A Year Of Prophesying - free ebook by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

FOREWORD

This book consists of a year of journalistic writing, fifty-five articles altogether, and all that ought to be said in the preface will be found in the concluding article. H. G. W. A YEAR OF PROPHESYING...

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I THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE FEDERATION OF MANKIND

22.9.23 I am one of those people who believe that if human affairs are to go on without decay and catastrophe, there must be an end to the organisation of war. I believe that the power to prepare for war and make war must be withdrawn from separate States, as already it has been withdrawn from separate cities and from districts and from private individuals, and that ultimately there must be a Confederation of all mankind to keep one peace throughout the world. The United States of America is but

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II THE BEAUTY OF FLYING

29.9.23 This last summer I had a number of aeroplane journeys about Europe. I had flights in several of the big omnibus aeroplanes that fly on the more or less regular European services, and also I flew as the single passenger in smaller open machines. There is a delight and wonder in the latter sort of flying altogether lost in the boxed-in aeroplane. International jealousies, commercial rivalries, and the meanness of outlook universally prevalent in Europe at the present time are muddling away

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III THE TRIUMPH OF FRANCE

6.10.23 The long-spun-out passive resistance in the Ruhr is over, and the controlled, instructed, and disciplined French Press, and the more than French Press which serves the national interests of France in Great Britain and Holland and other European countries, is cock-a-hoop with the clamour of this empty victory. Let us consider what it means for civilisation and the world at large. Men’s memories are short, and it may be well to remind them of the broad facts that have led up to this outrag

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IV THE SINGAPORE ARSENAL

13.10.23 It is proposed that Great Britain, which is too shabbily poor to give the mass of its own children more than half an elementary education, which cannot house its workers with comfort or decency, which has over a million unemployed, shall spend great sums of money upon a naval establishment at Singapore. This undertaking is just not within the positive prohibitions of the Washington Agreement. It is a few hundred miles west of the area involved in that Agreement. But it is flatly contrar

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V THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AGAIN

20.10.23 I opened this series of articles with an attack on the existing League of Nations at Geneva. This attack provoked a very considerable correspondence in reply. Hardly anyone was disposed to defend the League as perfect or satisfactory, but it was urged that it was a beginning, a germ, a young thing that might accumulate power and prestige, that its intentions were admirable, that it embodied and sustained an ideal, and that if it were destroyed there would be nothing to stand between the

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VI THE AVIATION OF THE HALF-CIVILISED

27.10.23 It is probable that the first adequate and successful inauguration of air transport will be in North and South America, but it is in Europe that the needs and possibilities are greatest; and were it not for the short-sightedness and petty competitiveness of the Europeans it is in Europe that flying might first become the usual method of travel for distances of over three hundred miles. Europe is so cut up by channels, sands, bays, Zuyder Zees, Adriatics and Baltic Seas and the like, she

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VII WILL GERMANY BREAK INTO PIECES?

3.11.23 Will Germany break into pieces and become a group of divergent and mutually hostile States? To some readers this will seem to be an entirely useless question. They will declare that the thing is happening. Germany is breaking up visibly, they will say. Germany has attempted a democratic republic and failed. The daily news is kaleidoscopic. It varies with the day and the political bias of one’s paper. Sometimes Germany is breaking in this way and sometimes in that. But few people seem to

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VIII THE FUTURE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Empire Review. October 1923 The Empire Review has, I perceive, been born again and displays a constellation of gifted contributors writing about subjects of which their knowledge approaches saturation point. Commander Locker Lampson is alive to the need of variety, and for an incidental change he asks me to write upon a topic that he must feel is by no means my specialty. He wants my views about the British Empire. I more than suspect he counts upon my taking a Radical view of that great system.

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IX WINSTON

10.11.23 In this tragic and confused world it has been my undeserved lot to lead an amused life. All sorts of bright and entertaining and likeable things have been given me and paraded before me. And among others is my friend, Mr. Winston Churchill: not the American Winston but the British Winston. Our relations are relations of intermittent but I trust affectionate controversy. We had a great slanging match some years ago about Russia, and if I remember rightly Mr. Churchill took the count. Tha

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X THE OTHER SIDE IN FRANCE

17.11.23 In several recent articles I have been girding at France, at the destructive egotism of France, at the relentless political cruelty of France. Let me now look at France from another aspect. Many of us, I suspect, are excessively bitter with France just now because we love France. We are angry because we are jealous about her. She has seen fit to embody herself in the dull, relentless Poincaré; she has set her face like flint harshly and pitilessly against the recovery and peace of Europ

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XI THE LAST OF THE VICTORIANS

24.11.23 Mr. Asquith is now, to use the phrase he coined for a contemporary, the last of the Victorian “giants.” He is the leader of some sort of Liberal Party in England, the oldest and the ripest, I am told, though I confess I am quite unable to make head or tail of these various Liberal parties in England nowadays, and he is always trying to lead his little band back to the nineteenth century, when there were ever so many “giants” in the land, not to mention the Grand Old Man, and when politi

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XII POLITICS AS A PUBLIC NUISANCE

1.12.23 In the United States of America they know when their elections are coming, and prepare for them; in Great Britain they come unheralded, like earthquakes and tidal waves. They may come and come again; there is no period of immunity. It is only yesterday that in Great Britain we were all speculating about this Mr. Baldwin, who had become Prime Minister. What was he? Where had he come from? Nobody knew. From the first he seemed to share our doubts about himself. He hid as much as possible b

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XIII THE RE-EMERGENCE OF MR. LLOYD GEORGE

8.12.23 That muddle-headed process, the General Election, is over in Great Britain; the votes have been counted and the results are out—and everybody now is free to speculate what it was that the British Demos was trying to say to the world. The idiotic simplicity of the voting method employed leaves the intelligent observer entirely free to put whatever interpretation he likes upon these results, and the British and foreign Press are taking the fullest advantage of this freedom. Confronted by a

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XIV SPAIN AND ITALY WHISPER TOGETHER

15.12.23 The noise of the British General Election subsides, and we realise that a crisis of supreme insignificance to the world in general is over. The affair has had much the same importance as a wayside epileptic fit. The patient falls into convulsive movements, emits strange noises. Presently it is all over, and the patient seems very little the worse for it. Britain’s herself again, and nobody can tell what it meant at all. One can only hope that there will not be another fit for some time.

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XV LATIN AMERICA AND THE LEAGUE

22.12.23 In my previous article I discussed the visit of King Alfonso to Rome, and the profound significance to France and the world in general of the conversations that must have taken place there between the Spanish and Italian dictators. Among other issues was the possibility of a Latin League, comprehending the two European peninsulas and Latin America. I return to this idea. At the least it is an imaginative gesture on the parts of General de Rivera and Signor Mussolini on a higher creative

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XVI COSMOPOLITAN AND INTERNATIONAL

29.12.23 Sometimes words for quite unaccountable reasons get down on their luck. They lose caste, they drop out of society, nobody will be seen about with them. A word for which I have the greatest sympathy is “Cosmopolitan.” I want to see it restored to a respectable use. It is a fine word and it embodies a fine idea. But for more than half the English-speaking people who hear it, I suppose, it carries with it the quality of a shady, illicit individual with a bad complexion, a falsified passpor

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XVII THE PARLIAMENTARY TRIANGLE

5.1.24 That profoundly absurd body the British Parliament will meet on January 8, and the recondite and fascinating game of party politics will be resumed under novel conditions with three parties, none of which have a majority, and with a Labour Party in sight, not of power, but of office. I call the British Parliament an absurd body with set and measured intention. It is twice as big as it ought to be for efficient government; it carries a load, a fatty encumbrance, of more than three hundred

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XVIII MODERN GOVERNMENT: PARLIAMENT AND REAL ELECTORAL REFORM

22.1.24 We are assured that a reform of the electoral system is now imminent in Great Britain. The oldest and most respectable of the world’s democratic governments is declared to be in need of repair and reconstruction. It has produced three parties without a majority, and it threatens to jam. Immediate legislation is promised. This must needs be a matter of lively interest to every intelligent person from China to Peru. For the British Parliament is the Mother of Parliaments. This is the proud

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XIX SCRAPPING THE GOLD STANDARD

19.1.24 Among recent events of conspicuous importance is the publication of a new book by Mr. J. M. Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform . Among the large trivial happenings of the time, revolutions, movements of crowned heads in and out of exile, new French alliances, and the antics of eminent politicians, it is refreshing to have something of real significance on which to make one’s weekly comments. I incurred great odium a little while ago by saying that Mr. J. M. Keynes could claim to have ach

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XX THE HUB OF EUROPE: CZECHO-SLOVAKIA AND FRANCE

26.1.24 Bohemia within its mountains is like a square citadel in the very centre of Europe. Czecho-Slovakia, the old Bohemian kingdom revived and extended, is the most orderly and successful of all the States created by the Treaty of Versailles. The republic understands the modern need of advertisement; the wandering writer finds a flattering welcome there, and what is done in Prague is heard of in the world. The new treaty with France brings Czecho-Slovakia still more prominently forward. Poor

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XXI THE MANDARINS AT THE GATE: THE REVIVAL OF THE OLD LEARNING

2.2.24 It would be near the truth of things to say that the only events of permanent importance in human affairs are educational events. Except in so far as they demonstrate and teach or interrupt teaching, wars and treaties, kings and laws, and all the standard material of history are but the by-products of the educator’s work. Some day, when we have escaped from the trumpery dignity of classical history, a new Gibbon will trace for us the failure in understanding and co-operation that made the

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XXII LENIN: PRIVATE CAPITALISM AGAINST COMMUNISM

9.2.24 So Lenin is dead at last. He dies on the eve of the recognition of the Soviet Government by the Western Powers. For most practical purposes the work of Lenin was over before 1920. His death now or a little later will make only the smallest difference in the destinies of Russia. For the Communist Party which still controls Russia has this in common with the Catholic Church, that it is sustained by a system of dogmas, disciplines and, now, experiences and traditions so much stronger than an

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XXIII THE FANTASIES OF MR. BELLOC AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD

16.2.24 Mr. Belloc has written a small imposing book about America and England, called The Contrast . Small it is in length and substance, but imposing in its English edition at least by reason of large print, vast margins, thick paper, and all that makes a book physically impressive. It is the sort of book that has the first sentence of Chapter I on page nine. To the student of current events it is a very noteworthy book indeed. It betrays the drift of a very complex group of forces at work in

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XXIV A CREATIVE EDUCATIONAL SCHEME FOR BRITAIN: A TENTATIVE FORECAST

22.2.24 The Labour Government of Great Britain starts its career with a conservative discretion that should reassure even the most excitable inmates of the Rothermere journalistic institutions. For this year at any rate we shall get little that we might not have had from a rather left-handed Liberal Cabinet. The Social Revolution is in no hurry to arrive. The recognition of Russia is all to the good; and the treatment of foreign politicians in office as though they were statesmen and the serious

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XXV PORTUGAL AND PROSPERITY: THE BLESSEDNESS OF BEING A LITTLE NATION

1.3.24 For several weeks just recently I was cut off from Britain and America and most of the things that interest me in the world by a postal strike in Portugal. It was an original sort of strike. The little dears went to their offices and so forth, and just did nothing until the Government kept a promise to raise salaries. Telegrams and letters coagulated in masses that are still incompletely dissolved. Some of the more humorous of the strikers mixed up the letters, and delivered considerable

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XXVI RECONSTRUCTION OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM

8.3.24 If the world had suddenly become rational in November 1918, I suppose there would have been a conference of all the Powers of the world to atone for their common sins and restore their common welfare. But as the world is some thousands of years yet from rational collective conduct we have the treaty of the Victors, the Demi-League of Nations, and all the post-war disorder, waste, and misery that still unfold upon us. The League is unsoundly planned; it stands on rotten foundations; it is

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XXVII THE LABOUR PARTY ON TRIAL: THE FOLLY OF THE FIVE CRUISERS

15.3.24 I have recently been watching British politics from a rather interesting angle; I have been seeing Britain through Latin eyes from the Portuguese corner of Europe. Events come to me generally in this order. First the Lisbon Diario des Noticias comes in with my coffee; next day the French Quotidien arrives before lunch and the Italian Secolo at dinner, and there is usually another twenty-four hours before a bundle of London papers comes to hand. The Paris Daily Mail or the Action Français

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XXVIII DICTATORS OR POLITICIANS? THE DILEMMA OF CIVILISATION

22.3.24 The drift towards dictatorships in many of the European countries has been very marked in the last few years. The mental distress and physical discomforts arising out of the steady process of financial, social, and economic decay in the tangle of nationalist States in Europe, have liberated a lively and widespread discontent with the methods of representative government. The legal way and the parliamentary way has seemed too long, tedious, and disingenuous for the urgent needs of the tim

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XXIX YOUTH AND THE VOTE: THE REJUVENESCENCE OF THE WORLD

29.3.24 The recent discussion of the extension of the British parliamentary suffrage has been an amusing and instructive display. The finer parts of the debate upon Mr. Adamson’s Bill were a little overshadowed in the Press by the Duchess of Atholl’s possibly exaggerated objection to the proposed enfranchisement of several hundred travelling tinkers, and her nightmare of all the women in the country voting down all the men in the country upon some unexpected issue. I must confess that I am not v

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XXX OLIVE BRANCHES OF STEEL: SHOULD THE ANGELS OF PEACE CARRY BOMBS?

5.4.24 The will for peace is futile without the courage to disarm. I would like to have that proposition printed in large letters and put up at all the meetings of the British League of Nations Union, just to see what the worthy practitioners in easy optimism who fill these gatherings would make of it. I doubt if half the kindly idealists who support the League of Nations in Britain and America are prepared for any effectual disarmament of their own countries. For others—yes; but not for their o

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XXXI THE CASE OF UNAMUNO: THE FEEBLE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS

12.4.24 There is nothing greater in the world of men than thought. Science, literature, and art; what other glories has man? And yet the company of men of science and letters and art forms but the feeblest of republic throughout the world, is insignificant socially and politically, and wins only posthumous respect. A time may come when men will have a better sense of the values of things, and when the creative experimenter and writer and artist will be accorded something of the respect and somet

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XXXII AN OPEN LETTER TO ANATOLE FRANCE ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY

( Written as the English Contribution to a Booklet of Congratulation ) 19.5.24 Cher Maître ,—You write for the whole world, and the whole world salutes you on this happy occasion of your eightieth birthday. You are eighty years old, and yet it seemed to me a little time ago, when I paid my personal homage to you and found you, as ever, smiling, friendly, interested, and amused, that you were still untouched by age. And indeed what has age to do with you, who are already immortal, staying on here

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XXXIII THE EUROPEAN KALEIDOSCOPE: THE GERMAN WILL IN DEFAULT

23.4.24 I was in Paris the other day when M. Poincaré reconstructed his Government, and I heard him make his declaration of policy to the Chamber of Deputies. I had never seen him before. It was a dramatic and amusing occasion, and I conceived for M. Poincaré the same sort of warm and hostile affection that I have for Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Lloyd George. He is an entirely delightful personality; he has all the charm—and much of the appearance—of a wiry-haired terrier. He even barks. The C

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XXXIV CHINA: THE LAND OUT OF THE LIMELIGHT

26.4.24 China has been out of the limelight of the newspapers lately. It is the tradition of the Atlantic civilisations to think about China as little as possible. We ignore the enormous importance of its gifts to us in the past, and we do our utmost to disregard its immediate share in the world’s future. China drove the Huns westward to relieve Europe from the decaying stagnation of the western Roman Empire. She gave the world paper, which made the printed book and newspaper possible, which mad

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XXXV AIR ARMAMENT: THE SUPREMACY OF QUALITY

3.5.24 Bankrupt France and out-of-work England are developing a sort of armament race in air equipment. It has not quite the vigour of the old naval armament race; it is not so expensive, and the chances for financial and industrial loot are less. But it goes on, and at present, on paper at least, France leads handsomely. On paper France is ascendant over Britain in the air, capable of inflicting vast injuries, while sustaining small reprisals, and the matter is one of great concern to many anxi

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XXXVI LABOUR POLITICIANS: THE EVAPORATION OF THE INTELLIGENZIA

10.5.24 At the last General Election the British Labour Party was supported with the most whole-hearted enthusiasm by a great cloud of artistic and intellectual workers. It had the Intelligenzia solidly for it. It had all the higher and better theatrical and artistic workers on its side: such great literary names as Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, such men of science as Soddy. They supported it for a variety of very understandable reasons. They were revolted by the mean and sterile dullness o

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XXXVII CONSTRUCTIVE IDEAS AND THEIR RELATION TO CURRENT POLITICS

17.5.24 Mr. Smillie, a little while ago, was talking of the peculiar mental virtues of the Labour Party. It was “out to deal with root causes” and so forth. There was to be no parleying with Liberals. This was immediately before Mr. Snowden produced the greatest Liberal Budget in history; something off something for everybody and no Socialist confiscation. I was moved at the time of Mr. Smillie’s speech to point out that the Labour Government had not been caught looking at the root cause of anyt

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XXXVIII THE WEMBLEY EMPIRE: AN EXHIBITION OF LOST OPPORTUNITIES

24.5.24 The preparation of a great exhibition of the glories of the British Empire at Wembley profoundly deranged the order of nature. The skies wept copiously; the English spring showed every sign of distress. The builders struck at the eleventh hour, and were only allayed by a patriotic speech by Mr. Thomas. The show opened in a state of entirely British unpreparedness, and the ceremony went chiefly to demonstrate that the development of building in concrete was a much more imposing fact in hu

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XXXIX THE EXTINCTION OF PARTY GOVERNMENT

31.5.24 The politicians of Great Britain, under the pressure of various accidental and some fundamental necessities, are being forced towards an honest democracy and efficient government. But they resist with great activity and ingenuity. A Bill for what is called Proportional Representation, but which is really sane voting, has recently been rejected by the House of Commons by a majority of 238 to 144. It had the official support of the Liberal Party. Previously the Liberal hacks were all again

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XL THE SERFDOM OF IGNORANCE: THE RIGHT OF WOMEN TO KNOWLEDGE

7.6.24 The British Labour movement is being agitated at present by one of the most important questions in the world, the question whether a woman has a right to clear and complete knowledge about her own body and the fundamental facts of her life. It is a searching and dividing question that may very well split the party into two discordant sections. The old-fashioned politicians who haven’t yet observed that women have now got votes, consider the question ought to be left outside politics. It i

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XLI BLINKERS FOR FREE YOUTH: YOUNG AMERICA ASKS TO HEAR AND SEE

14.6.24 A sure way to madden Americans is to make comparisons between education in the United States and in Western Europe. Even if the comparison is flattering it leaves them mad. Apparently belief in the superior education of the American citizen is becoming as sacred as belief in the American constitution. Doubt is prohibited. Visitors to the United States may presently have to sign a form about it. Hitherto with an extraordinary discretion I have avoided, or at least skirted, this sensitive

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XLII THE LAWLESSNESS OF AMERICA AND THE WAY TO ORDER

21.6.24 Miss Rebecca West, that acute and brilliant observer, has recently been in America, and she has been writing her impressions of the American scene. She has been lecturing and hand-shaking, but with commendable restraint she says little of her audiences, her hotels, and her railway journeys. She has looked over the heads of her hearers and out of the carriage windows. She has looked at the great spectacle as a whole, and she generalises about it broadly and bravely. The lack of civil orde

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XLIII THE SHABBY SCHOOLS OF THE PIOUS: DRAINS AND THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY

28.6.24 One of the numerous questions which the Labour Government has to avoid most sedulously in its official egg dance is the question of the denominational school. Many of the denomination schools of England are in an advanced state of decay, most of them fall short of modern educational requirements, and the Labour Party made the amplest promises of educational progress in the electoral campaign that led it to office. Something drastic ought to be done about these denominational schools. But

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XLIV THE INCOMPATIBILITY OF INDIA: DIVORCE OR LEGAL SEPARATION

5.7.24 Is the Anglo-Saxon fit to govern any other race? He sprawls across the earth. He rules hundreds of millions of brown and black and buff peoples; he dominates and “protects” an even larger number than he actually governs. And there are moments when one is struck by a sense of his immense ineptitude. In many respects he is unquestionably a fine figure, but with regard to other races he is overbearing, he is unsympathetic, he is obtuse. Possibly he is exceptionally so. But it is more probabl

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XLV THE SPIRIT OF FASCISM: IS THERE ANY GOOD IN IT AT ALL?

12.7.24 During the last few weeks an extraordinary fuss has been made over the brutal murder of one of Signor Mussolini’s most able and honourable opponents. Fascism has been put upon its defence. Weak but distinct sounds of disapproval have come from the more respectable sections of the Italian public. Even the London Times has published leading articles that seem to hint at a faint reluctant perception that the Italian dictator is remotely connected with the bloody and filthy terrorism on whic

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XLVI THE RACE CONFLICT: IS IT UNAVOIDABLE?

19.7.24 The action of the United States in setting aside its gentlemanly understanding with Japan in the matter of immigration and excluding the Japanese altogether has greatly exercised the British mind. At this distance it strikes us as an altogether uncivilised thing to do. We believe that for all practical purposes the peace of the Pacific rests on the tripod, America, Britain, Japan; we attached immense importance to the Washington Agreement and the feeling of concord it developed; we aband

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XLVII THE SCHOOLS OF A NEW AGE: A FORECAST

26.7.24 In these articles I have been harping continuously on the vast disorder, the uncertainty and waste of the world spectacle to-day; and I have been clamouring for more education, for much more education, for a more strenuous and devoted educational effort. Comments and replies, a quite copious correspondence, have brought home to me two things very plainly. One is the deep resentment aroused in many minds by the statement of what is to me an obvious fact, the littleness, imperfection and u

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XLVIII THE IMPUDENCE OF FLAGS: OUR POWER RESOURCES AND MY ELEPHANTS, WHALES, AND GORILLAS

2.8.24 The British Empire Exhibition at Wembley is open to all sorts of criticism, and is occasionally quite absurd, but it contrives to be entertaining. Many of us dislike the Kipling quality and the strong, unpleasant flavour of Imperial Preference that hang about it. I have reviled its commercialism; its relative disregard of educational duties and responsibilities; its suggestion of imperial self-sufficiency. But all sorts of conferences are meeting at Wembley, and occasionally a strong brea

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XLIX HAS COMMUNISM A FUTURE? THE POSSIBILITY OF A SOCIALIST RENASCENCE

9.8.24 I have a real affection for Communists—and a temperate admiration. It is the sort of love that leaps forward to chasten. In a world of oafish self-complacencies set in a morass of dull submission to the chances of life it is a consolation and refreshment to find any people who realise the self-destructiveness of the present system and, however vaguely, the possibility of remaking human society upon richer and happier lines. The value of the Communist Party as an organised ferment is very

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L THE LITTLE HOUSE: AS IT WAS, IS NOW, AND APPARENTLY EVER WILL BE

16.8.24 What a very odd spectacle the British Parliament face to face with the housing problem is! On the strength of that issue alone I should imagine that any really civilised judgment would condemn the poor old institution at once and set about a revolutionary search for a better constructed instrument of government. There is a shortage of housing accommodation in Great Britain; the picturesque, creeper-clad country cottage is too often a cramped, decivilising, insanitary fraud, and most of t

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LI THE TRIVIALITY OF DEMOCRACY AND THE FEMININE INFLUENCE IN POLITICS

23.8.24 The other day I was discussing the political outlook in Great Britain with a very close and shrewd observer of political motives. I live very much in a dream of a saner world and he lives in active reaction to the passing hour, but we both knew most of the leading figures in public affairs and we were surveying the present extraordinary fragmentation of parties in Parliament—for even the Labour Party now is hardly on speaking terms with itself and has nothing but office to hold it togeth

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LII SEX ANTAGONISM: AN UNAVOIDABLE AND INCREASING FACTOR IN MODERN LIFE

30.8.24 I have been reading a book called Ancilla’s Share ; it professes to be an indictment of Sex Antagonism, but indeed it is an artless demonstration of it. It was first published as anonymous, but then came paragraphs ascribing it to Miss Elizabeth Robins. Now I gather she admits her authorship. I find little of her fine gloomy talent in it. Possibly she is only partly responsible. It is under a confusing number of heads a tirade against the hostility of man to woman. Instances from all the

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LIII LIVING THROUGH: THE TRUTH ABOUT AN INTERVIEW

6.9.24 It is a foolish thing for a writer to see an interviewer. Other men may want an intermediary to tell the world of their thoughts and intentions, but a writer should be able to do his own telling. Yet I am always falling again into this folly. They come along with such nice introductions. They are so young and respectful and reassuring. They do not make it clear that they mean to turn your unguarded civilities into an article until quite at the end of the encounter. And then arrives the in

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LIV THE CREATIVE PASSION

13.9.24 Do men and women generally want a better world than this? Do they want a world free from war, general economic security, a higher level of general health, long life, freedom and hope for everyone, beauty as the common quality of their daily lives? The conventional answer to that question, especially if you put it to a public meeting with the appropriate gestures, is “Of course they do.” But the true answer is, “Not much!” They may do so when they read an inspiring book by the fireside or

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LV AFTER A YEAR OF JOURNALISM: AN OUTBREAK OF AUTO-OBITUARY

20.9.24 Fifty-four articles have I written in the past twelve months and this will be the fifty-fifth and last. I desist. I turn over the book into which my secretary with a relentless regularity has pasted them all. Some I like; most seem to be saying something quite acceptable to me, but imperfectly in a rather ill-fitting form; some are just bad. My admiration for the masters of journalism has grown to immense proportions after these efforts. Their confidence! Their unstrained directness! The

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