 Chapter 58 The Industrial Revolution There is a tendency in many histories to confuse together what we have here called the Mechanical Revolution, which was an entirely new thing in human experience arising out of the development of organized science. A new step like the invention of agriculture or the discovery of metals was something else quite different in its origins, something for which there was already on historical precedent the social and financial development, which is called the Industrial Revolution. The two processes were going on together. They were constantly reacting upon each other, but they were in root and essence different. There would have been an Industrial Revolution of sorts if there had been no coal, no steam, no machinery, but in that case it would probably have followed far more closely upon the lines of the social and financial developments of the later years of the Roman Republic. It would have repeated the story of dispossessed free cultivators, gang labor, great estates, great financial fortunes, and a socially destructive financial process. Even the factory method came before power and machinery. Factories were the product, not of machinery, but of the division of labor. Drilled and sweated workers were making such things as millinery cardboard boxes and furniture and coloring maps and book illustrations and so forth, before even water wheels had been used for industrial purposes. There were factories in Rome in the days of Augustus. New books, for instance, were dictated to rows of copyists in the factories of the booksellers. The attentive student of Defoe and of the political pamphlets of Fielding will realize that the idea of herding poor people into establishments to work collectively for their living was already current in Britain, before the close of the 17th century. There are intimations of it even as early as Moors Utopia 1516. It was a social and not a mechanical development. Up to past the middle of the 18th century, the social and economic history of Western Europe was in fact retreating the path along which the Roman state had gone in the last three centuries B.C. But the political disunions of Europe, the political convulsions against monarchy, the recalcitrance of the common folk and perhaps also the greater accessibility of the Western European intelligence to mechanical ideas and inventions turned the process into quite noble directions. Ideas of human solidarity, thanks to Christianity, were far more widely diffused in the newer European world. Political power was not so concentrated, and the man of energy, anxious to get rich, turned his mind, therefore, very willingly, from the ideas of the slave and of gang labour to the idea of mechanical power and the machine. The mechanical revolution, the process of mechanical invention and discovery, was a new thing in human experience, and it went on regardless of the social, political, economic and industrial consequences it might produce. The industrial revolution, on the other hand, like most other human affairs, was and is more and more profoundly changed and deflected by the constant variation in human conditions caused by the mechanical revolution, and the essential difference between the amassing of riches, the extinction of small farmers and small businessmen, and the phase of big finance in the latter centuries of the Roman Republic, on the one hand, and the very similar concentration of capital in the 18th and 19th centuries on the other, lies in the profound difference in the character of labour that the mechanical revolution was bringing about. The power of the old world was human power. Everything depended ultimately upon the driving power of human muscle, the muscle of ignorant and subjugated men. A little animal muscle supplied by draft oxen, horse traction and the like contributed. When a weight had to be lifted, men lifted it. When a rock had to be quarried, men chipped it out. Where a field had to be plowed, men and oxen plowed it. The Roman equivalent of the steamship was the galley with its bank of sweating rowers. A vast proportion of mankind in the early civilizations were employed in purely mechanical drudgery. At its onset, power-driven machinery did not seem to promise any release from such an intelligent toil. Great gangs of men were employed in excavating canals, in making railway cuttings and embankments and the like. The number of miners increased enormously, but the extension of facilities and the output of commodities increased much more, and as the 19th century went on, the plain logic of the new situation asserted itself more clearly. Human beings were no longer wanted as a source of mere indiscriminate power. What could be done mechanically by a human being could be done faster and better by a machine. The human being was needed now only where choice and intelligence had to be exercised. Human beings were wanted only as human beings. The drudge on whom all the previous civilizations had rested, the creature of mere obedience, the man whose brains were superfluous, had become unnecessary to the welfare of mankind. This was as true of such ancient industries as agriculture and mining as it was of the newest metallurgical processes for plowing, sowing and harvesting. Swift machines came forward to do the work of scores of men. The Roman civilization was built upon cheap and degraded human beings. Modern civilization is being rebuilt upon cheap mechanical power. For a hundred years power has been getting cheaper and labor dearer. If, for a generation or so, machinery has had to wait its turn in the mine, it is simply because for a time men were cheaper than machinery. Now here was a changeover of quite primary importance in human affairs. The chief solicitude of the rich and of the ruler in the old civilization had been to keep up a supply of drudges. As the 19th century went on it became more and more plain to the intelligent directive people that the common man had now to be something better than a drudge. He had to be educated, if only to secure industrial efficiency. He had to understand what he was about. From the days of the first Christian propaganda popular education had been smoldering in Europe, just as it had smoldered in Asia wherever Islam had set its foot, because of the necessity of making the believer understand a little of the belief by which he is saved and of enabling him to read a little in the sacred books by which his belief is conveyed. Christian controversies with their competition for adherence plowed the ground for the harvest of popular education. In England, for instance, by the 30s and 40s of the 19th century, the disputes of the sects and the necessity of catching adherents young had produced a series of competing educational organizations for children, the church national schools, the dissenting British schools, and even Roman Catholic elementary schools. The second half of the 19th century was a period of rapid advance in popular education throughout all the westernized world. There was no parallel advance into education of the upper classes. Some advanced no doubt, but nothing to correspond. And so the great gulf that had divided that world, his or two, into the readers and the non-reading mass became little more than a slightly perceptible difference in educational level. At the back of this process was the mechanical revolution, apparently regardless of social conditions, but really insisting inexorably upon the complete abolition of a totally illiterate class throughout the world. The economic revolution of the Roman Republic had never been clearly apprehended by the common people of Rome. The ordinary Roman citizen never saw the changes through which he lived, clearly and comprehensively as we see them. But the industrial revolution as it went on towards the end of the 19th century was more and more distinctly seen as one whole process by the common people it was affecting, because presently they could read and discuss and communicate, and because they went about and saw things as no commonality had ever done before. End of chapter 58. Chapter 59 of A Short History of the World by H. G. Wells. The Slippery Works recording is in the public domain. Chapter 59. The Development of Modern Political and Social Ideas. The institutions and customs and political ideas of the ancient civilizations grew up slowly, age by age, no man designing and no man foreseeing. It was only in that great century of human adolescence, the 6th century B.C., that men began to think clearly about their relations to one another, and first to question and first propose to alter and rearrange the established beliefs and laws and methods of human government. We have told of the glorious intellectual dawn of Greece and Alexandria, and how presently the collapse of the slaveholding civilizations and the clouds of religious intolerance and absolutist government darkened the promise of that beginning. The light of fearless thinking did not break through the European obscurity again, effectually, until the 15th and 16th centuries. We have tried to show something of the share of the great winds of Arab curiosity and Mongol conquest in this gradual clearing of the mental skies of Europe. And at first it was chiefly material knowledge that increased. The first fruits of the recovered manhood of the race were material achievements and material power. The science of human relationship, of individual and social psychology, of education and of economics are not only more subtle and intricate in themselves, but also bound up inextricably with much emotional matter. The advances made in them have been slower and made against greater opposition. Men will listen dispassionately to the most diverse suggestions about stars or molecules, but ideas about our ways of life touch and reflect upon everyone about us. And just as in Greece the bold speculations of Plato came before our total hard search for fact. So in Europe the first political inquiries of the new phase were put in the form of utopian stories directly imitated from Plato's Republic and his laws. Sir Thomas More's Utopia is a curious imitation of Plato that bore fruit in a new English poor law. The Neapolitan Campanella city of the sun was more fantastic and less fruitful. By the end of the 17th century we find a considerable and growing literature of political and social science was being produced. Among the pioneers in this discussion was John Locke, the son of an English Republican and Oxford scholar who first directed his attention to chemistry and medicine. His treatises on government, toleration and education show a mind fully awake to the possibilities of social reconstruction. Parallel with and a little later than John Locke in England, Montesquieu 1689 to 1755 in France, subjected social, political and religious institutions to a searching and fundamental analysis. He stripped the magical prestige from the absolutist monarchy in France. He shares with Locke the credit for clearing away many of the false ideas that had hitherto prevented deliberate unconscious attempts to reconstruct human society. The generation that followed him in the middle and later decades of the 18th century was a boldly speculative upon the moral and intellectual clearings he had made. A group of brilliant writers, the encyclopedists, mostly rebel spirits from the excellent schools of the Jesuits, set themselves to scheme out a new world, 1766. Side by side was the encyclopedists where the economists or physiocrats were making bold and crude inquiries into the production and distribution of food and goods. Morally, the author of the Côte d'Alenature denounced the institution of private property and proposed a communistic organization of society. He was the precursor of that large and various school of collectivist thinkers in the 19th century who are lumped together as socialists. What is socialism? There are a hundred definitions of socialism and a thousand sects of socialists. Essentially socialism is no more and no less than a criticism of the idea of property in the light of the public good. We may review the history of that idea through the ages very briefly. That and the idea of internationalism are the two cardinal ideas upon which most of our political life is turning. The idea of property arises out of the combative instincts of the species. Long before men were men, the ancestral ape was a proprietor. Primitive property is what a beast will fight for. The dog and his bone, the tigress and her lair, the roaring stag and his herd, these are proprietorship blazing. No more nonsensical expression is conceivable in sociology than the term primitive communism. The old man of the family tribe of early paleolithic times insisted upon his proprietorship in his wives and daughters, in his tools, in his visible universe. If any other man wandered into his visible universe, he fought him and if he could he slew him. The tribe grew in the course of ages, as Atkinson showed convincingly his primal law by the gradual toleration by the old man of the existence of the younger man and of their proprietorship in the wives they captured from outside the tribe and in the tools and ornaments they made and the game they slew. Human society grew by a compromise between this one's property and that. It was a compromise with instinct which was forced upon men by the necessity of driving some other tribe out of its visible universe. If the hills and forests and streams were not your land or my land it was because they had to be our land. Each of us would have preferred to have it my land but that would not work. In that case the other fellows would have destroyed us. Society, therefore, is from its beginning a mitigation of ownership. Ownership in the beast and in the primitive savage was far more intense a thing than it is in the civilized world today. It is rooted more strongly in our instincts than in our reason. In the natural savage and in the untutored man today there is no limitation to the sphere of ownership. Whatever you can fight for you can own. Woman folk, spared captive, captured beast, forest-glade, stone pit or whatnot. As the community grew, a sort of law came to restrain, internal science fighting. Men developed rough and ready methods of settling proprietorship. Men could own what they were the first to make or capture or claim. It seemed natural that a debtor who could not pay should become the property of his creditor. Equally natural was it that after claiming a patch of land a man should exact payments from anyone who wanted to use it. It was only slowly as the possibilities of organized life dawned on men that this unlimited property in anything, whatever, began to be recognized as a nuisance. Men found themselves born into a universe all owned and claimed. Nay, they found themselves born, owned and claimed. The social struggles of the earlier civilization are difficult to trace now but the history we have told of the Roman Republic shows a community waking up to the idea that debts may become a public inconvenience and should then be repudiated and that the unlimited ownership of land is also an inconvenience. We find that later Babylonia severely limited the rights of property in slaves. Finally we find in the teaching of that great revolutionist Jesus of Nazareth such an attack upon property as had never been before. Easier it was he said for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the owner of great possessions to enter the kingdom of heaven. A steady continuous criticism of the permissible scope of property seems to have been going on in the world for the last 25 or 30 centuries. 1900 years after Jesus of Nazareth we find all the world that has come under the Christian teaching persuaded that there could be no property in human beings and also the idea that a man may do what he likes with his own was very much shaken in relation to other sorts of property. But this world of the closing 18th century was still only in the interrogative stage in this matter. It had got nothing clear enough, much less settled enough to act upon. One of its primary impulses was to protect property against the greed and waste of kings and the exploitation of noble adventurers. It was largely to protect private property from taxation that the French Revolution began. But the Equalitarian formulae of the revolution carried it into a criticism of the very property it had risen to protect. How can men be free and equal when numbers of them have no ground to stand upon and nothing to eat and the owners will neither feed nor lodge them unless they toil, excessively the poor complained. To which a little the reply of one important political group was to set about dividing up. They wanted to intensify and universalize property. Aiming at the same end by another route there were the primitive socialists or to be more exact communists who wanted to abolish private property altogether. The state, a democratic state was of course understood, was to own all property. It is paradoxical that different men seeking the same ends of liberty and happiness should propose on the one hand to make property as absolute as possible and on the other to put an end to it altogether. But so it was. And the clue to this paradox is to be found in the fact that ownership is not one thing but a multitude of different things. It was only as the 19th century developed that men began to realize that property was not one simple thing but a great complex of ownerships of different values and consequences that many things such as one's body, the implements of an artist's closing toothbrushes are very profoundly and incurably one's personal property and that there is a very great range of things. Railways, machinery of various sorts, homes, cultivated gardens, pleasure boats for example, which need each to be considered very particularly to determine how far and under what limitations it may come under private ownership and how far it falls into the public domain and maybe administered and let out by the state in the collective interest. On the practical side these questions pass into politics and the problem of making and sustaining efficient state administration. They open up issues in social psychology and interact with the inquiries of educational science. The criticism of property is still a vast and passionate ferment rather than a science. On the one hand are the individualists who would protect and enlarge our present freedoms with what we possess and on the other the socialists who would in many directions pool our ownerships and restrain our proprietary acts. In practice one will find every gradation between the extreme individualist who will scarcely tolerate attacks of any sort to support a government and the communist who would deny any possessions at all. The ordinary socialist of today is what is called a collectivist. He would allow a considerable amount of private property but put such affairs as education, transport, mines, landowning, most mass productions of stable articles and the like into the hands of a highly organized state. Nowadays there does seem to be a gradual convergence of reasonable men towards a moderate socialism scientifically studied and planned. It is realized more and more clearly that the untutored man does not cooperate easily and successfully in large undertakings and that every step towards a more complex state and every function that the state takes over from private enterprise necessitates a corresponding educational advance and the organization of a proper criticism and control. Both the press and the political methods of the contemporary state are far too crude for any large extension of collective activities but for a time the stresses between employer and employed and particularly between selfish employers and reluctant workers led to a worldwide dissemination of the very harsh and elementary form of communism which is associated with the name of Marx. Marx based his theories on a belief that men's minds are limited by their economic necessities and that there is a necessary conflict of interests in our present civilization between the prosperous and employing classes of people and the employed mass. With the advance in education necessitated by the mechanical revolution this great employed majority will become more and more class-conscious and more and more solid in antagonism to the class-conscious ruling minority. In some way the class-conscious workers would seize power he prophesied and inaugurate a new social state. The antagonism the insurrection the possible revolution are understandable enough but it does not follow that a new social state or anything but a socially destructive process will ensue. Put to the test in Russia Marxism as we shall note later has proved singularly uncreative. Marx sought to replace national antagonism by class antagonisms. Marxism has produced in succession a first a second and a third workers international but from the starting point of modern individualistic thought it is also possible to reach international ideas. From the days of that great English economist Adams Smith onward there has been an increasing realization that for worldwide prosperity free and unencumbered trade about the earth is needed. The individualist with his hostility to the state is hostile also to tariffs and boundaries and all the restraints upon free act and movement that national boundaries seem to justify. It is interesting to see two lines of thought so diverse in spirit so different in substance as this class-war socialism of the Marxists and the individualistic free trading philosophy of the British businessman of the Victorian age heading at last in spite of these primary differences towards the same intimations of a new worldwide treatment of human affairs outside the boundaries and limitations of any existing state. The logic of reality triumphs over the logic of theory we begin to perceive that from widely divergent starting points individualist theory and socialist theory are part of a common search a search for more spacious social and political ideas and interpretations upon which men may contrive to work together a search that began again in Europe and has intensified as man's confidence in the ideas of the Holy Roman Empire and in Christendom decayed and as the age of discovery broadened their horizons from the world of the Mediterranean to the whole wide world to bring this description of the elaboration and development of social economic and political ideas right down to the discussions of the present day would be to introduce issues altogether too controversial for the scope and intentions of this book but regarding these things as we do here from the vast perspectives of the student of world history we are bound to recognize that this reconstruction of these directive ideas in the human mind is still an unfinished task we cannot even estimate yet how unfinished the task may be certain common beliefs do seem to be emerging and their influence is very perceptible upon the political events and public acts of today but at present they are not clear enough nor convincing enough to compel men definitely and systematically towards their realization men's acts waiver between tradition and the new and on the whole they rather gravitate towards the traditional yet compared with the thought of even a brief lifetime ago there does seem to be an outline shaping itself of a new order in human affairs it is a sketchy outline vanishing into vagueness at this point and that and fluctuating in detail and formula yet it grows steadfastly clearer and its main lines change less and less it is becoming planer and planer each year that in many respects and in an increasing range of affairs mankind is becoming one community and that it is more and more necessary that in such matters there should be a common worldwide control for example it is steadily truer that the whole planet is now one economic community that the proper exploitation of its natural resources demands one comprehensive direction and that the greater power and range that discovery has given human effort makes the present fragmentary and contentious administration of such affairs more and more wasteful and dangerous financial and monetary expedience also become worldwide interest to be dealt with successfully only on worldwide lines infectious diseases and the increase and migrations of population are also now plainly seen to be worldwide concerns the greater power and range of human activities has also made war disproportionately destructive and disorganizing and even as a clumsy way of settling issues between government and government and people and people ineffective all these things clamor for controls and authorities of a greater range and greater comprehensiveness than any government that has hitherto existed but it does not follow that the solution of these problems lies in some super government of all the world arising by conquest or by the coalescence of existing governments by analogy with existing institutions men have thought of the parliament of mankind of a world congress of a president or emperor of the earth our first natural reaction is towards some such conclusion but the discussion and experiences of half a century of suggestions and attempts has on the whole discouraged belief in that first obvious idea along that line to world unity the resistances are too great the drift of thought seems now to be in a direction of a number of special committees or organizations with worldwide power delegated to them by existing governments in this group of matters or that body is concerned with the waste or development of natural wealth with the equalization of labor conditions with world peace with currency population health and so forth the world may discover that all its common interests are being managed as one concerned while it still fails to realize that the world government exists but before even so much human unity is attained before such international arrangements can be put above patriotic suspicions and jealousies it is necessary that the common mind of the race should be possessed of that idea of human unity and that the idea of mankind as one family should be a matter of universal instruction and understanding for a score of centuries or more the spirit of the great universal religions has been struggling to maintain and extend that idea of a universal human brotherhood but to this day despite angers and distrusts of tribal national and racial friction obstruct and successfully obstruct the broader views and more generous impulses which would make every man the servant of all mankind the idea of human brotherhood struggles now to possess a human soul just as the idea of christendom struggled to possess the soul of europe in the confusion and disorder of the sixth and seventh centuries of the christian era the dissemination and triumph of such ideas must be the work of a multitude of devoted and undistinguished missionaries and no contemporary writer can presume to guess how far such work has gone or what harvest it may be preparing social and economic questions seem to be inseparably mingled with international ones the solution in each case lies in an appeal to that same spirit of service which can enter and inspire the human heart the distrust intractability and equitism of nations reflects and is reflected by the distrust intractability and equitism of the individual owner and worker in the face of the common good exaggerations of possessiveness in the individual are parallel and of a peace with the clutching greed of nations and emperors they are products of the same instinctive tendencies and the same ignorances and traditions internationalism is the socialism of nations no one who has wrestled with these problems can feel that there yet exists a sufficient depth and strength of psychological science and a sufficiently planned out educational method and organization for any real and final solution of these riddles of human intercourse and cooperation we are as incapable of planning a really effective peace organization of the world today as were men in 1820 to plan an electric railway system but for all we know the thing is equally practicable and may be as nearly at hand no man can go beyond his own knowledge no thought can reach beyond contemporary thought and it is impossible for us to guess or foretell how many generations of humanity may have to live in war and waste and insecurity and misery before the dawn of the great peace to which all history seems to be pointing peace in the heart and peace in the world ends our night of wasteful and aimless living our proposed solutions are still vague and crude passion and suspicion surround them a great task of intellectual reconstruction is going on it is still incomplete and our conceptions grow clearer and more exact slowly rapidly it is hard to tell which but as they grow clearer they will gather power over the minds and imaginations of men their present lack of grip is due to their lack of assurance and exact brightness they are misunderstood because they are variously and confusingly presented but with precision and certainty the new vision of the world will gain compelling power it may presently gain power very rapidly and a great work of educational reconstruction will follow logically and necessarily upon that clearer understanding End of Chapter 59 Chapter 60 of A Short History of the World by H. G. Wells The Slippery Box recording is in the public domain Chapter 60 The Expansion of the United States The region of the world that displayed the most immediate and striking results from the new inventions in transport was North America Politically the United States embodied and its constitution crystallized the liberal ideas of the middle 18th century it dispensed with state church or crown it would have no titles it protected property very jealously as a method of freedom and the exact practice varied at first in the different states it gave nearly every adult male citizen a vote its method of voting was barbarically crude and as a consequence its political life fell very soon under the control of highly organized party machines but that did not prevent the newly emancipated population developing an energy enterprise and public spirit far beyond that of any other contemporary population then came that acceleration of locomotion to which we have already called attention it is a curious thing that America which owes most to this acceleration in locomotion has felt at least the United States have taken the railway the river steamboat the telegraph and so forth as though they were a natural part of their growth they were not these things happen to come along just in time to save american unity the united states of today were made first by the river steamboat and then by the railway without these things the present united states this vast continental nation would have been altogether impossible the westward flow of population would have been far more sluggish it might never have crossed the great central plains it took nearly 200 years for effective settlement to reach from the coast to Missouri much less than halfway across the continent the first state established beyond the river was the steamboat state of Missouri in 1821 but the rest of the distance to the pacific was down in a few decades if we had the resources of the cinema it would be interesting to show a map of north america year by year from 1600 onward with little dots to represent hundreds of people each dot a hundred and starts to represent cities of a hundred southern people for 200 years the reader would see that stippling creeping slowly along the coastal districts and navigable waters spreading still more gradually into indiana kentucky and so forth then somewhere about 1810 would come a change things would get more lively along the river courses the dots would be multiplying and spreading that would be the steamboat the pioneer dots would be spreading soon over hansas and nebraska from a number of jumping off places along the great rivers then from about 1850 onward would come the black lines of the railways and after that the little black dots would not simply creep but run they would appear now so rapidly it would be almost as though they were being put on by some sort of spraying machine and suddenly here and then there would appear the first stars to indicate the first great cities of a hundred thousand people first one or two and then a multitude of cities each like a knot in the growing net of the railways the growth of the united states is a process that has no precedent in the world's history it is a new kind of occurrence such a community could not have come into existence before and if it had without railways it would certainly have dropped to pieces long before now without railways or telegraph it would be far easier to administer california from pekin than from washington but this great population of the united states of america has not only grown outrageously it has kept uniform nay it has become more uniform the man of san francisco is more like the man of new york today than the man of virginia was like the man of new england a century ago and the process of assimilation goes on unimpeded the united states is being woven by railway by telegraph more and more into one vast unity speaking thinking and acting harmoniously with itself soon aviation will be helping in the work this great community of the united states is an altogether new thing in history there have been great empires before with populations exceeding 100 millions but these were associations of divergent peoples there has never been one single people on this scale before we want a new term for this new thing we call the united states a country just as we call france or holland a country but the two things are as different as an automobile one horse shea they are the creations of different periods and different conditions they are going to work at a different pace and in an entirely different way the united states in scale and possibility is halfway between a european state and a united states of all the world but on the way to this present greatness and security the american people passed through one phase of dire conflict the river steamboats the railways the telegraph and their associate facilities did not come soon enough to avert a deepening conflict of interests and ideas between the southern and northern states of the union the former were slave holding states the latter states in which all men were free the railways and steamboats at first did but bring into sharper conflict and already established difference between the two sections of the united states the increasing unification due to the new means of transport made the question whether the southern spirit or the northern should prevail an ever more urgent one there was little possibility of compromise the northern spirit was free and individualistic the southern made for great estates and conscious gentility ruling over a dusky subject multitude every new territory that was organized into a state as the tide of population swept westward every new incorporation into the fast growing american system became a field of conflict between the two ideas whether it should become a state of free citizens or whether the state and slavery system should prevail from 1833 an american anti-slavery society was not merely resisting the extension of the institution but agitating the whole country for its complete abolition the issue flamed up into open conflict over the admission of texas to the union texas had originally been a part of the republic of mexico but it was largely colonized by americans from the slave holding states and it succeeded from mexico established its independence in 1835 and was annexed to the united states in 1844 under the mexican law slavery had been forbidden in texas but now the south claimed texas for slavery and got it meanwhile the development of ocean navigation was bringing a growing swarm of immigrants from europe to swell the spreading population of the northern states and the raising of yoa wisconsin minnesota and oregon all northern farmlands to state level gave the anti-slavery north the possibility of predominance built in the senate and the house of representatives the cotton growing south irritated by the growing threat of the abolitionist movement and fearing this predominance in congress began to talk of secession from the union southerners began to dream of annexations to the south of them in mexico and the west indies and of a great slave state detached from the north and reaching to panama the return of abraham lancolm as an anti-extension president in 1860 decided the south to split the union south carolina passed an ordinance of secession and prepared for war mississippi florida alabama georgia louisiana and texas joined her and a convention met at montgomery in alabama elected jefferson davis president of the confederated states of america and adopted a constitution specifically upholding the institution of negro slavery abraham lincolm was a chance a man entirely typical of the new people that had grown up after the war of independence his early years had been spent as a drifting particle in the general westward flow of the population he was born in kentucky 1809 was taken to indiana as a boy and later on to illinois life was rough in the backwards of indiana in those days the house was a mere log cabin in the wilderness and his schooling was poor and casual but his mother taught him to read early and he became a voracious reader at 17 he was a big athletic youth a great wrestler and runner he worked for a time as clerk in a store went into business as a storekeeper was a drunken partner and contracted debts that he did not fully pay off for 15 years in 1834 when he was still only 5 and 20 he was elected member of the house of representatives for the state of illinois in illinois particularly the question of slavery flamed because the great leader of the party for the extension of slavery in the national congress was senator douglas of illinois douglas was a man of great ability and prestige and for some years lincon fought against him by speech and pamphlet rising steadily to the position of his most formidable and finally victorious antagonist their culminating struggle was the presidential campaign of 1860 and on the 4th of march 1861 lincon was inaugurated president was a southern states already in active secession from the rule of the federal government in washington and committing acts of war the civil war in america was fought by improvised armies that grew steadily from a few score thousands to hundreds of thousands until at last the federal forces exceeded a million men it was fought over a vast area between new mexico and the eastern sea washington and richmond were the chief objectives it is beyond our scope here to tell of the mounting energy of that epic struggle that rolled to and fro across the hills and woods of tennessee and virginia and down the mississippi there was a terrible waste and killing of men thrust was followed by counter thrust hope gave way to despondency and returned and was again disappointed sometimes washington seemed within the confederate grasp again the federal armies were driving towards richmond the confederates outnumbered and far poorer in resources fought under a general of supreme ability general lee the general ship of the union was far inferior generals were dismissed new generals appointed until it lost under sherman and grand came victory over the ragged and depleted south in october 1864 a federal army under sherman broke through the confederate left and marched down from tennessee through georgia to the coast right across the confederate country and then turned up through the carolinas coming in upon the rear of the confederate armies meanwhile grand held lee before richmond until sherman closed on him on april 9 1865 lee and his army surrendered at a pomatox courthouse and within a month all the remaining secessionist armies had laying down their arms and the confederacy was at an end this four-year struggle had meant an enormous physical and moral strain for the people of the united states the principle of state autonomy was very dear to many minds and the north seemed in effect to be forcing abolition upon the south in the border states brothers and cousins even fathers and sons would take opposite sides and find themselves in antagonistic armies the north felt its calls a righteous one but for great numbers of people it was not a full-bodied and unchallenged righteousness but for lincoln there was no doubt he was a clear-minded man in the midst of much confusion he stood for union he stood for the white peace of america he was opposed to slavery but slavery he held to be a secondary issue his primary purpose was that the united states should not be torn into two contrasted and jarring fragments when in the opening stages of the war congress and the federal generals embarked upon a precipitated emancipation lincoln opposed and mitigated their enthusiasm he was for emancipation by stages and was compensation it was only in january 1865 that the situation had ripened to a point when congress could propose to abolish slavery forever by a constitutional amendment and the war was already over before this amendment was ratified by the states as the war dragged on through 1862 and 1863 the first passions and insidiasms waned and america learned all the phases of war wariness and war disgust the president found himself with defeatists traitors dismissed generals tortures party politicians and adopting and fatigued people behind him and uninspired generals and depressed troops before him his chief consolation must have been that jefferson davis at richard could be in little better case the english government misbehaved and permitted the confederate agents in england to launch and man three swift privateer ships the alabama is the best remembered of them which changed the united states shipping from the seas the french army in mexico was trampling the monroe doctrine in the dirt came subtle proposals from richmond to drop the war leaves the issues of the war for subsequent discussion and turn federal and confederate in alliance upon the french in mexico but lincoln would not listen to such proposals unless the supremacy of the union was maintained the americans might do such things as one people but not us too he held the united states together through long very months of reverses and ineffective effort through black phases of division and failing courage and there is no record that he ever faltered from his purpose there were times when there was nothing to be done when he sat in the white house silent and motionless a grim monument of resolve times when he relaxed his mind by justing and broad anecdotes he sold the union triumphant he entered richmond the day after its surrender and heard of lee's capitulation he returned to washington and on april 11 made his last public address his theme was reconciliation and the reconstruction of loyal government in the defeated states on the evening of april 14 he went to ford's theater in bashington and as he sat looking at the stage he was shot in the back of the head and killed by an actor named booth who had some sort of grievance against him and who had crept into the box and observed but lincoln's work was done the union was saved at the beginning of the war there was no railway to the pacific coast after it the railway spread like a swiftly growing plant until now they have clutched and held and woven all the vast territory of the united states into one indissolute mental and material unity the greatest real community until the common folk of china have learned to read in the world end of chapter 60 chapter 61 of a short history of the world by hg wells this library box recording is in the public domain chapter 61 the rise of germany to predominance in europe we have told how after the convulsion of the french revolution and the napoleonic adventure europe settled down again for a time to an insecure peace and a sort of modernized revival of the political conditions of 50 years before until the middle of the century the new facilities in the handling of steel and the railway and steamship produced no marked political consequences but the social tension due to the development of urban industrialism grew france remained a conspicuously uneasy country the revolution of 1830 was followed by another in 1848 then napoleon the third and nephew of napoleon bonaparte became first president and then in 1852 emperor he set about rebuilding paris and changed it from a picturesque 17th century incendiary city into the spacious latinized city of marble it is today he set about rebuilding france and made it into a brilliant looking modernized imperialism he displayed a disposition to revive that competitiveness of the great powers which had kept europe busy with futile wars during its 17th and 18th centuries the tsar nikolas the first of russia 1825 to 1856 was also becoming aggressive and pressing southward upon the turkish empire with his eyes on constantinople after the turn of the century europe broke out into a fresh cycle of wars they were chiefly balance of power and ascendancy wars england france and sardinia assailed russia in the crimian war in defense of turkey prusa with italy is an ally and austria fought for their leadership of germany france liberated north italy from austria at the price of savoy and italy gradually unified itself into one kingdom then napoleon the third was so ill advised as to attempt adventures in mexico during the american civil war he set up an emperor maximiland there and abandoned him hastily to his fate he was shot by the mexicans when the victorius federal government showed its teeth in 1870 came a long pending struggle for predominance in europe between france and prusa prusa had long foreseen and prepared for the struggle and france was rotten with financial corruption her defeat was swift and dramatic the germans invaded france in august one great french army under the emperor capitulated at sedan in september another surrendered in october at mezz and in january 1871 paris after a siege on bombardment fell into german hands peace was signed at frankfort surrendering the provinces of alzac and lorraine to the germans germany excluding austria was unified as an empire and the king of prusa was added to the galaxy of european caesars as the german emperor for the next 43 years germany was the leading power upon the european continent there was a russia-turkish war in 1977-78 but thereafter except for certain readjustments in the Balkans european frontiers remained uneasily stable for 30 years end of chapter 61 chapter 62 of a short history of the world by hg wells this livery box recording is in the public domain chapter 62 the new overseas empires of steamship and railway the end of the 18th century was a period of disrupting empires and disillusioned expansionists the long and tedious journey between britain and spain and their colonies in america prevented any real free coming and going between the homeland and the daughterlands and so the colonies separated into new and distinct communities with distinctive ideas and interests and even modes of speech as they grew they strained more and more at the feeble and uncertain link of shipping that had joined them weak trading posts in the wilderness like those of france in canada or trading establishments in great alien communities like those of britain in india might well cling for their existence to the nation which gave them support and a reason for their existence that much and no more seemed to many thinkers in the early part of the 19th century to be the limit set to overseas rule in 1820 the sketchy great european empires outside of europe that had figured so bravely in the maps of the middle 18th century had shrunken to very small dimensions only the russian sprawled as large as ever across asia the british empire in 1815 consisted of the thinly populated coastal river and lake regions of canada and a great hinterland of wilderness in which the only settlements as yet were the fur trading stations of the hudson bay company about a third of the indian peninsula under the rule of the east india company the coast districts of the cape of good hope inhabited by blacks and rebellious spirited dutch settlers a few trading stations on the coast of west africa the rock of gibraltar the island of malta jamaica a few minor slave labor possessions in the west indies british guiana in south america and on the other side of the world two dumps for convicts at botany bay in australia and in tasmania spain retained cuba and a few settlements in the philippine islands portugal had in africa some vestiges of her ancient claims holland had various islands and possessions in the east indies and dutch guiana and danmark an island or so in the west indies france had one or two west indian islands and french guiana this seemed to be as much as the european powers needed or were likely to acquire of the rest of the world only the east india company showed any spirit of expansion while europe was busy with the napoleonic wars the east india company under a succession of governors general was playing much the same role in india that had been played before by turkaman and such like invaders from the north and after the peace of vienna it went on levying its revenues making wars sending ambassadors to asianic powers a quasi-independent state however with a marked disposition to send wealth westward we cannot tell here in any detail how the british company made its way to supremacy sometimes as the ally of this power sometimes as that and finally as the conqueror of all its power spread to asam send out the map of india began to take on the outlines familiar to the english schoolboy of today a patchwork of native states embraced and held together by the great provinces under direct british rule in 1859 following upon a serious mutiny of the native troops in india this empire of the east india company was annexed to the british crown by an act entitled an act for the better government of india the governor general became a viceroy representing the sovereign and the place of the company was taken by a secretary of state for india responsible to the british parliament in 1877 lord beaconsfield to complete the work caused queen victoria to be proclaimed empress of india upon these extraordinary lines india and britain are linked at the present time india is still the empire of the great mogul but the great mogul has been replaced by the crown republic of the great britain india is an autocracy without an autocrat its rule combines the disadvantage of absolute monarchy with the impersonality and irresponsibility of democratic officialdom the indian was a complaint to make has no visible monarch to go to his emperor is a golden symbol he must circulate pamphlets in england or inspire a question in the british house of commons the more occupied parliament is with british affairs the less attention india will receive and the more she will be at the mercy of her small group of higher officials apart from india there was no great expansion of any european empire until the railways and the steamships were in effective action a considerable school of political thinkers in britain was disposed to regard overseas possessions as a source of weakness to the kingdom the australian settlements developed slowly until in 1842 the discovery of valuable copper mines and in 1851 of gold gave them a new importance improvements on transport were also making australian wool an increasingly marketable commodity in europe canada too was not remarkably progressive until 1849 it was troubled by dissensions between its french and british inhabitants there were several serious revolts and it was only in 1867 that the new constitution creating a federal dominion of canada relieved its internal strains it was the railway that altered the canadian outlook it enabled canada just as it enabled the united states to expand westward to market its corn another produce in europe and in spite of its swift and extensive growth to remain in language and sympathy and interests one community the railway the steamship and the telegraph cable were indeed changing all the conditions of colonial development before 1840 english settlements had already begun in new zealand and a new zealand land company had been formed to exploit the possibilities of the island in 1840 new zealand also was added to the colonial possessions of the british crown canada as we have noted was the first of the british possessions to respond richly to the new economic possibilities that the new methods of transport were opening presently the republics of south america and particularly the argentine republic began to feel in their cattle trade and coffee growing the increased nearness of the european market hitherto the chief commodities that had attracted the european powers into unsettled and barbaric regions had been gold or other metals spices ivory or slaves but in the later quarter of the 19th century the increase of the european populations was obliging their governments to look abroad for staple foods and the growth of scientific industrialism was creating a demand for new raw materials fats and greases of every kind rubber and other his or two disregarded substances it was plain that great britain and holand and portugal were reaping a great and growing commercial advantage from their very considerable control of tropical and subtropical products after 1871 germany and presently france and later italy began to look for an annexed raw material areas or for oriental countries capable of profitable modernization so began a fresh scramble all over the world except in the american region where the monroe doctrine now barred such adventures for politically unprotected lands close to europe was the continent of africa full of vaguely known possibilities in 1850 it was a continent of black mystery only egypt and the coast were known here we have no space to tell the amazing story of the explorers and adventurers who first pierced the african darkness and of the political agents administrators traders settlers and scientific men who followed in the track wonderful races of men like the pygmies strange beasts like the okapi marvelous fruits and flowers and insects terrible diseases astounding scenery of forest and mountain enormous inland seas and gigantic rivers and cascades were revealed a whole new world even remains at zimbabwe of some unrecorded and vanished civilization the southward enterprise of an early people were discovered into this new world came the europeans and found the rifle already there in the hands of the arab slave traders and negro life in disorder by 1900 in half a century all africa was mapped explored estimated and divided between the european powers little heed was given to the welfare of the natives in this scramble the arab slave was indeed curbed rather than expelled but the greed for rubber which was a wild product collected under compulsion by the natives in the belgian congo agreed exacerbated by the clash of inexperienced european administrators with the native population led to horrible atrocities no european power has perfectly clean hands in this matter we cannot tell here in any detail how great britain got possession of egypt in 1883 and remained there in spite of the fact that egypt was technically a part of the turkish empire nor how nearly the scramble led to war between france and great britain in 1898 when a certain colonial marchand crossing central africa from the west coast tried at fashoda to seize the upper nile nor can we tell how the british government first led the bores or dutch settlers of the orange river district and the transval set up independent republics in the inland parts of south africa and then repented and annexed the transval republic in 1877 nor how the transval wars fought for freedom and won it after the battle of majuba hill 1881 majuba hill was made to rankle in the memory of the english people by a persistent press campaign a war with both republics broke out in 1899 a three years war enormously costly to the british people which ended at last in the surrender of the two republics their period of subjugation was a brief one in 1907 after the downfall of the imperialist government which had conquered them the liberals took the south african problem in hand and these former republics became free and fairly willing associates with cape colony and natal in a confederation of all the states of south africa as one self-governing republic under the british crown in a quarter of a century the partition of africa was completed there remained and annexed three comparatively small countries liberia a settlement of liberated negro slaves on the west coast morocco under a muslim sultan and abyssinia a barbaric country with an ancient and peculiar form of christianity which had successfully maintained its independence against italy at the battle of adowa in 1896 end of chapter 62 chapter 63 of a short history of the world by hg wells this liberty box recording is in the public domain chapter 63 european aggression in asia and the rise of japan it is difficult to believe that any large number of people really accepted this headlong painting of the map of africa in european colors as a permanent new settlement of the world's affairs but it is the duty of the historian to record that it was so accepted there was but a shallow historical background to the european mind in the 19th century and no habit of penetrating criticism the quite temporary advantages that the mechanical revolution in the west had given the europeans or was the rest of the old world were regarded by people blankly ignorant of such events as the great mongol conquests as evidences of a permanent and assured european leadership of mankind they had no sense of the transferability of science and its fruits they did not realize that china men and indians could carry on the work of research as ably as frenchmen or englishmen they believed that there was some innate intellectual drive in the west and some innate indolence and conservatism in the east that assured the europeans a world predominance forever the consequence of this infatuation was that the various european foreign offices said themselves not merely to scramble was the british for the savage and undeveloped regions of the world's surface but also to carve up the populace and civilized countries of asia as those these people also were no more than raw material for exploitation the inwardly precarious but outwardly splendid imperialism of the british ruling class in india and the extensive and profitable possessions of the dutch in the east indies filled the rival great powers with dreams of similar glories in persia in the disintegrating ottoman empire and in further india china and japan in 1898 germany seized kyao chow in china britain responded by seizing way highway and the next year the russians took possession of port arthur a flame of hatred for the europeans swept through china there were massacres of europeans and christian converts and in 1900 an attack upon and siege of the european legations in pekin a combined force of europeans made a punitive expedition to pekin rescued the legations and stole an enormous amount of valuable property the russians then seized manchuria and in 1904 the british invaded tibet but now a new power appeared in the struggle of the great powers japan hither to japan had played but a small part in this history her secluded civilization has not contributed very largely to the general shaping of human destinies she has received much but she has given little the japanese proper are of the mongolian race their civilization their writing and their literary and artistic traditions are derived from the chinese their history is an interesting and romantic one they developed a feudal system and the system of rivalry in the earlier centuries of the christian era their attacks upon korea and china are an eastern equivalent of the english wars in france japan was first brought into contact with europe in the 16th century in 1542 some portugese reached it in a chinese junk and in 1549 a jesuit missionary francis javier began his teaching there for a time japan welcomed european intercourse and the christian missionaries made a great number of converts a certain william adams became the most trusted european advisor of the japanese and showed them how to build big ships there were voyages in japanese built ships to india and peru then arose complicated quarrels between the spanish dominicans the portuguese jesuits and the english and dutch protestants each warning the japanese against the political designs of the others the jesuits in a phase of ascendancy persecuted and insulted the buddhists with great acronomy in the end the japanese came to the conclusion that the europeans were an intolerable nuisance and that catholic christianity in particular was a mere cloak for the political dreams of the pope and the spanish monarchy already in possession of the philippine islands there was a great persecution of the christians and in 1638 japan was absolutely closed to europeans and remained closed for over 200 years during these two centuries the japanese were as completely cut off from the rest of the world as though they lived upon another planet it was forbidden to build any ship larger than a mere coasting boat no japanese could go abroad and no european enters the country for two centuries japan remained outside the main current of history she lived on in a state of picturesque feudalism in which about five percent of the population the samurai or fighting men and the nobles and their families tyrannized without restraint over the rest of the population meanwhile the great world outside went on to wider visions and new powers strange shipping became more frequent passing the japanese headlands sometimes ships were wrecked and sailors brought ashore through the dutch settlement in the island of deshima there one link with the outer universe came warnings that japan was not keeping pace with the power of the western world in 1837 a ship sailed into yido bay flying a strange flag of stripes and stars and carrying some japanese sailors she had picked up far adrift in the pacific she was driven off by cannon shot this flag presently reappeared on other ships one in 1849 came to demand the liberation of 18 shipwrecked american sailors then in 1853 came four american warships under commodore perry and refused to be driven away he lay at anchor in forbidden waters and sent messages to the two rulers who at that time shared the control of japan in 1854 he returned with 10 ships amazing ships propelled by steam and equipped with bigger guns and he made proposals for trade and intercourse that the japanese had no power to resist he landed with a guard of 500 men to sign the treaty incredulous crowds watched this visitation from the outer world marching through the streets russia holland and britain followed in the wake of america a great nobleman whose estates commanded the straits of shimonoseki so fit to fire on foreign vessels and a bombardment by a fleet of british french dutch and american warships destroyed his batteries and scattered his swordsmen finally an allied squadron 1865 at anchor of Kyoto imposed a ratification of the treaties which opened japan to the world the humiliation of the japanese by these events was intense with astonishing energy and intelligence they set themselves to bring their culture and organization to the level of the european powers never in all the history of mankind did a nation make such a stride as japan then did in 1866 she was a medieval people a fantastic caricature of the extremist romantic feudalism in 1899 hers was a completely westernized people on the level was the most advanced european powers she completely dispelled the persuasion that asia was in some irrecoverable way hopelessly behind europe she made all european progress seems sluggish by comparison we cannot tell here in any detail of japan's war with china in 1894-95 it demonstrated the extent of her westernization she had an efficient westernized army and a small but sound fleet but the significance of her renaissance though it was appreciated by britain and the united states who were already treating her as if she were a european state was not understood by the other great powers engaged in the pursuit of new indias in asia russia was pushing down through manchuria to korea france was already established far to the south in tonkin and annam germany was prowling hourly on the lookout for some settlement the three powers combined to prevent japan reaping any fruits from the chinese war she was exhausted by the struggle and they threatened her with war japan submitted for a time and gathered her forces within 10 years she was ready for a struggle with russia which marks an epoch in the history of asia the close of the period of european arrogance the russian people were of course innocent and ignorant of the struggle that was being made for them halfway around the world and divisor russian statesmen were against these foolish thrusts but a gang of financial adventurers including the grand dukes his cousins surrounded the tsar they had gambled deeply in the prospective looting of manchuria and china and they would suffer no withdrawal so they began a transportation of great armies of japanese soldiers across the sea to port arsehole and korea and the sending of endless train loads of russian peasants along the syberian railway to die in those distant battlefields the russians badly led and dishonestly provided were beaten on sea and land alike the russian baltic fleet sailed round africa to be utterly destroyed in the straits of chushima a revolutionary movement amongst the common people of russia infuriated by this remote and reasonless slaughter obliged the tsar to end the war in 1905 he returned the southern half of sakhalin which had been seized by russia in 1875 evacuated manchuria resigned korea to japan the european invasion of asia was coming to an end and the retraction of europe's tentacles was beginning end of chapter 63 chapter 64 of a short history of the world by hg wells the slipperybox recording is in the public domain chapter 64 the british empire in 1914 we may note here briefly the varied nature of the constituents of the british empire in 1914 which the steamship and railway had brought together it was and is a quite unique political combination nothing of the sort has ever existed before first and central to the whole system was the crown republic of the united british kingdom including against the will of a considerable part of the irish people ireland the majority of the british parliament made up of the three united parliaments of england and wales scotland and ireland determines the headship the quality and policy of the ministry and determines it largely on considerations arising out of british domestic politics it is this ministry which is the effective supreme government with powers of peace and war over all the rest of the empire next in order of political importance of the british states where the crown republics of australia canada newfoundland the oldest british possession 1583 new zealand and south africa all practically independent and self-governing states in alliance with great britain but each was a representative of the crown appointed by the government in office next the indian empire an extension of the empire of the great mogul with its dependent and protected states reaching now from belakistan to burma and including aidan in all of which empire the british crown and the india office under parliamentary control played the role of the original torcoman dynasty then the ambiguous possession of egypt still nominally a part of the turkish empire and still retaining its own monarch the kadeev but under almost despotic british official rule then the still more ambiguous anglo-egyptian sudan province occupied and administered jointly by the british and by the british controlled egyptian government then a number of a partially self-governing communities some british in origin and some not with elected legislators and an appointed executive such as malta jamaica they have bahamas and bermuda then the crown colonies in which the rule of the british home government through the colonial office merged on autocracy as in seilon trinidad and fiji where there was an appointed council and jiprothar and saint helena where there was a governor then great areas of chiefly tropical lands raw product areas with politically weak and under civilized native communities which were nominally protectorates and administered either by a high commissioner set over native chiefs as in basuto land or over a chartered company as in rhodesia in some cases the foreign office in some cases the colonial office and in some cases the india office has been concerned in acquiring the possessions that fell into this last and least definite class of all but for the most part the colonial office was now responsible for them it will be manifest therefore that no single office and no single brain had ever comprehended the british empire as a whole it was a mixture of growth and accumulations entirely different from anything that has ever been called an empire before it guaranteed a wide peace and security that is why it was endured and sustained by many men of the subject races in spite of official tyrannies and insufficiencies and of much negligence on the part of the home public like the athinian empire it was an overseas empire its ways were seaways and its common link with the british navy like all empires its cohesion was dependent physically upon a method of communication the development of seamanship shipbuilding and steamships between the 16th and 19th centuries had made it a possible and convenient packs the packs britannica and fresh developments of air or swift land transport might at any time make it inconvenient end of chapter 64 chapter 65 of a short history of the world by hg wells the slibrivox recording is in the public domain chapter 65 the age of armament in europe and the great war of 1914 1918 the progress in material science that created this vast steamboat and railway republic of america and spread this precarious british steamship empire over the world produced quite other effects upon the congested nations upon the continent of europe they found themselves confined within boundaries fixed during the horse and high road period of human life and their expansion overseas had been very largely anticipated by great britain only russia had any freedom to expand eastward and she drew a great railway across syberia until she entangled herself in a conflict with japan and pushed southeastwardly towards the borders of persia and india to the annoyance of britain the rest of the european powers were in a state of intensifying congestion in order to realize the full possibilities of the new apparatus of human life they had to rearrange their affairs upon a broader basis either by some sort of voluntary union or by a union imposed upon them by some predominant power the tendency of modern thought was in the direction of the former alternative but all the force of political tradition drove europe towards the latter the downfall of the empire of napoleon the third the establishment of the new german empire pointed men's hopes and fears towards the idea of a europe consolidated under german auspices for 36 years of uneasy peace the polities of europe centered upon that possibility france the steadfast rival of germany for european ascendancy since the division of the empire of charlemagne sought to correct her own weakness by a close alliance with russia and germany linked herself closely with the austrian empire it had ceased to be the holy roman empire in the days of napoleon first and less successfully with the new kingdom of italy at first great britain stood as usual half in and half out of continental affairs but she was gradually forced into a close association with the franco-russian group by the aggressive development of great german navy the grandiose imagination of the emperor williams the second 1888 to 1918 thrust germany into premature overseas enterprise that ultimately brought not only great britain but japan and the united states into their circle of her enemies all these nations armed year after year the proportion of national production devoted to the making of guns equipment battleships and the like increased year after year the balance of things seemed trembling towards war and then war would be averted at last it came germany and austria struck at france and russia and serbia german armies marching through belgium britain immediately came into the war on the side of belgium bringing in japan as her ally and very soon turkey followed on the german side italy entered the war against austria in 1915 and bulgaria joined the central powers in the october of that year in 1916 rumania and in 1917 the united states and china were forced into war against germany it is not within the scope of this history to define the exact share of blame for this vast catastro the more interesting question is not why the great war was begun but why the great war was not anticipated and prevented it is a far graver thing for mankind that scores of millions of people were too patriotic stupid or apathetic to prevent this disaster by a movement towards european unity upon frank and generous lines then that a small number of people may have been active in bringing it about it is impossible within the space at our command here to trace the intricate details of the war within a few months it became apparent that the progress of modern technical science had changed the nature of warfare very profoundly physical science gives power power over steel over distance over disease whether that power is used well or ill depends upon the moral and political intelligence of the world the governments of europe inspired by antiquated policies of hate and suspicion found themselves with unexampled powers both of destruction and resistance in their hands the war became a consuming fire round and about the world causing losses both to victors and vanquished out of all proportion just issues involved the first phase of the war was a tremendous rush of the germans upon paris and an invasion of east prussia by the russians both attacks were held and turned then the power of the defensive developed there was a rapid elaboration of trench warfare until for a time the opposing armies lay entrenched in long lines right across europe unable to make any advance without enormous losses the armies were millions strong and behind them entire populations were organized for the supply of food and munitions to the front then was a cessation of nearly every sort of productive activity except such as contributed to military operations all the able bodied manhood of europe was drawn into the armies or navies or into the improvised factories that served them there was an enormous replacement of men by women in industry probably more than half the people in the belligerent countries of europe changed their employment altogether during this stupendous struggle they were socially uprooted and transplanted education and normal scientific work were restricted or diverted to immediate military ends and the distribution of news was crippled and corrupted by military control and propaganda activities the phase of military deadlock burst slowly into one of aggression upon the combatant populations behind the fronts by the destruction of food supplies and by attacks through the air and also there was a steady improvement in the size and range of the guns employed and of such ingenious devices as poison gas shells and the small mobile forts known as tanks to break down the resistance of troops in the trenches the air offensive was the most revolutionary of all the new methods it carried warfare from two dimensions into three hitherto in the history of mankind war had gone on only where the armies marched and met now it went on everywhere first the zeppelin and then the bombing airplane carried war over and past the front to an ever-increasing area of civilian activities beyond the old distinction maintained in civilized warfare between the civilian and combatant population disappeared everyone who grew food or who sued a garment everyone who fell the tree or repaired the house every railway station and every warhouse was held to be fair game for destruction the air offensive increased in range and terror was every month in the war at last great areas of europe were in a state of siege and subject to nightly raids such exposed cities as london and paris passed sleepless night after sleepless night while the bombs burst the anti-aircraft guns maintained an intolerable racket and the fire engines and ambulances rattled headlong through the darkened and deserted streets the effects upon the minds and health of all people and young children were particularly distressing and destructive pestilence that old follower of warfare did not arrive until the very end of the fighting in 1918 for four years medical science staved off any general epidemic then came a great outbreak of influenza about the world which destroyed many millions of people famine also was staved off for some time by the beginning of 1918 however most of europe was in a state of mitigated and regulated famine the production of food throughout the world had fallen very greatly through the calling off of peasant mankind to the france and the distribution of such food as was produced was impeded by the havoc brought by the submarine by the rupture of customary routes through the closing of frontiers and by the disorganization of the transport system of the world the various governments took possession of the dwindling food supplies and with more or less success rationed their populations by the fourth year the whole world was suffering from shortages of clothing and housing and of most of the normal gear of life as well as of food business and economic life were profoundly disorganized everyone was worried and most people were leading lives of unwanted discomfort the actual warfare ceased in november 1918 after a supreme effort in the spring of 1918 that almost carried the germans to paris the central powers collapsed they had come to an end of their spirit and resources end of chapter 65 chapter 66 of a short history of the world by hg wells this librivox recording is in the public domain chapter 66 the revolution and famine in russia but the good year and more before the collapse of the central powers the half oriental monarchy of russia which had professed to be the continuation of the bizantine empire had collapsed the tsardom had been showing signs of profound rottenness for some years before the war the court was under the sway of a fantastic religious imposter rasputin and the public administration's civil and military was in a state of extreme inefficiency and corruption at the outset of the war there was a great flair of patriotic enthusiasm in russia a vast conscript army was called up for which there was neither adequate military equipment nor a proper supply of competent officers and this great host ill supplied and badly handled was hurled against the german and austrian frontiers there can be no doubt that the early appearance of russian armies in east prussia in september 1914 diverted the energies and attention of the germans from their first victorius drive upon paris the sufferings and deaths of scores of thousands of ill led russian peasants saved france from complete overthrow in that momentous opening campaign and made all western europe the debtors of that great and tragic people but the strain of the war upon this sprawling ill organized empire was too heavy for its strength the russian common soldiers were sent into battle without guns to support them without even rifle ammunition they were wasted by their officers and generals in a delirium of militarist enthusiasm for a time they seemed to be suffering mutely as the beasts suffer but there is a limit to the endurance even of the most ignorant a profound disgust for tsardom was creeping through these armies of betrayed and wasted men from the close of 1915 onward russia was a source of deepening anxiety to her western allies throughout 1916 she remained largely on the defensive and there were rumors of a separate peace with germany on december 29 1916 the monk ross putin was murdered at a dinner party in petrograd and a belated attempt was made to put the tsardom in order by march things were moving rapidly food riots in petrograd developed into a revolutionary insurrection there was an attempted suppression of the duma the representative body there were attempted arrests of liberal leaders the formation of a provisional government under princel wolf and an abdication march 15th by the tsar for a time it seemed that a moderate and controlled revolution might be possible perhaps under a new tsar then it became evident that the destruction of popular confidence in russia had gone too far for any such adjustments the russian people were sick to death of the old order of things in europe of tsars and wars and of great powers it wanted relief and that speedily from unendurable miseries the allies had no understanding of russian realities their diplomatists were ignorant of russian genteel persons with their attention directed to the russian court rather than to russia they blundered steadily with the new situation there was little goodwill among these diplomatists for republicanism and a manifest disposition to embarrass the new government as much as possible at the head of the russian republican government was an eloquent and picturesque leader kerensky who found himself assailed by the forces of a profounder revolutionary movement the social revolution at home and cold-shouldered by the allied governments abroad his allies would neither let him give the russian peasants the land for which they craved nor peace beyond their frontiers the french and the british press pestered their exhausted ally for a fresh offensive but when presently the germans made a strong attack by sea and land upon riga the british admiral take quailed before the prospect of a baltic expedition in relief the new russian republic had to fight unsupported in spite of their naval predominance and the bitter protests of the great english admiral lord fischer 1841 to 1920 it is to be noted that the british and their allies except for some submarine attacks left the germans a complete mastery of the baltics through all the war the russian masses however were resolute to end the war at any cost there had come into existence in petrograd a body representing the workers and common soldiers the soviet and this body clamored for an international conference of socialists at stock hall food riots were occurring in berlin at this time war wearing is in austria and germany was profound and there can be little doubt in the light of subsequent events that such a conference would have precipitated a reasonable peace on democratic lines in 1917 and a german revolution karenski implored his western allies to allow this conference to take place but fearful of a worldwide outbreak of socialism and republicanism they refused in spite of the favorable response by a small majority of the british labor party without either moral or physical help from the allies the unhappy moderate russian republic still fought on and made a last desperate offensive effort in july it failed after some preliminary successes and there came another great slaughtering of russians the limit of russian endurance was reached mutinies broke out in the russian armies and particularly upon the northern front and on november 7th 1917 karenski's government was overthrown and power was seized by the soviets dominated by the obolshevik socialist under lenin and pledged to make peace regardless of the western powers on march 2nd 1918 a separate peace between russia and germany was signed at brestlitovsk it speedily became evident that these bolshevik socialists were men of a very different quality from the rhetorical constitutionalists and revolutionaries of the karenski phase they were fanatical marxist communists they believed that their accession to power in russia was only the opening of a worldwide social revolution and they set about changing the social and economic order with the thoroughness of perfect faith and absolute inexperience the western european and the american governments were themselves much too ill-informed and incapable to guide or help this extraordinary experiment and the press set itself to discredit and the ruling classes to wreck these usurpers upon any terms and at any cost to themselves or to russia a propaganda of abominable and disgusting inventions went on unchecked in the press of the world the bolshevik leaders were represented as incredible monsters glutted with blood and plunder and living lives of sensuality before which the realities of the tsarist court during the rasputin regime paled to a wide purity expeditions were launched at the exhausted country insurgents and raiders were encouraged armed and subsidized and no method of attack was too mean or too monstrous for the frightened enemies of the bolshevik regime in 1919 the russian bolsheviks ruling a country already exhausted and disorganized by five years of intensive warfare were fighting a british expedition at archangel japanese invaders in eastern syberia romanians with french and greek contingents in the south the russian admiral colchak in syberia and general denikin supported by the french fleet in the Crimea in july of that year an estonian army and their general yudinich almost got to petersburg in 1920 the polls incited by the french made a new attack on russia and a new reactionary raider general wrongler took over the task of general denikin in invading and devastating his own country in march 1921 the sailors at cronstadt revolted the russian government under its president lenin survived all these various attacks it showed an amazing tenacity and the common people of russia sustained it unswervingly under conditions of extreme hardship by the end of 1921 both britain and italy had made a sort of recognition of the communist rule but if the bolshevik government was successful in its struggle against foreign intervention and internal revolt it was far less happy in its attempts to set up a new social order based upon communist ideas in russia the russian peasant is a small land hungry proprietor as far from communism in his thoughts and methods as a whale is from flying the revolution gave him the land of the great landowners but could not make him grow food for anything but negotiable money and the revolution among other things had practically destroyed the value of money agricultural production already greatly disordered by the collapse of the railway through war strain shrank to a mere cultivation of food by the peasants for their own consumption the towns starved hasty and ill planned attempts to make over industrial production in accordance with communist ideas were equally unsuccessful by 1920 russia presented the unprecedented spectacle of a modern civilization in complete collapse railways were rusting and passing out of use towns were falling into ruin everywhere there was an immense mortality yet the country still fought with its enemies at its gates in 1921 came a drought and a great famine among the peasant cultivators in the war devastated southeast provinces millions of people starved but the question of the distresses and the possible recuperation of russia brings us too close to current controversies to be discussed here end of chapter 66