Chapter I: Front Matter

THE WAY
THE WORLD IS GOING

_GUESSES & FORECASTS OF
THE YEARS AHEAD_

_BY_
H. G. Wells

GARDEN CITY
_NEW YORK_
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN
AND COMPANY, INC.
1929

COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN &
COMPANY, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY THE NEW
YORK TIMES MAGAZINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

FIRST EDITION

NOTE

These articles were written for great weekly newspapers upon both sides of the Atlantic, and I note rather than complain that they appeared after suffering a certain amount of mutilation. I expressed my disapproval of such changes as were made, as vividly as possible, but the remedies a writer has are uncertain and tedious and the editorial interference went on to the end. The paragraphs were cut to pieces; there was a brightly careless excision of phrases and sentences apparently done at the eleventh hour to fit space and there was a frequent insertion of uncongenial cross-heads and headings more satisfactory to the editorial mind. The article in which I replied to the repeated personal attacks of Lord Birkenhead and his son suffered exceptionally in the London version. America with ampler columns was more respectful to the general text, but made one magnificent cut of the whole article about Sacco and Vanzetti, paid for it without complaint and did not print a line of it.

I make this note in justice to myself rather than as an indictment of these big newspapers. It is a considerable stimulus to address one’s ideas to their Sunday morning audience, and it is amusing to try saying what one has to say in as editor-proof a form as possible. It is like shouting across an intervener at a crowd. I would be the last person in the world to object to the criticism that there is a distinct flavour of shouting and a disposition to reiterate in this book. Mercifully, I have removed the emphatic cross-heads in restoring my original text. Quips and quirks, fine phrases and fine qualifications, and, above all, suggestions and hints, one flings into such work to please oneself, praying God that the printer and sub-editor will at least in their final crisis of adjustment cut out rather than distort. And when all its defects have been discounted, this syndicated newspaper work still gives a handsome opportunity for saying things broadly and plainly, and obliges one, very wholesomely, to state one’s current state of mind about this, that, and the other thing in simple lucid terms. One has the sense of committing oneself to readers who may never have heard of one before, and who may, for example, base a life’s antipathy on a single rash assertion.

Inserted among these papers is a lecture given in Paris in 1927 called “Democracy Under Revision.” If I may so far assist the reader, I would point out that this is much more closely written than the rest of this book. It is natural to weigh one’s _p_s and _q_s when one faces the ordeal of presently reading it all aloud to an exceptionally intelligent audience. This lecture is something more than an essay upon methods of government. It is an essay upon social structure. It carries in it the statement of a general principle of artistic criticism and has various sentences capable of considerable expansion. As nearly everything else in the book is in a state of quite generous expansion this lecture may be stepped over unawares. But I will be glad to find what I have to say therein about the modern novel and the modern play, for instance, not altogether disregarded. And anyhow, I would like to underline the title to the extent of remarking that the revision of democracy is not its repudiation.

H. G. Wells

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The articles included in this volume
appeared in the New York _Times_
Magazine in fortnightly installments
during 1927 under the general heading,
“The Way the World Is Going.”

CONTENTS

I. Man Becomes a Different Animal. Delusions
about Human Fixity 1

II. What Is Happening in China? Does the
Kuomintang Foreshadow a New Sort of
Government in the World? 13

III. What Is Fascism? Whither Is It Taking Italy? 25

IV. Doubts of Democracy. New Experiments
in Government 37

V. Democracy Under Revision: a Lecture
Delivered at the Sorbonne on March 15th, 1927 51

VI. The Absurdity of British Politics. A
Shadow on the Whole World. What
Has to Be Done about It? 78

VII. Baldwinism a Danger to the World.
Wanted, a Coalition Government. The
Deadlock and the Way Out 89

VIII. Communism and Witchcraft 100

IX. The Future of Labour. The Struggle between
Capital and Labour. Controversial Hallucinations 110

X. What Is the British Empire Worth to
Mankind? Meditations of an Empire Citizen 122

XI. The Present Uselessness and Danger of
Aeroplanes. A Problem in Organization 132

XII. Changes in the Arts of War. Are Armies
Needed any Longer? The Twilight of the Guards 145

XIII. Delusions about World Peace. The Price of Peace 158

XIV. The Possibility of War Between Britain and America.
Such a War Is Being Prepared Now. What Are
Intelligent People to Do about It? 168

XV. The Remarkable Vogue of Broadcasting:
Will It Continue? 180

XVI. The Silliest Film: Will Machinery Make Robots of Men? 192

XVII. Is Life Becoming Happier? 204

XVIII. Experimenting with Marriage. Legal
Recognition of Current Realities 214

XIX. New Light on Mental Life: Mr. J. W.
Dunne’s Experiments with Dreaming 225

XX. Popular Feeling and the Advancement of
Science. Anti-vivisection 237

XXI. The New American People: What Is Wrong with It? 248

XXII. Outrages in Defence of Order. The Proposed
Murder of Two American Radicals 257

XXIII. Some Plain Words to Americans. Are the
Americans a Sacred People? Is International
Criticism Restricted to the Eastward Position? 270

XXIV. Fuel-getting in the Modern World 282

XXV. The Man of Science and the Expressive Man.
To Whom Does the Future Belong? Some Thoughts
about Ivan Pavloff and George Bernard Shaw 291

XXVI. The Future of the Novel. Difficulties of
the Modern Novelist 303

XXVII. Is a Belief in a Spirit World Growing?
Why Many Sensible Men Continue to
Doubt and Disregard It. What Is Immortality? 315