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106 pages

English

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World War I forever altered the course of human history, and thinkers and activists around the globe were galvanized by the goal of developing ideas and means by which to avoid future conflicts. In What Is Coming?, science fiction luminary H. G. Wells throws his hat in the ring, imagining a future in which the spread of socialism and other progressive ideals help to pave the way for world peace.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776533091
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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WHAT IS COMING?
A FORECAST OF THINGS AFTER THE WAR
* * *
H. G. WELLS

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What Is Coming? A Forecast of Things After the War First published in 1916 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-309-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-310-7 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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I - Forecasting the Future II - The End of the War III - Nations in Liquidation IV - Braintree, Bocking, and the Future of the World V - How Far Will Europe Go Toward Socialism? VI - Lawyer and Press VII - The New Education VIII - What the War is Doing for Women IX - The New Map of Europe X - The United States, France, Britain, and Russia XI - "The White Man's Burthen" XII - The Outlook for the Germans Endnotes
I - Forecasting the Future
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Prophecy may vary between being an intellectual amusement and a seriousoccupation; serious not only in its intentions, but in its consequences.For it is the lot of prophets who frighten or disappoint to be stoned.But for some of us moderns, who have been touched with the spirit ofscience, prophesying is almost a habit of mind.
Science is very largely analysis aimed at forecasting. The test of anyscientific law is our verification of its anticipations. The scientifictraining develops the idea that whatever is going to happen is reallyhere now—if only one could see it. And when one is taken by surprisethe tendency is not to say with the untrained man, "Now, who'd ha'thought it?" but "Now, what was it we overlooked?"
Everything that has ever existed or that will ever exist is here—foranyone who has eyes to see. But some of it demands eyes of superhumanpenetration. Some of it is patent; we are almost as certain of nextChristmas and the tides of the year 1960 and the death before 3000 A.D.of everybody now alive as if these things had already happened. Belowthat level of certainty, but still at a very high level of certainty,there are such things as that men will probably be making aeroplanes ofan improved pattern in 1950, or that there will be a through railwayconnection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombayin the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one maycome down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached:the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a militarygenius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The mostaccessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secretof the jumping cat within the human skull. How will so-and-so behave,and how will the nation take it? For such questions as that we need thesubtlest guesses of all.
Yet, even to such questions as these the sharp, observant man may riskan answer with something rather better than an even chance of beingright.
The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interestedin to-morrow than he is in to-day, and the past is just material forfuture guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a touristin the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think ofthe men who will." It is surely as interesting that presently somefounder of the World Republic, some obstinate opponent of militarism orlegalism, or the man who will first release atomic energy for human use,will walk along the Via Sacra as that Cicero or Giordano Bruno orShelley have walked there in the past. To the prophetic mind all historyis and will continue to be a prelude. The prophetic type willsteadfastly refuse to see the world as a museum; it will insist thathere is a stage set for a drama that perpetually begins.
Now this forecasting disposition has led the writer not only to publisha book of deliberate prophesying, called "Anticipations," but almostwithout premeditation to scatter a number of more or less obviousprophecies through his other books. From first to last he has beenwriting for twenty years, so that it is possible to check a certainproportion of these anticipations by the things that have happened, Someof these shots have hit remarkably close to the bull's-eye of reality;there are a number of inners and outers, and some clean misses. Muchthat he wrote about in anticipation is now established commonplace. In1894 there were still plenty of sceptics of the possibility either ofautomobiles or aeroplanes; it was not until 1898 that Mr. S.P. Langley(of the Smithsonian Institute) could send the writer a photograph of aheavier-than-air flying machine actually in the air. There were articlesin the monthly magazines of those days proving that flying wasimpossible.
One of the writer's luckiest shots was a description (in "Anticipations"in 1900) of trench warfare, and of a deadlock almost exactly upon thelines of the situation after the battle of the Marne. And he wasfortunate (in the same work) in his estimate of the limitations ofsubmarines. He anticipated Sir Percy Scott by a year in his doubts ofthe decisive value of great battleships ( see "An Englishman Looks atthe World"); and he was sound in denying the decadence of France; indoubting (before the Russo-Japanese struggle) the greatness of the powerof Russia, which was still in those days a British bogey; in makingBelgium the battle-ground in a coming struggle between the mid-EuropeanPowers and the rest of Europe; and (he believes) in foretelling arenascent Poland. Long before Europe was familiar with the engagingpersonality of the German Crown Prince, he represented great airshipssailing over England (which country had been too unenterprising to makeany) under the command of a singularly anticipatory Prince Karl, and in"The World Set Free" the last disturber of the peace is a certain"Balkan Fox."
In saying, however, here and there that "before such a year so-and-sowill happen," or that "so-and-so will not occur for the next twentyyears," he was generally pretty widely wrong; most of his time estimatesare too short; he foretold, for example, a special motor track apartfrom the high road between London and Brighton before 1910, which isstill a dream, but he doubted if effective military aviation or aerialfighting would be possible before 1950, which is a miss on the otherside. He will draw a modest veil over certain still wider misses thatthe idle may find for themselves in his books; he prefers to count thehits and leave the reckoning of the misses to those who will find apleasure in it.
Of course, these prophecies of the writer's were made upon a basis ofvery generalised knowledge. What can be done by a really sustainedresearch into a particular question—especially if it is a questionessentially mechanical—is shown by the work of a Frenchman all tooneglected by the trumpet of fame—Clement Ader. M. Ader was probably thefirst man to get a mechanism up into the air for something more than aleap. His Eole , as General Mensier testifies, prolonged a jump as faras fifty metres as early as 1890. In 1897 his Avion fairly flew. (Thisis a year ahead of the date of my earliest photograph of S.P. Langley'saeropile in mid-air.) This, however, is beside our present mark. Thefact of interest here is that in 1908, when flying was still almostincredible, M. Ader published his "Aviation Militaire." Well, that waseight years ago, and men have been fighting in the air now for a year,and there is still nothing being done that M. Ader did not see, andwhich we, if we had had the wisdom to attend to him, might not have beenprepared for. There is much that he foretells which is still awaitingits inevitable fulfilment. So clearly can men of adequate knowledge andsound reasoning power see into the years ahead in all such matters ofmaterial development.
But it is not with the development of mechanical inventions that thewriter now proposes to treat. In this book he intends to hazard certainforecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so. Mechanicalnovelties will probably play a very small part in that coming history.This world-wide war means a general arrest of invention and enterprise,except in the direction of the war business. Ability is concentratedupon that; the types of ability that are not applicable to warfare areneglected; there is a vast destruction of capital and a waste of thesavings that are needed to finance new experiments. Moreover, we arekilling off many of our brightest young men.
It is fairly safe to assume that there will be very little new furnitureon the stage of the world for some considerable time; that if there ismuch difference in the roads and railways and shipping it will be forthe worse; that architecture, domestic equipment, and so on, will befortunate if in 1924 they stand where they did in the spring of 1914. Inthe trenches of France and Flanders, and on the battlefields of Russia,the Germans have been spending and making the world spend the comfort,the luxury and the progress of the next quarter-century. There is noaccounting for tastes. But the result is that, while it was possiblefor the writer in 1900 to write "Anticipations of the Reaction ofMechanical Progress upon Human Life and Thought," in 1916 hisanticipations must belong to quite another system of consequences.
The broad material facts before us are plain enough. It is the mentalfacts that have to be unravelled. It isn't now a question of "Whatthing—what faculty—what added power will come to hand, and how will itaffect our ways of living?" It is a question of "How are people going totake these obvious things—waste of the world's resources, arrest