..."
"I agree," said Dr. Martineau.
"So I want a report to admit that distinctly. I want it to go
further than that. I want to get the beginnings, the germ, of a world
administration. I want to set up a permanent world commission of
scientific men and economists--with powers, just as considerable powers
as I can give them--they'll be feeble powers at the best--but still some
sort of SAY in the whole fuel supply of the world. A say--that may grow
at last to a control. A right to collect reports and receive
accounts for example, to begin with. And then the right to make
recommendations.... You see?... No, the international part is not the
most difficult part of it. But my beastly owners and their beastly
lawyers won't relinquish a scrap of what they call their freedom of
action. And my labour men, because I'm a fairly big coal owner myself,
sit and watch and suspect me, too stupid to grasp what I am driving at
and too incompetent to get out a scheme of their own. They want a world
control on scientific lines even less than the owners. They try to think
that fuel production can carry an unlimited wages bill and the owners
try to think that it can pay unlimited profits, and when I say; 'This
business is something more than a scramble for profits and wages; it's a
service and a common interest,' they stare at me--" Sir Richmond was
at a loss for an image.
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