GRIM WARNING

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 88, 7 January 1933, Page 12

GRIM WARNING

Annihilation of Distance FORESIGHT THE NEED Mr. H. G. Wells Looks Ahead (Reuter— Special to “Dominion.”) London, Nov. 22. Sir. H. G. Wells, author of so many books about the future, has looked ahead once more —-in a broadcast talk this time—to give humanity a warning, and a griqt warniffg at that. He called for Foresight, the quality he himself has so long exercised his great powers upon. Now he wants Professors of foresight. Mr. Wells’s talk followed a programme of sound pictures showing how methods of communication had developed during the past ten years. “We need tp_organise foresight in these matters very urgently indeed,” he declared. “Because, you see, it is not only that men will be able to get at and see and talk to their friends anywhere. They will , also be able to get at those they suppose their enemies with an equal facility. “Let me ask you bow’ long you suppose it is before this becomes possible —that men will be able to pack up a parcel of explosives or poison gas or incendiary matter or any little thing of that sort and send it up intp the air to travel to just any chosen spot in the world, and drop its load. For my own part, I do not think it is going to be so very long before that is practicable. “Our military people still stick to guns that carry only twenty miles or so, or aeroplanes that must fight their w’ay through hostile planes and gunfire, to drop whatever they do drop. But nobody believes that these things mark the extreme range of offensive activities. .) Air Torpedoes For Any where. “Air torpedoes for anywhere, bomb, gas and-flame delivered wherever you like, or don’t like, at any time, this-is one of the manifest possibilities to which all this improvement in communication is leading. “Either we must make peace throughout the world, make one world-state, one world-pax, w’ith one money, one police, one speech and one brotherhood, however hard that task may seem, or w r e must-prepare to live with the knife of the stranger always at our throats, in fear and in danger of death, enemy neighbours with the rest of our species. “Distance once was protection. For good or evil, distance has been done away with. This problem of communications rushes upon us to-day—it rushes upon us like Jehu the son of Nimshi. It driveth furiously- Audit evokes' the same question : Is it peace? “Because if it is not to be peace foreseen and planned and established.-then it w-ill be disaster and death. “All my life I have seen the abolition of distance becoming more and more complete. In a little while there will be nd more distance left, and little separation. Before another half-cen-tury has passed everybody, so to speak, will be on call next door. “For all practical purposes we have not even begun to think yet what we are going, to do about this abolition of distance. We are all of us behaving as though there were.no need whatever to adapt our lives and ideas in any way to these new conditions. “See how unprepared our world was for the motor-ear. The motor-car ought to have been anticipated at the beginning of this century. It was bound to change our roads, take passenger ahd goods traffic from the railways. “It was bound to make it possible for a man to commit a robbery or murder in Devonshire overnight and breakfast in London or Birmingham. “In the case of the motor-car we have let consequence take us by surprise. Then we have tried our remedies —belatedly. We are abolishing distance — heedlessly, recklessly. “Isn’t it plain that we ought to have whole faculties and departments of Foresight, doing all they can to anticipate and prepare for the consequences of this gathering together, this bunching up, which is now going on, of what were once widely dispersed human relationships.”