A Year of Prophesying by H.G. Wells — Read

The British Empire Exhibition at Wembley is open to all sorts of criticism, and is occasionally quite absurd, but it contrives to be entertaining. Many of us dislike the Kipling quality and the strong, unpleasant flavour of Imperial Preference that hang about it. I have reviled its commercialism; its relative disregard of educational duties and responsibilities; its suggestion of imperial self-sufficiency. But all sorts of conferences are meeting at Wembley, and occasionally a strong breath of human common sense dispels for a time the stuffy, foggy conceit of our recent and transitory Empire. Wembley, in spite of itself, becomes international and contributes to the project of a new world.

The British Electrical and Associated Trades have been holding a most enlightening and hopeful conference on the power resources of the world -- not of the Empire, be it noted, but of the world. Prominent among the speakers at the opening were the secretary of the United States Federal Power Commission, the president of the Italian Electrical Committee, and other "outsiders. " A real attempt to see the world as one economic whole has been made. A frank admission of the need for organised world unity and world co-operation underlies the activities of this particular gathering.