H. G. Wells.
CONTENTS
[INTRODUCTION] [I] THE IMMENSITY OF THE ISSUE AND THE TRIVIALITY OF MEN [II] ARMAMENTS THE FUTILITY OF MERE LIMITATION [III] THE TRAIL OF VERSAILLES TWO GREAT POWERS ARE SILENT AND ABSENT [IV] THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR [V] THE PRESIDENT AT ARLINGTON [VI] THE FIRST MEETING [VII] WHAT IS JAPAN? [VIII] CHINA IN THE BACKGROUND [IX] THE FUTURE OF JAPAN [X] “SECURITY”—THE NEW AND BEAUTIFUL CATCHWORD [XI] FRANCE IN THE LIMELIGHT [XII] THUS FAR [XIII] THE LARGER QUESTION BEHIND THE CONFERENCE [XIV] THE REAL THREAT TO CIVILIZATION [XV] THE POSSIBLE BREAKDOWN OF CIVILIZATION [XVI] WHAT OF AMERICA? [XVII] EBB TIDE AT WASHINGTON [XVIII] AMERICA AND ENTANGLING ALLIANCES [XIX] AN ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS [XX] FRANCE AND ENGLAND—THE PLAIN FACTS OF THE CASE [XXI] A REMINDER ABOUT WAR [XXII] SOME STIFLED VOICES [XXIII] INDIA, THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS [XXIV] THE OTHER END OF PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE—THE SIEVE FOR GOOD INTENTIONS [XXV] AFRICA AND THE ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS [XXVI] THE FOURTH PLENARY SESSION [XXVII] ABOUT THE WAR DEBTS [XXVIII] THE FOUNDATION STONE AND THE BUILDING [XXIX] WHAT A STABLY ORGANIZED WORLD PEACE MEANS FOR MANKIND
I
THE IMMENSITY OF THE ISSUE AND THE TRIVIALITY OF MEN
Washington, Nov. 7.
The conference nominally for the limitation of armaments that now gathers at Washington may become a cardinal event in the history of mankind. It may mark a turning point in human affairs or it may go on record as one of the last failures to stave off the disasters and destruction that gather about our race.
In August, 1914, an age of insecure progress and accumulation came to an end. When at last, on the most momentous summer night in history, the long preparations of militarism burst their bounds and the little Belgian village Vise went up in flames, men said: “This is a catastrophe.” But they found it hard to anticipate the nature of the catastrophe. They thought for the most part of the wounds and killing and burning of war and imagined that when at last the war was over we should count our losses and go on again much as we did before 1914.
As well might a little shopkeeper murder his wife in the night and expect to carry on “business as usual” in the morning. “Business as usual”—that was the catchword in Britain in 1914; of all the catchwords of the world it carries now the heaviest charge of irony.
The catastrophe of 1914 is still going on. It does not end; it increases and spreads. This winter more people will suffer dreadful things and more people will die untimely through the clash of 1914 than suffered and died in the first year of the war. It is true that the social collapse of Russia in 1917 and the exhaustion of food and munitions in Central Europe in 1918 produced a sort of degradation and enfeeblement of the combatant efforts of our race and that a futile conference at Versailles settled nothing, with an air of settling everything, but that was no more an end to disaster than it would be if a man who was standing up and receiving horrible wounds were to fall down and writhe and bleed in the dust. It would be merely a new phase of disaster. Since 1919 this world has not so much healed its wounds as realized its injuries.
Chief among these injuries is the progressive economic breakdown, the magnitude of which we are only beginning to apprehend. The breakdown is a real decay that spreads and spreads. In a time of universal shortage there is an increasing paralysis in production; and there is a paralysis of production because the monetary system of the world, which was sustained by the honest co-operation of Governments, is breaking down. The fluctuations in the real value of money become greater and greater and they shake and shatter the entire fabric of social co-operation.