The World Set Free Read online

  Firmin, forgetting the habits of a score of years, remained

  seated.

  'WELL,' he said at last. 'And I have known nothing!'

  The king smiled very cheerfully. He liked these talks with

  Firmin.

  Section 3

  That conference upon the Brissago meadows was one of the most

  heterogeneous collections of prominent people that has ever met

  together. Principalities and powers, stripped and shattered until

  all their pride and mystery were gone, met in a marvellous new

  humility. Here were kings and emperors whose capitals were lakes

  of flaming destruction, statesmen whose countries had become

  chaos, scared politicians and financial potentates. Here were

  leaders of thought and learned investigators dragged reluctantly

  to the control of affairs. Altogether there were ninety-three of

  them, Leblanc's conception of the head men of the world. They

  had all come to the realisation of the simple truths that the

  indefatigable Leblanc had hammered into them; and, drawing his

  resources from the King of Italy, he had provisioned his

  conference with a generous simplicity quite in accordance with

  the rest of his character, and so at last was able to make his

  astonishing and entirely rational appeal. He had appointed King

  Egbert the president, he believed in this young man so firmly

  that he completely dominated him, and he spoke himself as a

  secretary might speak from the president's left hand, and

  evidently did not realise himself that he was telling them all

  exactly what they had to do. He imagined he was merely

  recapitulating the obvious features of the situation for their

  convenience. He was dressed in ill-fitting white silk clothes,

  and he consulted a dingy little packet of notes as he spoke.

  They put him out. He explained that he had never spoken from

  notes before, but that this occasion was exceptional.

  And then King Egbert spoke as he was expected to speak, and

  Leblanc's spectacles moistened at that flow of generous

  sentiment, most amiably and lightly expressed. 'We haven't to

  stand on ceremony,' said the king, 'we have to govern the world.

  We have always pretended to govern the world and here is our

  opportunity.'

  'Of course,' whispered Leblanc, nodding his head rapidly, 'of

  course.'

  'The world has been smashed up, and we have to put it on its

  wheels again,' said King Egbert. 'And it is the simple common

  sense of this crisis for all to help and none to seek advantage.

  Is that our tone or not?'

  The gathering was too old and seasoned and miscellaneous for any

  great displays of enthusiasm, but that was its tone, and with an

  astonishment that somehow became exhilarating it began to resign,

  repudiate, and declare its intentions. Firmin, taking notes

  behind his master, heard everything that had been foretold among

  the yellow broom, come true. With a queer feeling that he was

  dreaming, he assisted at the proclamation of the World State, and

  saw the message taken out to the wireless operators to be

  throbbed all round the habitable globe. 'And next,' said King

  Egbert, with a cheerful excitement in his voice, 'we have to get

  every atom of Carolinum and all the plant for making it, into our

  control…'

  Firman was not alone in his incredulity. Not a man there who was

  not a very amiable, reasonable, benevolent creature at bottom;

  some had been born to power and some had happened upon it, some

  had struggled to get it, not clearly knowing what it was and what

  it implied, but none was irreconcilably set upon its retention at

  the price of cosmic disaster. Their minds had been prepared by

  circumstances and sedulously cultivated by Leblanc; and now they

  took the broad obvious road along which King Egbert was leading

  them, with a mingled conviction of strangeness and necessity.

  Things went very smoothly; the King of Italy explained the

  arrangements that had been made for the protection of the camp

  from any fantastic attack; a couple of thousand of aeroplanes,

  each carrying a sharpshooter, guarded them, and there was an

  excellent system of relays, and at night all the sky would be

  searched by scores of lights, and the admirable Leblanc gave

  luminous reasons for their camping just where they were and going

  on with their administrative duties forthwith. He knew of this

  place, because he had happened upon it when holiday-making with

  Madame Leblanc twenty years and more ago. 'There is very simple

  fare at present,' he explained, 'on account of the disturbed

  state of the countries about us. But we have excellent fresh

  milk, good red wine, beef, bread, salad, and lemons… In a

  few days I hope to place things in the hands of a more efficient

  caterer…'

  The members of the new world government dined at three long

  tables on trestles, and down the middle of these tables Leblanc,

  in spite of the barrenness of his menu, had contrived to have a

  great multitude of beautiful roses. There was similar

  accommodation for the secretaries and attendants at a lower level

  down the mountain. The assembly dined as it had debated, in the

  open air, and over the dark crags to the west the glowing June

  sunset shone upon the banquet. There was no precedency now among

  the ninety-three, and King Egbert found himself between a

  pleasant little Japanese stranger in spectacles and his cousin of

  Central Europe, and opposite a great Bengali leader and the

  President of the United States of America. Beyond the Japanese

  was Holsten, the old chemist, and Leblanc was a little way down

  the other side.

  The king was still cheerfully talkative and abounded in ideas. He

  fell presently into an amiable controversy with the American, who

  seemed to feel a lack of impressiveness in the occasion.

  It was ever the Transatlantic tendency, due, no doubt, to the

  necessity of handling public questions in a bulky and striking

  manner, to over-emphasise and over-accentuate, and the president

  was touched by his national failing. He suggested now that there

  should be a new era, starting from that day as the first day of

  the first year.

  The king demurred.

  'From this day forth, sir, man enters upon his heritage,' said

  the American.

  'Man,' said the king, 'is always entering upon his heritage. You

  Americans have a peculiar weakness for anniversaries-if you will

  forgive me saying so. Yes-I accuse you of a lust for dramatic

  effect. Everything is happening always, but you want to say this

  or this is the real instant in time and subordinate all the

  others to it.'

  The American said something about an epoch-making day.

  'But surely,' said the king, 'you don't want us to condemn all

  humanity to a world-wide annual Fourth of July for ever and ever

  more. On account of this harmless necessary day of declarations.

  No conceivable day could ever deserve that. Ah! you do not know,

  as I do, the devastations of the memorable. My poor grandparents

&nbs
p; were-RUBRICATED. The worst of these huge celebrations is that

  they break up the dignified succession of one's contemporary

  emotions. They interrupt. They set back. Suddenly out come the

  flags and fireworks, and the old enthusiasms are furbished

  up-and it's sheer destruction of the proper thing that ought to

  be going on. Sufficient unto the day is the celebration thereof.

  Let the dead past bury its dead. You see, in regard to the

  calendar, Iam for democracy and you are for aristocracy. All

  things I hold, are august, and have a right to be lived through

  on their merits. No day should be sacrificed on the grave of

  departed events. What do you think of it, Wilhelm?'

  'For the noble, yes, all days should be noble.'

  'Exactly my position,' said the king, and feltpleased at what he

  had been saying.

  And then, since the American pressed his idea, the king contrived

  to shift the talk from the question of celebrating the epoch they

  were making to the question of the probabilities that lay ahead.

  Here every one became diffident. They could see the world

  unified and at peace, but what detail was to follow from that

  unification they seemed indisposed to discuss. This diffidence

  struck the king as remarkable. He plunged upon the possibilities

  of science. All the huge expenditure that had hitherto gone into

  unproductive naval and military preparations, must now, he

  declared, place research upon a new footing. 'Where one man

  worked we will have a thousand.' He appealed to Holsten. 'We

  have only begun to peep into these possibilities,' he said. 'You

  at any rate have sounded the vaults of the treasure house.'

  'They are unfathomable,' smiled Holsten.

  'Man,' said the American, with a manifest resolve to justify and

  reinstate himself after the flickering contradictions of the

  king, 'Man, I say, is only beginning to enter upon his heritage.'

  'Tell us some of the things you believe we shall presently learn,

  give us an idea of the things we may presently do,' said the king

  to Holsten.

  Holsten opened out the vistas…

  'Science,' the king cried presently, 'is the new king of the

  world.'

  'OUR view,' said the president, 'is that sovereignty resides with

  the people.'

  'No!' said the king, 'the sovereign is a being more subtle than

  that. And less arithmetical. Neither my family nor your

  emancipated people. It is something that floats about us, and

  above us, and through us. It is that common impersonal will and

  sense of necessity of which Science is the best understood and

  most typical aspect. It is the mind of the race. It is that

  which has brought us here, which has bowed us all to its

  demands…'

  He paused and glanced down the table at Leblanc, and then

  re-opened at his former antagonist.

  'There is a disposition,' said the king, 'to regard this

  gathering as if it were actually doing what it appears to be

  doing, as if we ninety-odd men of our own free will and wisdom

  were unifying the world. There is a temptation to consider

  ourselves exceptionally fine fellows, and masterful men, and all

  the rest of it. We are not. I doubt if we should average out as

  anything abler than any other casually selected body of

  ninety-odd men. We are no creators, we are consequences, we are

  salvagers-or salvagees. The thing to-day is not ourselves but

  the wind of conviction that has blown us hither…'

  The American had to confess he could hardly agree with the king's

  estimate of their average.

  'Holster, perhaps, and one or two others, might lift us a

  little,' the king conceded. 'But the rest of us?'

  His eyes flitted once more towards Leblanc.

  'Look at Leblanc,' he said. 'He's just a simple soul. There are

  hundreds and thousands like him. I admit, a certain dexterity, a

  certain lucidity, but there is not a country town in France where

  there is not a Leblanc or so to be found about two o'clock in its

  principal cafe. It's just that he isn't complicated or

  Super-Mannish, or any of those things that has made all he has

  done possible. But in happier times, don't you think, Wilhelm, he

  would have remained just what his father was, a successful

  epicier, very clean, very accurate, very honest. And on holidays

  he would have gone out with Madame Leblanc and her knitting in a

  punt with a jar of something gentle and have sat under a large

  reasonable green-lined umbrella and fished very neatly and

  successfully for gudgeon…'

  The president and the Japanese prince in spectacles protested

  together.

  'If I do him an injustice,' said the king, 'it is only because I

  want to elucidate my argument. I want to make it clear how small

  are men and days, and how great is man in comparison…'

  Section 4

  So it was King Egbert talked at Brissago after they had

  proclaimed the unity of the world. Every evening after that the

  assembly dined together and talked at their ease and grew

  accustomed to each other and sharpened each other's ideas, and

  every day they worked together, and really for a time believed

  that they were inventing a new government for the world. They

  discussed a constitution. But there were matters needing

  attention too urgently to wait for any constitution. They

  attended to these incidentally. The constitution it was that

  waited. It was presently found convenient to keep the

  constitution waiting indefinitely as King Egbert had foreseen,

  and meanwhile, with an increasing self-confidence, that council

  went on governing…

  On this first evening of all the council's gatherings, after King

  Egbert had talked for a long time and drunken and praised very

  abundantly the simple red wine of the country that Leblanc had

  procured for them, he fathered about him a group of congenial

  spirits and fell into a discourse upon simplicity, praising it

  above all things and declaring that the ultimate aim of art,

  religion, philosophy, and science alike was to simplify. He

  instanced himself as a devotee to simplicity. And Leblanc he

  instanced as a crowning instance of the splendour of this

  quality. Upon that they all agreed.

  When at last the company about the tables broke up, the king

  found himself brimming over with a peculiar affection and

  admiration for Leblanc, he made his way to him and drew him aside

  and broached what he declared was a small matter. There was, he

  said, a certain order in his gift that, unlike all other orders

  and decorations in the world, had never been corrupted. It was

  reserved for elderly men of supreme distinction, the acuteness of

  whose gifts was already touched to mellowness, and it had

  included the greatest names of every age so far as the advisers

  of his family had been able to ascertain them. At present, the

  king admitted, these matters of stars and badges were rather

  obscured by more urgent affairs, for his own part he had never

  set any value upon them at all, but a time might come when
they

  would be at least interesting, and in short he wished to confer

  the Order of Merit upon Leblanc. His sole motive in doing so, he

  added, was his strong desire to signalise his personal esteem.

  He laid his hand upon the Frenchman's shoulder as he said these

  things, with an almost brotherly affection. Leblanc received this

  proposal with a modest confusion that greatly enhanced the king's

  opinion of his admirable simplicity. He pointed out that eager

  as he was to snatch at the proffered distinction, it might at the

  present stage appear invidious, and he therefore suggested that

  the conferring of it should be postponed until it could be made

  the crown and conclusion of his services. The king was unable to

  shake this resolution, and the two men parted with expressions of

  mutual esteem.

  The king then summoned Firmin in order to make a short note of a

  number of things that he had said during the day. But after about

  twenty minutes' work the sweet sleepiness of the mountain air

  overcame him, and he dismissed Firmin and went to bed and fell

  asleep at once, and slept with extreme satisfaction. He had had

  an active, agreeable day.

  Section 5

  The establishment of the new order that was thus so humanly

  begun, was, if one measures it by the standard of any preceding

  age, a rapid progress. The fighting spirit of the world was

  exhausted. Only here or there did fierceness linger. For long

  decades the combative side in human affairs had been monstrously

  exaggerated by the accidents of political separation. This now

  became luminously plain. An enormous proportion of the force that

  sustained armaments had been nothing more aggressive than the

  fear of war and warlike neighbours. It is doubtful if any large

  section of the men actually enlisted for fighting ever at any

  time really hungered and thirsted for bloodshed and danger. That

  kind of appetite was probably never very strong in the species

  after the savage stage was past. The army was a profession, in

  which killing had become a disagreeable possibility rather than

  an eventful certainty. If one reads the old newspapers and

  periodicals of that time, which did so much to keep militarism

  alive, one finds very little about glory and adventure and a

  constant harping on the disagreeableness of invasion and

  subjugation. In one word, militarism was funk. The belligerent

  resolution of the armed Europe of the twentieth century was the