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diff --git a/33889.txt b/33889.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..086ea87 --- /dev/null +++ b/33889.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5809 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Salvaging Of Civilisation, by +H. G. (Herbert George) Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Salvaging Of Civilisation + +Author: H. G. (Herbert George) Wells + +Release Date: October 29, 2010 [EBook #33889] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SALVAGING OF CIVILISATION *** + + + + +Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZATION + + + + + THE SALVAGING + OF CIVILIZATION + + BY + + H. G. WELLS + + CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED + London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne + + 1921 + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + I. THE PROBABLE FUTURE OF MANKIND 1 + II. THE PROJECT OF A WORLD STATE 42 + III. THE ENLARGEMENT OF PATRIOTISM TO A WORLD STATE 68 + IV. THE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION; PART ONE 95 + V. THE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION; PART TWO 118 + VI. THE SCHOOLING OF THE WORLD 139 + VII. COLLEGE, NEWSPAPER AND BOOK 166 + VIII. THE ENVOY 193 + INDEX 199 + + + + +The Salvaging of Civilization + + + + +I + +THE PROBABLE FUTURE OF MANKIND[A] + + [A] First published in the _Review of Reviews_. + + +Sec. 1 + +The present outlook of human affairs is one that admits of broad +generalizations and that seems to require broad generalizations. We are +in one of those phases of experience which become cardinal in history. A +series of immense and tragic events have shattered the self-complacency +and challenged the will and intelligence of mankind. That easy general +forward movement of human affairs which for several generations had +seemed to justify the persuasion of a necessary and invincible progress, +progress towards greater powers, greater happiness, and a continual +enlargement of life, has been checked violently and perhaps arrested +altogether. The spectacular catastrophe of the Great War has revealed an +accumulation of destructive forces in our outwardly prosperous society, +of which few of us had dreamt; and it has also revealed a profound +incapacity to deal with and restrain these forces. The two years of +want, confusion, and indecision that have followed the Great War in +Europe and Asia, and the uncertainties that have disturbed life even in +the comparatively untouched American world, seem to many watchful minds +even more ominous to our social order than the war itself. What is +happening to our race? they ask. Did the prosperities and confident +hopes with which the twentieth century opened, mark nothing more than a +culmination of fortuitous good luck? Has the cycle of prosperity and +progress closed? To what will this staggering and blundering, the +hatreds and mischievous adventures of the present time, bring us? Is the +world in the opening of long centuries of confusion and disaster such as +ended the Western Roman Empire in Europe or the Han prosperity in China? +And if so, will the debacle extend to America? Or is the American (and +Pacific?) system still sufficiently removed and still sufficiently +autonomous to maintain a progressive movement of its own if the Old +World collapse? + +Some sort of answer to these questions, vast and vague though they are, +we must each one of us have before we can take an intelligent interest +or cast an effective vote in foreign affairs. Even though a man +formulate no definite answer, he must still have an implicit persuasion +before he can act in these matters. If he have no clear conclusions +openly arrived at, then he must act upon subconscious conclusions +instinctively arrived at. Far better is it that he should bring them +into the open light of thought. + +The suppression of war is generally regarded as central to the complex +of contemporary problems. But war is not a new thing in human +experience, and for scores of centuries mankind has managed to get along +in spite of its frequent recurrence. Most states and empires have been +intermittently at war throughout their periods of stability and +prosperity. But their warfare was not the warfare of the present time. +The thing that has brought the rush of progressive development of the +past century and a half to a sudden shock of arrest is not the old and +familiar warfare, but warfare strangely changed and exaggerated by novel +conditions. It is this change in conditions, therefore, and not war +itself, which is the reality we have to analyse in its bearing upon our +social and political ideas. In 1914 the European Great Powers resorted +to war, as they had resorted to war on many previous occasions, to +decide certain open issues. This war flamed out with an unexpected +rapidity until all the world was involved; and it developed a horror, a +monstrosity of destructiveness, and, above all, an inconclusiveness +quite unlike any preceding war. That unlikeness was the essence of the +matter. Whatever justifications could be found for its use in the past, +it became clear to many minds that under the new conditions war was no +longer a possible method of international dealing. The thing lay upon +the surface. The idea of a League of Nations sustaining a Supreme World +Court to supersede the arbitrament of war, did not so much arise at any +particular point as break out simultaneously wherever there were +intelligent men. + +Now what was this change in conditions that had confronted mankind with +the perplexing necessity of abandoning war? For perplexing it certainly +is. War has been a ruling and constructive idea in all human societies +up to the present time; few will be found to deny it. Political +institutions have very largely developed in relation to the idea of war; +defence and aggression have shaped the outer form of every state in the +world, just as co-operation sustained by compulsion has shaped its inner +organization. And if abruptly man determines to give up the waging of +war, he may find that this determination involves the most extensive and +penetrating modifications of political and social conceptions that do +not at the first glance betray any direct connection with belligerent +activities at all. + +It is to the general problem arising out of this consideration, that +this and the three following essays will be addressed; the question: +What else has to go if war is to go out of human life? and the problem +of what has to be done if it is to be banished and barred out for ever +from the future experiences of our race. For let us face the truth in +this matter; the abolition of war is no casting of ancient, barbaric, +and now obsolete traditions, no easy and natural progressive step; the +abolition of war, if it can be brought about, will be a reversal not +only of the general method of human life hitherto but of the general +method of nature, the method, that is, of conflict and survival. It will +be a new phase in the history of life, and not simply an incident in the +history of man. These brief essays will attempt to present something +like the true dimensions of the task before mankind if war is indeed to +be superseded, and to show that the project of abolishing war by the +occasional meeting of some Council of a League of Nations or the like, +is, in itself, about as likely to succeed as a proposal to abolish +thirst, hunger, and death by a short legislative act. + +Let us first examine the change in the conditions of human life that has +altered war from a normal aspect of the conflict for existence of human +societies into a terror and a threat for the entire species. The change +is essentially a change in the amount of power available for human +purposes, and more particularly in the amount of material power that can +be controlled by one individual. Human society up to a couple of +centuries ago was essentially a man-power and horse-power system. There +was in addition a certain limited use of water power and wind power, but +that was not on a scale to affect the general truth of the proposition. +The first intimation of the great change began seven centuries ago with +the appearance of explosives. In the thirteenth century the Mongols made +a very effective military use of the Chinese discovery of gunpowder. +They conquered most of the known world, and their introduction of a +low-grade explosive in warfare rapidly destroyed the immunity of castles +and walled cities, abolished knighthood, and utterly wrecked and +devastated the irrigation system of Mesopotamia, which had been a +populous and civilized region since before the beginnings of history. +But the restricted metallurgical knowledge of the time set definite +limits to the size and range of cannon. It was only with the nineteenth +century that the large scale production of cast steel and the growth of +chemical knowledge made the military use of a variety of explosives +practicable. The systematic extension of human power began in the +eighteenth century with the utilization of steam and coal. That opened a +crescendo of invention and discovery which thrust rapidly increasing +quantities of material energy into men's hands. Even now that crescendo +may not have reached its climax. + +We need not rehearse here the familiar story of the abolition of +distance that ensued; how the radiogram and the telegram have made every +event of importance a simultaneous event for the minds of everyone in +the world, how journeys which formerly took months or weeks now take +days or hours, nor how printing and paper have made possible a +universally informed community, and so forth. Nor will we describe the +effect of these things upon warfare. The point that concerns us here is +this, that before this age of discovery communities had fought and +struggled with each other much as naughty children might do in a crowded +nursery, _within the measure of their strength_. They had hurt and +impoverished each other, but they had rarely destroyed each other +completely. Their squabbles may have been distressing, but they were +tolerable. It is even possible to regard these former wars as healthy, +hardening and invigorating conflicts. But into this nursery has come +Science, and has put into the fists of these children razor blades with +poison on them, bombs of frightful explosive, corrosive fluids and the +like. The comparatively harmless conflicts of these infants are suddenly +fraught with quite terrific possibilities, and it is only a question of +sooner or later before the nursery becomes a heap of corpses or is blown +to smithereens. A real nursery invaded by a reckless person distributing +such gifts, would be promptly saved by the intervention of the nurse; +but humanity has no nurse but its own poor wisdom. And whether that poor +wisdom can rise to the pitch of effectual intervention is the most +fundamental problem in mundane affairs at the present time. + +The deadly gifts continue. There was a steady increase in the +frightfulness and destructiveness of belligerence from 1914 up to the +beginning of 1918, when shortage of material and energy checked the +process; and since the armistice there has been an industrious +development of military science. The next well-organized war, we are +assured, will be far more swift and extensive in its destruction--more +particularly of the civilian population. Armies will advance no longer +along roads but extended in line, with heavy tank transport which will +plough up the entire surface of the land they traverse; aerial bombing, +with bombs each capable of destroying a small town, will be practicable +a thousand miles beyond the military front, and the seas will be swept +clear of shipping by mines and submarine activities. There will be no +distinction between combatants and non-combatants, because every +able-bodied citizen, male or female, is a potential producer of food and +munitions; and probably the safest, and certainly the best supplied +shelters in the universal cataclysm, will be the carefully buried, +sandbagged, and camouflaged general-headquarters of the contending +armies. There military gentlemen of limited outlook and high +professional training will, in comparative security, achieve destruction +beyond their understanding. The hard logic of war which gives victory +always to the most energetic and destructive combatant, will turn +warfare more and more from mere operations for loot or conquest or +predominance into operations for the conclusive destruction of the +antagonists. A relentless thrust towards strenuousness is a +characteristic of belligerent conditions. War is war, and vehemence is +in its nature. You must hit always as hard as you can. Offensive and +counter-offensive methods continue to prevail over merely defensive +ones. The victor in the next great war will be bombed from the air, +starved, and depleted almost as much as the loser. His victory will be +no easy one; it will be a triumph of the exhausted and dying over the +dead. + +It has been argued that such highly organized and long prepared warfare +as the world saw in 1914-18 is not likely to recur again for a +considerable time because of the shock inflicted by it upon social +stability. There may be spasmodic wars with improvised and scanty +supplies, these superficially more hopeful critics admit, but there +remain no communities now so stable and so sure of their people as to +prepare and wage again a fully elaborated scientific war. But this view +implies no happier outlook for mankind. It amounts to this, that so long +as men remain disordered and impoverished they will not rise again to +the full height of scientific war. But manifestly this will only be for +so long as they remain disordered and impoverished. When they recover +they will recover to repeat again their former disaster with whatever +modern improvements and intensifications the ingenuity of the +intervening time may have devised. This new phase of disorder, +conflict, and social unravelling upon which we have entered, this phase +of decline due to the enhanced and increasing powers for waste and +destruction in mankind, is bound, therefore, to continue so long as the +divisions based upon ancient ideas of conflict remain; and if for a time +the decadence seems to be arrested, it will only be to accumulate under +the influence of those ideas a fresh war-storm sufficiently destructive +and disorganizing to restore the decadent process. + +Unless mankind can readjust its political and social ideas to this +essential new fact of its enormously enlarged powers, unless it can +eliminate or control its pugnacity, no other prospect seems open to us +but decadence, at least to such a level of barbarism as to lose and +forget again all the scientific and industrial achievements of our +present age. Then, with its powers shrunken to their former puny scale, +our race may recover some sort of balance between the injuries and +advantages of conflict. Or, since our decadent species may have less +vitality and vigour than it had in its primitive phases, it may dwindle +and fade out altogether before some emboldened animal antagonist, or +through some world-wide disease brought to it perhaps by rats and dogs +and insects and what not, who may be destined to be heirs to the rusting +and mouldering ruins of the cities and ports and ways and bridges of +to-day. + +Only one alternative to some such retrogression seems possible, and that +is the conscious, systematic reconstruction of human society to avert +it. The world has been brought into one community, and the human mind +and will may be able to recognize and adapt itself to this fact--in +time. Men, as a race, may succeed in turning their backs upon the method +of warfare and the methods of conflict and in embarking upon an immense +world-wide effort of co-operation and mutual toleration and salvage. +They may have the vigour to abandon their age-long attempt to live in +separate sovereign states, and to grapple with and master the now quite +destructive force that traditional hostility has become, and bring their +affairs together under one law and one peace. These new vast powers over +nature which have been given to them, and which will certainly be their +destruction if their purposes remain divergent and conflicting, will +then be the means by which they may set up a new order of as yet +scarcely imaginable interest and happiness and achievement. But is our +race capable of such an effort, such a complete reversal of its +instinctive and traditional impulses? Can we find premonitions of any +such bold and revolutionary adaptations as these, in the mental and +political life of to-day? How far are we, reader and writer, for +example, working for these large new securities? Do we even keep them +steadfastly in our minds? How is it with the people around us? Are not +we and they and all the race still just as much adrift in the current +of circumstances as we were before 1914? Without a great effort on our +part (or on someone's part) that current which swirled our kind into a +sunshine of hope and opportunity for a while will carry our race on +surely and inexorably to fresh wars, to shortages, hunger, miseries, and +social debacles, at last either to complete extinction or to a +degradation beyond our present understanding. + + +Sec.2 + +The urgent need for a great creative effort has become apparent in the +affairs of mankind. It is manifest that unless some unity of purpose can +be achieved in the world, unless the ever more violent and disastrous +incidence of war can be averted, unless some common control can be +imposed on the headlong waste of man's limited inheritance of coal, oil, +and moral energy that is now going on, the history of humanity must +presently culminate in some sort of disaster, repeating and exaggerating +the disaster of the great war, producing chaotic social conditions, and +going on thereafter in a degenerative process towards extinction. So +much all reasonable men seem now prepared to admit. But upon the +question of how and in what form a unity of purpose and a common control +of human affairs is to be established, there is still a great and +lamentable diversity of opinion and, as a consequence, an enfeeblement +and wasteful dispersal of will. At present nothing has been produced but +the manifestly quite inadequate League of Nations at Geneva, and a +number of generally very vague movements for a world law, world +disarmament, and the like, among the intellectuals of the various +civilized countries of the world. + +The common failings of all these initiatives are a sort of genteel +timidity and a defective sense of the scale of the enterprise before us. +A neglect of the importance of scale is one of the gravest faults of +contemporary education. Because a world-wide political organ is needed, +it does not follow that a so-called League of Nations without +representative sanctions, military forces, or authority of any kind, a +League from which large sections of the world are excluded altogether, +is any contribution to that need. People have a way of saying it is +better than nothing. But it may be worse than nothing. It may create a +feeling of disillusionment about world-unifying efforts. If a mad +elephant were loose in one's garden, it would be an excellent thing to +give one's gardener a gun. But it would have to be an adequate gun, an +elephant gun. To give him a small rook-rifle and tell him it was better +than nothing, and encourage him to face the elephant with that in his +hand, would be the directest way of getting rid not of the elephant but +of the gardener. + +It is, if people will but think steadfastly, inconceivable that there +should be any world control without a merger of sovereignty, but the +framers of these early tentatives towards world unity have lacked the +courage of frankness in this respect. They have been afraid of outbreaks +of bawling patriotism, and they have tried to believe, and to make +others believe, that they contemplate nothing more than a league of +nations, when in reality they contemplate a subordination of nations and +administrations to one common law and rule. The elementary necessity of +giving the council of any world-peace organization which is to be more +than a sentimental international gesture, not only a complete knowledge +but an effective control of all the military resources and organizations +in the world, appalled them. They did not even ask for such a control. +The frowning solidity of existing things was too much for them. They +wanted to change them, but when it came to laying hands on them--No! +They decided to leave them alone. They wanted a new world--and it is to +contain just the same things as the old. + +But are these intellectuals right in their estimate of the common man? +Is he such a shallow and vehement fool as they seem to believe? Is he so +patriotic as they make out? If mankind is to be saved from destruction +there must be a world control; a world control means a world government, +it is only another name for it, and manifestly that government must have +a navy that will supersede the British navy, artillery that will +supersede the French artillery, air forces superseding all existing air +forces, and so forth. For many flags there must be one sovereign flag; +_orbis terrarum_. Unless a world control amounts to that it will be +ridiculous, just as a judge supported by two or three unarmed policemen, +a newspaper reporter and the court chaplain, proposing to enforce his +decisions in a court packed with the heavily armed friends of the +plaintiff and defendant would be ridiculous. But the common man is +supposed to be so blindly and incurably set upon his British navy or his +French army, or whatever his pet national instrument of violence may be, +that it is held to be impossible to supersede these beloved and adored +forces. If that is so, then a world law is impossible, and the wisest +course before us is to snatch such small happiness as we may hope to do +and leave the mad elephant to work its will in the garden. + +But is it so? If the mass of common men are incurably patriotic and +belligerent why is there a note of querulous exhortation in nearly all +patriotic literature? Why, for instance, is Mr. Rudyard Kipling's +"History of England" so full of goading and scolding? And very +significant indeed to any student of the human outlook was the +world-response to President Wilson's advocacy of the League of Nations +idea, in its first phase in 1918, before the weakening off and +disillusionment of the Versailles Conference. Just for a little while it +seemed that President Wilson stood for a new order of things in the +world, that he had the wisdom and will and power to break the net of +hatreds and nationalisms and diplomacies in which the Old World was +entangled. And while he seemed to be capable of that, while he promised +most in the way of change and national control, then it was that he +found his utmost support in every country in the world. In the latter +half of 1918 there was scarcely a country anywhere in which one could +not have found men ready to die for President Wilson. A great +hopefulness was manifest in the world. It faded, it faded very rapidly +again. But that brief wave of enthusiasm, which set minds astir with the +same great idea of one peace of justice throughout the earth in China +and Bokhara and the Indian bazaars, in Iceland and Basutoland and +Ireland and Morocco, was indeed a fact perhaps more memorable in history +even than the great war itself. It displayed a possibility of the +simultaneous operation of the same general ideas throughout the world +quite beyond any previous experience. It demonstrated that the +generality of men are as capable of being cosmopolitan and pacifist as +they are of being patriotic and belligerent. Both moods are extensions +and exaltations beyond the everyday life, which itself is neither one +thing nor the other. And both are transitory moods, responses to +external suggestion. + +It is to that first wave of popular feeling for a world law transcending +and moving counter to all contemporary diplomacies, and not to the timid +legalism of the framers of the first schemes for a League of Nations +that we must look, if we are to hope at all for the establishment of a +new order in human affairs. It is upon the spirit of that transitory +response to the transitory greatness of President Wilson that we have to +seize; we have to lay hold of that, to recall it and confirm it and +enlarge and strengthen it, to make it a flux of patriotisms and a +creator of new loyalties and devotions, and out of the dead dust of our +present institutions to build up for it and animate with it the body of +a true world state. + +We have already stated the clear necessity, if mankind is not to perish +by the hypertrophy of warfare, for the establishment of an armed and +strong world law. Here in this spirit that has already gleamed upon the +world is the possible force to create and sustain such a world law. What +is it that intervenes between the universal human need and its +satisfaction? Why, since there are overwhelming reasons for it and a +widespread disposition for it, is there no world-wide creative effort +afoot now in which men and women by the million are participating--and +participating with all their hearts? Why is it that, except for the weak +gestures of the Geneva League of Nations and a little writing of books +and articles, a little pamphleteering, some scattered committee +activities on the part of people chiefly of the busybody class, an +occasional speech and a diminishing volume of talk and allusion, no +attempts are apparent to stay the plain drift of human society towards +new conflicts and the sluices of final disaster? + +The answer to that Why, probes deep into the question of human motives. + +It must be because we are all creatures of our immediate surroundings, +because our minds and energies are chiefly occupied by the affairs of +every day, because we are all chiefly living our own lives, and very few +of us, except by a kind of unconscious contribution, the life of +mankind. In moments of mental activity, in the study or in +contemplation, we may rise to a sense of the dangers and needs of human +destiny, but it is only a few minds and characters of prophetic quality +that, without elaborate artificial assistance, seem able to keep hold +upon and guide their lives by such relatively gigantic considerations. +The generality of men and women, so far as their natural disposition +goes, are scarcely more capable of apprehending and consciously serving +the human future than a van full of well-fed rabbits would be of +grasping the fact that their van was running smoothly and steadily down +an inclined plane into the sea. It is only as the result of considerable +educational effort and against considerable resistance that our minds +are brought to a broader view. In every age for many thousands of years +men of exceptional vision have spent their lives in passionate efforts +to bring us ordinary men into some relation of response and service to +the greater issues of life. It is these pioneers of vision who have +given the world its religions and its philosophical cults, its loyalties +and observances; and who have imposed ideas of greatness and duty on +their fellows. In every age the ordinary man has submitted reluctantly +to such teachings, has made his peculiar compromises with them, has +reduced them as far as possible to formula and formality, and got back +as rapidly as possible to the eating and drinking and desire, the +personal spites and rivalries and glories which constitute his reality. +The mass of men to-day do not seem to care, nor want to care, whither +the political and social institutions to which they are accustomed are +taking them. Such considerations overstrain us. And it is only by the +extremest effort of those who are capable of a sense of racial danger +and duty that the collective energies of men can ever be gathered +together and organized and orientated towards the common good. To nearly +all men and women, unless they are in the vein for it, such discussion +as this in these essays does not appeal as being right or wrong; it does +not really interest them, rather it worries them; and for the most part +they would be glad to disregard it as completely as a lecture on wheels +and gravitation and the physiological consequences of prolonged +submergence would be disregarded by those rabbits in the van. + +But man is a creature very different in his nature from a rabbit, and if +he is less instinctively social, he is much more consciously social. +Chief among his differences must be the presence of those tendencies +which we call conscience, that haunting craving to be really right and +to do the really right thing which is the basis of the moral and perhaps +also of most of the religious life. In this lies our hope for mankind. +Man hates to be put right, and yet also he wants to be right. He is a +creature divided against himself, seeking both to preserve and to +overcome his egotism. It is upon the presence of the latter strand in +man's complex make-up that we must rest our hopes of a developing will +for the world state which will gradually gather together and direct into +a massive constructive effort the now quite dispersed chaotic and +traditional activities of men. + +As we have examined this problem it has become clear that the task of +bringing about that consolidated world state which is necessary to +prevent the decline and decay of mankind is not primarily one for the +diplomatists and lawyers and politicians at all. It is an educational +one. It is a moral based on an intellectual reconstruction. The task +immediately before mankind is to find release from the contentious +loyalties and hostilities of the past which make collective world-wide +action impossible at the present time, in a world-wide common vision of +the history and destinies of the race. On that as a basis, and on that +alone, can a world control be organized and maintained. The effort +demanded from mankind, therefore, is primarily and essentially a bold +reconstruction of the outlook upon life of hundreds of millions of +minds. The idea of a world commonweal has to be established as the +criterion of political institutions, and also as the criterion of +general conduct in hundreds of millions of brains. It has to dominate +education everywhere in the world. When that end is achieved, then the +world state will be achieved, and it can be achieved in no other way. +And unless that world state can be achieved, it would seem that the +outlook before mankind is a continuance of disorder and of more and more +destructive and wasteful conflicts, a steady process of violence, +decadence, and misery towards extinction, or towards modifications of +our type altogether beyond our present understanding and sympathy. + + +Sec. 3 + +In framing an estimate of the human future two leading facts are +dominant. The first is the plain necessity for a political +reorganization of the world as a unity, to save our race from the social +disintegration and complete physical destruction which war, under modern +conditions, must ultimately entail, and the second is the manifest +absence of any sufficient will in the general mass of mankind at the +present time to make such a reorganization possible. There appear to be +the factors of such a will in men, but they are for the most part +unawakened, or they are unorganized and ineffective. And there is a +very curious incapacity to grasp the reality of the human situation, a +real resistance to seeing things as they are--for man is an +effort-shirking animal--which greatly impedes the development of such a +will. Failing the operation of such a sufficient will, human affairs are +being directed by use and wont, by tradition and accidental deflections. +Mankind, after the tragic concussion of the great war, seems now to be +drifting again towards new and probably more disastrous concussions. + +The catastrophe of the Great War did more or less completely awaken a +certain limited number of intelligent people to the need of some general +control replacing this ancient traditional driftage of events. But they +shrank from the great implications of such a world control. The only +practicable way to achieve a general control in the face of existing +governments, institutions and prejudices, interested obstruction and the +common disregard, is by extending this awakening to great masses of +people. This means an unprecedented educational effort, an appeal to +men's intelligence and men's imagination such as the world has never +seen before. Is it possible to rationalize the at present chaotic will +of mankind? That possibility, if it is a possibility, is the most +important thing in contemporary human affairs. + +We are asking here for an immense thing, for a change of ideas, a vast +enlargement of ideas, and for something very like a change of heart in +hundreds of millions of human beings. But then we are dealing with the +fate of the entire species. We are discussing the prevention of wars, +disorders, shortages, famines and miseries for centuries ahead. The +initial capital we have to go upon is as yet no more than the aroused +understanding and conscience of a few thousands, at most of a few score +thousands of people. Can so little a leaven leaven so great a lump? Is a +response to this appeal latent in the masses of mankind? Is there +anything in history to justify hope for so gigantic a mental turnover in +our race? + +A consideration of the spread of Christianity in the first four +centuries A.D. or of the spread of Islam in the seventh century will, we +believe, support a reasonable hope that such a change in the minds of +men, whatever else it may be, is a practicable change, that it can be +done and that it may even probably be done. Consider our two instances. +The propagandas of those two great religions changed and changed for +ever the political and social outlook over vast areas of the world's +surface. Yet while the stir for world unity begins now simultaneously in +many countries and many groups of people, those two propagandas each +radiated from a single centre and were in the first instance the +teachings of single individuals; and while to-day we can deal with great +reading populations and can reach them by press and printed matter, by a +universal distribution of books, by great lecturing organizations and +the like, those earlier great changes in human thought were achieved +mainly by word of mouth and by crabbed manuscripts, painfully copied and +passed slowly from hand to hand. So far it is only the trader who has +made any effectual use of the vast facilities the modern world has +produced for conveying a statement simultaneously to great numbers of +people at a distance. The world of thought still hesitates to use the +means of power that now exist for it. History and political philosophy +in the modern world are like bashful dons at a dinner party; they +crumble their bread and talk in undertones and clever allusions to their +nearest neighbour, abashed at the thought of addressing the whole table. +But in a world where Mars can reach out in a single night and smite a +city a thousand miles away, we cannot suffer wisdom to hesitate in an +inaudible gentility. The knowledge and vision that is good enough for +the best of us is good enough for all. This gospel of human brotherhood +and a common law and rule for all mankind, the attempt to meet this +urgent necessity of a common control of human affairs, which indeed is +no new religion but only an attempt to realize practically the common +teaching of all the established religions of the world, has to speak +with dominating voice everywhere between the poles and round about the +world. + +And it must become part of the universal education. It must speak +through the school and university. It is too often forgotten, in +America, perhaps, even more than in Europe, that education exists for +the community, and for the individual only so far as it makes him a +sufficient member of the community. The chief end of education is to +subjugate and sublimate for the collective purposes of our kind the +savage egotism we inherit. Every school, every college, teaches directly +and still more by implication, relationship to a community and devotion +to a community. In too many cases that community we let our schools and +colleges teach to our children is an extremely narrow one; it is the +community of a sect, of a class, or of an intolerant, greedy and +unrighteous nationalism. Schools have increased greatly in numbers +throughout the world during the last century, but there has been little +or no growth in the conception of education in schools. Education has +been extended, but it has not been developed. If man is to be saved from +self-destruction by the organization of a world community, there must be +a broadening of the reference of the teaching in the schools of all the +world to that community of the world. World-wide educational development +and reform are the necessary preparations for and the necessary +accompaniments of a political reconstruction of the world. The two are +the right and left hands of the same thing. Neither can effect much +without the other. + +Now it is manifest that this reorganization of the world's affairs and +of the world's education which we hold to be imperatively dictated by +the change in warfare, communications and other conditions of human +life brought about by scientific discovery during the last hundred +years, carries with it a practical repudiation of the claims of every +existing sovereign government in the world to be final and sovereign, to +be anything more than provisional and replaceable. There is the +difficulty that has checked hundreds of men after their first step +towards this work for a universal peace. It involves, it cannot but +involve, a revision of their habitual allegiances. At best existing +governments are to be regarded as local trustees and caretakers for the +coming human commonweal. + +If they are not that, then they are necessarily obstructive and +antagonistic. But few rulers, few governments, few officials, will have +the greatness of mind to recognize and admit this plain reality. By a +kind of necessity they force upon their subjects and publics a conflict +of loyalties. The feeble driftage of human affairs from one base or +greedy arrangement or cowardly evasion to another, since the Armistice +of 1918, is very largely due to the obstinate determination of those who +are in positions of authority and responsibility to ignore the plain +teachings of the great war and its sequelae. They are resisting +adjustments; their minds are fighting against the sacrifices of pride +and authority that a full recognition of their subordination to the +world commonweal will involve. They are prepared, it would seem, to +fight against the work of human salvation basely and persistently, +whenever their accustomed importance is threatened. + +Even in the schools and in the world of thought the established thing +will make its unrighteous fight for life. The dull and the dishonest in +high places will suppress these greater ideas when they can, and ignore +when they dare not suppress. It seems too much to hope for that there +should be any willingness on the part of any established authority to +admit its obsolescence and prepare the way for its merger in a world +authority. It is not creative minds that produce revolutions, but the +obstinate conservatism of established authority. It is the blank refusal +to accept the idea of an orderly evolution towards new things that gives +a revolutionary quality to every constructive proposal. The huge task of +political and educational reconstruction which is needed to arrest the +present drift of human affairs towards catastrophe, must be achieved, if +it is to be achieved at all, mainly by voluntary and unofficial effort; +and for the most part in the teeth of official opposition. + +There are one or two existing states to which men have looked for some +open recognition of their duty to mankind as a whole, and of the +necessarily provisional nature of their contemporary constitutions. The +United States of America constitute a political system, profoundly +different in its origin and in its spirit, from any old-world state; it +was felt that here at least might be an evolutionary state; and in the +palmy days of President Wilson it did seem for a brief interval as if +the New World was indeed coming to the rescue of the old, as if America +was to play the role of a propagandist continent, bringing its ideas of +equality and freedom, and extending the spirit of its union to all the +nations of the earth. From that expectation, the world opinion is now in +a state of excessive and unreasonable recoil. President Wilson fell away +from his first intimations of that world-wide federal embrace; his mind +and will were submerged by the clamour of contending patriotisms and the +subtle expedients of old-world diplomacy in Paris; but American +accessibility to the idea of a federalized world neither began with him +nor will it end with his failure. America is still a hopeful laboratory +of world-unifying thought. A long string of arbitration treaties stands +to the credit of America, and a series of developing Pan-American +projects, pointing clearly to at least a continental synthesis within a +measurable time. There has been, and there still is, a better +understanding of, and a greater receptivity to, ideas of international +synthesis in America than in any European state. + +And the British Empire, which according to many of its liberal +apologists is already a league of nations linked together in a mutually +advantageous peace, to that too men have looked for some movement of +adaptation to this greater synthesis which is the world's pre-eminent +need. But so far the British Empire has failed to respond to such +expectations. The war has left it strained and bruised and with its +affairs very much in the grip of the military class, the most illiterate +and dangerous class in the community. They have done, perhaps, +irreparable mischief to the peace of the empire in Ireland, India and +Egypt, and they have made the claim of the British system to be an +exemplary unification of dissimilar peoples seem now to many people +incurably absurd. It is a great misfortune for mankind that the British +Empire, which played so sturdy and central a part in the great war, +could at its close achieve no splendid and helpful gesture towards a +generous reconstruction. + +Since the armistice there has been an extraordinary opportunity for the +British monarchy to have displayed a sense of the new occasions before +the world, and to have led the way towards the efforts and renunciations +of an international renascence. It could have taken up a lead that the +President of the United States had initiated and relinquished; it could +have used its peculiar position to make an unexampled appeal to the +whole world. It could have created a new epoch in history. The Prince of +Wales has been touring the world-wide dominions of which, some day, he +is to be the crowned head. He has received addresses, visited sights, +been entertained, shaken hands with scores of thousands of people and +submitted himself to the eager, yet unpenetrating gaze of vast +multitudes. His smallest acts have been observed with premeditated +admiration, his lightest words recorded. He is not now a boy; he saw +something of the great war, even if his exalted position denied him any +large share of its severer hardships and dangers; he cannot be blind to +the general posture of the world's affairs. Here, surely, was a chance +of saying something that would be heard from end to end of the earth, +something kingly and great-minded. Here was the occasion for a fine +restatement of the obligations and duties of empire. But from first to +last the prince has said nothing to quicken the imaginations of the +multitude of his future subjects to the gigantic possibilities of these +times, nothing to reassure the foreign observer that the British Empire +embodies anything more than the colossal national egotism and +impenetrable self-satisfaction of the British peoples. "Here we are," +said the old order in those demonstrations, "and here we mean to stick. +Just as we have been, so we remain. British!--we are Bourbons." These +smiling tours of the Prince of Wales in these years of shortage, stress, +and insecurity, constitute a propaganda of inanity unparalleled in the +world's history. + + * * * * * + +Nor do we find in the nominal rulers and official representatives of +other countries any clear admission of the necessity for a great and +fundamental change in the scope and spirit of government. These official +and ruling people, more than any other people, are under the sway of +that life of use and wont which dominates us all. They are often +trained to their positions, or they have won their way to their +positions of authority through a career of political activities which +amounts to a training. And that training is not a training in enterprise +and change; it is a training in sticking tight and getting back to +precedent. We can expect nothing from them. We shall be lucky if the +resistance of the administrative side of existing states to the +conception of a world commonweal is merely passive. There is little or +no prospect of any existing governing system, unless it be such a +federal system as Switzerland or the United States, passing directly and +without extensive internal changes into combination with other sovereign +powers as part of a sovereign world system. At some point the +independent states will as systems resist, and unless an overwhelming +world conscience for the world state has been brought into being and +surrounds them with an understanding watchfulness, and invades the +consciences of their supporters and so weakens their resisting power, +they will resist violently and disastrously. But it will be an +incoherent resistance because the very nature of the sovereign states of +to-day is incoherence. There can be no world-wide combination of +sovereign states to resist the world state, because that would be to +create the world state in the attempt to defeat it. + + +Sec. 4 + +In the three preceding essays an attempt has been made to state the pass +at which mankind has arrived, the dangers and mischiefs that threaten +our race, and the need there is and the opportunities there are for a +strenuous attempt to end the age-long bickerings of nations and empires +and establish one community of law and effort throughout the whole +world. Stress has been laid chiefly upon the monstrous evils and +disasters a continuation of our present divisions, our nationalisms and +imperialisms and the like, will certainly entail. These considerations +of evil however are only the negative argument for this creative effort; +they have been thrust forward because war, disorder, insufficiency, and +the ill health, the partings, deprivations, boredom and unhappiness that +arise out of these things are well within our experience and entirely +credible; the positive argument for a world order demands at once more +faith and imagination. + +Given a world law and world security, a release from the net of +bickering frontiers, world-wide freedom of movement, and world-wide +fellowship, a thousand good things that are now beyond hope or dreaming +would come into the ordinary life. The whole world would be our +habitation, and the energies of men, released from their preoccupation +with contention, would go more and more abundantly into the +accumulation and application of scientific knowledge, that is to say +into the increase of mental and bodily health, of human power, of +interest and happiness. Even to-day the most delightful possibilities +stand waiting, inaccessible to nearly all of us because of the general +insecurity, distrust and anger. Flying, in a world safely united in +peace, could take us now to the ends of the earth smoothly, securely +through the sweet upper air, in five or six days. In two or three years +there could again be abundance of food and pleasant clothing for +everyone throughout the whole world. Men could be destroying their slums +and pestilential habitations and rebuilding spacious and beautiful +cities. Given only peace and confidence and union we could double our +yearly production of all that makes life desirable and still double our +leisure for thought and growth. We could live in a universal palace and +make the whole globe our garden and playground. + +But these are not considerations that sway people to effort. Fear and +hate, not hope and desire, have been hitherto the effective spurs for +men. The most popular religions are those which hold out the widest +hopes of damnation. Our lives are lives of use and wont, we distrust the +promise of delightful experience and achievements beyond our accustomed +ways; it offends our self-satisfaction even to regard them as +possibilities; we do not like the implied cheapening of familiar things. +We are all ready to sneer at "Utopias," as elderly invalids sneer at +the buoyant hopes of youth and do their best to think them sure of +frustration. The aged and disillusioned profess a keen appreciation of +the bath chair and the homely spoonful of medicine, and pity a crudity +that misses the fine quality of those ripe established things. Most +people are quite ready to dismiss the promise of a full free life for +all mankind with a sneer. That would rob the world of romance, they say, +the romance of passport offices, custom houses, shortages of food, +endless petty deprivations, slums, pestilence, under-educated stunted +children, youths dying in heaps in muddy trenches, an almost universal +lack of vitality, and all the picturesque eventfulness of contemporary +conditions. So that we have not dwelt here upon the life-giving aspect +of a possible world state, but only on its life-saving aspects. We have +not argued that our present life of use and wont could be replaced by an +infinitely better way of living. We have rather pointed out that if +things continue to drift as they are doing, the present life of use and +wont will become intolerably insecure. It is the thought of the large +bombing aeroplane and not the hope of swift travelling across the sky +that will move the generality of men, if they are to be moved at all, +towards a world peace. + +But whether the lever that moves them is desire or fear the majority of +men, unless the species is to perish, must be brought within a +measurable time to an understanding of, and a will for, a single world +government. And since at first existing institutions, established +traditions, educational organizations and the like, will all be +passively if not actively resistant to the spread of this saving idea, +and much more so to any attempts to realize this saving idea, there +remains nothing for us to look to, at the present time, for the first +organization of this immense effort of mental reversal, but the zeal and +devotion and self-sacrifice of convinced individuals. The world state +must begin; it can only begin, as a propagandist cult, or as a group of +propagandist cults, to which men and women must give themselves and +their energies, regardless of the consequences to themselves. Laying the +foundations of a world state upon a site already occupied by a muddle of +buildings is an undertaking which will almost necessarily bring its +votaries into conflict with established authority and current sentiment; +they will have to face the possibility of lives of conflict, +misunderstanding, much thankless exertion; they must count on little +honour and considerable active dislike; and they will have to find what +consolation they can in the interest of the conflict itself and in the +thought of a world, made at last by such efforts as theirs, peaceful and +secure and vigorous, a world they can never hope to see. So stated it +seems a bad bargain that the worker for the world state is invited to +make, yet the world has never lacked people prepared to make such a +bargain and they will not fail it now. There are worse things than +conflict without manifest victory and effort without apparent reward. +To the finer kind of mind it is infinitely more tragic and distressing +to find that existence bears a foolish aimless face. Many people, +tormented by the discontent of conscience, and wanting, more than they +can ever want any satisfaction, some satisfying rule of life, some +criterion of conduct, will find in this cult of the world state just +that sustaining reality they need. And their number will grow. Because +it is a practical and reasonable shape for a life, arising naturally out +of a proper understanding of history and physical science, and embodying +in a unifying plan the teaching of all the great religions of the world. +It comes to us not to destroy but to fulfil. + +The activities of a cult which set itself to bring about the world state +would at first be propagandist, they would be intellectual and +educational, and only as a sufficient mass of opinion and will had +accumulated would they become to a predominant extent politically +constructive. Such a cult must direct itself particularly to the +teaching of the young. So far the propaganda for a world law, the League +of Nations propaganda, since it has sought immediate political results, +has been addressed almost entirely to adults; and as a consequence it +has had to adapt itself as far as possible to their preconceptions about +the history and outlook of their own nationality, and to the general +absence as yet in the world of any vision of the welfare of mankind as +one whole. It is because of this acceptance of current adult ideas +about patriotism and nationality that the movement has adopted the +unsatisfactory phrase, a League of Nations, when what is contemplated is +much more than a league and a very considerable subordination of +national sovereignty. And a large share in the current ineffectiveness +of the League of Nations is evidently due to the fact that men interpret +the phrase and the proposition of the League of Nations differently in +accordance with the different fundamental historical ideas they possess, +ideas that propaganda has hitherto left unassailed. The worker for the +world state will look further and plough deeper. It is these fundamental +ideas which are the vitally important objective of a world-unifying +movement, and they can only be brought into that world-wide uniformity +which is essential to the enduring peace of mankind, by teaching +children throughout all the earth the common history of their kind, and +so directing their attention to the common future of their descendants. +The driving force that makes either war or peace is engendered where the +young are taught. The teacher, whether mother, priest, or schoolmaster, +is the real maker of history; rulers, statesmen and soldiers do but work +out the possibilities of co-operation or conflict the teacher creates. +This is no rhetorical flourish; it is a sober fact. The politicians and +masses of our time dance on the wires of their early education. + +Teaching then is the initial and decisive factor in the future of +mankind, and the first duty of everyone who has the ability and +opportunity, is to teach, or to subserve the teaching of, the true +history of mankind and of the possibilities of this vision of a single +world state that history opens out to us. Men and women can help the +spread of the saving doctrine in a thousand various ways; for it is not +only in homes and schools that minds are shaped. They can print and +publish books, endow schools and teaching, organize the distribution of +literature, insist upon the proper instruction of children in world wide +charity and fellowship, fight against every sort of suppression or +restrictive control of right education, bring pressure through political +and social channels upon every teaching organization to teach history +aright, sustain missions and a new sort of missionary, the missionaries +to all mankind of knowledge and the idea of one world civilization and +one world community; they can promote and help the progress of +historical and ethnological and political science, they can set their +faces against every campaign of hate, racial suspicion, and patriotic +falsehood, they can refuse, they are bound to refuse, obedience to any +public authority which oppresses and embitters class against class, race +against race, and people against people. A belligerent government as +such, they can refuse to obey; and they can refuse to help or suffer any +military preparations that are not directed wholly and plainly to +preserving the peace of the world. This is the plain duty of every +honest man to-day, to judge his magistrate before he obeys him, and to +render unto Caesar nothing that he owes to God and mankind. And those who +are awakened to the full significance of the vast creative effort now +before mankind will set themselves particularly to revise the common +moral judgment upon many acts and methods of living that obstruct the +way of the world state. Blatant, aggressive patriotism and the +incitements against foreign peoples that usually go with it, are just as +criminal and far more injurious to our race than, for example, indecent +provocations and open incitements to sexual vice; they produce a much +beastlier and crueller state of mind, and they deserve at least an equal +condemnation. Yet you will find even priests and clergymen to-day +rousing the war passions of their flocks and preaching conflict from the +very steps of the altar. + +So far the movement towards a world state has lacked any driving power +of passion. We have been passing through a phase of intellectual +revision. The idea of a world unity and brotherhood has come back again +into the world almost apologetically, deferentially, asking for the kind +words of successful politicians and for a gesture of patronage from +kings. Yet this demand for one world-empire of righteousness was +inherent in the teachings of Buddha, it flashed for a little while +behind the sword of Islam, it is the embodiment in earthly affairs of +the spirit of Christ. It is a call to men for service as of right, it is +not an appeal to them that they may refuse, not a voice that they may +disregard. It is too great a thing to hover for long thus deferentially +on the outskirts of the active world it has come to save. To-day the +world state says "Please listen; make way for me." To-morrow it will +say: "Make way for me, little people." The day is not remote when +disregardful "patriotic" men hectoring in the crowd will be twisted +round perforce to the light they refuse to see. First comes the idea and +then slowly the full comprehension of the idea, comes realization, and +with that realization will come a kindling anger at the vulgarity, the +meanness, the greed and baseness and utter stupidity that refuses to +attend to this clear voice, this definite demand of our racial +necessity. To-day we teach, but as understanding grows we must begin to +act. We must put ourselves and our rulers and our fellow men on trial. +We must ask: "What have you done, what are you doing to help or hinder +the peace and order of mankind?" A time will come when a politician who +has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as +sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It +is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not +stake their own. The service of the world state calls for much more than +passive resistance to belligerent authorities, for much more than +exemplary martyrdoms. It calls for the greater effort of active +interference with mischievous men. "I will believe in the League of +Nations," one man has written, "when men will fight for it." For this +League of Nations at Geneva, this little corner of Balfourian jobs and +gentility, no man would dream of fighting, but for the great state of +mankind, men will presently be very ready to fight and, as the thing may +go, either to kill or die. Things must come in their order; first the +idea, then the kindling of imaginations, then the world wide battle. We +who live in the bleak days after a great crisis, need be no more +discouraged by the apparent indifference of the present time than are +fields that are ploughed and sown by the wet days of February and the +cold indifference of the winds of early March. The ploughing has been +done, and the seed is in the ground, and the world state stirs in a +multitude of germinating minds. + + + + +II + +THE PROJECT OF A WORLD STATE[B] + + [B] Written originally as a lecture to be delivered in America. + + +In this paper, I want to tell you of the idea that now shapes and +dominates my public life--the idea of a world politically united--of a +world securely and permanently at peace. And I want to say what I have +to say, so far as regards the main argument of it, as accurately and +plainly as possible, without any eloquence or flourishes. + +When I first planned this paper, I chose as the title _The Utopia of a +World State_. Well, there is something a little too flimsy and +unpracticable about that word Utopia. To most people Utopia conveys the +idea of a high-toned political and ethical dream--agreeable and +edifying, no doubt, but of no practical value whatever. What I have to +talk about this evening is not a bit dreamlike, it is about real dangers +and urgent necessities. It is a Project and not a Utopia. It may be a +vast and impossible project. It may be a hopeless project. But if it +fails our civilization fails. And so I have called this paper not the +Utopia but _The Project of a World State._ There are some things that it +is almost impossible to tell without seeming to scream and exaggerate, +and yet these things may be in reality the soberest matter of fact. I +want to say that this civilization in which we are living is tumbling +down, and I think tumbling down very fast; that I think rapid enormous +efforts will be needed to save it; and that I see no such efforts being +made at the present time. I do not know if these words convey any +concrete ideas to the reader's mind. There are statements that can open +such unfamiliar vistas as to seem devoid of any real practical meaning +at all, and this I think may be one of them. + +In the past year I have been going about Europe. I have had glimpses of +a new phase of this civilization of ours--a new phase that would have +sounded like a fantastic dream if one had told about it ten years ago. I +have seen a great city that had over two million inhabitants, dying, and +dying with incredible rapidity. In 1914 I was in the city of St. +Petersburg and it seemed as safe and orderly a great city as yours. I +went thither in comfortable and punctual trains. I stayed in an hotel as +well equipped and managed as any American hotel. I went to dine with and +visit households of cultivated people. I walked along streets of +brilliantly lit and well-furnished shops. It was, in fact, much the same +sort of life that you are living here to-day--a part of our (then) +world-wide modern civilization. + +I revisited these things last summer. I found such a spectacle of decay +that it seems almost impossible to describe it to those who have never +seen the like. Streets with great holes where the drains had fallen in. +Stretches of roadway from which the wood paving had been torn for +firewood. Lampposts that had been knocked over lying as they were left, +without an attempt to set them up again. Shops and markets deserted and +decayed and ruinous. Not closed shops but abandoned shops, as +abandoned-looking as an old boot or an old can by the wayside. The +railways falling out of use. A population of half a million where +formerly there had been two. A strangely homeless city, a city of +discomforts and anxieties, a city of want and ill-health and death. Such +was Petersburg in 1920. + +I know there are people who have a quick and glib explanation of this +vast and awe-inspiring spectacle of a great empire in collapse. They say +it is Bolshevism has caused all this destruction. But I hope to show +here, among other more important things, that Bolshevism is merely a +part of this immense collapse--that the overthrow of a huge civilized +organization needs some more comprehensive explanation than that a +little man named Lenin was able to get from Geneva to Russia at a +particular crisis in Russian history. And particularly is it to be noted +that this immense destruction of civilized life has not been confined to +Russia or to regions under Bolshevik rule. Austria and Hungary present +spectacles hardly less desolating than Russia. There is a conspicuous +ebb in civilization in Eastern Germany. And even when you come to France +and Italy and Ireland there are cities, townships, whole wide regions, +where you can say: This has gone back since 1914 and it is still going +back in material prosperity, in health, in social order. + +Even in England and Scotland, in Holland and Denmark and Sweden, it is +hard to determine whether things are stagnant or moving forward or +moving back--they are certainly not going ahead as they were before +1913-14. The feeling in England is rather like the feeling of a man who +is not quite sure whether he has caught a slight chill or whether he is +in the opening stage of a serious illness. + +Now what I want to do here is to theorize about this shadow, this chill +and arrest, that seems to have come upon the flourishing and expanding +civilization in which all of us were born and reared. I want to put a +particular view of what is happening before you, and what it is that we +are up against. I want to put before you for your judgment the view that +this overstrain and breaking down and stoppage of the great uprush of +civilization that has gone on for the past three centuries is due to the +same forces and is the logical outcome of the same forces that led to +that uprush, to that tremendous expansion of human knowledge and power +and life. And that that breaking up is an inevitable thing unless we +meet it by a very great effort of a particular kind. + +Now the gist of my case is this: That the civilization of the past three +centuries has produced a great store of scientific knowledge, and that +this scientific knowledge has altered the material scale of human +affairs and enormously enlarged the physical range of human activities, +but that there has been no adequate adjustment of men's political ideas +to the new conditions. + +This adjustment is a subtle and a difficult task. It is also a greatly +neglected task. And upon the possibility of our making this adjustment +depends the issue whether the ebb of civilizing energy, the actual +smashing and breaking down of modern civilization, which has already +gone very far indeed in Russia and which is going on in most of Eastern +and Central Europe, extends to the whole civilized world. + +Let me make a very rough and small scale analysis of what is happening +to the world to-day. And let us disregard many very important issues and +concentrate upon the chief, most typical issue, the revolution in the +facilities of locomotion and communication that has occurred to the +world and the consequences of that revolution. For the international +problem to-day is essentially dependent upon the question of transport +and communication--all others are subordinate to that. I shall +particularly call your attention to certain wide differences between the +American case and the old-world case in this matter. + +It is not understood clearly enough at the present time how different +is the American international problem from the European international +problem, and how inevitable it is that America and Europe should +approach international problems from a different angle and in a +different spirit. Both lines of thought and experience do, I believe, +lead at last to the world state, but they get there by a different route +and in a different manner. + +The idea that the government of the United States can take its place +side by side with the governments of the old world on terms of equality +with those governments in order to organize the peace of the world, is, +I believe, a mistaken and unworkable idea. I shall argue that the +government of the United States and the community of the United States +are things different politically and mentally from those of the states +of the old world, and that the role they are destined to play in the +development of a world state of mankind is essentially a distinctive +one. And I shall try to show cause for regarding the very noble and +splendid project of a world-wide League of Nations that has held the +attention of the world for the past three years, as one that is, at +once, a little too much for complete American participation, and not +sufficient for the urgent needs of Europe. It is not really so +practicable and reasonable a proposition as it seemed at first. + +The idea of a world state, though it looks a far greater and more +difficult project, is, in the long run, a sounder and more hopeful +proposition. + +Now let me make myself as clear as I can be about the central idea upon +which the whole of the arguments in this lecture rests. It is this: +forgive me for a repetition--that there has been a complete alteration +in the range and power of human activities in the last hundred years. +Men can react upon men with a rapidity and at a distance inconceivable a +hundred years ago. This is particularly the case with locomotion and +methods of communication generally. I will not remind you in any detail +of facts with which you are familiar; how that in the time of Napoleon +the most rapid travel possible of the great conqueror himself did not +average all over as much as four and a half miles an hour. A hundred and +seven miles a day for thirteen days--the pace of his rush from Vilna to +Paris after the Moscow disaster--was regarded as a triumph of speed. In +those days, too, it was a marvel that by means of semaphores it was +possible to transmit a short message from London to Portsmouth in the +course of an hour or so. + +Since then we have seen a development of telegraphy that has at last +made news almost simultaneous about the world, and a steady increase in +the rate of travel until, as we worked it out in the Civil Air Transport +Committee in London, it is possible, if not at present practicable, to +fly from London to Australia, half way round the earth, in about eight +days. I say possible, but not practicable, because at present properly +surveyed routes, landing grounds and adequate supplies of petrol and +spare parts do not exist. Given those things, that journey could be done +now in the time I have stated. This tremendous change in the range of +human activities involves changes in the conditions of our political +life that we are only beginning to work out to their proper consequences +to-day. + +It is a curious thing that America, which owes most to this acceleration +in locomotion, has felt it least. The United States have taken the +railway, the river steamboat, the telegraph and so forth as though they +were a natural part of their growth. They were not. These things +happened to come along just in time to save American unity. The United +States of to-day were made first by the river steamboat, and then by the +railway. Without these things, the present United States, this vast +continental nation, would have been altogether impossible. The westward +flow of population would have been far more sluggish. It might never +have crossed the great central plains. It took, you will remember, +nearly two hundred years for effective settlement to reach from the +coast to the Missouri, much less than half-way across the continent. The +first state established beyond the river was the steamboat state of +Missouri in 1821. But the rest of the distance to the Pacific was done +in a few decades. + +If we had the resources of the cinema it would be interesting to show a +map of North America year by year from 1600 onward, with little dots to +represent hundreds of people, each dot a hundred, and stars to represent +cities of a hundred thousand people. + +For two hundred years you would see that stippling creeping slowly along +the coastal districts and navigable waters, spreading still more +gradually into Indiana, Kentucky, and so forth. Then somewhere about +1810 would come a change. Things would get more lively along the river +courses. The dots would be multiplying and spreading. That would be the +steamboat. The pioneer dots would be spreading soon from a number of +jumping-off places along the great rivers over Kansas and Nebraska. + +Then from about 1830 onward would come the black lines of the railways, +and after that the little black dots would not simply creep but run. +They would appear now so rapidly, it would be almost as though they were +being put on by some sort of spraying machine. And suddenly here and +then there would appear the first stars to indicate the first great +cities of a hundred thousand people. First one or two and then a +multitude of cities--each like a knot in the growing net of the +railways. + +This is a familiar story. I recall it to you now to enforce this +point--that the growth of the United States is a process that has no +precedent in the world's history; it is a new kind of occurrence. Such a +community could not have come into existence before, and if it had it +would, without railways, have certainly dropped to pieces long before +now. Without railways or telegraph it would be far easier to administer +California from Pekin than from Washington. But this great population of +the United States of America has not only grown outrageously; it has +kept uniform. Nay, it has become more uniform. The man of San Francisco +is more like the man of New York to-day than the man of Virginia was +like the man of New England a century ago. And the process of +assimilation goes on unimpeded. The United States is being woven by +railway, by telegraph, more and more into one vast human unity, +speaking, thinking, and acting harmoniously with itself. Soon aviation +will be helping in the work. + +Now this great community of the United States is, I repeat, an +altogether new thing in history. There have been great empires before +with populations exceeding 100 millions, but these were associations of +divergent peoples; there has never been one single people on this scale +before. We want a new term for this new thing. We call the United States +a country, just as we call France or Holland a country. But really the +two things are as different as an automobile and a one-horse shay. They +are the creations of different periods and different conditions; they +are going to work at a different pace and in an entirely different way. +If you propose--as I gather some of the League of Nations people +propose--to push the Peace of the World along on a combination of these +two sorts of vehicle, I venture to think the Peace of the World will be +subjected to some very considerable strains. + +Let me now make a brief comparison between the American and the European +situation in relation to these vital matters, locomotion and the general +means of communicating. I said just now that the United States of +America owe most to the revolution in locomotion and have felt it least. +Europe on the other hand owes least to the revolution in locomotion and +has felt it most. The revolution in locomotion found the United States +of America a fringe of population on the sea margins of a great rich +virgin empty country into which it desired to expand, and into which it +was free to expand. The steamboat and railway seemed to come as a +natural part of that expansion. They came as unqualified blessings. But +into Western Europe they came as a frightful nuisance. + +The States of Europe, excepting Russia, were already a settled, +established and balanced system. They were living in final and +conclusive boundaries with no further possibility of peaceful expansion. +Every extension of a European state involved a war; it was only possible +through war. And while the limits to the United States have been set by +the steamship and the railroad, the limits to the European sovereign +states were drawn at a much earlier time. They were drawn by the horse, +and particularly the coach-horse travelling along the high road. If you +will examine a series of political maps of Europe for the last two +thousand years, you will see that there has evidently been a definite +limit to the size of sovereign states through all that time, due to the +impossibility of keeping them together because of the difficulty of +intercommunication if they grew bigger. And this was in spite of the +fact that there were two great unifying ideas present in men's minds in +Europe throughout that period, namely, the unifying idea of the Roman +Empire, and the unifying idea of Christendom. Both these ideas tended to +make Europe one, but the difficulties of communication defeated that +tendency. It is quite interesting to watch the adventures of what is +called first the Roman Empire and afterwards the Holy Roman Empire, in a +series of historical maps. It keeps expanding and then dropping to +pieces again. It is like the efforts of someone who is trying to pack up +a parcel which is much too big, in wet blotting paper. The cohesion was +inadequate. And so it was that the eighteenth century found Europe still +divided up into what I may perhaps call these high-road and coach-horse +states, each with a highly developed foreign policy, each with an +intense sense of national difference and each with intense traditional +antagonisms. + +Then came this revolution in the means of locomotion, which has +increased the normal range of human activity at least ten times. The +effect of that in America was opportunity; the effect of it in Europe +was congestion. It is as if some rather careless worker of miracles had +decided suddenly to make giants of a score of ordinary men, and chose +the moment for the miracle when they were all with one exception +strap-hanging in a street car. The United States was that fortunate +exception. + +Now this is what modern civilization has come up against, and it is the +essential riddle of the modern sphinx which must be solved if we are to +live. All the European boundaries of to-day are impossibly small for +modern conditions. And they are sustained by an intensity of ancient +tradition and patriotic passion.... That is where we stand. + +The citizens of the United States of America are not without their +experience in this matter. The crisis of the national history of the +American community, the war between Union and Secession, was essentially +a crisis between the great state of the new age and the local feeling of +an earlier period. But Union triumphed. Americans live now in a +generation that has almost forgotten that there once seemed a +possibility that the map of North America might be broken up at last +into as many communities as the map of Europe. Except by foreign travel, +the present generation of Americans can have no idea of the net of +vexations and limitations in which Europeans are living at the present +time because of their political disunion. + +Let me take a small but quite significant set of differences, the +inconveniences of travel upon a journey of a little over a thousand +miles. They are in themselves petty inconveniences, but they will serve +to illustrate the net that is making free civilized life in Europe more +and more impossible. + +Take first the American case. An American wants to travel from New York +to St. Louis. He looks up the next train, packs his bag, gets aboard a +sleeper and turns out at St. Louis next day ready for business. + +Take now the European parallel. A European wants to travel from London +to Warsaw. Now that is a shorter distance by fifty or sixty miles than +the distance from New York to St. Louis. Will he pack his bag, get +aboard a train and go there? He will not. He will have to get a +passport, and getting a passport involves all sorts of tiresome little +errands. One has to go to a photographer, for example, to get +photographs to stick on the passport. The good European has then to take +his passport to the French representative in London for a French visa, +or, if he is going through Belgium, for a Belgian visa. After that he +must get a German visa. Then he must go round to the Czecho-Slovak +office for a Czechoslovak visa. Finally will come the Polish visa. + +Each of these endorsements necessitates something vexatious, personal +attendance, photography, stamps, rubber stamps, mysterious signatures +and the like, and always the payment of fees. Also they necessitate +delays. The other day I had occasion to go to Moscow, and I learnt that +it takes three weeks to get a visa for Finland and three weeks to get a +visa for Esthonia. You see you can't travel about Europe at all without +weeks and weeks of preparation. The preparations for a little journey to +Russia the other day took three whole days out of my life, cost me +several pounds in stamps and fees, and five in bribery. + +Ultimately, however, the good European is free to start. Arriving at the +French frontier in an hour or so, he will be held up for a long customs' +examination. Also he will need to change some of his money into francs. +His English money will be no good in France. The exchange in Europe is +always fluctuating, and he will be cheated on the exchange. All European +countries, including my own, cheat travellers on the exchange--that is +apparently what the exchange is for. + +He will then travel for a few hours to the German frontier. There he +will be bundled out again. The French will investigate him closely to +see that he is not carrying gold or large sums of money out of France. +Then he will be handed over to the Germans. He will go through the same +business with the customs and the same business with the money. His +French money is no further use to him and he must get German. A few more +hours and he will arrive on the frontier of Bohemia. Same search for +gold. Then customs' examination and change of money again. A few hours +more and he will be in Poland. Search for gold, customs, fresh money. + +As most of these countries are pursuing different railway policies, he +will probably have to change trains and rebook his luggage three or four +times. The trains may be ingeniously contrived not to connect so as to +force him to take some longer route politically favoured by one of the +intervening states. He will be lucky if he gets to Warsaw in four days. + +Arrived in Warsaw, he will probably need a permit to stay there, and he +will certainly need no end of permits to leave. + +Now here is a fuss over a fiddling little journey of 1,100 miles. Is it +any wonder that the bookings from London to Warsaw are infinitesimal in +comparison with the bookings from New York to St. Louis? But what I have +noted here are only the normal inconveniences of the traveller. They are +by no means the most serious inconveniences. + +The same obstructions that hamper the free movement of a traveller, +hamper the movement of foodstuffs and all sorts of merchandise in a much +greater degree. Everywhere in Europe trade is being throttled by tariffs +and crippled by the St. Vitus' dance of the exchanges. Each of these +European sovereign states turns out paper money at its own sweet will. +Last summer I went to Prague and exchanged pounds for kroners. They +ought to have been 25 to the pound. On Monday they were 180 to the +pound: on Friday 169. They jump about between 220 and 150, and everybody +is inconvenienced except the bankers and money changers. And this +uncertain exchange diverts considerable amounts of money that should be +stimulating business enterprise into a barren and mischievous gambling +with the circulation. + +Between each one of these compressed European countries the movement of +food or labour is still more blocked and impeded. And in addition to +these nuisances of national tariffs and independent national coinages at +every few score miles, Europe is extraordinarily crippled by its want of +any central authority to manage the most elementary collective +interests; the control of vice, for example; the handling of infectious +diseases; the suppression of international criminals. + +Europe is now confronted by a new problem--the problem of air transport. +So far as I can see, air transport is going to be strangled in Europe by +international difficulties. One can fly comfortably and safely from +London to Paris in two or three hours. But the passport preliminaries +will take days beforehand. + +The other day I wanted to get quickly to Reval in Esthonia from England +and back again. The distance is about the same as from Boston to +Minneapolis, and it could be done comfortably in 10 or 12 hours' flying. +I proposed to the Handley Page Company that they should arrange this for +me. They explained that they had no power to fly beyond Amsterdam in +Holland; thence it might be possible to get a German plane to Hamburg, +and thence again a Danish plane to Copenhagen--leaving about 500 miles +which were too complicated politically to fly. Each stoppage would +involve passport and other difficulties. In the end it took me five days +to get to Reval and seven days to get back. In Europe, with its present +frontiers, flying is not worth having. It can never be worth having--it +can never be worked successfully--until it is worked as at least a +pan-European affair. + +All these are the normal inconveniences of the national divisions of +Europe in peace time. By themselves they are strangling all hope of +economic recovery. For Europe is _not_ getting on to its feet +economically. Only a united effort can effect that. But along each of +the ridiculously restricted frontiers into which the European countries +are packed, lies also the possibility of war. National independence +means the right to declare war. And so each of these packed and +strangulated European countries is obliged, by its blessed independence, +to maintain as big an army and as big a military equipment as its +bankrupt condition--for we are all bankrupt--permits. + +Since the end of the Great War, nothing has been done of any real value +to ensure any European country against the threat of war, and nothing +will be done, and nothing can be done to lift that threat, so long as +the idea of national independence overrides all other considerations. + +And again, it is a little difficult for a mind accustomed to American +conditions, to realize what modern war will mean in Europe. + +Not one of these sovereign European states I have named between London +and Warsaw is any larger than the one single American state of Texas, +and not one has a capital that cannot be effectively bombed by aeroplane +raiders from its frontier within five or six hours of a declaration of +war. We can fly from London to Paris in two or three hours. And the +aerial bombs of to-day, I can assure you, will make the biggest bombs of +1918 seem like little crackers. Over all these European countries broods +this immediate threat of a warfare that will strain and torment the +nerves of every living man, woman or child in the countries affected. +Nothing of the sort can approach the American citizen except after a +long warning. The worst war that could happen to any North American +country would merely touch its coasts. + +Now I have dwelt on these differences between America and Europe because +they involve an absolute difference in outlook towards world peace +projects, towards leagues of nations, world states and the like, between +the American and the European. + +The American lives in a political unity on the big modern scale. He can +go on comfortably for a hundred years yet before he begins to feel tight +in his political skin, and before he begins to feel the threat of +immediate warfare close to his domestic life. He believes by experience +in peace, but he feels under no passionate urgency to organize it. So +far as he himself is concerned, he has got peace organized for a good +long time ahead. I doubt if it would make any very serious difference +for some time in the ordinary daily life of Kansas City, let us say, if +all Europe were reduced to a desert in the next five years. + +But on the other hand, the intelligent European is up against the unity +of Europe problem night and day. Europe cannot go on. European +civilization cannot go on, unless that net of boundaries which strangles +her is dissolved away. The difficulties created by language differences, +by bitter national traditions, by bad political habits and the like, are +no doubt stupendous. But stupendous though they are, they have to be +faced. Unless they are overcome, and overcome in a very few years, +Europe--entangled in this net of boundaries, and under a perpetual fear +of war, will, I am convinced, follow Russia and slide down beyond any +hope of recovery into a process of social dissolution as profound and +disastrous as that which closed the career of the Western Roman Empire. + +The American intelligence and the European intelligence approach this +question of a world peace, therefore, from an entirely different angle +and in an entirely different spirit. To the American in the blessed ease +of his great unbroken territory, it seems a matter simply of making his +own ample securities world-wide by treaties of arbitration and such-like +simple agreements. And my impression is that he thinks of Europeans as +living under precisely similar conditions. + +Nothing of that sort will meet the problem of the Old World. The +European situation is altogether more intense and tragic than the +American. Europe needs not treaties but a profound change in its +political ideas and habits. Europe is saturated with narrow patriotism +like a body saturated by some evil inherited disease. She is haunted by +narrow ambitions and ancient animosities. + +It is because of this profound difference of situation and outlook that +I am convinced of the impossibility of any common political co-operation +to organize a world peace between America and Europe at the present +time. + +The American type of state and the European type of state are different +things, incapable of an effectual alliance; the steam tractor and the ox +cannot plough this furrow together. American thought, American +individuals, may no doubt play a very great part in the task of +reconstruction that lies before Europe, but not the American federal +government as a sovereign state among equal states. + +The United States constitute a state on a different scale and level from +any old world state. Patriotism and the national idea in America is a +different thing and a bigger scale thing than the patriotism and +national idea in any old world state. + +Any League of Nations aiming at stability now, would necessarily be a +league seeking to stereotype existing boundaries and existing national +ideas. Now these boundaries and these ideas are just what have to be got +rid of at any cost. Before Europe can get on to a level and on to equal +terms with the United States, the European communities have to go +through a process that America went through--under much easier +conditions--a century and a half ago. They have to repeat, on a much +greater scale and against profounder prejudices, the feat of +understanding and readjustment that was accomplished by the American +people between 1781 and 1788. + +As you will all remember, these States after they had decided upon +Independence, framed certain Articles of Confederation; they were +articles of confederation between thirteen nations, between the people +of Massachusetts, the people of Virginia, the people of Georgia, and so +forth--thirteen distinct and separate sovereign peoples. They made a +Union so lax and feeble that it could neither keep order at home nor +maintain respect abroad. Then they produced another constitution. They +swept aside all that talk about the people of Massachusetts, the people +of Virginia, and the rest of their thirteen nations. They based their +union on a wider idea: the people of the United States. + +Now Europe, if it is not to sink down to anarchy, has to do a parallel +thing. If Europe is to be saved from ultimate disaster, Europe has to +stop thinking in terms of the people of France, the people of England, +the people of Germany, the French, the British, the Germans, and so +forth. Europe has to think at least of the people of Europe, if not of +the civilized people of the world. If we Europeans cannot bring our +minds to that, there is no hope for us. Only by thinking of all peoples +can any people be saved in Europe. Fresh wars will destroy the social +fabric of Europe, and Europe will perish as nations, fighting. + +There are many people who think that there is at least one political +system in the old world which, like the United States, is large enough +and world wide enough to go on by itself under modern conditions for +some considerable time. They think that the British Empire can, as it +were, stand out of the rest of the Old World as a self-sufficient +system. They think that it can stand out freely as the United States can +stand out, and that these two English-speaking powers have merely to +agree together to dominate and keep the peace of the world. + +Let me give a little attention to this idea. It is I believe a wrong +idea, and one that may be very disastrous to our common English-speaking +culture if it is too fondly cherished. + +There can be no denying that the British Imperial system is a system +different in its nature and size from a typical European state, from a +state of the horse and road scale, like France, let us say, or Germany. +And equally it is with the United States a new growth. The present +British Empire is indeed a newer growth than the United States. But +while the United States constitute a homogeneous system and grow more +homogeneous, the British Empire is heterogeneous and shows little or no +assimilative power. And while the United States are all gathered +together and are still very remote from any serious antagonist, the +British Empire is scattered all over the world, entangled with and +stressed against a multitude of possible antagonists. + +I have been arguing that the size and manageability of all political +states is finally a matter of transport and communications. They grow to +a limit strictly determined by these considerations. Beyond that limit +they are unstable. Let us now apply these ideas to the British Empire. + +I have shown that the great system of the United States is the creation +of the river steamboat and the railway. Quite as much so is the present +British Empire the creation of the ocean-going steamship--protected by a +great navy. + +The British Empire is a modern ocean state just as the United States is +a modern continental state. The political and economic cohesion of the +British Empire rests upon this one thing, upon the steamship remaining +the dominant and secure means of world transport in the future. If the +British Empire is to remain sovereign and secure and independent of the +approval and co-operation of other states, it is necessary that +steamship transport (ocean transport) should remain dominant in peace +and invulnerable in war. + +Well, that brings us face to face with two comparatively new facts that +throw a shadow upon both that predominance and upon that +invulnerability. One is air transport; the other the submarine. The +possibilities of the ocean-going submarine I will not enlarge upon now. +They will be familiar to everyone who followed the later phases of the +Great War. + +It must be clear that sea power is no longer the simple and decisive +thing it was before the coming of the submarine. The sea ways can no +longer be taken and possessed completely. To no other power, except +Japan, is this so grave a consideration as it is to Britain. + +And if we turn to the possibilities of air-transport in the future we +are forced towards the same conclusion, that the security of the British +Empire must rest in the future not on its strength in warfare, but on +its keeping the peace within and without its boundaries. + +I was a member of the British Civil Air Transport Committee, and we went +with care and thoroughness into the possibilities and probabilities of +the air. My work on that committee convinced me that in the near future +the air may be the chief if not the only highway for long-distance +mails, for long-distance passenger traffic, and for the carriage of most +valuable and compact commodities. The ocean ways are likely to be only +the ways for slow travel and for staple and bulky trade. + +And my studies on that committee did much to confirm my opinion that in +quite a brief time the chief line of military attack will be neither by +sea nor land but through the air. Moreover, it was borne in upon me that +the chief air routes of the world will lie over the great plains of the +world, that they will cross wide stretches of sea or mountainous country +only very reluctantly. + +Now think of how the British Empire lies with relation to the great sea +and land masses of the world. There has been talk in Great Britain of +what people have called "all-red air routes," that is to say, +all-British air routes. There are no all-red air routes. You cannot get +out of Britain to any other parts of the Empire, unless perhaps it is +Canada, without crossing foreign territory. That is a fact that British +people have to face and digest, and the sooner they grasp it the better +for them. Britain cannot use air ways even to develop her commerce in +peace time without the consent and co-operation of a large number of her +intervening neighbours. If she embarks single-handed on any considerable +war she will find both her air and her sea communications almost +completely cut. + +And so the British Empire, in spite of its size and its modernity, is +not much better off now in the way of standing alone than the other +European countries. It is no exception to our generalization that (apart +from all other questions) the scale and form of the European states are +out of harmony with contemporary and developing transport conditions, +and that all these powers are, if only on this account, under one urgent +necessity to sink those ideas of complete independence that have +hitherto dominated them. It is a life and death necessity. If they +cannot obey it they will all be destroyed. + + + + +III + +THE ENLARGEMENT OF PATRIOTISM TO A WORLD STATE + + +In my opening argument I have shown the connexion between the present +intense political troubles of the world and more particularly of Europe, +and the advance in mechanical knowledge during the past hundred and +fifty years. I have shown that without a very drastic readjustment of +political ideas and habits, there opens before Europe and the world +generally, a sure prospect of degenerative conflicts; that without such +a readjustment, our civilization has passed its zenith and must continue +the process of collapse that has been in progress since August, 1914. + +Now this readjustment means an immediate conflict with existing +patriotism. We have embarked here upon a discussion in which emotion and +passion seem quite unavoidable, the discussion of nationality. At the +very outset we bump violently against patriotism as any European +understands that word. And it is, I hold, impossible not to bump against +European patriotisms. We cannot temporize with patriotism, as one finds +it in Europe, and get on towards a common human welfare. The two things +are flatly opposed. One or other must be sacrificed. The political and +social muddle of Europe at the present time is very largely due to the +attempt to compromise between patriotism and the common good of Europe. + +Do we want to get rid of patriotism altogether? + +I do not think we want to get rid of patriotism, and I do not think we +could, even if we wanted to do so. It seems to be necessary to his moral +life, that a man should feel himself part of a community, belonging to +it, and it belonging to him. And that this community should be a single +and lovable reality, inspired by a common idea, with a common fashion +and aim. + +But a point I have been trying to bring out throughout all this argument +so far is this--that when a European goes to the United States of +America he finds a new sort of state, materially bigger and materially +less encumbered than any European state. And he also finds an intensely +patriotic people whose patriotism isn't really the equivalent of a +European patriotism. It is historically and practically a synthesis of +European patriotisms. It is numerically bigger. It is geographically ten +times as big. That is very important indeed from the point of view of +this discussion. And it is synthetic; it is a thing made out of +something smaller. People, I believe, talk of 100 per cent. Americans. +There is no 100 per cent. American except the Red Indian. There isn't a +white man in the United States from whose blood a large factor of +European patriotism hasn't been washed out to make way for his American +patriotism. + +Upon this fact of American patriotism, as a larger different thing than +European patriotism, I build. The thing can be done. If it can be done +in the Europeans and their descendants who have come to America, it can +conceivably be done in the Europeans who abide in Europe. And how can we +set about doing it? + +America, the silent, comprehensive continent of America, did the thing +by taking all the various nationalities who have made up her population +and obliging them to live together. + +Unhappily we cannot take the rest of our European nations now and put +them on to a great virgin continent to learn a wider political wisdom. +There are no more virgin continents. Europe must stay where she is.... + +Now I am told it sometimes helps scientific men to clear up their ideas +about a process by imagining that process reversed and so getting a view +of it from a different direction. Let us then, for a few moments, +instead of talking of the expansion and synthesis of patriotism in +Europe, imagine a development of narrow patriotism in America and +consider how that case could be dealt with. + +Suppose, for instance, there was a serious outbreak of local patriotism +in Kentucky. Suppose you found the people of Kentucky starting a flag of +their own and objecting to what they would probably call the "vague +internationalism" of the stars and stripes. Suppose you found them +wanting to set up tariff barriers to the trade of the states round about +them. Suppose you found they were preparing to annex considerable parts +of the state of Virginia by force, in order to secure a proper strategic +frontier among the mountains to the east, and that they were also +talking darkly of their need for an outlet to the sea of their very own. + +What would an American citizen think of such an outbreak? He would +probably think that Kentucky had gone mad. But this, which seems such +fantastic behaviour when we imagine it occurring in Kentucky, is exactly +what is happening in Europe in the case of little states that are hardly +any larger than Kentucky. They have always been so. They have not gone +mad; if this sort of thing is madness then they were born mad. And they +have never been cured. A state of affairs that is regarded in Europe as +normal would be regarded in the United States as a grave case of local +mental trouble. + +And what would the American community probably do in such a case? It +would probably begin by inquiring where Kentucky had got these strange +ideas. They would look for sources of infection. Somebody must have been +preaching there or writing in the newspapers or teaching mischief in the +school. And I suppose the people of the United States would set +themselves very earnestly to see that sounder sense was talked and +taught to the people of Kentucky about these things. + +Now that is precisely what has to be done in the parallel European case. +Everywhere in Europe there goes on in the national schools, in the +patriotic churches, in the national presses, in the highly nationalized +literatures, a unity-destroying propaganda of patriotism. The schools of +all the European countries at the present time with scarcely an +exception, teach the most rancid patriotism; they are centres of an +abominable political infection. The children of Europe grow up with an +intensity of national egotism that makes them, for all practical +international purposes, insane. They are not born with it, but they are +infected with it as soon as they can read and write. The British learn +nothing but the glories of Britain and the British Empire; the French +are, if possible, still more insanely concentrated on France; the +Germans are just recovering from the bitter consequences of forty years +of intensive nationalist education. And so on. Every country in Europe +is its own _Sinn Fein_, cultivating that ugly and silly obsession of +"ourselves alone." "Ourselves alone" is the sure guide to conflict and +disaster, to want, misery, violence, degradation and death for our +children and our children's children--until our race is dead. + +The first task before us in Europe is, at any cost, to release our +children from this nationalist obsession, to teach the mass of European +people a little truthful history in which each one will see the past +and future of his own country in their proper proportions, and a little +truthful ethnology in which each country will get over the delusion that +its people are a distinct and individual race. The history teaching in +the schools of Europe is at the very core of this business. + +But that is only, so to speak, the point of application of great complex +influences, the influences that mould us in childhood, the teachings of +literature, of the various religious bodies, and the daily reiteration +of the press. Before Europe can get on, there has to be a colossal +turnover of these moral and intellectual forces in the direction of +creating an international mind. If that can be effected then there is +hope for Europe and the Old World. If it cannot be effected, then +certainly Europe will go down--with its flags nailed to its masts. We +are on a sinking ship that only one thing can save. We have to oust +these European patriotisms by some greater idea or perish. + +What is this greater idea to be? + +Now I submit that this greater idea had best be the idea of the World +State of All Mankind. + +I will admit that so far I have made a case only for teaching the idea +of a United States of Europe in Europe. I have concentrated our +attention upon that region of maximum congestion and conflict. But as a +matter of fact there are no real and effective barriers and boundaries +in the Old World between Europe and Asia and Africa. The ordinary +Russian talks of "Europe" as one who is outside it. The European +political systems flow over and have always overflowed into the greater +areas to the east and south. Remember the early empires of Macedonia and +Rome. See how the Russian language runs to the Pacific, and how Islam +radiates into all three continents. I will not elaborate this case. + +When you bear such things in mind, I think you will agree with me that +if we are to talk of a United States of Europe, it is just as easy and +practicable to talk of a United States of the Old World. And are we to +stop at a United States of the Old World? + +No doubt the most evident synthetic forces in America at the present +time point towards some sort of pan-American unification. That is the +nearest thing. That may come first. + +But are we to contemplate a sort of dual world--the New World against +the Old? + +I do not think that would be any very permanent or satisfactory +stopping-place. Why make two bites at a planet? If we work for unity on +the large scale we are contemplating, we may as well work for world +unity. + +Not only in distance but in a score of other matters are London and Rome +nearer to New York than is Patagonia, and San Francisco is always likely +to be more interesting to Japan than Paris or Madrid. I cannot see any +reason for supposing that the mechanical drawing together of the +peoples of the world into one economic and political unity is likely to +cease--unless our civilization ceases. I see no signs that our present +facilities for transport and communication are the ultimate possible +facilities. Once we break away from current nationalist limitations in +our political ideas, then there is no reason and no advantage in +contemplating any halfway house to a complete human unity. + +Now after what I have been saying it is very easy to explain why I would +have this idea of human unity put before people's minds in the form of a +World State and not of a League of Nations. + +Let me first admit the extraordinary educational value of the League of +Nations propaganda, and of the attempt that has been made to create a +League of Nations. It has brought before the general intelligence of the +world the proposition of a world law and a world unity that could not +perhaps have been broached in any other way. + +But is it a league of nations that is wanted? + +I submit to you that the word "nations" is just the word that should +have been avoided--that it admits and tends to stereotype just those +conceptions of division and difference that we must at any cost minimize +and obliterate if our species is to continue. And the phrase has a thin +and legal and litigious flavour. What loyalty and what devotion can we +expect this multiple association to command? It has no unity--no +personality. It is like asking a man to love the average member of a +woman's club instead of loving his wife. + +For the idea of Man, for human unity, for our common blood, for the one +order of the world, I can imagine men living and dying, but not for a +miscellaneous assembly that will not mix--even in its name. It has no +central idea, no heart to it, this League of Nations formula. It is weak +and compromising just where it should be strong--in defining its +antagonism to separate national sovereignty. For that is what it aims +at, if it means business. If it means business it means at least a +super-state overriding the autonomy of existing states, and if it does +not mean business then we have no use for it whatever. + +It may seem a much greater undertaking to attack nationality and +nationalism instead of patching up a compromise with these things, but +along the line of independent nationality lies no hope of unity and +peace and continuing progress for mankind. We cannot suffer these old +concentrations of loyalty because we want that very loyalty which now, +concentrates upon them to cement and sustain the peace of all the world. +Just as in the past provincial patriotisms have given place to national +patriotisms, so now we need to oust these still too narrow devotions by +a new unity and a new reigning idea, the idea of one state and one flag +in all the earth. + +The idea of the World State stands to the idea of the League of Nations +much as the idea of the one God of Earth and Heaven stands to a Divine +Committee composed of Wodin and Baal and Jupiter and Amon Ra and Mumbo +Jumbo and all the other national and tribal gods. There is no compromise +possible in the one matter as in the other. There is no way round. The +task before mankind is to substitute the one common idea of an +overriding world commonweal for the multitudinous ideas of little +commonweals that prevail everywhere to-day. We have already glanced at +the near and current consequences of our failure to bring about that +substitution. + +Now this is an immense proposal. Is it a preposterous one? Let us not +shirk the tremendous scale upon which the foundations of a world state +of all mankind must be laid. But remember, however great that task +before us may seem, however near it may come to the impossible, +nevertheless, in the establishment of one world rule and one world law +lies the only hope of escape from an increasing tangle of wars, from +social overstrain, and at last a social dissolution so complete as to +end for ever the tale of mankind as we understand mankind. + +Personally I am appalled by the destruction already done in the world in +the past seven years. I doubt if any untravelled American can realize +how much of Europe is already broken up. I do not think many people +realize how swiftly Europe is still sinking, how urgent it is to get +European affairs put back upon a basis of the common good if +civilization is to be saved. + +And now, as to the immensity of this project of substituting loyalty to +a world commonweal for loyalty to a single egotistical belligerent +nation. It is a project to invade hundreds of millions of minds, to +attack certain ideas established in those minds and either to efface +those ideas altogether or to supplement and correct them profoundly by +this new idea of a human commonweal. We have to get not only into the at +present intensely patriotic minds of Frenchmen, Germans, English, Irish +and Japanese, but into the remote and difficult minds of Arabs and +Indians and into the minds of the countless millions of China. Is there +any precedent to justify us in hoping that such a change in world ideas +is possible? + +I think there is. I would suggest that the general tendency of thought +about these things to-day is altogether too sceptical of what teaching +and propaganda can do in these matters. In the past there have been very +great changes in human thought. I need scarcely remind you of the spread +of Christianity in Western Europe. In a few centuries the whole of +Western Europe was changed from the wild confusion of warring tribes +that succeeded the breakdown of the Roman Empire, into the unity of +Christendom, into a community with such an idea of unity that it could +be roused from end to end by the common idea of the Crusades. + +Still more remarkable was the swift transformation in less than a +century of all the nations and peoples to the south and west of the +Mediterranean, from Spain to Central Asia, into the unity of Islam, a +unity which has lasted to this day. In both these cases, what I may call +the mental turnover was immense. + +I think if you will consider the spread of these very complex and +difficult religions, and compare the means at the disposal of their +promoters with the means at the disposal of intelligent people to-day, +you will find many reasons for believing that a recasting of people's +ideas into the framework of a universal state is by no means an +impossible project. + +Those great teachings of the past were spread largely by word of mouth. +Their teachers had to travel slowly and dangerously. People were +gathered together to hear with great difficulty, except in a few crowded +towns. Books could be used only sparingly. Few people could read, fewer +still could translate, and MSS. were copied with extreme slowness upon +parchment. There was no printing, no paper, no post. And except for a +very few people there were no schools. Both Christendom and Islam had to +create their common schools in order to preserve even a minimum of their +doctrine intact from generation to generation. All this was done in the +teeth of much bitter opposition and persecution. + +Now to-day we have means of putting ideas and arguments swiftly and +effectively before people all over the world at the same time, such as +no one could have dreamt of a hundred years ago. We have not only books +and papers, but in the cinema we have a means of rapid, vivid +presentation still hardly used. We have schools nearly everywhere. And +here in the need for an overruling world state, and the idea of world +service replacing combative patriotism, we have an urgent, a commanding +human need. We have an invincible case for this world state and an +unanswerable objection to the nationalisms and patriotisms that would +oppose it. + +Is it not almost inevitable that some of us should get together and +begin a propaganda upon modern lines of this organized world peace, +without which our race must perish? The world perishes for the want of a +common political idea. It is still quite possible to give the world this +common political idea, the idea of a federal world state. We cannot help +but set about doing it. + +So I put it to you that the most important work before men and women +to-day is the preaching and teaching, the elaboration and then at last +the realization of this Project of the World State. We have to create a +vision of it, to make it seem first a possibility and then an +approaching reality. This is a task that demands the work and thought of +thousands of minds. We have to spread the idea of a Federal World State, +as an approaching reality, throughout the world. We can do this nowadays +through a hundred various channels. We can do it through the press, +through all sorts of literary expression, in our schools, colleges, and +universities, through political mouthpieces, by special organizations, +and last, but not least, through the teaching of the churches. For +remember that all the great religions of the world are in theory +universalist; they may tolerate the divisions of men but they cannot +sanction them. We propose no religious revolution, but at most a +religious revival. We can spread ideas and suggestions now with a +hundred times the utmost rapidity of a century ago. + +This movement need not at once intervene in politics. It is a +prospective movement, and its special concern will be with young and +still growing minds. But as it spreads it will inevitably change +politics. The nations, states, and kingdoms of to-day, which fight and +scheme against each other as though they had to go on fighting and +scheming for ever, will become more and more openly and manifestly +merely guardian governments, governments playing a waiting part in the +world, while the world state comes of age. For this World State, for +which the world is waiting, must necessarily be a fusion of all +governments, and heir to all the empires. + +So far I have been occupied by establishing a case for the World State. +It has been, I fear, rather an abstract discussion. I have kept closely +to the bare hard logic of the present human situation. + +But now let me attempt very briefly, in the barest outline, some +concrete realization of what a World State would mean. Let us try and +conceive for ourselves the form a World State would take. I do not care +to leave this discussion with nothing to it but a phrase which is really +hardly more than a negative phrase until we put some body to it. As it +stands World State means simply a politically undivided world. Let us +try and carry that over to the idea of a unified organized state +throughout the world. + +Let us try to imagine what a World Government would be like. I find that +when one speaks of a World State people think at once of some existing +government and magnify it to world proportions. They ask, for example, +where will the World Congress meet; and how will you elect your World +President? Won't your World President, they say, be rather a tremendous +personage? How are we to choose him? Or will there be a World King? +These are very natural questions, at the first onset. But are they sound +questions? May they not be a little affected by false analogies? The +governing of the whole of the world may turn out to be _not_ a magnified +version of governing a part of the world, but a different sort of job +altogether. These analogies that people draw so readily from national +states may not really work in a world state. + +And first with regard to this question of a king or president. Let us +ask whether it is probable that the world state will have any single +personal head at all? + +Is the world state likely to be a monarchy--either an elective short +term limited monarchy such as is the United States, or an inherited +limited monarchy like the British Empire? + +Many people will say, you _must_ have a head of the state. But _must_ +you? Is not this idea a legacy from the days when states were small +communities needing a leader in war and diplomacy? + +In the World State we must remember there will be no war--and no +diplomacy as such. + +I would even question whether in such a great modern state as the U.S.A. +the idea and the functions of the president may not be made too +important. Indeed I believe that question has been asked by many people +in the States lately, and has been answered in the affirmative. + +The broad lines of the United States constitution were drawn in a period +of almost universal monarchy. American affairs were overshadowed by the +personality of George Washington, and as you know, monarchist ideas were +so rife that there was a project, during the years of doubt and division +that followed the War of Independence, for importing a German King, a +Prussian Prince, in imitation of the British Monarchy. But if the United +States were beginning again to-day on its present scale, would it put so +much power and importance upon a single individual as it put upon George +Washington and his successors in the White House? I doubt it very much. + +There may be a limit, I suggest, to the size and complexity of a +community that can be directed by a single personal head. Perhaps that +limit may have been passed by both the United States and by the British +Empire at the present time. It may be possible for one person to be +leader and to have an effect of directing personality in a community of +millions or even of tens of millions. But is it possible for one small +short-lived individual to get over and affect and make any sort of +contact with hundreds of millions in thousands of towns and cities? + +Recently we have watched with admiration and sympathy the heroic efforts +of the Prince of Wales to shake hands with and get his smile well home +into the hearts of the entire population of the British Empire of which +he is destined to become the "golden link." After tremendous exertions a +very large amount of the ground still remains to be covered. + +I will confess I cannot see any single individual human head in my +vision of the World State. + +The linking reality of the World State is much more likely to be not an +individual but an idea--such an idea as that of a human commonweal under +the God of all mankind. + +If at any time, for any purpose, some one individual had to step out and +act for the World State as a whole, then I suppose the senior judges of +the Supreme Court, or the Speaker of the Council, or the head of the +Associated Scientific Societies, or some such person, could step out +and do what had to be done. + +But if there is to be no single head person, there must be at least some +sort of assembly or council. That seems to be necessary. But will it be +a gathering at all like Congress or the British Parliament, with a +Government side and an opposition ruled by party traditions and party +ideas? + +There again, I think we may be too easily misled by existing but +temporary conditions. I do not think it is necessary to assume that the +council of the World State will be an assembly of party politicians. I +believe it will be possible to have it a real gathering of +representatives, a fair sample of the thought and will of mankind at +large, and to avoid a party development by a more scientific method of +voting than the barbaric devices used for electing representatives to +Congress or the British Parliament, devices that play directly into the +hands of the party organizer who trades upon the defects of political +method. + +Will this council be directly elected? That, I think, may be found to be +essential. And upon a very broad franchise. Because, _firstly_, it is +before all things important that every adult in the world should feel a +direct and personal contact between himself and the World State, and +that he is an assenting and participating citizen of the world; and +_secondly_, because if your council is appointed by any intermediate +body, all sorts of local and national considerations, essential in the +business of the subordinate body, will get in the way of a simple and +direct regard for the world commonweal. + +And as to this council: Will it have great debates and wonderful scenes +and crises and so forth--the sort of thing that looks well in a large +historical painting? There again we may be easily misled by analogy. One +consideration that bars the way to anything of that sort is that its +members will have no common language which they will be all able to +speak with the facility necessary for eloquence. Eloquence is far more +adapted to the conditions of a Red Indian pow-wow than to the ordering +of large and complicated affairs. The World Council may be a very +taciturn assembly. It may even meet infrequently. Its members may +communicate their views largely by _notes_ which may have to be very +clear and explicit, because they will have to stand translation, and +short--to escape neglect. + +And what will be the chief organs and organizations and works and +methods with which this Council of the World State will be concerned? + +There will be a Supreme Court determining _not_ International Law, but +World Law. There will be a growing Code of World Law. + +There will be a world currency. + +There will be a ministry of posts, transport and communications +generally. + +There will be a ministry of trade in staple products and for the +conservation and development of the natural resources of the earth. + +There will be a ministry of social and labour conditions. + +There will be a ministry of world health. + +There will be a ministry, the most important ministry of all, watching +and supplementing national educational work and taking up the care and +stimulation of backward communities. + +And instead of a War Office and Naval and Military departments, there +will be a _Peace Ministry_ studying the belligerent possibilities of +every new invention, watching for armed disturbances everywhere, and +having complete control of every armed force that remains in the world. +All these world ministries will be working in co-operation with local +authorities who will apply world-wide general principles to local +conditions. + +These items probably comprehend everything that the government of a +World State would have to do. Much of its activity would be merely the +co-ordination and adjustment of activities already very thoroughly +discussed and prepared for it by local and national discussions. I think +it will be a mistake for us to assume that the work of a world +government will be vaster and more complex than that of such governments +as those of the United States or the British Empire. In many respects it +will have an enormously simplified task. There will be no foreign enemy, +no foreign competition, no tariffs, so far as it is concerned, or tariff +wars. It will be keeping order; it will not be carrying on a contest. +There will be no necessity for secrecy; it will not be necessary to have +a Cabinet plotting and planning behind closed doors; there will be no +general policy except a steady attention to the common welfare. Even the +primary origin of a World Council must necessarily be different from +that of any national government. Every existing government owes its +beginnings to force and is in its fundamental nature militant. It is an +offensive-defensive organ. This fact saturates our legal and social +tradition more than one realizes at first. There is, about civil law +everywhere, a faint flavour of a relaxed state of siege. But a world +government will arise out of different motives and realize a different +ideal. It will be primarily an organ for keeping the peace. + +And now perhaps we may look at this project of a World State mirrored in +the circumstances of the life of one individual citizen. Let us consider +very briefly the life of an ordinary young man living in a World State +and consider how it would differ from a commonplace life to-day. + +He will have been born in some one of the United States of the World--in +New York or California, or Ontario or New Zealand, or Portugal or France +or Bengal or Shan-si; but wherever his lot may fall, the first history +he will learn will be the wonderful history of mankind, from its nearly +animal beginnings, a few score thousand years ago, with no tools, but +implements of chipped stone and hacked wood, up to the power and +knowledge of our own time. His education will trace for him the +beginnings of speech, of writing, of cultivation and settlement. + +He will learn of the peoples and nations of the past, and how each one +has brought its peculiar gifts and its distinctive contribution to the +accumulating inheritance of our race. + +He will know, perhaps, less of wars, battles, conquests, massacres, +kings and the like unpleasant invasions of human dignity and welfare, +and he will know more of explorers, discoverers and stout outspoken men +than our contemporary citizen. + +While he is still a little boy, he will have the great outlines of the +human adventure brought home to his mind by all sorts of vivid methods +of presentation, such as the poor poverty-struck schools of our own time +cannot dream of employing. + +And on this broad foundation he will build up his knowledge of his own +particular state and nation and people, learning not tales of ancient +grievances and triumphs and revenges, but what his particular race and +countryside have given and what it gives and may be expected to give to +the common welfare of the world. On such foundations his social +consciousness will be built. + +He will learn an outline of all that mankind knows and of the +fascinating realms of half knowledge in which man is still struggling to +know. His curiosity and his imagination will be roused and developed. + +He will probably be educated continuously at least until he is eighteen +or nineteen, and perhaps until he is two or three and twenty. For a +world that wastes none of its resources upon armaments or soldiering, +and which produces whatever it wants in the regions best adapted to that +production, and delivers them to the consumer by the directest route, +will be rich enough not only to spare the first quarter of everybody's +life for education entirely, but to keep on with some education +throughout the whole lifetime. + +Of course the school to which our young citizen of the world will go +will be very different from the rough and tumble schools of to-day, +understaffed with underpaid assistants, and having bare walls. It will +have benefited by some of the intelligence and wealth we lavish to-day +on range-finders and submarines. + +Even a village school will be in a beautiful little building costing as +much perhaps as a big naval gun or a bombing-aeroplane costs to-day. I +know this will sound like shocking extravagance to many contemporary +hearers, but in the World State the standards will be different. + +I don't know whether any of us really grasp what we are saying when we +talk of greater educational efficiency in the future. That means--if it +means anything--teaching more with much less trouble. It will mean, for +instance, that most people will have three or four languages properly +learnt; that they will think about things mathematical with a quickness +and clearness that puzzles us; that about all sorts of things their +minds will move in daylight where ours move in a haze of ignorance or in +an emotional fog. + +This clear-headed, broad-thinking young citizen of the World State will +not be given up after his educational years to a life of toil--there +will be very little toil left in the world. Mankind will have machines +and power enough to do most of the toil for it. Why, between 1914 and +1918 we blew away enough energy and destroyed enough machinery and +turned enough good grey matter into stinking filth to release hundreds +of millions of toilers from toil for ever! + +Our young citizen will choose some sort of interesting work--perhaps +creative work. And he will be free to travel about the whole world +without a passport or visa, without a change of money; everywhere will +be his country; he will find people everywhere who will be endlessly +different, but none suspicious or hostile. Everywhere he will find +beautiful and distinctive cities, freely expressive of the spirit of the +land in which they have arisen. Strange and yet friendly cities. + +The world will be a far healthier place than it is now--for mankind as a +whole will still carry on organized wars--no longer wars of men against +men, but of men against malarias and diseases and infections. Probably +he will never know what a cold is, or a headache. He will be able to go +through the great forests of the tropics without shivering with fever +and without saturating himself with preventive drugs. He will go freely +among great mountains; he will fly to the Poles of the earth if he +chooses, and dive into the cold, now hidden, deep places of the sea. + +But it is very difficult to fill in the picture of his adult life so +that it will seem real to our experience. It is hard to conceive and +still more difficult to convey. We live in this congested, bickering, +elbowing, shoving world, and it has soaked into our natures and made us +a part of itself. Hardly any of us know what it is to be properly +educated, and hardly any what it is to be in constant general good +health. + +To talk of what the world may be to most of us is like talking of baths +and leisure and happy things to some poor hopeless, gin-soaked drudge in +a slum. The creature is so devitalized; the dirt is so ingrained, so +much a second nature, that a bath really isn't attractive. Clean and +beautiful clothes sound like a mockery or priggishness. To talk of +spacious and beautiful places only arouses a violent desire in the poor +thing to get away somewhere and hide. In squalor and misery, quarrelling +and fighting make a sort of nervous relief. To multitudes of slum-bred +people the prospect of no more fighting is a disagreeable prospect, a +dull outlook. + +Well, all this world of ours may seem a slum to the people of a happier +age. They will feel about our world just as we feel about the ninth or +tenth century, when we read of its brigands and its insecurities, its +pestilences, its miserable housing, its abstinence from ablutions. + +But our young citizen will not have been inured to our base world. He +will have little of our ingrained dirt in his mind and heart. He will +love. He will love beautifully. As most of us once hoped to do in our +more romantic moments. He will have ambitions--for the world state will +give great scope to ambition. He will work skilfully and brilliantly, or +he will administer public services, or he will be an able teacher, or a +mental or physical physician, or he will be an interpretative or +creative artist; he may be a writer or a scientific investigator, he may +be a statesman in his state, or even a world statesman. If he is a +statesman he may be going up perhaps to the federal world congress. In +the year 2020 there will still be politics, but they will be great +politics. Instead of the world's affairs being managed in a score of +foreign offices, all scheming meanly and cunningly against each other, +all planning to thwart and injure each other, they will be managed under +the direction of an educated and organized common intelligence intent +only upon the common good. + +Dear! Dear! Dear! Does it sound like rubbish to you? I suppose it does. +You think I am talking of a dreamland, of an unattainable Utopia? +Perhaps I am! This dear, jolly old world of dirt, war, bankruptcy, +murder and malice, thwarted lives, wasted lives, tormented lives, +general ill health and a social decadence that spreads and deepens +towards a universal smash--how can we hope to turn it back from its +course? How priggish and impracticable! How impertinent! How +preposterous! I seem to hear a distant hooting.... + +Sometimes it seems to me that the barriers that separate man and man are +nearly insurmountable and invincible, that we who talk of a world state +now are only the pioneers of a vast uphill struggle in the minds and +hearts of men that may need to be waged for centuries--that may fail in +the end. + +Sometimes again, in other moods, it seems to me that these barriers and +nationalities and separations are so illogical, so much a matter of +tradition, so plainly mischievous and cruel, that at any time we may +find the common sense of our race dissolving them away.... + +Who can see into that darkest of all mysteries, the hearts and wills of +mankind? It may be that it is well for us not to know of the many +generations who will have to sustain this conflict. + +Yes, that is one mood, and there is the other. Perhaps we fear too much. +Even before our lives run out we may feel the dawn of a greater age +perceptible among the black shadows and artificial glares of these +unhappy years. + + + + +IV + +THE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION + +PART ONE + + +Sec. 1 + +In my next two papers I am going to discuss and--what shall I +say?--experiment with an old but neglected idea, an idea that was first +broached I believe about the time when the State of Connecticut was +coming into existence and while New York was still the Dutch city of New +Amsterdam. + +The man who propounded this idea was a certain great Bohemian, Komensky, +who is perhaps better known in our western world by his Latinized name +Comenius. He professed himself the pupil of Bacon. He was the friend of +Milton. He travelled from one European country to another with his +political and educational ideas. For a time he thought of coming to +America. It is a great pity that he never came. And his idea, the +particular idea of his we are going to discuss, was the idea of a common +book, a book of history, science and wisdom, which should form the basis +and framework for the thoughts and imaginations of every citizen in the +world. + +In many ways the thinkers and writers of the early seventeenth century +seem more akin to us and more sympathetic with the world of to-day, than +any intervening group of literary figures. They strike us as having a +longer vision than the men of the eighteenth century, and as being +bolder--and, how shall I put it?--more desperate in their thinking than +the nineteenth century minds. And this closer affinity to our own time +arises, I should think, directly and naturally, out of the closer +resemblance of their circumstances. Between 1640 and 1650, just as in +our present age, the world was tremendously unsettled and distressed. A +century and more of expansion and prosperity had given place to a phase +of conflict, exhaustion and entire political unsettlement. Britain was +involved in the bitter political struggle that culminated in the +execution of King Charles I. Ireland was a land of massacre and +counter-massacre. The Thirty Years War in Central Europe was in its +closing, most dreadful stages of famine and plunder. In France the crown +and the nobles were striving desperately for ascendancy in the War of +the Fronde. The Turk threatened Vienna. Nowhere in Western Europe did +there remain any secure and settled political arrangements. Everywhere +there was disorder, everywhere it seemed that anything might happen, and +it is just those disordered and indeterminate times that are most +fruitful of bold religious and social and political and educational +speculations and initiatives. + +This was the period that produced the Quakers and a number of the most +vigorous developments of Puritanism, in which the foundations of modern +republicanism were laid, and in which the project of a world league of +nations--or rather of a world state--received wide attention. And the +student of Comenius will find in him an active and sensitive mind +responding with a most interesting similarity to our own responses, to +the similar conditions of his time. He has been distressed and +dismayed--as most of us have been distressed and dismayed--by a rapid +development of violence, by a great release of cruelty and suffering in +human affairs. He felt none of the security that was felt in the +eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the _certainty_ of progress. He +realized as we do that the outlook for humanity is a very dark and +uncertain one unless human effort is stimulated and organized. He traced +the evils of his time to human discords and divisions, to our political +divisions, and the mutual misconceptions due to our diversity of +languages and leading ideas. In all that he might be writing and +thinking in 1921. And his proposed remedies find an echo in a number of +our contemporary movements. He wanted to bring all nations to form one +single state. He wanted to have a universal language as the common +medium of instruction and discussion, and he wanted to create a common +Book of Necessary Knowledge, a sort of common basis of wisdom, for all +educated men in the world. + +Now this last is the idea I would like to develop now. I would like to +discuss whether our education--which nowadays in our modern states +reaches everyone--whether our education can include and ought to include +such a Book of Necessary Knowledge and Wisdom; and (having attempted to +answer that enquiry in the affirmative) I shall then attempt a sketch of +such a book. + +But to begin with perhaps I may meet an objection that is likely to +arise. I have called this hypothetical book of ours the Bible of +Civilization, and it may be that someone will say: Yes, but you have a +sufficient book of that sort already; you have the Bible itself and that +is all you need. Well, I am taking the Bible as my model. I am taking it +because twice in history--first as the Old Testament and then again as +the Old and New Testament together--it has formed a culture, and unified +and kept together through many generations great masses of people. It +has been the basis of the Jewish and Christian civilizations alike. And +even in the New World the State of Connecticut did, I believe, in its +earliest beginnings take the Bible as its only law. Nevertheless, I hope +I shall not offend any reader if I point out that the Bible is not all +that we need to-day, and that also in some respects it is redundant. Its +very virtues created its limitations. It served men so well that they +made a Canon of it and refused to alter it further. Throughout the most +vital phases of Hebrew history, throughout the most living years of +Christian development the Bible changed and grew. Then its growth ceased +and its text became fixed. But the world went on growing and discovering +new needs and new necessities. + +Let me deal first with its redundancy. So far as redundancy goes, a +great deal of the Book of Leviticus, for example, seems not vitally +necessary for the ordinary citizen of to-day; there are long explicit +directions for temple worship and sacrificial procedure. There is again, +so far as the latter day citizen is concerned, an excess of information +about the minor Kings of Israel and Judah. And there is more light than +most of us feel we require nowadays upon the foreign policies of Assyria +and Egypt. It stirs our pulses feebly, it helps us only very indirectly +to learn that Attai begat Nathan and Nathan begat Zabad, or that Obed +begat Jehu and Jehu begat Azariah, and so on for two or three hundred +verses. + +And so far as deficiencies go, there is a great multitude of modern +problems--problems that enter intimately into the moral life of all of +us, with which the Bible does not deal, the establishment of American +Independence, for example, and the age-long feud of Russia and Poland +that has gone on with varying fortunes for four centuries. That is much +more important to our modern world than the ancient conflict of Assyria +and Egypt which plays so large a part in the old Bible record. And there +are all sorts of moral problems arising out of modern conditions on +which the Bible sheds little or no direct light: the duties of a citizen +at an election, or the duties of a shareholder to the labour employed by +his company, for example. For these things we need at least a +supplement, if we are still to keep our community upon one general basis +of understanding, upon one unifying standard of thought and behaviour. + +We are so brought up upon the Bible, we are so used to it long before we +begin to think hard about it, that all sorts of things that are really +very striking about it, the facts that the history of Judah and Israel +is told twice over and that the gospel narrative is repeated four times +over for example, do not seem at all odd to us. How else, we ask, could +you have it? Yet these are very odd features if we are to regard the +Bible as the compactest and most perfect statement of essential truth +and wisdom. + +And still more remarkable, it seems to me, is it that the Bible breaks +off. One could understand very well if the Bible broke off with the +foundation of Christianity. Now this event has happened, it might say, +nothing else matters. It is the culmination. But the Bible does not do +that. It goes on to a fairly detailed account of the beginnings and +early politics of the Christian Church. It gives the opening literature +of theological exposition. And then, with that strange and doubtful +book, the Revelation of St. John the Divine, it comes to an end. As I +say, it leaves off. It leaves off in the middle of Roman imperial and +social conflicts. But the world has gone on and goes on--elaborating its +problems, encountering fresh problems--until now there is a gulf of +upwards of eighteen hundred years between us and the concluding +expression of the thought of that ancient time. + +I make these observations in no spirit of detraction. If anything, these +peculiarities of the Bible add to the wonder of its influence over the +lives and minds of men. It has been The Book that has held together the +fabric of western civilization. It has been the handbook of life to +countless millions of men and women. The civilization we possess could +not have come into existence and could not have been sustained without +it. It has explained the world to the mass of our people, and it has +given them moral standards and a form into which their consciences could +work. But does it do that to-day? Frankly, I do not think it does. I +think that during the last century the Bible has lost much of its former +hold. It no longer grips the community. And I think it has lost hold +because of those sundering eighteen centuries, to which every fresh year +adds itself, because of profound changes in the methods and mechanisms +of life, and because of the vast extension of our ideas by the +development of science in the last century or so. + +It has lost hold, but nothing has arisen to take its place. That is the +gravest aspect of this matter. It was the cement with which our western +communities were built and by which they were held together. And the +weathering of these centuries and the acids of these later years have +eaten into its social and personal influence. It is no longer a +sufficient cement. And--this is the essence of what I am driving +at--_our modern communities are no longer cemented_, they lack organized +solidarity, they are not prepared to stand shocks and strains, they have +become dangerously loose mentally and morally. That, I believe, is the +clue to a great proportion of the present social and political troubles +of the world. We need to get back to a cement. We want a Bible. We want +a Bible so badly that we cannot afford to put the old Bible on a +pinnacle out of daily use. We want it re-adapted for use. If it is true +that the old Bible falls short in its history and does not apply closely +to many modern problems, then we need a revised and enlarged Bible in +our schools and homes to restore a common ground of ideas and +interpretations if our civilization is to hold together. + +Now let us see what the Bible gave a man in the days when it could +really grip and hold and contain him; and let us ask if it is impossible +to restore and reconstruct a Bible for the needs of these great and +dangerous days in which we are living. Can we re-cement our increasingly +unstable civilization? I will not ask now whether there is still time +left for us to do anything of the sort. + +The first thing the Bible gave a man was a Cosmogony. It gave him an +account of the world in which he found himself and of his place in it. +And then it went on to a general history of mankind. It did not tell him +that history as a string of facts and dates, but as a moving and +interesting story into which he himself finally came, a story of +promises made and destinies to be fulfilled. It gave him a dramatic +relationship to the schemes of things. It linked him to all mankind with +a conception of relationships and duties. It gave him a place in the +world and put a meaning into his life. It explained him to himself and +to other people, and it explained other people to him. In other words, +out of the individual it made a citizen with a code of duties and +expectations. + +Now I take it that both from the point of view of individual happiness +and from the point of view of the general welfare, this development of +the citizenship of a man, this placing of a man in his own world, is of +primary importance. It is the necessary basis of all right education; it +is the fundamental purpose of the school, and I do not believe an +individual can be happy or a community be prosperous without it. The +Bible and the religions based on it gave that idea of a place in the +world to the people it taught. But do we provide that idea of a place in +the world for our people to-day? I suggest that we do not. We do not +give them a clear vision of the universe in which they live, and we do +not give them a history that invests their lives with meaning and +dignity. + +The cosmogony of the Bible has lost grip and conviction upon men's +minds, and the ever-widening gulf of years makes its history and its +political teaching more and more remote and unhelpful amidst the great +needs of to-day. Nothing has been done to fill up these widening gaps. +We have so great a respect for the letter of the Bible that we ignore +its spirit and its proper use. We do not rewrite and retell Genesis in +the light and language of modern knowledge, and we do not revise and +bring its history up to date and so apply it to the problems of our own +time. So we have allowed the Bible to become antiquated and remote, +venerable and unhelpful. + +There has been a great extension of what we call education in the past +hundred years, but while we have spread education widely, there has been +a sort of shrinkage and enfeeblement of its aims. Education in the past +set out to make a Christian and a citizen and afterwards a gentleman out +of the crude, vulgar, self-seeking individual. Does education even +pretend to do as much to-day? It does nothing of the sort. Our young +people are taught to read and write. They are taught bookkeeping and +languages that are likely to be useful to them. They are given a certain +measure of technical education, and _they are taught to shove_. And +then we turn them out into the world to get on. Our test of a college +education is--Does it make a successful business man? + +Well, this, I take it, is the absolute degradation of education. It is a +modern error that education exists for the individual. Education exists +for the community and the race; it exists to subdue the individual for +the good of the world and his own ultimate happiness. + +But we have been letting the essentials of education slip back into a +secondary place in our pursuit of mere equipment, and we see the results +to-day throughout all the modern states of the world, in a loss of +cohesion, discipline and co-operation. Men will not co-operate except to +raise prices on the consumer or wages on the employer, and everyone +scrambles for a front place and a good time. And they do so, partly no +doubt by virtue of an ineradicable factor in them known as Original Sin, +but also very largely because the vision of life that was built up in +their minds at school and in their homes was fragmentary and +uninspiring; it had no commanding appeal for their imaginations, and no +imperatives for their lives. + +So I put it, that for the opening books of our Bible of Civilization, +our Bible translated into terms of modern knowledge, and as the basis of +all our culture, we shall follow the old Bible precedent exactly. We +shall tell to every citizen of our community, as plainly, simply and +beautifully as we can, the New Story of Genesis, the tremendous +spectacle of the Universe that science has opened to us, the flaming +beginnings of our world, the vast ages of its making and the astounding +unfolding, age after age, of Life. We shall tell of the changing +climates of this spinning globe and the coming and going of great floras +and faunas, mighty races of living things, until out of the vast, slow +process our own kind emerged. And we shall tell the story of our race. +How through hundreds of thousands of years it won power over nature, +hunted and presently sowed and reaped. How it learnt the secrets of the +metals, mastered the riddle of the seasons, and took to the seas. That +story of our common inheritance and of our slow upward struggle has to +be taught throughout our entire community, in the city slums and in the +out-of-the-way farmsteads most of all. By teaching it, we restore again +to our people the lost basis of a community, a common idea of their +place in space and time. + +Then, still following the Bible precedent, we must tell a universal +history of man. And though on the surface it may seem to be a very +different history from the Bible story, in substance it will really be +very much the same history, only robbed of ancient trappings and +symbols, and made real and fresh again for our present ideas. It will +still be a story of conditional promises, the promises of human +possibility, a record of sins and blunders and lost opportunities, of +men who walked not in the ways of righteousness, of stiff-necked +generations, and of merciful renewals of hope. It will still point our +lives to a common future which will be the reward and judgment of our +present lives. + +You may say that no such book exists--which is perfectly true--and that +no such book could be written. But there I think you underrate the +capacity of our English-speaking people. It would be quite possible to +get together a committee that would give us the compact and clear +cosmogony of history that is needed. Some of the greatest, most +inspiring books and documents in the world have been produced by +Committees: Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the English +Translation of the Bible, and the Prayer Book of the English Church are +all the productions of committees, and they are all fine and inspiring +compilations. For the last three years I have been experimenting with +this particular task, and, with the help of six other people, I have +sketched out and published an outline of our world's origins and history +to show the sort of thing I mean. That _Outline_ is, of course, a +corrupting mass of faults and minor inaccuracies, but it does +demonstrate the possibility of doing what is required. And its reception +both in America and England has shown how ready, how greedy many people +are, on account of themselves and on account of their children, for an +ordered general account of the existing knowledge of our place in space +and time. For want of anything better they have taken my _Outline_ very +eagerly. Far more eagerly would they have taken a finer, sounder and +more authoritative work. + +In England this _Outline_ was almost the first experiment of the kind +that has been made--the only other I know of in England, was a very +compact General History of the World by Mr. Oscar Browning published in +1913. But there are several educationists in America who have been at +work on the same task. In this matter of a more generalized history +teaching, the New World is decidedly leading the Old. The particular +problems of a population of mixed origins have forced it upon teachers +in the United States. + +My friend--I am very happy to be able to call him my friend--Professor +Breasted, in conjunction with that very able teacher Professor Robinson, +has produced two books, _Ancient Times_ and _Mediaeval and Modern Times_, +which together make a very complete history of civilized man. They do +not, however, give a history of life before man, nor very much of human +pre-history. Another admirable American summary of history is Doctor +Hutton Webster's _History of the Ancient World_ together with his +_Mediaeval and Modern History_. This again is very sparing of the story +of primitive man. + +But the work of these gentlemen confirms my own experience that it is +quite possible to tell in a comprehensible and inspiring outline the +whole history of life and mankind in the compass of a couple of +manageable volumes. Neither Browning nor Breasted and Robinson, nor +Hutton Webster, nor my own effort are very much longer than twice the +length of Dickens' novel of _Bleak House_. So there you have it. There +is the thing shown to be possible. If it is possible for us isolated +workers to do as much then why should not the thing be done in a big and +authoritative manner? Why should we not have a great educational +conference of teachers, scientific men and historians from all the +civilized peoples of the world, and why should they not draft out a +standard World History for general use in the world's schools? Why +should that draft not be revised by scores of specialists? Discussed and +re-discussed? Polished and finished, and made the opening part of a new +Bible of Civilization, a new common basis for a world culture? + +At intervals it would need to be revised, and it could be revised and +brought up to date in the same manner. + +Now such a book and such a book alone would put the people of the world +upon an absolutely new footing with regard to social and international +affairs. They would be told a history coming right up to the Daily +Newspaper. They would see themselves and the news of to-day as part of +one great development. It would give their lives significance and +dignity. It would give the events of the current day significance and +dignity. It would lift their imaginations up to a new level. I say +lift, but I mean restore their imaginations to a former level. Because +if you look back into the lives of the Pilgrim Fathers, let us say, or +into those of the great soldiers and statesmen of Cromwellian England, +you will find that these men had a sense of personal significance, a +sense of destiny, such as no one in politics or literature seems to +possess to-day. They were still in touch with the old Bible. To-day if +life seems adventurous and fragmentary and generally aimless it is +largely because of this one thing. We have lost touch with history. We +have ceased to see human affairs as one great epic unfolding. And only +by the universal teaching of Universal History can that epic quality be +restored. + +You see then the first part of my project for a Bible of Civilization, a +rewriting of Genesis and Exodus and Judges and Chronicles in terms of +World History. It would be a quite possible thing to do.... + +Is it worth doing? + +And let me add here that when we do get our New Genesis and our new +historical books, they will have a great number of illustrations as a +living and necessary part of them. For nowadays we can not only have a +canonical text, but canonical maps and illustrations. The old Hebrew +Bible was merely the written word. Indeed it was not even that, for it +was written without vowels. That was not a merit, nor a precedent for +us; it was an unavoidable limitation in those days; but under modern +conditions there is no reason whatever why we should confine our Bible +to words when a drawing or a map can better express the thing we wish to +convey. It is one of the great advantages of the modern book over the +ancient book that because of printing it can use pictures as well as +words. When books had to be reproduced by copyists the use of pictures +was impossible. They would have varied with each copying until they +became hopelessly distorted.... + + +Sec. 2 + +But the cosmological and historical part of the old Bible was merely the +opening, the groundwork upon which the rest was built. Let us now +consider what else the Bible gave a man and a community, and what would +be the modern form of the things it gave. + +The next thing in order that the Bible gave a man and the community to +which he belonged was the Law. Rules of Life. Rules of Health. +Prescriptions--often very detailed and intimate--of permissible and +unpermissible conduct. This also the modern citizen needs and should +have: he and she need a book of personal wisdom. + +First as to Health. One of the first duties of a citizen is to keep +himself in mental and bodily health in order to be fit for the rest of +his duties. Now the real Bible, our model, is extremely explicit upon a +number of points, upon what constitutes cleanness or uncleanness, upon +ablutions, upon what a man or woman may eat and what may not be eaten, +upon a number of such points. It was for its times and circumstances a +directory of healthy practice. Well, I do not see why the Bible of a +Modern Civilization should not contain a book of similarly clear +injunctions and warnings--why we should not tell every one of our people +what is to be known about self-care. + +And closely connected with the care of one's mental and bodily health is +sexual morality, upon which again Deuteronomy and Leviticus are most +explicit, leaving very little to the imagination. I am all for imitating +the wholesome frankness of the ancient book. Where there are no dark +corners there is very little fermentation, there is very little foulness +or infection. But in nearly every detail and in method and manner, the +Bible of our Civilization needs to be fuller and different from its +prototype upon these matters. The real Bible dealt with an oriental +population living under much cruder conditions than our own, engaged +mainly in agriculture, and with a far less various dietary than ours. +They had fermented but not distilled liquors; they had no preserved nor +refrigerated foods; they married at adolescence; many grave diseases +that prevail to-day were unknown to them, and their sanitary problems +were entirely different. Generally our New Leviticus will have to be +much fuller. It must deal with exercise--which came naturally to those +Hebrew shepherds. It must deal with the preservation of energy under +conditions of enervation of which the prophets knew nothing. On the +other hand our New Leviticus can afford to give much less attention to +leprosy--which almost dominates the health instructions of the ancient +law-giver. + +I do not know anything very much about the movements in America that aim +at the improvement of the public health and at the removal of public +ignorance upon vital things. In Britain we have a number of powerful +organizations active in disseminating knowledge to counteract the spread +of this or that infectious or contagious disease. The War has made us in +Europe much more outspoken and fearless in dealing with lurking hideous +evils. We believe much more than we did in the curative value of light +and knowledge. And we have a very considerable literature of books +on--what shall I call it? on Sex Wisdom, which aim to prevent some of +that great volume of misery, deprivation and nervous disease due to the +prevailing ignorance and secrecy in these matters. For in these matters +great multitudes of modern people still live in an ignorance that would +have been inconceivable to an ancient Hebrew. In England now the books +of such a writer as Dr. Marie Stopes are enormously read, and--though +they are by no means perfect works--do much to mitigate the hidden +disappointments, discontents, stresses and cruelties of married life. +Now I believe that it would be possible to compile a modern Leviticus +and Deuteronomy to tell our whole modern community decently and +plainly--just as plainly as the old Hebrew Bible instructed its Hebrew +population--what was to be known and what had to be done, and what had +not to be done in these intimate matters. + +But Health and Sex do not exhaust the problems of conduct. There are +also the problems of Property and Trade and Labour. Upon these also the +old Bible did not hesitate to be explicit. For example, it insisted +meticulously upon the right of labour to glean and upon the seller +giving a "full measure brimming over," and it prohibited usury. But here +again the Bible is extraordinarily unhelpful when we come to modern +issues, because its rules and regulations were framed for a community +and for an economic system altogether cruder, more limited and less +complicated than our own. Much of the Old Testament we have to remember +was already in existence before the free use of coined metal. The vast +credit system of our days, joint-stock company enterprise and the like, +were beyond the imagination of that time. So too was any anticipation of +modern industrialism. And accordingly we live to-day in a world in which +neither property nor employment have ever been properly moralized. The +bulk of our present social and economic troubles is due very largely to +that. + +In no matter is this muddled civilization of ours more hopelessly at +sixes and sevens than in this matter of the rights and duties of +property. Manifestly property is a trust for the community varying in +its responsibilities with the nature of the property. The property one +has in one's toothbrush is different from the property one has in ten +thousand acres of land; the property one has in a photograph of a friend +is different from the property one has in some irreplaceable masterpiece +of portraiture. The former one may destroy with a good conscience, but +not the latter. At least so it seems to me. + +But opinions vary enormously on these matters because we have never +really worked them out. On the one hand, in this matter of property, we +have the extreme individualist who declares that a man has an unlimited +right to do what he likes with his own--so that a man who owns a coal +mine may just burn it out to please himself or spite the world, or raise +the price of coal generally--and on the other hand we have the extreme +communist who denies all property and in practice--so far as I can +understand his practice--goes on the principle that everything belongs +to somebody else or that one is entitled to exercise proprietary rights +over everything that does not belong to oneself. (I confess that +communistic practice is a little difficult to formulate.) Between these +extremists you can find every variety of idea about what one may do and +about what one may not do with money and credit and property generally. +Is it an offence to gamble? Is it an offence to speculate? Is it an +offence to hold fertile fields and not cultivate them? Is it an offence +to hold fertile fields and undercultivate them? Is it an offence to use +your invested money merely to live pleasantly without working? Is it an +offence to spend your money on yourself and refuse your wife more than +bare necessities? Is it an offence to spend exorbitant sums that might +otherwise go in reproductive investments, to gratify the whims and +vanities of your wife? You will find different people answering any of +these questions with Yes or No. But it cannot be both Yes and No. There +must be a definable Right or Wrong upon all these issues. + +Almost all the labour trouble in the world springs directly from our +lack of an effective detailed moral code about property. The freedom +that is claimed for all sorts of property and exercised by all sorts of +property to waste or withhold is the clue to that savage resentment +which flares out nowadays in every great labour conflict. Labour is a +rebel because property is a libertine. + +Now this untilled field of conduct, this moral wilderness of the rights +and duties and limitations of property, the Books of the Law in a modern +Bible could clear up in the most lucid and satisfying way. I want to get +those parts of Deuteronomy and Leviticus written again, more urgently +than any other part of the modern Bible. I want to see it at work in the +schools and in the law-courts. I admit that it would be a most difficult +book to write and that we should raise controversial storms over every +verse. But what an excellent thing to have it out, once for all, with +some of these rankling problems! What an excellent thing if we could get +together a choice group of representative men--strictly rationed as to +paper--and get them to set down clearly and exactly just what classes of +property they recognized and what limitations the community was entitled +to impose upon each sort. + +Every country in the world does impose limitations. In Italy you may not +export an ancient work of art, although it is your own. In England you +may not maltreat your own dog or cat. In the United States, I am told, +you may not use your dollars to buy alcohol. Why should we not make all +this classification of property and the restraints upon each class of +property, systematic and world-wide? If we could so moralize the use of +property, if we could arrive at a clear idea of just what use an owner +could make of his machinery, or a financier could make of his credit, +would there be much left of the incessant labour conflicts of the +present time? For if you will look into it, you will find there is +hardly ever a labour conflict into which some unsettled question of +principle, some unsettled question of the permissible use of property, +does not enter as the final and essential dispute. + + + + +V + +THE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION + +PART TWO + + +Sec. 3 + +In the preceding sections we have discussed Genesis and the Historical +Books generally as they would appear in a modernized Bible, and we have +dealt with the Law. But these are only the foundations and openings of +the Bible as we know it. We come now to the Psalms and Proverbs, the +Song of Songs, the Book of Job--and the Prophets. What are the modern +equivalents of these books? + +Well, what were they? + +They were the entire Hebrew literature down to about the time of Ezra; +they include sacred songs, love songs, a dramatic dialogue, a sort of +novel in the Books of Ruth and Esther, and so forth. What would be our +equivalent of this part of the Bible to-day? What would be the +equivalent for the Bible of a world civilization? + +I suppose that it would be the whole world literature. + +That, I admit, is a rather tremendous proposition. Are we to +contemplate the prospect of a modern Bible in twenty or thirty thousand +volumes? Such a vast Bible would defeat its own end. We want a Bible +that everyone will know, which will be grasped by the mind of everyone. +That is essential to our idea of a Bible as a social cement. + +Fortunately our model Bible, as we have it to-day, gives us a lead in +this matter. Its contents are classified. We have first of all the +canonical books, which are treated as the vitally important books; they +are the books, to quote the phrase used in the English prayer book, +which are "necessary to salvation." And then we have a collection of +other books, the Apocrypha, the books set aside, books often admirable +and beautiful, but not essential, good to be read for "example of life +and instruction of manners," yet books that everyone need not read and +know. Let us take this lead and let us ask whether we can--with the +whole accumulated literature of the world as our material--select a +bookful or so of matter, of such exceptional value that it would be well +for all mankind to read it and know it. This will be our equivalent for +the canonical Books. I will return to that in a moment. + +And outside this canonical Book or Books, shall we leave all the rest of +literature in a limitless Apocrypha? I am doubtful about that. I would +suggest that we make a second intermediate class between the canonical +books that everyone in our civilization ought to read and the outer +Apocrypha that you may read or not as you choose. This intermediate +class I would call the Great Books of the World. It would not be a part +of our Bible, but it would come next to our Bible. It would not be what +one must read but only what it is desirable the people should read. + +Now this canonical literature we are discussing is to be the third vital +part of our modern Bible. I conceive of it as something that would go +into the hands of every man and woman in that coming great civilization +which is the dream of our race. Together with the Book of World History +and the Book of Law and Righteousness and Wisdom that I have sketched +out to you, and another Book of which I shall have something to say +later, this canonical literature will constitute the intellectual and +moral cement of the World Society, that intellectual and moral cement +for the want of which our world falls into political and social +confusion and disaster to-day. Upon such a basis, upon a common body of +ideas, a common moral teaching and the world-wide assimilation of the +same emotional and aesthetic material, it may still be possible to build +up humanity into one co-operative various and understanding community. + +Now if we bear this idea of a cementing function firmly in mind, we +shall have a criterion by which to judge what shall be omitted from and +what shall be included in the Books of Literature in this modern Bible +of ours. We shall begin, of course, by levying toll upon the Old and +New Testaments. I do not think I need justify that step. I suppose that +there will be no doubt of the inclusion of many of the Psalms--but I +question if we should include them all--and of a number of splendid +passages from the Prophets. Should we include the Song of Songs? I am +inclined to think that the compilers of a new Bible would hesitate at +that. Should we include the Book of Job? That I think would be a very +difficult question indeed for our compilers. The Book of Job is a very +wonderful and beautiful discussion of the profound problem of evil in +the world. It is a tremendous exercise to read and understand, but is it +universally necessary? I am disposed to think that the Book of Job, +possibly with the illustrations of Blake, would not make a part of our +Canon but would rank among our Great Books. It is a part of a very large +literature of discussion, of which I shall have more to say in a moment. +So too I question if we should make the story of Ruth or the story of +Esther fundamental teaching for our world civilization. Daniel, again, I +imagine relegated to the Apocrypha. But to this I will return later. + +The story of the Gospels would, of course, have been incorporated in our +Historical Book, but in addition as part of our first canon, each of the +four gospels--with the possible omission of the genealogies--would have +a place, for the sake of their matchless directness, simplicity and +beauty. They give a picture, they convey an atmosphere of supreme value +to us all, incommunicable in any other form or language. Again there is +a great wealth of material in the Epistles. It is, for example, +inconceivable that such a passage as that of St. Paul's Epistle to the +Corinthians--"Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have +not charity I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal"--the +whole of that wonderful chapter--should ever pass out of the common +heritage of mankind. + +So much from the Ancient Bible for our modern Bible, all its inspiration +and beauty and fire. And now what else? + +Speaking in English to an English-speaking audience one name comes close +upon the Bible, Shakespear. What are we going to do about Shakespear? If +you were to waylay almost any Englishman or American and put this +project of a modern Bible before him, and then begin your list of +ingredients with the Bible and the whole of Shakespear, he would almost +certainly say, "Yes, Yes." + +But would he be right? + +On reflection he might perhaps recede and say "Not the whole of +Shakespear," but well, _Hamlet_, _The Tempest_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _A +Midsummer-Night's Dream_. But even these! Are they "generally necessary +to salvation"? We run our minds through the treasures of Shakespear as +we might run our fingers through the contents of a box of very precious +and beautiful jewels--before equipping a youth for battle. + +No. These things are for ornament and joy. I doubt if we could have a +single play--a single scene of Shakespear's in our Canon. He goes +altogether into the Great Books, all of him; he joins the aristocracy of +the Apocrypha. And, I believe, nearly all the great plays of the world +would have to join him there. Euripides and Sophocles, Schiller and +Ibsen. Perhaps some speeches and such-like passages might be quoted in +the Canon, but that is all. + +Our Canon, remember, is to be the essential cementing stuff of our +community and nothing more. If once we admit merely beautiful and +delightful things, then I see an overwhelming inrush of jewels and +flowers. If we admit _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, then I must insist +that we also admit such lovely nonsense as + + In Xanadu did Kubla Khan + A stately pleasure dome decree, + Where Alph the sacred river ran + Through caverns measureless to man + Down to a sunless sea.... + +Our Canon I am afraid cannot take in such things, and with the plays we +must banish also all the novels; the greater books of such writers as +Cervantes, Defoe, Dickens, Fielding, Tolstoi, Hardy, Hamsun, that great +succession of writers--they are all good for "example of life and +instruction of manners," and to the Apocrypha they must go. And so it +is that since I would banish _Romeo and Juliet_, I would also banish the +Song of Songs, and since I must put away _Vanity Fair_ and the _Shabby +Genteel Story_, I would also put away _Esther_ and _Ruth_. And I find +myself most reluctant to exclude not any novels written in English, but +one or two great sweeping books by non-English writers. It seems to me +that Tolstoi's _War and Peace_ and Hamsun's _Growth of the Soil_ are +books on an almost Biblical scale, that they deal with life so greatly +as to come nearest to the idea of a universally inspiring and +illuminating literature which underlies the idea of our Canon. If we put +in any whole novels into the Canon I would plead for these. But I will +not plead now even for these. I do not think any novels at all can go +into our modern Bible, as whole works. The possibility of long passages +going in, is of course, quite a different matter. + +And passing now from great plays and great novels and romances, we come +to the still more difficult problem of great philosophical and critical +works. Take _Gulliver's Travels_--an intense, dark, stirring criticism +of life and social order--and the _Dialogues of Plato_, full of light +and inspiration. In these latter we might quarry for beautiful passages +for our Canon, but I do not think we could take them in as wholes, and +if we do not take them in as complete books, then I think that Semitic +parallel to these Greek dialogues, The Book of Job, must stand not in +our Canon, but in the Great Book section of our Apocrypha. + +And next we have to consider all the great Epics in the world. There +again I am for exclusion. This Bible we are considering must be +universally available. If it is too bulky for universal use it loses its +primary function of a moral cement. We cannot include the _Iliad_, the +Norse Sagas, the _AEneid_ or _Paradise Lost_ in our Canon. Let them swell +the great sack of our Apocrypha, and let the children read them if they +will. + +When one glances in this fashion over the accumulated literary resources +of mankind it becomes plain that our canonical books of literature in +this modern Bible of ours can be little more than an Anthology or a +group of Anthologies. Perhaps they might be gathered under separate +heads, as the 'Book of Freedom,' the 'Book of Justice,' the 'Book of +Charity.' And now having done nothing as yet but reject, let me begin to +accept. Let me quote a few samples of the kind of thing that I imagine +would best serve the purpose of our Bible and that should certainly be +included. + +Here are words that every American knows by heart already--I would like +every man in the world to know them by heart and to repeat them. It is +Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and I will not spare you a word of it: + +"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this +continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the +proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a +great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived +and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of +that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final +resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might +live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in +a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot +hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, +have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The +world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can +never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be +dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have +thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to +the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take +increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full +measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall +not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new +birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for +the people, shall not perish from the earth." + +And here is something that might perhaps make another short chapter in +the same Book of Freedom--but it deals with Freedom of a different sort: + + Out of the night that covers me + Black as the pit from pole to pole, + I thank whatever gods may be + For my unconquerable soul. + In the fell clutch of circumstance + I have not winced nor cried aloud, + Under the bludgeonings of Chance, + My head is bloody but unbowed. + + Beyond this Place of wrath and tears, + Looms but the Horror of the Shade, + And yet the Menace of the years + Finds and shall find me Unafraid. + It matters not how strait the gate, + How charged with punishments the scroll, + I am the Master of my Fate, + I am the Captain of my Soul. + +That, as you know, was Henley's, and as I turned up his volume of poems +to copy out that poem I came again on these familiar lines: + + The ways of Death are soothing and serene, + And all the words of Death are grave and sweet, + From camp and church, the fireside and the street, + She beckons forth--and strife and song have been. + + A summer's night descending cool and green, + And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat, + The ways of Death are soothing and serene, + And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. + +There seems something in that also which I could spare only very +reluctantly from a new Bible in the world. Yet I tender those lines very +doubtfully. For I am not a very cultivated and well-read person, and +note only the things that have struck upon my mind; but I quite +understand that there must be many things of the same sort, but better, +that I have never encountered, or that I have not heard or read under +circumstances that were favourable to their proper appreciation. I would +rather say about what I am quoting in this section, not positively "this +thing," but merely "this sort of thing." + +And in the vein of "this sort of thing" let me quote you--again for the +Book of Freedom--a passage from Milton, defending the ancient English +tradition of free speech and free decision and praising London and +England. This London and England of which he boasts have broadened out +as the idea of Jerusalem has broadened out, to world-wide +comprehensions. Let no false modesty blind us to our great tradition; +you and I are still thinking in Milton's city; we continue, however +unworthily, the great inheritance of the world-wide responsibility and +service, of His Englishmen. Here is my passage: + + "Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general + instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly + express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and + great period in His Church, even to the reforming of + reformation itself; what does He then but reveal Himself to His + servants, and as His manner is, first to His Englishmen? I say, + as His manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of + His counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast city, a + city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and + surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there + more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and + instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, + than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious + lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas + wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, + the approaching reformation: others as fast reading, trying all + things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. + + "What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so + prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a + towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to + make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of + worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there + need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields + are white already. Where there is much desire to learn, there + of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; + for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under + these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the + earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding, + which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of, we + rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious + forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-deputed care of + their religion into their own hands again. A little generous + prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain + of charity might win all these diligencies to join and unite + into one general and brotherly search after truth; could we but + forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free consciences + and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I + doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should come among + us, wise to discern the mould and temper of a people, and how + to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent + alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the + pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as + Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage: 'If such + were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that + could be attempted to make a church or kingdom happy.' + + "Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and + sectaries, as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, + some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the + cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men, who could not + consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made + in the quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be + built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it + cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in + this world: neither can every piece of the building be of one + form; nay, rather the perfection consists in this, that out of + many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are + not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful + symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure." + +But I will not go on turning over the pages of books and reciting prose +and poetry to you. I cannot even begin to remind you of the immense +treasure of noble and ennobling prose and verse that this world has +accumulated in the past three thousand years. Not one soul in ten +thousand that is born into this world even tastes from that store. For +most of mankind now that treasure is as if it had never been. Is it too +much to suggest that we should make some organized attempt to gather up +the quintessence of literature now, and make it accessible to the masses +of our race? Why should we not on a large scale with a certain breadth +and dignity set about compiling the Poetic Books, the Books of +Inspiration for a renewed Bible, for a Bible of Civilization? It seems +to me that such a Book made universally accessible, made a basis of +teaching everywhere could set the key of the whole world's thought. + + +Sec. 4 Today + +There remains one other element if we are to complete the parallelism of +the old Bible and the new. The Christian Bible ends with a forecast, the +Book of Revelation; the Hebrew Bible ended also with forecasts, the +Prophets. To that the old Bible owed much of its magic power over men's +imaginations and the inspiration it gave them. It was not a dead record, +not an accumulation of things finished and of songs sung. It pointed +steadily and plainly to the Days to Come as the end and explanation of +all that went before. So too our Modern Bible, if it is to hold and rule +the imagination of men, must close I think with a _Book of Forecasts_. +We want to make our world think more than it does about the consequences +of the lives it leads and the political deeds that it does and that it +permits to be done. We want to turn the human imagination round again +towards the future which our lives create. We want a collection and +digest of forecasts and warnings to complete this modern Bible of ours. +Now here I think you will say--and I admit with perfect reason--that I +am floating away from any reasonable possibility at all. How can we have +forecasts and prophecies of things that are happening now? Well, I will +make a clean breast of it, and admit that I am asking for something that +may be impossible. Nevertheless it is something that is very necessary +if men are to remain indeed intelligent co-operating communities. In the +past you will find where there have been orderly and successful +communities the men in them had an idea of a Destiny, of some object, +something that would amount to a criterion and judgment upon their +collective conduct. Well, I believe that we have to get back to +something of that sort. + +We have statesmen and politicians who profess to guide our destinies. +Whither are they guiding our destinies? + +Surely they have some idea. The great American statesmen and the great +European statesmen are making To-morrow. What is the To-morrow they are +making? + +They must have some idea of it. Otherwise they must be imposters. I am +loth to believe them imposters, mere adventurers who have blundered into +positions of power and honour with no idea of what they are doing to the +world. But if they have an idea of what they are doing to the world, +they foresee and intend a Future. That, I take it, is sound reasoning +and the inference is plain. + +They ought to write down their ideas of this Future before us. It would +be helpful to all of us. It might be a very helpful exercise for them. +It is, I think, reasonable for Americans to ask the great political +personages of America, the president and so forth, for example: whether +they think the United States will stand alone in twenty-five years' +time as they stand alone now? Or whether they think that there will be a +greater United States--of all America--or of all the world? They must +know their own will about that. And it is equally reasonable to ask the +great political personages of the British Empire: what will Ireland be +in twenty-five years' time? What will India be? There must be a plan, an +intended thing. Otherwise these men have no intentions; otherwise they +must be, in two words, dangerous fools. The sooner we substitute a type +of man with a sufficient foresight and capable of articulate speech in +the matter, the better for our race. + +And again every statesman and every politician throughout the world says +that the relations of industrial enterprise to the labour it employs are +unsatisfactory. Yes. But how are those relations going to develop? How +do they mean them to develop? + +Are we just drifting into an unknown darkness in all these matters with +blind leaders of our blindness? Or cannot a lot of these things be +figured out by able and intelligent people? I put it to you that they +can. That it is a reasonable and proper thing to ask our statesmen and +politicians: what is going to happen to the world? What sort of better +social order are you making for? What sort of world order are you +creating? Let them open their minds to us, let them put upon permanent +record the significance of all their intrigues and manoeuvres. Then as +they go on we can check their capacity and good faith. We can establish +a control at last that will rule presidents and kings. + +Now the answer to these questions for statesmen is what I mean by a +_Book of Forecasts_. Such a book I believe is urgently needed to help +our civilization. It is a book we ought all to possess and read. I know +you will say that such a _Book of Forecasts_ will be at first a +preposterously insufficient book--that every year will show it up and +make it more absurd. I quite agree. The first _Book of Forecasts_ will +be a poor thing. Miserably poor. So poor that people will presently +clamour to have it thoroughly revised. + +The revised _Book of Forecasts_ will not be quite so bad. It will have +been tested against realities. It will form the basis of a vast amount +of criticism and discussion. + +When again it comes to be revised, it will be much nearer possible +realities. + +I put it to you that the psychology, the mentality of a community that +has a _Book of Forecasts_ in hand and under watchful revision will be +altogether steadier and stronger and clearer than that of a community +which lives as we do to-day, mere adventurers, without foresight, in a +world of catastrophies and accidents and unexpected things. We shall be +living again in a plan. Our lives will be shaped to certain defined +ends. We shall fall into place in a great scheme of activities. We shall +recover again some or all of the steadfastness and dignity of the old +religious life. + + +Sec. 5 Today + +Let me with this _Book of Forecasts_ round off my fantasy. I would +picture to you this modern Bible, perhaps two or three times as bulky as +the old Bible, and consisting first of + + The Historical Books with maps and the like; + The Books of Conduct and Wisdom; + The Anthologies of Poetry and Literature; and finally the + Book of Forecasts, taking the place of the Prophets and Revelations. + +I would picture this revivified Bible to you as most carefully done and +printed and made accessible to all, the basis of education in every +school, the common platform of all discussion--just as in the past the +old Bible used to be. I would ask you to imagine it translated into +every language, a common material of understanding throughout all the +world. + +And furthermore, I imagine something else about this--quite unlike the +old Bible--I imagine all of it periodically revised. The historical +books would need to be revised and brought up to date, there would be +new lights on health and conduct, there would be fresh additions to the +anthologies, and there would be Forecasts that would have to be struck +out because they were realized or because they were shown to be hopeless +or undesirable, and fresh Forecasts would be added to replace them. It +would be a Bible moving forward and changing and gaining with human +experience and human destiny.... + +Well, that is my dream of a Bible of Civilization. Have I in any way +carried my vision out to you of this little row of four or five volumes +in every house, in every life, throughout the world, holding the lives +and ideas and imaginations of men together in a net of common familiar +phrases and common established hopes? + +And is this a mere fantastic talk, or is this a thing that could be done +and that ought to be done? + +I do not know how it will appear to you, but to me it seems that this +book I have been talking about, the Bible of to-day's civilization, is +not simply a conceivable possibility, it is a great and urgent need. Our +education is, I think, pointless without it, a shell without a core. Our +social life is aimless without it, we are a crowd without a common +understanding. Only by means of some such unifying instrument, I +believe, can we hope to lift human life out of its present dangerous +drift towards confusion and disaster. + +It is, I think therefore, an urgently desirable undertaking. + +It is also a very practicable one. The creation of such a Bible, its +printing and its translation, and a propaganda that would carry it into +the homes and schools of most of the world, could I think all be +achieved by a few hundred resolute and capable people at a cost of +thirty or forty million dollars. That is a less sum than that the United +States--in a time when they have no enemy to fear in all the world--are +prepared to spend upon the building of what is for them an entirely +superfluous and extravagant toy, a great navy. + +You may, you probably will, differ very widely upon much that I have +here put before you. Let me ask you not to let any of the details of my +sketching set you against the fundamental idea, that old creative idea +of the Bohemian educationist who was the pupil of Bacon and the friend +of Milton, the idea of Komensky, the idea of creating and using a common +book, a book of knowledge and wisdom, as the necessary foundation for +any enduring human unanimity. + + + + +VI + +THE SCHOOLING OF THE WORLD + + +And now I am going on to a review of the broad facts of the educational +organization of our present world. + +I am myself a very under-educated person. It is a constant trouble to +me. Like seeks like in this world. I propose to ask the question whether +the whole world is not under-educated, and I warn you in advance that I +am going to answer in the affirmative. + +I am going to discuss the possibility of raising the general educational +level very considerably, and I am going to consider what such a raising +of the educational level would mean in human life. + +I propose to adopt rather a vulgar, business-like tone about all this. I +am going to apply to the human community much the same sort of tests +that a manufacturer applies to his factory. His factory has some +distinctive product, and when he looks into his affairs he tries to find +out whether he gets the utmost quantity of the product, whether he gets +the best possible quality of the product, whether he gets it as +efficiently and inexpensively as possible, and constantly how he can +improve his factory and his processes in all these matters. + +Now the human community may be regarded as a concern engaged in the +production of human life. And it may be judged very largely by the +question whether the human life it produces is abundant and full and +intense and beautiful. + +Most of the tests that we apply to a state or a city or a period or a +nation resolve themselves, you will find, into these questions:-- + + What was the life it produced? + What is the life it produces? + +Now I will further assume that as yet the community has little or no +control over the raw product, over the life, that is to say, that comes +into it. I admit that from at least the time of Plato onward the +possibility has been discussed of _breeding_ human beings as we do +horses and dogs. There is an enormous amount of what is called eugenic +literature and discussion to-day. But I will set all that sort of thing +aside from our present discussion because I do not think anything of the +kind is practicable at the present time. + +Quite apart from any other considerations, one has to remember one +entire difference between the possible breeding of human beings and the +actual breeding of dogs and horses. We breed dogs and horses for +uniformity, for certain very limited specified _points_--speed, scent +and the like. But human beings we should have to breed for variety: we +cannot specify any particular _points_ we want. We want statesmen and +poets and musicians and philosophers and swift men and strong men and +delicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the weaknesses +of another. + +It is really a false analogy, that between the breeding of men and the +breeding of horses and dogs. In the case of human beings we want much +more subtle and delicate combinations of qualities. For any practical +purposes we do not know what we want nor do we know how to get it. So +let us rule that theme out of our present discussion altogether. + +And I also propose to rule out another set of topics from this +discussion--simply because if we don't do so we shall have more matter +than we can handle conveniently in the time at our disposal. I propose +to leave out all questions of health and physical welfare. There is, as +you know, a vast literature now in existence, concerned with the health +and welfare of children before and after birth, concerned with infantile +life, with social conditions and social work directed to the production +of a vigorous population. I am going to assume here that all that sort +of thing is seen to--that it is all right, that somebody is doing that, +that we need not trouble for the present about any of those things. + +This leaves us with the mental life only of our community and its +individuals to consider. On that I propose to concentrate this +discussion. + +Now the human mind in its opening stages in a civilized community passes +through a process which may best be named as _schooling_. And under +schooling I would include not only the sort of things that we do to a +prospective citizen in the school and the infant school but also +anything in the nature of a school-like lesson that is done by the +mother or nurse or tutor at home, or by playmates and companions +anywhere. Out of this schooling arises the general mental life. It is +the structural ground-stuff of all education and thought. + +Now what is this _schooling_ to do--what is it doing to the new human +being? + +Let us recall what our own schooling was. + +It fell into two pretty clearly defined parts. We learnt reading and +writing, we made a certain study of grammar, the method of language, +perhaps we learnt the beginnings of some other language than our own; we +learnt some arithmetic and perhaps a little geometry and algebra; we did +some drawing. All these things were ways of expression, means of +expressing ourselves, means of comprehending our thoughts in terms of +other people's minds, and of understanding the expressions of others. +That was the basis and substance of our schooling; a training in mental +elucidation and in communication with other minds. But also as our +schooling went on there was something more; we learnt a little history, +some geography, the beginnings of science. This second part of education +was not so much expression as _wisdom_. We learnt what was generally +known of the world about us and of its past. We entered into the common +knowledge and common ideas of the world. + +Now, obviously, this _schooling_ is merely a specialization and +expansion of a parental function. + +In the primitive ages of our race the parent, and particularly the +mother, out of an instinctive impulse and practical necessity, +restrained and showed and taught, and the child, with an instinctive +imitativeness and docility, obeyed and learnt. And as the primitive +family grew into a tribe, as functions specialized and the range of +knowledge widened, this primitive schooling by the mother was +supplemented and extended by the showing of things by companions and by +the maxims and initiations of old men. + +It was only with the development of early civilizations, as the +mysteries of writing and reading began to be important in life, that the +school, _qua_ school, became a thing in itself. And as the community +expanded, the scope of instruction expanded with it. Schooling is, in +fact, and always has been, the expansion and development of the +primitive savage mind, which is still all that we inherit, to adapt it +to the needs of a larger community. It makes out of the savage raw +material which is our basal mental stuff, a citizen. It is a necessary +process of fusion if a civilized community is to keep in being. Without +at least a network of schooled persons, able to communicate its common +ideas and act in intelligent co-operation, no community beyond a mere +family group can ever hold together. + +As the human community expands, therefore, the range of schooling must +expand to keep pace with it. + +I want to base my inquiry upon that proposition. If it is sound, certain +very interesting conclusions follow. + +I have already shown in the preceding discussions that the _range_ of +the modern state has increased at least ten times in the past century, +and that the scale of our community of intercourse has increased +correspondingly. I want now to ask if there has been any corresponding +enlargement of the scope of the schooling--either of the community as a +whole or of any special governing classes in the community--to keep pace +with this tremendous extension of range. I am going to argue that there +has not been such an enlargement, and that a large factor in our present +troubles is the failure of education and educational method to keep pace +with the new demands made upon them. + +Now I will first ask what would one like one's son or daughter to get at +school to make him or her a full living citizen of this modern world. +And at first I will not take into consideration the question of expense +or any such practical difficulties. I will suppose that for the +education of this fortunate young citizen whose case we are considering +we have limitless means, the best possible tutors, the best apparatus +and absolutely the most favourable conditions. The only limits to the +teaching of this young citizen are his or her own limitations. We +suppose a pupil of fair average intelligence only. + +Now first we shall want our pupil to understand, speak, read and write +the mother tongue well. To do this thoroughly in English involves a +fairly sound knowledge of Latin grammar and at least some slight +knowledge of the elements of Greek. Latin and Greek, which are +disappearing as distinct and separate subjects from many school +curricula, are returning as necessary parts of the English course. + +But nowadays a full life is not to be lived with a single language. The +world becomes polyglot. Even if we do not want to live among foreigners, +we want to read their books and newspapers and understand and follow +their thought. Few of us there are who would not gladly read and speak +several more languages if we had the chance of doing so. I would +therefore set down as a desirable part of this ideal education we are +planning, two or three other languages in addition to the mother tongue +learnt early and thoroughly. These additional languages can be acquired +easily if they are learnt in the right way. The easiest way to learn a +language is to learn it when you are quite young. Many prosperous people +in Europe nowadays contrive to bring up their children with two or three +foreign languages, by employing foreign nurses and nursery governesses +who never speak to the children except in the foreign languages. In +many cases what is known as the alternate week system prevails. The +governess is Swiss and for one week she talks nothing but French and for +another nothing but German. In this way the children at the age of eight +or nine can be made to talk all three languages with a perfect accent +and an easy idiom. + +Now, if this can be done for some children it could be done for all +children--provided we could find the nurses and governesses or some +equivalent for the nurses and governesses, and if we can organize the +business efficiently. That point I will defer. I note here simply that +the thing is possible, if not practicable. + +Children, however, who have made this much start with languages are +unable, in England and America at least, to go on properly with the +learning of languages when they pass into a school. Our schools are so +badly organized that it is rare to find even French well taught, and +there is rarely any teaching at all of modern languages other than +French or German. Often the two foreign languages are taught by +different teachers employing different methods, and both employing a +different grammatical nomenclature from that used in studying the mother +tongue. The classes are encumbered with belated beginners. The child who +has got languages from its governess, therefore, marks time--that is to +say, wastes time in these subjects at school. The child well grounded +in some foreign tongue is often a source of irritation to the teacher, +and gets into trouble because it uses idiomatic expressions with which +the teacher is unfamiliar, or seems to reflect upon the teacher's +accent. These are the limitations of the school and not the limitations +of the pupil. _Given facilities_, there is no reason why there should +not be a rapid expansion of the language syllabus at thirteen or +fourteen, and why language generally should not be studied. Some +Slavonic language could be taken up--Russian or Czech--and a beginning +made with some non-Aryan tongue--Arabic, for example. + +The object of language teaching in a civilized state is twofold: to give +a thorough, intimate, usable knowledge of the mother tongue and of +certain key languages. But if teaching were systematic and no time were +wasted, if schooling joined on and were continuous instead of being +catastrophically disconnected, there is another side of language +teaching altogether--now entirely disregarded--and that is the +acquisition _in skeleton_ of quite a number of languages clustering +round the key languages. If at the end of his schooling a boy knows +English, French and German very well and nothing more, he is still a +helpless foreigner in relation to large parts of the world. But if, in +addition, he has an outline knowledge of Russian and Arabic or Turkish +or Hindustani--it need only be a quite bare outline--and if he has had a +term or so of Spanish in relation to his French, or Swedish in relation +to his German, then he has the key in his hands for almost any language +he may want. If he has not the language in his head, he has it very +conveniently on call--he needs but a sensible conversation dictionary +and in a little while he can possess himself of it. + +You may think this a large order; you may think I am demanding +linguistic prodigies; but remember that I am upon my own ground here; I +am a trained teacher and a student of pedagogic science, and I am a +watchful parent; I know how time and opportunity are wasted in school, +and particularly in language teaching. Languages are not things that +exist in water-tight compartments; each one illuminates the other +and--unless it is taught with stupefying stupidity--leads on to others. +A child can acquire the polyglot habit almost unawares. This widening +grasp of languages is or was within the capacity of nearly everyone born +into the world--given the facilities. + +I ask you to note that qualification--"given the facilities." + +And now let us turn from the language side to the rest of schooling. A +second main division of our schooling was mathematical instruction of a +sort. It fell into the three more or less isolated subjects of +arithmetic, algebra and Euclid. We carried on in these closed cells what +was, I now perceive, a needlessly laborious and needlessly muddled +struggle to comprehend quantity, series and form. + +In all these matters, looking back upon what I was taught, comparing it +with what I now know, and comparing my mind with the minds of more +fortunate individuals, I cannot resist the persuasion that I was very +badly done indeed in this section. And it is small consolation to me to +note that most people's minds seem to be no better done than mine. + +My arithmetic, for instance, is mediocre. It is pervaded by inaccuracy. +You may say that this is probably want of aptitude. Partly, no doubt, +but not altogether. What is want of aptitude? Bad as my arithmetic is +now it is not so bad as it was when I left school. When I was about +twenty I held a sort of inquest upon it and found out a number of +things. I found that I had been allowed to acquire certain bad habits +and besetting sins--most people do. For instance, when I ran up a column +of figures to add them I would pass from nine to seven quite surely and +say sixteen; but if I went from seven to nine I had a vicious +disposition to make it eighteen. Endless additions went wrong through +that one error. I had fumbled into this vice and--this is my point--my +school had no apparatus, and no system of checks, to discover that this +had occurred. I used to get my addition wrong and I used to be +punished--stupidly--by keeping me in from exercise. Time after time this +happened; there was no investigation and no improvement. Nobody ever put +me through a series of test sums that would have analysed my errors and +discovered these besetting sins of mine that led to my inaccurate +arithmetic. + +And another thing that made my arithmetic wrong was a defect in +eyesight. My two eyes haven't quite the same focal length and this often +puts me out of the straight with a column of figures. But there was +nothing in my school to discover that, and my school never did discover +it. + +My geometrical faculties are also very poor and undeveloped. Euclid's +elements, indeed, I have always found simple and straightforward, but +when it comes to anything in solid geometry--the intersection of a +sphere by a cone, let us say, or something of that sort--I am hopelessly +at sea. Deep-seated habits of faulting and fogging, which were actually +developed by my schooling, prevent my forming any conception of the +surfaces involved. + +Here again, just as with the language teaching, hardly any of us are +really fully educated. We suffer, nearly all of us, from a lack of +quantitative grasp and from an imperfect grasp of form. Few of us have +acquired such a grasp. Few of us ever made a proper use of models, and +nearly all of us have miserably trained hands. _Given proper +facilities_--and here again I ask you to note that proviso--given proper +educational facilities, most of us would not only be able to talk with +most people in the world but we should also have a conception of form +and quantity far more subtle than that possessed by any but a few +mathematicians and mechanical geniuses to-day. + +Let me now come to a third main division of what we call _schooling_. In +our schooling there was an attempt to give us a view of the world about +us and a view of our place in it, under the headings of History and +Geography. + +It would be impossible to imagine a feebler attempt. The History and +Geography I had was perhaps, in one respect, the next best thing to a +good course. It was so thoroughly and hopelessly bad that it left me +with a vivid sense of ignorance. I read, therefore, with great avidity +during my adolescence. + +In English schools now I doubt if the teaching of history is much better +than it was in my time, but geography has grown and improved--largely +through the vigorous initiative of Professor Huxley, who replaced the +old dreary topography by a vivid description of the world and mingled +with it a sort of _general elementary science_ under the name of +Physiography. This subject, with the addition of some elementary Biology +and Physiology does now serve to give many young people in Great Britain +something like a general view of the world as a whole. We need now to +make a parallel push with the teaching of history. Upon this matter of +the teaching of history I am a fanatic. I cannot think of an education +as even half done until there has been a fairly sound review of the +whole of the known past, from the beginnings of the geological record +up to our own time. Until that is done, the pupil has not been _placed_ +in the world. He is incapable of understanding his relationship to and +his role in the scheme of things. He is, whatever else he may have +learnt, essentially an ignorant person. + +And now let me recapitulate these demands I have made upon the process +of schooling--this process of teaching that begins in the nursery and +ends about the age of sixteen or seventeen. I have asked that it should +involve a practical mastery of three or four languages, including the +mother tongue, and that perhaps four or five other additional languages +shall have been studied, so to speak, in skeleton. I have added +mathematics carried much higher and farther than most of our schools do +to-day. I have demanded a sound knowledge of universal history, a +knowledge of general physical and general biological science, and I have +thrown in, with scarcely a word of apology, a good training of the eyes +and hands in drawing and manual work. + +So far as the pupil goes, I submit this is an entirely practicable +proposal. It can be done, I am convinced, with any ordinary pupil of +average all-round ability, given--what is now almost universally +wanting--the proper educational facilities. And now I will go on to +examine the question of why these facilities are wanting. I want to ask +why a large class, if not the whole of our population, is not educated +up to the level of wide understanding and fully developed capacity such +a schooling as I have sketched out implies. + +Well, the first fact obvious to every parent who has ever enquired +closely into the educational outlook of his offspring, the first fact we +have to face is this: there are not enough properly equipped schools +and, still more, not enough good teachers, to do the job. It is +proclaiming no very profound secret to declare that there is hardly such +a thing in the world to-day as a fully equipped school, that is to say a +school having all the possible material and apparatus and staffed +sufficiently with a bright and able teacher, a really live and alert +educationist, in every necessary subject, such as would be needed to +give this ideal education. That is the great primary obstacle, that is +the core of our present problem. We cannot get our modern community +educated to anything like its full possibilities as yet because we have +neither the teachers nor the schools. + +Now is this a final limitation? + +For a moment I will leave the question of the possibilities of more and +better equipped schools on one side. I will deal with the supply of +teachers. At present we do not even attempt to get good teachers; we do +not offer any approach to a tolerable life for an ordinary teacher; we +compel them to lead mean and restricted lives; we underpay them +shockingly; we do not deserve nearly such good teachers as we get. But +even supposing we were to offer reasonable wages for teachers; an +average all-round wage of L1,000 a year or so, and respect and dignity; +it does not follow that we should get as many as we should need--using +the methods that are in use to-day--to provide this ideal schooling for +most of our population, or, indeed, for any large section of our +population. + +You will note a new proviso creeping in at this point--"using the +methods that are used to-day." + +Because you must remember it is not simply a matter of payment that +makes the teacher. Teachers are born and not made. Good teaching +requires a peculiar temperament and distinctive aptitudes. I doubt very +much, even if you could secure the services of every human being who had +the natural gifts needed in a good teacher, if you could disregard every +question of cost and payment, I doubt whether even then you would +command the services of more than one passable teacher for a hundred +children and of more than one really inspired and inspiring teacher for +five hundred children. No doubt you could get _a sort of teacher_ for +every score or even for every dozen children, a commonplace person who +could be trained to do a few simple educational things, but I am +speaking now of good teachers who have the mental subtlety, the sympathy +and the devotion necessary for efficient teaching by the individualistic +methods in use to-day. And since, _using the methods that are used +to-day_, you can only hope to secure fully satisfactory results with one +teacher to every score of pupils, or fewer, and since it is unlikely we +shall ever be able to command the services of more than a tithe of the +people who could teach well, it seems that we come up here against an +insurmountable obstacle to an educated population. + +Now I want to press home the idea of that difficulty. I am an old and +seasoned educationist; most of my earliest writings are concealed in the +anonymity of the London educational papers of a quarter of a century +ago, and my knowledge of educational literature is fairly extensive. I +know in particular the literature of educational reform. And I do not +recall that I have ever encountered any recognition of this fundamental +difficulty in the way of educational development. The literature of +educational reform is always assuming parents of limitless intelligence, +sympathy and means, employing teachers of limitless energy and capacity. +And that to an extreme degree is what we haven't got and what we can +never hope to have. + +Educational reformers seem always to be looking at education from the +point of view of the individual scholastic enterprise and of the +individual pupil, and hardly ever from the point of view of a public +task dealing with the community as a whole. For all practical purposes +this makes waste paper of a considerable proportion of educational +literature. This literature, the reader will find, is pervaded by +certain fixed ideas. There is a sort of standing objection to any +_machining_ of education. There is, we are constantly told, to be no +syllabus of instruction, no examinations and no controls, no prescribed +text-books or diagrams because these things limit the genius of the +teacher. And this goes on with a blissful invincible disregard of the +fact that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of the thousand the +genius of the teacher isn't and can't be there. And also of the fact +that this affair of elementary education has in its essentials been done +over and over and over again for thousands of millions of times. There +ought to be as much scope left for genius and originality in ordinary +teaching as there is for genius and originality in a hen laying an +ordinary egg. + +These educational idealists are always disregarding the fundamental +problem of educational organization altogether, the problem of economy, +economy of the most precious thing of all, _teaching power_. It is the +problem of stretching the competent teacher over the maximum number of +pupils, and that can be done only by the same methods of economy that +are practised in every other large-scale production--by the +standardization of everything that can be standardized, and by the use +of every possible time and labour-saving device and every possible +replacement of human effort, not in order to dispense with originality +and initiative but in order to conserve them for application at their +points of maximum efficiency. + +I have said that a disregard of the possibilities of wide organization +and its associated economy of effort is characteristic of most +"advanced" educational literature. You will, if you will examine them, +find that disregard working out to its natural consequences in what are +called the "advanced" schools that appeal to educationally anxious +parents nowadays. You will find that these places, often very +picturesque and pleasing-looking places, are rarely prosperous enough to +maintain more than one or two good teachers. The rest of the staff +shrinks from scrutiny. You will find these schools adorned with +attractive diagrams drawn by the teachers, and strikingly original +models and apparatus made by the teachers, and if you look closely into +the matter or consult an intelligent pupil, you will find there are +never enough diagrams and apparatus to see a course through. If you +press that matter you will find that they haven't had time to make them +so far. And they will never get so far. No school, however rich and +prosperous and however enthusiastically run, can hope to make for itself +all the plant and diagrams and apparatus needed for a fully efficient +modern education such as we have sketched out. As well might a busy man +hope to array himself, by his own efforts, with hats, suits and boots +made by himself out of wool and raw hides. + +But now I think you will begin to see what I am driving at. It is this: +that if the general level of education is to be raised in our modern +community, and if that better education is to be spread over most of our +community, it is necessary to reorganize education in the world upon +entirely bolder, more efficient, and more economical lines. We are +inexorably limited as to the number of good teachers we can get into the +educational organization, and we are limited as inexorably as to the +quality of the rank and file of our teaching profession; but we are not +limited in the equipment and systematic organization of teaching methods +and apparatus. That is what I want particularly to enlarge upon now. + +Think of the ordinary schoolhouse--a mere empty brick building with a +few hat-pegs, a stale map or so, half a dozen plaster casts, a few +hundred tattered books, a blackboard, and some broken chemical +apparatus: think of it as the dingy insufficiency it is! In such a place +the best teacher must needs waste three-fourths of his energies. In such +a place staff and pupils meet chiefly to waste each other's time. This +is the first and principal point at which we can stanch the wastage of +teaching energy that now goes on. Everywhere about the world nowadays, +the schoolhouse is set up and equipped by a private person or a local +authority in more or less complete ignorance of educational +possibilities, in more or less complete disconnectedness, without any of +the help or any of the economy that comes from a centralized mass +production. Let us now consider what we might have in the place of this +typical schoolhouse of to-day. + +Let me first suggest that every school should have a complete library +of very full and explicit lesson notes, properly sorted and classified. +All the ordinary subjects in schools have been taught over and over +again millions and millions of times. Few people, I think, realize that, +and fewer still realize the reasonable consequences of that. Human minds +are very much the same everywhere, and the best way of teaching every +ordinary school subject, the best possible lesson and the best possible +succession of lessons, ought to have been worked out to the last point, +and the courses ought to have been stereotyped long ago. Yet if you go +into any school to-day, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred you will +find an inexpert and ill-prepared young teacher giving a clumsy, +vamped-up lesson as though it had never been given before. He or she +will have no proper notes and no proper diagrams, and a halting and +faulty discourse will be eked out by feeble scratchings with chalk on a +blackboard, by querulous questioning of the pupils, and irrelevancies. +The thing is preposterous. + +And linked up with this complete equipment of proper lesson notes upon +which the teacher will give the lessons, there should be a thing which +does not exist at present in any school and which ought to exist in +every school, a collection of some hundreds of thousands of pictures and +diagrams, properly and compactly filed; a copious supply of maps, views +of scenery, pictures of towns, and so forth for teaching geography, +diagrams and tables for scientific subjects, and so on and so on. You +must remember that if the schools of the world were thought of as a +whole and dealt with as a whole, these things could be produced +wholesale at a cost out of comparison cheaper than they are made to-day. +There is no reason whatever why school equipment should not be a world +market. A lesson upon the geography of Sweden needs precisely the same +maps, the same pictures of scenery, types of people, animals, cities, +and so forth, whether that lesson is given in China or Peru or Morocco +or London. There is no reason why these pictures and maps should not be +printed from the same blocks and distributed from the same centre for +the schools of all mankind. If the government of any large country had +the vigour and intelligence to go right ahead and manufacture a proper +equipment of notes and diagrams for its own use in all its own schools, +it would probably be able to recoup itself for most of the outlay by +dominating the map and diagram markets of the rest of the world. + +And next to this full and manageable collection of pictures and +diagrams, which the teacher would whip out, with the appropriate notes, +five minutes before his lesson began, the modern school would have quite +a considerable number of gramophones. These would be used not only to +supply music for drill and so forth, and for the analytical study of +music, but for the language teaching. Instead of the teacher having to +pretend, as he usually pretends now, to a complete knowledge of the +foreign language he can really only smatter, he would become the honest +assistant of the real teaching instrument--the gramophone. Here, again, +it is a case for big methods or none--a case for mass production. A mass +production of gramophone records for language teaching throughout the +world would so reduce the cost that every school could quite easily be +equipped with a big repertory of language records. For the first year of +any language study, at any rate, the work would go always to the +accompaniment of the proper accent and intonation. And all over the +world each language would be taught with the same accent and quantities +and idioms--a very desirable thing indeed. + +And now let me pass on to another requirement for an efficient school +that our educational organization has still to discover--the method of +using the cinematograph. I ask for half a dozen projectors or so in +every school, and for a well-stocked storehouse of films. The +possibilities of certain branches of teaching have been altogether +revolutionized by the cinematograph. In nearly every school nowadays you +will find a lot of more or less worn and damaged scientific apparatus +which is supposed to be used for demonstrating the elementary facts of +chemistry, physics and the like. There is a belief that the science +teachers--and they do their best with the time and skill and material at +their disposal--rig up experimental displays of the more illuminating +experimental facts with this damaged litter. Many of us can recall the +realities of the sort of demonstration I mean. The performance took two +or three hours to prepare, an hour to deliver and an hour or so to clear +away; it was difficult to follow, impossible to repeat, it usually went +wrong, and almost invariably the teacher lost his temper. These +practical demonstrations occurred usually in the opening enthusiasm of +the term. As the weeks wore on, the pretence of practical teaching was +quietly dropped, and we crammed our science out of the text-book. + +Now that is the sort of thing that still goes on. But it ought to be +entirely out of date. All that scientific bric-a-brac in the cupboard +had far better be thrown away. All the demonstration experiments that +science teachers will require in the future can be performed once for +all--before a cinematograph. They can be done _finally_; they need never +be done again. You can get the best and most dexterous teacher in the +world--he can do what has to be done with the best apparatus, in the +best light; anything that is very minute or subtle you can magnify or +repeat from another point of view; anything that is intricate you can +record with extreme slowness; you can show the facts a mile off or six +inches off, and all that your actual class teacher need do now is to +spend five minutes on getting out the films he wants, ten minutes in +reading over the corresponding lecture notes, and then he can run the +film, give the lesson, question his class upon it, note what they miss +and how they take it, run the film again for a second scrutiny, and get +out for the subsequent study of the class the ample supply of diagrams +and pictures needed to fix the lesson. Can there be any comparison +between the educational efficiency of the two methods? + +So I put it to you, that it is possible now to make--and that the world +needs badly that we should make--a new sort of school, a standardized +school, a school richly equipped with modern apparatus and economizing +the labour of teaching to an extent at present undreamt of, in which, +all over the world, the same stereotyped lessons, leading the youth of +the whole world through a parallel course of schooling, can be +delivered. + +I know that in putting this before you I challenge some of the most +popular affectations of cultivated people. I know that many people will +be already writhing with a genteel horror at the idea of the same lesson +being given in identical terms to everybody in turn throughout the +world. It sounds monotonous. It will rob the world of variety--and so on +and so on. But indeed it will not be monotonous at all. That lesson will +be new and fresh and good to every pupil who receives it. And remember +it is by our hypothesis the best possible form and arrangement of that +lesson. It is to take the place of a sham lesson or no lesson at all. +There is an eternal freshness in learning as in all the other main +things in life. It will be no more monotonous than having one's seventh +birthday or falling in love for the first time. + +And as for variety, I for one do not care how soon every possible +variety of ignorance and misconception is banished from the world. The +sun shines on the whole world and it is the same sun. I have still to be +persuaded that our planet would be more various and interesting if it +were lit by two or three thousand uncertain, spasmodic and differently +coloured searchlights directed upon it from every direction. I am +pleading for a clear white light of education that shall go like the sun +round the whole world. + +You see that in all this I am driving at--what shall I call +it?--syndicated schools, syndicated lesson notes, and, so far as +equipment goes, mass production. I want to see the sort of thing +happening to schools that has already happened to many sorts of retail +shops. In the place of little ill-equipped schools, each run by its own +teacher and buying its own books and diagrams and material and so forth +in small quantities at high prices, I want to see a great central +organization, employing teachers of genius, working in consultation and +co-operation and producing lesson notes, diagrams, films, phonograph +records, cheaply, abundantly, on a big scale for a nation, or a group of +nations, or, if you like, for all the world, just as America produces +watches and alarum clocks and cheap automobiles for all the world. And I +want to see the schools of the world being run, so far as the +intellectual training goes, not by local committees but by that _central +organization_. + +It is only by this reorganization of schooling upon the lines of big +production that we can hope to get a civilized community in the world at +an educational level very markedly higher than the existing educational +level. + +But if we could so economize teaching energy--if we made our really +great teachers, by the use of modern appliances, teachers not of +handfuls but of millions; if we insisted upon a universal application of +the best and most effective methods of teaching, just as we insist upon +the best and most effective methods of street traction and town +lighting--then I believe it would be possible to build the civilization +of the years to come on a foundation of mental preparation incomparably +sounder and higher than anything we know of to-day. + + + + +VII + +COLLEGE, NEWSPAPER AND BOOK + + +And now let us go on to the next stages of education. + +The schooling process is a natural phase in human development--it is our +elaboration of the natural learning of boyhood and girlhood and of +adolescence. There was schooling before schools; there was schooling +before humanity. I have watched a cat schooling her kittens. Schooling +is a part of being young. And we grow up. So there comes a time when +schooling is over, when the process of equipment gives place to an +increasing share in the activities and decisions of adult life. + +Nevertheless for us education must still go on. + +I suppose that the savage or the barbarian or the peasant in any part of +the world or the uneducated man anywhere would laugh if you told him +that the adult must still learn. But in our modern world--I mean the +more or less civilized world of the last twenty-five centuries or +so--there has grown up a new idea--new, I mean, in the sense that it +runs counter to the life scheme of primitive humanity and of most other +living things--and that is _the idea that one can go on learning right +up to the end of life_. It marks off modern man from all animals, that +in his adult life he can display a sense that there remains something +still to be investigated and wisdom still to be acquired. + +I do not know enough history to tell you with any confidence when adult +men, instead of just going about the business of life after they had +grown up, continued to devote themselves to learning, to a deliberate +prolongation of what is for all other animals an adolescent phase. But +by the time of Buddha in India and Confucius in China and the schools of +the philosophers in the Greek world the thing was in full progress. That +was twenty-six centuries ago or more. + +Something of the sort may have been going on in the temples of Egypt or +Samaria a score of centuries before. I do not know. You must ask some +such great authority as Professor Breasted about that. It may be fifty +or a hundred centuries since men, although they were fully grown up, +still went on trying to learn. + +The idea of adult learning has spread ever since. To-day I suppose most +educated people would agree that so long as we live we learn and ought +to learn--that we ought to develop our ideas and enlarge, correct and +change our ideas. + +But even to-day you will find people who have not yet acquired this +view. You will find even teachers and doctors and business men who are +persuaded that they had learnt all that there was to learn by +twenty-five or thirty. It is only quite recently that this idea has +passed beyond a special class and pervaded the world generally--the idea +of everyone being a life-long student and of the whole world becoming, +as it were, a university for those who have passed beyond the schooling +stage. + +It has spread recently because in recent years the world has changed so +rapidly that the idea of settling down for life has passed out of our +minds, has given place to a new realization of the need of continuous +adaptation to the very end of our days. It is no good settling down in a +world that, on its part, refuses to do anything of the sort. + +But hitherto, before these new ideas began to spread in our community, +the mass of men and women definitely _settled down_. At twelve, or +fifteen, or sixteen, or twenty it was decided that they should stop +learning. It has only been a rare and exceptional class hitherto that +has gone on learning throughout life. The scene and field of that +learning hitherto has been, in our Western communities, the University. +Essentially the University is and has been an organization of adult +learning as distinguished from preparatory and adolescent learning. + +But between the phase of schooling and the phase of adult learning there +is an intermediate stage. + +In Scotland and America that is distinguished and thought of clearly as +the _college stage_. But in England, where we do not think so clearly, +this college stage is mixed up with and done partly at school and partly +in the University. It is not marked off so definitely from the stage of +general preparation that precedes it or from the stage of free +intellectual enterprise that follows it. + +Now what should college give the young citizen, male or female, upon the +foundation of schooling we have already sketched out? In practice we +find a good deal of technical study comes into the college stage. The +budding lawyer begins to read law, the doctor starts his professional +studies, the future engineer becomes technical, and the young merchant +sets to work, or should do, to study the great movements of commerce and +business method and organization. + +As the college stage of those who do not, as a matter of fact, go to +college, we have now in every civilized country the evening continuation +school, the evening technical school and the works school. + +But important as these things are from the point of view of service, +they are not the _soul_--not the real meaning of the college stage. + +The soul of the college stage, the most important value about it, is +that in it is a sort of preparatory pause and inspection of the whole +arena of life. It is the educational concomitant of the stage of +adolescence. + +The young man and the young woman begin to think for themselves, and the +college education is essentially the supply of stimulus and material +for that process. + +It was in the college stage that most of us made out our religion and +made it real for ourselves. It was then we really took hold of social +and political ideas, when we became alive to literature and art, when we +began the delightful and distressful enterprise of finding ourselves. + +And I think most of us will agree when we look back that the most real +thing in our college life was not the lecturing and the lessons--very +much of that stuff could very well have been done in the schooling +stage--but the arguments of the debating society, the discussions that +broke out in the classroom or laboratory, the talks in one's rooms about +God and religion, about the state and freedom, about art, about every +possible and impossible social relationship. + +Now in addition to that I had something else in my own college +course--something of the same sort of thing but better. + +I have spoken of myself as under-educated. My schooling was shocking +but, as a blessed compensation, my college stage was rather +exceptionally good. My schooling ended when I was thirteen. My father, +who was a professional cricketer, was smashed up by an accident, and I +had three horrible years in employment in shops. Then my luck changed +and I found myself under one of the very greatest teachers of his time, +Professor Huxley. I worked at the Royal College of Science in London +for one year under him in his great course in zoology, and for a year +and a half under a very good but rather uninspiring teacher, Professor +Judd, the geologist. I did also physics and astronomy. Altogether I had +three full years of science study. And the teaching of biology at that +time, as Huxley had planned it, was a continuing, systematic, +illuminating study of life, of the forms and appearances of life, of the +way of life, of the interplay of life, of the past of life and the +present prospect of life. It was a tremendous training in the sifting of +evidence and the examination of appearances. + +Every man is likely to be biassed, I suppose, in favour of his own +educational course. Yet it seems to me that those three years of work +were educational--that they gave a vision of the universe as a whole and +a discipline and a power such as no other course, no classical or +mathematical course I have ever had a chance of testing, could do. + +I am so far a believer in a biological backbone for the college phase of +education that I have secured it for my sons and I have done all I can +to extend it in England. Nevertheless, important as that formal college +work was to me, it still seems to me that the informal part of our +college life--the talk, the debates, the discussion, the scampering +about London to attend great political meetings, to hear William Morris +on Socialism, Auberon Herbert on Individualism, Gladstone on Home Rule, +or Bradlaugh on Atheism--for those were the lights of my remote student +days--was about equally important. + +If schooling is a training in expression and communication, college is +essentially the establishment of broad convictions. And in order that +they may be established firmly and clearly, it is necessary that the +developing young man or woman should hear all possible views and see the +medal of truth not only from the obverse but from the reverse side. + +Now here again I want to put the same sort of questions I have put about +schooling. + +Is the college stage of our present educational system anywhere near its +maximum possible efficiency? And could it not be extended from its +present limited range until it reached practically the whole adolescent +community? + +Let me deal with the first of these questions first. + +Could we not do much more than we do to make the broad issues of various +current questions plain and accessible to our students in the college +stage? + +For example, there is a vast discussion afoot upon the questions that +centre upon Property, its rights and its limitations. There is a great +literature of Collectivist Socialism and Guild Socialism and Communism. +About these things our young people must know. They are very urgent +questions; our sons and daughters will have to begin to deal with them +from the moment they leave college. Upon them they must form working +opinions, and they must know not only what they themselves believe but, +if our public affairs are not to degenerate into the squalid, obstinate, +hopeless conflicts of prejudiced adherents, they must know also what is +believed by other people whose convictions are different from theirs. + +You may want to hush these matters up. Many elderly people do. You will +fail. + +All our intelligent students will insist upon learning what they can of +these discussions and forming opinions for themselves. And if the +college will not give them the representative books, a fair statement of +the facts and views, and some guidance through the maze of these +questions, it means merely that they will get a few books in a defiant +or underhand way and form one-sided and impassioned opinions. + +Another great set of questions upon which the adolescent want to judge +for themselves, and ought to judge for themselves, are the religious +questions. + +And a third group are those that determine the principles of sexual +conduct. + +I know that in all these matters, on both sides of the Atlantic, a great +battle rages between dogma and concealment on the one hand and open +ventilation on the other. + +Upon the issue I have no doubt. I find it hard even to imagine the case +for the former side. + +So long as _schooling_ goes on, the youngster is immature, needs to be +protected, is not called upon for judgments and initiatives, and may +well be kept under mental limitations. I do not care very much how you +censor or select the reading and talking and thinking of the schoolboy +or schoolgirl. But it seems to me that with adolescence comes the right +to knowledge and the right of judgment. And that it is the _task and +duty_ of the college to give matters of opinion in the solid--to let the +student walk round and see them from every side. + +Now how is this to be done? + +I suggest that to begin with we open wide our colleges to propaganda of +every sort. There is still a general tendency in universities on both +sides of the Atlantic to treat propaganda as infection. For the +adolescent it is not--it is a stimulating drug. + +Let me instance my own case. I am a man of Protestant origins and with a +Protestant habit of mind. But it is a matter of great regret to me that +there is no good Roman Catholic propaganda available for my sons in +their college life. I would like to have the old Mother Church giving my +boys an account of herself and of the part she has played in the history +of the world, telling them what she stands for and claims to be, giving +her own account of the Mass. These things are interwoven with our past; +they are part of us. I do not like them to go into a church and stare +like foreigners and strangers at the altar. + +And side by side with that Catholic propaganda I would like them to hear +an interpretation of religious origins and church history by some +non-catholic or sceptical ethnologist. He, too, should be free to tell +his story and drive his conclusions home. + +But you will find most colleges and most college societies bar religious +instruction and discussion. What do they think they are training? Some +sort of genteel recluse--or men and women? + +So, too, with the discussion of Bolshevism. I do not know how things are +in America but in England there has been a ridiculous attempt to +suppress Bolshevik propaganda. I have seen a lot of Bolshevik propaganda +and it is not very convincing stuff. But by suppressing it, by police +seizures of books and papers and the like, it has been invested with a +quality of romantic mystery and enormous significance. Our boys and +girls, especially the brighter and more imaginative, naturally enough +think it must be tremendous stuff to agitate the authorities in this +fashion. + +At our universities, moreover, the more loutish types of student have +been incited to attack and smash up the youths suspected of such +reading. This gives it the glamour of high intellectual quality. + +The result is that every youngster in the British colleges with a spark +of mental enterprise and self-respect is anxious to be convinced of +Bolshevik doctrine. He believes in Lenin--because he has been prevented +from reading him. Sober collectivists like myself haven't a chance with +him. + +But you see my conception of the college course? Its backbone should be +the study of biology and its substance should be the threshing out of +the burning questions of our day. + +You may object to this that I am proposing the final rejection of that +discipline in classical philosophy which is still claimed as the highest +form of college education in the world----the sort of course that the +men take in what is called _Greats_ at Oxford. You will accuse me of +wanting to bury and forget Aristotle and Plato, Heraclitus and +Lucretius, and so forth and so on. + +But I don't want to do that--_so far as their thought is still alive_. +So far as their thought is still alive these men will come into the +discussion of living questions now. If they are Ancients and dead then +let them be buried and left to the archaeological excavator. If they are +still Moderns and alive, I defy you to bury them if you are discussing +living questions in a full and honest way. But don't go hunting after +them, there are still modern Immortals in the darkness of a forgotten +language. Don't make a superstition of them. Let them come hunting after +you. Either they are unavoidable if your living questions are fully +discussed, or they are irrelevant and they do not matter. That there is +a wisdom and beauty in the classics which is incommunicable in any +modern language, which obviously neither ennobles nor empowers, but +which is nevertheless supremely precious, is a kind of nonsense dear to +the second-rate classical don, but it has nothing endearing about it +for any other human beings. I will not bother you further with that sort +of affectation here. + +And this college course I have sketched should, in the modern state, +pass insensibly into adult mental activities. + +Concurrently with it there will be going on, as I have said, a man's +special technical training. He will be preparing himself for a life of +industrialism, commerce, engineering, agriculture, medicine, +administration, education or what not. And as with the man, so with the +woman. That, too, is a process which in this changing new world of ours +can never be completed. Neither of these college activities will ever +really leave off. All through his life a man or woman should be +confirming, fixing or modifying his or her general opinions; and all the +time his or her technical knowledge and power should be consciously +increased. + +And now let me come to the second problem we opened up in connection +with college education--the problem of its extension. + +Can we extend it over most or all of a modern population? + +I don't think we can, if we are to see it in terms of college buildings, +class rooms, tutors, professors and the like. Here again, just as in the +case of schooling, we have to raise the neglected problem--neglected so +far as education goes--of economy of effort; and we have to look once +more at the new facilities that our educational institutions have so +far refused to utilize. Our European colleges and universities have a +long and honourable tradition that again owes much to the educational +methods of the Roman Empire and the Hellenic world. This tradition was +already highly developed before the days of printing from movable type, +and long before the days when maps or illustrations were printed. The +higher education, therefore, was still, as it was in the Stone Age, +largely vocal. And the absence of paper and so forth, rendering +notebooks costly and rare, made a large amount of memorizing necessary. +For that reason the mediaeval university teacher was always dividing his +subject into firstly and secondly and fourthly and sixthly and so on, so +that the student could afterwards tick off and reproduce the points on +his fingers--a sort of thumb and finger method of thought--still to be +found in perfection in the discourses of that eminent Catholic +apologist, Mr. Hilaire Belloc. It is a method that destroys all sense of +proportion between the headings; main considerations and secondary and +tertiary points get all catalogued off as equivalent numbers, but it was +a mnemonic necessity of those vanished days. + +And they have by no means completely vanished. We still use the lecture +as the normal basis of instruction in our colleges, we still hear +discourses in the firstly, secondly and thirdly form, and we still +prefer even a second-rate professor on the spot to the printed word of +the ablest teacher at a distance. Most of us who have been through +college courses can recall the distress of hearing a dull and inadequate +view of a subject being laboriously unfolded in a long series of tedious +lectures, in spite of the existence of full and competent text-books. +And here again it would seem that the time has come to centralize our +best teaching, to create a new sort of wide teaching professor who will +teach not in one college but in many, and to direct the local professor +to the more suitable task of ensuring by a commentary, by organized +critical work, and so forth, that the text-book is duly read, discussed +and compared with the kindred books in the college library. + +This means that the great teaching professors will not lecture, or that +they will lecture only to try over their treatment of a subject before +an intelligent audience as a prelude to publication. They may perhaps +visit the colleges under their influence, but their basis instrument of +instruction will be not a course of lectures but a book. They will carry +out the dictum of Carlyle that the modern university is a university of +books. + +Now the frank recognition of the book and not the lecture as the +substantial basis of instruction opens up a large and interesting range +of possibilities. It releases the process of learning from its old +servitude to place and to time. It is no longer necessary for the +student to go to a particular room, at a particular hour, to hear the +golden words drop from the lips of a particular teacher. The young man +who reads at eleven o'clock in the morning in luxurious rooms in +Trinity College, Cambridge, will have no very marked advantage over +another young man, employed during the day, who reads at eleven o'clock +at night in a bed-sitting-room in Glasgow. The former, you will say, may +get commentary and discussion, but there is no particular reason why the +latter should not form some sort of reading society with his fellows, +and discuss the question with them in the dinner hour and on the way to +the works. Nor is there any reason why he should not get tutorial help +as a university extension from the general educational organization, as +good in quality as any other tutorial help. + +And this release of the essentials of a college education from +limitations of locality and time brought about by modern conditions, not +only makes it unnecessary for a man to come "up" to college to be +educated, but abolishes the idea that his educational effort comes to an +end when he goes "down." Attendance at college no longer justifies a +claim to education; inability to enter a college is no longer an excuse +for illiteracy. + +I do not think that our educational and university authorities realize +how far the college stage of education has already escaped from the +local limitations of colleges; they do not understand what a great and +growing volume of adolescent learning and thought, of college education +in the highest and best sense of the word, goes on outside the walls of +colleges altogether; and on the other they do not grasp the significant +fact that, thanks to the high organization of sports and amusements and +social life in our more prosperous universities, a great proportion of +the youngsters who come in to their colleges never get the realities of +a college education at all, and go out into the world again as shallow +and uneducated as they came in. And this failure to grasp the great +change in educational conditions brought about, for the most part, in +the last half-century, accounts for the fact that when we think of any +extension of higher education in the modern community we are all too apt +to think of it as a great proliferation of expensive, pretentious +college buildings and a great multiplication of little teaching +professorships, and a further segregation of so many hundreds or +thousands of our adolescents from the general community, when as a +matter of fact the reality of education has ceased to lie in that +direction at all. The modern task is not to multiply teachers _but to +exalt and intensify exceptionally good teachers_, to recognize their +close relationship with the work of university research--which it is +their business to digest and interpret--and to secure the production and +wide distribution of books throughout the community. + +I am inclined to think that the type of adolescent education, very much +segregated in out-of-the-way colleges and aristocratic in spirit, such +as goes on now at Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Holloway, Wellesley and the +like, has probably reached and passed its maximum development. I doubt +if the modern community can afford to continue it; it certainly cannot +afford to extend it very widely. + +But as I have pointed out, there has always been a second strand to +college education--the technical side, the professional training or +apprenticeship. Here there are sound reasons that the student should go +to a particular place, to the special museums and laboratories, to the +institutes of research, to the hospitals, factories, works, ports, +industrial centres and the like where the realities he studies are to be +found, or to the studios or workshops or theatres where they practise +the art to which he aspires. Here it seems we have natural centres of +aggregation in relation to which the college stage of a civilized +community, the general adolescent education, the vision of the world as +a whole and the realization of the individual place in it, can be +organized most conveniently. + +You see that what I am suggesting here is in effect that we should take +our colleges, so far as they are segregations of young people for +general adolescent education, and break them as a cook breaks eggs--and +stir them up again into the general intellectual life of the community. + +Coupled with that there should, of course, be a proposal to restrict the +hours of industrial work or specialized technical study up to the age of +twenty, at least, in order to leave time for this college stage in the +general education of every citizen of the world. + +The idea has already been broached that men and women in the modern +community are no longer inclined to consider themselves as ever +completely adult and finished; there is a growing disposition and a +growing necessity to keep on learning throughout life. In the worlds of +research, of literature and art and economic enterprise, that adult +learning takes highly specialized forms which I will not discuss now; +but in the general modern community the process of continuing education +after the college stage is still evidently only at a primitive level of +development. There are a certain number of literary societies and +societies for the study of particular subjects; the pulpit still +performs an educational function; there are public lectures and in +America there are the hopeful germs of what may become later on a very +considerable organization of adult study in the Lyceum Chautauqua +system; but for the generality of people the daily newspaper, the Sunday +newspaper, the magazine and the book constitute the only methods of +mental revision and enlargement after the school or college stage is +past. + +Now we have to remember that the bulk of this great organization of +newspapers and periodicals and all the wide distribution of books that +goes on to-day are extremely recent things. This new nexus of print has +grown up in the lifetime of four or five generations, and it is +undergoing constant changes. We are apt to forget its extreme newness in +history and to disregard the profound difference in mental conditions it +makes between our own times and any former period. It is impossible to +believe that thus far it is anything but a sketch and intimation of what +it will presently be. It has grown. No man foresaw it; no one planned +it. We of this generation have grown up with it and are in the habit of +behaving as though this nexus had always been with us and as though it +would certainly remain with us. The latter conclusion is almost wilder +than the former. + +By what we can only consider a series of fortunate accidents, the press +and the book world have provided and do provide a necessary organ in the +modern world state, an organ for swift general information upon matters +of fact and for the rapid promulgation and diffusion of ideas and +interpretations. The newspaper grew, as we know, out of the news-letter +which in a manuscript form existed before the Roman Empire; it owes its +later developments largely to the advertisement possibilities that came +with the expansion of the range of trading as the railways and suchlike +means of communication developed. Modern newspapers have been described, +not altogether inaptly, as sheets of advertisements with news and +discussions printed on the back. The extension of book reading from a +small class, chiefly of men, to the whole community has also been +largely a response to new facilities; though it owes something also to +the religious disputes of the last three centuries. The population of +Europe, one may say with a certain truth, first learnt to read the +Bible, and only afterwards to read books in general. A large proportion +of the book publishing in the English language in the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries still consisted of sermons and controversial +theological works. + +Both newspaper and book production began in a small way as the +enterprise of free individuals, without anyone realizing the dimensions +to which the thing would grow. Our modern press and book trade, in spite +of many efforts to centralize and control it, in spite of Defence of the +Realm Acts and the like, is still the production of an unorganized +multitude of persons. It is not centralized; it is not controlled. To +this fact the nexus of print owes what is still its most valuable +quality. Thoughts and ideas of the most varied and conflicting sort +arise and are developed and worked out and fought out in this nexus, +just as they do in a freely thinking vigorous mind. + +I am not, you will note, saying that this freedom is perfect or that the +thought process of the print nexus could not go very much better than it +does, but I am saying that it has a very considerable freedom and vigour +and that so far as it has these qualities it is a very fine thing +indeed. + +Now many people think that we are moving in the direction of world +socialism to-day. Collectivism is perhaps a better, more definite word +than socialism, and, so far as keeping the peace goes, and in matters of +transport and communication, trade, currency, elementary education, the +production and distribution of staples and the conservation of the +natural resources of the world go, I believe that the world and the +common sense of mankind move steadily towards a world collectivism. But +the more co-operation we have in our common interests, the more +necessary is it to guard very jealously the freedom of the mind, that is +to say, the liberty of discussion and suggestion. + +It is here that the Communist regime in Russia has encountered its most +fatal difficulty. A catastrophic unqualified abolition of private +property has necessarily resulted in all the paper, all the printing +machinery, all the libraries, all the news-stalls and book shops, +becoming Government property. It is impossible to print anything without +the consent of the Government. One cannot buy a book or newspaper; one +must take what the Government distributes. Free discussion--never a very +free thing in Russia--has now on any general scale become quite +impossible. It was a difficulty foreseen long ago in Socialist +discussions, but never completely met by the thorough-paced Communist. +At one blow the active mental life of Russia has been ended, and so long +as Russia remains completely and consistently communist it cannot be +resumed. It can only be resumed by some surrender of paper, printing and +book distribution from absolute Government ownership to free individual +control. That can only be done by an abandonment of the full rigours of +communist theory. + +In our western communities the dangers to the intellectual nexus lie +rather on the other side. The war period produced considerable efforts +at Government control and as a consequence considerable annoyance to +writers, much concealment and some interference with the expression of +opinion; but on the whole both newspapers and books held their own. +There is to-day probably as much freedom of publishing as ever there +was. It is not from the western governments that mischief is likely to +come to free intellectual activity in the western communities but from +the undisciplined individual, and from the incitements to mob violence +by propagandist religions and cults against free discussion. + +About the American press I know and can say little. I will speak only of +things with which I am familiar. I am inclined to think that there has +been a considerable increase of deliberate lying in the British press +since 1914, and a marked loss of journalistic self-respect. Particular +interests have secured control of large groups of papers and pushed +their particular schemes in entire disregard of the general mental +well-being. For instance, there has recently been a remarkable boycott +in the London press of a very able collectivist book, Sir Leo Money's +_Triumph of Nationalization_, because it would have interfered with the +operation of very large groups which were concerned in getting back +public property into private hands on terms advantageous to the latter. +It is a book not only important as a statement of a peculiar economic +view, but because of the statesmanlike gravity and clearness of its +exposition. I do not think it would have been possible to stand between +the public and a writer in this way in the years before 1914. A +considerable proportion of the industrial and commercial news is now +written to an end. The British press has also suffered greatly from the +outbreak of social and nationalist rancour arising out of the great war, +the inability of the European mind to grasp the Bolshevik issue, and the +clumsy blunderings of the Versailles settlement. Quite half the news +from Eastern Europe that appears in the London press is now deliberate +fabrication, and a considerable proportion of the rest is rephrased and +mutilated to give a misleading impression to the reader. + +But people cannot be continuously deceived in this way, and the +consequence of this press demoralization has been a great loss of +influence for the daily paper. A diminishing number of people now +believe the news as it is given them, and fewer still take the unsigned +portions of the newspaper as written in good faith. And there has been a +consequent enhancement of the importance of signed journalism. Men of +manifest honesty, men with names to keep clean, have built up +reputations and influence upon the ruins of editorial prestige. The +exploitation of newspapers by the adventurers of "private enterprise" in +business, has carried with it this immense depreciation in the power and +honour of the newspaper. + +I am inclined to think that this swamping of a large part of the world's +press by calculated falsehood and partisan propaganda is a temporary +phase in the development of the print nexus: nevertheless, it is a very +great inconvenience and danger to the world. It stands very much in the +way of that universal adult education which is our present concern. +Reality is horribly distorted. Men cannot see the world clearly and they +cannot, therefore, begin to think about it rightly. + +We need a much better and more trustworthy press than we possess. We +cannot get on to a new and better world without it. The remedy is to be +found not, I believe, in any sort of Government control, but in a legal +campaign against the one thing harmful--the lie. It would be in the +interests of most big advertisers, for most big advertisement is honest; +it would be, in the long run, in the interests of the Press; and it +would mean an enormous step forward in the general mental clarity of the +world if a deliberate lie, whether in an advertisement or in the news or +other columns of the press, was punishable--punishable whether it did or +did not involve anything that is now an actionable damage. And it would +still further strengthen the print nexus and clear the mind of the world +if it were compulsory to correct untrue statements in the periodical +press, whether they had been made in good faith or not, at least as +conspicuously and lengthily as the original statement. I can see no +impossibility in the realization of either of these proposals, and no +objection that a really honest newspaper proprietor or advertiser could +offer to them. It would make everyone careful, of course, but I fail to +see any grievance in that. The sanitary effect upon the festering +disputes of our time would be incalculably great. It would be like +opening the windows upon a stuffy, overcrowded and unventilated room of +disputing people. + +Given adequate laws to prevent the cornering of paper or the partisan +control of the means of distribution of books and printed matter, I +believe that the present freedoms and the unhampered individualism of +the world of thought, discussion and literary expression are and must +remain conditions essential to the proper growth and activity of a +common world mind. On the basis of that sounder education I have +sketched in a preceding paper, there is possible such an extension of +understanding, such an increase of intelligent co-operations and such a +clarification of wills as to dissolve away half the difficulties and +conflicts of the present time and to provide for the other half such a +power of solution as we, in the heats, entanglements and limitations of +our present ignorance, doubt and misinformation can scarcely begin to +imagine. + +I do not know how far I have conveyed to you in the last two papers my +underlying idea of an education not merely intensive but extensive, +planned so economically and so ably as to reach every man and woman in +the world. + +It is a dream not of _individuals educated_--we have thought too much of +the individual educated _for_ the individual--but of a _world educated_ +to a pitch of understanding and co-operation far beyond anything we know +of to-day, for the sake of all mankind. + +I have tried to show that, given organization, given the will for it, +such a world-wide education is possible. + +I wish I had the gift of eloquence so that I could touch your wills in +this matter. I do not know how this world of to-day strikes upon you. I +am not ungrateful for the gift of life. While there is life and a human +mind, it seems to me there must always be excitements and beauty, even +if the excitements are fierce and the beauty terrible and tragic. +Nevertheless, this world of mankind to-day seems to me to be a very +sinister and dreadful world. It has come to this--that I open my +newspaper every morning with a sinking heart, and usually I find little +to console me. Every day there is a new tale of silly bloodshed. Every +day I read of anger and hate, oppression and misery and want--stupid +anger and oppression, needless misery and want--the insults and +suspicions of ignorant men, and the inane and horrible self-satisfaction +of the well-to-do. It is a vile world because it is an under-educated +world, unreasonable, suspicious, base and ferocious. The air of our +lives is a close and wrathful air; it has the closeness of a +prison--the indescribable offence of crowded and restricted humanity. + +And yet I know that there is a way out. + +Up certain steps there is a door to this dark prison of ignorance, +prejudice and passion in which we live--and that door is only locked on +the inside. It is within our power, given the will for it, given the +courage for it--it is within our power to go out. The key to all our +human disorder is organized education, comprehensive and universal. The +watchword of conduct that will clear up all our difficulties is, the +_plain truth_. Rely upon that watchword, use that key with courage and +we can go out of the prison in which we live; we can go right out of the +conditions of war, shortage, angry scrambling, mutual thwarting and +malaise and disease in which we live; we and our kind can go out into +sunlight, into a sweet air of understanding, into confident freedoms and +a full creative life--for ever. + +I do not know--I do not dare to believe--that I shall live to hear that +key grating in the lock. It may be our children and our children's +children will still be living in this jail. But a day will surely come +when that door will open wide and all our race will pass out from this +magic prison of ignorance, suspicion and indiscipline in which we now +all suffer together. + + + + +VIII + +THE ENVOY + + +In the preceding papers I have, with some repetition and much stumbling, +set out a fairly complete theory of what men and women have to do at the +present time if human life is to go on hopefully to any great happiness +and achievement in the days to come. Much of this material was first +prepared to be delivered to a lecture audience, and I regret that +ill-health has prevented a complete re-writing of these portions. There +is more of the uplifted forefinger and the reiterated point than I +should have allowed myself in an essay. But this is a loss of grace +rather than of clearness. And since I am stating a case and not offering +the reader anything professing to be a literary work, I shall not +apologise for finally summing up and underlining the chief points of +this book. + +They are, firstly: that a great change in human conditions has been +brought about during the past century, and secondly that a vast task of +adaptation, which must be, initially and fundamentally, _mental_ +adaptation, has to be undertaken by our race. It is a task which +politicians, who live from day to day, and statesmen, who live from +event to event, may hinder or aid very greatly, but which they cannot +be expected to conduct or control. Politicians and statesmen perforce +live and work in the scheme of ideas they find about them; the +conditions of their activities are made for them. They can be compelled +by the weight of public opinion to help it, but the driving force for +this great task must come not from official sources but from the +steadfast educational pressure of a great and growing multitude of +convinced people. In times of fluctuation and dissolving landmarks, the +importance of the teacher--using the word in its widest sense--rises +with the progressive dissolution of the established order. + +The creative responsibility for the world to-day passes steadily into +the hands of writers and school teachers, students of social and +economic science, professors and poets, editors and journalists, +publishers and newspaper proprietors, preachers, every sort of +propagandist and every sort of disinterested person who can give time +and energy to the reconstruction of the social idea. Human life will +continue to be more and more dangerously chaotic until a world social +idea crystallizes out. That--and no existing institution and no current +issue--is the primary concern of the present age. + +We need, therefore, before all other sorts of organization, educational +organizations; we need, before any other sort of work, work of education +and enlightenment; we need everywhere active societies pressing for a +better, more efficient conduct of public schooling, for a wider, more +enlightening school curriculum, for a world-wide linking-up of +educational systems, for a ruthless subordination of naval, military and +court expenditure to educational needs, and for a systematic +discouragement of mischief-making between nation and nation and race and +race and class and class. I could wish to see Educational Societies, +organized as such, springing up everywhere, watching local bodies in +order to divert economies from the educational starvation of a district +to other less harmful saving; watching for obscurantism and reaction and +mischievous nationalist teaching in the local schools and colleges and +in the local press; watching members of parliament and congressmen for +evidences of educational good-will or malignity; watching and getting +control of the administration of public libraries; assisting, when +necessary, in the supply of sound literature in their districts; raising +funds for invigorating educational propaganda in poor countries like +China and in atrociously educated countries like Ireland, and +corresponding with kindred societies throughout the world. I believe +such societies would speedily become much more influential than the +ordinary political party clubs and associations that now use up so much +human energy in the western communities. Subordinating all vulgar +political considerations to educational development as the supreme need +in the world's affairs, even quite small societies could exercise a +powerful decisive voice in a great number of political contests. And an +educational movement is more tenacious than any other sort of social or +political movement whatever. It trains its adherents. What it wins it +holds. + +I know that in thus putting all the importance upon educational needs at +the present time I shall seem to many readers to be ignoring quite +excessively the profound racial, social and economic conflicts that are +in progress. I do. I believe we shall never get on with human affairs +until we do ignore them. I offer no suggestion whatever as to what sides +people should take in such an issue as that between France and Germany +or between Sinn Fein and the British Government, or in the class war. I +offer no such suggestion because I believe that all these conflicts and +all such current conflicts are so irrational and destructive that it is +impossible for a sane man who wishes to serve the world to identify +himself with either side in any of them. These conflicts are mere +aspects of the gross and passionate stupidity and ignorance and +sectionalism of our present world. The class war, the push for and the +resistance to some vague reorganization called the Social +Revolution--such things are the natural inevitable result of the sordid +moral and intellectual muddle of our common ideas about property. The +capitalist, the employer, the property-owning class, as a class, have +neither the intelligence nor the conscience to comprehend any moral +limitations, any limitations whatever but the strong arm of the law, +upon what they do with their property. Their black and obstinate +ignorance, the clumsy adventurousness they call private enterprise, +their unconscious insolence to poor people, their stupidly conspicuous +self-indulgence, produce as a necessary result the black hatred of the +employed and the expropriated. On one side we have greed, insensibility +and incapacity, on the other envy and suffering stung to vindictive +revolt: on neither side light nor generosity nor creative will. Neither +side has any power to give us any reality we need. Neither side is more +than a hate and an aggression. How can one take sides between them? + +The present system, _unless it can develop a better intelligence and a +better heart_, is manifestly destined to foster fresh wars and to +continue wasting what is left of the substance of mankind, until +absolute social disaster overtakes us all. And manifestly the +revolutionary communist, _at his present level of education_, has +neither the plans nor the capacity to substitute any more efficient +system for this crazy edifice of ill-disciplined private enterprise that +is now blundering to destruction. But at a higher level of intelligence, +at a level at which it is possible to define the limitations of private +property clearly and to ensure a really loyal and effectual co-operation +between individual and state, this issue--this wholly destructive +conflict between the property manipulator and the communist fanatic +which is now rapidly wrecking our world--disappears. It disappears as +completely as the causes of a murderous conflict between two drunken +men will disappear when they are separated and put under a stream of +clear cold water. + +So it is that, in spite of their apparent urgency, I ask the reader to +detach himself from these present conflicts of national politics, of +political parties and of the class war as completely as he can; or, if +he cannot detach himself completely, then to play such a part in them, +regardless of any other consideration, as may be most conducive to a +wide-thinking, wide-ranging education upon which we can base a new world +order. A resolute push for quite a short period now might reconstruct +the entire basis of our collective human life. + +In this book I have tried to show what form that push should take, to +show that it has a reasonable hope of an ultimate success, and that +unless it is made, the outlook for mankind is likely to become an +entirely dismal prospect. I put these theses before the reader for his +consideration. They are not discursive criticisms of life, not haphazard +grumblings at our present discontents, they are offered as the +fundamental propositions of an ordered constructive project in which he +can easily find a part to play commensurate with his ability and +opportunities. + + + + +INDEX + + + Adult learning, spread of, 167 + + Aircraft as a means of quick travel, 48 + in future wars, 9 + + Air transport a problem for Europe, 58 + possibilities of future, 66 + + "All-red air routes," 67 + + America and the League of Nations, 15, 28, 47 + generalized history teaching in, 108 + her part in European reconstruction, 62 + locomotion in, 49, 52 + political unity of, 60 + (_see also_ United States) + + American social system, comparisons, 2 + + Americans, patriotism of, 69 + + Anthology and a modernized Bible, 125 + + Apocrypha, the, and a modernized Bible, 119 _et seq._ + + Arithmetic, a wrong way of teaching, 149 + + Austria after the war, 44 + + + Belloc, Hilaire, 178 + + Bible, the, a criticism of, 98 _et seq._ + and the theory of origin, 103 + English translation of, 107 + its effect upon civilization, 101 + redundancy in, 99 + rules of health in, 111 + why it has lost hold on the people, 101 + + Bible of Civilization, the, 95 _et seq._ + need for frequent revision, 136 + what it will contain, 105 _et seq._ + + Biology, Huxley's system of, 171 + study of, 151, 152 + + Bolshevik propaganda, suppression of, 175 + + Bolshevism and the overthrow of Russia, 44 + + Books and mentality, 183 + + Boundary question in Europe, 54, 59, 61, 62 + + Bradlaugh, Charles, lectures of, 171 + + Breasted, Professor, works of, 108 + + Breeding, points required in, 140 + + Britain, national egotism of, 72 + + British Civil Air Transport Committee, 48, 66 + + British Empire, the, a prime necessity for security of, 65 + a wrong conception of, 64 + an ocean state, 65 + its failure with reconstruction, 28-9 + + British monarchy, the, lost opportunities of, 29 + + Browning, Oscar, 108 + + + Canonical books and the Bible of Civilization, 119 + + Chinese discovery of gunpowder, 6 + + Christianity, 23 + spread of, in Western Europe, 78 + + + Cinematograph, the, as an aid to teaching, 80, 161 + + Civilization, adjustment of political ideas necessary for, 46 + effect of the Bible on, 101 + impotence of, 1 + the Bible of, 95 _et seq._ + the war and, 43 _et seq._ + + College stage of education, 168 + changed conditions of, 180 + how it could be improved, 172 + problem of its extension, 177 + + Comenius, political and educational ideas of, 95, 97, 138 + + Committees, good work by, 107 + + Communism and property, 115 + + Communists, Russian, and the Press, 186 + + Connecticut, State of, the Bible as its only law, 98 + + Conscience the basis of moral life, 20 + + Contemporary problems, complexity of, 3 + + Cosmogony of the Bible, the, 103-4 + + Customs, the, and European travel, 56 + + + Declaration of Independence, 63, 107 + + Denmark, present-day conditions in, 45 + + Disarmament, ineffectual movements for, 13 + + Discovery, the age of, 6 + + + Education a fundamental difficulty, 155 + chief end of, 25 + degradation of, 105 + in the world state, 20, 90 + necessary basis of, 103 + neglect of language teaching, 145 + past and present, 79, 104 + primary obstacle to, 153 + progressive character of, 166, 183 + reorganization of, needed, 158, 165 + + Educational organization, a review of, 139 + need of, 194 + + England before and after the war, 45 + + Epics and a modernized Bible, 125 + + Eugenic literature, 140, 141 + + Europe, and the League of Nations, 47 + boundary question of, 54, 59, 61, 62 + in the seventeenth century, 96 + problem of air transport, 58 + propaganda of patriotism in, 72 + results of political disunion, 54 + slow economic recovery of, 59 + + European travel, preparations needed for, 55 + + Evening continuation and technical schools, 169 + + Exchange, fluctuating nature of, 56, 57 + + + Federal World State, an approaching reality, 80 + + Forecasts, a Book of, and the modernized Bible, 132 + + Foresight, need of, 133 + + France, national egotism of, 72 + post-war decadence in, 45 + + Frontiers and the possibility of war, 59 + + + Geography, improved method of teaching, 151 + + Germany, ebb in civilization in, 45 + intensive nationalist education in, 72 + + Gladstone, Mr., a speech by, 171 + + Gramophones as aids to school teaching, 160 + + Gunpowder, discovery of, 6 + + + Hamsun's _Growth of the Soil_, 124 + + Health and the citizen, 111 + + Hebrew Bible, the, 110 + + Henley, a poem by, 127 + + Herbert, Auberon, lectures by, 171 + + Higher education, a false conception of, 181 + + Historical books, value of illustrations and maps in, 110 + + History, and national egotism, 73 + cardinal experiences in, 1 + + _History of the Ancient World_, 108 + + History teaching in schools, unsatisfactory nature of, 151 + + Holland, post-war condition of, 45 + + Human brotherhood, gospel of, 24 + + Human disorder, the key to, 192 + + Human outlook, the, 1 + + Human society, ancient and modern, 5 + needs reconstruction, 11 + + Human unity and a world state, 75 + + Hungary, post-war desolation in, 44 + + Huxley, Professor, author's tribute to, 170 + his system of teaching geography, 151 + + + Illustrations, need of, in books, 110 + + Independent nationality, need for, 76 + + Individualists and property, 115 + + Industrialism, modern, 114 + + Intellectuals, their estimate of man, 14 + + International mind, an, 73 + + International problem of to-day, 46 + + Ireland, after-effects of war in, 45 + condition of (1640-1650), 96 + + + Islam, lasting unity of, 79 + spread of, in seventh century, 23 + + Italy, after the war, 45 + forbids export of works of art, 117 + + + Judd, Professor, 171 + + Kipling, Rudyard, 15 + + Komensky (_see_ Comenius) + + + Labour problems, the Bible and, 114 + + Labour trouble, and from what it springs, 116, 117 + + Language teaching, a necessary part of education, 145 + suggested use of gramophones for, 160 + twofold object of, 147 + + League of Nations, the, 13, 17 + and the boundary question, 62 + educational value of its propaganda, 75 + ineffectiveness of, 5, 37, 41, 47, 76 + President Wilson and, 15, 28 + + Lectures as basis of instruction, 178 + + Lenin and Russia, 44 + + Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, 126 + + Locomotion and methods of communication, 48, 52, 53 + + + Machinery, in a world state, 91 + + Magna Carta, 107 + + Man, his plain duty, 38 + social nature of, 19 + + Mankind, influence of surroundings on, 18 + probable future of, 1 _et seq._ + + Mathematics, teaching of, 149 + + _Mediaeval and Modern History_, 108 + + _Mediaeval and Modern Times_, 108 + + Mental life, schooling and the, 142 + + Mesopotamia, irrigation system of, 6 + + Military class, mischief of a, 29 + + Milton's defence of free speech, 128 + + Missouri, establishment of, 49 + + Money, Sir Leo, his _Triumph of Nationalization_, 187 + + Morris, William, lectures by, 171 + + + Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, 48 + + National independence, meaning of, 59 + + Newspapers, 183 + evolution of, 184 + journalistic demoralization, 187, 188 + + Novels, and a modernized Bible, 123 + + + Ocean transport, importance of, 65 + + Organized education, the key to human disorder, 192 + + Organized solidarity and modern communities, 102 + + Original Sin, the factor of, 105 + + _Outline of History_, Wells's, 107, 108 + + + Passports, delays attendant on, 55 + + Patriotism, a unity-destroying propaganda of, 72 + aggressive, dangers of, 39 + American, 69 + true and false conceptions of, 68, 69 + + Peace Ministry, functions of a, 87 + + Philosophical works and a modernized Bible, 124 + + Physiography, Huxley and, 151 + + Physiology, value of study of, 151 + + Pilgrim Fathers, the, and the Bible, 110 + + Plays and a modernized Bible, 123 + + Political reconstruction, accompaniments of, 25 + + Politicians, their need of foresight, 133 + + Politics in a world state, 81, 93 + + Prayer Book, the, 107 + + Press, the, demoralization of, 187-8 + freedom of, 185 + Government control of, 186, 187 + + Printing and the community, 7 + + Progress, arrest of, 1 + + Property, class war and, 196 + labour trouble and, 116, 117 + problems of, 114 + rights and duties of, 115 + + Puritanism in the seventeenth century, 97 + + + Quakers, the, foundation of, 97 + + + Radiogram, the, and its results, 6 + + Railways, American, 49 _et seq._, 65 + + Readjustment of political ideas, 46 _et seq._, 68 + + Religion and the political and social outlook, 23, 79 + universalist in theory, 81 + + Religious instruction and discussion barred by colleges, 175 + + Revolutions and how produced, 27 + + Robinson, Professor, 108 + + Roman Empire, the, rise and fall of, 53 + + Russia, Bolshevism in, 44 + the Press in, 186 + vexatious delays in a journey to, 56 _et seq._ + + + St. Petersburg before and after the war, 43, 44 + + Schoolhouse, an ordinary, and an ideal, 158-9 + + Schooling of the world, the, 139 _et seq._ + and what should be taught, 143 + why so often a failure, 153 + + Schools and the development of education, 25 + of a world state, 90 + + Science teaching under difficulties and a suggested remedy, 161 + + Scotland after the war, 45 + + Sea power and the submarine, 66 + + Semaphores, 48 + + Sexual morality, need for, 112 + + Shakespear and the Bible of Civilization, 122 + + Social nature of man, 19 + + Sovereign states, incoherent nature of, 31 + + Steamboats, American, 49, 65 + + Stopes, Dr. Marie, 113 + + Submarine, the, and sea power, 66 + + Sweden, before and after the war, 45 + + + Teachers, lack of, and the reason, 153 + + Teaching and the future of mankind, 37 + + Teaching power and how it might be economized, 156 _et seq._ + + Technical study, specialized, 182 + + Telegraphy, development of, 6, 48 + + Thirty Years War, the, 96 + + Tolstoi's _War and Peace_, 124 + + Trade problems, the Bible and, 114 + + Transport and the international problem, 46 + + Travel, inconveniences of European, 55 _et seq._ + + + United States, the government of, 47, 83 + growth of, 49-50 + political system of, 27 + (_see also_ America) + + University, the, and adult learning, 168 + + + Vienna threatened by the Turk, 96 + + + Wales, Prince of, world tour of, 29, 84 + + War, a ruling and constructive idea, 4 + abolition of, and what it means, 5 + frequent recurrence of, 3 + military science in, 8 + + Washington, George, and his successors, 83 + + Webster, Dr. Hutton, historical summaries of, 108 + + Wells, H. G., as educationist, 155 + college life of, 170 + his _Outline of History_, 107, 108 + ideals of, 42 + serves on British Civil Air Transport Committee, 48, 66 + views on teaching of history, 151 + + Wilson, President, and the League of Nations, 15, 28 + + World control, and what it means, 14, 17 + + World History, a suggested, 109 + + World peace, American and European view of, 61 + + World state, the, cult of, 35 + enlargement of patriotism to, 68 + fundamental ideas of, 37 + government of, 82 _et seq._ + life in, 88 _et seq._ + meaning of, 82 + project of, 42 _et seq._ + the Council and its functions, 85 + + World, the, as a university, 168 + + +PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.4 + + + + +ERRATUM. + + + _Page 176, line 20_, + + there are still modern Immortals in the darkness + _should read_, + + if they are still modern Immortals, in the darkness + + * * * * * + + + + +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 + JOAN AND PETER + THE UNDYING FIRE + +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 + IN THE FOURTH YEAR + GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY + RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS + +And two little books about children's play, called: + + FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Salvaging Of Civilisation, by +H. G. (Herbert George) Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SALVAGING OF CIVILISATION *** + +***** This file should be named 33889.txt or 33889.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/8/8/33889/ + +Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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