Madariaga and H. G. Wells' 'Open Conspiracy'

H. G. WELLS, SALVADOR DE MADARIAGA AND THE 'OPEN CONSPIRACY'

A key book that helped me understand the New Age Movement in 1981 was H. G. Wells’ THE OPEN CONSPIRACY: BLUEPRINTS FOR A WORLD REVOLUTION. I first read of it in Marilyn Ferguson’s THE AQUARIAN CONSPIRACY. I then found the title, predictably, on the shelves of Detroit’s then leading New Age bookstore, The Mayflower.[1] I took more than my fair share of ridicule, mostly from self-styled cult “experts” in the Christian community for pointing out the obvious similarities between what was happening and how H. G. Wells said things should and would happen. Particularly among many proclaimed cult-experts in the evangelical world (EMNR, CRI, John Warwick Montgomery), there was denial of any political networking or even “political consciousness” among New Agers. I will have more to say about this later.

Lately, materials I have reviewed concerning, inter alia, Javier Solana, brought passages from my old H. G. Wells’ readings to mind. I found myself absently mindedly wondering if there were perhaps connections between Salvador de Madariaga, Javier Solana’s fondly mentoring grandfather and Wells. After all, they were contemporaries. Thanks in part to two of my favorite persons, the guys who invented Google.com, and in part to my personal bookshelves, I discovered indeed there were – and they were strong, even close connections. Madariaga was an admirer of H. G. Wells plans for the new strong one world government. This information is also contained in my growing library of Salvador de Madariaga’s books. A telling reference is MORNING WITHOUT NOON Memoirs[2] by him. Happily, Madariaga is more readable than many of his peers. He had his faults, but he was not a dry or boring writer!

Madariaga included Wells in the list of great men “that converged on Geneva” in his League of Nations’ days. He records his recollections:

Such was the concentration of great men that converged on Geneva as moths drawn towards the light, that I found myself one evening to dine with Rabindranath Tagore and also, at another place, with H. G. Wells. In my usual absent-mindedness, I had accepted both invitations. I disentangled the conundrum by dining with Wells and going to have coffee with Tagore.[3]

It appears there was sometimes friction between Wells’ and Madariaga. He said there was contrast between the two personalities he met that evening: “while Tagore was nobility incarnate, Wells was vulgarity at its best-worst.”[4]

Despite this, all things being equal, Madariaga often preferred Wells’ to Tagore. He drew parallels and contrasts between the two men. Their messages were the same. Their styles were very different. A sensitive person, Madariaga professed to shudder at Wells’ crudeness. But he feared Tagore’s apparent delicacy was not strong enough to put their one-world government plans over the top. Wells’ maybe were. Tagore’s theme, per Madariaga was “the unity of mankind, and his argument, forcible and convincing, led to the need for developing the League of Nations into a world government.

Madariaga was firm in his conviction (and angered at the USA for blocking same) that world government was needed. Wells was the better person to put it over the top:

“Wells, however, had his own fascination, and in a parallel with Tagore he was by no means the loser; for he did, at least, hold his own. Tagore sitting in an ample summer chair on which he spread his vast figure and flowing robes . . . But when I listened to Wells, whose talk nearly always covered the same ground, I could not help preferring the Westerner’s concrete, directly, original approach, to the Easterner’s more vapid, general and, so to speak, goody-goody preaching. Wells was ever at his best in the context of action, cause and effect, mechanics of society, evolution of production and consumption, strains and balances between nations and the vast avenue of progress his mind opened for men out of the (then) present mess. Perhaps, would I then think, his very vulgarity helps to make it taste more modern.”

Madariaga’s 1973 book did not give a time frame apart from the obvious Geneva encounter. But I do know positively of at least one other time. That was an apparent 1940 symposium with speakers H. G. Wells, S. De Madariaga, J. Middleton Murry, and one C. E. M. Joad on what else? The New World Order – Its Basic Principles”. The four gentleman gathered before their live audience at a non-specified date that year in Central Hall, Westminister under the aegis of the National Peace Conference. England was under Nazi Germany’s attack. It was predictable that there would be concern for how society would be organized when all was over and that’s what this conference was about.

I’m sorry, but shades of much of this, peace conferences and all (not to mention the anti-religious aspects of that seminar) are reminding me of a literary character named Julius Felsenburgh in Lord of the World. You can reference that by clicking on the side link to my blogspot.

Back to the 1940 symposium. Madariaga seemed from the transcripts publicly irritated that evening by some of Wells’ apparent crudeness. Speaker J. Middleton Murry (a claimed ‘pacifist Christian’) had things to say to both. He said the two men were “both in essential agreement and I am in agreement with them . . . that what we are up against is an appalling lag of the human consciousness.” It was explained, per Mr. Murry, as “a major biological crisis.” Now, Madariaga had spoken to the “consciousness crisis” as well.

Folks, where did I hear that language in my anti-New Age career? “Consciousness,” “New World Order,” . . . In his speech that evening, Madariaga said, “the revolution must be in the inward man”. Now, as I said in my last post about Cardinal Danneels alleged daily changing theology, that whether that was good or bad was the direction in which it changed.

Madariaga made intriguing references in his speech that evening to "that angel that had the pride to sacrifice himself so that God could be great and henceforth went to the other place—I do not mean in the Parliamentary sense but in the theological sense. Christians for centuries have been accustomed to putting their own mistakes to the devil.[5] . .”

At any rate, this obvious Luciferic reference along with other considerable evidence of Salvador de Madariaga’s anti-clericalism and esotericism will be the subject of another blogspot as well as my forthcoming book. The $64 question is: how much of his approval to H. G. Wells’ disturbing agenda was inculcated in his personally-mentored grandson, Javier Solana, who is now running the military and foreign policy aspects of the European Union.

Of his prescription for the world and its supposed “cure,” Wells wrote:

“Whenever possible, the Open Conspiracy will advance by illumination and persuasion. But it has to advance and even from the outset where it is not allowed to illuminate and persuade it must fight.

And also

“Non-resistance, the restriction of activities to moral suasion, is no part of the programme of the Open Conspiracy. In the face of unscrupulous opposition creative ideas must become aggressive, must define their enemies and attach them. By its own organisations or through the police and military strength of governments amenable to its ideas, the movement is bound to find itself fighting for open roads open frontiers, freedom of speech and the realities of peace in regions of oppression. The Open Conspiracy rests upon a disrespect for nationality and there is no reason why it should tolerate noxious or obstructive governments because they hold their own in this or that patch of human territory."

Hmm -- Wells’ statements sound an awful lot like what has been coming out of both Washington and the European Union. Wells himself was no doubt along with his other proclivities genuinely wanting to see an end to war – but he proclaimed with equal vigor that it was ok to wage war to put his “New Order” in place. While decrying his crudeness, Solana’s grandfather thought Wells’ ideas viable and his directness more effective than more flowery, peaceful sounding versions of “the plan.”

The $64 question is “how much of this rubbed off on Javier Solana.” I suspect it was a lot. I also more than suspect that I am defined as one of the “enemies of the open conspiracy.” C’est la vie! As Herb Peters puts, “stay tuned” and have a happy Easter!

[1]The metropolitan Detroit area featured three well stocked New Age bookstores when I started my research in 1982. They were the Mayflower; Middle Earth Books; and the Michigan Metaphysical Society’s store. The Mayflower carried numerous pieces of anti-Semitic literature such as “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and Lady Jane Queensborough’s “Occult Theocrasy.” They, like the H. G. Wells’ THE OPEN CONSPIRACY were strangely labeled “Christian Book Club Edition” .
[2]See Salvador de Madariaga. Morning Without Noon Memoirs: United Kingdom: Saxon House, 1974 (copyrighted by Salvador de Madariaga, 1973).
[3] Ibid., page 134.
[4] Op. cit., page 135.

[5] See H. G. Wells, S. de Madariaga, J. Middleton Murry, C.E.M. Joad on THE NEW WORLD ORDER, NPC Fourpence. A pamphlet which I was fortunately able to obtain through abebooks.com and an English dealer, Left on the Shelf” of Highgate, Kendal, UK. This particular reference is from page 23.