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§ 1. — GROWN MEN DO NOT NEED LEADERS

Table of Contents

FOR the greater part of my life I have given most of my working time to the problem of the human future, studying the possibility of a world-wide reorganisation of human society that might avert the menace of defeat and extinction that hangs over our species. That has been my leading preoccupation since I published The Time Machine in 1893. I have never thought, much less have I asserted, that progress was inevitable, though numerous people chose to fancy that about me. I have always maintained that by a strenuous effort mankind might defeat the impartial destructiveness of nature, but I have always insisted that only by incessant hard thinking and a better co-ordination of man's immense but dispersed powers of self-sacrifice and heroism was such a victory possible.

Since the present crisis began to develop I have done everything I could, to focus the thinking of a lifetime upon the stormy clashes of to-day. I have studied and spoken and written and published, to get reality clear in my own and as many minds as possible. In this little book I am trying again to assemble the essential truth about what is happening, as concisely and clearly as possible. This is, to the best of my ability, a map of where we are and how we can go. Not only where we are, I repeat, but how we can go. I am writing it down without exhortation or any emotional appeal. That, if you want It, you must seek elsewhere. If you are one of those who prefer to go On with life with a magic talisman in your hand instead of a map, this book is not for you. But if you like to carry a blessed image or a mascot in your pocket I will not quarrel with you, if only you have the sense to rely upon the map instead of trying to muddle your way through when the bearings of the situation are plain.

Since I began to learn about the direction of human affairs, I have been much afilicted by would-be disciples and followers. Before I took my own measure I did occasionally entangle myself with groups of people who proposed to take possession of me, interpret me and make something between a figure-head and a leader of me. These entanglements taught me one thing very clearly, that "leadership" is entirely incompatible with the clear and critical apprehension of how things are and where things are, which is the natural activity of such a mind as mine. You might just as well expect a chart and compass to steer a ship. I found out very early in life, not only that I could not "manage" people, but that I disliked in about equal measure the concessions and deceptions that are involved in managing anyone, and the tiresome people who obliged me to make those politic adjustments of the truth necessary to keep them in tow. I despise driven sheep, I despise dogs tha.t fawn upon me, I despise followers and disciples, I despIse the " simple faith " and " unquestioning loyalty" of human beings who ought, I feel, to think and act for themselves instead of sacrificing the brief opportumtIes this life affords them of being real.

Read me, I would say, use all I have to give you, assimilate me to yourself (and assimilation may very well mean a digestive change and improvement) and we will go on together in fraternal co-operation, but please, please, do not imagine you are being invited to line up behind me. You have a backbone and a brain; your brain is as important as mine and probably better at most jobs; my only claim on your consideration is that I have specialised in trying to get my Outlines true.

That is the spirit in which I call myself a republican, a democrat and an adult man.

It is a biological truism that the majority of our species retains infantile characteristics throughout life; most men and women never grow up at all. Most animals settle down, but human beings can play and be curious at seventy. Men and women of eighty can die young. This has its good but also its profoundly enfeebling side, if you remain not young but infantile. Most of our kind pass from the knee of mothers, who tell them what and how, to the schoolmaster or mistress, the priest, the big boys (or girls) in the school, their caste, the employer, the political adventurer, all telling them what and how before they are allowed a sceptical moment. Directly they come to the frustrations and distresses of our disordered social life, leadership touts for them, exploits them and enslaves them. We have now in Mein Kampf a complete expose of the art of leadership, and in the stricken lands of the great offensive, we have seen these poor methodical, gullible, German lout-sheep pouring forward in their multitudes to destroy horribly or be destroyed. It is like a flight of locusts; it is a stampede. One has to kill them or be killed, because reason would be wasted on them.

In Britain, America, France and what are called the sroaner democratic countries, we have a number of more or less ridiculous figures proposing themselves for leadership after the fashion of Mussolini and Hitler. Every antic of these masters is aped. But there is in all our countries, thanks to certain accidents of their past history, a capacity for derision and individual initiative that makes the careers of these aspirants to dominance' difficult. It is a type which ought of course to be shot when it makes itself plainly dangerous. Huey Long, whom I met and found very attractive in America was,I think, very properly murdered. Our Parliamentary forefathers made treason to the people a capital offence. It might very well be the only capital offence. There is no other crime so evil. If it were possible to express this present world conflict in one phrase which it certainly is not-" The struggle of the free men against the led men," might be as serviceable as any.

The infantile belief that it is possible for one single individual to concentrate will and understanding for a whole people may be best disposed of by a very simple set of considerations. I would call it "counting the hours of a man's life." I would ask you to take anyone to whom you may be disposed to submit yourself and reduce the total of his life to hours. It comes to no very great total. Then deduct from that the hours that must have been spent in sleep, in eating and drinking and in what is called recreation. That will about halve your total. Now take off the years of infancy. Then enquire into the history of your divinity. He went to such and such a school, he had access to what books? All schools waste a certain amount of time; no worth-while book is read without difficulty. And a man who is to cut a figure in the world must act as well as learn. I was led to this sort of enquiry when I set myself to work out the maximum number of hours available for impartmg knowledge to youngsters between tbe ages of five and sixteen.* When everything else has been allowed for it works out to a total that is astoundingly small. I was so struck by this realisation that I set myself a number of problems in history. Always I sought to determine the quality of the sources of knowledge available and the maximum number of hours the individual under examination could have given to the matter under discussion. What could Alexander the Great have known of the Persian and Indian worlds into which he led his raiders, what was his vision of the world he splashed with new cities, had he the remotest idea of the gathering Romans in his rear? What can Stalin know of the social and cultural realities of the Western world, against which he guards himself with such dire suspicion? What can the Pope, any Pope, know of the great concepts of modem biology? You will realise that every one of us, even the most receptive, is a blinkered man. There are certain things he may know well, but the better he knows those definite things, the less he can know of matters outside the limits of his specialisation. A man may guide you unerringly up Mont Blanc. That is no reason why you should expect him to steer you through the traffic of New York City. These leaders and enslavers of men are fabulous creatures. They are pretenders and impostors. There are no such people.

* See "World Brain!"

I write these introductory disavowals to the reader in order that the purpose of this book should be perfectly plain. You are being led nowhere in this little book; you are being shown certain definite things. Certain interpretations of what is happening will be put before you, and it is for you to decide whether these interpretations are true or false. Certain possible roads will be shown to you and whither they lead. If your leader or your colonel or your priest or anyone to whose hands you have entrusted your mental conscience tells you not to trouble about the reasoning with which I challenge you, and you take his word for it, I can do no more for you. Or if some bright young Communist, for example, after the pattern of those absurd young "students" I met at Leeds the other day, students who listened to nothing and were obviously incapable of study, persuades you that I have produced all this carefully thought out discussion for some obscure and sordid motives of my own, and that therefore you are absolved from thinking about it, then again I I can only shrug my shoulders. Suppose, as he will imply, that publishing a Penguin book brings me wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, does that in itself make the arguments I put before you, any the less sound?

And so to our discussion.

But first let me repeat the headline of this section and add two additional sentences. Grown Men do not need Leaders. But that does not mean that they will not trust a properly accredited equal who has some specific gift or function. You trust your plumber, your doctor, your cook, your automobile scout, your Ordnance Map, conditionally, without either arrogance or subservience.