The Project Gutenberg EBook of War and the Future, by H. G. Wells

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Title: War and the Future

Author: H. G. Wells

Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1804]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR AND THE FUTURE ***

Produced by Morgan L. Owens and David Widger

WAR AND THE FUTURE

Italy, France and Britain at War

by H. G. Wells

Contents

The Passing of the Effigy

The War in Italy (August, 1916)
I. The Isonzo Front
II. The Mountain War
III. Behind the Front

The Western War (September, 1916)
I. Ruins
II. The Grades of War
III. The War Landscape
IV. New Arms for Old Ones
V. Tanks

How People Think About the War
I. Do they Really Think at all?
II. The Yielding Pacifist and the Conscientious Objector
III. The Religious Revival
IV. The Riddle of the British
V. The Social Changes in Progress
VI. The Ending of the War

THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY

1

One of the minor peculiarities of this unprecedented war is the Tour of
the Front. After some months of suppressed information--in which even
the war correspondent was discouraged to the point of elimination--it
was discovered on both sides that this was a struggle in which Opinion
was playing a larger and more important part than it had ever done
before. This wild spreading weed was perhaps of decisive importance;
the Germans at any rate were attempting to make it a cultivated flower.
There was Opinion flowering away at home, feeding rankly on rumour;
Opinion in neutral countries; Opinion getting into great tangles
of misunderstanding and incorrect valuation between the Allies. The
confidence and courage of the enemy; the amiability and assistance of
the neutral; the zeal, sacrifice, and serenity of the home population;
all were affected. The German cultivation of opinion began long
before the war; it is still the most systematic and, because of the
psychological ineptitude of the Germans, it is probably the clumsiest.
The French _Maison de la Presse_ is certainly the best organisation in
existence for making things clear,