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The World Set Free Chapter 1 - The Sun Snarers Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of the World Set Free by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Adam Rcitach, June two
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  Speaker 1: thousand nine, Alexandria, Virginia, The World Set Free by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Section five. Frederick Barnae's vandr Yar is one of those
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  Speaker 1: autobiographical novels that were popular throughout the third and fourth
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  Speaker 1: decades of the twentieth century. It was published in nineteen seventy,
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  Speaker 1: and one must understand vonder Yar rather in a spiritual
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  Speaker 1: and intellectual than in a literal sense. It is indeed
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  Speaker 1: an elusive title, carrying the world back to the Wilhelm
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  Speaker 1: Meister of Gota a century and a half earlier. Its author,
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  Speaker 1: Frederick Barney, gives a minute and curious history of his
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  Speaker 1: life and ideas between his nineteenth and his twenty third birthdays.
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  Speaker 1: He was neither a very original nor a very brilliant man,
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  Speaker 1: but he had a trick of circumstantial writing, and though
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  Speaker 1: no authentic portrait was to survive for the information of posterity,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: he betrays by a score of casual phrases that he
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  Speaker 1: was short, sturdy, inclined to be plump, with a rather
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  Speaker 1: blobby face and full, rather projecting blue eyes. He belonged,
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  Speaker 1: until the financial debacle of nineteen fifty six, to the
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  Speaker 1: class of fairly prosperous people. He was a student in London.
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  Speaker 1: He aeroplane to Italy and then had a pedestrian tour
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  Speaker 1: from Genoa to Rome in the air, to Greece and Egypt,
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  Speaker 1: and came back over the Balkans. In Germany, his family fortunes,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: which were largely invested in bank shares, coal mines and
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  Speaker 1: house property, were destroyed, reduced to penury. He sought to
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  Speaker 1: earn a living. He suffered great hardship and was then
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  Speaker 1: caught up by the war, and had a year of soldiering,
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  Speaker 1: first as an officer in the English Infantry and then
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  Speaker 1: in the Army of Pacification. His book tells all these
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  Speaker 1: things so simply and at the same time so explicitly,
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  Speaker 1: that it remains, as it were, an i by which
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  Speaker 1: future generations may have at least one man's vision of
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  Speaker 1: the years of the great change. And he was he
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  Speaker 1: tells us a modern state man by instinct from the beginning.
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  Speaker 1: He breathed in these ideas in the classrooms and laboratories
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  Speaker 1: of the Carnegie Foundation School that rose a long and
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  Speaker 1: delicately beautiful facade along the south bank of the Thames,
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  Speaker 1: opposite the ancient dignity of Somerset House. Such thought was
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  Speaker 1: interwoven with the very fabric of that pioneer school in
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  Speaker 1: the educational renaissance in England, after the customary exchange years
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: in Heidelberg and Paris, he went into the Classical School
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: of London University. The older so called classical education of
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  Speaker 1: the British pedagogues, probably the most paralyzing, ineffective and foolish
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  Speaker 1: routine that ever wasted human life, had already been swept
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  Speaker 1: out of this great institution in favor of modern methods.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And he learned Greek and Latin as well as he
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: had learned German, Spanish and French, so that he wrote
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  Speaker 1: and spoke them freely, and used them with an unconscious
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  Speaker 1: ease in his study of the foundation civilizations of the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: European system to which they were key. This change was
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  Speaker 1: still so recent that he mentions an encounter in Rome
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  Speaker 1: with an Oxford Don who spoke Latin with the Wiltshire
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  Speaker 1: accent and manifest discomfort, wrote Greek letters with his tongue out,
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  Speaker 1: and seemed to think a Greek sentence a charm when
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  Speaker 1: it was a quotation, and an impropriety when it wasn't.
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  Speaker 1: Barney saw the last days of the coal steam engines
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: upon the English railways and the gradual cleansing of the
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  Speaker 1: London atmosphere as the smoke creating sea coal fires gave
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: place to electric heating. The building of laboratories at Kensington
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  Speaker 1: was still in progress, and he took part in the
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  Speaker 1: students riots that delayed the removal of the Albert Memorial.
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  Speaker 1: He carried a banner with we like funny statue on
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  Speaker 1: one side and on the other seats and canopies for statues.
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  Speaker 1: Why should our great departed stand in the rain? He
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: learnt that the rather athletic aviation of those days at
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  Speaker 1: the university grounds at Sydenham, and he was fined for
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: flying over the new prison for political libelers at Wormwood
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  Speaker 1: Scrubs in a manner calculated to exhilarate the prisoners while
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  Speaker 1: at exercise. That was the time of the attempted suppression
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  Speaker 1: of any criticism of the public judicature, and the place
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  Speaker 1: was crowded with journalists who had ventured to call attention
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  Speaker 1: to the dementia of Chief Justice. ABRAHAMS. Barney was not
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  Speaker 1: a very good aviator, he confesses. He was always a
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  Speaker 1: little afraid of his machine. There was excellent reason for
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  Speaker 1: everyone to be afraid of those clumsy early types, and
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: he never attempted steep descents or very high flying. He also,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: he records, owned one of those oil driven motor bicycles,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: whose clumsy complexity and extravagant filthiness still astonished the visitors
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  Speaker 1: to the Museum of Machinery at South Kensington. He mentions
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  Speaker 1: running over a dog and complains of the ruinous price
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  Speaker 1: of spatchcocks in Surrey. Spatchcocks, it seems, was a slang
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  Speaker 1: term for crushed hens. He passed the examinations necessary to
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  Speaker 1: reduce his military service to a minimum, and his want
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  Speaker 1: of any special scientific or technical qualification, and a certain
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  Speaker 1: precocious corpulence that handicapped his aviation, indicated the infantry of
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  Speaker 1: the lion as his sphere of training. That was the
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  Speaker 1: most generalized form of soldiering. The development of the theory
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  Speaker 1: of war had been for some decades, but little assisted
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  Speaker 1: by any practical experience. What fighting had occurred in recent
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: years had been fighting in minor or uncivilized states with
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  Speaker 1: peasant or barbaric soldiers and with but a small equipment
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  Speaker 1: of modern contrivances. And the great powers of the world
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  Speaker 1: were content for the most part to maintain armies that
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  Speaker 1: sustained in their broader organization the traditions of the European
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  Speaker 1: Wars of thirty and forty years before. There was the
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  Speaker 1: infantry arm to which Barney belonged, and which was supposed
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  Speaker 1: to fight on foot with a rifle and be the
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  Speaker 1: main portion of the army. There were cavalry forces horse soldiers,
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  Speaker 1: having a ratio to the infantry that had been determined
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  Speaker 1: by the experiences of the Franco German War in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy one. There was also artillery, and for some unexplained reason,
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  Speaker 1: much of this was still drawn by horses, though there
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  Speaker 1: were also in all the European armies a small number
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  Speaker 1: of motor guns with wheels so constructed that they could
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  Speaker 1: go over broken ground. In addition, there were large developments
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  Speaker 1: of the engineering arm concerned with motor transport, motor bicycle scouting, aviation,
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  Speaker 1: and the like. No first class intelligence had been sought
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  Speaker 1: to specialize in and work out the problem of warfare
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  Speaker 1: with the new appliances and under modern conditions. But a
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  Speaker 1: succession of able jurists, Lord Haldane, Chief Justice Briggs, and
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  Speaker 1: that very able King's Council Philbrick, had reconstructed the army
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  Speaker 1: frequently and thoroughly, and placed it at last with the
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  Speaker 1: adoption of national service, upon a footing that would have
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: seemed very imposing to the public of nineteen hundred. At
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  Speaker 1: any moment, the British Empire could now put a million
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  Speaker 1: and a quarter of arguable sits upon the board of
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  Speaker 1: wealth politic The traditions of Japan and the Central European
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  Speaker 1: armies were more princely and less forensic. The Chinese still
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  Speaker 1: refused resolutely to become a military power and maintained a
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  Speaker 1: small standing army upon the American model. That was said,
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  Speaker 1: so far as it went to be highly efficient, and Russia,
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  Speaker 1: secured by a stringent administration against internal criticism, had scarcely
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  Speaker 1: altered the design of a uniform or the organization of
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  Speaker 1: a battery since the opening decades of the century. Barney's
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  Speaker 1: opinion of his military training was manifestly a poor one.
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  Speaker 1: His modern state ideas disposed him to regard it as
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  Speaker 1: a bore, and his common sense condemned it as useless. Moreover,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: his habit of body made him peculiarly sensitive to the
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  Speaker 1: fatigues and hardships of service. For three days in succession,
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  Speaker 1: we turned out before dawn, and for no earthly reason,
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  Speaker 1: without breakfast, he relates. I suppose that it is to
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  Speaker 1: show us that when the day comes, the first thing
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  Speaker 1: will be to get as thoroughly uncomfortable and rotten. Then
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: we proceed to kriegspiel according to the mysterious ideas of
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  Speaker 1: those in authority over us. On the last day we
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: spent three hours under a hot, if early sun, getting
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  Speaker 1: over eight miles of country to a point we could
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  Speaker 1: have reached in a motor omnibus in nine minutes and
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  Speaker 1: a half. I did it the last day in that
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  Speaker 1: and then we made a massed attack upon intrenchments that
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  Speaker 1: could have shot us all about three times over, if
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  Speaker 1: only the umpires had let them. Then came a little
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  Speaker 1: bayonet exercise. But I doubt if I am sufficiently a
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  Speaker 1: barbarian to stick this long knife into anything living Anyhow,
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  Speaker 1: in this battle. I shouldn't have had a chance, assuming
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  Speaker 1: that by some miracle I hadn't been shot three times over.
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  Speaker 1: I was far too hot and blown when I got
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  Speaker 1: up to the entrenchments, even to lift my beastly rifle.
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  Speaker 1: It was those others would have begun the sticking. For
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  Speaker 1: a time we were watched by two hostile airplanes. Then
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  Speaker 1: our own came up and asked them not to, and
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  Speaker 1: the practice of aerial warfare, still being unknown, they very
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  Speaker 1: politely desisted and went away and did dives in circles
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  Speaker 1: of the most charming description over the Fox Hills. All
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  Speaker 1: Barney's accounts of his military training were written in the
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  Speaker 1: same half contemptuous, half protesting tone. He was of opinion
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  Speaker 1: that his chances of participating in any real warfare were
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  Speaker 1: very slight, and that if, after all, while he should participate,
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  Speaker 1: it was bound to be so entirely different from these
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  Speaker 1: peace maneuvers, that his only course as a rational man
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  Speaker 1: would be to keep as observantly out of danger as
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  Speaker 1: he could until he had learnt the tricks and possibilities
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  Speaker 1: of the new conditions. He states this quite frankly. Never
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  Speaker 1: was a man more free from sham heroics. Section six
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  Speaker 1: Barney welcomed the appearance of the atomic engine with the
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  Speaker 1: zest of masculine youth in all fresh machinery. And it
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  Speaker 1: is evident that for some time he failed to connect
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  Speaker 1: the rush of wonderful new possibilities with the financial troubles
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  Speaker 1: of his family. I knew my father was worried. He
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  Speaker 1: admits that cast the smallest of shadows upon his delighted
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  Speaker 1: departure for Italy and Greece and Egypt. With three congenial
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  Speaker 1: companions in one of the new atomic models. They flew
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: over the Channel aisles and Terain he mentions, and circled
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: about Mont Blanc. These new helicopters we found, he notes,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: had abolished all the danger and strain of sudden drops
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  Speaker 1: to which the old time airplanes were liable. And then
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: he went on by way of Pisa, Paestrum, Ghirgenti, and
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Athens to visit the Pyramids by moonlight, flying thither from Cairo,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: and followed the Nile up to Khartoum. Even by later standards,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: it must have been a very gleeful holiday for a
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  Speaker 1: young man, and it made the tragedy of his next
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: experiences all the darker. A week after his return his father,
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  Speaker 1: who was a widower, announced himself ruined and committed suicide
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: by means of an unscheduled opiate. At one blow, Barney
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: found himself flung out of the possessing, spending, enjoying class
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  Speaker 1: to which he belonged, Penniless, and with no calling by
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  Speaker 1: which he could earn a living. He tried teaching in
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  Speaker 1: some journalism, but in a little while he found himself
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: on the underside of a world in which he had
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: always reckoned to live in the sunshine. For innumerable men,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: such an experience has meant mental and spiritual destruction. But Barney,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: in spite of his bodily gravitation towards comfort, showed himself
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: when put to the test of the more valiant modern quality.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: He was saturated with the creative stoicism of the heroic
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: times that were already dawning, and he took his difficulties
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  Speaker 1: and discomfort stoutly as his appointed material and turned them
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  Speaker 1: to expression. Indeed, in his book he thanks fortune for them.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I might have lived and died, he says, in that
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  Speaker 1: neat fool's paradise of secure lavishness above there I might
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: never have realized the gathering wrath and sorrow of the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: ousted and exasperated masses. In the days of my own prosperity,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: things had seemed to me to be very well arranged. Now,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: from his new point of view, he was able to
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: find they were not arranged at all. That government was
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: a compromise of aggressions and powers and lassitudes, and a
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  Speaker 1: law a convention between interests, and that the poorer and
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the weak, though they had many negligent masters, had few friends.
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  Speaker 1: I had thought things were looked after, He wrote, it
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: was with a kind of amazement that I tramped the
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  Speaker 1: roads and starved, and found that no one in particular cared.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: He was turned out of his lodging in a backward
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  Speaker 1: part of London. It was with difficulty I persuaded my landlady.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: She was an needy widow, poor soul, and I was
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: already in her debt to keep an old box for
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  Speaker 1: me in which I had locked a few letters, keepsakes
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and the like. She lived in great fear of the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Public Health and Morality Inspectors, because she was sometimes too
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: poor to pay the customary tip to them. But at
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: last she consented to put it in a dark tiled
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: place under the stairs, and then I went forth into
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: the world to seek first the luck of a meal
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and then shelter. He wandered down into the thronging, gayer
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: parts of London, in which a year or so ago
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: he had been numbered among the spenders. London under the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: visible smoke law, by which any production of visible smoke,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: by which any production of visible smoke with or without
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: excuse was punishable by a fine, had already ceased to
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: be the somber, smoke darkened city of the Victorian test
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: It had been, and indeed was constantly being rebuilt, and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: its main streets were already beginning to take on those
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: characteristics that distinguished them. Throughout the latter half of the
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: twentieth century, the insanitary horse and the plebeian bicycle had
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: been banished from the roadway, which was now of a
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: resilient glass like surface, spotlessly clean, and the foot passenger
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: was restricted to a narrow vestige of the ancient footpath
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: on either side of the track, and forbidden, at the
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: risk of a fine if he survived to cross the roadway.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: People descended from their automobiles upon this pavement and went
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: through the lower shops to the lifts and stairs to
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: the new ways for pedestrians. The rows that ran along
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the front of the houses at the level of the
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: first story, and being joined by frequent bridges, gave the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: newer parts of London and a curiously Venetian appearance. In
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: some streets there were upper and even third story rows.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: For most of the day and all night, the shop
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: windows were lit by electric light, and many establishments had made,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: as it were, canals of public footpaths through their premises
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: in order to increase their window space. Barney made his
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: way along the night scene rather apprehensively, since the police
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: had power to challenge and demand the labor card of
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: any indigent looking person, and if the record failed to
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: show he was an employment dismiss him to the traffic
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: pavement below. But there was still enough of his former
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: gentility about Barney's appearance and bearing to protect him from this.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: The police too had other things to think of that night,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: and he was permitted to reach the galleries about Leicester Square,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: that great focus of London life and pleasure. He gives
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: a vivid description of the scene that evening. In the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: center was a garden raised on arches, lit by festoons
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: of light, and connected with the rose by eight graceful bridges,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: beneath which hum the interlacing streams of motor traffic, pulsating
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: as the current alternated between east and west and north
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and south. Above rose great frontages of intricate, rather than beautiful,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: reinforced porcelain, studded with lights, barred by bold illuminated advertisements,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: and glowing with reflections. There were the two historical music
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: halls of this place, the Shakespeare Memorial Theater, in which
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the municipal players revolved perpetually through the cycle of Shakespeare's plays,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: and four other great houses of refreshment and entertainment, whose
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: pinnacles streamed up into the blue obscurity of the night.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: The south side of the square was in dark contrast
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: to the others. It was still being rebuilt, and a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: lattice of steel bars, surmounted by the frozen gestures of
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: monstrous cranes, rose over the excavated sites of vanished Victorian buildings.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: This framework attracted Barney's attention for a time, to the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: exclusion of other interests. It was absolutely still. It had
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: a dead rigidity, a stricken inaction. No one was at
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: work upon it, and all its machinery was quiet. But
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the constructor's globes of vacuum light filled its every interstice
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: with a quivering green moonshine, and showed alert but motionless
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: soldiers sentinels. He asked a passing stroller and was told
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that the men had struck that day against the use
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of an atomic riveter that would have doubled the individual
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: efficiency and have the number of steel workers. Shouldn't wonder
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: if they didn't get chucking bombs, said Barney's informant. Hovered
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: for a moment, and then went on his way to
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the Alhambra Music Hall. Barney became aware of an excitement
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: in the newspaper Kiosks. At all the corners of the square,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: something very sensational had been flashed upon the transparencies. Forgetting
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: for a moment his penniless condition, he made his way
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: over a bridge to buy a paper, for in those days,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the papers, which were printed upon sheets of metallic foil,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: were sold at determinate points by specifically licensed purveyors. Half over,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: he stopped short at a change in the traffic below,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: and was astonished to see that the police signals were
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: restricting vehicles to the half roadway, when presently he he
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: got within sight of the transparencies that had replaced the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: placards of Victorian times. He read of the great March
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: of the unemployed that was already in progress through the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: West End, and so without expenditure he was able to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: understand what was coming. He watched, and his book describes
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: this procession, which the police had considered it unwise to prevent,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and which had been spontaneously organized in imitation of the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: unemployed processions of earlier times. He had expected a mob,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: but there was a kind of sullen discipline about the procession.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: When at last it arrived what seemed for a time
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: an unending column of men marched, wearily, marched with a
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: kind of implacable futility along the roadway underneath him. He was,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: he says, moved to join them, but instead he remained watching.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: They were a dingy, shabby, ineffective looking multitude, for the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: most part, incapable of anything but obsolete and superseded types
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: of labor. They bore a few banners with the time
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: honored inscription work not charity, but otherwise their ranks were unadorned.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: They were not singing, they were not even talking. There
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: was nothing truculent nor aggressive in their bearing. They had
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: no definite objective. They were just marching and showing themselves
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: in the more prosperous parts of London. They were a
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: sample of that great mass of unskilled, cheap labor which
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the now still cheaper mechanical powers had superseded. For evermore.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: They were being scrapped as horses had been scrapped. Barney
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: leaned over the parapet watching them, his mind quickened by
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: his own precarious condition. For a time, he says, he
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: felt nothing but despair at the sight. What should be done?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: What could be done for this gathering surplus of humanity?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: They were so manifestly useless and incapable and pitiful. What
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: were they asking for? They had been overtaken by unexpected
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: things nobody had foreseen. It flashed suddenly into his mind
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: just what the multitudinous shambling enigma below meant. It was
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: an appeal against the unexpected, an appeal to those others
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: who more fortunate, seemed wiser and more powerful, for something.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: For intelligence. This mute mass, weary footed rank following rank
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: protested its persuasion that some of these others must have
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: foreseen these dislocations, that anyhow they ought to have foreseen
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and arranged. That was what this crowd of wreckage was feeling,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and seeking so dumbly to assert. Things came to me
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: like the turning on of a light in a darkened room,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: he says. These men were praying to their fellow creatures,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: as once they prayed to God. The last thing that
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: men will realize about anything is that it is inanimate.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: They had transferred their animation to mankind. They still believed
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: there was intelligence somewhere, even if it was careless or malignant.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: It had only to be aroused, to be conscience stricken,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: to be moved to exertion. And I saw too that
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: as yet there was no such intelligence. The world waits
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: for intelligence. That intelligence has still to be made, That
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: will for good and order has still to be gathered
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: together out of scraps of impulse and wandering seeds of benevolence,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and whatever is fine and creative in our souls into
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a common purpose. It's still something to come. It is
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: characteristic of the widening thought of the time that this
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: not very heroical young man, who in any previous age
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: might well have been altogether occupied with the problem of
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: his own individual necessities, should be able to stand there
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: and generalize about the needs of the race. But upon
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: all the stresses and conflicts of that chaotic time, there
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: was already downing the light of a new era. The
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: spirit of humanity was escaping even then. It was escaping
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: from its extreme imprisonment in individuals. Salvation from the bitter
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: intensities of self, which had been a conscious religious end
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: for thousands of years, which men had sought in mortifications,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: in the wilderness, in meditation, and by innumerable strange paths,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: was coming at last with the effect of naturalness, into
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the talk of men, into the books they read, into
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: their unconscious gestures, into their newspapers, and daily purposes and
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: everyday acts. The broad horizons, the magic possibilities that the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: spirit of the seeker had revealed to them were charming
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: them out of those ancient and instinctive preoccupations from which
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the very threat of hell and torment had failed to
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: drive them. And this young man, homeless and without provision,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: even for the immediate hours, in the presence of social disorganization, distress,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and perplexity, in a blazing wilderness of thoughtless pleasure that
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: blotted out the stars, could think, as he tells us,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: he thought I saw life, plain, he wrote, I saw
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the gigantic task before us, and the very splendor of
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: its intricate and immeasurable difficulty filled me with exultation. I
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: saw that we have still to discover government, that we
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: have still to discover education, which is a necessary reciprocal
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: of government. And that all this in which my own
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: little speck of life was so manifestly overwhelmed, This and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: it's yesterday in Greece and Rome and Egypt were nothing
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the mere first dust swirls of the beginning, the movements
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: of dim murmurings of a sleeper who will presently be
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: awake Section seven. And then the story tells, with an
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: engaging simplicity, of his descent from this ecstatic vision of reality.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Presently I found myself again, and I was beginning to
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: feel cold and a little hungry. He bethought himself of
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: the John Byrns Relief Offices, which stood upon the Thames Embankment.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: He made his way through the galleries of the booksellers
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: and the National Gallery, which had been opened continuously day
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: and night to all decently dressed people now for more
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: than twelve years, and across the rose gardens of Trafalgar Square,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and so by the hotel Colonnade to the Embankment. He
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: had long known of these admirable offices, which had swept
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the last beggars and match sellers and all the casual
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: indigent from the London streets, and he believed that he would,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: as a matter of course, be able to procure a
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: ticket for food and a night's lodgings, and some indication
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of possible employment. But he had not reckoned upon the
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: new labor troubles, and when he got to the Embankment
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: he found on the offices hopelessly congested and besieged by
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a large and rather unruly crowd. He hovered for a
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: time on the outskirts of the waiting multitude, perplexed and dismayed.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: And then he became aware of a movement, a purposive
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: trickling away of people up through the arches of the
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: great buildings that had arisen when all the railway stations
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: were removed to the south side of the river, and
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: so to the covered ways of the Strand. And here
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: in the open glare of midnight, he found unemployed men begging,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and not only begging, but begging with astonishing assurance from
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: the people who were emerging from the small theaters and
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: other such places of entertainment which abounded in that thoroughfare.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: This was an altogether unexampled thing. There had been no
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: begging in London streets for a quarter of a century,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: but that night the police were evidently unwilling or unable
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: to cope with the destitute who were invading those well
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: kept quarters of the town. They had become stonily blind
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: to anything but manifest disorder. Barney walked through the crowd,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: unable to bring himself to ask. Indeed, his bearing must
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: have been more valiant than his circumstances. For twice he
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: says that he was begged from near the Trafalgar Square gardens.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: A girl with reddened cheeks and blackened eyebrows, who was
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: walking alone, spoke to him with peculiar friendliness. I'm starving,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: he said to her abruptly. Oh poor dear, she said,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: and with the impulsive generosity of her kind, glanced round
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and slipped a silver piece into his hand. It was
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: a gift that, in spite of the precedent of de Quincey, might,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: under the repressive social legislation of those times, had brought
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Barney within reach of the prison lash. But he took it,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: he confesses, and thanked her as well as he was able,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: and went off very gladly to get food Section eight.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: A day or so later, and again his freedom to
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: go as he pleased upon the roads may be taken
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: as a mark of increasing social disorganization and police embarrassment.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: He wandered out into the open country. He speaks of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the roads of that plutocratic age as being fenced with
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: barbaric wire against unpropertied people of the high walled gardens,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and trespass warnings that kept him to the dusty narrowness
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of the public ways. In the air, happy rich people
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: were flying, heedless of the misfortunes about them, as he
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: himself had been flying too years ago. And along the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: road swept the new traffic, light and swift and wonderful.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: One was rarely out of earshot of its whistles and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: gongs and siren cries. Even in the field paths or
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: over the open downs. The officials of the labor exchanges
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: were everywhere, overworked and infuriated. The casual wards were so
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: crowded that the surplus wanderers slept in ranks under sheds
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: or in the open air, And since giving to wayfarers
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: had been made a punishable offense, there was no longer
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: friendship or help for a man from the rare foot
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: passenger or the wayside cottage. I wasn't angry, said Barney.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I saw an immense selfishness, a monstrous disregard for anything
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: but pleasure and possession, in all those people above us.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: But I saw how inevitable that was, How certainly if
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: the richest had changed places with the poorest, that things
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: would have been the same. What else can happen when
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: men use science and every new thing that science gives,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and all their available intelligence and energy to manufacture wealth
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and appliances, and leave government and education to the rustling
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: traditions of hundreds of years ago. Those traditions come from
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the dark ages, when there was really not enough for everyone,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: when life was a fierce struggle that might be masked
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: but could not be escaped. Of Course, this famine grabbing,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: this fierce dispossession of others, must follow from such a
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: disharmony between material and training. Of course, the rich were
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: vulgar and the poor grew savage, and every added power
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: that came to men made the rich richer and the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: poor less necessary and less free. When I met in
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: the casual wards and the relief offices were all smoldering
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: for revolt, talking of justice and injustice and revenge. I
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: saw no hope in that talk, nor in anything but patience.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: But he did not mean a passive patience. He meant
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: that the method of social reconstruction was still a riddle,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: that no effectual rearrangement was possible until this riddle, in
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: all its tangled aspects, was solved. I tried to talk
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: to those discontented men, he wrote, but it was hard
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: for them to see things as I saw them. When
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: I talked of patience and the larger scheme, they answered,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: but then we shall all be dead. And I could
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: not make them see what is so simple to my
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: own mind that that did not affect the question. Men
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: who think in lifetimes are of no use to statemanship.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: He does not seem to have seen a newspaper during
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: those wanderings. In a chance sight of the transparency of
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: a kiosk in the market place at bishops Stortford, announcing
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: a grave international situation did not excite him very much.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: There had been so many grave international situations in recent years.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: This time it was talk of the Central European powers
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: suddenly attacking the slav confederacy, with France and England going
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: to the help of the Slavs. But the next night
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: he found a tolerable meal awaiting the vagrants in the
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: casual ward, and learned from the workhouse master that all
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: serviceable trained men were to be sent back on the
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: morrow to their mobilization centers. The country was on the
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: eve of war. He was to go back through London
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: to Surrey. His first feeling, he records, was one of
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: extreme relief that his days of hopeless battering at the
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: underside of civilization were at an end. Here was something
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: definite to do, something definitely provided for. But his relief
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: was greatly modified when he found that the mobilization arrangements
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: had been made so hastily and carelessly that for nearly
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: thirty six hours at the improvised depot at Epsom he
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: got nothing either to eat or drink but a cup
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: of cold water. The depot was absolutely unprovisioned, and no
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: one was free to leave it. End of Chapter one