 Chapter 67, of a short history of the world by H. G. Wells, this librivox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 67, the political and social reconstruction of the world. The scheme and scale upon which this history is planned do not permit us to enter into the complicated and agronomous disputes that center about the treaties and particularly of the Treaty of Vercels, which concluded the Great War. We are beginning to realize that that conflict, terrible and enormous as it was, ended nothing, began nothing, and settled nothing. It killed millions of people, it wasted and impoverished the world, it smashed Russia altogether. It was at best an acute and frightful reminder that we were living foolishly and confusedly without much plan or foresight in a dangerous and unsympathetic universe. The crudely organized egoisms and passions of national and imperial greed that carried mankind into that tragedy emerged from it sufficiently unimpaired to make some other similar disaster highly probable so soon as the world has a little recovered from its war exhaustion and fatigue. Wars and revolutions make nothing. Their utmost service to mankind is that, in a very rough and painful way, they destroy superannuated and obstructive things. The Great War lifted the threat of German imperialism from Europe and shattered the imperialism of Russia. It cleared away a number of monarchies, but a multitude of flags still waves in Europe, the frontiers still exasperate, great armies accumulate fresh stores of equipment. The peace conference at Versailles was a gathering very ill adapted to do more than carry out the conflicts and defeats of the war to their logical conclusions. The Germans, Austrians, Turks and Bulgarians were permitted no share in its deliberations. They were only to accept the decisions it dictated to them. From the point of view of human welfare, the choice of the place of meeting was particularly unfortunate. It was at Versailles in 1871 that, with every circumstance of triumph and vulgarity, the new German empire had been proclaimed. The suggestion of a melodramatic reversal of that scene in the same Hall of Mirrors was overpowering. Whatever generosity had appeared in the opening phases of the Great War had long been exhausted. The populations of the victorious countries were acutely aware of their own losses and sufferings, and entirely regardless of the fact that the defeat it had paid in the like manner. The war had arisen as a natural and inevitable consequence of the competitive nationalisms of Europe and the absence of any federal adjustment of these competitive forces. War is the necessary logical consummation of independent sovereign nationalities living in too small an area with too powerful an armament. And if the Great War had not come in the form it did, it would have come in some similar form. Just as it will certainly return upon a still more disastrous scale in 20 or 30 years time, if no political unification anticipates and prevents it. States organized for war will make wars as surely as hands will lay eggs, but the feeling of these distressed and war-worn countries disregarded this fact. And the whole of the defeated peoples were treated as morally and materially responsible for all the damage, as they would no doubt have treated the victor peoples, had the issue of war been different. The French and English thought the Germans were to blame, the Germans thought the Russians French and English were to blame, and only an intelligent minority thought that there was anything to blame in the fragmentary political constitution of Europe. The Treaty of Versailles was intended to be exemplary and vindictive, it provided tremendous penalties for the vanquished, it sought to provide compensations for the wounded and suffering victors by imposing enormous depths upon nations already bankrupt, and its attempts to reconstitute international relations by the establishment of a League of Nations against war were manifestly insincere and inadequate. So far as Europe was concerned, it is doubtful if there would have been any attempt, whatever, to organize international relations for a permanent peace. The proposal of the League of Nations was brought into practical politics by the President of the United States of America, President Wilson. Its chief support was in America. So far the United States, this new modern state, had developed new distinctive ideas of international relationship beyond the Monroe Doctrine, which protected the new world from European interference. Now suddenly it was called upon for its mental contribution to the vast problem of the time. It had none. The natural disposition of the American people was towards a permanent world peace. With this however was linked a strong traditional distrust of world-world polities and a habit of isolation from old world entanglements. The Americans had hardly begun to think out an American solution of world problems, when the submarine campaign of the Germans dragged them into the war on the side of the anti-German allies. President Wilson's scheme of a League of Nations was an attempt, a short notice, to create a distinctively American world project. It was a sketchy, inadequate and dangerous scheme. In Europe however it was taken as a matured American point of view. The generality of mankind in 1918-19 was intensely weary of war and anxious at almost any sacrifice to erect barriers against its recurrence. But there was not a single government in the old world, willing to wave one yota of its sovereign independence to attain any such end. The public utterances of President Wilson leading up to the project of a World League of Nations seemed for a time to appeal right over the heads of the governments to the peoples of the world. They were taken as expressing the ripe intentions of America and the response was enormous. Unhappily President Wilson had to deal with governments and not with peoples. He was a man capable of tremendous flashes of vision and yet when put to the test egoistical and limited, under great wave of enthusiasm he awoke, passed and was wasted. Says Dr. Dillon in his book The Peace Conference. Europe, when the president touched its shores, was as clay ready for the creative putter. Never before was a nation so eager to follow a Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars are prohibited and locates unknown. And to their thinking he was just that great leader. In France man bowed down before him with awe and affection. Labour leaders in Paris told me that they shed tears of joy in his presence and that their comrades would go through fire and water to help him to realise his noble schemes. To the working classes in Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his doctrine as their sheet anchor of safety. The fearless Hermulans said if President Wilson were to address the Germans and pronounce a severe sentence upon them they would accept it with resignation and without a murmur and set to work at once. In German Austria his fame was that of a savior and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. Such were the overpowering expectations that President Wilson raised. How completely he disappointed them and how weak and futile was the league of nations he made is too long and too distrustful a story to tell here. He exaggerated a mixed person, our common human tragedy. He was so very great in his dreams and so incapable of in his performance. America descended from the acts of its president and would not join the league Europe accepted from him. There was a slow realisation on the part of the American people that it had been rushed into something for which it was totally unprepared. There was a corresponding realisation on the part of Europe that America had nothing ready to give to the old world in its extremity. Born prematurely and crippled at its birth the league has become indeed with its elaborate and unpractical constitution and its manifest limitations of power a serious obstacle in the way of any effective reorganization of international relationships. The problem would be a clearer one if the league did not yet exist yet that worldwide blaze of enthusiasm that first welcomed the project that readiness of men everywhere round and about the earth of men that is as distinguished from governments for a world control of war is a thing to be recorded with emphasis in any history. Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and mismanage human affairs a real force for world unity and world order exists and grows. From 1918 onward the world entered upon an age of conferences of these the conference at Washington called by President Harding 1921 has been the most successful and suggestive. Notable two is the Genoa Conference 1922 for the appearance of German and Russian delegates at its deliberations. We will not discuss this long procession of conferences and tentatives in any detail it becomes more and more clearly manifest that the huge work of reconstruction has to be done by mankind if a crescendo of such convulsions and world massacres as that of the great war is to be averted. No such hasty improvisation as the League of Nations no patched up system of conferences between this group of states and that which change nothing with an air of settled everything We'll meet the complex political needs of the new age that lies before us. A systematic development and a systematic application of the sciences of human relationship of personal and group psychology of financial and economic science and of education sciences still only in their infancy is required. Narrow and obsolete, dead and dying moral and political ideas have to be replaced by a clearer and a simpler conception of the common origins and destinies of our kind. But if the dangers, confusions and disasters that crowd upon man in these days are enormous beyond any experience of the past it is because science has brought him such powers as he never had before. And the scientific method of fearless thought exhaustively lucid statement and exhaustively criticized planning which has given him these as yet uncontrollable powers gives him also the hope of controlling these powers. Man is still only adolescent. His troubles are not the troubles of senility and exhaustion but of increasing and still undisciplined strength. When we look at all history as one process as we have been doing in this book when we see the steadfast upward struggle of life towards vision and control then we see in their true proportions the hopes and dangers of the present time as yet we are hardly in the earliest dawn of human greatness but in the beauty of flower and sunset in the happy and perfect moments of young animals and in the delight of ten thousand various landscapes we have some intimations of what life can do for us and in some few works of plastic and pictorial art in some great music in a few noble buildings and happy gardens we have an intimation of what the human will can do with material possibilities we have dreams we have at present undisciplined but ever increasing power can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations that it will achieve unity and peace that it will live the children of our blood and lives will live in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know going on from strength to strength in an ever widening circle of adventure and achievement what man has done, the little triumphs of his present state and all this history we have told formed but the prelude to the things that man has got to do End of Chapter 67 Chapter 68 of a short history of the world by H. G. Wells this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chronological Table about the year 1000 B.C. the Aryan peoples were establishing themselves in the peninsulas of Spain, Italy and the Balkans and they were established in North India Knossos was already destroyed and the spacious times of Egypt, of Totmes III Ammanophis III and Ramses II were three or four centuries away weak monarchs of the 21st dynasty were ruling in the Nile Valley Israel was united under her early kings Saul or David or possibly even Solomon may have been reigning Sargon I 2750 B.C. of the Akkadian-Schumerian Empire was a remote memory in Babylonian history more remote than is constant on the great from the world of the present day Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years the Asturians were already dominating the less military Babylonians in 1100 B.C. Tiglas Pilacer the first had taken Babylon but there was no permanent conquest Asturia and Babylonia were still separate empires in China the new Chow dynasty was flourishing Stonehenge in England was already some hundreds of years old the next two centuries saw around a sense of Egypt under the 22nd dynasty the splitting up of the brief little Hebrew kingdom of Solomon the spreading of the Greeks in the Balkans South Italy and Asia Minor and the days of Etruscan predominance in central Italy we begin our list of a certain dates with B.C. 800 the building of Carthage 790 the Ethiopian conquest of Egypt founding of the 25th dynasty 776 first Olympiad 753 Rome built 745 Tiglas Pilacer the third conquered Babylonia and founded the new Assyrian Empire 722 Sargon II armed the Assyrians with iron weapons 721 he deported the Israelites 680 Essar Haddon took thieves in Egypt overthrowing the Ethiopian 25th dynasty 664 Pseumaticus I restored the freedom of Egypt and founded the 26th dynasty to 610 608 Niko of Egypt defeated Josiah king of Judah at the Battle of Megiddo 606 capture of Nineveh by the Chaldeans and Medes foundation of the Chaldean Empire 604 Niko pushed to the Euphrates and was overthrown by Nebuchadnezzar II Nebuchadnezzar carried off the Jews to Babylon 550 Kyrus the Persian succeeded Kixaris the Mede Kyrus conquered Krosus Buddha lived about this time so also did Confucius and Lao Tse 539 Kyrus took Babylon and founded the Persian Empire 521 Darius I the son of Hista space ruled from the Hellespont to the Indus his expedition to Scythia 490 Battle of Marathon 480 Battle of Thermopylae and Salamis 479 The battles of Plataea and Micale completed the repulse of Persia 474 Etrus Confleet destroyed by the Sicilian Greeks 431 Peloponnesian War began to 404 401 Retreat at the Ten Southened 359 Philip became king of Macedonia 338 Battle of Chironia 336 Macedonian troops crossed into Asia Philip murdered 334 Battle of the Granicus 333 Battle of Issus 331 Battle of Arbella 330 Darius III killed 323 Death of Alexander the Great 321 Rise of Chandragupta in the Punjab the Romans completely beaten by the Samnites at the Battle of Coding forks 281 Perus invaded Italy 280 Battle of Heraclea 279 Battle of Auskulum 278 Goals raided into Asia Minor and settled in Galatia 275 Perus left Italy 264 First Punic War Ashoka began to reign Bihar to 227 260 Battle of Muli 256 Battle of Echnomus 246 Sheikhuang Ti became king of Tsim 220 Sheikhuang Ti became emperor of China 214 Great Wall of China began 210 Death of Sheikhuang Ti 202 Battle of Zama 146 Carthage destroyed 133 Attilus bequeathed Pergamum to Rome 102 Marius drove back Germans 100 Triumph of Marius Chinese conquering the Tarim Valley 89 All Italians became Roman citizens 73 The revolt of the slaves under Spartacus 71 Defeat an end of Spartacus 66 Pompey led Roman troops to the Caspian and authorities he encountered the Alani 48 Julius Caesar defeated Pompey at Farsalos 44 Julius Caesar assassinated 27 Augustus Caesar princeps until 14 AD 4 True date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth AD Christian era began 14 Augustus died Tiberius emperor 30 Jesus of Nazareth crucified 41 Claudius the first emperor of the legions made emperor by Praetorian guard after murder of Caligula 68 Suicide of Nero Galba Otto Vitellus emperors in succession 69 Vespasian 102 Panchao on the Caspian Sea 117 Hadrian succeeded Trajan Roman Empire as its greatest extent 138 The Indoschithians at this time were destroying the last traces of Hellenic rule in India 161 Marcus Aurelius succeeded Antonimus Pius 164 Great Plague began and lasted to the death of M. Aurelius 180 this also devastated all Asia nearly a century of war and disorder began in the Roman Empire 220 End of the Haun dynasty beginning of 400 years of division in China 227 Ardashir the first first Sasanid Shah put an end to Arksacide line in Persia 242 Money began his teaching 247 Goth crossed Danube in a great raid 251 Great Victory of Goth Emperor Dysius killed 260 Sapu was the first the second Sasanid Shah took Antioch captured the emperor Valerian and was cut up on his return from Asia Minor by Odinathus of Palmyra 277 Money crucified in Persia 284 Diocletian became emperor 303 Diocletian persecuted the Christians 311 Galerius abandoned the persecution of the Christians 312 Constantin the Great became emperor 323 Constantin presided over the council of Nikia 337 Constantin baptized on his deathbed 361-63 Julian the Apostate attempted to substitute Mithraism for Christianity 392 Theodosius the Great Emperor of East and West 395 Theodosius the Great died Honorius and Arcadius re-divided the empire with Stilico and Alaric as their masters and protectors 410 The Visigoths and their Alaric captured Rome 425 Wandels settling in south of Spain Hans in Pannonia, Gothen, Dalmatia Visigoths and Suevi in Portugal and north Spain English invading Britain 439 Wandels took Carthage 451 Attila raided Gaul and was defeated by Franks, Alemani and Romans at Troy's 453 Death of Attila 455 Wandels sacked Rome 470 Odoachar king of a medley of Toytanic tribes 456 Theodoric the Ostrogoth conquered Italy and became king of Italy but was nominally subject to Constantinople Gothic kings in Italy, Gauss settled on special confiscated lands as a garrison 527 Justinian Emperor 529 Justinian closed the schools at Achaia 457 Justinian Emperor 529 Justinian closed the schools at Athens which had flourished nearly a thousand years Belisarius, Justinian's general took Naples 531 Corse rose the first began to ring 543 Great Plague in Constantinople 553 Goths expelled from Italy by Justinian Justinian died The Lombards conquered most of North Italy leaving Ravenna and Rome Byzantine 570 Muhammad born 579 Corse rose the first died The Lombards dominant in Italy 590 Plague raged in Rome Corse rose the second began to reign 610 Heraclius began to reign 619 Corse rose the second held Egypt 620 Jerusalem, Damascus and armies on Helispont Tang dynasty began in China 622 The Hegira 627 Great Persian defeat at Nineveh by Heraclius Taitung became Emperor of China 628 Cavads the second murdered and succeeded his father Corse rose the second Muhammad wrote letters to all the rulers of the earth 629 Muhammad returned to Mecca 632 Muhammad died Abubakar Caliph 634 Battle of the Yarmouk Muslims took Syria Omar II Caliph 635 Taitung received Nestorian missionaries 637 Battle of Cadetia 638 Jerusalem surrendered to the Caliph Omar 642 Heraclius died 643 Ottoman III Caliph 655 Defeat of the Byzantine fleet by the Muslims 668 The Caliph Moa Via attacked Constantinople by sea 687 Pepin of Herstal, mayor of the palace Reunited Austria and Noistria 711 Muslim army invaded Spain from Africa 715 The domains of the Caliph Valid I Extended from the Pyrenees to China 717-718 Solomon, son and successor of Valid failed to take Constantinople 732 Charles Martel defeated the Muslims near Poitiers 751 Pepin crowned king of the French 768 Pepin died 771 Charlemagne sole king 774 Charlemagne conquered Lombardy 786 Haroun al-Rashid Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad to 809 795 Leo III became Pope to 816 800 Leo crowned Charlemagne emperor of the west 802 Egbert, formerly an English refugee at the court of Charlemagne established himself as king of Vessex 810 Crum of Bulgaria defeated and killed the emperor Nisyphorus 814 Charlemagne died 828 Egbert became first king of England 843 Louis the Pious died and the Carlovingian empire went to pieces until 962 there was no regular succession of Holy Roman emperors though the title appeared intermittently 850 About this time Rurik, a Northman, became ruler of Novgorod and Kiev 852 bore its first Christian king of Bulgaria to 884 865 The fleet of the Russians, Northmen, threatened Constantinople 904 Russian Northmen fleet of Constantinople 9012 Rolf the Ganger established himself in Normandy 919 Henry the Fowler elected king of Germany 936 Otto I became king of Germany in succession to his father Henry the Fowler 941 Russian fleet against threatened Constantinople 962 Otto I king of Germany crowned emperor I Saxon emperor by John XII 987 Hugh Capet became king of France, end of the Carlovingian line of French kings 1016 Canute became king of England, Denmark and Norway 1043 Russian fleet threatened Constantinople 1066 Conquest of England by William Duke of Normandy 1071 Revival of Islam under the Seljuk Turks, Battle of Melesgard 1073 Hildebrand became Pope, Gregory VII, II, 1085 1084 Robert Giscard the Norman Sektorome 1087-99 Urban II Pope 1095 Urban II at Clermont summoned the first crusade 1096 Massacre of the People's Crusade 1099 Godfrey of Boulion captured Jerusalem 1147 The Second Crusade 1169 Saladin, Sultan of Egypt 1176 Frederick Barbarossa acknowledged supremacy of the Pope, Alexander III at Venice 1187 Saladin captured Jerusalem 1189 The Third Crusade 1198 Innocent the Third Pope 1216 Frederick II aged IV king of Sicily became his ward 1202 The Fourth Crusade attacked the Eastern Empire 1204 Capture of Constantinople by the Latins 1214 Cengiz Khan took Pekin 1226 St. Francis of Assisi died, the Franciscans 1227 Cengiz Khan died, Khan from the Caspian to the Pacific 1228 Frederick II embarked upon the Sixth Crusade and acquired Jerusalem 1240 Mongols destroyed Kiev, Russia tributary to the Mongols 1241 Mongol victory in Leignitz in Silesia 1250 Frederick II, the last Hohenstofen emperor, died German interregnum until 1273 1251 Mongol Khan became Great Khan, Kublai Khan governor of China 1258 Hulagu Khan took and destroyed Baghdad 1260 Kublai Khan became Great Khan 1261 The Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latins 1273 Rudolf of Habsburg elected emperor, the Swiss formed their everlasting league 1280 Kublai Khan founded the Yuan dynasty in China 1292 Deaths of Kublai Khan 1293 Roger Bacon the prophet of experimental science died 1348 The Great Plague, the Black Death 1360 In China, the Mongol Yuan dynasty fell and was succeeded by the Ming dynasty to 1644 1377 Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome 1378 The Great Schism, urban the Sixth in Rome, Clemens VII at Avignon 1398 Hus preached Wycliffeism at Prague 1414-1418 The Council of Constance, Hus burned 1415 1417 The Great Schism ended 1453 Ottoman Turks under Mohammed II took Constantinople 1480 Even the Third Grand Duke of Moscow threw off the Mongol allegiance 1481 Deaths of the Sultan Mohammed II while preparing for the conquest of Italy 1486 Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope 1492 Columbus crossed the Atlantic to America 1498 Maximilian I became Emperor 1498 Vasco de Gama sailed round the Cape to India 1499 Switzerland became an independent republic 1500 Charles V Born 1509 Henry VIII King of England 1513 Leo X Pope 1515 Francis I King of France 1520 Solomon the Magnificent, Sultan to 1566 who ruled from Baghdad to Hungary, Charles V Emperor 1525 Baber won the Battle of Panipat, captured Delhi and founded the Mogul Empire 1527 The German troops in Italy under the Constable of Bourbon took and pillaged Rome 1529 Solomon besieged Vienna 1530 Charles V crowned by the Pope Henry VIII began his quarrel with the papacy 1539 The Society of Jesus founded 1546 Martin Luther died 1547 Ivan IV The Terrible took the title of Tsar of Russia 1556 Charles V abdicated Agbar Great Mogul to 1605 Ignatius of Loyola died 1558 Death of Charles V 1566 Suleiman the Magnificent died 1603 James I King of England and Scotland 1620 Mayflower expedition founded New Plymouth First Negro slaves landed at Jamestown 1625 Charles I of England 1626 Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verlund died 1643 Louis XIV began his reign of 72 years 1644 The Manchus ended the Ming dynasty 1648 Treaty of Westphalia thereby Holland and Switzerland were recognized as free republics and Prussia became important The treaty gave a complete victory neither to the imperial crown nor to the princes War of the Front it ended in the complete victory of the French crown 1649 Execution of Charles I of England 1658 Aurangzeb Great Mogul Cromwell died 1660 Charles II of England 1674 New Amsterdam finally became British by treaty and was renamed New York 1683 The lost Turkish attack on Vienna defeated by John III of Poland 1689 Peter the Great of Russia to 1725 1701 Frederick I, First King of Prussia 1707 Death of Aurangzeb the Empire of the Great Mogul disintegrated 1713 Frederick the Great of Prussia born 1715 Louis the 15th of France 1755 to 63 Britain and France struggled for America and India France in alliance with Austria and Russia against Prussia and Britain 1756 to 63 The Seven Years' War 1759 The British general Wolff took Quebec 1760 George III of Britain 1763 Peace of Paris Canada ceded to Britain British dominant in India 1769 Napoleon Bonaparte born 1774 Louis the 16th began his reign 1776 Declaration of Independence by the United States of America 1783 Treaty of Peace between Britain and the new United States of America 1787 The Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia set up the federal government of the United States France discovered to be bankrupt 1788 First Federal Congress of the United States at New York 1789 The French state general assembled storming of the Bastille 1791 Flight to Arrhenys 1792 France declared war on Austria Prussia declared war on France Battle of Well-Me France became a republic 1793 Louis the 16th beheaded 1794 Execution of Robespierre and end of the Jacobin Republic 1795 The Directory Bonaparte suppressed revolt and went to Italy as commander-in-chief 1798 Bonaparte went to Egypt Battle of the Nile 1799 Bonaparte returned to France 1799 He became first consul with enormous powers 1701 Bonaparte became emperor 1702 France the 2nd took the title of emperor of Austria in 1805 1703 And in 1806 he dropped the title of Holy Roman Emperor 1704 So the Holy Roman Empire came to an end 1706 Prussia overthrown Adjena 1708 Napoleon made his brother Joseph, king of Spain 1810 Spanish America became republican 1812 Napoleon's retreat from Moscow 1814 Abdication of Napoleon, Louis the 18th 1824 Charles the 10th of France 1825 Nicholas the 1st of Russia 1st Railway stalked on to Darlington 1827 Battle of Navarino 1829 Greece independent 1830 A year of disturbance Louis Philip ousted Charles the 10th Belgium broke away from Holland Leopold of Saxe Coburgota became king of this new country, Belgium Russian Poland revolted ineffectually 1835 The word socialism first used 1839 Queen Victoria 1840 Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe Coburgota 1852 Napoleon the 3rd emperor of the French 1854-56 Crimean War 1856 Alexander the 2nd of Russia 1861 Victor Emmanuel 1st king of Italy Abraham Lincoln became president USA The American Civil War began 1865 Surrender of Apomatox courthouse Japan opened to the world 1870 Napoleon the 3rd declared war against Prussia 1871 Paris surrendered in January The king of Prussia became German emperor The peace of Frankfurt 1878 The Treaty of Berlin The armed peace of 46 years began in western Europe 1888 Frederick the 2nd March William the 2nd June German emperors 1912 China became a republic 1914 The Great War in Europe began 1917 The two Russian revolutions Establishment of the Bolshevik regime in Russia 1918 The Armistice 1920 First meeting of the League of Nations From which Germany, Austria, Russia and Turkey were excluded And at which the United States was not represented 1921 The Greeks in complete disregard of the League of Nations Make war upon the Turks 1922 Great defeat of the Greeks in Asia Minor by the Turks End of chronological table This is also the end of the book A Short History of the World by H. G. Wells This book was read to you by Christina in Riga, Latvia April 2020 Thank you for listening