The World Set Free

of will as an effectual effort to turn the rush of human affairs

demands. The inertia of dead ideas and old institutions carries

us on towards the rapids. Only in one direction is there any

plain recognition of the idea of a human commonweal as something

overriding any national and patriotic consideration, and that is

in the working class movement throughout the world. And labour

internationalism is closely bound up with conceptions of a

profound social revolution. If world peace is to be attained

through labour internationalism, it will have to be attained at

the price of the completest social and economic reconstruction

and by passing through a phase of revolution that will certainly

be violent, that may be very bloody, which may be prolonged

through a long period, and may in the end fail to achieve

anything but social destruction. Nevertheless, the fact remains

that it is in the labour class, and the labour class alone, that

any conception of a world rule and a world peace has so far

appeared. The dream of The World Set Free, a dream of highly

educated and highly favoured leading and ruling men, voluntarily

setting themselves to the task of reshaping the world, has thus

far remained a dream.

H. G. WELLS.

EASTON GLEBE,

DUNMOW, 1921.

CONTENTS

PRELUDE

THE SUN SNARERS

CHAPTER THE FIRST

THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY

CHAPTER THE SECOND

THE LAST WAR

CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE ENDING OF WAR

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE NEW PHASE

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

THE LAST DAYS OF MARCUS KARENIN

PRELUDE

THE SUN SNARERS

Section I

THE history of mankind is the history of the attainment of

external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. From

the outset of his terrestrial career we find him supplementing

the natural strength and bodily weapons of a beast by the heat of

burning and the rough implement of stone. So he passed beyond

the ape. From that he expands. Presently he added to himself the

power of the horse and the ox, he borrowed the carrying strength

of water and the driving force of the wind, he quickened his fire

by blowing, and his simple tools, pointed first with copper and

then with iron, increased and varied and became more elaborate

and efficient. He sheltered his heat in houses and made his way

easier by paths and roads. He complicated his social

relationships and increased his efficiency by the division of

labour. He began to store up knowledge. Contrivance followed

contrivance, each making it possible for a man to do more.

Always down the lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and

again, he is doing more… A quarter of a million years ago the

utmost man was a savage, a being scarcely articulate, sheltering

in holes in the rocks, armed with a rough-hewn flint or a

fire-pointed stick, naked, living in small family groups, killed

by some younger man so soon as his first virile activity

declined. Over most of the great wildernesses of earth you would

have sought him in vain; only in a few temperate and sub-tropical

river valleys would you have found the squatting lairs of his

little herds, a male, a few females, a child or so.

He knew no future then, no kind of life except the life he led.

He fled the cave-bear over the rocks full of iron ore and the

promise of sword and spear; he froze to death upon a ledge of

coal; he drank water muddy with the clay that would one day make

cups of porcelain; he chewed the ear of wild wheat he had plucked

and gazed with a dim speculation in his eyes at the birds that

soared beyond his reach. Or suddenly he became aware of the scent

of another male and rose up roaring, his roars the formless

precursors of moral admonitions. For he was a great

individualist, that original, he suffered none other than

himself.

So through the long generations, this heavy precursor, this

ancestor of all of us, fought and bred and perished, changing

almost imperceptibly.

Yet he changed. That keen chisel of necessity which sharpened

the tiger's claw age by age and fined down the clumsy Orchippus

to the swift grace of the horse, was at work upon him-is at work

upon him still. The clumsier and more stupidly fierce among him

were killed soonest and oftenest; the finer hand, the quicker

eye, the bigger brain, the better balanced body prevailed; age by

age, the implements were a little better made, the man a little

more delicately adjusted to his possibilities. He became more

social; his herd grew larger; no longer did each man kill or

drive out his growing sons; a system of taboos made them

tolerable to him, and they revered him alive and soon even after

he was dead, and were his allies against the beasts and the rest

of mankind. (But they were forbidden to touch the women of the

tribe, they had to go out and capture women for themselves, and

each son fled from his stepmother and hid from her lest the anger

of the Old Man should be roused. All the world over, even to this

day, these ancient inevitable taboos can be traced.) And now

instead of caves came huts and hovels, and the fire was better

tended and there were wrappings and garments; and so aided, the

creature spread into colder climates, carrying food with him,

storing food-until sometimes the neglected grass-seed sprouted