Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/156

 inevitably, because our world has been content to drift along on false premises and haphazard assumptions about nationality and race and the order of things. These things have happened because the technical education of men has been better than their historical and social education. Once men have lost touch with, or failed to apprehend that idea of a single human community, that idea which is the substance of all true history and the essential teaching of God, it is towards such organised abominations as these that they drift—necessarily. People in this country who are just as incoherent in their minds, just as likely to drift into some kindred cul-de-sac of conduct, would have these U-boat men tortured—to show the superiority of their own moral standards.

"But indeed these men are tortured

"Bear yet a little longer with this boy of mine in the U-boat. I've tried to suggest him to you with his conscience scared—at a moment when his submarine had made a kill. But those moments are rare. For most of its time the U-boat is under water and a hunted thing. The surface swarms with hostile craft; sea-planes and observation balloons are seeking it. Every time a U-boat comes even near to the surface it may be spotted by a sea-plane and destruction may fall upon it. Even when it is submerged below the limits of visibility in the turbid North Sea waters, the noise of its engines will betray it to a listening apparatus and a happy guess with a depth-charge may end its career. I want you to think of the daily life of this youngster under these conditions. I want you to see exactly where wrong