The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind by H. G. Wells

Author:H. G. Wells
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Nuclear warfare -- Fiction, Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction, War stories
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2021-03-14T21:37:23+00:00

§ III

That con­fer­ence upon the Bris­sago mead­ows was one of the most het­ero­gen­eous col­lec­tions of prom­in­ent people that has ever met to­geth­er. Prin­cip­al­it­ies and powers, stripped and shattered un­til all their pride and mys­tery were gone, met in a mar­vel­lous new hu­mil­ity. Here were kings and em­per­ors whose cap­it­als were lakes of flam­ing de­struc­tion, states­men whose coun­tries had be­come chaos, scared politi­cians and fin­an­cial po­tentates. Here were lead­ers of thought and learned in­vest­ig­at­ors dragged re­luct­antly to the con­trol of af­fairs. Al­to­geth­er there were ninety-three of them, Leb­lanc’s con­cep­tion of the head men of the world. They had all come to the real­isa­tion of the simple truths that the in­defatig­able Leb­lanc had hammered in­to them; and, draw­ing his re­sources from the King of Italy, he had pro­vi­sioned his con­fer­ence with a gen­er­ous sim­pli­city quite in ac­cord­ance with the rest of his char­ac­ter, and so at last was able to make his as­ton­ish­ing and en­tirely ra­tion­al ap­peal. He had ap­poin­ted King Egbert the pres­id­ent, he be­lieved in this young man so firmly that he com­pletely dom­in­ated him, and he spoke him­self as a sec­ret­ary might speak from the pres­id­ent’s left hand, and evid­ently did not real­ise him­self that he was telling them all ex­actly what they had to do. He ima­gined he was merely re­capit­u­lat­ing the ob­vi­ous fea­tures of the situ­ation for their con­veni­ence. He was dressed in ill-fit­ting white silk clothes, and he con­sul­ted a dingy little pack­et of notes as he spoke. They put him out. He ex­plained that he had nev­er spoken from notes be­fore, but that this oc­ca­sion was ex­cep­tion­al.

And then King Egbert spoke as he was ex­pec­ted to speak, and Leb­lanc’s spec­tacles moistened at that flow of gen­er­ous sen­ti­ment, most ami­ably and lightly ex­pressed. “We haven’t to stand on ce­re­mony,” said the king, “we have to gov­ern the world. We have al­ways pre­ten­ded to gov­ern the world, and here is our op­por­tun­ity.”

“Of course,” whispered Leb­lanc, nod­ding his head rap­idly, “of course.”

“The world has been smashed up, and we have to put it on its wheels again,” said King Egbert. “And it is the simple com­mon sense of this crisis for all to help and none to seek ad­vant­age. Is that our tone or not?”

The gath­er­ing was too old and seasoned and mis­cel­laneous for any great dis­plays of en­thu­si­asm, but that was its tone, and with an as­ton­ish­ment that some­how be­came ex­hil­ar­at­ing it began to resign, re­pu­di­ate, and de­clare its in­ten­tions. Firm­in, tak­ing notes be­hind his mas­ter, heard everything that had been fore­told among the yel­low broom, come true. With a queer feel­ing that he was dream­ing, he as­sisted at the pro­clam­a­tion of the World State, and saw the mes­sage taken out to the wire­less op­er­at­ors to be throbbed all round the hab­it­able globe. “And next,” said King Egbert, with a cheer­ful ex­cite­ment in his voice, “we have to get every atom of Car­olin­um and all the plant for mak­ing it, in­to our con­trol. …”

Firm­in was not alone in his in­credu­lity. Not a man there who was not a

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