Washington and the Riddle of Peace

by H. G. Wells

Washington, November 28.

In my next article I will report progress of the Washington Conference; in this I will go on with my account in general terms of what is happening in the world.

I have written of a progressive rapid dissolution of our civilized organization as the dominant fact of the present time. It is very hard indeed to keep it in one’s mind here in this city of plenty and lavish light that anything of the sort is going on. It is amazing how they splash light about here; the Capitol shines all night like a full moon, an endless stream of light pours down the Washington Obelisk, light blinks and glitters and spins about and spills all over the city.

I find it hard to realize the reality of the collapse here myself, and yet I have seen the streets of one great European city in full daylight as dead and empty as a skull. I have sought my destination in the chief thoroughfare of another European capital at night by means of a pocket electric torch. I at least ought to keep these memories of desolation clear before me.

I do not see how Americans who have never seen anything of the wrecked state of Eastern Europe and the shabbiness and privation of the Centre can be expected to feel and see the vision I find it so hard to keep vivid in my thoughts. Here is a country where money is still good; the $10 notes in my pocket assure me I can go down to the Treasury here and get gold for them whenever I think fit. (I believe them so thoroughly that I do not even think fit.) My intimations of the progressive dissolution over there must read like a gloomy fiction. And it is the hardest, most important fact in the world.

Everywhere here there is festival. I go to splendid balls, to glittering receptions; I am whirled off to a most hilarious barbecue, an ox in chains, roasts and drips over a wood fire—think of that in Russia! Thanksgiving Day was an inordinate feast. The portions of food they give you in hotels, clubs and restaurants are enormous, by present European standards; one seems always to be eating little bits and throwing the rest away.

Neither New York nor Washington shows a trace yet, that I can see, of the European shadow. There is much unemployment, but not enough yet to alarm people. Nothing of it has struck upon my perceptions either here or in New York. In the midst of this gay prosperity comes a letter from my wife describing how the police had to censor the bitter inscriptions upon the wreaths that were laid upon the London cenotaph on Armistice Day and how the veterans of the Great War who marched in the unemployed processions in London wore pawn tickets in the place of their medals.

I am forced by these contrasts to the question: “Suppose America patches up a fairly stable peace with Japan; lets Japan accumulate in Manchuria, Siberia, and finally China; cuts her naval expenditure to nothing, and allows the rest of the world, including the old English-speaking home, to slide and go over into the abyss—apart from the moral loss, will she suffer very greatly?”

That is a very interesting speculation.

I think she may adjust herself to a self-contained system and, in a sense, pull through. It may involve some very severe stresses. At present she grows more food than she can eat or waste; she exports foodstuffs. The American farmer sells so much of his produce for export, not a very great percentage, but enough to form an important item in his affairs. Given a Europe and Asia too impoverished and broken up to import food stuffs, that trade goes. The American farmer will have to sell to a shrunken demand; he will have either to shrink himself or undersell his fellow farmer. This will mean bad times for the American farmer as Europe sinks; farmers will be unable to buy as freely as usual; many agriculturists will be going out of business.