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Washington and the Riddle of Peace

H. G. Wells

As an observer at the WASHINGTON CONFERENCE FOR THE LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS held in 1921 and attended by the victorious nations of The Great War, the acclaimed author H. G. Wells wrote 29 short essays that were serialized in the New York World and other newspapers. This book is a collection of those essays. They are not a record or description of the Conference, but the impressions of one visitor. Wells noted that the failed League of Nations was the first American initiative toward an organized world peace, and in its absence “the American mind has produced this second experiment, which has been tried with the loosest of constitutions and the most severely defined and limited of aims. Instead of a world constitution we have had a world conversation.”
The essays relate “one observer’s conviction of how things can be done, and of how they need to be done, if our civilization is indeed to be rescued from the dangers that encompass it and set again upon the path of progress.” While history would not bear out all of Wells’ various expressions of optimism and pessimism, his vision of world peace nevertheless remains relevant today. ( Lee Smalley)