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
Let me sketch out here what I conceive to be the essentials of a world
settlement. Some of the items are the mere commonplaces of everyone who
discusses this question; some are less frequently insisted upon. I have
been joining up one thing to another, suggestions I have heard from
this man and that, and I believe that it is really possible to state a
solution that will be acceptable to the bulk of reasonable men all about
the world. Directly we put the panic-massacres of Dinant and Louvain,
the crime of the _Lusitania_ and so on into the category of symptoms
rather than essentials, outrages that call for special punishments and
reparations, but that do not enter further into the ultimate settlement,
we can begin to conceive a possible world treaty. Let me state the broad
outlines of this pacification. The outlines depend one upon the other;
each is a condition of the other. It is upon these lines that the
thoughtful, as distinguished from the merely the combative people, seem
to be drifting everywhere.
In the first place, it is agreed that there would have to be an
identical treaty between all the great powers of the world binding them
to certain things. It would have to provide:--
That the few great industrial states capable of producing modern war
equipment should take over and control completely the manufacture of all
munitions of war in the world. And that they should absolutely close the
supply of such material to all the other states in the world. This is a
far easier task than many people suppose. War has now been so developed
on its mechanical side that the question of its continuance or abolition
rests now entirely upon four or five great powers.
Next comes the League of Peace idea; that there should be an
International Tribunal for the discussion and settlement of
international disputes. That the dominating powers should maintain land
and sea forces only up to a limit agreed upon and for internal police
use only or for the purpose of enforcing the decisions of the Tribunal.
That they should all be bound to attack and suppress any power amongst
them which increases its war equipment beyond its defined limits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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