The Salvaging of Civilization

by H. G. Wells

And first with regard to this question of a king or president. Let us ask whether it is probable that the world state will have any single personal head at all?

Is the world state likely to be a monarchy—either an elective short term limited monarchy such as is the United States, or an inherited limited monarchy like the British Empire?

Many people will say, you must have a head of the state. But must you? Is not this idea a legacy from the days when states were small communities needing a leader in war and diplomacy?

In the World State we must remember there will be no war—and no diplomacy as such.

I would even question whether in such a great modern state as the U.S.A. the idea and the functions of the president may not be made too important. Indeed I believe that question has been asked by many people in the States lately, and has been answered in the affirmative.

The broad lines of the United States constitution were drawn in a period of almost universal monarchy. American affairs were overshadowed by the personality of George Washington, and as you know, monarchist ideas were so rife that there was a project, during the years of doubt and division that followed the War of Independence, for importing a German King, a Prussian Prince, in imitation of the British Monarchy. But if the United States were beginning again to-day on its present scale, would it put so much power and importance upon a single individual as it put upon George Washington and his successors in the White House? I doubt it very much.

There may be a limit, I suggest, to the size and complexity of a community that can be directed by a single personal head. Perhaps that limit may have been passed by both the United States and by the British Empire at the present time. It may be possible for one person to be leader and to have an effect of directing personality in a community of millions or even of tens of millions. But is it possible for one small short-lived individual to get over and affect and make any sort of contact with hundreds of millions in thousands of towns and cities?

Recently we have watched with admiration and sympathy the heroic efforts of the Prince of Wales to shake hands with and get his smile well home into the hearts of the entire population of the British Empire of which he is destined to become the "golden link." After tremendous exertions a very large amount of the ground still remains to be covered.

I will confess I cannot see any single individual human head in my vision of the World State.

The linking reality of the World State is much more likely to be not an individual but an idea—such an idea as that of a human commonweal under the God of all mankind.