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
Such a typical paper as the British _Labour Leader_, for example, may
be read in vain, number after number, for any sound and sincere
constructive proposal. It is a prolonged scream of extreme
individualism, a monotonous repetition of incoherent discontent with
authority, with direction, with union, with the European effort. It
wants to do nothing. It just wants effort to stop--even at the price of
German victory. If the whole fabric of society in western Europe were to
be handed over to those pseudo-socialists to-morrow, to be administered
for the common good, they would fly the task in terror. They would make
excuses and refuse the undertaking. They do not want the world to go
right. The very idea of the world going right does not exist in their
minds. They are embodied discontent and hatred, making trouble, and that
is all they are. They want to be “rebels”--to be admired as “rebels”.
That is the true psychology of the Resentful Employee. He is a
de-socialised man. His sense of the State has been destroyed.
The Resentful Employees are the outcome of our social injustices. They
are the failures of our social ad educational systems. We may regret
their pitiful degradation, we may exonerate them from blame; none the
less they are a pitiful crew. I have seen the hardship of the trenches,
the gay and gallant wounded. I do a little understand what our soldiers,
officers and men alike, have endured and done. And though I know I ought
to allow for all that I have stated, I cannot regard these conscientious
objectors with anything but contempt. Into my house there pours a dismal
literature rehearsing the hardships of these men who set themselves
up to be martyrs for liberty; So and So, brave hero, has been sworn
at--positively sworn at by a corporal; a nasty rough man came into
the cell of So and So and dropped several h's; So and So, refusing to
undress and wash, has been undressed and washed, and soap was rubbed
into his eyes--perhaps purposely; the food and accommodation are not of
the best class; the doctors in attendance seem hasty; So and So was put
into a damp bed and has got a nasty cold. Then I recall a jolly vanload
of wounded men I saw out there....
But after all, we must be just. A church and state that permitted
these people to be thrust into dreary employment in their early 'teens,
without hope or pride, deserves such citizens as these. The marvel
is that there are so few. There are a poor thousand or so of these
hopeless, resentment-poisoned creatures in Great Britain. Against five
willing millions. The Allied countries, I submit, have not got nearly
all the conscientious objectors they deserve.
3
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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