What is Coming? A Forecast of Things after the WarWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
What is Coming? A Forecast of Things after the War
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World War, 1914-1918; World politics
One Labour paper a month or so ago was contrasting Mr. Asquith's
eloquent appeals to the working man to economise and forgo any rise in
wages with the photographs that were appearing simultaneously in the
smart papers of the very smart marriage of Mr. Asquith's daughter. I
submit that by that sort of standard none of us will be blameless. But
without any condemnation, it is easy to understand that the initiative
to tax almost to extinction large automobiles, wedding dresses,
champagne, pâté de foie gras and enclosed parks, instead of gin and
water, bank holiday outings and Virginia shag, is less likely to come
from the Prime Minister class than from the class of dock labourers.
There is an unconscious class war due to habit and insufficient thinking
and insufficient sympathy that will play a large part in the
distribution of the burthen of the State bankruptcy that is in progress,
and in the subsequent readjustment of national life.
And having made this parenthesis, I may perhaps go on to point out the
peculiar limitations under which various classes will be approaching the
phase of reorganisation, without being accused of making this or that
class the villain of an anticipatory drama.
Now, three great classes will certainly resist the valiant
reconstruction of economic life with a vigour in exact proportion to
their baseness, stupidity and narrowness of outlook. They will, as
classes, come up for a moral judgment, on whose verdict the whole future
of Western civilisation depends. If they cannot achieve a considerable,
an unprecedented display of self-sacrifice, unselfish wisdom, and
constructive vigour, if the community as a whole can produce no forces
sufficient to restrain their lower tendencies, then the intelligent
father had better turn his children's faces towards the New World. For
Europe will be busy with social disorder for a century.
The first great class is the class that owns and holds land and
land-like claims upon the community, from the Throne downward. This
Court and land-holding class cannot go on being rich and living rich
during the strains of the coming years. The reconstructing world cannot
bear it. Whatever rises in rent may occur through the rise in prices,
must go to meet the tremendous needs of the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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