less-settled

Updated: May 6, 2025

In the worst event given an emotional and empty hostility to property as such, masquerading as Socialism one has the prospect of a bitter and aimless class war between the expropriated many and the property-holding few, a war not of general insurrection but of localised outbreaks, strikes and brutal suppressions, a war rising to bloody conflicts and sinking to coarsely corrupt political contests, in which one side may prevail in one locality and one in another, and which may even develop into a chronic civil war in the less-settled parts of the country or an irresistible movement for secession between west and east.

H. G. (Herbert George) Wells - An Englishman Looks at the World