DANGERS TO THE WORLD

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21087, 12 February 1934, Page 9

DANGERS TO THE WORLD

MR H. G. WELLS'S REVIEW NEED FOR INTERNATIONAL CONTROLS v (mOU OUB OWN COKBESEOHDIKT.) LONDON, January 12. Mr H, G. Wells, in the first broadcast talk of the series, "Whittle? Britain?", reviewed present conditions of the world and advocated international boards to control world trade, money, aviation, and health. "All over the world people have 1 been receding from internationalism —and doing barbaric things to aliens and strangers. "The nations are carrying on a cruel and disastrous financial warfare behind vast tariff barriers. They are manoeuvring with money and credit. Finally, they are arming, arming, arming—drifting steadily towards nightmare possibilities of bloodshed, murder and destruction unheard of , before in human experience. "They don't want to do it, but they feel they have to do it—as if they were hypnotised. "For many dismayed spirits the answer to 'Whither Britain?' amounts practically to this—drifting with the rest of mankind towards catastrophe." Monetary Tricks There were reasons why this state of affairs in the monetary system should have come about, but there was no invincible reason why it should continue. There was every reason why it should end. People had to adjust money throughout the world to the needs of world production. In the end this trouble of business confusion, which centred now upon money, was more serious even than political stresses and the danger of war. It has a warfare of its own. All the great economic communities of the world were fighting desperately now with tricks of inflation and so forth, with tariffs and shipping laws and restrictions upon trading and a multitude of such devices, to shift the steadily increasing burden of distress one to the other. Men did not intend to take disorganisation and ruin without a struggle. And that fight was not being waged by "that little sham world parliament at Geneva"; it was being waged most plainly and conspicuously in two great economic communities that had no voice at Geneva—the United States and Soviet Russia.

Trade and Money Board Mr Wells said he would have Britain advance towards at least an understanding and participation and identification with the American experiment and, if possible, an understanding with the Russian struggle. Dealing with the question of the dollar and the pound, Mr Wells said that if it were possible to create a trade and money board for these two vast systems, it would not be many years before it became a board for all the world. Quite as imperative was a world airways board, to regulate air traffic, and to police the air. A world health board was also needed. Failing such control the world-wide diffusion of some great pestilence, a new cholera, or a new influenza, was only a question of time. In an isolated nationalist protectionist Britain, it was absurd even to ask, "Whither Britain?" In that case the only answer must be "Stick in the mud until the scavenging forces in the world pick us up and clear us away altogether."