“What I Would Do With the World IX”

1931 Inge, The Very Rev. Dean [William Ralph] (1860-1954). “What I Would Do With the World IX.” The Listener 6.152 (December 9, 1931): 987-989, 1021, with a sketch of Inge by Kapp on 989. LLL, NLS

The nineth in a series responding to H. G. Wells’s question: What would he do if he was Dictator of the world for the next twenty years and had the power to bring about change? The League of Nations as a sovereign state with a small territory of its own including what was then Constantinople (Istanbul) and the eastern part of Thrace (essentially European Turkey) where it would have its “Senate house and public offices, its international fleet and air force. All international disputes will come before it: a recalcitrant nation would be punished by a complete boycott. All national navies and armies are abolished” (997). No tariffs or passports but independent nations will still exist with their own forms of government. The League will regulate international trade and immigration. Eugenic measures would be encouraged. He says that the state must exist for the individual not the individual for the state; therefore, he rejects most forms of socialism. In Britain, he would abolish the House of Commons and have a Senate representing interests not numbers. He would re-energize settlement in the colonies to take those in Britain who had lost work to machinery or for other reasons by establishing “self-sustained and self-supporting village communities, growing their own food and supplying their own needs” in South Africa, Australasia, and Canada (1021). He would establish two committees to develop rational dress for both men and women. Education that would give workers and their wives “something enjoyable and elevating to do when the day’s work is over” (1021). No gambling or betting. The author was an Anglican priest, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, and Dean of St Paul's Cathedral.