H. Wells - The World Set Free

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

forgiveme 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 realinstant 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

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, I amfor 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 thinkof it, Wilhelm?'

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

'Exactly my position,' said the king, and felt pleasedat 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 seethe 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 himselfafter 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 beingmore 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 understoodand

most typical aspect. It is the mindof 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

ourselvesexceptionally fine fellows, and masterful men, and all

the restof it. We are not. I doubtif 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 ourselvesbut

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 restof 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 happiertimes, 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 reallyfor 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

spiritsand fell into a discourse upon simplicity, praising it

above all things and declaring that the ultimateaim of art,

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

instanced himselfas 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 himselfbrimming 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