In The Fourth Year - H.G. Wells
Mr. WELLS has also written the following novels:
LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM
KIPPS
MR. POLLY
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
ANN VERONICA
TONO BUNGAY
MARRIAGE
BEALBY
THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN
THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT
MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH
THE SOUL OF A BISHOP
The following fantastic and imaginative romances:
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
THE TIME MACHINE
THE WONDERFUL VISIT
THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
THE SEA LADY
THE SLEEPER AWAKES
THE FOOD OF THE GODS
THE WAR IN THE AIR
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET
THE WORLD SET FREE
And numerous Short Stories now collected in One
Volume under the title of
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
A Series of books upon Social, Religious and Political questions:
ANTICIPATIONS (1900)
MANKIND IN THE MAKING
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
A MODERN UTOPIA
THE FUTURE IN AMERICA
AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD
WHAT IS COMING?
WAR AND THE FUTURE
GOD THE INVISIBLE KING
And two little books about children's play, called:
FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS
IN THE FOURTH YEAR
ANTICIPATIONS OF A WORLD PEACE
BY
H. G. WELLS
AUTHOR OF "MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH,"
"THE WAR AND THE FUTURE," "WHAT IS COMING?" "THE WAR THAT WILL
END WAR," "THE WORLD SET FREE," "IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET," AND
"A MODERN UTOPIA"
1918
PREFACE
In the latter half of 1914 a few of us were writing that this war was a
"War of Ideas." A phrase, "The War to end War," got into circulation,
amidst much sceptical comment. It was a phrase powerful enough to sway
many men, essentially pacifists, towards taking an active part in the
war against German imperialism, but it was a phrase whose chief content
was its aspiration. People were already writing in those early days of
disarmament and of the abolition of the armament industry throughout the
world; they realized fully the element of industrial belligerency behind
the shining armour of imperialism, and they denounced the "Krupp-Kaiser"
alliance. But against such writing and such thought we had to count, in
those days, great and powerful realities. Even to those who expressed
these ideas there lay visibly upon them the shadow of impracticability;
they were very "advanced" ideas in 1914, very Utopian. Against them was
an unbroken mass of mental habit and public tradition. While we talked
of this "war to end war," the diplomatists of the Powers allied against
Germany were busily spinning a disastrous web of greedy secret treaties,
were answering aggression by schemes of aggression, were seeing in the
treacherous violence of Germany only the justification for
countervailing evil acts. To them it was only another war for
"ascendancy." That was three years and a half ago, and since then this
"war of ideas" has gone on to a phase few of us had dared hope for in
those opening days. The Russian revolution put a match to that pile of
secret treaties and indeed to all the imperialist plans of the Allies;
in the end it will burn them all. The greatest of the Western Allies is
now the United States of America, and the Americans have come into this
war simply for an idea. Three years and a half ago a few of us were
saying this was a war against the idea of imperialism, not German
imperialism merely, but British and French and Russian imperialism, and
we were saying this not because it was so, but because we hoped to see
it become so. To-day we can say so, because now it is so.
In those days, moreover, we said this is the "war to end war," and we
still did not know clearly how. We thought in terms of treaties and
alliances. It is largely the detachment and practical genius of the
great English-speaking nation across the Atlantic that has carried the
world on beyond and replaced that phrase by the phrase, "The League of
Nations," a phrase suggesting plainly the organization of a sufficient
instrument by which war may be ended for ever. In 1913 talk of a World
League of Nations would have seemed, to the extremest pitch, "Utopian."
To-day the project has an air not only of being so practicable, but of
being so urgent and necessary and so manifestly the sane thing before
mankind that not to be busied upon it, not to be making it more widely
known and better understood, not to be working out its problems and
bringing it about, is to be living outside of the contemporary life of
the world. For a book upon any other subject at the present time some
apology may be necessary, but a book upon this subject is as natural a
thing to produce now as a pair of skates in winter when the ice begins
to bear.
All we writers find ourselves engaged perforce in some part or other of
a world-wide propaganda of this the most creative and hopeful of
political ideas that has ever dawned upon the consciousness of mankind.
With no concerted plan we feel called upon to serve it. And in no
connection would one so like to think oneself un-original as in this
connection. It would be a dismaying thing to realize that one were
writing anything here which was not the possible thought of great
multitudes of other people, and capable of becoming the common thought
of mankind. One writes in such a book as this not to express oneself but
to swell a chorus. The idea of the League of Nations is so great a one
that it may well override the pretensions and command the allegiance of
kings; much more does it claim the self-subjugation of the journalistic
writer. Our innumerable books upon this great edifice of a World Peace
do not constitute a scramble for attention, but an attempt to express in
every variety of phrase and aspect this one system of ideas which now
possesses us all. In the same way the elementary facts and ideas of the
science of chemistry might conceivably be put completely and fully into
one text-book, but, as a matter of fact, it is far more convenient to
tell that same story over in a thousand different forms, in a text-book
for boys here, for a different sort or class of boy there, for adult
students, for reference, for people expert in mathematics, for people
unused to the scientific method, and so on. For the last year the writer
has been doing what he can--and a number of other writers have been
doing what they can--to bring about a united declaration of all the
Atlantic Allies in favour of a League of Nations, and to define the
necessary nature of that League. He has, in the course of this work,
written a series of articles upon the League and upon _the necessary
sacrifices of preconceptions_ that the idea involves in the London
press. He has also been trying to clear his own mind upon the real
meaning of that ambiguous word "democracy," for which the League is to
make the world "safe." The bulk of this book is made up of these
discussions. For a very considerable number of readers, it may be well
to admit here, it can have no possible interest; they will have come at
these questions themselves from different angles and they will have long
since got to their own conclusions. But there may be others whose angle
of approach may be similar to the writer's, who may have asked some or
most of the questions he has had to ask, and who may be actively
interested in the answers and the working out of the answers he has made
to these questions. For them this book is printed.
H. G. WELLS.
_May_, 1918.
It is a dangerous thing to recommend specific books out of so large and
various a literature as the "League of Nations" idea has already
produced, but the reader who wishes to reach beyond the range of this
book, or who does not like its tone and method, will probably find
something to meet his needs and tastes better in Marburg's "League of
Nations," a straightforward account of the American side of the movement
by the former United States Minister in Belgium, on the one hand, or in
the concluding parts of Mr. Fayle's "Great Settlement" (1915), a frankly
sceptical treatment from the British Imperialist point of view, on the
other. An illuminating discussion, advocating peace treaties rather than
a league, is Sir Walter Phillimore's "Three Centuries of Treaties." Two
excellent books from America, that chance to be on my table, are Mr.
Goldsmith's "League to Enforce Peace" and "A World in Ferment" by
President Nicholas Murray Butler. Mater's "Societe des Nations" (Didier)
is an able presentation of a French point of view. Brailsford's "A
League of Nations" is already a classic of the movement in England, and
a very full and thorough book; and Hobson's "Towards International
Government" is a very sympathetic contribution from the English liberal
left; but the reader must understand that these two writers seem
disposed to welcome a peace with an unrevolutionized Germany, an idea to
which, in common with most British people, I am bitterly opposed.
Walsh's "World Rebuilt" is a good exhortation, and Mugge's "Parliament
of Man" is fresh and sane and able. The omnivorous reader will find good
sense and quaint English in Judge Mejdell's "_Jus Gentium_," published
in English by Olsen's of Christiania. There is an active League of
Nations Society in Dublin, as well as the London and Washington ones,
publishing pamphlets and conducting propaganda. All these books and
pamphlets I have named happen to lie upon my study table as I write, but
I have made no systematic effort to get together literature upon the
subject, and probably there are just as many books as good of which I
have never even heard. There must, I am sure, be statements of the
League of Nations idea forthcoming from various religious standpoints,
but I do not know any sufficiently well to recommend them. It is
incredible that neither the Roman Catholic Church, the English Episcopal
Church, nor any Nonconformist body has made any effort as an
organization to forward this essentially religious end of peace on
earth. And also there must be German writings upon this same topic. I
mention these diverse sources not in order to present a bibliography,
but because I should be sorry to have the reader think that this little
book pretends to state _the_ case rather than _a_ case for the League of
Nations.
CONTENTS
I. THE WAY TO CONCRETE REALIZATION
II. THE LEAGUE MUST BE REPRESENTATIVE
III. THE NECESSARY POWERS OF THE LEAGUE
IV. THE LABOUR VIEW OF MIDDLE AFRICA
V. GETTING THE LEAGUE IDEA CLEAR IN RELATION TO
IMPERIALISM
VI. THE WAR AIMS OF THE WESTERN ALLIES COMPACTLY STATED
VII. THE FUTURE OF MONARCHY
VIII. THE PLAIN NECESSITY FOR A LEAGUE
IX. DEMOCRACY
X. THE RECENT STRUGGLE FOR PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
IN GREAT BRITAIN
XI. THE STUDY AND PROPAGANDA OF DEMOCRACY
IN THE FOURTH YEAR
THE LEAGUE OF FREE NATIONS
I
THE WAY TO CONCRETE REALIZATION
More and more frequently does one hear this phrase, The League of
Nations, used to express the outline idea of the new world that will
come out of the war. There can be no doubt that the phrase has taken
hold of the imaginations of great multitudes of people: it is one of
those creative phrases that may alter the whole destiny of mankind. But
as yet it is still a very vague phrase, a cloudy promise of peace. I
make no apology therefore, for casting my discussion of it in the most
general terms. The idea is the idea of united human effort to put an end
to wars; the first practical question, that must precede all others, is
how far can we hope to get to a concrete realization of that?
But first let me note the fourth word in the second title of this book.
The common talk is of a "League of Nations" merely. I follow the man who
is, more than any other man, the leader of English political thought
throughout the world to-day, President Wilson, in inserting that
significant adjective "Free." We western allies know to-day what is
involved in making bargains with governments that do not stand for their
peoples; we have had all our Russian deal, for example, repudiated and
thrust back upon our hands; and it is clearly in his mind, as it must be
in the minds of all reasonable men, that no mere "scrap of paper," with
just a monarch's or a chancellor's endorsement, is a good enough earnest
of fellowship in the league. It cannot be a diplomatist's league. The
League of Nations, if it is to have any such effect as people seem to
hope from it, must be, in the first place, "understanded of the people."
It must be supported by sustained, deliberate explanation, and by
teaching in school and church and press of the whole mass of all the
peoples concerned. I underline the adjective "Free" here to set aside,
once for all, any possible misconception that this modern idea of a
League of Nations has any affinity to that Holy Alliance of the
diplomatists, which set out to keep the peace of Europe so disastrously
a century ago.
Later I will discuss the powers of the League. But before I come to
that I would like to say a little about the more general question of its
nature and authority. What sort of gathering will embody it? The
suggestions made range from a mere advisory body, rather like the Hague
convention, which will merely pronounce on the rights and wrongs of any
international conflict, to the idea of a sort of Super-State, a
Parliament of Mankind, a "Super National" Authority, practically taking
over the sovereignty of the existing states and empires of the world.
Most people's ideas of the League fall between these extremes. They want
the League to be something more than an ethical court, they want a
League that will act, but on the other hand they shrink from any loss of
"our independence." There seems to be a conflict here. There is a real
need for many people to tidy up their ideas at this point. We cannot
have our cake and eat it. If association is worth while, there must be
some sacrifice of freedom to association. As a very distinguished
colonial representative said to me the other day: "Here we are talking
of the freedom of small nations and the 'self-determination' of peoples,
and at the same time of the Council of the League of Nations and all
sorts of international controls. Which do we want?"
The answer, I think, is "Both." It is a matter of more or less, of
getting the best thing at the cost of the second-best. We may want to
relax an old association in order to make a newer and wider one. It is
quite understandable that peoples aware of a distinctive national
character and involved in some big existing political complex, should
wish to disentangle themselves from one group of associations in order
to enter more effectively into another, a greater, and more satisfactory
one. The Finn or the Pole, who has hitherto been a rather reluctant
member of the synthesis of the Russian empire, may well wish to end that
attachment in order to become a free member of a worldwide brotherhood.
The desire for free arrangement is not a desire for chaos. There is such
a thing as untying your parcels in order to pack them better, and I do
not see myself how we can possibly contemplate a great league of freedom
and reason in the world without a considerable amount of such
preliminary dissolution.
It happens, very fortunately for the world, that a century and a quarter
ago thirteen various and very jealous states worked out the problem of a
Union, and became--after an enormous, exhausting wrangle--the United
States of America. Now the way they solved their riddle was by
delegating and giving over jealously specified sovereign powers and
doing all that was possible to retain the residuum. They remained
essentially sovereign states. New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, for
example, remained legally independent. The practical fusion of these
peoples into one people outran the legal bargain. It was only after long
years of discussion that the point was conceded; it was indeed only
after the Civil War that the implications were fully established, that
there resided a sovereignty in the American people as a whole, as
distinguished from the peoples of the several states. This is a
precedent that every one who talks about the League of Nations should
bear in mind. These states set up a congress and president in Washington
with strictly delegated powers. That congress and president they
delegated to look after certain common interests, to deal with
interstate trade, to deal with foreign powers, to maintain a supreme
court of law. Everything else--education, militia, powers of life and
death--the states retained for themselves. To this day, for instance,
the federal courts and the federal officials have no power to interfere
to protect the lives or property of aliens in any part of the union
outside the district of Columbia. The state governments still see to
that. The federal government has the legal right perhaps to intervene,
but it is still chary of such intervention. And these states of the
American Union were at the outset so independent-spirited that they
would not even adopt a common name. To this day they have no common
name. We have to call them Americans, which is a ridiculous name when we
consider that Canada, Mexico, Peru, Brazil are all of them also in
America. Or else we have to call them Virginians, Californians, New
Englanders, and so forth. Their legal and nominal separateness weighs
nothing against the real fusion that their great league has now made
possible.
Now, that clearly is a precedent of the utmost value in our schemes for
this council of the League of Nations. We must begin by delegating, as
the States began by delegating. It is a far cry to the time when we
shall talk and think of the Sovereign People of the Earth. That council
of the League of Nations will be a tie as strong, we hope, but certainly
not so close and multiplex as the early tie of the States at Washington.
It will begin by having certain delegated powers and no others. It will
be an "_ad hoc_" body. Later its powers may grow as mankind becomes
accustomed to it. But at first it will have, directly or mediately, all
the powers that seem necessary to restrain the world from war--and
unless I know nothing of patriotic jealousies it will have not a scrap
of power more. The danger is much more that its powers will be
insufficient than that they will be excessive. Of that later. What I
want to discuss here now is the constitution of this delegated body. I
want to discuss that first in order to set aside out of the discussion
certain fantastic notions that will otherwise get very seriously in our
way. Fantastic as they are, they have played a large part in reducing
the Hague Tribunal to an ineffective squeak amidst the thunders of this
war.
A number of gentlemen scheming out world unity in studies have begun
their proposals with the simple suggestion that each sovereign power
should send one member to the projected parliament of mankind. This has
a pleasant democratic air; one sovereign state, one vote. Now let us run
over a list of sovereign states and see to what this leads us. We find
our list includes the British Empire, with a population of four hundred
millions, of which probably half can read and write some language or
other; Bogota with a population of a million, mostly poets; Hayti with a
population of a million and a third, almost entirely illiterate and
liable at any time to further political disruption; Andorra with a
population of four or five thousand souls. The mere suggestion of equal
representation between such "powers" is enough to make the British
Empire burst into a thousand (voting) fragments. A certain concession
to population, one must admit, was made by the theorists; a state of
over three millions got, if I remember rightly, two delegates, and if
over twenty, three, and some of the small states were given a kind of
intermittent appearance, they only came every other time or something of
that sort; but at The Hague things still remained in such a posture that
three or four minute and backward states could outvote the British
Empire or the United States. Therein lies the clue to the insignificance
of The Hague. Such projects as these are idle projects and we must put
them out of our heads; they are against nature; the great nations will
not suffer them for a moment.
But when we dismiss this idea of representation by states, we are left
with the problem of the proportion of representation and of relative
weight in the Council of the League on our hands. It is the sort of
problem that appeals terribly to the ingenious. We cannot solve it by
making population a basis, because that will give a monstrous importance
to the illiterate millions of India and China. Ingenious statistical
schemes have been framed in which the number of university graduates and
the steel output come in as multipliers, but for my own part I am not
greatly impressed by statistical schemes. At the risk of seeming
something of a Prussian, I would like to insist upon certain brute
facts. The business of the League of Nations is to keep the peace of the
world and nothing else. No power will ever dare to break the peace of
the world if the powers that are capable of making war under modern
conditions say "_No_." And there are only four powers certainly capable
at the present time of producing the men and materials needed for a
modern war in sufficient abundance to go on fighting: Britain, France,
Germany, and the United States. There are three others which are very
doubtfully capable: Italy, Japan, and Austria. Russia I will mark--it is
all that one can do with Russia just now--with a note of interrogation.
Some day China may be war capable--I hope never, but it is a
possibility. Personally I don't think that any other power on earth
would have a ghost of a chance to resist the will--if it could be an
honestly united will--of the first-named four. All the rest fight by the
sanction of and by association with these leaders. They can only fight
because of the split will of the war-complete powers. Some are forced to
fight by that very division.
No one can vie with me in my appreciation of the civilization of
Switzerland, Sweden, or Holland, but the plain fact of the case is that
such powers are absolutely incapable of uttering an effective protest
against war. Far less so are your Haytis and Liberias. The preservation
of the world-peace rests with the great powers and with the great powers
alone. If they have the will for peace, it is peace. If they have not,
it is conflict. The four powers I have named can now, if they see fit,
dictate the peace of the world for ever.
Let us keep our grip on that. Peace is the business of the great powers
primarily. Steel output, university graduates, and so forth may be
convenient secondary criteria, may be useful ways of measuring war
efficiency, but the meat and substance of the Council of the League of
Nations must embody the wills of those leading peoples. They can give an
enduring peace to the little nations and the whole of mankind. It can
arrive in no other way. So I take it that the Council of an ideal League
of Nations must consist chiefly of the representatives of the great
belligerent powers, and that the representatives of the minor allies and
of the neutrals--essential though their presence will be--must not be
allowed to swamp the voices of these larger masses of mankind.
And this state of affairs may come about more easily than logical,
statistical-minded people may be disposed to think. Our first impulse,
when we discuss the League of Nations idea, is to think of some very
elaborate and definite scheme of members on the model of existing
legislative bodies, called together one hardly knows how, and sitting
in a specially built League of Nations Congress House. All schemes are
more methodical than reality. We think of somebody, learned and
"expert," in spectacles, with a thin clear voice, reading over the
"Projected Constitution of a League of Nations" to an attentive and
respectful Peace Congress. But there is a more natural way to a league
than that. Instead of being made like a machine, the League of Nations
may come about like a marriage. The Peace Congress that must sooner or
later meet may itself become, after a time, the Council of a League of
Nations. The League of Nations may come upon us by degrees, almost
imperceptibly. I am strongly obsessed by the idea that that Peace
Congress will necessarily become--and that it is highly desirable that
it should become--a most prolonged and persistent gathering. Why should
it not become at length a permanent gathering, inviting representatives
to aid its deliberations from the neutral states, and gradually
adjusting itself to conditions of permanency?
I can conceive no such Peace Congress as those that have settled up
after other wars, settling up after this war. Not only has the war been
enormously bigger than any other war, but it has struck deeper at the
foundations of social and economic life. I doubt if we begin to realize
how much of the old system is dead to-day, how much has to be remade.
Since the beginnings of history there has been a credible promise of
gold payments underneath our financial arrangements. It is now an
incredible promise. The value of a pound note waves about while you look
at it. What will happen to it when peace comes no man can tell. Nor what
will happen to the mark. The rouble has gone into the Abyss. Our giddy
money specialists clutch their handfuls of paper and watch it flying
down the steep. Much as we may hate the Germans, some of us will have to
sit down with some of the enemy to arrange a common scheme for the
preservation of credit in money. And I presume that it is not proposed
to end this war in a wild scramble of buyers for such food as remains in
the world. There is a shortage now, a greater shortage ahead of the
world, and there will be shortages of supply at the source and transport
in food and all raw materials for some years to come. The Peace Congress
will have to sit and organize a share-out and distribution and
reorganization of these shattered supplies. It will have to Rhondda the
nations. Probably, too, we shall have to deal collectively with a
pestilence before we are out of the mess. Then there are such little
jobs as the reconstruction of Belgium and Serbia. There are considerable
rectifications of boundaries to be made. There are fresh states to be
created, in Poland and Armenia for example. About all these smaller
states, new and old, that the peace must call into being, there must be
a system of guarantees of the most difficult and complicated sort.