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Anticipations Chapter 8 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter eight b of anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Anticipations
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Weelve, Chapter eight And while the great
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Speaker 1: states of the continent of Europe are hammering down their
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Speaker 1: obstructions of language and national tradition, or raising the educational
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Speaker 1: level above them until a working unity is possible. And
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Speaker 1: while the reconstruction of Eastern Asia, whether that be under Russian, Japanese, English,
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Speaker 1: or native Chinese direction, struggles towards attainment, will there also
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Speaker 1: be a great synthesis of the English speaking peoples going on.
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Speaker 1: I am inclined to believe that there will be such
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Speaker 1: a synthesis, and that the head and center of the
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Speaker 1: new unity will be the great urban region that is
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Speaker 1: developing between Chicago and the Atlantic, and which will lie mainly,
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Speaker 1: but not entirely, south of the Saint Lawrence. Inevitably, I
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Speaker 1: think that region must become the intellectual, political, and industrial
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Speaker 1: center of any permanent unification of the English speaking states.
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Speaker 1: There will, I believe, develop about that center a great
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Speaker 1: federation of white English speaking peoples, a federation having America
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Speaker 1: north of Mexico as its central mass, a federation that
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Speaker 1: may conceivably include Scandinavia and its federal government will sustain
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Speaker 1: a common fleet and protect or dominate or actually administer
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Speaker 1: most or all of the non white states of the
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Speaker 1: present British Empire, and in addition, much of the South
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Speaker 1: and Middle Pacific, the East and West Indies, the rest
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Speaker 1: of America, and the larger part of Black Africa, quite
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Speaker 1: apart from the dominated races. Such an English speaking state
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Speaker 1: should have by the century end a practically homogeneous citizenship
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Speaker 1: of at least a hundred million, sound bodied and educated
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Speaker 1: and capable men. It would be the first of the
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Speaker 1: three powers of the world, and it should face the
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Speaker 1: organizing synthesis of Europe and Eastern Asia with an intelligent sympathy.
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Speaker 1: By the year two thousand, all its common citizens should
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Speaker 1: certainly be in touch with the thought of continental Europe
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Speaker 1: through the medium of French. Its English language should be
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Speaker 1: already rooting firmly through all the world beyond its confines,
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Speaker 1: and its statesmanship should be preparing openly and surely and
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Speaker 1: discussing calmly with the public mind of the European and
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Speaker 1: probably of the yellow state, the possible coalescences and conventions,
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Speaker 1: the obliteration of custom houses, the homologization of law and
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Speaker 1: coinage and measures, and the mitigation of monopolies and special claims,
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Speaker 1: by which the final peace of the world may be
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Speaker 1: assured forever. Such a synthesis at any rate of the peoples,
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Speaker 1: now using the English tongue, I regard not only as
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Speaker 1: a possible but as a probable thing. The positive obstacles
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Speaker 1: to its achieve great, though they are are yet trivial
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Speaker 1: in comparison with the obstructions to that lesser European synthesis
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Speaker 1: we have ventured to forecast. The greater obstacle is negative.
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Speaker 1: It lies in the want of stimulus, in the lacks
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Speaker 1: prosperity of most of the constituent states of such a union.
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Speaker 1: But such a stimulus the renaiscence of Eastern Asia or
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Speaker 1: a great German fleet upon the ocean, may presently supply
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Speaker 1: now all these three great coalescences. This shriveling up and
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Speaker 1: vanishing of boundary lines, will be the outward and visible
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Speaker 1: accompaniment of that inward and social reorganization which is the
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Speaker 1: main object of these anticipations to display. I have sought
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Speaker 1: to show that, in peace and war alike, a process
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Speaker 1: has been and is at work, a process with all
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Speaker 1: the inevitableness and all the patience of a natural force,
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Speaker 1: whereby the great swollen, shapeless, hypertrophied social mass of to
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Speaker 1: day must give birth at last to a naturally and
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Speaker 1: informally organized educated class, an unprecedented sort of people, a
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Speaker 1: new republic dominating the world. It will be none of
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Speaker 1: our ostensible governments that will effect this great clearing up.
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Speaker 1: It will be the mass of power and intelligence, altogether
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Speaker 1: outside the official state systems of to day that will
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Speaker 1: make this great clearance, a new social hercules that will
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Speaker 1: strangle the serpents of war and national animosity in his cradle. Now,
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Speaker 1: the more one descends from the open uplands of wide
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Speaker 1: generalization to the parallel jungle of particulars, the more dangerous
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Speaker 1: does the road of prophecying become. Yet, nevertheless, there may
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Speaker 1: be some possibility of speculating how, in the case of
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Speaker 1: the English speaking synthesis, at least this effective new republic
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Speaker 1: may begin visibly to shape itself out and appear. It
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Speaker 1: will appear first, I believe, as a conscious organization of intelligent,
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Speaker 1: and quite possibly in some cases wealthy men. As a
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Speaker 1: movement having distinct social and political aims, confessedly ignoring most
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Speaker 1: of the existing apparatus of political control, or using it
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Speaker 1: only as an incidental implement to the attainment of these aims,
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Speaker 1: it will be very loosely organized in its earlier stages,
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Speaker 1: a mere movement of a number of people in a
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Speaker 1: certain direction, who will presently discover with a sort of surprise,
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Speaker 1: the common object towards which they are all moving. Already,
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Speaker 1: there are some interesting aspects of public activity that, diverse,
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Speaker 1: though their aims may seem, do nevertheless serve to show
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Speaker 1: the possible line of development of this new republic in
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Speaker 1: the coming time, for example, as a sort of preliminary
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Speaker 1: sigh before the stirring of a larger movement. There are
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Speaker 1: various Anglo American movements and leagues to be noted. A
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Speaker 1: souciations for entertaining traveling samples of the American leisure class
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Speaker 1: in guaranteed English country houses, for bringing them into momentary
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Speaker 1: physical contact with real titled persons at lunches and dinners,
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Speaker 1: and for having them collectively lectured by respectable English authors
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Speaker 1: and divines. Are no doubt trivial things enough, but a
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Speaker 1: snob sometimes shows how the wind blows better than a
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Speaker 1: serious man. The Empire may catch the American as the
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Speaker 1: soldier caught the tartar. There is something very much more
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Speaker 1: spacious than such things as this, latent in both the
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Speaker 1: British and the American mind, and observable, for instance, in
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Speaker 1: the altered tone of the presses of both countries. Since
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Speaker 1: the Venezuela Message and the Spanish American War, certain projects
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Speaker 1: of a much ampler sort have already been put forward.
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Speaker 1: An interesting proposal of an interchangeable citizenship, so that with
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Speaker 1: a change of domicile an Englishman should have the chance
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Speaker 1: of becoming a citizen of the United States and an
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Speaker 1: American a British citizen, or a voter in an autonomous
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Speaker 1: British colony, for example, has been made. Such schemes will
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Speaker 1: no doubt become frequent, and will afford much scope for
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Speaker 1: discussion in both countries during the next decade or so.
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Speaker 1: Footnote I foresee great scope for the ingenious persons who
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Speaker 1: write so abundantly to the London Evening Papers upon etymological points,
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Speaker 1: issues in heraldry and the correct union jack in the
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Speaker 1: very pleasing topic of a possible Anglo American flag for
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Speaker 1: use at first only on unofficial occasions. End footnote. The
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Speaker 1: American Constitution and the British Crown and Constitution have to
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Speaker 1: be modified or shelved at some stage in the synthesis,
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Speaker 1: and for certain types of intelligence there could be no
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Speaker 1: more attractive problem. Certain curious changes in the colonial point
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Speaker 1: of view will occur as these discussions open out. The
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Speaker 1: United States of America are rapidly taking or have already taken,
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Speaker 1: the ascendency in the iron and steel and electrical industries
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Speaker 1: out of the hands of the British. They are developing
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Speaker 1: a far ampler and more thorough system of higher scientific
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Speaker 1: education than the British, and the spirit of efficiency percolating
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Speaker 1: from their more efficient businesses is probably higher in their
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Speaker 1: public services. These things render the transfer of the present
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Speaker 1: mercantile and naval ascendancy of Great Britain to the United
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Speaker 1: States during the next two or three decades a very
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Speaker 1: probable thing. And when this is accomplished, the problem how
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Speaker 1: far colonial loyalty is the fruit of royal visits and
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Speaker 1: sporadic knighthoods, and how far it has relation to the
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Speaker 1: existence of a predominant fleet will be near its solution.
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Speaker 1: An interesting point about such discussions as this, in which indeed,
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Speaker 1: in all probability the nascent consciousness of the New Republic
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Speaker 1: will emerge, will be the solution. This larger synthesis will
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Speaker 1: offer to certain miserable difficulties of the present time. Government
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Speaker 1: by the elect of the first families of Great Britain
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Speaker 1: has in the last hundred years made Ireland and South
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Speaker 1: Africa two open soores of irreconcilable wrong. These two English
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Speaker 1: speaking communities will never rest and never emerge from wretchedness
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Speaker 1: under the vacillating vote catching incapacity of British imperialism, and
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Speaker 1: it is impossible that the British power, having embittered them,
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Speaker 1: should ever dare to set them free. But within such
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Speaker 1: an ampler synthesis as the New Republic will seek, these
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Speaker 1: states could emerge to an equal fellowship that would take
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Speaker 1: all the bitterness from their unforgettable past. Another type of
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Speaker 1: public activity, which foreshadows an aspect under which the New
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Speaker 1: Republic will emerge, is to be found in the unofficial
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Speaker 1: organizations that have come into existence in Great Britain to
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Speaker 1: watch and criticize various public depart. There is, for example,
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Speaker 1: the Navy League, a body of intelligent and active persons
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Speaker 1: with a distinctly expert qualification, which has intervened very effectively
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Speaker 1: in naval control during the last few years. There is
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Speaker 1: also at present a vast amount of disorganized but quite
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Speaker 1: intelligent discontent with the tawdry futilities of army reform that
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Speaker 1: occupy the War Office. It becomes apparent that there is
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Speaker 1: no hope of a fully efficient and well equipped official
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Speaker 1: army under parliamentary government, and with that realization there will
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Speaker 1: naturally appear a disposition to seek some way to military efficiency,
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Speaker 1: as far as is legally possible outside War Office control.
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Speaker 1: Already recruiting is falling off, it will probably fall off
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Speaker 1: more and more as the patriotic emotions are voked by
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Speaker 1: the Boer War fade away, and no trivial addition to
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Speaker 1: pay or privilege will restore it. Elementary education has at
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Speaker 1: last raised them the intelligence of the British lower classes
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Speaker 1: to appoint when the prospect of fighting in distant lands
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Speaker 1: under unsuitably educated British officers of means and gentility, with
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Speaker 1: a defective War Office equipment and inferior weapons has lost
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Speaker 1: much of its romantic glamour. But an unofficial body that
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Speaker 1: set itself to the establishment of a school of military science,
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Speaker 1: to the sane organization and criticism of military experiments and
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Speaker 1: tactics and equipment, and to the raising for experimental purposes
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Speaker 1: of volunteer companies and battalions, would find no lack of men.
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Speaker 1: What an unofficial syndicate of capable persons of the new
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Speaker 1: sort may do in these matters has been shown in
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Speaker 1: the case of the Turbinia, the germ of an absolute
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Speaker 1: revolution in naval construction. Such attempts at unofficial soldiering would
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Speaker 1: be entirely in the spirit in which I believe the
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Speaker 1: new Republic will emerge. But it is in another line
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Speaker 1: of activity that the growing new consciousness will presently be
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Speaker 1: much more distinctly apparent. It is increasingly evident that to
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Speaker 1: organize and control public education is beyond the power of
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Speaker 1: a democratic government. The meanly equipped and pretentiously conducted private
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Speaker 1: schools of Great Britain, staffed with ignorant and in capable
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Speaker 1: young men, exist, on the other hand, to witness that
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Speaker 1: public education is no matter to be left to merely
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Speaker 1: commercial enterprise working upon parental ignorance. And social prejudice. The
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Speaker 1: necessary condition to the effective development of the new Republic
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Speaker 1: is a universally accessible, spacious, and varied educational system working
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Speaker 1: in an atmosphere of efficient criticism and general intellectual activity.
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Speaker 1: Schools alone are of no avail. Universities are merely dens
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Speaker 1: of the higher cramming unless the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses and
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Speaker 1: lecturers are in touch with and under the light of
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Speaker 1: an abundant, contemporary and for fully adult intellectuality. At present
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Speaker 1: and Great Britain at least, the headmasters, entrusted with the
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Speaker 1: education of the bulk of the influential men of the
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Speaker 1: next decades, are conspicuously second rate men, forced and etiolated creatures.
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Speaker 1: Scholarship boys manured with annotated additions and brought up under
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Speaker 1: and protected from all current illumination by the kale pot
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Speaker 1: of the thirty nine articles. Many of them are less
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Speaker 1: capable teachers and even less intelligent men than many board
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Speaker 1: school teachers. There is, however, urgent need of an absolutely
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Speaker 1: new type of school, a school that shall be at
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Speaker 1: least so skillfully conducted as to supply the necessary training
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Speaker 1: in mathematics, dialectics, languages and drawing, and the necessary knowledge
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Speaker 1: of science without either consuming all the leisure of the
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Speaker 1: boy or destroying his individuality as it is destroyed by
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Speaker 1: the ignorant and pretentious blunderers of today. And there is
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Speaker 1: an equally manifest need of a new type of university,
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Speaker 1: something other than a happy fastness for those precociously brilliant creatures,
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Speaker 1: creatures whose brilliances too often the hectic indication of a
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Speaker 1: constitutional unsoundness of mind, who can get in before the
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Speaker 1: port colors of the nineteenth Birthday falls. These new educational
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Speaker 1: elements may either grow slowly through the steady and painful
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Speaker 1: pressure of remorseless facts, or as the effort to revoke
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Speaker 1: the new Republic becomes more conscious and deliberate. They may
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Speaker 1: be rapidly brought into being by the conscious endeavors of
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Speaker 1: capable men. Assuredly, they will never be developed by the
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Speaker 1: wisdom of the governments of the gray. It may be
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Speaker 1: pointed out that in an individual and disorganized way, a
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Speaker 1: growing sense of such needs is already displayed. Such great
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Speaker 1: business manages as mister Andrew Carnegie, for example, and many
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Speaker 1: other of the wealthy efficients of the United States of
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Speaker 1: America are displaying a strong distinc the nation to found
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Speaker 1: families of functionless shareholders, and a strong disposition to contribute
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Speaker 1: by means of colleges, libraries, and splendid foundations, to the
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Speaker 1: future of the whole English speaking world. Of course, mister
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Speaker 1: Carnegie is not an educational specialist, and as good intentions
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Speaker 1: will be largely exploited by the energetic mediocrites who control
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Speaker 1: our educational affairs. But it is the intention that concerns
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Speaker 1: us now, and not the precise method or effect. Indisputably,
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Speaker 1: these rich Americans are at a fundamentally important work in
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Speaker 1: these endowments, and as indisputably, many of their successes, I
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Speaker 1: do not mean the heirs to their private wealth, but
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Speaker 1: the men of the same type who will play their
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Speaker 1: role in the coming years, will carry on this spacious
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Speaker 1: work with a wider prospect and a clearer common understanding.
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Speaker 1: The establishment of modern and efficient schools is alone not
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Speaker 1: sufficient for the intellectual needs of the coming time. The
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Speaker 1: school and un university are merely the preparation for the
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Speaker 1: life of mental activity in which the citizen of the
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Speaker 1: coming state will live. The three years of university and
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Speaker 1: a lifetime of garrulous stagnation which constitutes the mind's history
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Speaker 1: of many a public school master, for example, and most
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Speaker 1: of the clergy today, will be impossible under the new needs.
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Speaker 1: The old fashioned university, secure in its omniscience, merely taught,
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Speaker 1: the university of the coming time will, as its larger function,
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Speaker 1: criticize and learn. It will be organized for research for
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Speaker 1: the criticism that is of thought and nature. And a
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Speaker 1: subtler and a greater task before those who will presently
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Speaker 1: swear allegiance to the New Republic is to aid and
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Speaker 1: stimulate that process of sound adult mental activity, which is
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Speaker 1: the cardinal element in human life. After all, In spite
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Speaker 1: of the pretentious impostors who trade upon the claim literature,
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Speaker 1: contemporary literature is the breath of civilized life, and those
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Speaker 1: who sincerely think can write the salt of the social body.
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Speaker 1: To mumble over the past, to live on the classics, however,
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Speaker 1: splendid is senility. The New Republic therefore will sustain its authors.
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Speaker 1: In the past, the author lived within the limits of
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Speaker 1: his patron's susceptibility and led the world so far as
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Speaker 1: he did lead it from that cage. In the present,
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Speaker 1: he lives within the limits of a particularly distressful and
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Speaker 1: ill managed market. He must please and interest the public
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Speaker 1: before he may reason with it, and even to reach
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Speaker 1: the public air involves other assiduities than writing. To write
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Speaker 1: one's best is surely sufficient work for a man. But
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Speaker 1: unless the author is prepared to add to his literary
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Speaker 1: toil the correspondence and alert activity of a business man,
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Speaker 1: he may find that no measure of acceptance will save
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Speaker 1: him from a mysterious poverty. Publishing has become a trade
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Speaker 1: differing only from the trade in pork or butter, in
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Speaker 1: the tradesman's careless bookkeeping, and has professed indifference to the
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Speaker 1: quality of his goods. But unless the whole mass of
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Speaker 1: argument in these anticipations is false, publishing is as much
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Speaker 1: or even more of a public concern than education, and
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Speaker 1: as little to be properly discharged by private men working
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Speaker 1: for profit. On the other hand, it is not to
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Speaker 1: be undertaken by a government of the gray, for a
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Speaker 1: confusion cannot undertake to clarify itself. It is an activity
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Speaker 1: in which the New Republic will necessarily engage. The men
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Speaker 1: of the New Republic will be intelligently critical men, and
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Speaker 1: they will have the courage of their critical conclusions. For
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Speaker 1: the sake of the English tongue, for the sake of
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Speaker 1: the English peoples. They will set themselves to put temptingly
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Speaker 1: within the reach of all readers of the tongue and
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Speaker 1: all possible readers of the tongue, an abundance of living literature.
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Speaker 1: They will endeavor to shape great publishing trusts and associations
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Speaker 1: that will have the same relation to the publishing office
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Speaker 1: of to day that a medical association has to a
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Speaker 1: patent medicine dealer. They will not only publish, but sell
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Speaker 1: their efficient bookshops. Their efficient system of book distribution will
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Speaker 1: replace the present haphazard dealings of quite illiterate persons under
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Speaker 1: whose shadows people in the provinces live footnote. In a
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Speaker 1: large town like Folkeston, for example, it is practically impossible
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Speaker 1: to buy any book but a boomed novel, unless one
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Speaker 1: has ascertained the names of the author, the book, the edition,
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Speaker 1: and the publisher. There is no index in existence kept
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Speaker 1: up to date that supplies these particulars. If, for example,
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Speaker 1: one wants, as I want, one to read all that
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Speaker 1: I have not read of the work of mister Frank Stockton,
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Speaker 1: two to read a book of essays by Professor Ray Lancaster,
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Speaker 1: the title of which I have forgotten, and three to
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Speaker 1: buy the most convenient edition of the works of Swift,
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Speaker 1: one has to continue wanting until the British Museum Library
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Speaker 1: chart to get in one's way. The book selling trade
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Speaker 1: supplies no information at all on these points. End the footnote.
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Speaker 1: If one of these publishing groups decides that a book,
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Speaker 1: new or old is of value to the public mind,
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Speaker 1: I conceive that copyright will be secured and the book
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Speaker 1: produced all over the world, in every variety of form
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Speaker 1: and price that seems necessary to its exhaustive sale. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: these publishing associations will sustain spaciously conceived organs of opinion
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Speaker 1: and criticism, which will begin by being patiently and persistently good,
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Speaker 1: and so develop into power. And the more distinctly the
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Speaker 1: new Republic emerges, the less danger there will be of
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Speaker 1: these associations being allowed to outlive their service in a
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Speaker 1: state of ossified authority. New groups of men and new
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Speaker 1: phases of thought will organize their publishing associations as children
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Speaker 1: learn to talk. Footnote. One of the least satisfactory features
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Speaker 1: of the intellectual atmosphere of the present time is the
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Speaker 1: absence of good controversy. To follow closely, an honest and
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Speaker 1: subtle controversy, and to have arrived at a definite opinion
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Speaker 1: upon some general question of real and practical interest and
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Speaker 1: complicated reference is assuredly the most educational exercise in the world.
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Speaker 1: I would go so far as to say that no
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Speaker 1: person is completely educated who has not done as much.
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Speaker 1: The memorable discussions in which Huxley figured, for example, were
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Speaker 1: extraordinarily stimulating. We lack that sort of thing now. A
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Speaker 1: great number of people are expressing conflicting opinions upon all
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Speaker 1: sorts of things, but there is a quite remarkable shirking
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Speaker 1: of plain issues of debate. There is no answering back.
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Speaker 1: There is much indirect answering, depreciation of the adversary, attempts
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Speaker 1: to limit his publicity, restatements of the opposing opinion in
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Speaker 1: a new way, but no conflict in the lists. We
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Speaker 1: no longer fight obnoxious views, but assassinate them from first
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Speaker 1: to last. For example, there has been no honest discussion
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Speaker 1: of the fundamental issues in the Boer War. Something may
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Speaker 1: be due to the multiplication of magazines and newspapers and
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Speaker 1: the confusion of opinions that has scattered the controversy. Following
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Speaker 1: public It is much to be regretted that the laws
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Speaker 1: of copyright and the methods of publication stand in the
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Speaker 1: way of annotated editions of works of current controversial value.
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Speaker 1: For example, mister Andrew Lang has assailed the new edition
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Speaker 1: of The Golden Bough. His criticisms, which are no doubt
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Speaker 1: very shrewd and penetrating, ought to be accessible with the
22:35
Speaker 1: text he criticizes. Yet numerous people will read his comments
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Speaker 1: who will never read The Golden Bough. They will accept
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Speaker 1: his dinted sword as proof of the slaughter of mister Fraser,
22:46
Speaker 1: and many will read The Golden Bough and never hear
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Speaker 1: of mister Lang's comments. Why should it be so hopeless
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Speaker 1: to suggest an edition of The Golden Bough with footnotes
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Speaker 1: by mister Lang and mister Fraser's replies. There are all
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Speaker 1: sorts of books to which mister Lang might add footnotes
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Speaker 1: with infinite benefit to every one. Mister Malick again is
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Speaker 1: going to explain how science and religion stand at the
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Speaker 1: present time. If only someone would explain in the margin
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Speaker 1: how mister Malick stands, the thing would be complete. Such
23:17
Speaker 1: a book again, as these anticipations would stand a vast
23:20
Speaker 1: amount of controversial footnoting. It bristles with pegs for discussion
23:25
Speaker 1: vacant pegs. It is written to provoke. I hope that
23:29
Speaker 1: some publisher, sooner or later, will do something of this
23:32
Speaker 1: kind and will give us not only the text of
23:35
Speaker 1: an author's work, but a series of footnotes and appendices
23:38
Speaker 1: by reputable antagonists. The experiment, well handled, might prove successful
23:44
Speaker 1: enough to start a fashion, a very beneficial fashion for
23:47
Speaker 1: authors and readers alike. People will write twice as carefully
23:51
Speaker 1: and twice as clearly with that possible second edition with
23:55
Speaker 1: footnotes by X and Y in view. Imagine the Impregnable
24:00
Speaker 1: Rock of Holy Scripture as it might have been edited
24:03
Speaker 1: by the late Professor Huxley Frown's edition of the Grammar
24:07
Speaker 1: of Assent, mister G. B. Shaw's edition of the Works
24:11
Speaker 1: of mister Lecky, or the Criticism of Art and Life
24:14
Speaker 1: of Ruskin The Beauties of Ruskin, annotated by mister Whistler
24:19
Speaker 1: and carefully prepared for the press by Professor William James.
24:23
Speaker 1: Like the Tomato and the Cucumber, every book would carry
24:26
Speaker 1: its antidote wrapped about It impossible, you say, But is
24:30
Speaker 1: it or is it only unprecedented? If novelists will consent
24:35
Speaker 1: to the illustration of their stories by artists whose chief
24:38
Speaker 1: aim appears to be to contradict their statements. I do
24:41
Speaker 1: not see why controversial writers who believe their opinions are
24:45
Speaker 1: correct should object to the checking of their facts and
24:47
Speaker 1: logic by persons with a different way of thinking. Why
24:51
Speaker 1: should not men of opposite opinions collaborate in their discussion?
24:56
Speaker 1: End footnote. And while the new Republic is thus developing
25:00
Speaker 1: its idea of itself and organizing its mind, it will
25:05
Speaker 1: also be growing out of the confused and intricate businesses
25:08
Speaker 1: and undertakings and public services of the present time into
25:12
Speaker 1: a recognizable material body. The synthetic process that is going
25:17
Speaker 1: on in the case of many of the larger of
25:19
Speaker 1: the businesses of the world, that formation of trusts that
25:23
Speaker 1: bulk so large an American discussion, is of the utmost
25:26
Speaker 1: significance in this connection. Conceivably, the first impulse to form
25:31
Speaker 1: trusts came from a mere desire to control competition and
25:36
Speaker 1: economize working expenses. But even in its very first stages,
25:40
Speaker 1: this process of coalescence has passed out of the region
25:43
Speaker 1: of commercial operations into that of public affairs. The trust
25:47
Speaker 1: develops into the organization under men far more capable than
25:50
Speaker 1: any sort of public officials, of entire industries, of entire
25:55
Speaker 1: departments of public life, quite outside the ostensible democratic government system. Altogether,
26:01
Speaker 1: the whole apparatus of communication, which we have seen to
26:04
Speaker 1: be of such primary importance in the making of the future,
26:08
Speaker 1: promises to pass, in the case of the United States,
26:10
Speaker 1: at least, out of the region of scramble, into the
26:13
Speaker 1: domain of deliberate control. Even today, the trusts are taken
26:17
Speaker 1: over quite consciously the most vital national matters. The American
26:21
Speaker 1: iron and steel industries have been drawn together and developed
26:24
Speaker 1: in a manner that is a necessary preliminary to the
26:27
Speaker 1: capture of the Empire of the seas. That end is
26:30
Speaker 1: declaredly within the vista of these operations. Within their initial design.
26:36
Speaker 1: These things are not the work of dividend hunting imbeciles,
26:39
Speaker 1: but of men who regard wealth as a convention, as
26:42
Speaker 1: a means to spacious material ends. There is an animated
26:46
Speaker 1: little paper published in Los Angeles in the Interests of
26:49
Speaker 1: mister Wiltshire, which bears upon its forefront the maxim let
26:54
Speaker 1: the nation own the trusts well under their mantle of property.
26:58
Speaker 1: The trusts grow continually more elaborate and efficient machines of
27:01
Speaker 1: production and public service, while the formal nation chooses its
27:05
Speaker 1: bosses and buttons and reads its illustrated press. I must
27:09
Speaker 1: confess I do not see the Negro and the poor irishman,
27:13
Speaker 1: and all the emigrant sweepings of Europe, which constitute the
27:16
Speaker 1: bulk of the American abyss, uniting to form that great
27:19
Speaker 1: socialist party of which mister Wilshire dreams, and with a
27:23
Speaker 1: little demonstrating and balloting, taking over the foundry and the
27:26
Speaker 1: electrical works, the engine shed and the signal box from
27:29
Speaker 1: the capable men in charge. But that a confluent system
27:34
Speaker 1: of trust owned business organisms, and of universities and re
27:37
Speaker 1: organised military and naval services may presently discover an essential
27:41
Speaker 1: unity of purpose, presently begin thinking a literature and behaving
27:46
Speaker 1: like a state is a much more possible thing. In
27:51
Speaker 1: its more developed phases. I seem to see the new
27:54
Speaker 1: Republic as if I may use an expressive ball a
27:58
Speaker 1: sort of outspoken secrets, so society with which even the
28:02
Speaker 1: prominent men of the ostensible state may be openly affiliated.
28:07
Speaker 1: A vast number of men admit the need, but hesitate
28:09
Speaker 1: at the means of revolution. And in this conception of
28:13
Speaker 1: a slowly growing new social order organized with open deliberation
28:17
Speaker 1: within the substance of the old. There are, no doubt,
28:20
Speaker 1: elements of technical treason, but an enormous gain in the thoroughness, efficiency,
28:25
Speaker 1: and stability of the possible change. So it is, or
28:31
Speaker 1: at least in some such ways, that I conceive the
28:33
Speaker 1: growing sense of itself which the new class of modern
28:36
Speaker 1: efficients will develop, will become manifest in movements and concerns
28:40
Speaker 1: that are now heterogeneous and distinct, but will presently drift
28:44
Speaker 1: into cooperation and coalescence. This idea of a synthetic reconstruction
28:49
Speaker 1: within the bodies of the English speaking states may very
28:52
Speaker 1: possibly clothe itself in quite other formulae than my phrase
28:56
Speaker 1: of the new Republic. But the need is with us.
28:59
Speaker 1: The social elements are developing among us, the appliances are
29:03
Speaker 1: arranging themselves for the hands that will use them, And
29:07
Speaker 1: I cannot but believe that the idea of a spacious
29:10
Speaker 1: common action will presently come in a few years. I
29:14
Speaker 1: believe many men who are now rather aimless, men who
29:17
Speaker 1: have disconsolately watched the collapse of the old liberalism, will
29:21
Speaker 1: be clearly telling themselves and one another of their adhesion
29:24
Speaker 1: to this new ideal. They will be working in schools
29:27
Speaker 1: and newspaper offices, in foundries and factories, in colleges and laboratories,
29:33
Speaker 1: in county councils, and on school boards. Even it may
29:36
Speaker 1: be in pulpits for the time when the coming of
29:39
Speaker 1: the new Republic will be ripe. It may be dawning
29:43
Speaker 1: even in the schools of law, because presently there will
29:46
Speaker 1: be a new and scientific handling of jurisprudence. The highly
29:50
Speaker 1: educated and efficient officers mess will rise mechanically and drink
29:55
Speaker 1: to the monarch and sit down to go on discussing
29:57
Speaker 1: the new Republic's growth. I do not see, indeed, why
30:00
Speaker 1: an intelligent monarch himself than these days should not waive
30:04
Speaker 1: any silliness about divine right and all the ill bred
30:07
Speaker 1: pretension that sits so heavily on a gentlemanly king, and
30:11
Speaker 1: come into the movement with these others. When the growing
30:14
Speaker 1: conception touches as an America, it has already touched the
30:17
Speaker 1: legacy leaving class. There will be fewer new asylums, perhaps,
30:21
Speaker 1: but more university chairs. So it is I conceive the
30:27
Speaker 1: elements of the new Republic taking shape and running together
30:30
Speaker 1: through the social mass, picking themselves out more and more
30:33
Speaker 1: clearly from the shareholder, the parasitic speculator, and the wretched
30:38
Speaker 1: multitudes of the abyss. The new Republicans will constitute an
30:42
Speaker 1: informal and open freemasonry. In all sorts of ways, they
30:46
Speaker 1: will be influencing and controlling the apparatus of the ostensible governments.
30:50
Speaker 1: They will be pruning irresponsible property, checking speculators, and controlling
30:54
Speaker 1: the abyssward drift, but at that at an indirect control,
30:59
Speaker 1: at any sort of fixtion, the New Republic, from the
31:01
Speaker 1: very nature of its cardinal ideas, will not rest the
31:06
Speaker 1: clearest and simplest statement. The clearest and simplest method is
31:10
Speaker 1: inevitably associated with the conceptions of that science upon which
31:14
Speaker 1: the New Republic will arise. There will be a time
31:17
Speaker 1: in peace, it may be, or under the stresses of warfare,
31:20
Speaker 1: when the new Republic will find itself ready to arrive,
31:23
Speaker 1: when the theory will have been worked out and the
31:25
Speaker 1: details will be generally accepted, and the new order will
31:28
Speaker 1: be ripe to begin. And then indeed it will begin.
31:32
Speaker 1: What life or strength will be left in the old
31:35
Speaker 1: order to prevent this new order? Beginning end of Chapter
31:40
Speaker 1: eight B recording by John Trevidck,