War and the Future: Italy, France and Britain at WarWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
War and the Future: Italy, France and Britain at War
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World War, 1914-1918
Indubitably the Christian church took a wide stride from the kingship of
God when it placed a golden throne for the unbaptised Constantine in
the midst of its most sacred deliberations at Nicaea. But it seems to
me that this abandonment of moral judgements in the present case by the
Holy See is an almost wider step from the church's allegiance to God....
3
Thought about the great questions of life, thought and reasoned
direction, this is what the multitude demands mutely and weakly, and
what the organised churches are failing to give. They have not the
courage of their creeds. Either their creeds are intellectual flummery
or they are the solution to the riddles with which the world is
struggling. But the churches make no mention of their creeds. They
chatter about sex and the magic effect of church attendance and simple
faith. If simple faith is enough, the churches and their differences are
an imposture. Men are stirred to the deepest questions about life and
God, and the Anglican church, for example, obliges--as I have described.
It is necessary to struggle against the unfavourable impression made by
these things. They must not blind us to the deeper movement that is in
progress in a quite considerable number of minds in England and France
alike towards the realisation of the kingdom of God.
What I conceive to be the reality of the religious revival is to be
found in quarters remote from the religious professionals. Let me give
but one instance of several that occur to me. I met soon after my return
from France a man who has stirred my curiosity for years, Mr. David
Lubin, the prime mover in the organisation of the International
Institute of Agriculture in Rome. It is a movement that has always
appealed to my imagination. The idea is to establish and keep up to date
a record of the food supplies in the world with a view to the ultimate
world control of food supply and distribution. When its machinery has
developed sufficiently to a control in the interests of civilisation of
many other staples besides foodstuffs. It is in fact the suggestion and
beginning of the economic world peace and the economic world state, just
as the Hague Tribunal is the first faint sketch of a legal world state.
The King of Italy has met Mr. Lubin's idea with open hands. (It was
because of this profoundly interesting experiment that in a not very
widely known book of mine, _The World Set Free_ (May, 1914), in which I
represented a world state as arising out of Armageddon, I made the
first world conference meet at Brissago in Italian Switzerland under the
presidency of the King of Italy.) So that when I found I could meet Mr.
Lubin I did so very gladly. We lunched together in a pretty little room
high over Knightsbridge, and talked through an afternoon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account