Washington and the Riddle of PeaceWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Washington and the Riddle of Peace
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Conference on the Limitation of Armament (1921-1922 : Washington, D.C.); Peace; World politics
In a previous paper I have set out the plain facts of the condition of
Central and Eastern Europe. It is a break-up of the modern civilization
system, due to the smashing up of money, without which organized town
life, factory production, education and systematic communications are
unworkable. If it goes on unchecked to its natural conclusion, Central
and Eastern Europe will follow Russia to a condition in which the towns
will be dying or dead, empty and ruinous, the railroads passing out of
use, and in which few people will be left alive except uneducated and
degenerating peasants and farmers, growing their own food and keeping a
rough order among themselves in their own fashion. We are faced, indeed
with a return to barbarism over all these areas. They are going back to
the conditions of rural Asia Minor or the Balkans.
How far is this degeneration going to spread?
Let us recognize at once that it need spread no further. It is not an
inevitable process. It could be arrested, it could be turned back and a
rapid restoration of our shattered civilization could be set going right
away if the leading powers of the world, sinking their political
ambitions for a time, could meet frankly to work out a bankruptcy
arrangement that would release the impoverished nations from debt and
give them again a valid money, a stable money with a trustworthy
exchange value, that could be accepted with confidence and saved without
deterioration. Upon that things could be set going again quite
hopefully. Education has not so degenerated as yet, habits of work and
trading and intercourse are still strong enough to make such a recovery
possible.
Except perhaps in Russia. Russia, for all we know, may have sunken very
deep.
But if there is no vigorous world effort made soon the trading class,
the foreman class, the technically educated class, the professional
class, the teachers, and so forth, will have been broken up and
dispersed. These classes are comparatively easy to destroy, extremely
hard to reconstruct. Modern civilization will really have been
destroyed, if not for good, for a long period, over great areas if these
classes go.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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