Omega, Camille Flammarion [top 10 books to read TXT] 📗

For about five years there was scarcely a single marriage or union. Every citizen was a soldier, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in every nation of Europe⁠—all ready for a confederation of States, but never recoiling before questions represented by the national flag. The women held their ground; they felt that truth was on their side, but their firmness would deliver humanity from the slavery which oppressed it, and that they could not fail of victory. To the passionate objurgations of certain men, they replied: “No; we will have nothing more to do with fools;” and, if this state of affairs continued, they had decided to keep their vow, or to emigrate to America, where, centuries before, the military system had disappeared.

The most eloquent appeals for disarmament were made at every session to the committee of administrators of the state, formerly called deputies or senators. Finally, after a lapse of five years, face to face with this wall of feminine opposition, which, day by day, grew stronger and more impregnable, the deputies of every country, as if animated by a common motive, eloquently advocated the cause of women, and that very week disarmament was voted in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Spain.

It was springtime. There was no disorder. Innumerable marriages followed. Russia and England had held aloof from the movement, the suffrage of women in these countries not having been unanimous. But as all the states of Europe were formed into a republic the ensuing year, uniting in a single confederated state, on the invitation of the government of the United States of Europe, these two great nations also decreed a gradual disarmament. Long before this time, India had been lost to England, and the latter had become a republic. As for Russia, the monarchical form of government still existed. It was then the middle of the twenty-fourth century, and from that epoch the narrow sentiment of patriotism was replaced by the general one of humanity.

Delivered from the ball and chain of military slavery, Europe had immediately gotten rid of the bureaucracy which had also exhausted nations, condemned to perish, as it were, by plethora. But for this a radical revolution was necessary. From that time on, Europe had advanced as by magic in a marvellous progress⁠—social, scientific, artistic and industrial. Taxation, diminished by nine-tenths, served only for the maintenance of internal order, the security of life and property, the support of schools, and the encouragement of new researches. But individual initiative was far more effective than the old-time official centralization which for so many years had stifled individual effort, and bureaucracy was dead and buried.

At last one breathed freely, one lived. In order to pay 700,000 millions every century to citizens withdrawn from all productive work, and to maintain the bureaucracy, governments had been obliged to increase taxation to a fearful degree. The result was that everything was taxed; the air one breathes, the water one drinks, the light and heat of the sun, bread, wine and every article of food, clothing, houses, the streets of cities, the country roads, animals, horses, oxen, dogs, cats, hens, rabbits, birds in cages, plants, flowers, musical instruments, pianos, organs, violins, zithers, flutes, trumpets, trades and professions, the married and the unmarried, children, furniture⁠—everything, absolutely everything; and this taxation had grown until it equalled the net product of all human labor, with the single exception of the “daily bread.” Then, all work had ceased. It seemed thenceforth impossible to live. It was this state of affairs which led to the great social revolution of the international socialists, of which mention was made at the beginning of this book, and to others which followed it. But these upheavals had not definitely liberated Europe from the barbarism of bygone days, and it was to the young women’s league that humanity owes its deliverance.

The unification of nations, of ideas, of languages, had brought about also that of weights and measures. No nation had resisted the universal adoption of the metric system, based upon the dimensions of the planet itself. A single kind of money was in circulation. One initial meridian ruled in geography. This meridian passed through the observatory of Greenwich, and at its antipode the day changed its name at noon.

Nations which we call modern had vanished like those of the past. France had disappeared in the twenty-eighth century, after an existence of about two thousand years. Germany disappeared in the thirty-second; Italy in the twenty-ninth; England had spread over the surface of the ocean.

Meteorology had attained the precision of astronomy, and about the thirtieth century the weather could be predicted without error.

The forests, sacrificed to agriculture and the manufacture of paper, had entirely disappeared.

The legal rate of interest had fallen to one-half of one percent.

Electricity had taken the place of steam. Railroads and pneumatic tubes were still in use, but only for the transportation of freight. Voyages were made preferably by dirigible balloons, aeroplanes and airships, especially in the daytime.

This very fact of aerial navigation would have done away with frontiers if the progress of reason had not already abolished them. Constant intercourse between all parts of the globe had brought about internationalism, and the absolutely free exchange of goods and ideas. Customhouses had been suppressed.

The telephonoscope disseminated immediately the most important and interesting news. A comedy played at Chicago or Paris could be heard and seen in every city of the world.

Astronomy had attained its end: the knowledge of the life of other worlds and the establishment of communication with them. All philosophy, all religion, was founded upon the progress of astronomy.

Marvellous instruments in optics and physics had been invented. A new substance took the place of glass, and had yielded the most unexpected results to science. New natural forces had been conquered.

Social progress had been no less great than that of science. Machines driven by electricity had gradually taken the place of manual labor. At the same time the production of food had become