Smashing Up Their Civilisation

Kurt: Think of it, Smallways: there's war everywhere! They're smashing up their civilisation before they have made it. … The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead — dripping death — dripping death!

Kurt The War in the Air (1908) by H. G. Wells

Get the book at Bookshop.org Supports independent bookstores. We earn a small commission.

Context: Lieutenant Kurt, a German airship officer, despairs to Bert about the spreading war.

Not in a duel yet

Source: Chapter VII. The “Vaterland” Is Disabled

More from The War in the Air

They complacently assumed a necessary progress towards which they had no moral responsibility. They did not realise that this security of progress was a thing still to be won — or lost, and that the…

A Thing Still to Be WonNot rated yet

Tom Smallways: You can say what you like… It didn't ought ever to 'ave begun.

It Didn't Ought to Have BegunTom SmallwaysNot rated yet

The development of Science had altered the scale of human affairs. By means of rapid mechanical traction, it had brought men nearer together, so much nearer socially, economically, physically, that…

Science Altered the ScaleNot rated yet

Tom Smallways: This here Progress… it keeps on. Tom Smallways: You'd hardly think it could keep on.

This Here ProgressTom SmallwaysNot rated yet

It was the dissolution of an age; it was the collapse of the civilisation that had trusted to machinery, and the instruments of its destruction were machines. But while the collapse of the previous…

Trusted to MachineryNot rated yet