The Open Conspiracy by H G Wells

In 1928 H.G Wells wrote a book THE OPEN CONSPIRACY describing the organization behind all the movements that have brought us to our present sorry state of affairs. Is there a world conspiracy for controlling the people ? According to H G Wells there is, and he was proud to be a part of it.

In 1930 a revised and expanded version was published, and a further revised edition appeared in 1931 titled What are we to do with our Lives?. A final version appeared in 1933 under its original title.

In a June 16, 1928 article in the Illustrated London News, Wells' good friend and life-long critic G. K. Chesterton reviewed the book and explained the danger he saw in what Wells was saying about the "general tendency towards establishing a world control.":

"It seems to me that a good many things might happen, if there is nothing to control the movement towards control. Ideas can be perverted only too easily even when they are strict ideas; I cannot see how we preserve them from perversion merely by making them loose ideas. A thing like the Catholic system is a system; that is, one idea balances and corrects another. A man like Mahomet or Marx, or, in his own way, Calvin, find that system too complex, and simplifies everything to a single idea. But it is a definite idea. He naturally builds a rather unbalanced system with his one definite idea. But I cannot see why there should be a better chance for a man trying to build up a balanced system with one indefinite idea....

There are two other difficulties I feel in this glorification of world government. One is the very simple fact that the real difficulty of representative government is how to make it representative, even in the smallest of small nationalities, even in the nearest parish council. Why we should talk as if we should have more influence over rulers governing the whole earth from Geneva or Chicago, I have never been able to see. Mr. Wells can spread himself in describing how 'world controls' would control us. He seems relatively vague about how we should control them. The other objection is less simple and would need a more atmospheric description, but it is even more real. Mr. Wells is driven to perpetual disparagement of patriotism and militant memories, and yet his appeal is always to the historic pride of man. Now nearly all normal men have in fact received their civilisation through their citizenship; and to lose their past would be to lose their link with mankind. An Englishman who is not English is not European; a Frenchman who is not fully French is not fully human. Nations have not always been seals or stoppers closing up the ancient wine of the world; they have been the vessels that received it. And, as with many ancient vessels, each of them is a work of art."