The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-09-30
TELLS ENGLAND TO' LOOSEN INDIA AND EMBRACE ANE RIGA
Says Continental Europe Be- ing Isolated And Destroyed
 By Intellectual InCapaCity
By H. G. WELLS PubIicist, Historian And NOvelistj Author Of ''The Outline Of History"

Author Of E'The Outline Of History"
 will begin with something that Is rnore than a mere verbal quibole. wish that this political system could have some other name than empire, because 1t is not properly an empire at all. It is a complex association Iof at least three different types of territory and the word empire IS end elessly misleading and nlischievous In connection with 1t.
 4. In the last few years, for purposes that need not now concern us, 1 have had to study a certain amount of his ltory and number of historians. Many men of commanding intel 2 ligence have been historians and l .t, offer no comparison between the in- g tellectuaI quality of historians and that of scientific men as such. But trained as I was in the clear, subtle and beautiful discipline of compara- tive anatomy. I found myself amazed 2 al the easy earelessness of the aver age historians habitual terminology. ehis slovenly parallelisms and reckless assumptions. A large part of his work is the study of human com modities and political associations. Yet I found him without any intel ligible classification of political com % binations any real sense of grades and structural differences between one community and another. He slops the word "empire" over the whole face of history; Athenian empire and empire, Empire of Alexander and Roman empire, Mongol empire and Hittite empire, British empire and Brazilian empire; it's all the same thing to him. Cats is dogs" as tho porter said, rabbits Is poultry, but parrot is passenger. As con sequence the historian argues from the most atrocious analogies. And though there is considerable and pretentious literature of pollt;cal science, there does not yet exist In all political and historical literature any attempt at clear analysls or the differences and affinities of all these various human complexes. Yet to make such an analysis would be @ most attractive and fruitful task Historical and political science has still to find its Linnaeus History until that happens, remains a slousn of terminological confusion and the ideas of the ordinary educated man drown in that mud.
 Word Covers Opposites.
 The word empire came Into the world with the expansion of the Roman empire. The Roman empire was q thing different in many funda- nentals from the so-cailed empires that preceded it, the "sha-doms" If l may create sort of temporary wora 1. of Asia and the "pharaoh-isms' of 7 Egypt for example. It differed from z them at least as widely In its pos 1, abilities, structure and range as species of Tertiary mammals differs E from q species of Mesozoic reptiles. It was unprecedented in arising out 2 of an aristocratic republic instead or 2 a conduering monarchy and in having { a legal tradition of strength anu prestige unknown to any previous . community It was unprecedented Tn it's disposition to extend It's citlzen- ship beyond It's initial boundaries It's expansion was concurrent with an Tn :. l creasing use of coined money and or { credit based upon coined money; US economic and financial system had q uuite novel facility and stability. The empire was held together by road system that made the road system of the Persians seem mere prellm- mary experiment. It's extent was far greater than that of any preceding form of political administration. Reading and writing, raisAd to new levels of simplicity and convenience by the Creeks and Hebrews brought what we should think nowadays a small proportion, but which was Tn those days quite unprecedented pro portion, of the population into an m telligent participation In public ar fairs Iron had become widespre eao for tools and implements as well as weapons, and the horse was now no longer a war beast but, with It's bastard child, the mule, universally available means of transport. All these things made the Roman imperial system as new thing in human eX- perience as the United states or America or the present British ''Em- pirer-both of which I hold are new species. fresh beginnings without any frl1a affinitieS in the past.
 There is in all history only one rough parallel to the Roman Empire and that is it's contemporary Chinese Empire. But I will restrain the encyclopaedia impulse and leave that out of our present discussion.
 It's story Is Europe's History.
 Now as Gibbons great history shows, the history of all Europe and western Asia since that time is real ly the story of this unique thing, the empire, the Roman empire and it's struggle to exist, to remain one and to restore itself when broken to com plete existence. It was broken by the Adriatic crack, by that fatal wedge out of the nomadic great plains. Hungary, by the general incapacity of the Italians for navigation, due perhaps to characteristics of the Italian coast, by the intellectual in adequacies of a plutocracy. But the CT pireS that SpfdHS lioiu ie " .NSSN and east were only the results or a fissia and that left the idea of re- union perpotually active; the Holy Roman empire, the CZardom, the im- perialism of Napoleon, even the Aus train and the Hohenzo1lern empires, were all logically and legittmately the products of the original empire, legitimately empires in origin and fn- tention, attempts to recover univer- sal sway; parts in a great, dreary fu- tile European drama on which at last in these days the curtain falls.
 There has indeed only been one real empire in the world, this that cen tered upon Rome and the Mediter- ranean. Britain played certain part in this emlire, Henry VIII. for ex- ample, was imperial candidate against Charles V and the King of France, but the role of Britain there in has gene lily been a marginal one. The importance of England to man. kind began only when it turned It's face from the empire and from thoughts of the empire to the ocean. What we call today the British em- rire is new thing and aAdifferent thins than the Roman empire. created by new and, greater forces and deserving an entirely distinc- tive name.
 The fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turtles saw great process of change in human conditions that has been go- ing on until the present time. From t;le point of view of one who dis cussea political or economic ag- glomerations the most important thing in that great revolution has Of communication between man and man. That revolution began with the iaprearance of the ocean-going sail Ing ship and of printed paper; it