker 1: of governments and the church and the press, and then
2:37:35
Speaker 1: turning about for some other source of mental control, we
2:37:38
Speaker 1: recall the organizations, the really quite opulent organizations that are
2:37:44
Speaker 1: professedly devoted to the promotion of peace. There is no
2:37:49
Speaker 1: voice from the Hague. The so called peace movement in
2:37:53
Speaker 1: our world has consume money enough and service enough to
2:37:57
Speaker 1: be something better than a weak little grumble at the
2:38:00
Speaker 1: existence of war. What is this movement and its organizations
2:38:05
Speaker 1: doing now? Ninety nine people in Europe out of every
2:38:09
Speaker 1: hundred are complaining of war. Now it needs no specially
2:38:13
Speaker 1: endowed committees to do that. They preach to a converted world.
2:38:18
Speaker 1: The question is how to end it and prevent its reoccurrence.
2:38:22
Speaker 1: But have these specially peace seeking people ever sought for
2:38:26
Speaker 1: the secret springs of war, or looked into the powers
2:38:30
Speaker 1: that war for war, or troubled to learn how to
2:38:33
Speaker 1: grasp war and subdue it. All. Germany is knit by
2:38:37
Speaker 1: the fighting spirit and armed beyond the rest of the world.
2:38:42
Speaker 1: Until the mind of Germany is changed, there can be
2:38:45
Speaker 1: no safe place on earth. But that, it seems, does
2:38:49
Speaker 1: not trouble the professional peace advocate, if only he may
2:38:53
Speaker 1: cry peace and live somewhere in comfort and with the
2:38:57
Speaker 1: comfortable sense of a superior descent from the general emotion.
2:39:02
Speaker 1: How are we to gather together the wills and understanding
2:39:05
Speaker 1: of men for the tremendous necessities and opportunities of this time? Thought, speech,
2:39:13
Speaker 1: persuasion and incessant appeal, for clear intentions, clear statements, for
2:39:19
Speaker 1: the dispelling of suspicion, and the abandonment of secrecy and trickery.
2:39:25
Speaker 1: There is work for every man who writes or talks
2:39:28
Speaker 1: and has the slightest influence upon another creature. This monstrous
2:39:33
Speaker 1: conflict in Europe, the slaughtering, the famine, the confusion, the
2:39:37
Speaker 1: panic and hatred and lying pride, It is all of
2:39:40
Speaker 1: it real only in the darkness of the mind. At
2:39:44
Speaker 1: the coming of understanding, it will vanish, as dreams vanish
2:39:47
Speaker 1: at awakening. But never will it vanish until understanding has come.
2:39:53
Speaker 1: It goes on only because we who are voices, who suggest,
2:39:58
Speaker 1: who might elucidate and inspire, are ourselves such little, scattered
2:40:03
Speaker 1: creatures that, though we strained to the breaking point, we
2:40:06
Speaker 1: still have no strength to turn on the light that
2:40:09
Speaker 1: would save us. There have been moments in the last
2:40:13
Speaker 1: three weeks when life has been a waking nightmare, one
2:40:16
Speaker 1: of those frozen nightmares, when with salvation within one's reach,
2:40:20
Speaker 1: one cannot move and the voice dies in one's throat.
2:40:28
Speaker 1: End of Chapter eleven recording by Peter Tomlinson. End of
2:40:34
Speaker 1: The War That Will End War by Herbert George Wells