Surprising Things I Found When I Finally Read Wells' The War That Will End War

I just got around to reading this famous work and I found myself surprised by a number of the passages.  MH, Editor/Publisher

H.G. Wells Was Among the 53 British Authors Who Supported
the War in a September 1914 Letter

You keep using that [title]. I do not think it means what 

you think it means.

Paraphrasing Inigo Montoya

1.  Despite His Well-Known Early Support for the War, the 1914 Version of Wells Is Startlingly Blood Thirsty

This Prussian Imperialism has been for forty years an intolerable nuisance in the earth. Ever since the crushing of the French in 1871 the evil thing has grown and cast its spreading shadow over Europe.

So that the harvest of this darkness comes now almost as a relief, and it is a grim satisfaction in our discomforts that we can at last look across the roar and torment of battlefields to the possibility of an organized peace. For this is now a war for peace.

To those who love peace there can be no other hope in the present conflict than the defeat, the utter discrediting of the German legend, the ending for good and all of the blood and iron superstition, of Krupp, flag-wagging Teutonic Kiplingism, and all that criminal, sham efficiency that centers in Berlin.  Never was war so righteous as war against Germany now. Never has any State in the world so clamored for punishment.

I find myself enthusiastic for this war against Prussian militarism. [33]

2.  "Taking the Profit Out of War":  A Strategy for Bringing Socialism?

Do Liberals realize that the individualist capitalist system is helpless now? It may be picked up unresistingly. It is stunned. A new economic order may be improvised and probably will in some manner be improvised in the next two or three years. 

There is no going back now to peace; our men must die, in heaps, in thousands; we cannot delude ourselves with dreams of easy victories; we must all suffer endless miseries and  anxieties; scarcely a human affair is there that will not be marred and darkened by this war. Out of it all must come one universal resolve: that this iniquity must be plucked out by the roots. Whatever follies still lie ahead for mankind this folly at least must end. There must be no more buying and selling of guns and warships and war-machines. There must be no more gain in arms. Kings and Kaisers must cease to be the commercial travelers of monstrous armament concerns.

Let me set out the suggestion very plainly. All the plant for the making of war material throughout the world must be taken over by the Government of the State in which it exists; every gun factory, every rifle factory, every dockyard for the building of warships. [45]

Wells Later in the War

3.  Let's Reshape Europe!

Do Liberals realize that now is the time to plan the confederation and collective disarmament of Europe, now is the time to re-draw the map of Europe so that there may be no more rankling sores or unsatisfied national ambitions? [67]

When the Prussians invaded Luxemburg they tore up the map of Europe. To the redrawing of that map a thousand complex forces will come. . .That means that we have to re-draw the map so that there shall be, for just as far as we can see ahead, as little cause for warfare among us Western nations as possible. That means that we have to redraw it justly. And very extensively. [For example] I suggest that France must recover Lorraine, and that Luxemburg must be linked in closer union with Belgium. Alsace, it seems to me, should be given a choice between France and an entry into the Swiss Confederation. It would possibly choose France. Denmark should have again the distinctly Danish part of her lost provinces restored to her. Trieste and Trent, and perhaps also Pola, should be restored to Italy. . . The break-up of the Austrian Empire has hung over Europe like a curse for forty years. Let us break it up now and have done with it. What is to become of the non-German regions of Austria-Hungary? And what is to happen upon the Polish frontier of Russia? [56]

4.  A Silver Lining—An Opportunity for the Intelligensia?

The character of the new age that must come out of the catastrophes of this epoch will be no mechanical consequence of inanimate forces. Will and ideas will take a larger part in this swirl-ahead than they have even taken in any previous collapse. . . The common man and base men are scared to docility. Rulers, pomposities, obstructives are suddenly apologetic, helpful, asking for help. This is a time of incalculable plasticity. For the men who know what they want, the moment has come. It is the supreme opportunity, the test or condemnation of constructive liberal thought in the world. [66]

5.  An Odd Appeal to the American People

This appeal comes to you from England at war, and it is addressed to you because upon your nation rests the issue of this conflict. The influence of your States upon its nature and duration must needs be enormous, and at its ending you may play a part such as no nation has ever played since the world began.

For it rests with you to establish and secure or to refuse to establish and secure the permanent peace of the world, the final ending of war.

We do not ask you for military help. Keep the peace which it is your unparalleled good fortune to enjoy so securely. But keep it fairly. Remember that we fight now for national existence, and that in the night, even as this is written, within a hundred miles or so of this place, the dark ships [?] feel their way among the floating mines with which the Germans have strewn the North Sea, [81]

6.  Where Are Those Christians?

We look to the Church that takes for its purposes the name of the Prince of Peace. In England, except for the smallest, meekest protest against war, any sort of war, on the part of a handful of Quakers, Christianity is silent. Its universally present organization speaks no coherent counsels. Its workers for the most part are buried in the loyal manufacture of flannel garments and an inordinate quantity of bed-socks for the wounded. [104]

Over the years, we have presented several other articles examining Wells' prophesies, commentary and reflections on the World War.  See our articles examining those ideas HERE

Source: Except for some minor merging of different sections covering similar ideas, the material above is all from the original version of The War That Will End War, which can be found for free on Project Gutenberg.