In the Fourth Year
In the Fourth Year is a collection H. G. Wells assembled in the spring of 1918 from essays he had recently published discussing the problem of establishing lasting peace when World War I ended.Wells believed that two considerations necessitated the instauration of a "League of Free Nations": "the present geographical impossibility of nearly all the existing European states and empires" and "the steadily increasing disproportion between the tortures and destructions inflicted by modern warfare and any possible advantages that may arise from it."[11] In the final essay in the volume, Wells called on intellectuals and teachers to engage in "the greatest of all propagandas" to make possible "this new world of democracy and the League of Free Nations to which all reasonable men are looking."[14] Wells regarded the end of the "Teutonic dynastic system in Europe" as an inevitable consequence of Allied victory in World War I.The essays it contains led Walter Lippmann (who had edited the pieces for publication in The New Republic) to seek out Wells when he visited England in August 1918, and their meetings influenced the US State Dept.