THE NEW WORLD ORDER

[  Whether  it  is  attainable,  how  it  can  be
attained, and what sort of world a world at peace
will have to be. ]

by  H. G. WELLS, as first published in Jan. 1940.

THE END OF AN AGE..............................01
OPEN CONFERENCE................................02
DISRUPTIVE FORCES..............................03
CLASS-WAR......................................04
UNSALTED YOUTH.................................05
SOCIALISM UNAVOIDABLE..........................06
FEDERATION.....................................07
THE NEW TYPE OF REVOLUTION.....................08
POLITICS FOR THE SANE MAN......................09
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN...............10
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS.........................11
WORLD ORDER IN  BEING...................,......12



THE  END  OF  AN AGE

IN  THIS  SMALL  BOOK  I  want  to  set  down  as
compactly, clearly and usefully as  possible  the
gist of what I have learnt about war and peace in
the course of my life. I am not  going  to  write
peace  propaganda  here. I am going to strip down
certain general ideas and  realities  of  primary
importance  to  their framework, and so prepare a
nucleus of useful knowledge for those who have to
go on with this business of making a world peace.
I am not going to persuade people  to  say  "Yes,
yes"  for  a world peace; already we have had far
too much abolition of war by making  declarations
and signing resolutions; everybody wants peace or
pretends to want peace, and there is no  need  to
add  even  a  sentence more to the vast volume of
such ineffective stuff. I am simply attempting to
state the things we must do and the price we must
pay for  world  peace  if  we  really  intend  to
achieve it.

Until  the  Great War, the First World War, I did
not bother very much about war and  peace.  Since
then I have almost specialised upon this problem.
It is not very easy to recall  former  states  of
mind  out  of which, day by day and year by year,
one has grown, but I think that  in  the  decades
before  1914 not only I but most of my generation
- in the  British  Empire,  America,  France  and
indeed  throughout  most of the civilised world -
thought that war was dying out.

So it seemed to  us.  It  was  an  agreeable  and
therefore  a readily acceptable idea. We imagined
the  Franco-German  War  of   1870-71   and   the
Russo-Turkish  War  of  1877-78  were  the  final
conflicts between Great Powers,  that  now  there
was  a  Balance  of  Power sufficiently stable to
make  further  major  warfare  impracticable.   A
Triple Alliance faced a Dual Alliance and neither
had much  reason  for  attacking  the  other.  We
believed  war was shrinking to mere expeditionary
affairs on the outskirts of our  civilisation,  a
sort  of  frontier  police  business.  Habits  of
tolerant  intercourse,  it  seemed,  were   being
strengthened  every  year  that  the peace of the
Powers remained unbroken.

There was in deed a mild armament race going  on;
mild  by  our present standards of equipment; the
armament industry was a growing and  enterprising
on;  but  we  did not see the full implication of
that; we preferred to believe that the increasing
general  good  sense  would  be  strong enough to
prevent  these  multiplying  guns  from  actually
going  off  and  hitting  anything. And we smiled
indulgently at  uniforms  and  parades  and  army
manœuvres.  They  were the time-honoured toys and
regalia of kings and emperors. They were part  of
the  display  side of life and would never get to
actual destruction and killing. I  do  not  think
that  exaggerates the easy complacency of, let us
say,  1895,  forty-five  years  ago.  It  was   a
complacency  that  lasted  with  most of us up to
1914. In 1914 hardly anyone in Europe or  America
below  the  age of fifty had seen anything of war
in his own country.

The world  before  1900  seemed  to  be  drifting
steadily    towards   a   tacit   but   practical
unification. One could travel without a  passport
over  the larger part of Europe; the Postal Union
delivered one’s  letters  uncensored  and  safely
from  Chile to China; money, based essentially on
gold, fluctuated  only  very  slightly;  and  the
sprawling   British  Empire  still  maintained  a
tradition of  free  trade,  equal  treatment  and
open-handedness to all comers round and about the
planet. In the United States  you  could  go  for
days  and  never see a military uniform. Compared
with to-day that was, upon  the  surface  at  any
rate,  an  age  of  easy-going  safety  and  good
humour. Particularly for the North Americans  and
the Europeans.

But apart from that steady, ominous growth of the
armament industry there  were  other  and  deeper
forces  at  work that were preparing trouble. The
Foreign Offices of the various  sovereign  states
had  not  forgotten the competitive traditions of
the eighteenth century. The admirals and generals
were   contemplating   with   something   between
hostility and fascination, the hunger weapons the
steel  industry  was  gently  pressing into their
hands. Germany did not share the self-complacency
of the English-speaking world; she wanted a place
in the sun; there was increasing  friction  about
the  partition  of  the  raw  material regions of
Africa;  the  British   suffered   from   chronic
Russophobia  with regard to their vast apportions
in the East, and set themselves  to  nurse  Japan
into  a  modernised  imperialist  power; and also
they "remembered Majuba"; the United States  were
irritated  by  the disorder of Cuba and felt that
the weak, extended Spanish possessions  would  be
all the better for a change of management. So the
game of Power Politics went on, but  it  went  on
upon  the  margins of the prevailing peace. There
were several wars and changes of boundaries,  but
they  involved  no fundamental disturbance of the
general civilised life;  they  did  not  seem  to
threaten    its    broadening   tolerations   and
understandings  in   any   fundamental   fashion.
Economic  stresses and social trouble stirred and
muttered  beneath   the   orderly   surfaces   of
political life, but threatened no convulsion. The
idea of altogether eliminating war,  of  clearing
what  was left of it away, was in the air, but it
was free from any sense  of  urgency.  The  Hague
Tribunal  was  established and there was a steady
dissemination of the conceptions  of  arbitration
and  international  law. It really seemed to many
that the peoples of the earth were settling  down
in  their  various  territories  to  a  litigious
rather than a belligerent  order.  If  there  was
much social injustice it was being mitigated more
and more by a quickening sense of social decency.
Acquisitiveness conducted itself with decorum and
public-spiritedness was in fashion.  Some  of  it
was quite honest public-spiritedness.

In those days, and they are hardly more than half
a lifetime behind us, no one thought of any  sort
of  world administration. That patchwork of great
Powers  and  small   Powers   seemed   the   most
reasonable  and practicable method of running the
business of mankind. Communications were far  too
difficult  for  any  sort  of  centralised  world
controls. Around the World in Eighty  Days,  when
it  was  published  seventy  years ago, seemed an
extravagant  fantasy.  It  was  a  world  without
telephone  or  radio, with nothing swifter than a
railway  train  or  more  destructive  than   the
earlier  types  of H.E. shell. They were marvels.
It was far more  convenient  to  administer  that
world   of  the  Balance  of  Power  in  separate
national areas and, since there were such limited
facilities  for peoples to get at one another and
do each other mischiefs, there seemed no harm  in
ardent  patriotism  and the complete independence
of separate sovereign states.

Economic   life   was   largely    directed    by
irresponsible   private  businesses  and  private
finance   which,   because   of   their   private
ownership, were able to spread out their unifying
transactions  in  a  network  that  paid   little
attention  to  frontiers  and national, racial or
religious  sentimentality.  "Business"  was  much
more  of  a world commonwealth than the political
organisations. There were many people, especially
in  America,  who  imagined that "Business" might
ultimately unify the world and  governments  sink
into subordination to its network.

Nowadays  we  can  be wise after the event and we
can see that below this fair surface  of  things,
disruptive   forces   were   steadily   gathering
strength. But these disruptive  forces  played  a
comparatively  small  rôle in the world spectacle
of half a century ago, when  the  ideas  of  that
older   generation   which  still  dominates  our
political life and the political education of its
successors,  were formed. It is from the conflict
of those Balance of Power and private  enterprise
ideas,  half  a century old, that one of the main
stresses of our time arises. These  ideas  worked
fairly  well in their period and it is still with
extreme reluctance  that  our  rulers,  teachers,
politicians,  face  the  necessity for a profound
mental adaptation of  their  views,  methods  and
interpretations  to  these disruptive forces that
once seemed  so  negligible  and  which  are  now
shattering their old order completely.

It  was  because  of  this  belief  in  a growing
good-will among nations, because of  the  general
satisfaction  with  things as they were, that the
German declarations of war in 1914 aroused such a
storm   of   indignation  throughout  the  entire
comfortable world. It was felt  that  the  German
Kaiser  had  broken the tranquillity of the world
club, wantonly and needlessly. The war was fought
"against  the  Hohenzollerns."  They  were  to be
expelled from the club,  certain  punitive  fines
were  to  be paid and all would be well. That was
the British idea of 1914.  This  out-of-date  war
business  was  then to be cleared up once for all
by a mutual guarantee by all the more respectable
members  of the club through a League of Nations.
There was no apprehension of any deeper operating
causes  in  that  great convulsion on the part of
the worthy elder statesmen who  made  the  peace.
And so Versailles and its codicils.

For  twenty years the disruptive forces have gone
on growing beneath the surface  of  that  genteel
and  shallow  settlement,  and twenty years there
has been no resolute attack upon the riddles with
which  their  growth  confronts  us. For all that
period of the League  of  Nations  has  been  the
opiate of liberal thought in the world.

To-day  there  is war to get rid of Adolf Hitler,
who has now taken the part of  the  Hohenzollerns
in  the drama. He too has outraged the Club Rules
and he too  is  to  be  expelled.  The  war,  the
Chamberlain-Hitler  War, is being waged so far by
the British Empire in quite the  old  spirit.  It
has  learnt  nothing and forgotten nothing. There
is  the  same  resolute  disregard  of  any  more
fundamental problem.

Still   the   minds   of   our   comfortable  and
influential ruling-class people refuse to  accept
the  plain  intimation  that  their time is over,
that  the  Balance  of  Power  and   uncontrolled
business   methods   cannot  continue,  and  that
Hitler,  like  the  Hohenzollerns,  is   a   mere
offensive  pustule on the face of a deeply ailing
world. To get rid of him and his Nazis will be no
more  a  cure  for the world’s ills than scraping
will heal  measles.  The  disease  will  manifest
itself  in some new eruption. It is the system of
nationalist  individualism   and   unco-ordinated
enterprise that is the world’s disease, and it is
the whole system that has to go.  It  has  to  be
reconditioned   down   to   its   foundations  or
replaced. It  cannot  hope  to  "muddle  through"
amiably,  wastefully  and  dangerously,  a second
time.

World peace means all that much revolution.  More
and  more  of  us begin to realise that it cannot
mean less.

The first thing, therefore that has to be done in
thinking  out the primary problems of world peace
is to realise this, that we are living in the end
of  a  definite  period of history, the period of
the sovereign states. As we used to  say  in  the
eighties  with  ever-increasing truth: "We are in
an age of transition". Now we get some measure of
the acuteness of the transition. It is a phase of
human life which may lead,  as  I  am  trying  to
show,  either  to  a  new  way  of living for our
species  or  else  to   a   longer   or   briefer
dégringolade  of  violence,  misery, destruction,
death and the extinction of  mankind.  These  are
not  rhetorical  phrases  I am using here; I mean
exactly what I say, the disastrous extinction  of
mankind.

That  is  the  issue  before  us.  It is no small
affair of parlour politics we have  to  consider.
As  I  write,  in the moment, thousands of people
are being  killed,  wounded,  hunted,  tormented,
ill-treated, delivered up to the most intolerable
and hopeless anxiety and  destroyed  morally  and
mentally,  and  there  is  nothing  in  sight  at
present to  arrest  this  spreading  process  and
prevent  its reaching you and yours. It is coming
for you and yours now at a great pace. Plainly in
so  far  as  we are rational foreseeing creatures
there is nothing for any of us now  but  to  make
this  world peace problem the ruling interest and
direction of our lives. If we run away from it it
will  pursue  and  get us. We have to face it. We
have to solve it or be destroyed by it. It is  as
urgent and comprehensive as that.

 02 OPEN CONFERENCE

BEFORE  WE  EXAMINE WHAT I have called so far the
"disruptive forces" in the current social  order,
let  me  underline  one primary necessity for the
most outspoken free discussion  of  the  battling
organisations   and  the  crumbling  institutions
amidst which we lead  our  present  uncomfortable
and precarious lives. There must be no protection
for  leaders  and  organisations  from  the  most
searching criticism, on the plea that out country
is or may be at war. Or on any pretence. We  must
talk  openly,  widely  and  plainly.  The  war is
incidental;   the    need    for    revolutionary
reconstruction  is  fundamental.  None  of us are
clear  as  yet  upon  some  of  the  most   vital
questions  before  us, we are not lucid enough in
our own minds to be  ambiguous,  and  a  mumbling
tactfulness  and  indirect  half-statements  made
with an eye upon some censor,  will  confuse  our
thoughts  and  the thoughts of those with whom we
desire    understanding,    to    the    complete
sterilisation  and defeat of every reconstructive
effort.

We want to talk and tell exactly what  our  ideas
and   feelings   are,  not  only  to  our  fellow
citizens, but to our  allies,  to  neutrals  and,
above  all,  to  the people who are marshalled in
arms  against  us.  We  want  to  get  the   same
sincerity from them. Because until we have worked
out a common basis of ideas with them, peace will
be  only  an  uncertain  equilibrium  while fresh
antagonisms develop.

Concurrently  with  this  war  we  need  a  great
debate.  We  want  every  possible  person in the
world  to  take  part  in  that  debate.  It   is
something  much  more  important  than the actual
warfare. It is intolerable to think of this storm
of  universal  distress leading up to nothing but
some "conference" of diplomatists  out  of  touch
with  the  world, with secret sessions, ambiguous
"understandings." . . . Not twice surely can that
occur.  And  yet  what  is  going  to prevent its
recurring?

It is quite easy to define the reasonable  limits
of  censorship  in  a  belligerent country. It is
manifest that the publication of any  information
likely  to  be  of  the slightest use to an enemy
must be drastically anticipated  and  suppressed;
not  only  direct  information,  for example, but
intimations  and  careless  betrayals  about  the
position  and  movements of ships, troops, camps,
depots of munitions,  food  supplies,  and  false
reports  of  defeats  and  victories  and  coming
shortages, anything that may lead to blind  panic
and  hysteria,  and  so  forth and so on. But the
matter takes on  a  different  aspect  altogether
when  it comes to statements and suggestions that
may affect public opinion in one’s own country or
abroad,  and  which may help us towards wholesome
and corrective political action.

One of the more unpleasant aspects of a state  of
war  under modern conditions is the appearance of
a swarm of individuals, too clever  by  half,  in
positions   of   authority.  Excited,  conceited,
prepared to lie,  distort  and  generally  humbug
people  into  states of acquiescence, resistance,
indignation,  vindictiveness,  doubt  and  mental
confusion,   states   of   mind  supposed  to  be
conductive to a  final  military  victory.  These
people  love  to twist and censor facts. It gives
them a feeling of power; if  they  cannot  create
they   can   at   least   prevent   and  conceal.
Particularly they poke themselves in  between  us
and the people with whom we are at war to distort
any possible  reconciliation.  They  sit,  filled
with  the  wine of their transitory powers, aloof
from  the  fatigues  and  dangers  of   conflict,
pulling imaginary strings in people’s minds.

In  Germany  popular  thought  is  supposed to be
under the control of Herr Dr Goebbels;  in  Great
Britain  we  writers  have  been invited to place
ourselves at the disposal  of  some  Ministry  of
Information,  that  is  to say at the disposal of
hitherto     obscure     and     unrepresentative
individuals,   and   write   under   its  advice.
Officials  from  the  British  Council  and   the
Conservative  Party  Headquarters  appear  in key
positions in this Ministry of  Information.  That
curious and little advertised organisation I have
just mentioned, the creation I am  told  of  Lord
Lloyd,  that  British  Council,  sends emissaries
abroad, writers,  well-dressed  women  and  other
cultural  personages,  to  lecture, charm and win
over    foreign    appreciation    for    British
characteristics,  for  British  scenery,  British
political virtues and so forth. Somehow  this  is
supposed  to  help  something  or other. Quietly,
unobtrusively, this  has  gone  on.  Maybe  these
sample  British  give unauthorised assurances but
probably they do little positive harm.  But  they
ought  not  to be employed at all. Any government
propaganda is contrary to the essential spirit of
democracy.   The   expression   of   opinion  and
collective thought should be outside the range of
government  activities  altogether.  It should be
the work of free individuals whose prominence  is
dependent  upon  the  response and support of the
general mind.

But here I have to make amends to Lord  Lloyd.  I
was  led  to believe that the British Council was
responsible for Mr. Teeling, the author of Crisis
for  Christianity, and I said as much in The Fate
of Homo Sapiens. I now unsay it. Mr.  Teeling,  I
gather,  was  sent  out  upon  his  journeys by a
Catholic  newspaper.  The  British  Council   was
entirely innocent of him.

It is not only that the Ministries of Information
and Propaganda do their level best to divert  the
limited  gifts  and  energies  of  such  writers,
lecturers and  talkers  as  we  possess,  to  the
production  of disingenuous muck that will muddle
the  public  mind  and  mislead   the   enquiring
foreigner,   but   that   they   show   a  marked
disposition to stifle any  free  and  independent
utterances  that  my  seem  to traverse their own
profound and secret plans for  the  salvation  of
mankind.

Everywhere  now  it is difficult to get adequate,
far-reaching publicity for  outspoken  discussion
of the way the world is going, and the political,
economic and social forces that carry  us  along.
This is not so much due to deliberate suppression
as to  the  general  disorder  into  which  human
affairs  are  dissolving.  There is indeed in the
Atlantic world hardly  a  sign  as  yet  of  that
direct  espionage  upon  opinion that obliterates
the mental life of  the  intelligent  Italian  or
German  or  Russian to-day almost completely; one
may still think what  one  likes,  say  what  one
likes  and write what one likes, but nevertheless
there is  already  an  increasing  difficulty  in
getting  bold,  unorthodox  views heard and read.
Newspapers are afraid upon  all  sorts  of  minor
counts,  publishers, with such valiant exceptions
as the publishers of this  matter,  are  morbidly
discreet; they get Notice D to avoid this or that
particular topic; there are obscure boycotts  and
trade  difficulties  hindering the wide diffusion
of general ideas in countless ways. I do not mean
there  is  any  sort  of  organised conspiracy to
suppress discussion, but I do say that the Press,
the  publishing  and bookselling organisations in
our free countries, provide a very  ill-organised
and  inadequate machinery for the ventilation and
distribution of thought.

Publishers publish for nothing but safe  profits;
it  would astound a bookseller to tell him he was
part of the world’s educational organisation or a
publisher’s  traveller,  that  he existed for any
other purpose than to  book  maximum  orders  for
best  sellers  and  earn  a  record  commission -
letting the other stuff, the highbrow  stuff  and
all  that,  go  hang. They do not understand that
they ought to put  public  service  before  gain.
They  have no inducement to do so and no pride in
their  function.  Theirs  is  the  morale  of   a
profiteering  world.  Newspapers  like  to insert
brave-looking    articles     of     conventional
liberalism,   speaking   highly   of   peace  and
displaying   a   noble   vagueness   about    its
attainment;  now  we are at war they will publish
the fiercest attacks upon  the  enemy  -  because
such attacks are supposed to keep up the fighting
spirit of the country; but  any  ideas  that  are
really loudly and clearly revolutionary they dare
not  circulate  at  all.  Under  these   baffling
conditions there is no thorough discussion of the
world outlook whatever, anywhere. The democracies
are only a shade better than the dictatorships in
this respect. It is ridiculous to represent  them
as realms of light at issue with darkness.

This  great debate upon the reconstruction of the
world is a thing more important and  urgent  than
the  war,  and  there exist no adequate media for
the utterance and criticism and correction of any
broad  general  convictions.  There  is a certain
fruitless   and   unproductive   spluttering   of
constructive  ideas, but there is little sense of
sustained   enquiry,   few   real   interchanges,
inadequate  progress, nothing is settled, nothing
is  dismissed  as  unsound  and  nothing  is  won
permanently.  No  one  seems  to hear what anyone
else is saying. That is because there is no sense
of an audience for these ideologists. There is no
effective audience saying rudely and obstinately:
"What  A.  has said, seems important. Will B. and
C., instead of bombinating in the void,  tell  us
exactly  where  and  why they differ from A.? And
now we have got to the common truth  of  A.,  B.,
C.,  and  D. Here is F. saying something. Will he
be so good as to correlate what  he  has  to  say
with A., B., C., and D.?"

But   there   is   no   such   background  of  an
intelligently  observant   and   critical   world
audience in evidence. There are a few people here
and there reading and  thinking  in  disconnected
fragments.  This is all the thinking our world is
doing in the  face  of  planetary  disaster.  The
universities,  bless  them!  are  in  uniform  or
silent.

We need to air  our  own  minds;  we  need  frank
exchanges,  if  we  are  to  achieve  any  common
understanding.  We  need  to  work  out  a  clear
conception  of the world order we would prefer to
this  present  chaos,  we  need  to  dissolve  or
compromise  upon  our  differences so that we may
set  our  faces   with   assurance   towards   an
attainable  world  peace.  The air is full of the
panaceas of  half-wits,  none  listening  to  the
others  and  most  of  them trying to silence the
others in their impatience.  Thousands  of  fools
are ready to write us a complete prescription for
our world troubles.  Will  people  never  realise
their  own  ignorance  and  incompleteness,  from
which  arise  this  absolute  necessity  for  the
plainest   statement  of  the  realities  of  the
problem, for the most  exhaustive  and  unsparing
examination  of  differences  of opinion, and for
the   most   ruthless   canvassing    of    every
possibility,  however  unpalatable it may seem at
first, of the situation?

Before anything else, therefore, in  this  survey
of  the way to world peace, I put free speech and
vigorous publication. It is the thing best  worth
fighting  for. It is the essence of your personal
honour. It is your duty as a world citizen to  do
what  you  can  for  that.  You  have not only to
resist suppressions, you have to fight  your  way
out  of  the  fog. If you find your bookseller or
newsagent  failing  to  distribute  any  type  of
publication  whatever - even if you are in entire
disagreement with the views of that publication -
you  should  turn  the weapon of the boycott upon
the  offender  and  find  another  bookseller  or
newsagent  for  everything you read. The would-be
world  citizen  should  subscribe  also  to  such
organisation  as  the  National Council for Civil
Liberties;  he  should  use  any  advantage   his
position  may  give  him  to check suppression of
free speech; and he should  accustom  himself  to
challenge  nonsense  politely  but firmly and say
fearlessly and as clearly as possible what is  in
his  mind and to listen as fearlessly to whatever
is said to him. So that he may know better either
through   reassurance   or   correction.  To  get
together with other people to argue and  discuss,
to  think and organise and then implement thought
is the first duty of every reasonable man.

This world of ours is going to pieces. It has  to
be  reconstructed  and it can only be effectively
reconstructed in the light. Only the free, clear,
open mind can save us, and these difficulties and
obstructions on our line of thought are  as  evil
as  children  putting obstacles on a railway line
or scattering nails on an automobile speed track.

This great world debate must go on, and  it  must
go on now. Now while the guns are still thudding,
is the time for thought. It is incredibly foolish
to  talk  as  so many people do of ending the war
and then having a World Conference to  inaugurate
a new age. So soon as the fighting stops the real
world conference, the live discussion, will stop,
too.  The diplomats and politicians will assemble
with an air of profound competence and close  the
doors   upon   the   outer  world  and  resume  -
Versailles. While the silenced  world  gapes  and
waits upon their mysteries.

 03 DISRUPTIVE FORCES

AND NOW LET US come to the disruptive forces that
have reduced that  late-nineteenth-century  dream
of  a  powerful  world patchwork of more and more
civilised states  linked  by  an  ever-increasing
financial   and   economic   interdependence,  to
complete incredibility, and so forced upon  every
intelligent  mind  the  need  to  work  out a new
conception of the World that ought to be.  It  is
supremely  important  that  the  nature  of these
disruptive forces should  be  clearly  understood
and  kept  in  mind. To grasp them is to hold the
clues to the world’s present troubles. To  forget
about  them,  even for a moment, is to lose touch
with essential reality and drift away into  minor
issues.

The  first  group  of these forces is what people
are accustomed to speak of as "the  abolition  of
distance"  and  "the  change  of  scale" in human
operations. This "abolition  of  distance"  began
rather  more  than a century ago, and its earlier
effects were  not  disruptive  at  all.  It  knit
together  the  spreading United States of America
over distances that might otherwise have strained
their  solidarity  to  the breaking-point, and it
enabled the sprawling British Empire  to  sustain
contacts round the whole planet.

The  disruptive  influence  of  the  abolition of
distance appeared only later.  Let  us  be  clear
upon  its essential significance. For what seemed
like endless  centuries  the  swiftest  means  of
locomotion  had  been the horse on the high-road,
the running man, the galley  and  the  uncertain,
weather-ruled   sailing   ship.  (There  was  the
Dutchman on skates on skates on his  canals,  but
that  was an exceptional culmination of speed and
not  for  general  application.)  The  political,
social  and imaginative life of man for all those
centuries   was   adapted   to   these   limiting
conditions.  They  determined  the  distances  to
which  marketable  goods  could  conveniently  be
sent,  the  limits  to which the ruler could send
his orders and his solders,  the  bounds  set  to
getting  news,  and  indeed  the  whole  scale of
living. There could be very little real community
feeling beyond the range of frequent intercourse.

Human  life  fell  naturally therefore into areas
determined  by  the   interplay   between   these
limitations  and  such  natural obstacles as seas
and mountains. Such countries as France, England,
Egypt,  Japan, appeared and reappeared in history
like natural, necessary things, and though  there
were  such  larger political efforts as the Roman
Empire, they never attained  an  enduring  unity.
The   Roman   Empire   held   together  like  wet
blotting-paper; it was always falling to  pieces.
The  older Empires, beyond their national nuclei,
were mere precarious tribute-levying powers. What
I  have already called the world patchwork of the
great and little Powers, was therefore, under the
old  horse-and-foot  and sailing-ship conditions,
almost as much a matter of natural  necessity  as
the sizes of trees and animals.

Within a century all this has been changed and we
have still to face up to what that  change  means
for us.

First   came   steam,   the   steam-railway,  the
steamship, and then  in  a  quickening  crescendo
came  the  internal combustion engine, electrical
traction, the motor  car,  the  motor  boat,  the
aeroplane, the transmission of power from central
power stations, the telephone, the radio. I  feel
apologetic  in  reciting this well-known story. I
do so in order to enforce the statement that  all
the  areas  that  were  the  most  convenient and
efficient  for  the  old,  time-honoured  way  of
living, became more and more inconveniently close
and narrow for the new  needs.  This  applied  to
every   sort   of   administrative   area,   from
municipalities and urban districts and the  range
of   distributing  businesses,  up  to  sovereign
states. They were - and for the  most  part  they
still  are  -  too small for the new requirements
and far too close together. All over  the  social
layout  this tightening-up and squeezing together
is an inconvenience, but when  it  comes  to  the
areas  of  sovereign states it becomes impossibly
dangerous. It becomes an intolerable thing; human
life  cannot  go on, with the capitals of most of
the civilised countries of the  world  within  an
hour’s  bombing  range of their frontiers, behind
which  attacks  can  be   prepared   and   secret
preparations  made  without  any form of control.
And yet  we  are  still  tolerant  and  loyal  to
arrangements  that seek to maintain this state of
affairs and treat it as though nothing else  were
possible.

The present war for and against Hitler and Stalin
and Mr. Chamberlain and so forth, does  not  even
touch upon the essential problem of the abolition
of distance. It may indeed destroy everything and
still  settle  nothing. If one could wipe out all
the issues of the  present  conflict,  we  should
still  be  confronted  with the essential riddle,
which is the abolition of the boundaries of  most
existing  sovereign  states  and  their merger in
some larger Pax.  We  have  to  do  that  if  any
supportable  human life is to go on. Treaties and
mutual guarantees are not enough. We have  surely
learnt  enough about the value of treaties during
the last half-century to realise that.  We  have,
because  of  the  abolition of distance alone, to
gather human affairs together  under  one  common
war-preventing control.

But  this  abolition of distance is only one most
vivid aspect of the change in the  conditions  of
human  life.  Interwoven  with  that is a general
change of scale in  human  operations.  The  past
hundred  years  has  been an age of invention and
discovery  beyond   the   achievements   of   the
preceding  three millennia. In a book I published
eight years ago, The Work, Wealth  and  Happiness
of  Mankind, I tried to summarise the conquest of
power and substances  that  is  still  going  on.
There  is  more  power  expended in a modern city
like Birmingham in a day than we need to keep the
whole  of  Elizabethan  England going for a year;
there is more destructive energy in a single tank
than  sufficed  the  army  of  William  I for the
conquest of England. Man is able now  to  produce
or  destroy  on a scale beyond comparison greater
than he could  before  this  storm  of  invention
began.  And  the  consequence  is  the  continual
further dislocation of the orderly social life of
our   great-great-grandfathers.   No   trade,  no
profession, is exempt. The  old  social  routines
and  classifications  have  been,  as people say,
"knocked silly". There is no sort of  occupation,
fisheries,  farming,  textile  work,  metal work,
mining  which  is  not  suffering  from  constant
readjustment  to  new methods and facilities. Our
traditions of  trade  and  distribution  flounder
after    these   changes.   Skilled   occupations
disappear in the general liquefaction.

The new power organisations  are  destroying  the
forests of the world at headlong speed, ploughing
great  grazing  areas  into  deserts,  exhausting
mineral  resources, killing off whales, seals and
a  multitude  of  rare  and  beautiful   species,
destroying  the  morale  of every social type and
devastating the planet. The institutions  of  the
private   appropriation   of   land  and  natural
resources generally, and  of  private  enterprise
for profit, which did produce a fairly tolerable,
stable and "civilised" social life  for  all  but
the  most  impoverished,  in  Europe, America and
East, for some centuries, have been expanded to a
monstrous     destructiveness    by    the    new
opportunities.     The     patient,     nibbling,
enterprising profit-seeker of the past, magnified
and equipped now with the huge  claws  and  teeth
the  change  of  scale  has provided for him, has
torn the old economic order to rags. Quite  apart
from   war,   our  planet  is  being  wasted  and
disorganised. Yet the process  goes  on,  without
any general control, more monstrously destructive
even than the  continually  enhanced  terrors  of
modern warfare.

Now  it  has  to  be  made  clear  that these two
things,   the   manifest   necessity   for   some
collective world control to eliminate warfare and
the  less  generally  admitted  necessity  for  a
collective control of the economic and biological
life of mankind, are aspects of one and the  same
process.  Of  the  two the disorganisation of the
ordinary life which is going on, war or  no  war,
is  the  graver  and least reversible. Both arise
out of the abolition of distance and  the  change
of  scale, they affect and modify each other, and
unless their parallelism and interdependence  are
recognised,  any projects for world federation or
anything of the sort  are  doomed  inevitably  to
frustration.

That  is  where  the League of nations broke down
completely. It was legal; it  was  political.  It
was   devised   by   an   ex-professor   of   the
old-fashioned   history   assisted   by   a   few
politicians.  It ignored the vast disorganisation
of  human  life  by  technical  revolutions,  big
business and modern finance that was going on, of
which the Great War itself was scarcely more than
a   by-product.  It  was  constituted  as  though
nothing of that sort was occurring.

This war storm which is breaking upon us now, due
to   the   continued   fragmentation   of   human
government among a patchwork of sovereign states,
is  only  one  aspect  of  the general need for a
rational  consolidation  of  human  affairs.  The
independent  sovereign  state  with its perpetual
war threat, armed with the  resources  of  modern
mechanical   frightfulness,   is  only  the  most
blatant and terrifying aspect of that  same  want
of   a   coherent   general  control  that  makes
overgrown,   independent,   sovereign,    private
business organisations and combinations, socially
destructive. We should still be at the  mercy  of
the  "Napoleons" of commerce and the "Attilas" of
finance, if there was not a gun or  a  battleship
or  a tank or a military uniform in the world. We
should still be sold up and dispossessed.

Political federation, we have to realise, without
a  concurrent economic collectivisation, is bound
to fail. The task of the peace-maker  who  really
desires peace in a new world, involves not merely
a political but  a  profound  social  revolution,
profounder  even than the revolution attempted by
the Communists in Russia. The Russian  Revolution
failed  not  by  its  extremism  but  through the
impatience,  violence  and  intolerance  of   its
onset, through lack of foresight and intellectual
insufficiency. The cosmopolitan revolution  to  a
world collectivism, which is the only alternative
to chaos and degeneration before mankind, has  to
go  much  further  than the Russian; it has to be
more  thorough  and  better  conceived  and   its
achievement  demands  a much more heroic and more
steadfast thrust.

It serves no useful purpose to shut our  eyes  to
the magnitude and intricacy of the task of making
the world peace. These are the basic  factors  of
the case.

 04 CLASS-WAR

NOW  HERE  IT  IS necessary to make a distinction
which   is   far    too    frequently    ignored.
Collectivisation means the handling of the common
affairs  of   mankind   by   a   common   control
responsible  to the whole community. It means the
suppression of  go-as-you-please  in  social  and
economic affairs just as much as in international
affairs.  It  means  the   frank   abolition   of
profit-seeking  and  of  every  devise  by  which
human+beings contrive to be  parasitic  on  their
fellow  man.  It  is the practical realisation of
the brotherhood of man through a common  control.
It means all that and it means no more than that.

The  necessary nature of that control, the way to
attain it and to maintain it  have  still  to  be
discussed.

The  early  forms  of  socialism were attempts to
think out and try out collectivist  systems.  But
with  the  advent  of Marxism, the larger idea of
collectivism became entangled with a smaller one,
the   perpetual   conflict   of   people  in  any
unregulated social system to get  the  better  of
one  another.  Throughout  the ages this has been
going on. The rich, the powerful  generally,  the
more  intelligent  and  acquisitive have got away
with things, and  sweated,  oppressed,  enslaved,
bought  and  frustrated the less intelligent, the
less acquisitive and the  unwary.  The  Haves  in
every  generation  have  always got the better of
the Have-nots,  and  the  Have-nots  have  always
resented the privations of their disadvantage.

So  it  is and so in the uncollectivised world it
has  always  been.  The   bitter   cry   of   the
expropriated   man  echoes  down  the  ages  from
ancient Egypt and the Hebrew prophets, denouncing
those  who  grind the faces of the poor. At times
the  Have-nots  have  been  so   uneducated,   so
helplessly    distributed    among   their   more
successful fellows that they have been  incapable
of   social   disturbance,   but   whenever  such
developments as plantation of factory labour, the
accumulation   of   men  in  seaport  towns,  the
disbanding  of  armies,  famine  and  so   forth,
brought  together  masses  of  men  at  the  same
disadvantage, their individual resentments flowed
together  and  became  a  common  resentment. The
miseries underlying human society were  revealed.
The Haves found themselves assailed by resentful,
vindictive revolt.

Let us note that these revolts of  the  Have-nots
throughout  the  ages  have  sometimes  been very
destructive, but that invariably they have failed
to  make  any fundamental change in this old, old
story of getting and not getting the upper  hand.
Sometimes   the   Have-nots  have  frightened  or
otherwise  moved  the  Haves   to   more   decent
behaviour.  Often  the  Have-nots  have  found  a
Champion who has ridden to power on their wrongs.
Then  the  ricks  were burnt or the châteaux. The
aristocrats  were  guillotined  and  their  heads
carried  on  exemplary  pikes. Such storms passed
and when they passed,  there  for  all  practical
purposes  was  the old order returning again; new
people  but  the  old   inequalities.   Returning
inevitably,   with   only  slight  variations  in
appearance and phraseology, under  the  condition
of a non-collective social order.

The  point  to  note  is  that  in  the unplanned
scramble of human life through the  centuries  of
the   horse-and-foot  period,  these  incessantly
recurring outbreaks of  the  losers  against  the
winners  have  never  once produced any permanent
amelioration  of  the  common  lot,  or   greatly
changed  the features of the human community. Not
once.

The   Have-nots   have   never    produced    the
intelligence  and  the ability and the Haves have
never  produced  the  conscience,   to   make   a
permanent  alteration  of  the rules of the game.
Slave revolts, peasant revolts,  revolts  of  the
proletariat  have always been fits of rage, acute
social fevers which have passed. The fact remains
that  history  produces  no  reason for supposing
that the Have-nots, considered as a  whole,  have
available   any   reserves   of   directive   and
administrative   capacity    and    disinterested
devotion, superior to that of the more successful
classes. Morally,  intellectually,  there  is  no
reason to suppose them better.

Many  potentially  able people may miss education
and  opportunity;  they  may  not  be  inherently
inferior  but  nevertheless they are crippled and
incapacitated and kept  down.  They  are  spoilt.
Many  specially  gifted  people may fail to "make
good" in  a  jostling,  competitive,  acquisitive
world  and  so  fall  into  poverty  and into the
baffled,  limited   ways   of   living   of   the
commonalty, but they too are exceptions. The idea
of  a  right-minded  Proletariat  ready  to  take
things over is a dream.

As the collectivist idea has developed out of the
original  propositions  of  socialism,  the  more
lucid  thinkers have put this age-long bitterness
of the Haves and the Have-nots  into  its  proper
place  as part, as the most distressing part, but
still only as part, of the vast wastage of  human
resources   that  their  disorderly  exploitation
entailed. In the light  of  current  events  they
have  come  to realise more and more clearly that
the need and possibility of arresting this  waste
by  a  world-wide  collectivisation  is  becoming
continually more possible and at  the  same  time
imperative.  They have had no delusions about the
education and liberation  that  is  necessary  to
gain that end. They have been moved less by moral
impulses  and  sentimental  pity  and  so  forth,
admirable  but  futile motives, as by the intense
intellectual irritation of living  in  a  foolish
and  destructive system. They are revolutionaries
not because the present way of living is  a  hard
and  tyrannous  way  of living, but because it is
from top to bottom exasperatingly stupid.

But  thrusting  athwart  the  socialist  movement
towards  collectivisation  and  its  research for
some  competent  directive  organisation  of  the
world’s  affairs,  came  the clumsy initiative of
Marxism with its class-war dogma, which has  done
more  to  misdirect and sterilise human good-will
than any other misconception of reality that  has
ever stultified human effort.

Marx  saw  the world from a study and through the
hazes of a vast ambition. He swam in the  current
ideologies  of  his  time  and  so  he shared the
prevalent      socialist      drive       towards
collectivisation.  But  while  his sounder-minded
contemporaries were studying means  and  ends  he
jumped from a very imperfect understanding of the
Trades Union movement in Britain to  the  wildest
generalisations  about  the  social  process.  He
invented and antagonised two  phantoms.  One  was
the Capitalist System; the other the Worker.

There never has been anything on earth that could
be properly called a Capitalist System. What  was
the  matter  with  his  world  was manifestly its
entire want of system. What the  Socialists  were
feeling  their  way towards was the discovery and
establishment of a world system.

The Haves of our period were and are a  fantastic
miscellany of people, inheriting or getting their
power and influence by the most  various  of  the
interbreeding  social solidarity even of a feudal
aristocracy or an Indian caste. But Marx, looking
rather  into  his inner consciousness than at any
concrete reality, evolved that  monster  "System"
on  his Right. Then over against it, still gazing
into that vacuum, he discovered on the  Left  the
proletarians   being  steadily  expropriated  and
becoming  class-conscious.  They  were  just   as
endlessly various in reality as the people at the
top of the scramble; in reality but  not  in  the
mind   of   the   Communist   seer.   There  they
consolidated rapidly.

So  while  other  men  toiled  at  this  gigantic
problem   of  collectivisation,  Marx  found  his
almost childlishy simple recipe. All you  had  to
do  was  to tell the workers that they were being
robbed and enslaved by  this  wicked  "Capitalist
System"  devised  by the "bourgeoisie". They need
only "unite"; they had "nothing to lose but their
chains".  The  wicked Capitalist System was to be
overthrown, with a certain vindictive liquidation
of "capitalists" in general and the "bourgeoisie"
in particular, and a millennium would ensue under
a  purely  workers’ control, which Lenin later on
was   to   crystallise   into   a    phrase    of
supra-theological  mystery,  "the dictatorship of
the proletariat".  The  proletarians  need  learn
nothing,  plan  nothing; they were right and good
by nature;  they  would  just  "take  over".  The
infinitely    various    envies,    hatreds   and
resentments of the Have-nots were to fuse into  a
mighty  creative  drive.  All  virtue  resided in
them; all evil in those who  had  bettered  them.
One  good thing there was in this new doctrine of
the  class  war,  it  inculcated  a  much  needed
brotherliness  among  the  workers,  but  it  was
balanced by the organisation of  class  hate.  So
the great propaganda of the class war, with these
monstrous falsifications of manifest  fact,  went
forth.  Collectivisation  would  not  so  much be
organised as appear magically when the incubus of
Capitalism  and all those irritatingly well-to-do
people, were lifted  off  the  great  Proletarian
soul.

Marx  was  a  man  incapable in money matters and
much bothered by tradesmen’s bills.  Moreover  he
cherished  absurd pretensions to aristocracy. The
consequence was that he romanced about the lovely
life  of  the  Middle  Ages as if he were another
Belloc and  concentrated  his  animus  about  the
"bourgeoisie",  whom  he made responsible for all
those great disruptive forces  in  human  society
that  we have considered. Lord Bacon, the Marquis
of Worcester, Charles the Second  and  the  Royal
Society, people like Cavendish and Joule and Watt
for example,  all  became  "bourgeoisie"  in  his
inflamed imagination. "During its reign of scarce
a century", he wrote in the Communist  Manifesto,
"the  bourgeoisie has created more powerful, more
stupendous  forces   of   production   than   all
preceding  generations  rolled  into  one . . . .
What earlier generations had the remotest inkling
that  such productive forces slumbered within the
wombs of associated labour?"

"The wombs of associated labour!" (Golly, what  a
phrase!)  The  industrial  revolution which was a
consequence  of  the  mechanical  revolution   is
treated  as  the  cause  of  it.  Could  facts be
muddled more completely?

And again: " . . . the  bourgeois  system  is  no
longer  able to cope with the abundance of wealth
it creates. How  does  the  bourgeoisie  overcome
these  crises? On the one hand, by the compulsory
annihilation of  a  quantity  of  the  productive
forces;  on  the  other,  by  the conquest of new
markets and the more thorough exploitation of old
ones. With what results? The results are that the
way  is  paved  for  more  widespread  and   more
disastrous  crises  and  that  the  capacity  for
averting such crises is lessened.

"The  weapons"  (Weapons!  How   that   sedentary
gentleman  in  his  vast  beard  adored  military
images!) "with which  the  bourgeoisie  overthrew
feudalism   are  now  being  turned  against  the
bourgeoisie itself.

"But the bourgeoisie  has  not  only  forged  the
weapons that will slay it; it has also engendered
the men who will use these weapons -  the  modern
workers, the proletarians."

And  so here they are, hammer and sickle in hand,
chest stuck out, proud, magnificent,  commanding,
in  the  Manifesto.  But  go  and  look  for them
yourself in the streets. Go and look at  them  in
Russia.

Even  for  1848  this  is  not intelligent social
analysis. It is the outpouring of a man with a  B
in  his bonnet, the hated Bourgeoisie, a man with
a  certain  vision,   uncritical   of   his   own
sub-conscious  prejudices,  but  shrewd enough to
realise how great a driving force is hate and the
inferiority  complex.  Shrewd  enough to use hate
and bitter enough to hate. Let anyone  read  over
that  Communist  Manifesto and consider who might
have shared the hate or even have got it all,  if
Marx  had  not been the son of a rabbi. Read Jews
for Bourgeoisie and the Manifesto  is  pure  Nazi
teaching of the 1933-8 vintage.

Stripped  down  to  its core in this fashion, the
primary falsity  of  the  Marxist  assumption  is
evident.  But  it  is  one  of  the  queer common
weakness of the human mind to  be  uncritical  of
primary assumptions and to smother up any enquiry
into their soundness in secondary elaboration, in
technicalities  and conventional formulæ. Most of
our  systems   of   belief   rest   upon   rotten
foundations,  and generally these foundations are
made sacred to preserve them  from  attack.  They
become  dogmas in a sort of holy of holies. It is
shockingly uncivil to say "But that is nonsense".
The  defenders  of all the dogmatic religions fly
into rage and indignation when one touches on the
absurdity of their foundations. Especially if one
laughs. That is blasphemy.

This avoidance of fundamental criticism is one of
the   greatest   dangers  to  any  general  human
understanding. Marxism is  no  exception  to  the
universal  tendency. The Capitalist System has to
be a real system, the  Bourgeoisie  an  organised
conspiracy  against  the Workers, and every human
conflict everywhere has to be an  aspect  of  the
Class  War, or they cannot talk to you. They will
not listen to you. Never once has there  been  an
attempt  to  answer  the plain things I have been
saying about them  for  a  third  of  a  century.
Anything  not  in  their language flows off their
minds like water off a duck’s back. Even Lenin  -
by far the subtlest mind in the Communist story -
has not escaped this pitfall, and when  I  talked
to  him  in Moscow in 1920 he seemed quite unable
to realise that the violent conflict going on  in
Ireland between the Catholic nationalists and the
Protestant   garrison   was   not   his    sacred
insurrection of the Proletariat in full blast.

To-day  there  is  quite a number of writers, and
among them there are men of science who ought  to
think     better,    solemnly    elaborating    a
pseudo-philosophy of science and society upon the
deeply    buried    but    entirely   nonsensical
foundations laid by  Marx.  Month  by  month  the
industrious  Left  book  Club  pours a new volume
over the minds of its devotees to  sustain  their
mental  habits and pickle them against the septic
influence of unorthodox literature. A party Index
of   Forbidden   Books   will  no  doubt  follow.
Distinguished professors with solemn  delight  in
their   own  remarkable  ingenuity,  lecture  and
discourse  and   even   produce   serious-looking
volumes,  upon the superiority of Marxist physics
and Marxist research, to the unbranded activities
of  the  human  mind. One tries not to be rude to
them, but it is hard  to  believe  they  are  not
deliberately  playing the fool with their brains.
Or  have  they  a  feeling   that   revolutionary
communism is ahead, and are they doing their best
to rationalise it with an eye to those  red  days
to come? (See Hogben’s Dangerous Thoughts.)

Here  I  cannot pursue in any detail the story of
the Rise and Corruption of Marxism in Russia.  It
confirms  in  every particular my contention that
the  class-war  idea  is  an   entanglement   and
perversion  of  the  world  drive towards a world
collectivism, a wasting disease  of  cosmopolitan
socialism. It has followed in its general outline
the  common  history  of  every  revolt  of   the
Have-nots  since  history  began.  Russia  in the
shadows displayed  an  immense  inefficiency  and
sank  slowly to Russia in the dark. Its galaxy of
incompetent foremen, managers, organisers and  so
forth,  developed  the most complicated system of
self-protection against criticism, they sabotaged
one  another, they intrigued against one another.
You can read the quintessence  of  the  thing  in
Littlepage’s  In  Search of Soviet Gold. And like
every other Have-not revolt  since  the  dawn  of
history,  hero  worship  took  possession  of the
insurgent   masses.   The   inevitable   Champion
appeared. They escape from the Czar and in twenty
years they are worshipping Stalin,  originally  a
fairly      honest,     unoriginal,     ambitious
revolutionary, driven to  self-defensive  cruelty
and   inflated   by   flattery   to  his  present
quasi-divine  autocracy.  The   cycle   completes
itself  and  we  see that like every other merely
insurrectionary revolution, nothing has  changed;
a lot of people have been liquidated and a lot of
other people have replaced them and Russia  seems
returning  back to the point at which it started,
to a patriotic absolutism of doubtful  efficiency
and  vague, incalculable aims. Stalin, I believe,
is  honest  and  benevolent  in   intention,   he
believes  in  collectivism simply and plainly, he
is still under the impression that he is making a
good  thing of Russia and of the countries within
her   sphere   of   influence,    and    he    is
self-righteously   impatient   of   criticism  or
opposition. His successor may not have  the  same
disinterestedness.

But I have written enough to make it clear why we
have to  dissociate  collectivisation  altogether
from  the class war in our minds. Let us waste no
more time on the spectacle of the Marxist putting
the  cart in front of the horse and tying himself
up with the harness. We  have  to  put  all  this
proletarian  distortion  of  the  case out of our
minds and start afresh upon the problem of how to
realise  the  new and unprecedented possibilities
of world collectivisation that  have  opened  out
upon the world in the past hundred years. That is
a new story. An entirely different story.

We human+beings are facing gigantic  forces  that
will  either  destroy  our  species altogether or
lift it to an altogether unprecedented  level  of
power  and  well-being.  These  forces have to be
controlled  or  we  shall  be  annihilated.   But
completely  controlled they can abolish slavery -
by the one sure  means  of  making  these  things
unnecessary.    Class-war   communism   has   its
opportunity to  realise  all  this,  and  it  has
failed  to make good. So far it has only replaced
one autocratic Russia by  another.  Russia,  like
all  the  rest  of the world, is still facing the
problem  of  the  competent   government   of   a
collective system. She has not solved it.

The  dictatorship  of  the proletariat has failed
us. We have to look for possibilities of  control
in other directions. Are they to be found?


NOTE

A  friendly  adviser  reading the passage on p.47
protests against "the wombs of associated labour"
as a mistranslation of the original German of the
Manifesto. I took  it  from  the  translation  of
Professor  Hirendranath  Mukherjee  in  an Indian
students’ journal, Sriharsha, which  happened  to
be  at  my  desk. But my adviser produces Lily G.
Aitken and Frank C. Budgen in a Glasgow Socialist
Labour Press publication, who gave it as "the lap
of social labour", which is more refined but pure
nonsense. The German word is "schoss", and in its
widest  sense  it  means  the  whole   productive
maternal  outfit  from  bosom  to  knees and here
quite definitely the womb. The French translation
gives  "sein", which at the first glance seems to
carry gentility to an even higher level.  But  as
you  can  say  in French that an expectant mother
carries  her  child  in  her  "sein",   I   think
Professor Mukherjee has it. Thousands of reverent
young  Communists  must  have  read  that   "lap"
without  observing  its absurdity. Marx is trying
to make  out  that  the  increase  of  productive
efficiency was due to "association" in factories.
A better phrase  to  express  his  (wrong-headed)
intention   would  have  been  "the  co-ordinated
operations of workers massed in factories".

 05 UNSALTED YOUTH

WE HAVE NOW TO examine these disruptive forces  a
little  more  closely,  these  disruptive  forces
which are manifestly overstraining and destroying
the  social and political system in which most of
us have been reared. At what particular points in
our   political   and   social   life  are  these
disruptive forces discovering breaking-points?

Chief among  these  breaking-points,  people  are
beginning  to  realise  more and more clearly, is
the common, half-educated young man.

One particular consequence of the onrush of power
and  invention  in  our time, is the release of a
great flood  of  human  energy  in  the  form  of
unemployed young people. This is a primary factor
of the general political instability.

We  have  to  recognise  that  humanity  is   not
suffering,  as  most  animal  species  when  they
suffer to do, from hunger or want in any material
form.  It  is threatened not by deficiency but by
excess. It is plethoric. It is not lying down  to
die  through  physical exhaustion; it is knocking
itself to pieces.

Measured   by   any   standards   except    human
contentment   and   ultimate   security,  mankind
appears to be much wealthier now  than  in  1918.
The  qualities  of power and material immediately
available  are  much  greater.  What  is   called
productivity  in general is greater. But there is
sound reason for supposing that a large  part  of
this  increased  productivity is really a swifter
and more thorough exploitation  of  irreplaceable
capital.  It  is  a  process  that  cannot  go on
indefinitely. It rises to a maximum and then  the
feast   is  over.  Natural  resources  are  being
exhausted at a  great  rate,  and  the  increased
output  goes  into war munitions whose purpose is
destruction,  and  into  sterile  indulgences  no
better  than waste. Man, "heir of the ages", is a
demoralised spendthrift, in a state of  galloping
consumption, living on stimulants.

When  we  look into the statistics of population,
there is irrefutable proof that everywhere we are
passing a maximum (see for this Enid Charles’ The
Twilight of  Parenthood,  or  R.  R.  Kuczynski’s
Measurement  of  Population  Growth)  and  that a
rapid decline is  certain  not  only  in  Western
Europe  bur  throughout the world. There is sound
reason for doubting the alleged vast increase  of
the  Russian  people  (see  Souvarine’s  Stalin).
Nevertheless,   because   of   the    continually
increasing  efficiency of productive methods, the
relative pressure of this  new  unemployed  class
increases.  The "mob" of the twentieth century is
quite different from the almost animal  "mob"  of
the  eighteenth  century. It is a restless sea of
dissatisfied young people, of young men  who  can
find  no  outlet  for their natural urgencies and
ambitions, young  people  quite  ready  to  "make
trouble" as soon as they are shown how.

In  the  technically  crude  past, the illiterate
Have-nots were sweated  and  overworked.  It  was
easy  to  find  toil  to keep them all busy. Such
surplus multitudes are wanted no more. Toil is no
longer  marketable.  Machines can toil better and
with less resistance.

These  frustrated  multitudes  have   been   made
acutely  aware  of their own frustration. The gap
of their always  partly  artificial  disadvantage
has  been greatly diminished because now they all
read. Even for incidental employment it has  been
necessary to teach them that, and the new reading
public  thus  created  has  evoked  a  press  and
literature  of  excitement  and  suggestion.  The
cinema and the radio dazzle them with  spectacles
of  luxury  and unrestricted living. They are not
the helpless  Hodges  and  factory  fodder  of  a
hundred  years  ago. They are educated up to what
must have been the middle-class  level  in  1889.
They  are  indeed  largely  a squeezed-out middle
class, restless, impatient and as  we  shall  see
extremely dangerous. They have assimilated almost
all  of  the  lower  strata  that  were  formerly
illiterate drudges.

And  this  modernised  excess  population  has no
longer any social humility. It has no  belief  in
the infallible wisdom of its rulers. It sees them
too clearly; it knows about  them,  their  waste,
vices  and  weaknesses,  with an even exaggerated
vividness. It sees no reason  for  its  exclusion
from  the  good things of life by such people. It
has lost enough of  its  inferiority  to  realise
that  most  of  that inferiority is arbitrary and
artificial.

You may say that this is  a  temporary  state  of
affairs,   that   the  fall  in  population  will
presently relieve the situation, by  getting  rid
of  this surplus of the "not wanted". But it will
do nothing of  the  sort.  As  population  falls,
consumption  will  fall. Industries will still be
producing  more  and  more  efficiently   for   a
shrinking market and they will be employing fewer
and fewer hands. A state of five  million  people
with  half  a  million  of useless hands, will be
twice as  unstable  as  forty  million  with  two
million  standing  off.  So  long  as the present
state  of  affairs  continues,  this  stratum  of
perplexed  young people "out of it" will increase
relatively to the total community.

It is still not realised as clearly as it  should
be, how much the troubles of the present time are
due to this new aspect of the social puzzle.  But
if  you  will  scrutinise  the events of the past
half century in the light of this idea, you  will
see  more and more convincingly that it is mainly
through this growing mass of  unfulfilled  desire
that the disruptive forces manifest themselves.

The  eager  and  adventurous unemployed young are
indeed the shock troops in the destruction of the
old  social  order everywhere. They find guidance
in  some  confident  Party   or   some   inspired
Champion, who organises them for revolutionary or
counter-revolutionary ends. It  scarcely  matters
which.  They  become  Communists  or  they become
Fascists, Nazis, the Irish  Republican  Army,  Ku
Klux Klansmen and so forth and so on. The essence
is the combination  of  energy,  frustration  and
discontent.  What  all  such  movements  have  in
common, is a genuine indignation  at  the  social
institutions   that   have   begotten   and  then
cold-shouldered    them,     a     quasi-military
organisation  and  the resolve to seize power for
themselves embodied in their leaders. A wise  and
powerful  government would at any cost anticipate
and  avert  these   destructive   activities   by
providing  various and interesting new employment
and the  necessary  condition  for  a  satisfying
successful  life for everyone. These young people
are life. The rise of the successful leader  only
puts  off the trouble for a time. He seizes power
in the name of his movement. And then?  When  the
seizure  of  power  has  been  effected, he finds
himself obliged to keep things going,  to  create
justification   for   his   leadership,  exciting
enterprises, urgencies.

A  leader  of  vision  with  adequate   technical
assistance  might  conceivedly direct much of the
human  energy  he  has  embodied  into   creative
channels. For example he could rebuild the dirty,
inadequate cities of  our  age,  turn  the  still
slovenly   country-side   into   a   garden   and
play-ground, re-clothe,  liberate  and  stimulate
imaginations,   until   the   ideas  of  creative
progress became a habit of  mind.  But  in  doing
this he will find himself confronted by those who
are   sustained   by   the    pre-emptions    and
appropriations of the old order. These relatively
well-off people will bargain with him up  to  the
last  moment  for  their  money  and  impede  his
seizure and  utilisation  of  land  and  material
resources,  and  will  be further hampered by the
fact that in organising his young people  he  has
had  to  turn  their  minds  and  capacities from
creative work to systematic violence and militant
activities.  It  is  easy  to  make an unemployed
young man into a Fascist or gangster, but  it  is
hard  to turn him back to any decent social task.
Moreover  the  Champion’s  own   leadership   was
largely due to his conspiratorial and adventurous
quality. He is himself unfit for a creative  job.
He  finds  himself  a  fighter  at  the head of a
fighting pack.

And furthermore, unless his  country  is  on  the
scale  of  Russia and the United States, whatever
he attempts in order to make good his promises of
an  abundant life, has to be done in face of that
mutual pressure of the sovereign  states  due  to
the  abolition  of  distance  and change of scale
which we  have  already  considered.  He  has  no
elbow-room  in which to operate. The resultant of
these convergent difficulties is to turn him  and
his  fighting  pack  releasing  flux of predatory
war.

Everywhere in  the  world,  under  varying  local
circumstances,   we   see  governments  primarily
concerned with this supreme problem of what to do
with  these  young  adults  who  are unemployable
under present conditions. We have to realise that
and  bear  it  constantly in mind. It is there in
every country.  It  is  the  most  dangerous  and
wrong-headed  view  of  the  world  situation, to
treat the  totalitarian  countries  as  differing
fundamentally from the rest of the world.

The problem of reabsorbing the unemployable adult
is the essential problem in all states. It is the
common  shape  to  which  all  current  political
dramas reduce. How are we to use up or slake this
surplus  of  human energy? The young are the live
core of our species. The generation below sixteen
or  seventeen  has not yet begun to give trouble,
and after forty, the ebb of vitality disposes men
to accept the lot that has fallen to them.

Franklin  Roosevelt and Stalin find themselves in
control of vast countries under-developed  or  so
misdeveloped  that  their  main  energies go into
internal organisation or reorganisation. They  do
not  press  against their frontiers therefore and
they do not  threaten  war.  The  recent  Russian
annexations  have  been  precautionary-defensive.
But all the same both Russia and America have  to
cater  for  that troublesome social stratum quite
as much as Europe. The New  Deal  is  plainly  an
attempt  to achieve a working socialism and avert
a   social   collapse   in   America;    it    is
extraordinarily   parallel   to   the  successive
"policies" and "Plans" of the Russian experiment.
Americans  shirk  the  word "socialism", but what
else can one call it?

The British oligarchy, demoralised and slack with
the accumulated wealth of a century of advantage,
bought off social upheaval  for  a  time  by  the
deliberate  and socially demoralising appeasement
of the dole. It has made no  adequate  effort  to
employ  or  educate  these surplus people; it has
just pushed the dole at them. It  even  tries  to
buy  off  the  leader  of the Labour Party with a
salary of £2000 a year. Whatever we may think  of
the  quality  and  deeds  of  the Nazi or Fascist
regimes or the follies of their leaders, we  must
at  any  rate  concede that they attempt, however
clumsily, to reconstruct life in  a  collectivist
direction.   They   are  efforts  to  adjust  and
construct and so far they are in advance  of  the
British  ruling  class.  The  British  Empire has
shown  itself  the  least  constructive  of   all
governing  networks. It produces no New Deals, no
Five Year Plans; it keeps on trying to stave  off
its  inevitable dissolution and carry on upon the
old lines - and apparently it will do that  until
it has nothing more to give away.

"Peace  in  our  time",  that foolishly premature
self-congratulation   of   Mr   Chamberlain,   is
manifestly  the  guiding principle of the British
elder statesman. It is that natural desire we all
begin to feel after sixty to sit down comfortably
somewhere. Unprogressive tranquillity  they  want
at  any  price, even at the price of a preventive
war. This astonishing bunch of rulers  has  never
revealed  any  conception  whatever  of  a common
future before its sprawling Empire. There  was  a
time when that Empire seemed likely to become the
nexus of a world system, but  now  manifestly  it
has  no future but disintegration. Apparently its
rulers expected it to go on just as  it  was  for
ever. Bit by bit its component parts have dropped
away   and   become   quasi-independent   powers,
generally  after an unedifying struggle; Southern
Ireland for example is  neutral  in  the  present
war, South Africa hesitated.

Now,  and that is why this book is being written,
these people, by a string  of  almost  incredible
blunders,  have  entangled  what is left of their
Empire in a great war to "end Hitler",  and  they
have  absolutely  no  suggestion  to  offer their
antagonists and the world at large, of what is to
come   after  Hitler.  Apparently  they  hope  to
paralyse  Germany  in  some  as  yet  unspecified
fashion  and  then to go back to their golf links
or the fishing stream and doze by the fire  after
dinner. That is surely one of the most astounding
things in history, the possibility of  death  and
destruction   beyond   all   reckoning   and  our
combatant governments have no idea of what is  to
follow   when   the   overthrow   of   Hitler  is
accomplished. They seem to  be  as  void  of  any
sense  of  the future, as completely empty-headed
about the aftermath of their campaigns, as one of
those  American  Tories who are "just out against
F.D.R. Damn him!"

So the British Empire  remains,  paying  its  way
down  to  ultimate  bankruptcy,  buying  itself a
respite  from  the  perplexing  problems  of  the
future,  with the accumulated wealth and power of
its  past.  It  is  rapidly  becoming  the   most
backward political organisation in the world. But
sooner or later it will have no  more  money  for
the  dole  and  no  more  allies  to  abandon nor
dominions to yield up to their local bosses,  and
then possibly its disintegration will be complete
(R.I.P.), leaving intelligent English  people  to
line  up at last with America and the rest of the
intelligent world and face the universal problem.
Which  is: how are we to adapt ourselves to these
mighty  disruptive  forces  that  are  shattering
human society as it is at present constituted?

In  the  compressed  countries  which have little
internal  scope  and  lack   the   vast   natural
resources    of    the   Russian   and   Atlantic
communities,  the  internal  tension  makes  more
directly   for   aggressive   warfare,   but  the
fundamental    driving-force     behind     their
aggressiveness  is  still  the universal trouble,
that surplus of young men.

Seen in this  broader  vision,  the  present  war
falls  into  its  true  proportions  as  a stupid
conflict upon secondary issues, which is delaying
and  preventing an overdue world adjustment. That
is may kill hundreds of thousands of people  does
not  alter  that.  An  idiot  with a revolver can
murder a family. He remains an idiot.

From 1914 to 1939 has been a quarter of a century
of  folly,  meanness, evasion and resentment, and
only a very tedious and copious  historian  would
attempt  to  distribute the blame among those who
had played a part in the story. And when  he  had
done it, what he had done would not matter in the
least. An almost overwhelmingly difficult problem
has  confronted  us  all,  and in some measure we
have all of us lost our heads in the face of  it,
lost our dignity, been too clever by half, pinned
ourselves to cheap solutions, quarrelled stupidly
among ourselves. "We have erred and strayed . . .
. We have lest undone those things that we  ought
to  have done and we have done those things which
we ought not to have done and there is no  health
in us."

I do not see any way to a solution of the problem
of World Peace unless we begin with a  confession
of universal wrong-thinking and wrong-doing. Then
we can sit down to the  question  of  a  solution
with  some  reasonable  prospect  of  finding  an
answer.

Now let us assume  that  "we"  are  a  number  of
intelligent   men,   German,   French,   English,
American, Italian, Chinese and so forth, who have
decided in consequence of the war and in spite of
the war, while the war is still going on, to wipe
out  all these squabbling bygones from our minds,
and  discuss  plainly  and  simply  the   present
situation of mankind. What is to be done with the
world? Let  us  recapitulate  the  considerations
that  so  far  have  been  brought  in,  and what
prospects they open,  if  any,  of  some  hopeful
concerted    action,   action   that   would   so
revolutionise the human outlook as to end war and
that  hectic  recurrent  waste  of human life and
happiness, for ever.

Firstly then  it  has  been  made  apparent  that
humanity  is  at  the  end  of  an age, an age of
fragmentation in the management of  its  affairs,
fragmentation    politically    among    separate
sovereign   states   and    economically    among
unrestricted  business of organisations competing
for  profit.  The  abolition  of  distance,   the
enormous increase of available power, root causes
of all our troubles, have suddenly made what  was
once  a  tolerable working system - a system that
was  perhaps  with  all  its   inequalities   and
injustices the only practicable working system in
its time - enormously dangerous and wasteful,  so
that  it  threatens  to  exhaust  and destroy our
world altogether. Man is like a feckless heir who
has  suddenly been able to get at his capital and
spend it as though it were income. We are  living
in   a   phase   of   violent   and   irreparable
expenditure. There  is  an  intensified  scramble
among  nations  and among individuals to acquire,
monopolise and spend. The dispossessed young find
themselves   hopeless   unless   they  resort  to
violence.  They  implement  the   ever-increasing
instability.       Only      a      comprehensive
collectivisation of human affairs can arrest this
disorderly  self-destruction of mankind. All this
has been made plain in what has gone before.

This   essential   problem,   the   problem    of
collectivisation,   can   be   viewed   from  two
reciprocal points  of  view  and  stated  in  two
different  ways.  We can ask, "What is to be done
to end the world chaos?" and  also  "How  can  we
offer  the  common  young  man  a  reasonable and
stimulating prospect of a full life?"

These two questions are the obverse  and  reverse
of  one  question.  What  answers one answers the
other. The answer to both  is  that  we  have  to
collectivise   the   world  as  one  system  with
practically   everyone   playing   a   reasonably
satisfying   part  in  it.  For  sound  practical
reasons,  over   and   above   any   ethical   or
sentimental  considerations,  we have to devise a
collectivisation  that   neither   degrades   nor
enslaves.

Our  imaginary  world conference then has to turn
itself to the question of how to collectivise the
world,  so  that it will remain collectivised and
yet enterprising, interesting and happy enough to
content  that common young man who will otherwise
reappear,  baffled  and  sullen,  at  the  street
corners  and  throw  it  into confusion again. To
that problem the rest of this book  will  address
itself.

As  a  matter  of fact it is very obvious that at
the present time a sort  of  collectivisation  is
being   imposed  very  rapidly  upon  the  world.
Everyone is being enrolled,  ordered  about,  put
under  control  somewhere - even if it is only in
an evacuation or concentration camp or what  not.
This       process      of      collectivisation,
collectivisation of some sort, seems now to be in
the  nature  of  things and there is no reason to
suppose it is  reversible.  Some  people  imagine
world   peace   as   the  end  of  that  process.
Collectivisation is going to be  defeated  and  a
vaguely  conceived  reign of law will restore and
sustain property, Christianity, individualism and
everything  to  which  the respectable prosperous
are accustomed. This  is  implicit  even  on  the
title  of  such a book as Edward Mousley’s Man or
Leviathan? It is much more  reasonable  to  think
that   world   peace  has  to  be  the  necessary
completion  of  that  process,   and   that   the
alternative  is  a  decadent  anarchy. If so, the
phrase for the aims of liberal thought should  be
no Man or Leviathan but Man masters Leviathan.

On    this    point,    the    inevitability   of
collectivisation  as  the  sole  alternative   to
universal  brigandage  and  social  collapse, our
world  conference  must  make  itself   perfectly
clear.

Then  it  has  to  turn  itself  to the much more
difficult and complicated question of how.

  06  SOCIALISM
UNAVOIDABLE

LET US, EVEN AT the cost of a certain repetition,
look a little more closely now into  the  fashion
in  which  the  disruptive forces are manifesting
themselves   in   the   Western    and    Eastern
hemispheres.

In  the  Old  World  the hypertrophy of armies is
most  conspicuous,  in   America   it   was   the
hypertrophy  of  big  business.  But  in both the
necessity for an increasing collective  restraint
upon   uncoordinated  over-powerful  business  or
political enterprise is  more  and  more  clearly
recognised.

There is a strong opposition on the part of great
interests in America to the  President,  who  has
made himself the spear-head of the collectivising
drive; they want to put  the  brake  now  on  his
progressive  socialisation  of  the  nation,  and
quite possibly, at the cost of increasing  social
friction,   they  may  slow  down  the  drift  to
socialism   very   considerably.   But   it    is
unbelievable  that  they  dare provoke the social
convulsion that would  ensue  upon  a  deliberate
reversal  of  the  engines or upon any attempt to
return to the glorious days of big business, wild
speculation   and  mounting  unemployment  before
1927. They will merely slow down the  drive.  For
in  the  world now all roads lead to socialism or
social dissolution.

The tempo of the process is different in the  two
continents;  that  is the main difference between
them. It is not an  opposition.  They  travel  at
different   rates  but  they  travel  towards  an
identical goal. In the Old World at  present  the
socialisation  of  the  community is going on far
more rapidly and thoroughly than it is in America
because of the perpetual war threat.

In  Western  Europe  now  the dissolution and the
drive towards socialisation progress by leaps and
bounds.  The  British governing class and British
politicians generally, overtaken by  a  war  they
had  not the intelligence to avert, have tried to
atone for their slovenly unimaginativeness during
the  past  twenty  years  in a passion of witless
improvisation. God knows what  their  actual  war
preparations amount to, but their domestic policy
seems to  be  based  on  an  imperfect  study  of
Barcelona,  Guernica,  Madrid  and  Warsaw.  They
imagine similar catastrophes on a larger scale  -
although  they  are  quite  impossible,  as every
steady-headed  person  who   can   estimate   the
available  supplies  of  petrol  knows - and they
have a terrible dread of being held  responsible.
They   fear   a   day  of  reckoning  with  their
long-bamboozled lower  classes.  In  their  panic
they  are  rapidly breaking up the existing order
altogether.

The changes that have occurred in  Great  Britain
in  less  than a year are astounding. They recall
in many particulars  the  social  dislocation  of
Russia  in  the closing months of 1917. There has
been a shifting  and  mixing-up  of  people  that
would  have  seemed impossible to anyone in 1937.
The evacuation of centres of population under the
mere  exaggerated threat of air raids has been of
frantic recklessness. Hundreds  of  thousands  of
families  have been broken up, children separated
from their parents and quartered in the homes  of
more  or less reluctant hosts. Parasites and skin
diseases, vicious habits and insanitary practices
have   been   spread,  as  if  in  a  passion  of
equalitarian  propaganda,  the  slums   of   such
centres   as   Glasgow,   London  and  Liverpool,
throughout the length and breadth  of  the  land.
Railways,    road   traffic,   all   the   normal
communications  have   been   dislocated   by   a
universal  running  about. For a couple of months
Great Britain has  been  more  like  a  disturbed
ant-hill than an organised civilised country.

The  contagion  of  funk  has  affected everyone.
Public institutions and great  business  concerns
have bolted to remote and inconvenient sites; the
BBC  organisation,  for  example,  scuffled   off
headlong     from    London,    needlessly    and
ridiculously, no man pursuing it. There has  been
a   wild  epidemic  of  dismissals,  of  servants
employed in London,  for  example,  and  a  still
wilder  shifting  of  unsuitable  men  to  novel,
unnecessary jobs. Everyone has been  exhorted  to
serve  the  country,  children  of twelve, to the
great  delight  of  conservative-minded  farmers,
have  been  withdrawn from school and put to work
on the land, and yet the number of those who have
lost  their jobs and cannot find anything else to
do, has gone up by over 100,000.

There have been  amateurish  attempts  to  ration
food,   producing   waste   here  and  artificial
scarcity there.  A  sort  of  massacre  of  small
independent  businesses  is in progress mainly to
the  advantage  of  the   big   provision-dealing
concerns,  who  changed  in  a  night  from  open
profiteers to become  the  "expert"  advisers  of
food  supply.  All  the  expertise they have ever
displayed has been the extraction of profits from
food  supply.  But  while profits mount, taxation
with an air of great resolution  sets  itself  to
prune them.

The  British public has always been phlegmatic in
the face of danger, it is too  stout-hearted  and
too  stupid  to give way to excesses of fear, but
the authorities  have  thought  it  necessary  to
plaster   the   walls   with   cast,   manifestly
expensive, posters, headed with  a  Royal  Crown,
"Your courage, your resolution, your cheerfulness
will bring us victory."

"Oh yus," said the London  Cockney.  "You’ll  get
the  victory all right. Trust you. On my courage,
my resolution, my  cheerfulness;  you’ll  use  up
‘Tommy Atkins’ all right. Larf at ‘im in a kindly
sort of way and  use  him.  And  then  you  think
you’ll  out  him  back  again  on  the dust-heap.
Again? Twice?"

That is all  too  credible.  But  this  time  our
rulers  will  emerge  discredited  and frustrated
from  the  conflict  to   face   a   disorganised
population  in  a state of mutinous enquiry. They
have made preposterous promises to restore Poland
and  they  will certainly have to eat their words
about  that.  Or  what  is  more   probable   the
government  will  have  to  give place to another
administration which will be able  to  eat  those
words  for  them  with  a  slightly better grace.
There is little prospect of Thanksgiving Services
or  any Armistice night orgy this time. People at
home are tasting the hardships of war  even  more
tediously  and  irritating than the men on active
service.  Cinemas,  theatres,  have   been   shut
prematurely,   black-outs   have  diminished  the
safety of the streets and  doubled  the  tale  of
road  casualties.  The British crowd is already a
sullen crowd. The world has not seen it in such a
bad temper for a century and half, and, let there
be no mistake about it,  it  is  far  less  in  a
temper  with  the Germans than it is with its own
rulers.

Through all this swirling intimidating propaganda
of civil disorder and a systematic suppression of
news and criticism of the most exasperating sort,
war  preparation has proceeded. The perplexed and
baffled  citizen  can  only  hope  that  on   the
military  side  there  has  been  a  little  more
foresight and less hysteria.

The   loss   of   confidence   and   particularly
confidence  in the government and social order is
already enormous. No one  feels  secure,  in  his
job, in his services, in his savings, any longer.
People lose confidence even in the money in their
pockets.   And   human   society   is   built  on
confidence. It cannot carry on without it.

Things are like this already and it is  only  the
opening  stage  of this strange war. The position
of the ruling class and the financial people  who
have  hitherto  dominated  British  affairs  is a
peculiar one. The cast  of  the  war  is  already
enormous,  and  there  is  no  sign  that it will
diminish. Income tax, super  tax,  death  duties,
taxes  on war profits have been raised to a level
that  should  practically  extinguish  the   once
prosperous  middle  strata of society altogether.
The very wealthy will  survive  in  a  shorn  and
diminished  state, they will hang on to the last,
but  the  graded  classes  that   have   hitherto
intervened  between  them  and  the  impoverished
masses of the population, who will  be  irritated
by  war  sacrifices,  extensively  unemployed and
asking more and more penetrating questions,  will
have   diminished   greatly.  Only  by  the  most
ingenious  monetary  manipulation,  by  dangerous
tax-dodging   and  expedients  verging  on  sheer
scoundrelism, will a clever young  man  have  the
ghost   of  a  chance  of  climbing  by  the  old
traditional  money-making   ladder,   above   his
fellows.  On  the  other  hand,  the  career of a
public  employee  will  become  continually  more
attractive. There is more interest in it and more
self-respect. The longer the war  continues,  the
completer  and  more  plainly irreparable will be
the dissolution of the old order.

Now to many readers who have been incredulous  of
the  statement of the first section of this book,
that we are living in the End of an Age, to those
who  have  been  impervious to the account of the
disruptive forces that are breaking up the social
order and to the argument I have drawn from them,
who may have got away from all that, so to speak,
by    saying    they    are    "scientific"    or
"materialistic" or "sociological" or  "highbrow",
or  that  Providence  that has hitherto displayed
such  a  marked  bias  in  favour  of   well-off,
comfortable, sluggish-minded people is sure to do
something nice for them at the eleventh hour, the
real  inconveniences,  alarms, losses and growing
disorder of the life about them may at last bring
a  realisation  that  the  situation  in  Western
Europe is approaching  revolutionary  conditions.
It  will  be a hard saying for many people in the
advantage-holding classes,  and  particularly  if
they  are middle-aged, that the older has already
gone to pieces can never be put back. But how can
they doubt it?

A  revolution,  that  is  to  say  a more or less
convulsive  effort  at   social   and   political
readjustment,  is  bound  to  come  in  all these
overstrained countries, in  Germany,  in  Britain
and  universally.  It  is more likely than not to
arise   directly   out   of   the    exasperating
diminuendos and crescendos of the present war, as
a culminating phase of  it.  Revolution  of  some
sort  we  must have. We cannot prevent its onset.
But we can affect the course of its  development.
It  may end in utter disaster or it may release a
new world, far better than the old. Within  these
broad limits it is possible for us to make up our
minds how it will come to us.

And since the only practical question  before  us
is  the  question  of how we will take this world
revolution  we  cannot  possibly  evade,  let  me
recall  to  your  attention  the  reasons  I have
advanced in the second section of this  book  for
the  utmost public discussion of our situation at
the present time. And also let me bring  back  to
mind  the  examination  of  Marxism in the fourth
section.  There  it  is  shown   how   easily   a
collectivist  movement,  especially  when  it  is
faced  by  the  forcible-feeble  resistances  and
suppressions  of  those who have hitherto enjoyed
wealth  and  power,  may   degenerate   into   an
old-fashioned  class-war,  become conspiratorial,
dogmatic and inadaptable, and sink towards leader
worship  and  autocracy.  That apparently is what
has happened in Russia in its present  phase.  We
do   not   know   how   much   of   the  original
revolutionary spirit survives there, and  a  real
fundamental  issue  in  the  world  situation  is
whether we are to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of
Russia  or whether we are going to pull ourselves
together, face the stern logic of  necessity  and
produce  a Western Revolution, which will benefit
by the Russian experience, react upon Russia  and
lead ultimately to a world understanding.

What  is  it  that  the Atlantic world finds most
objectionable in the Soviet world of  to-day?  Is
it  any disapproval of collectivism as such? Only
in the case of a dwindling minority of  rich  and
successful  men  - and very rarely of the sons of
such people. Very few  capable  men  under  fifty
nowadays  remain  individualists in political and
social matters. They are not  even  fundamentally
anti-Communist.  Only it happens that for various
reasons the political life of  the  community  is
still  in  the hands of unteachable old-fashioned
people.  What  are  called  "democracies"  suffer
greatly  from  the  rule  of old men who have not
kept pace with the times. The real and  effective
disapproval,   distrust   and  disbelief  in  the
soundness of the Soviet system lies  not  in  the
out-of-date individualism of these elderly types,
but in the conviction that it can  never  achieve
efficiency  or  even maintain its honest ideal of
each for all and all for each, unless it has free
speech  and  an  insistence  upon legally-defined
freedoms   for   the   individual   within    the
collectivist  framework.  We  do  not deplore the
Russian Revolution as a Revolution.  We  complain
that  it  is  not a good enough Revolution and we
want a better one.

The more highly things are collectivised the more
necessary  is a legal system embodying the Rights
of  Man.  This  has  been  forgotten  under   the
Soviets, and so men go in fear there of arbitrary
police  action.  But  the  more  functions   your
government  controls  the  more need there is for
protective   law.   The   objection   to   Soviet
collectivism  is  that, lacking the antiseptic of
legally assured personal  freedom,  it  will  not
keep.  It  professes to be fundamentally a common
economic system based  on  class-war  ideas;  the
industrial  director  is  under  the  heel of the
Party commissar; the political  police  have  got
altogether out of hand; and the affairs gravitate
inevitably towards an oligarchy or  an  autocracy
protecting  its  incapacity  by the repression of
adverse comment.

But these valid criticisms  merely  indicate  the
sort  of collectivisation that has to be avoided.
It does not dispose of collectivism as  such.  If
we in our turn do not wish to be submerged by the
wave  of   Bolshevisation   that   is   evidently
advancing  from  the  East, we must implement all
these   valid    objections    and    create    a
collectivisation  that  will  be  more efficient,
more  prosperous,  tolerant,  free  and   rapidly
progressive  than  the system we condemn. We, who
do not like the Stalinised-Marxist  state,  have,
as  they  used  to  say  in  British politics, to
"dish"  it  by  going  one  better.  We  have  to
confront   Eastern-spirited   collectivism   with
Western-spirited collectivism.

Perhaps this may be better put. We may be  giving
way  to a sub-conscious conceit here and assuming
that the West is always going to be thinking more
freely  and  clearly and working more efficiently
than the East. It is like that now,  but  it  may
not  always  be  like that. Every country has had
its phases of  illumination  and  its  phases  of
blindness.  Stalin  and Stalinism are neither the
beginning nor the end of the collectivisation  of
Russia.

We   are  dealing  with  something  still  almost
impossible to estimate, the extent to  which  the
new    Russian    patriotism    and    the    new
Stalin-worship, have effaced  and  how  far  they
have   merely   masked,  the  genuinely  creative
international  communism  of  the   revolutionary
years. The Russian mind is not a docile mind, and
most of the literature available for a young  man
to  read  in  Russia,  we must remember, is still
revolutionary. There has been no burning  of  the
books  there. The Moscow radio talks for internal
consumption since the Hitler-Stalin understanding
betray  a  great  solicitude  on  the part of the
government to make it clear that there  has  been
no  sacrifice  of  revolutionary  principle. That
witnesses to the vitality of  public  opinion  in
Russia.  The  clash between the teachings of 1920
and 1940 may have a  liberating  effect  on  many
people’s  minds.  Russians  love  to  talk  about
ideas.  Under  the  Czar  they  talked.   It   is
incredible that they do not talk under Stalin.

That  question  whether collectivisation is to be
"Westernised" or "Easternised", using these words
under  the  caveat  of the previous paragraph, is
really the first issue before the  world  to-day.
We   need  a  fully  ventilated  Revolution.  Our
Revolution has to go on in the light and air.  We
may have to accept sovietisation à la Russe quite
soon   unless   we   can   produce    a    better
collectivisation.  But  if  we  produce  a better
collectivisation it is  more  probable  than  not
that  the  Russian  system  will  incorporate our
improvements,  forget  its  reviving  nationalism
again, debunk Marx and Stalin, so far as they can
be debunked, and merge into the one world state.

Between  these   primary   antagonists,   between
Revolution with its eyes open and Revolution with
a  mask  and  a  gag,  there  will  certainly  be
complications  of the issue due to patriotism and
bigotry and the unteachable wilful  blindness  of
those  who  do not want to see. Most people lie a
lot  to  themselves  before  they  lie  to  other
people, and it is hopeless to expect that all the
warring cults and  traditions  that  confuse  the
mind of the race to-day are going to fuse under a
realisation of the imperative nature of the human
situation  as  I  have stated it here. Multitudes
will never realise it. Few human+beings are  able
to  change  their  primary ideas after the middle
thirties. They get fixed in them and drive before
them  no  more  intelligently  than animals drive
before  their  innate  impulses.  They  will  die
rather than change their second selves.

One of the most entangling of these disconcerting
secondary issues is that created  by  the  stupid
and  persistent  intrigues  of the Roman Catholic
Church.

Let me be  clear  here.  I  am  speaking  of  the
Vatican and of its sustained attempts to exercise
a directive rôle in secular life. I number  among
my  friends  many  Roman Catholics who have built
the most  charming  personalities  and  behaviour
systems  on  the framework provided them by their
faith. One of the  loveliest  characters  I  have
ever  known  was G. K. Chesterton. But I think he
was just as fine before he became a  Catholic  as
afterwards. Still he found something he needed in
Catholicism. There are saints of all  creeds  and
of  none,  so  good  are  better possibilities of
human nature.  Religious  observances  provide  a
frame that many find indispensable for the seemly
ordering of their lives. And outside the ranks of
"strict"  observers  many good people with hardly
more theology than a Unitarian, love to speak  of
goodness  and kindness as Christianity. So-and-so
is a  "good  Christian".  Voltaire,  says  Alfred
Noyes,   the   Catholic   writer,   was  a  "good
Christian". I do not use the word  "Christianity"
in  that  sense  because  I  do  not believe that
Christians have any monopoly of goodness. When  I
write of Christianity, I mean Christianity with a
definite creed and militant organisation and  not
these  good  kind  people,  good and kind but not
very fastidious about the exact use of the words.

Such "good Christians" can be almost as  bitterly
critical  as  I am of the continual pressure upon
the faithful by that inner group of  Italians  in
Rome,  subsidised  by the Fascist government, who
pull the strings of Church policy throughout  the
world,  so  as  to  do  this  or that tortuous or
uncivilised  thing,  to  cripple  education,   to
persecute unorthodox ways of living.

It is to the influence of the Church that we must
ascribe  the  foolish  support  by  the   British
Foreign  Office  of Franco, that murderous little
"Christian gentleman", in his  overthrow  of  the
staggering liberal renascence of Spain. It is the
Roman Catholic influence the British  and  French
have  to thank, for the fantastic blundering that
involved them in the defence  of  the  impossible
Polish state and its unrighteous acquisitions; it
affected British policy in respect to Austria and
Czechoslovakia  profoundly,  and  now it is doing
its utmost to maintain and  develop  a  political
estrangement between Russia and the Western world
by its prejudiced exacerbation of the  idea  that
Russia  is  "anti-God"  while  we  Westerners are
little children of the light, gallantly  fighting
on  the  side  of the Cross, Omnipotence, Greater
Poland,   national   sovereignty,    the    small
uneconomic  prolific  farmer  and  shopkeeper and
anything else you  like  to  imagine  constitutes
"Christendom".

The  Vatican  strives  perpetually to develop the
present war into a religious war. It is trying to
steal  the  war.  By all the circumstances of its
training it is unteachable. It knows  no  better.
It  will  go  on - until some economic revolution
robs  it  of  its  funds.  Then  as  a  political
influence  it  may  evaporate  very  rapidly. The
Anglican Church and many other Protestant  sects,
the wealthy Baptists, for example, follow suit.

It  is  not  only  in  British  affairs that this
propaganda goes on. With the onset of war  France
becomes  militant and Catholic. It has suppressed
the Communist Party, as a gesture  of  resentment
against  Russia and a precaution against post-war
collectivisation.   The   Belgian    caricaturist
Raemaekers is now presenting Hitler day after day
as a pitiful weakling  already  disposed  of  and
worthy   of   our   sympathy,   while  Stalin  is
represented as a frightful giant with horns and a
tail.  Yet  both  France and Britain are at peace
with Russia and have every reason to  come  to  a
working  understanding  with  that  country.  The
attitude of Russia to the war has  on  the  whole
been cold, contemptuous and reasonable.

It is not as if these devious schemes can take us
somewhere; it is not that this restoration of the
Holy  Roman Empire is a possibility. You confront
these Catholic politicians, just as you  confront
the  politicians  of  Westminster, with these two
cardinal facts, the abolition of distance and the
change  of  scale.  In  vain.  You cannot get any
realisation of the significance of  these  things
into  those idea-proofed skulls. They are deaf to
it, blind to it. They cannot see  that  it  makes
any  difference  at all to their long-established
mental habits. If their minds waver for a  moment
they  utter  little magic prayers to exorcise the
gleam.

What, they ask, has "mere size" to  do  with  the
soul  of  man, "mere speed, mere power"? What can
the young do better  than  subdue  their  natural
urgency  to live and do? What has mere life to do
with  the  religious  outlook?  The  war,   these
Vatican  propagandists  insist,  is  a  "crusade"
against modernism,  against  socialism  and  free
thought, the restoration of priestly authority is
its end; our sons  are  fighting  to  enable  the
priest  to  thrust  his  pious uncleanliness once
again  between  reader  and   book,   child   and
knowledge,  husband  and  wife,  sons and lovers.
While honest men are fighting now to put  an  end
to  military  aggression,  to  resume indeed that
"war to end war" that was aborted to give us  the
League  of  Nations,  these bigots are sedulously
perverting the issue, trying to represent it as a
religious  war  against  Russia in particular and
the modern spirit in general.

The    well-trained    Moslem,    the    American
fundamentalists,  the orthodox Jew, all the fixed
cultures, produce similar irrelevant and wasteful
resistances,   but   the   Catholic  organisation
reaches further and is  more  persistent.  It  is
frankly  opposed  to human effort and the idea of
progress. It makes no pretence about it.

Such cross-activities as these complicate,  delay
and may even sabotage effectively every effort to
solve the problem of a lucid collectivisation  of
the  world’s  affairs,  but they do not alter the
essential  fact  that  it  is  only   through   a
rationalisation  and  coalescence of constructive
revolutionary movements everywhere and a  liberal
triumph over the dogmatism of the class war, that
we can hope to emerge from the  present  wreckage
of our world.

 07 FEDERATION

LET  US  NOW TAKE up certain vaguely constructive
proposals which seem at present to be  very  much
in  people’s  minds.  They  find  their  cardinal
expression in a  book  called  Union  Now  by  Mr
Clarence  K. Streit, which has launched the magic
word   "Federation"   upon   the    world.    The
"democracies"  of  the  world are to get together
upon  a  sort  of  enlargement  of  the   Federal
constitution of the United States (which produced
one of the bloodiest civil wars in  all  history)
and then all will be well with us.

Let us consider whether this word "Federation" is
of  any   value   in   organising   the   Western
Revolution. I would suggest it is. I think it may
be a means of mental release for many people  who
would  otherwise have remained dully resistant to
any sort of change.

This   Federation   project   has   an   air   of
reasonableness.  It  is attractive to a number of
influential people who wish with the  minimum  of
adaptation  to  remain  influential in a changing
world, and particularly is it attractive to  what
I  may  call the liberal-conservative elements of
the  prosperous  classes  in  America  and  Great
Britain  and  the Oslo countries, because it puts
the most difficult aspect  of  the  problem,  the
need  for collective socialisation, so completely
in the background that it can  be  ignored.  This
enables  them  to take quite a bright and hopeful
view of the future without any serious  hindrance
to their present preoccupations.

They  think  that Federation, reasonably defined,
may  suspend  the  possibility  of  war   for   a
considerable  period and so lighten the burden of
taxation that the  present  crushing  demands  on
them  will relax and they will be able to resume,
on a  slightly  more  economical  scale  perhaps,
their former way of living. Everything that gives
them hope and self-respect  and  preserves  their
homes   from  the  worst  indignities  of  panic,
appeasement, treason-hunting and the rest of  it,
is  to  be  encouraged,  and meanwhile their sons
will have time to think and it may be possible so
to  search,  ransack  and  rationalise the Streit
project as to make a genuine and workable  scheme
for the socialisation of the world.

In  The  Fate of Homo sapiens I examined the word
"democracy" with  some  care,  since  it  already
seemed  likely that great quantities of our young
men were to be asked to cripple  and  risk  their
lives  for its sake. I showed that it was still a
very incompletely realised aspiration,  that  its
complete  development  involved  socialism  and a
level of education and  information  attained  as
yet by no community in the world. Mr Streit gives
a looser, more  rhetorical  statement  -  a  more
idealistic  statement,  shall  we  say?  - of his
conception of democracy, the  sort  of  statement
that  would be considered wildly exaggerated even
if it was war propaganda, and though unhappily it
is  remote from any achieved reality, he proceeds
without  further  enquiry  as  if   it   were   a
description  of  existing  realities  in  what he
calls the "democracies" of the world. In them  he
imagines  he finds "governments of the people, by
the people, for the people".

In the book I have already cited I  discuss  What
is  Democracy?  And  Where  is Democracy? I do my
best there to bring Mr Streit down to  the  harsh
and  difficult facts of the case. I will go now a
little more into particulars in my examination of
his project.

His   "founder   democracies"  are  to  be:  "The
American   Union,   the   British    Commonwealth
(specifically  the  United  Kingdom,  the Federal
Dominion   of   Canada,   the   Commonwealth   of
Australia,   New  Zealand,  the  Union  of  South
Africa, Ireland), the French  Republic,  Belgium,
the   Netherlands,   the   Swiss   Confederation,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland."

Scarcely one of these, as I have  shown  in  that
former book, is really a fully working democracy.
And the Union of South Africa is  a  particularly
bad  and  dangerous case of race tyranny. Ireland
is an incipient religious war and not one country
but  two.  Poland,  I note, does not come into Mr
Streit’s list of democracies at all. His book was
written  in  1938  when Poland was a totalitarian
country holding, in defiance  of  the  League  of
Nations,   Vilna,   which   it   had  taken  from
Lithuania, large areas of non-Polish  country  it
had  conquered  from Russia, and fragments gained
by the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.  It  only
became  a  democracy,  even technically and for a
brief period, before its  collapse  in  September
1939,  when  Mr  Chamberlain was so foolish as to
drag  the  British  Empire  into  a  costly   and
perilous  war,  on its behalf. But that is by the
way. None of  these  fifteen  (or  ten)  "founder
democracies" are really democracies at all. So we
start badly. But they  might  be  made  socialist
democracies  and  their  federation might be made
something very real indeed  -  at  a  price.  The
U.S.S.R.  is  a federated socialist system, which
has   shown   a   fairly   successful   political
solidarity  during the past two decades, whatever
else it has done or failed to do.

Now  let  us  help  Mr  Streit  to  convert   his
"federation"   from   a   noble   but   extremely
rhetorical aspiration into a living  reality.  He
is aware that this must be done at a price, but I
want to suggest that that price is, from  what  I
judge  to  be his point of view, far greater, and
the  change  much  simpler,  more   general   and
possibly  even  closer at hand, than he supposes.
He   is   disposed   to   appeal   to    existing
administrative    organisations,    and   it   is
questionable whether they are the right people to
execute  his  designs. One of the difficulties he
glosses over is the possible  reluctance  of  the
India  Office  to  hand over the control of India
(Ceylon and Burma he does not mention) to the new
Federation   Government,   which  would  also,  I
presume, take charge of the fairly well  governed
and  happy  fifty-odd million people of the Dutch
East Indies, the French colonial empire, the West
Indies and so on. This, unless he proposes merely
to re-christen the India Office, etc., is  asking
for an immense outbreak of honesty and competence
on the part of the new Federal officialdom. It is
also  treating the possible contribution of these
five or six hundred million of dusky  peoples  to
the  new  order  with  a levity inconsistent with
democratic ideals.

Quite a lot of these people have brains which are
as  good  or  better than normal European brains.
You could educate the whole world to the not very
exalted level of a Cambridge graduate in a single
lifetime, if you had schools, colleges, apparatus
and  teachers  enough. The radio, the cinema, the
gramophone, the improvements in  both  production
and   distribution,  have  made  it  possible  to
increase the range and effectiveness of a  gifted
teacher  a  thousandfold.  We have seen intensive
war preparations galore, but no  one  has  dreamt
yet  of  an intensive educational effort. None of
us  really  like  to  see  other   people   being
educated.  They  may be getting an advantage over
our privileged selves. Suppose we  overcome  that
primitive  jealousy.  Suppose we speed up - as we
are now physically able to do - the education and
enfranchisement   of   these   huge   undeveloped
reservoirs of human  capacity.  Suppose  we  tack
that  on the Union Now idea. Suppose we stipulate
that Federation, wherever it extends, means a New
and  Powerful  Education.  In Bengal, in Java, in
the  Congo  Free  State,  quite  as  much  as  in
Tennessee  or  Georgia  or  Scotland  or Ireland.
Suppose we think a  little  less  about  "gradual
enfranchisement"  by  votes  and  experiments  in
local autonomy and all these  old  ideas,  and  a
little  more  about  the  enfranchisement  of the
mind.  Suppose  we  drop  that  old  cant   about
politically immature peoples.

There  is  one  direction  in  which  Mr Streit’s
proposals are open to improvement. Let us turn to
another  in  which  he  does  not  seem  to  have
realised all the implications  of  his  proposal.
This  great  Union is to have a union money and a
union customs-free  economy.  What  follows  upon
that? More I think than he realises.

There  is  one  aspect  of  money  to  which  the
majority of those that  discuss  it  seem  to  be
incurably  blind.  You  cannot  have  a theory of
money or any plan about money by  itself  in  the
air.  Money  is  not  a  thing in itself; it is a
working part of an economic system. Money  varies
in its nature with the laws and ideas of property
in a community.  As  a  community  moves  towards
collectivism  and  communism,  for example, money
simplifies  out.  Money  is  a  necessary  in   a
communism  as  it is in any other system, but its
function therein is at its simplest.  Payment  in
kind to the worker gives him no freedom of choice
among the goods  the  community  produces.  Money
does. Money becomes the incentive that "works the
worker" and nothing more.

But directly you allow individuals  not  only  to
obtain  goods for consumption, but also to obtain
credit  to  produce   material   for   types   of
production  outside the staple productions of the
state, the question of credit and debt arises and
money   becomes   more  complicated.  With  every
liberation of this or  that  product  or  service
from    collective   control   to   business   or
experimental exploitation, the play of the  money
system  enlarges and the laws regulating what you
may take for it,  the  company  laws,  bankruptcy
laws   and  so  forth  increase.  In  any  highly
developed collective  system  the  administration
will  certainly  have to give credits for hopeful
experimental enterprises. When the system is  not
collectivism,  monetary  operations  for gain are
bound to  creep  in  and  become  more  and  more
complicated.  Where  most of the substantial side
of life is  entrusted  to  uncoordinated  private
enterprise,  the intricacy of the money apparatus
increases   enormously.   Monetary   manipulation
becomes  a  greater  and  greater  factor  in the
competitive   struggle,    not    only    between
individuals  and firms, but between states. As Mr
Streit himself shows, in an excellent  discussion
of   the   abandonment   of  the  gold  standard,
inflation  and  deflation   become   devices   in
international    competition.    Money    becomes
strategic, just as pipe lines  and  railways  can
become strategic.

This  being  so  it is plain that for the Federal
Union a common money means an identical  economic
life  throughout  the  Union.  And  this  too  is
implied  also  in  Mr   Streit’s   "customs-free"
economy.  It is impossible to have a common money
when a dollar or a pound, or whatever it is,  can
buy  this,  that  or  the  other advantage in one
state and is  debarred  from  anything  but  bare
purchases  for  consumption  in  another. So that
this Federal Union  is  bound  to  be  a  uniform
economic  system.  There  can be only very slight
variations in the control of economic life.

In the preceding sections the  implacable  forces
that  make  for the collectivisation of the world
or disaster, have been exposed. It  follows  that
"Federation"  means practically uniform socialism
within the  Federal  limits,  leading,  as  state
after  state is incorporated, to world socialism.
There manifestly we carry Mr Streit farther  than
he  realises  he  goes - as yet. For it is fairly
evident that he is under the  impression  that  a
large  measure of independent private business is
to go on throughout the  Union.  I  doubt  if  he
imagines it is necessary to go beyond the partial
socialisation already achieved by the  New  Deal.
But  we  have assembled evidence to show that the
profit scramble, the wild  days  of  uncorrelated
"business" are over for ever.

And  again  though  he  realises  and states very
clearly that governments are made for man and not
man for governments, though he applauds the great
declarations of the Convention that  created  the
American  Constitution, wherein "we the people of
the United States" overrode the haggling  of  the
separate  states  and  established  the  American
Federal   Constitution,   nevertheless   he    is
curiously chary of superseding any existing legal
governments in the present world. He is chary  of
talking of "We the people of the world". But many
of us are coming to  realise  that  all  existing
governments  have  to go into the melting pot, we
believe that it is a world  revolution  which  is
upon  us, and that in the great struggle to evoke
a  Westernised  World   Socialism,   contemporary
governments  may  vanish  like  straw hats in the
rapids of Niagara. Mr  Streit,  however,  becomes
extraordinarily  legal-minded at this stage. I do
not  think  that  he  realises  the   forces   of
destruction  that are gathering and so I think he
hesitates to plan a reconstruction upon  anything
like the scale that may become possible.

He evades even the obvious necessity that under a
Federal  Government  the  monarchies   of   Great
Britain,  Belgium,  Norway,  Sweden,  Holland, if
they  survive  at  all,  must  becomes  like  the
mediatised  sovereigns of the component states of
the  former  German   Empire,   mere   ceremonial
vestiges. Perhaps he thinks that, but he does not
say it outright. I do not know if he has pondered
the   New   York  World  Fair  of  1939  nor  the
significance of the Royal  Visit  to  America  in
that  year,  and thought how much there is in the
British system that would have to be abandoned if
his Federation is to become a reality. In most of
the implications of the word, it must cease to be
"British".   His   Illustrative  Constitution  is
achieved with an altogether forensic disregard of
the  fundamental  changes  in human conditions to
which we have to adapt ourselves  or  perish.  He
thinks  of  war  by itself and not as an eruption
due to deeper maladaptations. But if we push  his
earlier    stipulations    to   their   necessary
completion, we need not trouble very  much  about
that  sample  constitution  of  his,  which is to
adjust  the   balance   so   fairly   among   the
constituent  states.  The  abolition  of distance
must     inevitably     substitute     functional
associations     and    loyalties    for    local
attributions, if human society does not break  up
altogether.  The local divisions will melt into a
world collectivity and the main  conflicts  in  a
progressively  unifying  Federation are much more
likely to be these between  different  world-wide
types and associations of workers.

So  far  with  Union  Now.  One  of  Mr  Streit’s
outstanding merits is that he has had the courage
to  make definite proposals on which we can bite.
I doubt if a European  could  have  produced  any
such book. Its naïve political legalism, its idea
of salvation by constitution,  and  its  manifest
faith   in   the  magic  beneficence  of  private
enterprise, are distinctly  in  the  vein  of  an
American, almost a pre-New Deal American, who has
become, if anything, more American,  through  his
experiences  of the deepening disorder of Europe.
So many Americans still look on at world  affairs
like spectators at a ball game who are capable of
vociferous participation but still have  no  real
sense  of participation; they do not realise that
the ground is moving under their seats also,  and
that the social revolution is breaking surface to
engulf them in their turn. To most  of  us  -  to
most of us over forty at any rate - the idea of a
fundamental change in  our  way  of  life  is  so
unpalatable that we resist it to the last moment.

Mr  Streit  betrays  at times as vivid a sense of
advancing social collapse as I have, but  it  has
still  to  occur to him that that collapse may be
conclusive. There may be  dark  ages,  a  relapse
into  barbarism,  but  somewhen  and  somehow  he
thinks man must recover. George Bernard Shaw  has
recently been saying the same thing.

It may be worse that that.

I have given Mr Streit scarcely a word of praise,
because that would be beside the  mark  here.  He
wrote   his   book   sincerely   as   a   genuine
contribution to the unsystematic world conference
that  is  now going on, admitting the possibility
of error, demanding criticism, and I  have  dealt
with it in that spirit.

Unfortunately his word has gone much further than
his book. His book says definite things and  even
when one disagrees with it, it is good as a point
of departure. But a number of people have  caught
up  this  word  "Federation",  and  our minds are
distracted by a multitude of appeals  to  support
Federal projects with the most various content or
with no content at all.

All the scores and hundreds of thousands of  nice
people who are signing peace pledges and so forth
a few years ago, without the slightest attempt in
the world to understand what they meant by peace,
are now echoing  this  new  magic  word  with  as
little conception of any content for it. They did
not realise that peace means so  complicated  and
difficult  an  ordering  and  balancing  of human
society that it has never  been  sustained  since
man  became  man,  and  that  we  have  wars  and
preparatory interludes between wars because  that
is  a  much  simpler  and easier sequence for our
wilful, muddle-headed, suspicious and  aggressive
species. These people still think we can get this
new  and  wonderful  state  of  affairs  just  by
clamouring for it.

And  having failed to get peace by saying "Peace"
over and over again, they are now with an immense
sense of discovery saying "Federation". What must
happen to men in conspicuous public  positions  I
do  not  know, but even an irresponsible literary
man like  myself  finds  himself  inundated  with
innumerable  lengthy  private letters, hysterical
post-cards, pamphlets from budding organisations,
"declarations"     to     sign,    demands    for
subscriptions,  all  in  the  name  of  the   new
panacea,  all  as  vain  and  unproductive as the
bleating of lost  sheep.  And  I  cannot  open  a
newspaper    without    finding    some   eminent
contemporary  writing  a  letter  to  it,  saying
gently,   firmly  and  bravely,  the  same  word,
sometimes with bits of Union Now tacked on to it,
and  sometimes with minor improvements, but often
with nothing more than the bare idea.

All sorts of idealistic movements for world peace
which have been talking quietly to themselves for
years and years have been stirred  up  to  follow
the  new  banner. Long before the Great War there
was a book by Sir Max Waechter, a friend of  King
Edward  the Seventh, advocating the United States
of  Europe,  and  that  inexact  but   flattering
parallelism  to  the United States of America has
recurred frequently; as a  phase  thrown  out  by
Monsieur Briand for example, and as a project put
forward by  an  Austrian-Japanese  writer,  Count
Coudenhove-Kalergi,  who  even devised a flag for
the Union. The main objection to the idea is that
there are hardly any states completely in Europe,
except Switzerland, San Marino, Andorra and a few
of the Versailles creations. Almost all the other
European states extend far  beyond  the  European
limits  both  politically and in their sympathies
and cultural relations. They trail with them more
than  half  mankind. About a tenth of the British
Empire is in Europe and still less of  the  Dutch
Empire; Russia, Turkey, France, are less European
than not; Spain and Portugal have  their  closest
links with South America.

Few Europeans think of themselves as "Europeans".
I, for example, am English, and a large  part  of
my  interests,  intellectual  and  material,  are
Transatlantic. I dislike calling myself "British"
and  I  like  to think of myself as a member of a
great English-speaking community,  which  spreads
irrespective  of  race and colour round and about
the world. I am annoyed when an American calls me
a "foreigner" - war with America would seem to me
just as insane as war with Cornwall - and I  find
the   idea   of   cutting  myself  off  from  the
English-speaking peoples of America and  Asia  to
follow  the  flag  of my Austrian-Japanese friend
into a federally  bunched-up  European  extremely
unattractive.

It  would, I suggest, be far easier to create the
United States of the World, which is Mr  Streit’s
ultimate  objective,  than  to  get  together the
so-called continent of Europe into  any  sort  of
unity.

I  find  most  of  these  United States of Europe
movements are now jumping on  to  the  Federation
band-wagon.

My  old friend and antagonist, Lord David Davies,
for  instance,  has  recently  succumbed  to  the
infection.  He was concerned about the problem of
a World Pax  in  the  days  when  the  League  of
Nations  Society and other associated bodies were
amalgamated in the League of  Nations  Union.  He
was  struck  then by an idea, an analogy, and the
experience was  unique  for  him.  He  asked  why
individuals  went  about in modern communities in
nearly perfect security from assault and robbery,
without any need to bear arms. His answer was the
policeman. And  from  that  he  went  on  to  the
question  of  what  was  needed  for  states  and
nations to go their ways with the  same  blissful
immunity from violence and plunder, and it seemed
to him a complete and reasonable  answer  to  say
"an international policeman". And there you were!
He did not see, he is probably quite incapable of
seeing, that a state is something quite different
in its nature and behaviour  from  an  individual
human+being.  When  he  was  asked to explain how
that international policeman was  to  be  created
and   sustained,   he   just   went   on   saying
"international policeman". He has been saying  it
for  years.  Sometimes  it  seems it is to be the
League of Nations, sometimes the British  Empire,
sometimes an international Air Force, which is to
undertake this grave  responsibility.  The  bench
before   which  the  policeman  is  to  hale  the
offender and this position of the lock-up are not
indicated.  Finding  our  criticisms uncongenial,
his lordship went off with his great idea, like a
penguin  which  has  found an egg, to incubate it
alone.  I  hope  he  will  be   spared   to   say
"international policeman" for many years to come,
but I do not believe he  has  ever  perceived  or
ever   will   perceive  that,  brilliant  as  his
inspiration was, it still left vast areas of  the
problem  in darkness. Being a man of considerable
means,  he  has  been  able  to  sustain  a  "New
Commonwealth"  movement  and  publish books and a
periodical  in  which  his  one  great  idea   is
elaborated rather than developed.

But  I  will  not  deal  further  with  the  very
incoherent multitude that now  echoes  this  word
"Federation".  Many  among  them  will  cease  to
cerebrate further and fall by  the  wayside,  but
many  will  go  on  thinking,  and  if they go on
thinking they will come to perceive more and more
clearly  the  realities  of the case. Federation,
they will feel, is not enough.

So much for the present "Federalist" front. As  a
fundamental  basis  of action, as a declared end,
it seems hopelessly vague and  confused  and,  if
one may coin a phrase, hopelessly optimistic. But
since the concept seems to be the way to  release
a  number of minds from belief in the sufficiency
of  a  League  of  Nations,  associated  or   not
associated  with British Imperialism, it has been
worth while to consider how it can  be  amplified
and  turned  in  the  direction  of that full and
open-eyed  world-wide  collectivisation  which  a
study   of  existing  conditions  obliges  us  to
believe is the only alternative to  the  complete
degeneration of our species.

 08 THE NEW
TYPE OF REVOLUTION

LET US RETURN TO our main purpose,  which  is  to
examine  the  way  in  which we are to face up to
this impending World Revolution.

To many minds this idea of Revolution  is  almost
inseparable  from  visions  of  street barricades
made of paving-stones  and  overturned  vehicles,
ragged  mobs  armed  with  impromptu  weapons and
inspired by defiant songs, prisons broken  and  a
general  jail  delivery, palaces stormed, a great
hunting of ladies and gentlemen, decapitated  but
still  beautiful heads on pikes, regicides of the
most sinister quality,  the  busy  guillotine,  a
crescendo  of  disorder  ending  in  a  whiff  of
grapeshot. . . .

That was one type of Revolution. It is  what  one
might  call the Catholic type of Revolution, that
it is to say it is the ultimate phase of  a  long
period of Catholic living and teaching. People do
not realise this and some will  be  indignant  at
its  being  stated so barely. Yet the facts stare
us in the  face,  common  knowledge,  not  to  be
denied.  That  furious, hungry, desperate, brutal
mob was the outcome of  generations  of  Catholic
rule,  Catholic  morality and Catholic education.
The King of France was the "Most Christian  King,
the  eldest  son of the Church", he was master of
the economic and financial life of the community,
and    the   Catholic   Church   controlled   the
intellectual  life  of  the  community  and   the
education  of the people absolutely. That mob was
the  outcome.  It  is  absurd  to   parrot   that
Christianity  has  never been tried. Christianity
in its most highly developed form has been  tried
and tried again. It was tried for centuries fully
and completely, in Spain, France, Italy.  It  was
responsible  for the filth and chronic pestilence
and famine of  medieval  England.  It  inculcated
purity   but  it  never  inculcated  cleanliness.
Catholic     Christianity     had     practically
unchallenged  power in France for generations. It
was free to teach as it chose and as much  as  it
chose. It dominated the common life entirely. The
Catholic system  in  France  cannot  have  reaped
anything it did not sow, for no other sowers were
allowed.   That   hideous   mob   of    murderous
ragamuffins  we  are so familiar with in pictures
of the period,  was  the  final  harvest  of  its
regime.

The   more   Catholic  reactionaries  revile  the
insurgent  common  people  of  the  first  French
Revolution,  the more they condemn themselves. It
is the most impudent perversion  of  reality  for
them  to  snivel  about  the  guillotine  and the
tumbrils,  as  though  these  were   not   purely
Catholic   products,   as  though  they  came  in
suddenly  from  outside  to   wreck   a   genteel
Paradise.   They  were  the  last  stage  of  the
systematic injustice and ignorance of a  strictly
Catholic regime. One phase succeeded another with
relentless logic. The Maseillaise  completed  the
life-cycle of Catholicism.

In   Spain   too  and  in  Mexico  we  have  seen
undisputed   educational   and   moral   Catholic
ascendancy,   the   Church   with  a  free  hand,
producing a similar uprush of  blind  resentment.
The crowds there also were cruel and blasphemous;
but Catholicism cannot complain; for  Catholicism
hatched  them.  Priests and nuns who had been the
sole teachers of the  people  were  insulted  and
outraged  and  churches  defiled.  Surely  if the
Church is anything like what it claims to be, the
people  would  have loved it. They would not have
behaved as  though  sacrilege  was  a  gratifying
relief.

But these Catholic Revolutions are only specimens
of one single type of  Revolution.  A  Revolution
need  not  be  a spontaneous storm of indignation
against intolerable indignities and deprivations.
It can take quite other forms.

As  a  second  variety of Revolution, which is in
sharp contrast  with  the  indignation-revolt  in
which  so  many  periods of unchallenged Catholic
ascendancy have ended, we may take  what  we  may
call  the  "revolution  conspiracy",  in  which a
number of people set about organising the  forces
of  discomfort  and  resentment and loosening the
grip of the  government’s  forces,  in  order  to
bring  about  a fundamental change of system. The
ideal of this type is the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia,  provided  it  is a little simplified and
misunderstood. This, reduced to a working  theory
by its advocates, is conceived of as a systematic
cultivation of a public state of mind  favourable
to  a Revolution together with an inner circle of
preparation for a "seizure  of  power".  Quite  a
number  of  Communist  and other leftish writers,
bright  young   men,   without   much   political
experience,  have  let  their  imaginations loose
upon the "technique" of such an  adventure.  They
have  brought  the  Nazi  and Fascist Revolutions
into  the  material  for  their  studies.  Modern
social   structure   with  its  concentration  of
directive, information and coercive  power  about
radio  stations,  telephone exchangers, newspaper
offices, police stations, arsenals and the  like,
lends  itself  to  quasi-gangster exploitation of
this type. There is a  great  rushing  about  and
occupation  of key centres, an organised capture,
imprisonment or murder of possible opponents, and
the country is confronted with fait accompli. The
regimentation  of  the  more  or  less  reluctant
population follows.

But a Revolution need be neither an explosion nor
a coup  d’état.  And  the  Revolution  that  lies
before  us now as the only hopeful alternative to
chaos, either directly or after an  interlude  of
world  communism,  is  to  be  attained, if it is
attained at all, by neither of these methods. The
first  is  too  rhetorical  and chaotic and leads
simply to a Champion and tyranny; the  second  is
too  conspiratorial  and leads through an obscure
struggle of masterful personalities to a  similar
end.  Neither  is  lucid  enough  and  deliberate
enough to achieve a permanent change in the  form
and texture of human affairs.

An altogether different type of Revolution may or
may not be possible. No one can say  that  it  is
possible unless it is tried, but one can say with
some assurance that unless it can be achieved the
outlook for mankind for many generations at least
is hopeless. The new Revolution aims  essentially
at   a   change   in   directive  ideas.  In  its
completeness it is an untried method.

It  depends  for  its  success  upon  whether   a
sufficient  number  of  minds  can  be brought to
realise that the choice before us now  is  not  a
choice between further revolution or more or less
reactionary conservatism, but a choice between so
carrying  on  and  so  organising  the process of
change in our affairs as to produce a  new  world
order,   or   suffering  an  entire  and  perhaps
irreparable   social   collapse.   Our   argument
throughout has been that things have gone too far
ever to be put back again to  any  similitude  of
what  they  have  been.  We  can no more dream of
remaining where we are than think of  going  back
in  the  middle of a dive. We must go trough with
these present changes, adapt ourselves  to  them,
adjust  ourselves  to the plunge, or be destroyed
by them. We must go through these changes just as
we   must  go  through  this  ill-conceived  war,
because there is as yet no possible end for it.

There will be no possible way of ending it  until
the  new  Revolution  defines  itself.  If  it is
patched up now without a clear-headed  settlement
understood  and accepted throughout the world, we
shall have only the  simulacrum  of  a  peace.  A
patched-up  peace  now will not even save us from
the horrors of war, it will postpone them only to
aggravate  them  in  a few years time. You cannot
end this war yet, you can at best adjourn it.

The reorganisation of the world has at  first  to
be  mainly the work of a "movement" or a Party or
a religion or cult, whatever we  choose  to  call
it.  We  may  call  it  New Liberalism or the New
Radicalism  or  what  not.  It  will  not  be   a
close-knit  organisation,  toeing  the Party line
and so forth. It may be  a  very  loose-knit  and
many faceted, but if a sufficient number of minds
throughout  the  world,  irrespective  of   race,
origin  or  economic and social habituations, can
be brought to the free and candid recognition  of
the  essentials  of the human problem, then their
effective collaboration in a conscious,  explicit
and open effort to reconstruct human society will
ensue.

And to begin with they will do all  they  can  to
spread and perfect this conception of a new world
order, which they will regard as the only working
frame  for  their  activities,  while at the same
time they will set  themselves  to  discover  and
associate  with themselves, everyone, everywhere,
who is intellectually  able  to  grasp  the  same
broad ideas and morally disposed to realise them.

The distribution of this essential conception one
may  call  propaganda,  but  in  reality  it   is
education.  The opening phase of this new type of
Revolution must involve therefore a campaign  for
re-invigorated     and    modernised    education
throughout the world, an education that will have
the  same  ratio  to the education of a couple of
hundred years ago, as the electric lighting of  a
contemporary  city has to the chandeliers and oil
lamps of the same period. On its  present  mental
levels  humanity can do no better than what it is
doing now.

Vitalising education is only possible when it  is
under  the influence of people who are themselves
learning. It is inseparable from the modern  idea
of  education  that  it  should  be  knit  up  to
incessant research. We say research  rather  than
science. It is the better word because it is free
from any suggestion of that finality which  means
dogmatism and death.

All  education  tends  to  become  stylistic  and
sterile unless it is kept  in  close  touch  with
experimental verification and practical work, and
consequently this new movement  of  revolutionary
initiative,  must  at the same time be sustaining
realistic political  and  social  activities  and
working  steadily  for  the  collectivisation  of
governments and economic life.  The  intellectual
movement   will   be   only  the  initiatory  and
correlating part of the new revolutionary  drive.
These   practical  activities  must  be  various.
Everyone engaged in them  must  be  thinking  for
himself  and  not  waiting  for  orders. The only
dictatorship   he   will   recognise    is    the
dictatorship  of  the plain understanding and the
invincible fact.

And if  this  culminating  Revolution  is  to  be
accomplished,  then  the  participation  of every
conceivable  sort  of  human+being  who  has  the
mental  grasp to see these broad realities of the
world situation  and  the  moral  quality  to  do
something about it, must be welcomed.

Previous revolutionary thrusts have been vitiated
by bad psychology. They have given great play  to
the  gratification  of  the inferiority complexes
that arise out of class disadvantages. It  is  no
doubt  very  unjust  that anyone should be better
educated, healthier and less fearful of the world
than  anyone  else, but that is no reason why the
new Revolution should not make the fullest use of
the  health, education, vigour and courage of the
fortunate. The Revolution  we  are  contemplating
will   aim   at   abolishing  the  bitterness  of
frustration. But certainly it will do nothing  to
avenge  it.  Nothing  whatever. Let the dead past
punish its dead.

It is one of the  most  vicious  streaks  in  the
Marxist  teaching  to  suggest that all people of
wealth and capacity  living  in  a  community  in
which  unco-ordinated  private enterprise plays a
large part are  necessarily  demoralised  by  the
advantages  they  enjoy  and  that  they  must be
dispossessed by the worker and peasant,  who  are
presented  as  endowed  with  a collective virtue
capable of running all the complex machinery of a
modern  community.  But  the staring truth of the
matter is that an unco-ordinated scramble between
individuals  and  nations  alike, demoralises all
concerned. Everyone is  corrupted,  the  filching
tramp  by  the roadside, the servile hand-kissing
peasant  of  Eastern  Europe,   the   dole-bribed
loafer,  as  much  as  the  woman who marries for
money,  the  company  promoter,  the   industrial
organiser,  the  rent-exacting  landlord  and the
diplomatic agent. When the social  atmosphere  is
tainted everybody is ill.

Wealth,  personal  freedom and education, may and
do produce wasters  and  oppressive  people,  but
they may also release creative and administrative
minds to opportunity. The history of science  and
invention  before the nineteenth century confirms
this. On the whole if we are to assume  there  is
anything  good  in  humanity  at  all, it is more
reasonable to expect it to appear when  there  is
most opportunity.

And   in   further  confutation  of  the  Marxist
caricature of human motives,  we  have  the  very
considerable  number  of  young people drawn from
middle-class and upper-class homes, who figure in
the extreme left movement everywhere. It is their
moral reaction to  the  "stuffiness"  and  social
ineffectiveness  of  their  parents and their own
sort of people. They seek  an  outlet  for  their
abilities  that  is  not gainful but serviceable.
Many have sought an honourable life -  and  often
found  it,  and  death  with it - in the struggle
against  the  Catholics  and  their  Moorish  and
Fascist helpers in Spain.

It  is  a misfortune of their generation, that so
many of them have fallen into the mental traps of
Marxism.  It  has  been  my  absurd experience to
encounter noisy meetings of expensive  young  men
at  Oxford, not one of them stunted physically as
I was by twenty years  of  under-nourishment  and
devitalised  upbringing,  all  pretending  to  be
rough-hewn  collarless  proletarians  in  shocked
revolt  against  my  bourgeois  tyranny  and  the
modest  comfort  of  my  declining   years,   and
reciting  the  ridiculous  class-war  phrases  by
which  they  protected  their  minds   from   any
recognition  of  the  realities  of the case. But
though    that    attitude    demonstrates    the
unstimulating  education of their preparatory and
public  schools,  which  had  thrown  them   thus
uncritical and emotional into the problems of the
undergraduate life, it does not detract from  the
fact  that  they had found the idea of abandoning
themselves to a revolutionary  reconstruction  of
society,  that promised to end its enormous waste
of potential happiness and achievement, extremely
attractive,   notwithstanding   that   their  own
advantages seemed to be reasonably secure.

Faced with the immediate approach of  discomfort,
indignity,  wasted  years,  mutilation - death is
soon over but one wakes up  again  to  mutilation
every  morning  -  because  of this ill-conceived
war; faced also by the  reversion  of  Russia  to
autocracy  and  the  fiscal extinction of most of
the social advantages of  their  families;  these
young  people with a leftish twist are likely not
only to do some very profitable re-examination of
their   own   possibilities   but  also  to  find
themselves joined in  that  re-examination  by  a
very  considerable  number  of  others  who  have
hitherto been repelled by the obvious foolishness
and  insincerity of the hammer and sickle symbols
(workers  and  peasants  of  Oxford!)   and   the
exasperating  dogmatism  of the orthodox Marxist.
And  may  not  these  young  people,  instead  of
waiting  to  be  overtaken  by an insurrectionary
revolution from which they  will  emerge  greasy,
unshaven, class-conscious and in incessant danger
of liquidation, decide that before the Revolution
gets  hold  of  them  they  will  get hold of the
Revolution and save  it  from  the  inefficiency,
mental     distortions,    disappointments    and
frustrations that have over-taken it in Russia.

This new and complete Revolution  we  contemplate
can  be  defined  in  a very few words. It is (a)
outright world-socialism, scientifically  planned
and  directed,  plus  (b)  a sustained insistence
upon law, law based on a fuller,  more  jealously
conceived  resentment  of  the personal Rights of
Man, plus (c) the completest freedom  of  speech,
criticism and publication, and sedulous expansion
of   the   educational   organisation   to    the
ever-growing  demands  of  the new order. What we
may call the eastern or  Bolshevik  Collectivism,
the  Revolution of the Internationale, has failed
to achieve even the first of  these  three  items
and it has never even attempted the other two.

Putting  it at its compactest, it is the triangle
of Socialism, Law and Knowledge, which frames the
Revolution which may yet save the world.

Socialism!  Become  outright  collectivists? Very
few men of the more fortunate classes in our  old
collapsing  society  who  are  over fifty will be
able to readjust their minds  to  that.  It  will
seem  an  entirely  repulsive suggestion to them.
(The average age of the British  Cabinet  at  the
present time is well over sixty.) But it need not
be repulsive at all to their sons. They  will  be
impoverished  anyhow.  The stars in their courses
are seeing to  that.  And  that  will  help  them
greatly to realise that an administrative control
to  administrative  participation  and  then   to
direct  administration  are  easy steps. They are
being taken now, first in one matter and then  in
another.   On   both   sides   of  the  Atlantic.
Reluctantly and  often  very  disingenuously  and
against  energetic  but  diminishing resistances.
Great  Britain,  like  America,  may   become   a
Socialist  system  with  a definitive Revolution,
protesting all the time that it is doing  nothing
of the sort.

In  Britain we have now no distinctively educated
class, but all up and down the social scale there
are  well-read  men  and  women  who have thought
intensely upon these great problems we have  been
discussing.  To  many of them and maybe to enough
of them to start the avalanche  of  purpose  that
will   certainly   develop   from   a  clear  and
determined   beginning,   this   conception    of
Revolution to evoke a liberal collectivised world
may appeal. And so at last  we  narrow  down  our
enquiry  to an examination of what has to be done
now to save the Revolution, what the movement  or
its Party - so far as it may use the semblance of
a  Party  will  do,  what  its  Policy  will  be.
Hitherto   we   have  been  demonstrating  why  a
reasonable man, of any race or language anywhere,
should  become a "Western" Revolutionary. We have
now to review the immediate activities  to  which
he can give himself.

 09 POLITICS
FOR THE SANE MAN

LET US RESTATE THE general conclusions  to  which
our preceding argument has brought us.

The   establishment   of   a   progressive  world
socialism  in  which  the  freedoms,  health  and
happiness  of every individual are protected by a
universal law based on a  re-declaration  of  the
rights  of  man,  and wherein there is the utmost
liberty of thought, criticism and suggestion,  is
the plain, rational objective before us now. Only
the effective realisation of this  objective  can
establish  peace  on earth and arrest the present
march of human affairs to misery and destruction.
We  cannot  reiterate  this objective too clearly
and   too    frequently.    The    triangle    of
collectivisation, law and knowledge should embody
the common purpose of all mankind.

But between us and that goal intervenes the  vast
and  deepening  disorders  of  our  time. The new
order cannot be brought into existence without  a
gigantic  and more or less co-ordinated effort of
the  saner  and  abler  elements  in  the   human
population.  The thing cannot be done rapidly and
melodramatically. That  effort  must  supply  the
frame   for   all   sane   social  and  political
activities and  a  practical  criterion  for  all
religious and educational associations. But since
our world is multitudinously varied and confused,
it   is   impossible  to  narrow  down  this  new
revolutionary  movement  to  any  single   class,
organisation  or  Party.  It is too great a thing
for that. It will in its  expansion  produce  and
perhaps  discard  a  number  of organisations and
Parties, converging upon its ultimate  objective.
Consequently,  in  order to review the social and
political activities of sane, clear-headed people
to-day,  we have to deal with them piecemeal from
a number of points of view. We have  to  consider
an advance upon a long and various front.

Let  us  begin then with the problem of sanity in
face of the political methods of our  time.  What
are  we  to  do as voting citizens? There I think
the history of the so-called democracies  in  the
past   half-century  is  fairly  conclusive.  Our
present electoral methods which  give  no  choice
but  a  bilateral  choice  to  the citizen and so
force a two-party system  upon  him,  is  a  mere
caricature  of  representative government. It has
produced upon both sides of  the  Atlantic,  big,
stupid,  and  corrupt  party  machines.  That was
bound to happen and yet to this day  there  is  a
sort  of  shyness  in  the  minds  of  young  men
interested  in  politics   when   it   comes   to
discussing   Proportional   Representation.  They
think it is a "bit faddy". At best it is  a  side
issue.  Party politicians strive to maintain that
bashfulness, because they know quite clearly that
what  is  called Proportional Representation with
the   single   transferable   vote    in    large
constituencies,  returning  a  dozen  members  or
more, is extinction for the mere party  hack  and
destruction for party organisations.

The  machine  system in the United States is more
elaborate, more deeply entrenched legally in  the
Constitution  and illegally in the spoils system,
and it may prove more difficult to modernise than
the  British,  which is based on an outworn caste
tradition. But both Parliament and  Congress  are
essentially similar in their fundamental quality.
They trade in titles, concessions and the  public
welfare,  and they are only amenable in the rough
and at long  last  to  the  movements  of  public
opinion.  It is an open question whether they are
much more responsive to popular feeling than  the
Dictators  we  denounce  so  unreservedly  as the
antithesis of  democracy.  They  betray  a  great
disregard  of  mass responses. They explain less.
They disregard more. The Dictators have to go  on
talking  and  talking,  not always truthfully but
they  have  to   talk.   A   dumb   Dictator   is
inconceivable.

In  such  times of extensive stress and crisis as
the present, the baffling slowness,  inefficiency
and  wastefulness  of  the party system become so
manifest that some of its worst pretences are put
aside. The party game is suspended. His Majesty’s
Opposition abandons the pose of safeguarding  the
interests  of  the  common  citizens  from  those
scoundrels   upon   the    government    benches;
Republican and Democrats begin to cross the party
line to discuss the new situation. Even  the  men
who  live  professionally  by  the  Parliamentary
(Congressional) imposture, abandon it if they are
sufficiently   frightened   by   the  posture  of
affairs. The appearance of an All-Party  National
Government  in  Great  Britain  before  very long
seems inevitable.

Great Britain has in effect gone socialist  in  a
couple  of  months;  she is also suspending party
politics. Just as the United States  did  in  the
great  slump. And in both cases this has happened
because the rottenness and inefficiency of  party
politics  stank  to heaven in the face of danger.
And since in both cases Party Government threw up
its  hands  and  bolted, is there any conceivable
reason why we should let  it  come  back  at  any
appearance  of victory or recovery, why we should
not  go  ahead  from  where  we  are  to  a  less
impromptu  socialist  regime  under  a  permanent
non-party administration, to the reality  if  not
to the form of a permanent socialist government?

Now here I have nothing to suggest about America.
I have never, for example, tried to work out  the
consequences   of   the   absence   of  executive
ministers from the legislature. I am inclined  to
think  that  is  one  of  the  weak points in the
Constitution and that  the  English  usage  which
exposes  the  minister  to  question  time in the
House and makes him a prime mover in  legislation
affecting  his  department, is a less complicated
and therefore more  democratic  arrangement  than
the American one. And the powers and functions of
the President and the  Senate  are  so  different
from the consolidated powers of Cabinet and Prime
Minister,  that  even  when  an  Englishman   has
industriously   "mugged  up"  the  constitutional
points, he is still almost as much at a  loss  to
get  the living reality as he would be if he were
shown the score of an  opera  before  hearing  it
played  or  the  blue  prints of a machine he had
never  seen  in  action.   Very   few   Europeans
understand  the  history  of  Woodrow Wilson, the
Senate and his League of Nations. They think that
"America",  which  they imagine as a large single
individual, planted the latter  institution  upon
Europe  and then deliberately shuffled out of her
responsibility for it, and they will never  think
otherwise. And they think that "America" kept out
of  the  war  to  the  very  limit  of   decency,
overcharged  us for munitions that contributed to
the common victory, and made a grievance  because
the consequent debt was not discharged. They talk
like that while Americans talk as if  no  English
were killed between 1914 and 1918 (we had 800,000
dead) until the noble  American  conscripts  came
forward  to  die  for  them (to the tune of about
50,000). Savour for example  even  the  title  of
Quincy  Howe’s  England expects every American to
do his Duty. It’s the meanest of titles, but many
Americans seem to like it.

On  my  desk  as  I  write  is a pamphlet by a Mr
Robert Randall, nicely cyclostyled  and  got  up.
Which  urges a common attack on the United States
as a  solution  of  the  problem  of  Europe.  No
countries  will ever feel united unless they have
a common enemy, and the natural common enemy  for
Europe,  it is declared, is the United States. So
to bring about the United States of Europe we are
to  begin  by  denouncing  the Monroe doctrine. I
believe in the honesty and good intentions of  Mr
Robert  Randall; he is, I am sure, no more in the
pay of  Germany,  direct  or  indirect,  than  Mr
Quincy  Howe  or Mr Harry Elmer Barnes; but could
the most  brilliant  of  Nazi  war  propagandists
devise  a more effective estranging suggestion? .
. .

But I wander from my topic. I  do  not  know  how
sane  men  in  America  are  going  to  set about
relaxing the stranglehold  of  the  Constitution,
get control of their own country out of the hands
of those lumpish,  solemnly  cunning  politicians
with   their  great  strong  jowls  developed  by
chewing-gum   and   orotund    speaking,    whose
photographs  add  a real element of frightfulness
to the pages of  Time,  how  they  are  going  to
abolish  the spoils system, discover, and educate
to expand  a  competent  civil  service  able  to
redeem  the hampered promises of the New Deal and
pull America into line with the reconstruction of
the  rest  of  the  world. But I perceive that in
politics  and  indeed   in   most   things,   the
underlying humour and sanity of Americans are apt
to find a way round and do the impossible, and  I
have  as little doubt they will manage it somehow
as I have when I see a street  performer  on  his
little chair and carpet, all tied up with chains,
waiting until there are sufficient pennies in the
hat to justify exertion.

These  differences  in method, pace and tradition
are   a   great   misfortune   to    the    whole
English-speaking  world. We English people do not
respect Americans enough; we are too disposed  to
think  they  are all Quincy Howes and Harry Elmer
Barneses and Borahs and suchlike,  conceited  and
suspicious  anti-British monomaniacs, who must be
humoured at any cost; which is why we  are  never
so  frank and rude with them as they deserve. But
the more we must contain ourselves  the  less  we
love them. Real brothers can curse each other and
keep  friends.  Someday   Britannia   will   give
Columbia  a piece of her mind, and that may clear
the air. Said an exasperated Englishman to  me  a
day  or  so  ago: "I pray to God they keep out of
the end of this war anyhow. We shall  never  hear
the last of it if they don’t. . . ."

Yet  at  a  different  pace  our  two  people are
travelling towards  identical  ends,  and  it  is
lamentable  that a difference of accent and idiom
should do more  mischief  than  a  difference  of
language.

So  far  as  Great Britain goes things are nearer
and closer to me, and it seems to me  that  there
is  an  excellent  opportunity  now  to catch the
country in a state of socialisation  and  suspend
party  politics,  and  keep  it  at that. It is a
logical but often disregarded  corollary  of  the
virtual    creation    of    All-Party   National
Governments and suspension of electoral contests,
that   since   there   is  no  Opposition,  party
criticism  should  give   place   to   individual
criticism  of  ministers, and instead of throwing
out governments we should set ourselves to  throw
out  individual  administrative failures. We need
no longer confine our choice of  public  servants
to  political  careerists. We can insist upon men
who have done  things  and  can  do  things,  and
whenever  an  election  occurs  we can organise a
block  of  non-party  voters  who  will  vote  it
possible  for  an outsider of proved ability, and
will at any rate insist on a clear statement from
every  Parliamentary  candidate  of  the concrete
service, if any, he has done the country, of  his
past  and present financial entanglements and his
family  relationships  and  of   any   title   he
possesses. We can get these necessary particulars
published and note what newspapers decline to  do
so.  And  if  there are still only politicians to
vote for, we can at  least  vote  and  spoil  our
voting cards by way of protest.

At  present  we  see  one  public  service  after
another  in  a  mess  through   the   incompetent
handling  of  some  party  hack  and  the  unseen
activities  of  interested  parties.  People  are
asking  already  why  Sir Arthur Salter is not in
control of Allied Shipping again,  Sir  John  Orr
directing   our  food  supply  with  perhaps  Sir
Fredrick  Keeble  to   help   him,   Sir   Robert
Vansittart in the Foreign Office. We want to know
the individuals responsible for the incapacity of
our  Intelligence  and  Propaganda Ministries, so
that we may induce them to quit public  life.  It
would  be  quite  easy  now to excite a number of
anxious people with a  cry  for  "Competence  not
Party".

Most  people  in  the  British Isles are heartily
sick of Mr Chamberlain and  his  government,  but
they  cannot  face  up  to  a  political split in
wartime, and Mr Chamberlain sticks to office with
all  the  pertinacity of a Barnacle. But if we do
not  attack  the  government  as  a  whole,   but
individual  ministers, and if we replace them one
by one, we shall presently have a  government  so
rejuvenated that even Mr Chamberlain will realise
and accept his superannuation. Quite a small body
of   public-spirited  people  could  organise  an
active Vigilance  Society  to  keep  these  ideas
before   the   mass   of  voters  and  begin  the
elimination of inferior elements from our  public
life.  This  would  be a practical job of primary
importance  in  our  political  regeneration.  It
would  lead  directly to a new and more efficient
political structure to carry on after the present
war has collapsed or otherwise ended.

Following  upon  this campaign for the conclusive
interment of the played-out party  system,  there
comes  the  necessity  for  a much more strenuous
search for administrative and  technical  ability
throughout  the country. We do not want to miss a
single youngster who can be of use in  the  great
business  of making over Great Britain, which has
been   so   rudely,   clumsily   and   wastefully
socialised  by  our war perturbations, so that it
may become a permanently efficient system.

And from the base of the educational  pyramid  up
to  its  apex  of  higher  education of teachers,
heads of departments and research, there is  need
for  such  a  quickening  of minds and methods as
only a more or less organised movement of  sanely
critical  men  can bring about. We want ministers
now of the highest quality in  every  department,
but  in  no department of public life is a man of
creative  understanding,  bold   initiative   and
administrative  power  so  necessary  as  in  the
Education Ministry.

So tranquil and unobtrusive has been the flow  of
educational affairs in the British Empire that it
seems almost  scandalous,  and  it  is  certainly
"vulgar",  to suggest that we need an educational
Ginger Group  to  discover  and  support  such  a
minister. We want a Minister of Education who can
shock teachers into  self-examination,  electrify
and rejuvenate old dons or put them away in ivory
towers, and stimulate the younger ones. Under the
party  system  the  Education Ministry has always
been a restful corner for  some  deserving  party
politician  with  an  abject respect for his Alma
Mater and the  permanent  officials.  During  war
time,   when   other  departments  wake  up,  the
Education Department sinks into deeper  lethargy.
One  cannot  recall  a  single  British Education
Minister, since there have been  such  things  in
our  island story as Ministers for Education, who
signified anything at all  educationally  or  did
anything of his own impulse that was in the least
worth while.

Suppose we found a live one - soon - and let  him
rip! There again is something to be done far more
revolutionary than  throwing  bombs  at  innocent
policemen or assassinating harmless potentates or
ex-potentates. And yet it is only asking that  an
existing department be what it pretends to be.

A   third   direction   in  which  any  gathering
accumulation  of   sanity   should   direct   its
attention    is   the   clumsy   unfairness   and
indirectness   of   our   present   methods    of
expropriating  the former well-to-do classes. The
only observable principle seems to be widows  and
children  first.  Socialisation is being effected
in  Britain  and  America  alike  not  by   frank
expropriation  (with or without compensation) but
by increasing government control  and  increasing
taxation.  Both  our  great communities are going
into socialism backward and without ever  looking
round.  This  is good in so far as that technical
experience and directive ability is changed  over
step  by step from entirely private employment to
public service, and on that side sane and helpful
citizens  have  little  to  do  beyond making the
process conscious of itself and the public  aware
of  the  real nature of the change, but it is bad
in its  indiscriminate  destruction  of  savings,
which are the most exposed and vulnerable side of
the  old  system.  They   are   expropriated   by
profit-control  and  taxation  alike,  and at the
same time they suffer in purchasing power by  the
acceleration   of   that   process   of  monetary
inflation which is the unavoidable  readjustment,
the  petition  in bankruptcy, of a community that
has overspent.

The shareholding class dwindles and dies;  widows
and  orphans,  the  old who are past work and the
infirm who are incapable of it,  are  exposed  in
their  declining  years to a painful shrinkage of
their modes  of  living;  there  is  no  doubt  a
diminution  of social waste, but also there is an
indirect impoverishment of free opinion and  free
scientific and artistic initiative as the endless
societies, institutions and services  which  have
enriched  life  for  us  and  been  very  largely
supported by voluntary subscriptions, shrivel. At
present  a  large  proportion  of our scientific,
artistic,  literary  and   social   workers   are
educated  out  of  the private savings fund. In a
class-war  revolution  these  economically   very
defenceless  but  socially very convenient people
are subjected to vindictive humiliation -  it  is
viewed  as  a  great  triumph  for  their  meaner
neighbours - but a  revolution  sanely  conducted
will  probably  devise  a  system  of  terminable
annuities and compensation, and of assistance  to
once  voluntary associations, which will ease off
the social dislocations due to the  disappearance
of one stratum of relatively free and independent
people, before its successors, that is to say the
growing   class   of  retired  officials,  public
administrators and so forth, find their feet  and
develop   their  own  methods  of  assertion  and
enterprise.

  10
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN

LET  US TURN NOW to another system of problems in
the collectivisation of the world,  and  that  is
the  preservation  of  liberty  in  the socialist
state and  the  restoration  of  that  confidence
without   which   good   behaviour  is  generally
impossible.

This destruction of confidence is one of the less
clearly  recognised evils of the present phase of
world-disintegration. In the past there have been
periods  when whole communities or at least large
classes within communities have gone about  their
business  with  a general honesty, directness and
sense of personal honour. They have taken a  keen
pride  in  the quality of their output. They have
lived through  life  on  tolerable  and  tolerant
terms   with  their  neighbours.  The  laws  they
observed have varied in different  countries  and
periods,  but their general nature was to make an
orderly law-abiding life  possible  and  natural.
They  had  been taught and they believed and they
had every reason to believe: "This (that  or  the
other  thing)  is  right.  Do  right and nothing,
except by some  strange  exceptional  misfortune,
can  touch  you.  The Law guarantees you that. Do
right and nothing will rob you or frustrate you."

Nowhere in the world now is there  very  much  of
that  feeling  left,  and  as  it disappears, the
behaviour of people degenerates towards  a  panic
scramble,  towards  cheating, over-reaching, gang
organisation, precautionary hoarding, concealment
and  all  the  meanness  and  anti-social feeling
which is the natural outcome of insecurity.

Faced with what now amounts to something  like  a
moral  stampede,  more  and  more  sane  men will
realise  the  urgency  for   a   restoration   of
confidence.  The  more socialisation proceeds and
the more directive authority is concentrated, the
more  necessary  is  an  efficient  protection of
individuals from the impatience  of  well-meaning
or narrow-minded or ruthless officials and indeed
from all the possible abuses  of  advantage  that
are  inevitable  under  such circumstances to our
still childishly wicked breed.

In  the  past  the  Atlantic   world   has   been
particularly successful in expedients for meeting
this aspect of human nature.  Our  characteristic
and  traditional  method may be called the method
of  the  fundamental  declaration.  Our   Western
peoples,  by  a  happy  instinct,  have  produced
statements of Right, from Magna Carta onwards, to
provide  a structural defence between the citizen
and the necessary growth of central authority.

And plainly the successful  organisation  of  the
more  universal and penetrating collectivism that
is  now  being  forced  upon  us  all,  will   be
frustrated  in  its  most vital aspect unless its
organisation is accompanied by  the  preservative
of  a  new Declaration of the Rights of Man, that
must, because of the increasing complexity of the
social  structure, be more generous, detailed and
explicit than any of  its  predecessors.  Such  a
Declaration  must  become  the common fundamental
law  of  all   communities   and   collectivities
assembled  under  the  World  Pax.  It  should be
interwoven with the  declared  war  aims  of  the
combatant   powers  now;  it  should  become  the
primary fact in any settlement; it should be  put
before   the   now  combatant  states  for  their
approval,  their  embarrassed  silence  or  their
rejection.

In  order  to be as clear as possible about this,
let me submit a draft for your  consideration  of
this  proposed Declaration of the Rights of Man -
using "man" of course to cover every  individual,
male   or   female,   of   the  species.  I  have
endeavoured  to  bring  in  everything  that   is
essential  and  to omit whatever secondary issues
can  be   easily   deduced   from   its   general
statements. It is a draft for your consideration.
Points  may  have  been  overlooked  and  it  may
contain repetitions and superfluous statements.

"Since  a  man  comes  into this world through no
fault of his own, since he is manifestly a  joint
inheritor  of  the accumulations of the past, and
since   those   accumulations   are   more   than
sufficient  to  justify  the claims that are here
made for him, it follows:

"(1) That every man without distinction of  race,
of  colour or of professed belief or opinions, is
entitled to the  nourishment,  covering,  medical
care  and  attention  needed  to realise his full
possibilities of physical and mental  development
and  to  keep  him  in a state of health from his
birth to death.

"(2) That he is entitled to sufficient  education
to make him a useful and interested citizen, that
special education should be so made available  as
to  give  him  equality  of  opportunity  for the
development  of  his  distinctive  gifts  in  the
service  of  mankind,  that  he  should have easy
access to information upon all matters of  common
knowledge  throughout  his  life  and  enjoy  the
utmost freedom  of  discussion,  association  and
worship.

"(3)  That  he  may  engage  freely in any lawful
occupation, earning such pay as the need for  his
work  and  the  increment  it makes to the common
welfare may justify. That he is entitled to  paid
employment and to a free choice whenever there is
any variety of employment open  to  him.  He  may
suggest employment for himself and have his claim
publicly considered, accepted or dismissed.

"(4) That he shall have the right to buy or  sell
without  any discriminatory restrictions anything
which may be lawfully bought  or  sold,  in  such
quantities  and  with  such  reservations  as are
compatible with the common welfare."

(Here I will interpolate a comment.  We  have  to
bear  in mind that in a collectivist state buying
and selling to secure income and profit  will  be
not  simply  needless  but  impossible. The Stock
Exchange,      after      its      career      of
four-hundred-odd-years,  will  necessarily vanish
with the disappearance  of  any  rational  motive
either  for  large  accumulations or for hoarding
against deprivation and destitution. Long  before
the age of complete collectivisation arrives, the
savings of individuals for later consumption will
probably  be protected by some development of the
Unit Trust System into  a  public  service.  They
will  probably  be entitled to interest at such a
rate as to compensate for that secular  inflation
which  should  go on in a steadily enriched world
community. Inheritance and bequest in a community
in  which  the  means  of  production  and of all
possible monopolisation  are  collectivised,  can
concern   little   else  than  relatively  small,
beautiful and intimate objects, which will afford
pleasure  but  no  unfair social advantage to the
receiver.)

"(5) That he and his personal  property  lawfully
acquired   are   entitled  to  police  and  legal
protection from  private  violence,  deprivation,
compulsion and intimidation.

"(6)  That  he may move freely about the world at
his  own  expense.  That  his  private  house  or
apartment  or reasonably limited garden enclosure
is his castle, which may  be  entered  only  with
consent, but that he shall have the right to come
and  go  over  any  kind  of  country,  moorland,
mountain, farm, great garden or what not, or upon
the seas, lakes and rivers of  the  world,  where
his  presence  will  not  be  destructive of some
special use, dangerous to himself  nor  seriously
inconvenient to his fellow-citizens.

"(7)  That  a  man  unless  he  is  declared by a
competent authority to be a danger to himself and
to   others   through   mental   abnormality,   a
declaration which  must  be  annually  confirmed,
shall  not be imprisoned for a longer period than
six days without being charged  with  a  definite
offence  against the law, nor for more than three
months without public trial. At the  end  if  the
latter  period,  if  he  has  not  been tried and
sentenced by due process  of  law,  he  shall  be
released.   Nor   shall  he  be  conscripted  for
military, police or any other service to which he
has a conscientious objection.

"(8)  That  although a man is subject to the free
criticism of his fellows, he shall have  adequate
protection  from  any  lying or misrepresentation
that   may   distress   or   injure   him.    All
administrative  registration  and records about a
man shall be open to  his  personal  and  private
inspection.  There shall be no secret dossiers in
any administrative department. All dossiers shall
be accessible to the man concerned and subject to
verification and correction at his  challenge.  A
dossier is merely a memorandum; it cannot be used
as evidence without proper confirmation  in  open
court.

"(9)  That  no man shall be subjected to any sort
of mutilation or sterilisation  except  with  his
own  deliberate  consent,  freely  given,  nor to
bodily assault, except in restraint  of  his  own
violence,  nor  to  torture, beating or any other
bodily punishment; he shall not be  subjected  to
imprisonment  with  such  an  excess  of silence,
noise, light  or  darkness  as  to  cause  mental
suffering,   or   to  imprisonment  in  infected,
verminous or otherwise insanitary quarters, or be
put  into  the company of verminous or infectious
people.  He  shall  not  be  forcibly   fed   nor
prevented  from starving himself if he so desire.
He shall not be forced to take  drugs  nor  shall
they be administered to him without his knowledge
and consent.  That  the  extreme  punishments  to
which   he   may   be   subjected   are  rigorous
imprisonment  for  a  term  of  not  longer  than
fifteen years or death."

(Here  I would point out that there is nothing in
this to prevent any country from  abolishing  the
death  penalty  any  country  from abolishing the
death penalty. Nor do I assert a general right to
commit  suicide,  because no one can punish a man
for doing that. He has escaped. But  threats  and
incompetent  attempts to commit suicide belong to
an entirely different category. They are indecent
and  distressing  acts  that  can easily become a
serious social nuisance, from  which  the  normal
citizen is entitled to protection.)

"(10) That the provisions and principles embodied
in this Declaration shall be more  fully  defined
in a code of fundamental human rights which shall
be  made  easily  accessible  to  everyone.  This
Declaration  shall  not be qualified nor departed
from upon any pretext whatever.  It  incorporates
all   previous   Declarations   of  Human  Right.
Henceforth for a new ear it  is  the  fundamental
law for mankind throughout the whole world.

"No  treaty  and  no  law affecting these primary
rights shall be binding upon any man or  province
or administrative division of the community, that
has not been made openly, by and with the  active
or  tacit  acquiescence  of  every  adult citizen
concerned, either given by a direct majority vote
of   his  publicly  elected  representatives.  In
matters of collective  behaviour  it  is  by  the
majority    decision    men    must   abide.   No
administration,  under  a  pretext  of   urgency,
convenience  or the like, shall be entrusted with
powers to create or further  define  offences  or
set  up  by-laws,  which will in any way infringe
the  rights  and  liberties  here  asserted.  All
legislation  must  be  public  and  definite.  No
secret treaties shall be binding on  individuals,
organisations   or   communities.  No  orders  in
council or the like, which extend the application
of  a law, shall be permitted. There is no source
of law but the people, and since  life  flows  on
constantly  to new citizens, no generation of the
people can in  whole  or  in  part  surrender  or
delegate   the   legislative  power  inherent  in
mankind."

There, I think, is something  that  keener  minds
than  mine  may polish into a working Declaration
which would in the most  effective  manner  begin
that restoration of confidence of which the world
stands in  need.  Much  of  it  might  be  better
phrased,  but  I  think  it  embodies the general
good-will in mankind from pole  to  pole.  It  is
certainly  what  we  all  want  for ourselves. It
could be a very potent instrument indeed  in  the
present  phase  of human affairs. It is necessary
and it is acceptable. Incorporate  that  in  your
peace  treaties  and  articles  of  federation, I
would say, and you will have a  firm  foundation,
which  will  continually  grow  firmer,  for  the
fearless cosmopolitan life of a new world  order.
You  will  never get that order without some such
document.  It  is  the  missing  key  to  endless
contemporary difficulties.

And  if  we,  the  virtuous  democracies, are not
fighting for these common human rights, then what
in the name of the nobility and gentry, the Crown
and the Established Church, the City,  The  Times
and the Army and Navy Club, are we common British
peoples fighting for?

       11
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

AND NOW, HAVING COMPLETED our picture of what the
saner elements in human  society  may  reasonably
work  for  and  hope for, having cleared away the
horrible nightmares of  the  class  war  and  the
totalitarian  slave-state  from our imaginations,
we are able to attack the  immediate  riddles  of
international conflict and relationship with some
hope of a general solution. If we realise to  the
depths of our being that a world settlement based
in  the  three  ideas  of  socialism,   law   and
knowledge,  is  not  only possible and desirable,
but  the  only  way  of  escape  from   deepening
disaster,  then  manifestly  our attitude towards
the resentments of  Germany,  the  prejudices  of
America    or    Russia,    the    poverty    and
undernourishment of India  or  the  ambitions  of
Japan, must be frankly opportunist. None of these
are primary issues. We sane men must  never  lose
sight  of our ultimate objective, but our methods
of getting there  will  have  to  vary  with  the
fluctuating  variations  of  national feeling and
national policy.

There is this idea of  federalism  upon  which  I
have  already  submitted  a  criticism in chapter
seven.  As  I  have  shown  there,   the   Streit
proposals  will  either  take you further or land
you nowhere. Let us assume that we can strengthen
his   proposals   to   the  extent  of  making  a
socialistic economic consortium and  adhesion  to
that  Declaration  of  Rights, primary conditions
for any federal union; then it becomes  a  matter
of  mood  and  occasion with what communities the
federal association may be  begun.  We  can  even
encourage feeble federal experiments which do not
venture even so far as that  along  the  path  to
sanity,  in  the  certainty that either they will
fade out again or  else  that  they  will  become
liberal  realities of the type to which the whole
world must ultimately conform.  Behind  any  such
half-hearted tentatives an educational propaganda
can be active and effective.

But when it comes  to  the  rate  and  amount  of
participation  in  the construction of a rational
world order we can expect  from  any  country  or
group of countries, we are in a field where there
is  little  more  than  guessing  and   haphazard
generalisations  about  "national  character"  to
work upon. We are dealing with masses  of  people
which  may  be  swayed  enormously by a brilliant
newspaper  or  an  outstandingly  persuasive   or
compelling  personality  or  by almost accidental
changes in the drift of events. I,  for  example,
cannot  tell  how  far the generality of educated
and capable people in the British Empire now  may
fall  in with our idea of accepting and serving a
collectivism, or how  strong  their  conservative
resistance  may  be.  It  is my own country and I
ought to know it best,  and  I  do  not  know  it
detachedly  enough  or  deeply  enough  to decide
that. I do not see how anyone can foretell  these
swirls and eddies of response.

The  advocacy  of  such movements of the mind and
will as I am speaking of here is in itself  among
the operating causes in political adjustment, and
those who are deepest in the struggle  are  least
able to estimate how it is going. Every factor in
political  and   international   affairs   is   a
fluctuating  factor.  The wise man therefore will
not set his heart upon any  particular  drift  or
combination.   He  will  favour  everything  that
trends towards the end at which he aims.

The present writer cherishes the  idea  that  the
realisation  of  a  common  purpose  and a common
cultural inheritance may  spread  throughout  all
the  English-speaking  communities, and there can
be no harm  in  efforts  to  give  this  concrete
expression.  He  believes the dissociation of the
British  Empire   may   inaugurate   this   great
synthesis.  At  the  same  time there are factors
making for some closer association of the  United
States  of  America with what are called the Oslo
powers. There is  no  reason  why  one  of  these
associations  should  stand  in  the  way  of the
other. Some countries such as Canada rest already
under what is practically a double guarantee; she
has the security of the Monroe Doctrine  and  the
protection of the British fleet.

A Germany of eighty million people which has been
brought to acquiesce in the  Declaration  of  the
Rights   of  Man  and  which  is  already  highly
collectivised,  may  come  much  earlier   to   a
completely  liberal  socialist  regime than Great
Britain or  France.  If  she  participates  in  a
consortium for the development of what are called
the politically backward regions  of  the  world,
she   may  no  longer  be  disposed  for  further
military  adventures  and  further   stress   and
misery.  She may enter upon a phase of social and
economic recovery so rapid as  to  stimulate  and
react  upon  every other country in the world. It
is  not  for  other  countries  to  dictate   her
internal  politics, and if the German people want
to remain united  as  one  people,  in  federated
states  or  in  one  centralised  state, there is
neither righteousness nor wisdom preventing them.

The Germans like the rest of the  world  have  to
get   on  with  collectivisation,  they  have  to
produce  their  pattern,  and  they  cannot  give
themselves  to  that  if  they  are  artificially
divided up and disorganised by some old-fashioned
Quai d’Orsay scheme. They must do the right thing
in their own way.

That the belligerent tradition may linger  on  in
Germany  for  a  generation  or so, is a risk the
Atlantic powers have to take.  The  world  has  a
right  to  insist  that  not  simply  some German
government but the  people  generally,  recognise
unequivocably  and  repeatedly, the rights of man
asserted in the Declaration, and it  is  disarmed
and  that  any  aggressive  plant, any war plane,
warship, gun or arsenal that is discovered in the
country  shall  be  destroyed forthwith, brutally
and completely. But that is a thing  that  should
not be confined to Germany. Germany should not be
singled out  for  that.  Armament  should  be  an
illegality   everywhere,   and   some   sort   of
international force should patrol a  treaty-bound
world.   Partial   armament   is   one  of  those
absurdities dear to moderate-minded  "reasonable"
men. Armament itself is making war. Making a gun,
pointing a gun and firing it, are all acts of the
same  order.  It  should  be illegal to construct
anywhere  upon  earth,  any  mechanism  for   the
specific  purpose  of killing men. When you see a
gun it  is  reasonable  to  ask:  "Whom  is  that
intended to kill?"

Germany’s   rearmament  after  1918  was  largely
tolerated  because   she   played   off   British
Russophobia   against   the   Russian   fear   of
"Capitalist"  attack,  but  that  excuse  can  no
longer  serve  any  furtive war-mongers among her
people after her pact with Moscow.

Released   from   the   economic   burdens    and
restrictions  that  crippled  her  recovery after
1918, Germany may  find  a  full  and  satisfying
outlet  for  the  energy  of her young men in her
systematic collectivisation, raising the standard
of  her  common  life  deliberately and steadily,
giving Russia a lead in efficiency  and  obliging
the    maundering   "politics"   and   discursive
inattention  of  the  Atlantic  world  to  remain
concentrated upon the realities of life. The idea
of again splitting  up  Germany  into  discordant
fragments so as to postpone her ultimate recovery
indefinitely, is  a  pseudo-democratic  slacker’s
dream.  It  is  diametrically  opposed  to  world
reconstruction. We  have  need  of  the  peculiar
qualities  of  her  people,  and  the  sooner she
recovers the better for the whole  world.  It  is
preposterous to resume the policy of holding back
Germany simply that the old order may enjoy a few
more  years of self-indulgence in England, France
and America.

A lingering fear of  German  military  aggression
may not be altogether bad for the minor states of
South-Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, by  breaking
down  their  excessive  nationalism  and inducing
them to work together. The policy of the sane man
should be to welcome every possible experiment in
international   understandings   duplicate    and
overlap  one  another, so much the better. He has
to watch the activities of his own Foreign Office
with   incessant  jealousy,  for  signs  of  that
Machiavellian spirit which foments division among
foreign   governments  and  peoples  and  schemes
perpetually to frustrate the progressive movement
in  human affairs by converting it into a swaying
indecisive balance of power.

This book is a discussion of  guiding  principles
and  not  of  the  endless  specific  problems of
adjustment that arise  on  the  way  to  a  world
realisation  of  collective  unity. I will merely
glance at that old idea of Napoleon the  Third’s,
the   Latin   Union,  at  the  possibility  of  a
situation in Spanish and Portuguese South America
parallel  to  that overlap of the Monroe Doctrine
and the European motherlands which already exists
in  practice  in  the  case of Canada, nor will I
expatiate  upon  the  manifold  possibilities  of
sincere  application  of  the  Declaration of the
Rights  of  Man  to  India  and  Africa   -   and
particularly to those parts of the world in which
more or less black peoples are awakening  to  the
realities    of    racial    discrimination   and
oppression.

I  will  utter  a  passing  warning  against  any
Machiavellian   treatment   of   the  problem  of
Northern and Eastern Asia, into which the British
may  be  led by their constitutional Russophobia.
The Soviet collectivism, especially if  presently
it becomes liberalised and more efficient through
a recovery from its present obsession by  Stalin,
may  spread  very effectively across Central Asia
and China. To anyone nourished mentally upon  the
ideas  of  an  unending competition of Powers for
ascendancy for ever and ever,  an  alliance  with
Japan,  as  truculent  and militarised a Japan as
possible, will seem the most natural response  in
the  world.  But  to  anyone  who has grasped the
reality of the present situation of  mankind  and
the     urgent     desirableness     of     world
collectivisation, this immense  unification  will
be something to welcome, criticise and assist.

The  old bugbear of Russia’s "designs upon India"
may also play its part in distorting the  Asiatic
situation for many people. Yet a hundred years of
mingled  neglect,  exploitation  and   occasional
outbreaks  of  genuine  helpfulness  should  have
taught the British  that  the  ultimate  fate  of
India’s  hundreds  of  millions rests now upon no
conquering ruler but wholly and solely  upon  the
ability  of  the  Indian peoples to co-operate in
world collectivisation. They may  learn  much  by
way  of  precept and example from Russia and from
the English-speaking world, but the days for mere
revolt  or for relief by a change of masters have
passed. India has to work out  for  itself,  with
its  own  manner of participation in the struggle
for a world order, starting from the British  raj
as  a  datum line. No outside power can work that
out for the Indian peoples, nor force them to  do
it if they have no will for it.

But   I  will  not  wander  further  among  these
ever-changing problems  and  possibilities.  They
are,  so  to  speak,  wayside  eventualities  and
opportunities. Immense though some  of  them  are
they  remain  secondary. Every year or so now the
shifting  channels  of  politics   need   to   be
recharted.  The  activities  and responses of the
sane man in any particular  country  and  at  any
particular  time will be determined always by the
overruling  conception  of  a  secular   movement
towards  a  single  world order. That will be the
underlying  permanent  objective   of   all   his
political life.

There   is,   however,   another  line  of  world
consolidation to which attention  must  be  drawn
before  we  conclude this section, and is what we
may call ad hoc internationalism is admirably set
forth    in    Leonard    Woolf’s   International
Government, a classic which was published in 1916
and still makes profitable reading.

The  typical  ad  hoc  organisation is the Postal
Union,  which   David   Lubin,   that   brilliant
neglected  thinker, would have had extended until
it controlled  shipping  and  equalised  freights
throughout the world. He based his ideas upon his
practical experience of the mail  order  business
from  which  he  derived  his  very  considerable
fortune. From that problem of freight  adjustment
he  passed  to the idea of a controlled survey of
world, so that a shortage here or  a  glut  there
could  be  foreseen  and  remedied  in  time.  He
realised  the   idea   in   the   form   of   the
International  Institute  of Agriculture at Rome,
which  in  its  heyday  made  treaties  like   an
independent  sovereign  power  for  the supply of
returns from nearly every government upon  earth.
The war of 1914 and Lubin’s death in 1919 checked
the  development  of  this  admirable  and   most
inspiring  experiment in ad hoc internationalism.
Its history is surely something  that  should  be
made  part  of  the compulsory education of every
statesmen and publicist. Yet  never  in  my  life
have  I  met  a  professional politician who knew
anything whatever  or  wanted  to  know  anything
about   it.   It  didn’t  get  votes;  it  seemed
difficult to tax it; what was the good of it?

Another  ad  hoc  organisation  which  might   be
capable   of  a  considerable  extension  of  its
functions is the Elder Brethren of Trinity House,
who  control  the lighthouses and charting of the
seas throughout the world. But it  would  need  a
very  considerable  revision  and extension of Mr
Woolf’s book and, in spite of  the  war  stresses
that  have  delayed  and  in  some cases reversed
their development, it would be quite  beyond  our
present   scope,   to   bring   up  to  date  the
lengthening  tale   of   ad   hoc   international
networks,  ranging  from  international  business
cartels, scientific and technical  organisations,
white-slave-trade  suppression  and international
police  co-operation,  to  health  services   and
religious missions. Just as I have suggested that
the United States and Great  Britain  may  become
complete  socialisms  unawares,  so  it  is a not
altogether impossible dream that  the  world  may
discover to its great surprise that it is already
practically a cosmopolis, through  the  extension
and  interweaving  of these ad hoc co-operations.
At any rate we have this very powerful collateral
process  going  on  side  by  side  with the more
definite political schemes we have discussed.

Surveying  the  possibilities  of  these  various
attacks   upon   the  complicated  and  intricate
obstacles that stand between us  and  a  new  and
more  hopeful  world order, one realises both the
reasons for hope in that  great  possibility  and
the  absurdity  over  over-confidence. We are all
like soldiers upon a vast battlefield; we  cannot
be  sure of the trend of things; we may be elated
when disillusionment is rushing headlong upon us;
we  may  be  on the verge of despair, not knowing
that our antagonists are already in collapse.  My
own  reactions  vary  between  an almost mystical
faith in the ultimate triumph of human reason and
good-will,  and moods of stoical determination to
carry on to the end in the  face  of  what  looks
like  inevitable disaster. There are quantitative
factors in the outlook for  which  there  are  no
data;  there are elements of time and opportunity
beyond  any  estimating.  Every  one   of   these
activities we have been canvassing tends to delay
the drift to destruction and provides a  foothold
for   a  further  counter-offensive  against  the
adversary.

In the companion predecessor to  this  book,  The
Fate  of  Homo sapiens, I tried to drive home the
fact that our  species  has  no  more  reason  to
believe it can escape defeat and extinction, than
any other organism that plays or has  played  its
part  in the drama of life. I tried to make clear
how precarious is our present situation, and  how
urgent  it  is  that  we  should make a strenuous
effort at adjustment now. Only a little while ago
it  seemed as though that was an appeal to a deaf
and blind world, invincibly set in  its  habitual
ways  into  the question whether this inclination
towards pessimism reflected a mood  or  phase  in
myself,  and  I threw out a qualifying suggestion
or so; but for my own part I could not  find  any
serious  reason to believe that the mental effort
that was clearly necessary if man was  to  escape
that  fate  that  marched  upon him would ever be
made. His conservative resistances,  his  apathy,
seemed incurable.

Now  suddenly  everywhere  one meets with alarmed
and  open  and  enquiring  minds.  So   far   the
tremendous  dislocations  of the present war have
been immensely beneficial in stripping  off  what
seemed   to  be  quite  invincible  illusions  of
security only a year ago.  I  never  expected  to
live  to  see  the  world with its eyes as widely
open as they are to-day. The world has never been
so awake. Little may come of it, much may come of
it. We do not know. Life would amount to  nothing
at all if we did.

  12 WORLD ORDER
IN BEING

THERE WILL BE NO day of  days  then  when  a  new
world  order  comes  into being. Step by step and
here and there it will arrive,  and  even  as  it
comes   into   being   it   will   develop  fresh
perspectives, discover unsuspected  problems  and
go on to new adventures. No man, no group of men,
will  ever  be  singled  out  as  its  father  or
founder.  For  its maker will be not this man nor
that man nor any man but Man, that being  who  is
in  some  measure in every one of us. World order
will be, like science, like  most  inventions,  a
social   product,   an   innumerable   number  of
personalities will have lived fine lives, pouring
their best into the collective achievement.

We   can  find  a  small-scale  parallel  to  the
probable development of a new world order in  the
history of flying. Less than a third of a century
ago, ninety-nine people out of  a  hundred  would
have  told  you that flying was impossible; kites
and  balloons  and  possibly  even  a   navigable
balloon,  they  could  imagine; they had known of
such things for a hundred years;  but  a  heavier
then  air machine, flying in defiance of wind and
gravity!  That  they  knew  was   nonsense.   The
would-be  aviator was the typical comic inventor.
Any fool could laugh at  him.  Now  consider  how
completely the air is conquered.

And  who  did  it?  Nobody  and everybody. Twenty
thousand  brains  or  so,  each  contributing   a
notion,   a   device,   an   amplification.  They
stimulated one another; they took  off  from  one
another.  They  were  like  excited  ganglia in a
larger brain sending their impulses to  and  fro.
They  were  people  of  the most diverse race and
colour. You can  write  down  perhaps  a  hundred
people  or  so  who have figured conspicuously in
the air, and when you examine the rôle they  have
played, you will find for the most part that they
are mere notorieties of the  Lindbergh  type  who
have  put  themselves  modestly but firmly in the
limelight and can  lay  no  valid  claim  to  any
effective  contribution  whatever.  You will find
many  disputes  about  records  and  priority  in
making  this  or  that  particular  step, but the
lines of suggestion, the growth  and  elaboration
of  the idea, have been an altogether untraceable
process. It has been going on for not more than a
third  of  a century, under our very eyes, and no
one can say precisely how it came about. One  man
said  "Why  not  this?" and tried it, and another
said "Why not that?" A vast miscellany of  people
had  one  idea  in  common,  an  idea  as  old as
Dædalus, the idea that "Man can  fly".  Suddenly,
swiftly,  it  got about - that is the only phrase
you can use - that  flying  was  attainable.  And
man, man as a social being, turned his mind to it
seriously, and flew.

So it will certainly be with the new world order,
if  ever  it is attained. A growing miscellany of
people are saying - it is getting  about  -  that
"World Pax is possible", a World Pax in which men
will be both united and free and creative. It  is
of  no importance at all that nearly every man of
fifty and over receives the idea with  a  pitying
smile.  Its  chief  dangers are the dogmatist and
the would-be "leader" who will  try  to  suppress
every  collateral  line  of  work  which does not
minister to his supremacy. This movement must be,
and  it  must  remain,  many-headed.  Suppose the
world had decided that  Santos  Dumont  or  Hiram
Maxim  was the heaven-sent Master of the Air, had
given him the right to appoint  a  successor  and
subjected   all   experiments   to  his  inspired
control. We should probably have the  Air  Master
now,  with  an  applauding  retinue  of  yes-men,
following the hops of some  clumsy,  useless  and
extremely dangerous apparatus across country with
the utmost dignity and self-satisfaction . . . .

Yet that is precisely how we still set about  our
political and social problems.

Bearing  this  essential  fact  in  mind that the
Peace of Man can  only  be  attained,  if  it  is
attained  at  all,  by an advance upon a long and
various front, at varying speed and with  diverse
equipment,  keeping  direction  only  by a common
faith in the triple need  for  collectivism,  law
and  research,  we  realise  the impossibility of
drawing any picture of the new order as though it
was  as  settled  and  stable  as  the  old order
imagined itself to be.  The  new  order  will  be
incessant;  things will never stop happening, and
so it defies any Utopian description. But we  may
nevertheless  assemble  a number of possibilities
that will be increasingly realisable as the  tide
of  disintegration  ebbs  and  the  new  order is
revealed.

To  begin  with  we  have  to   realise   certain
peculiarities of human behaviour that are all too
disregarded in general political speculation.  We
have  considered the very important rôle that may
be played in our contemporary difficulties  by  a
clear statement of the Rights of Man, and we have
sketched such a Declaration. There is not an item
in  that Declaration, I believe, which a man will
not consider to be a reasonable demand -  so  far
as  he himself is concerned. He will subscribe to
it in that spirit very readily. But  when  he  is
asked  not only to concede by the same gesture to
everybody else in the world, but as something for
which he has to make all the sacrifices necessary
for its practical realisation, he will discover a
reluctance to "go so far as that". He will find a
serious   resistance   welling   up   from    his
sub-conscious and trying to justify itself in his
thoughts.

The  things  he  will  tell  you  will  be   very
variable;  but  the  word "premature" will play a
large part in it. He will  display  a  tremendous
tenderness  and consideration with which you have
never credited  him  before,  for  servants,  for
workers,  for  aliens and particularly for aliens
of a different colour  from  himself.  They  will
hurt  themselves with all this dangerous liberty.
Are they fit, he  will  ask  you,  for  all  this
freedom? "Candidly, are they fit for it?" He will
be slightly offended if you will say, "As fit  as
you  are". He will say in a slightly amused tone,
"But how can you say that?" and  then  going  off
rather  at  a  tangent, "I am afraid you idealise
your fellow-creatures."

As you press him, you will find  this  kindliness
evaporating from his resistance altogether. He is
now  concerned  about  the  general  beauty   and
loveliness  of  the  world.  He will protest that
this new Magna Carta will reduce all the world to
"a  dead  level  of uniformity". You will ask him
why must a world of free-men be uniform and at  a
dead level? You will get no adequate reply. It is
an assumption of vital importance to him  and  he
must  cling  to  it.  He  has  been accustomed to
associate "free" and "equal", and has never  been
bright-minded  enough  to  take  these  two words
apart and have a good look at them separately. He
is  likely  to  fall back at this stage upon that
Bible of the impotent genteel, Huxley’s Brave New
World, and implore you to read it. You brush that
disagreeable fantasy aside and continue to  press
him.  He  says  that nature has made men unequal,
and  you  reply  that  that  is  no  reason   for
exaggerating  the  fact.  The  more  unequal  and
various their gifts, the greater is the necessity
for  a  Magna  Carta  to  protect  them  from one
another. Then he will talk of robbing life of the
picturesque  and  the  romantic and you will have
some difficulty in getting these  words  defined.
Sooner  or later it will grow clear that he finds
the prospect of a world in which "Jack’s as  good
as his Master" unpleasant to the last degree.

If you still probe him with questions and leading
suggestions, you will begin to realise how  large
a  part the need for glory over his fellows plays
in his composition  (and  incidentally  you  will
note,  please,  you  own  secret  satisfaction in
carrying  the  argument  against  him).  It  will
become  clear to you, if you collate the specimen
under examination with the behaviour of children,
yourself  and  the  people  about you, under what
urgent  necessity  they  are  for  the  sense  of
triumph,  of  being  better and doing better than
their fellows, and having it felt and  recognised
by someone. It is a deeper, steadier impulse than
sexual lust; it is a hunger. It is  the  clue  to
the  unlovingness  of  so  much  sexual  life, to
sadistic  impulses,  to  avarice,  hoarding   and
endless  ungainful  cheating  and treachery which
gives men the sense  of  getting  the  better  of
someone even if they do not get the upper hand.

In  the last resort this is why we must have law,
and why Magna Carta and all its kindred documents
set  out to defeat human nature in defence of the
general  happiness.   Law   is   essentially   an
adjustment  of  that  craving to glory over other
living things, to the needs of social  life,  and
it  is  more  necessary in a collectivist society
than in any other. It  is  a  bargain,  it  is  a
social contract, to do as we would be done by and
to repress our extravagant egotisms in return for
reciprocal  concessions. And in the face of these
considerations we have advanced  about  the  true
nature  of  the beast we have to deal with, it is
plain that the politics of the  sane  man  as  we
have   reasoned   them  out,  must  anticipate  a
strenuous  opposition  to  this   primary   vital
implement for bringing about the new world order.

I  have  suggested that the current discussion of
"War Aims" may very  effectively  be  transformed
into  the  propaganda  of this new Declaration of
the Rights of Man. The opposition to it  and  the
attempts that will be made to postpone, mitigate,
stifle  and  evade  it,  need  to   be   watched,
denounced  and  combatted persistently throughout
the world. I do not know how far this Declaration
I  have  sketched  can  be  accepted  by  a  good
Catholic, but the Totalitarian  pseudo-philosophy
insists   upon   inequality   of   treatment  for
"non-Aryans" as a glorious duty.  How  Communists
would  respond  to  its clauses would, I suppose,
depend upon their orders from  Moscow.  But  what
are  called  the "democracies" are supposed to be
different, and it would be possible now  to  make
that  Declaration a searching test of the honesty
and spirit of the leaders and rulers in whom they
trust.  These  rulers can be brought to the point
by it, with a precision unattainable in any other
fashion.

But  the types and characters and authorities and
officials and arrogant and aggressive individuals
who  will  boggle at this Declaration and dispute
and defy it, do not exhaust  the  resistances  of
our  unregenerate  natures  to this implement for
the establishment of elementary  justice  in  the
world.  For  a  far  larger  proportion of people
among the "democracies" will be found,  who  will
pay it lip service and then set about discovering
how, in their innate craving for  that  sense  of
superiority  and advantage which lies so near the
core  of  our   individuals   wills,   they   may
unobtrusively  sabotage  it and cheat it. Even if
they only cheat it just a little. I  am  inclined
to  think  this  disingenuousness  is a universal
weakness. I have a real passion for  serving  the
world,  but  I  have a pretty keen disposition to
get more pay for my service, more recognition and
so  on  than  I deserve. I do not trust myself. I
want to be under just laws. We want  law  because
we are all potential law-breakers.

This    is   a   considerable   digression   into
psychology, and I will do no more than glance  at
how large a part this craving for superiority and
mastery has played in  the  sexual  practices  of
mankind.  There  we  have  the  ready means for a
considerable relief of this  egotistical  tension
in  mutual  boasting  and  reassurance.  But  the
motive for his digression here  is  to  emphasise
the  fact  that  the  generalisation  of our "War
Aims" into a Declaration  of  Rights,  though  it
will  enormously  simplify  the issue of the war,
will  eliminate  neither   open   and   heartfelt
opposition  nor endless possibilities of betrayal
and sabotage.

Nor does it alter the fact  that  even  when  the
struggle  seems to be drifting definitely towards
a world social democracy, there may still be very
great   delays   and  disappointments  before  it
becomes an efficient and beneficent world system.
Countless  people, from maharajas to millionaires
and from pukkha sahibs  to  pretty  ladies,  will
hate  the new world order, be rendered unhappy by
frustration  of  their  passions  and   ambitions
through   its  advent  and  will  die  protesting
against it.  When  we  attempt  to  estimate  its
promise we have to bear in mind the distress of a
generation or so of  malcontents,  many  of  them
quite gallant and graceful-looking people.

Ant  it  will  be no light matter to minimise the
loss of efficiency in the process of changing the
spirit and pride of administration work from that
of  an  investing,  high-salaried  man   with   a
handsome  display  of  expenditure and a socially
ambitious   wife,   into   a   relatively    less
highly-salaried  man  with  a  higher standard of
self-criticism, aware that he  will  be  esteemed
rather by what he puts into his work than by what
he gets out of it. There will be a lot of  social
spill, tragi-comedy and loss of efficiency during
the period of the change over, and it  is  better
to be prepared for that.

Yet    after    making   allowances   for   these
transitional stresses we may still  look  forward
with  some  confidence  to  certain phases in the
onset of World Order. War or war fear  will  have
led  everywhere  to  the  concentration  of  vast
numbers of workers upon  munition  work  and  the
construction    of    offensive   and   defensive
structures of all sorts, upon shipping,  internal
communications,      replacement      structures,
fortification.  There  will  be  both   a   great
accumulation   and   control   of   material  and
constructive machinery and also of hands  already
growing   accustomed   to  handling  it.  As  the
possibility of conclusive victory fades and  this
war   muddle  passes  out  of  its  distinctively
military phase towards revolution,  and  as  some
sort  of Peace Congress assembles, it will be not
only desirable but necessary for  governments  to
turn  over  these  resources  and  activities  to
social reconstruction. It will be  too  obviously
dangerous   and  wasteful  to  put  them  out  of
employment. They must surely have learnt now what
unemployment    means    in   terms   of   social
disorganisation. Governments will have to lay out
the  world, plan and build for peace whether they
like it or not.

But it will be asked, "Where will  you  find  the
credit  to  do that?" and to answer this question
we must reiterate that  fact  that  money  is  an
expedient and not an end. The world will have the
material   and   the   hands   needed    for    a
reconditioning  of  its life everywhere. They are
all about you now crying out to be used.  It  is,
or  at  any rate it has been, the function of the
contemporary money-credit system to bring  worker
and  material together and stimulate their union.
That system always justified  its  activities  on
that  ground,  that is its claim to exist, and if
it does not exist for that purpose then for  what
purpose  does  it  exist and what further need is
there for it? If now the financial mechanism will
not work, if it confronts us with a non possumus,
then clearly it resigns its function.

Then it has to  get  out  of  the  way.  It  will
declare the world has stopped when the truth will
be  that  the  City  has  stopped.  It   is   the
counting-house that has gone bankrupt. For a long
time now an increasing number of people have been
asking  questions about the world counting-house,
getting  down  at  last   to   such   fundamental
questions  as  "What  is  money?"  and  "Why  are
Banks?" It is disconcerting  but  stimulating  to
find that no lucid answer is forthcoming.

One might have imagined that long before this one
of the many great bankers and  financial  experts
in our world would have come forward with a clear
and  simple  justification   for   the   monetary
practices  of  to-day.  He  would  have shown how
completely  reasonable   and   trustworthy   this
money-credit system was. He would have shown what
was temporarily wrong with it and how to  set  it
working  again,  as the electrician does when the
lights go out. He would have released us from our
deepening  distress  about our money in the Bank,
our little  squirrel  hoard  of  securities,  the
deflating lifebelt of property that was to assure
our independence to  the  end.  No  one  of  that
quality  comes forward. There is not so much as a
latter-day Bagehot. It dawns upon more  and  more
of  us  that  it is not a system at all and never
has been a system, that it is an accumulation  of
conventions,  usages, collateral developments and
compensatory expedients,  which  creaks  now  and
sways  more  and  more  and gives every sign of a
complete and horrifying social collapse.

Most of us have believed up to  the  last  moment
that  somewhere  distributed  among the banks and
city offices in a sort of  world  counting-house,
there   were  books  of  accounts,  multitudinous
perhaps  and  intricate,  but  ultimately  proper
accounts. Only now is it dawning upon comfortable
decent people that the  counting-house  is  in  a
desperate  mess,  that  codes  seem  to have been
lost, entries made wrong, additions  gone  astray
down the column, records kept in vanishing ink. .
. .

For years there has  been  a  great  and  growing
literature about money. It is very various but it
has one general characteristic. First there is  a
swift  exposure  of the existing system as wrong.
Then there is  a  glib  demonstration  of  a  new
system  which  is right. Let this be done or that
be done, "let the nation own its own money", says
one  radio prophet earnestly, repeatedly, simply,
and all will be well. These  various  systems  of
doctrine   run  periodicals,  organise  movements
(with    coloured    shirt    complete),    meet,
demonstrate.  They  disregard  each other flatly.
And  without   exception   all   these   monetary
reformers betray signs of extreme mental strain.

The  secret  trouble  in  their  minds is gnawing
doubt that their own proper "plan", the  panacea,
is  in  some subtle and treacherous way likely to
fail them if it is put to the test. The  internal
fight  against  this  intolerable  shadow betrays
itself in their outer  behaviour.  Their  letters
and  pamphlets,  with scarcely an exception, have
this much in common with  the  letters  one  gets
from  lunatics,  that there is a continual resort
to capital letters and abusive terms. They  shout
out  at  the  slightest provocation or none. They
are not so  much  shouting  at  the  exasperating
reader  who  remains  so obstinate when they have
been so clear, so  clear,  as  at  the  sceptical
whisper within.

Because  there  is  no  perfect  money  system by
itself and there never can be. It is a dream like
the elixir vitæ or perpetual motion. It is in the
same order of thought.

Attention  has  already  been   drawn,   in   our
examination  of  Mr  Streit’s proposals for Union
Now, to the fact that money varies in its  nature
and  operations  with  the theory of property and
distribution on which society is based, that in a
complete  collectivism  for  example  it  becomes
little more than the check handed to  the  worker
to  enable him to purchase whatever he likes from
the resources of the community. Every  detachment
of   production  or  enterprise  from  collective
control (national or cosmopolitan) increases  the
possible  functions  of  money  and  so  makes  a
different thing of it. Thus there can be  endless
species  of  money  -  as  many types of money as
there are types and varieties  of  social  order.
Money  in Soviet Russia is a different organ from
money French or American  money.  The  difference
can be as wide as that between lungs and swimming
bladders  and  gills.  It   is   not   simply   a
quantitative  difference,  as so many people seem
to imagine, which can be adjusted by varying  the
rate of exchange or any such contrivance, it goes
deeper, it is a difference in quality  and  kind.
The  bare  thought of that makes our business and
financial people feel uncomfortable and  confused
and  menaced, and they go on moving their bars of
gold about from this vault to that, hoping almost
beyond  hope  that  no one will say anything more
about it. It worked very well for a time,  to  go
on  as  though  money  was the same thing all the
world  over.  They  will  not  admit   how   that
assumption is failing to work now.

Clever  people  reaped a certain advantage from a
more  or  less  definite  apprehension   of   the
variable nature of money, but since one could not
be a financier or business  director  without  an
underlying  faith  in  one’s  right  to profit by
one’s superior cleverness, there did not seem  to
be  any  reason  for  them  to make a public fuss
about it. They got their profits  and  the  flats
got left.

Directly  we  grasp  this  not very obscure truth
that there can be, and are,  different  sorts  of
money  dependent on the economic usages or system
in    operation,    which    are    not    really
interchangeable,  then  it  becomes  plain that a
collectivist world order, whose  fundamental  law
is  such  a  Declaration  of  Rights  as  we have
sketched, will have to carry  on  its  main,  its
primary  operations  at  least  with  a new world
money, a specially contrived money, differing  in
its  nature  from  any  sort of money conventions
that have hitherto served human needs. It will be
issued  against  the  total purchasable output of
the community in return for the workers’ services
to  the  community.  There will be no more reason
for going to the City for a loan than  for  going
to the oracle at Delphi for advice about it.

In  the  phase  of  social  stress  and emergency
socialisation  into  which   we   are   certainly
passing,  such  a  new  money may begin to appear
quite soon. Governments finding it impossible  to
resort to the tangled expedients of the financial
counting-house,  may  take   a   short   cut   to
recuperation,  requisition the national resources
within their reach  and  set  their  unemployment
hands  to work by means of these new checks. They
may carry out international  barter  arrangements
upon  an  increasing  scale.  The  fact  that the
counting-house is in a hopeless mess  because  of
its  desperate  attempts  to  ignore  the protean
nature of money, will become more manifest as  it
becomes less important.

The  Stock  Exchange and Bank credit and all arts
of  loaning  and  usury  and  forestalling   will
certainly  dwindle  away  together  as  the World
Order establishes itself. If and when World Order
establishes itself. They will be superseded, like
egg-shells  and  fœtal  membranes.  There  is  no
reason  for  denouncing  those  who  devised  and
worked  those   methods   and   institutions   as
scoundrels   and   villains.  They  did  honestly
according to their lights. They were a  necessary
part  of  the process of getting Homo sapiens out
of his cave and down from  his  tree.  And  gold,
that  lovely  heavy  stuff, will be released from
its vaults and hiding-places for the use  of  the
artist  and  technician  -  probably  at  a price
considerably below the present quotations.

Our attempt to forecast the coming World Order is
framed   then   in   an  immense  and  increasing
spectacle  of  constructive  activity.   We   can
anticipate a rapid transfiguration of the face of
the earth as its population  is  distributed  and
re-distributed  in  accordance  with the shifting
requirements of economic production.

It is not only that there is  what  is  called  a
housing  shortage  in  nearly every region of the
earth, but most of the existing accommodation, by
modern  standards, is unfit for human occupation.
There is scarcely a city in the  world,  the  new
world  as well as the old, which does not need to
have half its dwelling-places destroyed.  Perhaps
Stockholm,   reconditioned   under   a  Socialist
regime, may claim to be an exception; Vienna  was
doing  hopefully  until  its spirit was broken by
Dollfuss and the Catholic reaction. For the rest,
behind  a few hundred main avenues and prospects,
sea and river fronts, capitols, castles  and  the
like,   filthy   slums   and   rookeries  cripple
childhood and degrade and devitalise  its  dulled
elders.  You  can hardly say people are born into
such surroundings; they are only half born.

With the co-operation of the press and the cinema
it  would be easy to engender a world-wide public
interest and enthusiasm for the new types of home
and  fitment that are now attainable by everyone.
Here would be an outlet for  urban  and  regional
patriotism, for local shame and pride and effort.
Here would be stuff to argue about. Wherever  men
and  women have been rich enough, powerful enough
and free enough, their thoughts  have  turned  to
architecture  and  gardening. Here would be a new
incentive to travel, to see what other towns  and
country-sides  were  doing. The common man on his
holidays would do what the English milord of  the
seventeenth  century did; he would make his Grand
Tour  and  come  back  from  his  journeys   with
architectural   drawings  and  notions  for  home
application. And  this  building  and  rebuilding
would   be  a  continuing  process,  a  sustained
employment, going on from good to better, as  the
economic  forces  shifted  and  changed  with new
discoveries and men’s ideas expanded.

It is doubtful in a world  of  rising  needs  and
standards  if  many  people would want to live in
manifestly old houses, any more than  they  would
want  to  live  in  old  clothes. Except in a few
country  places  where  ancient  buildings   have
wedded   themselves   happily   to   some   local
loveliness and become  quasi-natural  things,  or
where some great city has shown a brave facade to
the world, I doubt  if  there  will  be  much  to
preserve.  In  such  large  open countries as the
United  States  there  has  been  a  considerable
development  of  the mobile home in recent years.
People haul a trailer-home behind their cars  and
become  seasonal  nomads.  .  . . But there is no
need to expatiate further on a  limitless  wealth
of  possibilities.  Thousands  of  those who have
been   assisting   in   the   monstrous    clumsy
evacuations and shiftings of population that have
been going  on  recently,  must  have  had  their
imaginations  stirred  by  dim realisation of how
much better all this might be done,  if  it  were
done  in  a  new  spirit  and  with  a  different
intention. There must be a multitude of young and
youngish  people quite ripe for infection by this
idea of cleaning up  and  resettling  the  world.
Young  men  who  are now poring over war maps and
planning annexations  and  strategic  boundaries,
fresh   Maginot   lines,   new   Gibraltars   and
Dardanelles, may presently be scheming the  happy
and    healthy   distribution   of   routes   and
residential districts in relation to this or that
important region of world supply for oil or wheat
or water-power. It is essentially the  same  type
of cerebration, better employed.

Considerations  of  this  sort  are sufficient to
supply a background of hopeful activities to  our
prospective  world  order.  But  we  are  not all
architects and gardeners there are many types  of
minds and many of those who are training or being
trained for the skilled co-operations of  warfare
and the development of a combatant morale, may be
more  disposed   to   go   on   with   definitely
educational  work.  In  that  way  they  can most
easily  gratify  the  craving   for   power   and
honourable  service.  They  will  face a world in
extreme need of more  teachers  and  fresh-minded
and inspiring teachers at that. At every level of
educational work from  the  kindergarten  to  the
research  laboratory,  and  in  every part of the
world from Capricornia to  Alaska  and  from  the
Gold Coast to Japan, there will be need of active
workers to bring  minds  into  harmony  with  new
order and to work out, with all the labour saving
and  multiplying  apparatus  available,   cinema,
radio,  cheap books and pictures and all the rest
of it, the endless new problems of human  liaison
that  will  arise. There we have a second line of
work along which millions  of  young  people  may
escape   the  stagnation  and  frustration  which
closed in upon  their  predecessors  as  the  old
order drew to its end.

A  sturdy  and assertive variety of the new young
will be needed for the police work of the  world.
They will be more disposed for authority and less
teaching  or  creative  activities   than   their
fellows.  The old proverb will still hold for the
new order that it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a
world,  and  the alternative to driving this type
of temperament into conspiracy  and  fighting  it
and, if you can, suppressing it, is to employ it,
win it over, trust it, and give it law behind  it
to  respect  and enforce. They want a loyalty and
this  loyalty  will  find  its   best   use   and
satisfaction  in  the  service  of world order. I
have remarked in the course of such air travel as
I  have done, that the airmen of all nations have
a common resemblance to each other and  that  the
patriotic   virus   in  their  blood  is  largely
corrected by a wider professionalism. At  present
the outlook before a young airmen is to perish in
a spectacular dog-fight before  he  is  five  and
twenty.  I wonder how many of them really rejoice
in that prospect.

It  is  not  unreasonable   to   anticipate   the
development of an ad hoc disarmament police which
will have its greatest strength in the  air.  How
easily  the  spirit  of  an  air  police  can  be
de-nationalised is shown by the instance  of  the
air patrols on the United States-Canadian border,
to which President Roosevelt drew  my  attention.
There is a lot of smuggling along that border and
the planes now play  an  important  part  in  its
suppression.  At  first  the  United  States  and
Canada had each their own planes. Then in a  wave
of  common  sense,  the two services were pooled.
Each  plane  now  carries  a  United  States  and
Canadian  customs  officer.  When  contraband  is
spotted the plane comes  down  on  it  and  which
officer  acts is determined by the destination of
the smuggled goods. There we have a pattern for a
world struggling through federation to collective
unity. An ad hoc disarmament police with its main
strength  in  the air would necessarily fall into
close co-operation with the various  other  world
police activities. In a world where criminals can
fly anywhere, the police  must  be  able  to  fly
anywhere   too.  Already  we  have  a  world-wide
network of competent men fighting the white-slave
traffic, the drug traffic and so forth. The thing
begins already.

All this I write to provide imaginative  material
for  those  who  see  the  coming order as a mere
blank interrogation. People  talk  much  nonsense
about   the   disappearance  of  incentive  under
socialism. The exact opposite is the truth. It is
the    obstructive   appropriation   of   natural
resources by  private  ownership  that  robs  the
prosperous of incentive and the poor of hope. Our
Declaration of Human rights  assures  a  man  the
proper  satisfaction  of all his elementary needs
in kind, and nothing more. If he wants more  than
that  he  will  have  to  work  for  it,  and the
healthier he is and the  better  he  is  fed  and
housed,  the  more bored he will be by inactivity
and the more he will want something to do.  I  am
suggesting  what  he  is  likely to do in general
terms, and that is as much as one can do now.  We
can  talk  about  the broad principles upon which
these matters will be handled in a  consolidating
world  socialism,  but we can scarcely venture to
anticipate  the  detailed  forms,   the   immense
richness    and   variety   of   expression,   an
ever-increasing number of intelligent people will
impose upon these primary ideas.

But  there is one more structural suggestion that
it may be necessary to bring into our picture. So
far  as I know it was first broached by that very
bold and subtle thinker, Professor William James,
in  a small book entitled The Moral Equivalent of
War. He pointed out the need there might be for a
conception of duty, side by side with the idea of
rights, that there should  be  something  in  the
life  of  every citizen, man or woman alike, that
should give him  at  once  a  sense  of  personal
obligation  to  the  World State. He brought that
into relation  with  the  fact  that  there  will
remain  in  any  social  order we can conceive, a
multitude of necessary services which by no  sort
of  device  can  be  made  attractive  as  normal
life-long occupations. He  was  not  thinking  so
much  of the fast-vanishing problem of mechanical
toil as the such  irksome  tasks  as  the  prison
warder’s, the asylum attendant’s; the care of the
aged and infirm, nursing  generally,  health  and
sanitary services, a certain residuum of clerical
routine, dangerous exploration and experiment. No
doubt  human  goodness  is  sufficient  to supply
volunteers for many of these things, but are  the
rest  of us entitled to profit by their devotion?
His solution  is  universal  conscription  for  a
certain  period of the adult life. The young will
have to do so much service and take so much  risk
for the general welfare as the world commonwealth
requires. They will be able to do these jobs with
the  freshness  and vigour of those who know they
will presently be released, and  who  find  their
honour  through  performance;  they  will  not be
subjected  to  that   deadening   temptation   to
self-protective     slacking    and    mechanical
insensitiveness, which assails all who are thrust
by  economic  necessity  into  these callings for
good and all.

It is quite possible that a certain percentage of
these conscripts may be caught by the interest of
what they are doing;  the  asylum  attendant  may
decide  to specialise in psycho-therapeutic work;
the hospital  nurse  succumb  to  that  curiosity
which   underlies  the  great  physiologist;  the
Arctic worker may fall in  love  with  his  snowy
wilderness. . . .

One  other  leading probability of a collectivist
world order has to be noted here, and that is  an
enormous  increase  in  the  pace  and  amount of
research and discovery. I write research, but  by
that  I  mean  that  double-barrelled attack upon
ignorance, the biological attack and the physical
attack,  that  is  generally  known as "Science".
"Science" comes to us from  those  academic  Dark
Ages when men had to console themselves for their
ignorance by pretending that there was a  limited
amount  of  knowledge  in  the  world, and little
chaps in caps and gowns strutted about, bachelors
who  knew  all that there was to be known. Now it
is manifest that none of us know very  much,  and
the  more we look into what we think we know, the
more hitherto undetected  things  we  shall  find
lurking in our assumptions.

Hitherto this business of research, which we call
the "scientific world", has been in the hands  of
very   few   workers  indeed.  I  throw  out  the
suggestion that in our present-day world, of  all
the   brains   capable  of  great  and  masterful
contributions   to   "scientific"   thought   and
achievement,   brains  of  the  quality  of  Lord
Rutherford’s, or Darwin’s or Mendel’s or  Freud’s
or   Leonardo’s   or  Galileo’s,  not  one  in  a
thousand, not one in a score of  thousands,  ever
gets  born into such conditions as to realise its
opportunities. The rest never learn  a  civilised
language,  never  get  near a library, never have
the faintest chance  of  self-realisation,  never
hear the call. They are under-nourished, they die
young, they are misused. And of the millions  who
would make good, useful, eager secondary research
workers and explorers, not one in  a  million  is
utilised.

But  now  consider how things will be if we had a
stirring education ventilating the  whole  world,
and  if  we had a systematic and continually more
competent search for exceptional  mental  quality
and   a   continually   more   extensive  net  of
opportunity for it. Suppose a  quickening  public
mind  implies an atmosphere of increasing respect
for   intellectual   achievement   and   livelier
criticism  of  imposture. What we call scientific
progress to-day would seem  a  poor,  hesitating,
uncertain  advance  in comparison with what would
be happening under these happier conditions.

The  progress  of  research  and  discovery   has
produced  such brilliant and startling results in
the past century and a half that few  of  us  are
aware  of the small number of outstanding men who
have been concerned in  it,  and  how  the  minor
figures  behind  these  leaders  trail off into a
following of timid and  ill-provided  specialists
who  dare  scarcely stand up to a public official
on their  own  ground.  This  little  army,  this
"scientific world" of to-day, numbering I suppose
from   head   to   tail,   down   to   the   last
bottle-washer,  not  a couple of hundred thousand
men, will certainly be  represented  in  the  new
world  order  by  a  force  of  millions,  better
equipped, amply co-ordinated, free  to  question,
able  to  demand opportunity. Its best will be no
better than our best, who could  not  be  better,
but  they will be far more numerous, and its rank
and file,  explorers,  prospectors,  experimental
team   workers   and   an  encyclopædic  host  of
classifiers and co-ordinators  and  interpreters,
will  have  a vigour, a pride and confidence that
will  make  the  laboratories  of   to-day   seem
half-way back to the alchemist’s den.

Can  one  doubt  that the "scientific world" will
break out in this  way  when  the  revolution  is
achieved, and that the development of man’s power
over nature and over his own nature and over this
still unexplored planet, will undergo a continual
acceleration as the years pass? No man can  guess
beforehand  what  doors  will  open then nor upon
what wonderlands.

These are some  fragmentary  intimations  of  the
quality  of that wider life a new world order can
open to mankind. I  will  not  speculate  further
about  them because I would not have it said that
this book is Utopian or "Imaginative" or anything
of that sort. I have set down nothing that is not
strictly reasonable and practicable.  It  is  the
soberest  of  books  and  the  least  original of
books. I think I have written enough to show that
it  is  impossible for world affairs to remain at
their present level. Either mankind collapses  or
our  species  struggles up by the hard yet fairly
obvious routes I have collated in this  book,  to
reach  a  new level of social organisation. There
can  be  little  question   of   the   abundance,
excitement  and  vigour of living that awaits our
children upon that upland.  If  it  is  attained.
There is no doubting their degradation and misery
if it is not.

There is nothing really novel  about  this  book.
But there has been a certain temerity in bringing
together facts  that  many  people  have  avoided
bringing  together  for  fear  they might form an
explosive mixture.  Maybe  they  will.  They  may
blast  through some obstinate mental barriers. In
spite  of  that   explosive   possibility,   that
explosive  necessity,  it  may  be  this  remains
essentially    an    assemblage,    digest    and
encouragement   of   now   prevalent   but  still
hesitating ideas. It is a plain statement of  the
revolution  to  which reason points an increasing
number  of  minds,  but  which  they  still  lack
resolution  to  undertake.  In  The  Fate of Homo
sapiens I have stressed the urgency of the  case.
Here  I  have  assembled  the things they can and
need to do.  They  had  better  summon  up  their
resolution.

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