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
For when the right answer is seized it answers not only the question why
men should work for their fellow-men but also why nation should cease to
arm and plan and contrive against nation. The social problem is only the
international problem in retail, the international problem is only the
social one in gross.
My bias rules me altogether here. I see men in social, in economic
and in international affairs alike, eager to put an end to conflict,
inexpressibly weary of conflict and the waste and pain and death it
involves. But to end conflict one must abandon aggressive or uncordial
pretensions. Labour is sick at the idea of more strikes and struggles
after the war, industrialism is sick of competition and anxious for
service, everybody is sick of war. But how can they end any of these
clashes except by the definition and recognition of a common end which
will establish a standard for the trial of every conceivable issue, to
which, that is, every other issue can be subordinated; and what common
end can there be in all the world except this idea of the world kingdom
of God? What is the good of orienting one's devotion to a firm, or to
class solidarity, or _La Republique Francais_, or Poland, or Albania, or
such love and loyalty as people profess for King George or King Albert
or the Duc d'Orleans--it puzzles me why--or any such intermediate object
of self-abandonment? We need a standard so universal that the platelayer
may say to the barrister or the duchess, or the Red Indian to the
Limehouse sailor, or the Anzac soldier to the Sinn Feiner or the
Chinaman, “What are we two doing for it?” And to fill the place of that
“it,” no other idea is great enough or commanding enough, but only the
world kingdom of God.
However long he may have to hunt, the blind man who is seeking service
and an end to bickerings will come to that at last, because of all the
thousand other things he may clutch at, nothing else can satisfy his
manifest need.
VI. THE ENDING OF THE WAR
1
About the end of the war there are two chief ways of thinking, there is
a simpler sort of mind which desires merely a date, and a more complex
kind which wants particulars. To the former class belong most of the men
out at the front. They are so bored by this war that they would
welcome any peace that did not definitely admit defeat--and examine
the particulars later. The “tone” of the German army, to judge by its
captured letters, is even lower. It would welcome peace in any form.
Never in the whole history of the world has a war been so universally
unpopular as this war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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