A year of prophesying

by H. G. Wells

Now unhappily it is just at this phase of French affairs, with the peace-intending reconciling forces of France and Britain coming rapidly into accord and ascendancy, that Germany begins to manifest her least agreeable traits. The recent Munich trials, the acquittal of that foolish old monarchist blusterer, Ludendorff, the ridiculous mitigated sentences of Hitler and the other conspirators against the German Republic, and, above all, the public demonstrations of sympathy with these second-rate nationalist reactionaries, come as a real shock to our hopes of an approaching European reconstruction. Like that supremely silly incident, the neglect to lower the German flag in Washington on the occasion of President Wilson’s death, it is ugly; it betrays the bad heart. One may recognise the stream of injustices and disappointments that have been inflicted on Germany in the last five years, one may be willing to concede the right of Germans to a considerable resentment, and yet one may find it hard to forgive these sentimental dangerous reversions towards monarchism in uniform, and, above all, that petty and provocative folly at Washington.

It has been a great disappointment and discouragement to those who have worked, and who are now drawing near to the accomplishment of their work, for a reconciled Europe, to note how feeble has been the collateral movement in Germany. Where is liberal and intelligent Germany to-day? It is begging its bread; but I do not see why it should concentrate all its energies upon begging its bread. When one goes into Germany one encounters plenty of residual swash-buckler spirit; the old heroism of the expanded chest and the high voice; and one encounters a vast amount of abject sob-stuff; but it is very hard indeed to find any Germans who seem to be steadily busy upon the reconstruction of Europe upon broad modern lines. Germany seems to be divided anatomically between the right and left. The Monarchists have the backbone and no brains; the Liberals have the brain and no backbone. When a German displays will he does something stupid and violent, and when he displays intelligence he does nothing at all. In Berlin last summer everybody I sought out and questioned talked in terms of crisis. Germany was sinking. England must do something for Germany at once. America must do something for Germany at once. The one thing they would not recognise was the necessity of Germany doing something for Germany at once. And no party has arisen, no newspapers have arisen, no leader or group of men stands out yet to embody a new Germany in a new Europe. The time of opportunity draws near and Germany, one fears, may remain too sick and beaten, too witless and unteachable, to make any use of this year of opening opportunity.

I write without any profound knowledge of things German. I may be too much impressed by the reactionary crowd in the streets of Munich. There may be deeper currents in German life which find no adequate expression in the German Press, and of which I know nothing. But with the French elections drawing near, it is time that the good Europeans in Germany, if there are good Europeans in Germany, should make themselves heard and felt. The impression I have of an unhelpful and uncreative and irresponsive Germany, cheated, it is true, and disappointed, but lapsing far too readily towards a sullen unhelpfulness, is a very general impression in France and Britain. France is under an urgent necessity of retrenchment and ready to abandon her futile aggressiveness; Britain was never less imperialist than she is to-day. Is there no German initiative to meet this new occasion?

XXXIV
CHINA: THE LAND OUT OF THE LIMELIGHT

26.4.24

China has been out of the limelight of the newspapers lately. It is the tradition of the Atlantic civilisations to think about China as little as possible. We ignore the enormous importance of its gifts to us in the past, and we do our utmost to disregard its immediate share in the world’s future.

China drove the Huns westward to relieve Europe from the decaying stagnation of the western Roman Empire. She gave the world paper, which made the printed book and newspaper possible, which made general education and the publication of scientific work possible, which indeed laid the foundation of the modern world. She taught the Mongols and Turks the organisation and military methods that ended the dying Greek impulse of the eastern Roman Empire, nearly conquered Europe, and drove the reluctant European seamen to discover South Africa and America. She numbers to-day more than a fifth part of the human race; has four times as many civilised citizens as the United States, and nearly as many as all continental Europe put together. When we discuss the struggles of a world civilisation to exist it is well now and then to give China a thought. For China must be a pillar of that world civilisation equivalent to the whole English-speaking world.

Two or three facts of some importance are not perhaps so actively present in the general consciousness as they might be. There is a Chinese Republic with a President in Pekin, who rules more or less in most of China proper, though Canton and several other provinces get along in a state of provisional independence. But besides the President there is also a young Emperor in Pekin with a large official income—in arrears—and a remarkable English tutor. The Emperor, we are told, is quite Anglicised, he is being taught constitutional history, and presently, if the British people do not wake up to the dangers of the position, there may be an attempt, open or furtive, with British assistance, to restore the Chinese monarchy. Moreover, although I understood at the Washington Conference that Wei-hai-wei was to be given up, the British are still there—waiting for something to turn up. The British never had much right to be in Wei-hai-wei; their excuse for being there collapsed with the collapse of Russian imperialism; and probably not one British voter in the hundred is prepared for the possibly expensive and humiliating consequences of keeping there too long. The abandonment of the Singapore dock enlargement implied a policy of general withdrawal from forcible adventures in Eastern Asia. But in the untidy way of the British, the shreds and patches of some old dream of a military and political predominance in China are left to brew misunderstandings and trouble in the future.

It is not that Britain has not a profound interest in the future development of China. All the English-speaking peoples, all the other peoples in the world, have a great and increasing interest in Chinese affairs. As the world is drawn together into a political unity, the Chinaman becomes the most important neighbour of everyone. But the method of expressing an interest by grabbing and fortifying settlements, threatening coasts with warships, levying tribute and imposing iniquitous trade arrangements, is now manifestly old-fashioned and barbaric, and a new line of activities has to replace these outworn puerilities.

The English-speaking communities have to work out, and do seem to be beginning to work out, a common conception of a world order, and of their common share in it. Regarded as a point of departure, as a new turn in international thought, the League of Nations movement marks an epoch in world history. That sort of thought is still most extensively carried by the English language; shallow and weak to-day, it may become deeper and more effective as time goes on. It is in the character of the English-speaking communities. It is manifestly of primary importance that so far as possible this thinking-out of the organised peace of the world by the English-speaking communities should go on parallel with, and in touch with, the similar thinking-out of the other great communities of the world. And with no other great community is it more possible and desirable to develop a joint system of ideas and a common political and social aim, than with the great Chinese mass. It is possible, because China is to an extraordinary extent renascent and blank and ready to consider and accept points of view and constructive conceptions. China is remaking her education from the foundation. The four hundred million mass of China is at present intellectually far more plastic than the forty million mass of France, and the thirty million mass of Italy. And it is desirable as well as possible, because a successful effort to bring modern Chinese and American and British thought about the world’s affairs into co-operative understanding would add the weight of four hundred million to the five hundred million of the American and British systems.