Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/187

 differentiate a non-combatant mass in the fighting State will certainly not be respected, the State will be organised as a whole to fight as a whole, it will have triumphantly asserted the universal duty of its citizens. The military force will be a much ampler organisation than the "army" of to-day, it will be not simply the fists but the body and brain of the land. The whole apparatus, the whole staff engaged in internal communication, for example, may conceivably not be State property and a State service; but if it is not it will assuredly be as a whole organised as a volunteer force that may instantly become a part of the machinery of defence or aggression at the outbreak of war. The men may conceivably not have a uniform, for military uniforms are simply one aspect of this curious and transitory phase of restriction, but they will have their orders and their universal plan. As the bells ring and the recording telephones click into every house the news that war has come, there will be no running to and fro upon the public ways, no bawling upon the moving platforms of the central urban nuclei, no crowds of silly useless able-bodied people gaping at inflammatory transparencies outside the offices of sensational papers because the egregious idiots in control of affairs have found them no better employment. Every man will be soberly and intelligently setting about the particular thing he has to do—even the rich shareholding sort of person, the hereditary mortgager of society, will be given something to do; and if he has learnt nothing else he will serve to tie up parcels of ammunition or pack army sausage. Very probably