We have now reached that point in the history of the First Men when,
some three hundred and eighty terrestrial years after the European War,
the goal of world unity was at last achieved—not, however, before the
mind of the race had been seriously crippled.
There is no need to recount in detail the transition from rival national
sovereignties to unitary control by the World Financial Directorate.
Suffice it that by concerted action in America and China the military
governments found themselves hamstrung by the passive resistance of
cosmopolitan big business. In China this process was almost
instantaneous and bloodless; in America there was serious disorder for a
few weeks, while the bewildered government attempted to reduce its
rebels by martial law. But the population was by now eager for peace;
and, although a few business magnates were shot, and a crowd of workers
here and there mown down, the opposition was irresistible. Very soon the
governing clique collapsed.
The new order consisted of a vast system akin to guild socialism, yet at
bottom individualistic. Each industry was in theory democratically
governed by all its members, but in practice was controlled by its
dominant individuals. Coordination of all industries was effected by a
World Industrial Council, whereon the leaders of each industry discussed
the affairs of the planet as a whole. The status of each industry on the
Council was determined partly by its economic power in the world, partly
by public esteem. For already the activities of men were beginning to be
regarded as either ‘noble’ or ‘ignoble’; and the noble were not
necessarily the most powerful economically. Thus upon the Council
appeared an inner ring of noble ‘industries,’ which were, in approximate
order of prestige, Finance, Flying, Engineering, Surface Locomotion,
Chemical Industry, and Professional Athletics. But the real seat of
power was not the Council, not even the inner ring of the Council, but
the Financial Directorate. This consisted of a dozen millionaires, with
the American President and the Chinese Vice-President at their head.
Within this august committee internal dissensions were inevitable.
Shortly after the system had been inaugurated the Vice-President sought
to overthrow the President by publishing his connexion with the coloured
woman who now styled herself the Daughter of Man. This piece of scandal
was expected to enrage the virtuous American public against their hero.
But by a stroke of genius the President saved both himself and the unity
of the world. Far from denying the charge, he gloried in it. In that
moment of sexual triumph, he said, a great truth had been revealed to
him. Without this daring sacrifice of his private purity, he would never
have been really fit to be President of the World; he would have
remained simply an American. In this lady’s veins flowed the blood of
all races, and in her mind all cultures mingled. His union with her,
confirmed by many subsequent visits, had taught him to enter into the
spirit of the East, and had given him a broad human sympathy such as his
high office demanded. As a private individual, he insisted, he remained
a monogamist with a wife in New York; and, as a private individual, he
had sinned, and must suffer for ever the pangs of conscience. But as
President of the World, it was incumbent upon him to espouse the World.
And since nothing could be said to be real without a physical basis,
this spiritual union had to be embodied and symbolized by his physical
union with the Daughter of Man. In tones of grave emotion he described
through the microphone how, in the presence of that mystical woman, he
had suddenly triumphed over his private moral scruples; and how, in a
sudden access of the divine energy, he had consummated his marriage with
the World in the shade of a banana tree.
The lovely form of the Daughter of Man (decently clad) was transmitted
by television to every receiver in the world. Her face, blended of Asia
and the West, became a most potent symbol of human unity. Every man on
the planet became in imagination her lover. Every woman identified
herself with this supreme woman.
Undoubtedly there was some truth in the plea that the Daughter of Man
had enlarged the President’s mind, for his policy had been unexpectedly
tactful towards the East. Often he had moderated the American demand for
the immediate Americanization of China. Often he had persuaded the
Chinese to welcome some policy which at first they had regarded with
suspicion.
The President’s explanation of his conduct enhanced his prestige both in
American and Asia. America was hypnotized by the romantic religiosity of
the story. Very soon it became fashionable to be a strict monogamist
with one domestic wife, and one ‘symbolical’ wife in the East, or in
another town, or a neighbouring street, or with several such in various
localities. In China the cold tolerance with which the President was at
first treated was warmed by this incident into something like affection.
And it was partly through his tact, or the influence of his symbolical
wife, that the speeding up of China’s Americanization was effected
without disorder.
For some months after the foundation of the World State, China had been
wholly occupied in coping with the plague of insanity, called ‘the
American madness,’ with which her former enemy had poisoned her. The
coast region of North China had been completely disorganized. Industry,
agriculture, transport, were at a standstill. Huge mobs, demented and
starving, staggered about the country devouring every kind of vegetable
matter and wrangling over the flesh of their own dead. It was long
before the disease was brought under control; and indeed for years
afterwards an occasional outbreak would occur, and cause panic
throughout the land.
To some of the more old-fashioned Chinese it appeared as though the
whole population had been mildly affected by the germ; for throughout
China a new sect, apparently a spontaneous native growth, calling
themselves Energists, began to preach a new interpretation of Buddhism
in terms of the sanctity of action. And, strange to say, this gospel
throve to such an extent that in a few years the whole educational
system was captured by its adherents, though not without a struggle with
the reactionary members of the older universities. Curiously enough,
however, in spite of this general acceptance of the New Way, in spite of
the fact that the young of China were now taught to admire movement in
all its forms, in spite of a much increased wage-scale, which put all
workers in possession of private mechanical locomotion, the masses of
China continued at heart to regard action as a mere means towards rest.
And when at last a native physicist pointed out that the supreme
expression of energy was the tense balance of forces within the atom,
the Chinese applied the doctrine to themselves, and claimed that in them
quiescence was the perfect balance of mighty forces. Thus did the East
contribute to the religion of this age. The worship of activity was made
to include the worship of inactivity. And both were founded on the
principles of natural science.