The Shape of Things to Come, page 63
5. the old alchemist: The precursor to the chemist, alchemists were medieval pseudo-scientists whose chief preoccupations were attempts to transmute base metals into gold and develop an elixir for eternal life. The practice was in decline by the early eighteenth century.
§5 THE FIRST CONFERENCE AT BASRA: 1965
1. A popular story published in 1933, Man’s Mortality… Michael Arlen, i895-i9)o: Originally named Dikran Kouyoumdjian, Michael Arlen (1895-1956) was a Bulgarian-born British novelist. In addition to Man’s Mortality, he published Piracy (1922), The Green Hat (1924) and collections of short stories.
2. the Bourses: ‘Bourse’ is the French word for stock exchange which is occasionally used in English. Written with an initial capital letter, the Bourse is specifically the Paris stock exchange.
3. a complete scheme for the ‘International’ control of aviators – A Union AÉronautique Internationale is proposed: In 1931 a memorandum, entitled Aviation for World Service, was prepared and published by a non-party group in France under the inspiration of Pierre Denis (1883-1951) and on the initiative of Henry de Jouvenel (1876-1935) to consider international control of aviation. Denis was a French geographer who published such works as Brazil (1911), The Argentine Republic (1922) and International Aspects of State Intervention in Economic Life (1938). De Jouvenel was a French politician and journalist who edited Le Matin and was the French delegate to the League of Nations (1922, 1924) and high commissioner in Syria (192.5-26). The proposed international aeronautical union never came into being.
4. Amen Rihani: A reference to the Lebanese poet, critic and promoter of Arab-American understanding, Ameen Fares Rihani, whom Wells had met at the 1921 Washington Disarmament Conference. He was the first Arab to publish a novel in English, The Book of Khalid (1911), and he introduced free verse to modern Arab poetry (1905).
5. lingua franca: Translating from Italian as ‘Frankish language’, it was originally a mixed Italian trade jargon used in the Levant.
More commonly it refers to a language chosen as a medium of communication among speakers of different languages, and is often used as a synonym for ‘universal language’.
§6 THE GROWTH OF RESISTANCE TO THE AIR AND SEA CONTROL
1. As the Estonian proverb says: ‘One must be born before one’s troubles begin’: Although the origins of this proverb are difficult to ascertain, it seems likely that Wells learnt it from Moura Budberg (1894-1984), his Estonian-born Russian lover whom he met in 1910 and who was his companion from 1932 to 1946.
2. Octroi dues: A toll or tax levied at the gates of a city on articles brought in. Also nowadays used to refer to tolls paid for the passage of cars on certain roads.
§7 INTELLECTUAL ANTAGONISM TO THE MODERN STATE
1. Herodotus: Herodotus (c. 485-425Bc),a widely travelled Greek historian who wrote not only histories of the Greco-barbarian wars, but attempted to explain their causes. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 bc) called him the ‘father of history’.
2. King Henry VIII: Henry VIII (1491-1547), King of England (1509-47), named ‘Defender of the Faith’ by Pope Leo X (1475-15 21), who broke with the Catholic Church and established the Church of England with himself at its head (1534). He was famously married six times.
3. Sumerian slave: A Sumer civilization existed from 7000 to 2000 bc to the north of the Persian Gulf in present-day Iraq. The Sumerian names for female and male slaves were mountain girl and mountain man, respectively.
4. As H. Levy insisted in his Universe of Science as early as 1932: Hyman Levy (1889-1975) was a British mathematician and intellectual who chaired the Labour Party’s Science Advisory Committee between 1924 and 1930 before resigning to join the Communist Party of Great Britain the following year. He was expelled from the Communist Party in 1958 for exposing anti-semitism in the Soviet Union.
5. J. A. Hobson: John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940) was a British ‘New Liberal’ economist who advocated state intervention to combat under-consumption, which he saw as the main cause of unemployment. He wrote Imperialism (1902), The Science of Wealth (1911) and Confessions of a Scientific Heretic (1938).
6.Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) was a British novelist and essayist. He published Brave New World as an anti-Wellsian dystopia in 1932, and also wrote Cronte Yellow (1921), Eyeless in Gaza (1936) and The Doors of Perception (1954).
7. Back to Methuselah: A play by George Bernard Shaw published in 1921.
8. Too True to be Good: A play by Shaw published in 1932.
9. Sir Charles Grandison: The title character of the History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4) by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). Richardson set out to present his readers with ‘the Example of a Man acting uniformly well thro’ a Variety of trying Scenes, because all his Actions are regulated by one steady Principle: A Man of Religion and Virtue; of Liveliness and Spirit; accomplished and agreeable; happy in himself, and a Blessing to others’.
10. Tony Lumpkin: A character in the play She Stoops to Conquer; or the Mistakes of a Night (1773) by the Irish playwright Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74).
11. King Charles his gentlemen’: this alleged nineteenth-century American poem cannot be traced, and must therefore be assumed to be Wells’s own invention.
§9 ‘THREE COURSES OF ACTION’
1. Machiavellian: This denotes the political philosophy of the Italian statesman and writer, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), as expressed in his book The Prince (1532). His main argument is that rulers must always be prepared to do evil if they judge good will come of it.
§11 THE REAL STRUGGLE FOR GOVERNMENT BEGINS
1. the old hammer and sickle: These implements, featured together in the flag of the Soviet Union between 1923 and 1991, were symbols of industrial and agricultural labour and are used by Communist Parties (sometimes including the pen of intellectual labour) to represent their perceived constituency.
2. the national fasces: In ancient Rome, a fasces lictoriae was a bundle of tied rods, a symbol of power and authority, which was carried before a magistrate in public ceremonies and inspections. The rods were used to whip delinquents on the spot. If it included an axe, it represented the power to decapitate. The fasces was the symbol of Italian fascism (from which the movement took its name) from 1922 until its overthrow in 1943.
3. a long-defunct phrase of President Wilson’s, ‘the self-determination of peoples’: On 11 February 1918 President Wilson, in an address to a Joint Session of the American congress, declared that’ “Self-determination” is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.’ ‘National self-determination’ became a rallying cry for the minority populations of the European empires at the end of the Great War, though the principle was applied rather clumsily (or subverted altogether) in the ensuing peace treaties. The Wilsonian principle was finally enshrined in article 12 of the United Nations Charter on 26 June 1945 in which it is declared that one of the purposes of the United Nations is ‘To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.’
4. palace of the Quirinal: The Palazzo del Quirinale was constructed in Rome in 1573 by Pope Gregory XIII (1502-85; pope 1572-85) as a papal summer residence. It was extended in 1730 and became the palace of the kings of Italy in 1870. Since 1947 it has been the official residence of the Italian presidents.
5. Duce: An Italian word meaning ‘leader’. From 192.3, it was used by Benito Mussolini as his de facto title in an attempt to elevate himself to a position as Italy’s unquestioned supreme leader.
6. [At this point Raven’s written transcript breaks off abruptly.]: This parenthetical note is Wells’s own.
BOOK IV THE MODERN STATE MILITANT
§1 GAP IN THE TEXT
1. kosher food: In Jewish culture, pure, clean food prepared in accordance with Jewish ordinances.
§2 MELODRAMATIC INTERLUDE
1. Caesar and Cleopatra: Cleopatra VII Philopator (c. 70-30 bc) was the last Ptolemaic pharaoh (51-30 bc) of Egypt. She was Julius Caesar’s lover between 48 and 44 bc, and later became the lover of one of Caesar’s successors, Marcus Antonius, between 42 and 30 bc. She committed suicide as her kingdom was being overrun by and absorbed into the Roman Empire.
2. Mirabeau and Marie Antoinette: Marie Antoinette (1755-93) was the queen of King Louis XVI of France (1754-93). Mirabeau attempted to persuade her and the king to leave Paris during the early weeks of the French Revolution, but her distrust of Mirabeau prevented a departure until it was too late. She was arrested along with her husband and executed at the guillotine in 1793.
§3 FUTILE INSURRECTION
1. agent provocateur: A police spy hired to provoke illegal activities among known criminals in order to create a pretence for their arrest and imprisonment.
2. the Death of Socrates: (469-399 bc), a Greek philosopher who was responsible for the decisive shift of philosophical interest from speculations about the natural world and cosmology to ethics and conceptual analysis. His philosophical enquiries led to his being accused of impiety and corrupting the young, and he chose to die by drinking hemlock rather than pay a fine for his release from prison.
§4 THE SCHOOLING OF MANKIND
1. Dr Johnson: Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was a British critic, lexicographer and poet. He published his great Dictionary in 1755, and also produced Rasselas (1759), A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (1775) and an eight-volume critical edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765).
2. Addison: Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was an English essayist and politician who published Account of the Great English Poets (1694) and wrote the opera Rosamond (1706), while also co-founding the Spectator magazine (1711) with Richard Steele (1672-1729).
3. Mr G. K. Chesterton: Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a British critic, novelist and poet. He published The Napoleon of Hotting Hill (1904), Heretics, Orthodoxy (both 1908) and The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) and was a convert to the Roman Catholic Church in 1922.
4. Meredith’s Tragic Comedians: George Meredith (1828-1909) was a British novelist and poet who published The Tragic Comedians (1880), Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883) and Diana of the Crossways (1885), amongst many other works.
5. [I resume my transcription here.]: This parenthetical note is Wells’s own.
6. Wop: A derogatory term for an Italian, derived from the Italian (dialect) word, guappo, meaning handsome.
7. The Catholic religion had been compulsory in South Ireland from 1944: Eire’s constitution, adopted in 1937, forbids the endowment of any religion as well as discrimination on religious grounds. However, Article 44, section 2, of the constitution did originally declare that ‘The State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens,’ though this was removed in 1973. However, Catholicism is still referred to in the Constitution’s preamble, although it has never been compulsory in Ireland.
8. the Erse language – had also been made obligatory: Since the independence of Southern Ireland (1922), the teaching of Irish in schools has been compulsory, and members of the civil service have had to be able to speak Irish. However, Irish has been in terminal decline since the nineteenth century, and compulsion has led to a backlash against it, resulting today in just twenty-five per cent of households being able to speak the language in the Republic of Ireland, and almost no one using it as a first language.
9. Overt Birth Control knowledge had been successfully banned: Between 1922 and 1985, contraception (and the promotion of birth control) were illegal in Ireland and, although general prohibitions of these have been lifted, abortion is still illegal except where the pregnant woman’s life is at risk (including a risk from suicide).
10. The effective subdivision of the Fellowship … into sections and departments: Wells considered the creation of functionalist government frequently in his fiction, starting with When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) and Men Like Gods (1923), and from 1930, in such works as The Way to World Peace (1930) and The New World Order (1940), he propagated the notion in his non-fiction too.
11. the world which had once been divided – among functional Great Powers: This functionalist approach to international relations, pioneered by Wells from 1899, was later elaborated into a theory of government by David Mitrany in A Working Peace System (1943).
§5 THE TEXT RESUMES: THE TYRANNY OF THE SECOND COUNCIL
1. ‘Puritan’ is a misused word – against the Roman version of Catholicism: Puritanism arose during Elizabethan England (1558-1603) when the more zealous Protestants felt the English Religious Settlement left too many Catholic ceremonials intact in the Church of England. The Puritans wished to see a greater emphasis on Christian fundamentals and austere ceremony, and the rejection of mystical practices and excessive ceremony. The Puritans became a dominant factor during the English Civil War and the overthrow of the Anglo-Catholic King Charles I.
2. the old Christian fancy of the Recording Angel and his Book on Resurrection Day: A belief in a Recording Angel who notes all individual deeds throughout life for use on the ultimate Judgement Day when admission to heaven is to be determined, is common in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In Christian belief, the second coming of Jesus Christ will result in the resurrection of all souls and reward and punishment will be determined based on the accounts in the Recording Angel’s book. The Recording Angel is commonly believed to be the Archangel Gabriel.
3. the figures on a Chinese screen: A Chinese traditional decoration believed to bring protection and good luck. They are ornately decorated, usually showing a scene from Chinese life and figures in traditional dress.
4. an Hellenic sarcophagus: A stone container for a coffin or body. The word comes from Greek sarkophagos, which means ‘eater of flesh’ and was adopted because it was believed that sarcophagi were carved from a special kind of rock that consumed the flesh of the corpse inside. Sarcophagi were usually carved, decorated or built ornately. Some were built to be free-standing above ground, as a part of an elaborate tomb. Others were made for burial, or were placed in crypts.
5. Edicts of Asoka: King Asoka of India (third century BC) organized Buddhism as the state religion, formalizing it through his Edicts (containing fourteen ‘Rock Edicts’, seven ‘Pillar Edicts’ and a number of ‘Minor Edicts’).
6.Rock Edict VI: This reads as follows: ‘Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, speaks thus: In the past, state business was not transacted nor were reports delivered to the king at all hours. But now I have given this order, that at any time, whether I am eating, in the women’s quarters, the bed chamber, the chariot, thepalanquin, in the park or wherever, reporters are to be posted with instructions to report to me the affairs of the people so that I might attend to these affairs wherever I am. And whatever I orally order in connection with donations or proclamations, or when urgent business presses itself on the Mahamatras, if disagreement or debate arises in the Council, then it must be reported to me immediately. This is what I have ordered. I am never content with exerting myself or with despatching business. Truly, I consider the welfare of all to be my duty, and the root of this is exertion and the prompt despatch of business. There is no better work than promoting the welfare of all the people and whatever efforts I am making is to repay the debt I owe to all beings to assure their happiness in this life, and attain heaven in the next.
‘Therefore this Dhamma edict has been written to last long and that my sons, grandsons and great-grandsons might act in conformity with it for the welfare of the world. However, this is difficult to do without great exertion.’
7. Asoka, D. R. Bhandarkar, 1932: Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhan-darkar (1875-1950) was an Indian archaeologist who published Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (i9zi),Some Aspects of Ancient Hindu Polity (1929), and other works in addition to Asoka (i93z).
8. Shi-Hwang-Tì: Properly Shih Huang Tì (259-210 BC), the first emperor of China, and the fourth monarch of the Chin dynasty from 246 bc. He started the construction of the Great Wall of China to keep Mongol invaders from raiding his empire (completed in ad 294), and he had all historical documents destroyed in 212 bc to maintain himself and his successors in power.
9. Mussolini, the realizer of Italian Fascismo, in his Talks to Ludwig: In 1932 the German writer, Emil Ludwig (originally Cohn, 1861-1948), published his Talks with Mussolini. He also wrote Bismarck (1924), The Practical Wisdom of Goethe (1933), the novel Diana (1929) and the play Versailles (1932).
§6 AESTHETIC FRUSTRATION: THE NOTEBOOKS OF ARISTON THEOTOCOPULOS
1. Was it Poe or De Quincey … suddenly opened and became eyes?: Edgar Allen Poe (1809—49) was an American poet and story writer who published Tamerlane and other Poems (1827),The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1938) and was a master of the short-story form. Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was a British critic and essayist who wrote Confessions of an English Opium-eater (i8zz), Klosterheim (1832) and The Logic of Political Economy (1841). The vision of a woman’s breasts suddenly opening and becoming eyes appeared to the British poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, during a nightmare. Shelley was staying at Lake Geneva during the summer of 1816 with Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), John William Polidori (1795-1821), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) and Jane ‘Claire’ Clairmont (1798-1879), and he suffered the nightmare following a discussion of ghosts and the supernatural, and Byron’s suggestion that each of them write a ghost story.
2. We are Stoics that we may be Epicureans: Stoics are disciples of the Greek Philosopher Zeno of Citium (334-262 bc) who advocated indifference to pleasure or pain, the limitation of wants, austere impassivity and uncomplaining fortitude in suffering. Epicureans are disciples of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 bc), who taught an atomic materialism in physics and hedonism in ethics. ‘Epicurean’ is often crudely applied to those who pursure sensual pleasure for its own sake.
