H. Wells - The World Set Free

enlisted whatever support he could find; no one was too humble

for an ally or too obstinate for his advances; through the

terrible autumn of the last wars this persistent little visionary

in spectacles must have seemed rather like a hopeful canary

twittering during a thunderstorm. And no accumulation of

disasters daunted his conviction that they could be ended.

For the whole world was flaring then into a monstrous phase of

destruction. Power after Power about the armed globe sought to

anticipate attack by aggression. They went to war in a delirium

of panic, in order to use their bombs first. China and Japan had

assailed Russia and destroyed Moscow, the United States had

attacked Japan, India was in anarchistic revolt with Delhi a pit

of fire spouting death and flame; the redoubtable King of the

Balkans was mobilising. It must have seemed plain at last to

every one in those days that the world was slipping headlong to

anarchy. By the spring of 1959 from nearly two hundred centres,

and every week added to their number, roared the unquenchable

crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs, the flimsy fabric of

the world's credit had vanished, industry was completely

disorganised and every city, every thickly populated area was

starving or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the

capital cities of the world were burning; millions of people had

already perished, and over great areas government was at an end.

Humanity has been compared by one contemporary writer to a

sleeper who handles matches in his sleep and wakesto find

himselfin flames.

For many months it was an open question whether there was to be

found throughout all the race the will and intelligence to face

these new conditionsand make even an attempt to arrest the

downfall of the social order. For a time the war spiritdefeated

every effort to rally the forces of preservation and

construction. Leblanc seemed to be protesting against

earthquakes, and as likely to find a spiritof reason in the

crater of Etna. Even though the shattered official governments

now clamoured for peace, bands of irreconcilables and invincible

patriots, usurpers, adventurers, and political desperadoes, were

everywhere in possession of the simple apparatus for the

disengagement of atomic energy and the initiation of new centres

of destruction. The stuff exercised an irresistible fascination

upon a certain type of mind. Why should any one give in while he

can still destroy his enemies? Surrender? While there is still

a chance of blowing them to dust? The power of destruction which

had once been the ultimateprivilege of government was now the

only power left in the world-and it was everywhere. There were

few thoughtfulmen during that phase of blazing waste who did not

pass through such moods of despairas Barnet describes, and

declare with him: 'This is the end…'

And all the while Leblanc was going to and fro with glittering

glasses and an inexhaustible persuasiveness, urging the manifest

reasonableness of his view upon ears that ceasedpresently to be

inattentive. Never at any time did he betray a doubtthat all

this chaotic conflict would end. No nurse during a nursery

uproar was ever so certain of the inevitable ultimatepeace.

From beingtreated as an amiable dreamerhe came by insensible

degrees to be regarded as an extravagant possibility. Then he

began to seem even practicable. The people who listened to him in

1958 with a smiling impatience, were eager before 1959 was four

months old to knowjust exactly what he thoughtmight be done.

He answered with the patienceof a philosopher and the lucidity

of a Frenchman. He began to receive responsesof a more and more

hopeful type. He came across the Atlantic to Italy, and there he

gathered in the promises for this congress. He chose those high

meadows above Brissago for the reasons we have stated. 'We must

get away,' he said, 'from old associations.' He set to work

requisitioning material for his conference with an assurance that

was justified by the replies. With a slight incredulity the

conference which was to begin a new order in the world, gathered

itself together. Leblanc summoned it without arrogance, he

controlled it by virtueof an infinite humility. Men appeared

upon those upland slopes with the apparatus for wireless

telegraphy; others followed with tents and provisions; a little

cable was flung down to a convenient point upon the Locarno road

below. Leblanc arrived, sedulously directing every detail that

would affect the tone of the assembly. He might have been a

courier in advance rather than the originator of the gathering.

And then there arrived, some by the cable, most by aeroplane, a

few in other fashions, the men who had been called together to

confer upon the stateof the world. It was to be a conference

without a name. Nine monarchs, the presidents of four republics,

a number of ministers and ambassadors, powerful journalists, and

such-like prominent and influentialmen, took part in it. There

were even scientific men; and that world-famous old man, Holsten,

came with the others to contribute his amateur statecraft to the

desperate problem of the age. Only Leblanc would have dared so

to summon figure heads and powers and intelligence, or have had

the courage to hope for their agreement…

Section 2

And one at least of those who were called to this conference of

governments came to it on foot. This was King Egbert, the young

king of the most venerable kingdom in Europe. He was a rebel,

and had always been of deliberate choice a rebel against the

magnificence of his position. He affected long pedestrian tours

and a dispositionto sleep in the open air. He came now over the

Pass of Sta Maria Maggiore and by boat up the lake to Brissago;

thence he walked up the mountain, a pleasantpath set with oaks

and sweet chestnut. For provision on the walk, for he did not

want to hurry, he carried with him a pocketful of bread and

cheese. A certain small retinue that was necessary to his comfort

and dignity upon occasions of statehe sent on by the cable car,

and with him walked his private secretary, Firmin, a man who had

thrown up the Professorship of World Politics in the London

School of Sociology, Economics, and Political Science, to take up

these duties. Firmin was a man of strong rather than rapid

thought, he had anticipated great influencein this new position,

and after some years he was still only beginning to apprehend how

largely his function was to listen. Originally he had been

something of a thinkerupon international politics, an authority

upon tariffs and strategy, and a valued contributor to various of

the higher organs of public opinion, but the atomic bombs had

taken him by surprise, and he had still to recover completely

from his pre-atomic opinions and the silencing effectof those

sustained explosives.

The king's freedom from the trammels of etiquette was very

complete. In theory-and he abounded in theory-his manners were

purely democratic. It was by sheer habit and inadvertency that he

permitted Firmin, who had discovered a rucksack in a small shop

in the town below, to carry both bottles of beer. The king had

never, as a matter of fact, carried anything for himselfin his

life, and he had never noted that he did not do so.

'We will have nobody with us,' he said, 'at all. We will be