A Meeting of Future Enemies
On the edge of Wimbledon Common Wells meets the artilleryman he first met at Woking so many days before. The artilleryman has not seen any Martians for 5 days and they discuss his plans for resistance. And the identity the artilleryman is disclosed for the first time.
In London Toni continues to be thankful for those who were left or stayed behind. Edith Cavell, who would, during The German War, be shot by the Germans for helping soldiers of both side, organises the nursing staff at Queen Anne’s Mansion, and the oldies who have found purpose despite their abandonment.
Toni continues to struggle with her own feelings of abandonment by the government of the day, and we begin to see her political awakening as she starts to appreciate that there may be more beyond achieving the vote. Now she has begun to question who should be in government.
This is also the last we hear of Morant, who disappears while leading a force to release any humans still held prison in the Martian’s redoubt on Primrose Hill.
Woke this morning after #SoMuchSleep. #FeelingBetter #LoveNurses #LoveOldies And someone brought me a cup of tea in bed! #FeelsSoDecadent
On the edge of Wimbleton Common Wells meets the artilleryman who he had last seen at Weybridge who expounds on his thoughts about the Martians. “They”re intelligent,” Wells later records the artilleryman as saying, “and they seem to want us for food”
“First, they’ll smash us up” Wells has the artilleryman saying “—ships, machines, guns, cities, all the order and organization. All that will go. If we were the size of ants we might pull through. But we’re not…
“We can beat them, but to do so we have to invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure to bring the children up…
“The tame ones will go like all tame beasts; in a few generations they”ll be big, beautiful, rich-blooded, stupid—rubbish! But we, the real men, will live underground, in London’s drains. People who don’t know drains think them horrible things…
“But under London are miles and miles of drains—hundreds of miles—and a few days’ rain and London empty will leave them sweet and clean. The main drains are big enough and airy enough for any one…
“And then there’s cellars, vaults, stores, from which bolting passages may be made to the drains. And the railway tunnels and subways. You see? And we form a band—able-bodied, clean-minded men. We”re not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again…
“All these—the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way—they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn”t one or the other—Lord! what is he but funk?…
“There’s 100’s of things I saw with my eyes that I’ve only begun to see clearly these last few days. There’s lots will take things as they are—fat and stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that they ought to be doing something. But the rest of us, the real men…
“We”ll learn—just see: 4 or 5 of their fighting-machines suddenly starting off—Heat-Rays right and left, and not a Martian in ’em, but men who have learned the way how. It may be in my time, even—those men. Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its Heat-Ray on our side!…
“Fancy having it in control! What would it matter if you were smashed to smithereens at the end of the run, after a bust like that? I reckon the Martians”ll open their eyes! Can”t you see them hurrying, hurrying—puffing and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs?…
“Something out of gear in every case. And swish, bang, rattle, swish! just as they are fumbling over it, swish comes the Heat-Ray, and, behold! man has come back to his own.”
@MarieRadiumCurie will assist @SirJohnTheEngineer in analysis of #Martian samples and construction of more #WirelessDevices #scientist #HowCanSheStillFunction #sadness #HeardHerWeeping #WeAllDoWhatWeCan
#RedWeed has some white patches on it this morning. #fear #WhatNightThisMean?
Breakfast handover is a party. Marie announces she is off to join the NUWSS’ hospital. Many men want to come with Vogan and I to finish off the Martians.
The Artilleryman and Wells talked through the early morning, and later crept out of the bushes, and, after scanning the sky for Martians, hurried precipitately to the house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair.
His lair was the coal-cellar, and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon—it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long, which he designed to reach to the main drain on Putney Hill—I had my first inkling of the gulf between his dreams and his powers. Such a hole I could have dug in a day.
Marie instructs us on the fireworks, and we set off a test rocket. I wish Mrs Curie well as she and her escort leave the Station.
Set off for Primrose Hill. [This is the last entry in Morant’s diary]
#MorningClinic ran smoothly this morning. #nurses organised #oldies into #orderlies . But the numbers of people are increasing. @EdithCavellNurse is a mastermind of organisation. #ThankHeavensForNurses .
So far we haven’t found any doctors to assist @GraceHarwoodStewart and I. @NUWSS continues to ask all new #refugees. Fortunately our #nurses are women of experience with many skills.
Wells believed in the artilleryman sufficiently to work with him all that morning, refreshed with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry. Wells described finding a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady labor.
But as they work objections and doubts began to arise in Wells’ mind; but he continues to work there all the morning, so glad was he to find himself with a purpose again. Then just as Well’s mind returns to his doubts the artilleryman announces it is time for lunch.
Over lunch, in answer to Wells’ questions, his companion returns to his grandiose plans again, growing so enthusiastic, and talking so eloquently of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that Wells begins to half-believe in him again.
But Wells is also to begin to understand something of his quality – the stress he lays on doing nothing precipitately. After eating the artilleryman insists upon playing cards. He teaches Wells euchre, and after dividing London between them they play for parish points.
#Martians strangely silent today. No #tripods seen moving around. Are they waiting for something? #fear #apprehension
After lunch the artilleryman teaches Well’s poker, after which Wells beats him at three tough chess games. When dark comes they decide to take the risk, and light a lamp.
#Exhausted #FirstSurgery #HadToAmputate #ThankHeavensForNurses #
Met with @MilliGawcett when #AfternoonClinic was over. @NUWSS has placed @SirJohnTheEngineer’s devices across #London in strategic places. We now have #communication between groups.
@NUWSS have requested aid from #Birmingham to assist with medical needs. #NoReply #WeAreBelowTheLine #anger
@NUWSS reports some issues with reckless drunkenness. People deal with disaster in many ways, but this way seems quite ridiculous to me. #fools #idiots
@Lizcadbury suggests I view these people with compassion rather than scorn. #StrugglingWithThis #fools #idiots #ButAbandoned #CompassionWouldBeABetterResponse #TheyAreBelowTheLine #anger
@Millifawcett says that offering them purpose and organisation will help. #IHopeSo #StupidLine #WhereIsTheGovernment? #ShouldWeBeTheGovernment?
Taking a cigar, Wells goes up the stairs to look at the lights from the Martian camp blazing so greenly along the Highgate hills, where he begins to question the atilleryman’s dedication, and filled with remorse at what he now sees a wasted day resolves to go on into London.
This program has for the first time been able to confirm the identity of Well’s un-named artilleryman as Edward Mosley, the founder of British Fascism.
Mosley, the founder of the British Union, promoted the legitimacy of political violence in his work “Reflections on Violence” (1908) and other works in which he advocated radical syndicalist action to achieve a revolution to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie.
In his work “The Illusions of Progress”, (1910) Mosley denounced democracy as reactionary, writing “nothing is more aristocratic than democracy.” During the German War, Mosley was detained under Defence Reg 18D and on his eventual release retired from public life, dying in 1939.
This is the last time Wells mentions the artilleryman, but his failure to acknowledge Mosley’s name in his account of the War is often taken to be evidence of Wells disgust with Mosley’s later fascist beliefs (Wells’ being a socialist).
Was thinking about @HGWellsBro tonight. Missing him.
Hope you’re safe @HGWellsBro #sadness #WhyDidYouGoToWoking Still can’t #SayThatWord
Despite the Martian’s attack on London occurring 16 days previously, Kensington is still on fire and observers, such as Wells, watching it from across the London valley, can see the occasional orange-red tongue of flame flash up and vanish into the deep blue of the night.
Against the darkness of the rest of the city, observers might also have noticed a strange light, a pale, violet-purple fluorescent glow, quivering under the night breeze from the red weed.