The War and Socialism: Death as an Escape by Brandon S.

Wells’ “A Dream of Armageddon” and The War and Socialism at first glance provide seemingly contradictory points about the morality and the necessity of war. “A Dream of Armageddon“details a man’s recount of his own lifelike dreams, in which he is a future politician with some degree of power; however, he chooses to leave politics in search of a better life, and in doing so, allows his former power-hungry partner to start a war, which ultimately leads to tragedy. When first reading “A Dream of Armageddon“, I understood it as not only a critique of war itself (evidenced by the trauma brought upon the story’s “protagonist”) but also of the very human impulses that lead to needless war. Wells especially seems to be commenting upon the fact that war is not only something caused by selfish and conceited reasons, but requires active work to avoid. The protagonist, for example, could have likely prevented the conflict, but chose not to, deciding that if other men were permitted to live selfish lives, then so was he. We see very different reasoning in The War and Socialism. Wells manages to combine his distaste for war with a compelling moral case for Britain’s involvement in WWI by arguing that whatever evil war may bring upon the world, the threat posed by increased German aggression and militarism necessitated involvement from a benevolent, otherwise un-interested party. Intentionally or not, in doing so, the two stories become inextricably linked in my mind.

Britain can easily be substituted for the protagonist of “A Dream of Armageddon“, and Germany for Evesham, without disrupting the narrative too much. And though trite, it is worth mentioning Wells’ amazing predilection in this story—if I hadn’t known the date of publication, I would have assumed that it was published during or after World War One and the terrible mechanization of war it brought. Wells was ‘well’ ahead of this and predicted warplanes in 1901, two years before a working plane was even flown. Aside from the wonder of that, the fact that these two works so closely mirror one another, and yet were written for very different reasons over a decade apart, goes far to show that Wells is not somehow reversing his position or expressing any degree of hypocrisy by urging Britain to war. Rather, he is acting on values expressed years earlier. Wells could not have possibly anticipated WWI exactly as it unfolded, but it nonetheless seems like he used “A Dream of Armageddon“ as a sort of practice run for writing about the war, from pointless beginning to inglorious end.

The physical medium of The War and Socialism speaks for itself regarding Wells’ intentions. Priced contemporarily at a penny and consisting of little more than a few sheets of thin paper, it is clear that, perhaps unlike some of his works, Wells was not only writing for his educational peers. Rather, he intended to reach as large and wide an audience as possible, and deliver to them a quick, digestible read. Wells was not only seeking to comment on society, as he could do in any work—he was seeking to influence public opinion, and he knew that in order to do so, he was going to have to appeal to as many people as possible. If Wells were to make a significant profit off of the book, that could cause some controversy; the low price also exculpates Wells from any claim that he was hypocritically profiting from a work that argued the benefits of socialism and the dangers of capitalism. This critique of capitalism is another parallel between The War and Socialism and “A Dream of Armageddon“. Though the economic system of this time isn’t mentioned, we can infer from descriptions of Capri (such as the so-called “pleasure islands” and the descriptions of the extravagant, well-lit, futuristic dance) that it serves to some extent to represent the extravagance of capitalism. To Wells, capitalism goes hand-in-hand with war; I was especially struck by the scene at the end, in which this new, capitalistic world meets the old (represented by the temple) only through death. With so much discussion about time in the narrative, The War and Socialism helped me to understand this last description of the future as a comment on the perpetuity of war and capitalism. A system as old and as entrenched as the sacred temple in which the “protagonist” dies; and it is only in death that either the protagonist or his lover can escape this system.