Already it was growing
clear that men must live on one side or the other. One could not have
little tradespeople and syndicated businesses in the same market,
sleeping carters and motor trolleys on the same road, bows and arrows
and aeroplane sharpshooters in the same army, or illiterate peasant
industries and power-driven factories in the same world. And still less
it was possible that one could have the ideas and ambitions and greed
and jealousy of peasants equipped with the vast appliances of the new
age. If there had been no atomic bombs to bring together most of
the directing intelligence of the world to that hasty conference at
Brissago, there would still have been, extended over great areas and
a considerable space of time perhaps, a less formal conference of
responsible and understanding people upon the perplexities of this
world-wide opposition. If the work of Holsten had been spread over
centuries and imparted to the world by imperceptible degrees, it would
nevertheless have made it necessary for men to take counsel upon and set
a plan for the future. Indeed already there had been accumulating for a
hundred years before the crisis a literature of foresight; there was a
whole mass of 'Modern State' scheming available for the conference to go
upon.
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