H. Wells - Selected Stories of H. G. Wells

I am able to quote this particular article because as a matter of fact it lies before me as I write. It is indeed, as I will explain, all that remains of this remarkable newspaper. The rest has been destroyed and all we can ever know of it now is through Brownlow’s sound but not absolutely trustworthy memory.

My mind, as the days pass, hangs on to that Federal Board. Does that phrase mean, as just possibly it may mean, a world federation, a scientific control of all human life only forty years from now? I find that idea—staggering. I have always believed that the world was destined to unify—“Parliament of Mankind and Confederation of the World,” as Tennyson put it—but I have always supposed that the process would take centuries. But then my time sense is poor. My disposition has always been to underestimate the pace of change. I wrote in 1900 that there would be aeroplanes “in fifty years’ time.” And the confounded things were buzzing about everywhere and carrying passengers before 1920.

Let me tell very briefly of the rest of that evening paper. There seemed to be a lot of sport and fashion; much about something called “Spectacle”—with pictures—a lot of illustrated criticism of decorative art and particularly of architecture. The architecture in the pictures he saw was “towering—kind of magnificent. Great blocks of building. New York, but more so and all run together”… Unfortunately he cannot sketch. There were sections devoted to something he couldn’t understand, but which he thinks was some sort of “radio programme stuff.”

All that suggests a sort of advanced human life very much like the life we lead today, possibly rather brighter and better.

But here is something—different.

“The birth-rate,” said Brownlow, searching his mind, “was seven in the thousand.”

I exclaimed. The lowest birth-rates in Europe now are sixteen or more per thousand. The Russian birth-rate is forty per thousand, and falling slowly.

“It was seven,” said Brownlow. “Exactly seven. I noticed it. In a paragraph.”

But what birth-rate, I asked. The British? The European?

“It said the birth-rate,” said Brownlow. “Just that.”

That I think is the most tantalising item in all this strange glimpse of the world of our grandchildren. A birth-rate of seven in the thousand does not mean a fixed world population; it means a population that is being reduced at a very rapid rate—unless the death-rate has gone still lower. Quite possibly people will not be dying so much then but living very much longer. On that Brownlow could throw no light. The people in the pictures did not look to him an “old lot.” There were plenty of children and young or young-looking people about.

“But Brownlow,” I said, “wasn’t there any crime?”

“Rather,” said Brownlow. “They had a big poisoning case on, but it was jolly hard to follow. You know how it is with these crimes. Unless you’ve read about it from the beginning, it’s hard to get the hang of the situation. No newspaper has found out that for every crime it ought to give a summary up-to-date every day—and forty years ahead, they hadn’t. Or they aren’t going to. Whichever way you like to put it.

“There were several crimes and what newspaper men call stories,” he resumed; “personal stories. What struck me about it was that they seemed to be more sympathetic than our reporters, more concerned with the motives and less with just finding someone out. What you might call psychological—so to speak.”

“Was there anything much about books?” I asked him.

“I don’t remember anything about books,” he said…

And that is all. Except for a few trifling details such as a possible thirteenth month inserted in the year, that is all. It is intolerably tantalising. That is the substance of Brownlow’s account of his newspaper. He read it—as one might read any newspaper. He was just in that state of alcoholic comfort when nothing is incredible and so nothing is really wonderful. He knew he was reading an evening newspaper of forty years ahead and he sat in front of his fire, and smoked and sipped his drink and was no more perturbed than he would have been if he had been reading an imaginative book about the future.

Suddenly his little brass clock pinged two.

He got up and yawned. He put that astounding, that miraculous newspaper down as he was wont to put any old newspaper down; he carried off his correspondence to the desk in his bureau, and with the swift laziness of a very tired man he dropped his clothes about his room anyhow and went to bed.

But somewhen in the night he woke up feeling thirsty and grey-minded. He lay awake and it came to him that something very strange had occurred to him. His mind went back to the idea that he had been taken in by a very ingenious fabrication. He got up for a drink of Vichy water and a liver tabloid, he put his head in cold water and found himself sitting on his bed towelling his hair and doubting whether he had really seen those photographs in the very colours of reality itself, or whether he had imagined them. Also running through his mind was the thought that the approach of a world timber famine for 1985 was something likely to affect his investments and particularly a trust he was setting up on behalf of an infant in whom he was interested. It might be wise, he thought, to put more into timber.

He went back down the corridor to his sitting-room. He sat there in his dressing-gown, turning over the marvellous sheets. There it was in his hands complete in every page, not a corner torn. Some sort of autohypnosis, he thought, might be at work, but certainly the pictures seemed as real as looking out of a window. After he had stared at them some time he went back to the timber paragraph. He felt he must keep that. I don’t know if you will understand how his mind worked—for my own part I can see at once how perfectly irrational and entirely natural it was—but he took this marvellous paper, creased the page in question, tore off this particular article and left the rest. He returned very drowsily to his bedroom, put the scrap of paper on his dressing-table, got into bed and dropped off to sleep at once.

When he awoke it was nine o’clock; his morning tea was untasted by his bedside and the room was full of sunshine. His parlourmaid-housekeeper had just re-entered the room.

“You were sleeping so peacefully,” she said; “I couldn’t bear to wake you. Shall I get you a fresh cup of tea?”

Brownlow did not answer. He was trying to think of something strange that had happened.

She repeated her question.

“No. I’ll come and have breakfast in my dressing-gown before my bath,” he said, and she went out of the room.

Then he saw the scrap of paper.

In a moment he was running down the corridor to the sitting-room. “I left a newspaper,” he said. “I left a newspaper.”

She came in response to the commotion he made.

“A newspaper?” she said. “It’s been gone this two hours, down the chute, with the dust and things.”

Brownlow had a moment of extreme consternation.

He invoked his God. “I wanted it kept!” he shouted. “I wanted it kept.”

“But how was I to know you wanted it kept?”

“But didn’t you notice it was a very extraordinary-looking newspaper?”

“I’ve got none too much time to dust out this flat to be looking at newspapers,” she said. “I thought I saw some coloured photographs of bathing ladies and chorus girls in it, but that’s no concern of mine. It didn’t seem a proper newspaper to me. How was I to know you’d be wanting to look at them again this morning?”

“I must get that newspaper back,” said Brownlow. “It’s—it’s vitally important… If all Sussex Court has to be held up I want that newspaper back.”