The Way The World Is Going - Guesses & Forecasts of the Years Ahead

An interesting collection of articles marred by a bitter tone.

The Way the World is Going is in format very similar to Wells' 1924, A Year of Prophesying (q.v.). Both are collections of articles that were put together in book form, but here the resemblance ends. While the earlier book has certain buoyant charm about it, this later one serves as much to show how Wells' mood had deteriorated as it does to inform the reader about the how the world is going. Uncharacteristically, Wells pats himself on the back a couple of times for his foresights and stews in an acrid manner about how the world is not going the way he would like. Despite this, however, there is still much to hold the reader's interest, and it remains a window into the past - albeit a window with patches of bitter haze.

In addition, however, to the magazine articles, the book has a glowing centerpiece entitled: Democracy Under Revision (q.v.). This is a reprinting of an address that Wells delivered in March 15th 1927, that was previously published as slim, and now quite rare book. Wells makes clear in the preface that he regards this address as by far the best bit of writing in entire book.

Interestingly, as Wells notes in the preface, several of the articles were censored for content on both sides of the Atlantic when first published in serial form. Noteably, an article critical of the miscarriage of justice that Sacco and Vanzetti trial produced, went unprinted by the New York Times Magazine.

Some of the more interesting articles in The Way the World is Going include:

What is Fascism? Whither Is It Taking Italy?

Is Life becoming Happier?

Some Plain Words to Americans.

What is the British Empire Worth to Mankind? Meditations of an Empire Citizen.

The Future of the Novel. Difficulties of the Modern Novelist.

Experimenting With Marriage. Legal Recognition of Current Realities.

And:

Delusions About World Peace. The Price of Peace.

"Peace talk bores many people. And it is interesting to note that it bores them. Among the hundreds of thousands who will glance over this article there are thousands, especially among the younger contingent, who will probably be killed or maimed in war. The present reader has a fairly good chance of having some of his face blown out at the back of this head, or his hips smashed to splinters... by one of the missiles that will be flying about in great abundance when the next fighting is under way" (159).

The Silliest Film: Will Machinery Make Robots of Men?

" Possibly I dislike this soupy whirlpool (the film: Metropolis)... because I find decaying fragments of my own juvenile work of thiry years ago, 'The Sleeper Awakes,' floating about in it. Capek's Robots have been lifted without apology, and that soulless mechanical monster of Mary Shelley's, who has fathered so many German inventions, breeds once more in this confusion. Originality there is none. Independent thought, none" (192-3).

Popular Feeling and the Advancement of Science. Anti-Vivisection.

"Far more pain, terror, and distress is inflicted on the first day of pheasant shooting every year, for no purpose at all except the saisfaction of the guns, upon the wounded and mutilated birds which escape than is inflicted by all the scientific invesigators in the world vivisecting for a year. The lives of "fancy" dogs, again, invalid and grotesque deformations of the canine type, must make an aggregation of prolonged discomfort beyond all comparison greater than that of the creatures inoculated by the physiologist" (239).

Outrages in the Defence of Order. The Proposed Murder of Two American Radicals.

"These two men (Sacco and Vanzetti) were condemned not as murderers, but as socialists and pacifists, and it is as socialists and pacifists that they are to be killed in July. The pro-Killing party in the United States hardly troubles to maintain the flimsy story of their murder guilt. The Braintree murder is indeed merely a legal fiction in this case.... If it can be used to kill Sacco and Vanzetti, then I do not see why it should not become a standard legal form, and why any other people in the United States whose opinions are considered to be unsound, whose presence on earth is regarded as unpropitious, or who have got themselves disliked in any way, should not presently be included in this murder case and sent after these first victims to the electric chair" (263).

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