The World Set Free

Section 3

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….’

Firman was not alone in his incredulity.  Not a man there who was not a very amiable, reasonable, benevolent creature at bottom; some had been born to power and some had happened upon it, some had struggled to get it, not clearly knowing what it was and what it implied, but none was irreconcilably set upon its retention at the price of cosmic disaster.  Their minds had been prepared by circumstances and sedulously cultivated by Leblanc; and now they took the broad obvious road along which King Egbert was leading them, with a mingled conviction of strangeness and necessity.  Things went very smoothly; the King of Italy explained the arrangements that had been made for the protection of the camp from any fantastic attack; a couple of thousand of aeroplanes, each carrying a sharpshooter, guarded them, and there was an excellent system of relays, and at night all the sky would be searched by scores of lights, and the admirable Leblanc gave luminous reasons for their camping just where they were and going on with their administrative duties forthwith.  He knew of this place, because he had happened upon it when holiday-making with Madame Leblanc twenty years and more ago.  ’There is very simple fare at present,’ he explained, ’on account of the disturbed state of the countries about us.  But we have excellent fresh milk, good red wine, beef, bread, salad, and lemons. . . .  In a few days I hope to place things in the hands of a more efficient caterer….’

The members of the new world government dined at three long tables on trestles, and down the middle of these tables Leblanc, in spite of the barrenness of his menu, had contrived to have a great multitude of beautiful roses.  There was similar accommodation for the secretaries and attendants at a lower level down the mountain.  The assembly dined as it had debated, in the open air, and over the dark crags to the west the glowing June sunset shone upon the banquet.  There was no precedency now among the ninety-three, and King Egbert found himself between a pleasant little Japanese stranger in spectacles and his cousin of Central Europe, and opposite a great Bengali leader and the President of the United States of America.  Beyond the Japanese was Holsten, the old chemist, and Leblanc was a little way down the other side.

The king was still cheerfully talkative and abounded in ideas.  He fell presently into an amiable controversy with the American, who seemed to feel a lack of impressiveness in the occasion.

It was ever the Transatlantic tendency, due, no doubt, to the necessity of handling public questions in a bulky and striking manner, to over-emphasise and over-accentuate, and the president was touched by his national failing.  He suggested now that there 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 forgive me 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 real instant 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 am for 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 think of it, Wilhelm?’

‘For the noble, yes, all days should be noble.’

‘Exactly my position,’ said the king, and felt pleased at 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 see the 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 himself after 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 being more 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 understood and most typical aspect.  It is the mind of 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 ourselves exceptionally fine fellows, and masterful men, and all the rest of it.  We are not.  I doubt if 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 ourselves but 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 rest of 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 happier times, 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….’