Observations placeholder

extract from The Presidential Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, given on September 2nd, 1937, at Nottingham, as read by Mr, Wells

We are all agreed upon the desirability of the spirit of Christianity and of the spirit of Democracy, and that the general interest of the community should not be sacrificed to Private Profit.

Yes — beautiful, but what is not realised is that Socialism in itself is little more than a generalisation about the undesirability of irresponsible ownership and that the major problem before the world is to devise some form of administrative organisation that will work better than the scramble of irresponsible owners.

That form of administrative organisation has not yet been devised.

You cannot expropriate the private adventurer until you have devised a competent receiver for the expropriated industry or service. This complex problem of the competent receiver is the underlying problem of most of our constructive politics.

It is imperative that every voter should have some conception of the experiments in economic control that are in progress in Great Britain, the United States of America, Italy, Germany, Russia, and elsewhere.

Such experiments are going to affect the whole of his or her life profoundly. So, too, are the experiments in monetary and financial organisation.

Many of the issues involved go further than general principles. They are quantitative issues, questions of balance and more or less.