War and the Future

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, counteracting hostile suggestion, the
British official organisations are comparatively ineffective; but what is
lacking officially is very largely made up for by the good will and
generous efforts of the English and American press. An interesting
monograph might be written upon these various attempts of the
belligerents to get themselves and their proceedings explained.
Because there is perceptible in these developments, quite over and
above the desire to influence opinion, a very real effort to get things

explained. It is the most interesting and curious-- one might almost
write touching--feature of these organisations that they do not
constitute a positive and defined propaganda such as the Germans
maintain. The German propaganda is simple, because its ends are
simple; assertions of the moral elevation and loveliness of Germany; of
the insuperable excellences of German Kultur, the Kaiser, and Crown
Prince, and so forth; abuse of the "treacherous" English who allied
themselves with the "degenerate" French and the "barbaric" Russians;
nonsense about "the freedom of the seas"--the emptiest phrase in
history-- childish attempts to sow suspicion between the Allies, and
still more childish attempts to induce neutrals and simple-minded
pacifists of allied nationality to save the face of Germany by initiating
peace negotiations. But apart from their steady record and reminder of
German brutalities and German aggression, the press organisations of
the Allies have none of this definiteness in their task. The aim of the
national intelligence in each of the allied countries is not to exalt one's
own nation and confuse and divide the enemy, but to get a real
understanding with the peoples and spirits of a number of different
nations, an understanding that will increase and become a fruitful and
permanent understanding between the allied peoples. Neither the
English, the Russians, the Italians, nor the French, to name only the
bigger European allies, are concerned in setting up a legend, as the
Germans are concerned in setting up a legend of themselves to impose
upon mankind. They are reality dealers in this war, and the Germans
are effigy mongers. Practically the Allies are saying each to one
another, "Pray come to me and see for yourself that I am very much the
human stuff that you are. Come and see that I am doing my best--and I
think that is not so very bad a best...." And with that is something else
still more subtle, something rather in the form of, "And please tell me
what you think of me--and all this."
So we have this curious byplay of the war, and one day I find Mr.
Nabokoff, the editor of the /Retch/, and Count Alexy Tolstoy, that
writer of delicate short stories, and Mr. Chukovsky, the subtle critic,
calling in upon me after braving the wintry seas to see the British fleet;
M. Joseph Reinach follows them presently upon the same errand; and
then appear photographs of Mr. Arnold Bennett wading in the trenches

of Flanders, Mr. Noyes becomes discreetly indiscreet about what he has
seen among the submarines, and Mr. Hugh Walpole catches