MECHANICS | THE WONDER OF PHYSICS | PHYSICS MADE SIMPLE

THE WONDER OF PHYSICS

MECHANICS

1. Introduction – The origin of our understanding of motion or mechanics

Motion in Physics means movement of bodies. Here in this section we will look at motion or movement of solid bodies.

When does a body move?

Let us start with our own observations of things, when they move.

The first kind of motion and the one that strikes us first is when one body hits another or there is a push or a pull given to bodies.

Kicking a football, opening a door, striking a carrom coin, throwing a ball, etc. etc. These can be called contact forces in gross terms became one body when striking another through actual contact does move the other body. Of course the body to move must be light enough and / or the contact force applied must be strong enough.

For example a large rock cannot be moved by a man but can be moved by a crane. But a small rock can be moved by a man. These are the things that we observe.

We also observe things falling from a height when left free. Of course birds and airplanes seem to go contrary to this but that is a phenomenon involving air and we won’t go into that now as in this section we are dealing with specifically motion involving solid bodies.

And then we see the heavenly bodies moving – the Sun, rising in the East, moving across the sky and setting in the West, the moon also moves across the sky but most people do not observe the moon moving as we sleep during that time! But we do see the moon at different places in the sky at different times when we do happen to observe it during late nights and very early in the morning.

We also see the countless stars and among these are the planets that also look like stars but are planets really. Usually people cannot distinguish between planets and stars but the interesting thing is that to us, the planets move during the year ( if you locate it and observe it the whole year) but the stars don’t seem to move.

Then we also see certain objects like magnets that move other objects like iron when brought near it. Travelers know another phenomenon that if you hang a magnet or a compass needle is left free, it moves and points in a specific (N-S) direction.

These are our observations and these same observations led the ancients to wonder and ask questions about all these motions.

Since we happen to see these things from childhood, we take them for granted we tend to feel that it is like that because it is like that!

Yet, there is a wonder to the observations just made. Setting aside contact forces for the moment, let us consider bodies falling when left free from a height.

Why should bodies fall at all? After all, nobody is pushing it. See the phenomenon as if you are seeing it for the first time. It is a wonder. Invariably, always, without fail, bodies fall on earth, if left free from a height.

The apparent motion of the Sun is even move wondrous and raises many questions.

What is the Sun? Why is there night and day? How far is it? Is the earth moving or the Sun moving? Why does it seem to move across the sky? Why is its apparent motion so regular?

Why do the moon and the planets too move as seen by us?

These questions were asked by the ancients. But some, the real seekers of knowledge, the more passionate of them did not only ask questions, they located the positions with the passage of time. It is equal to measuring the motion.

They found no irregularities with respect to the Sun and the moon. The Sun and the Moon went across the sky rising from the east and setting in the west as seen by us from Earth.

But when it came to the planets, they found a strange behavior of planets.

Let us take Mars. When they observed Mars the whole year, they found Mars to go in one direction till June and then it went backward for 3 months and then went forward again. This is how Mars looks to us.

The same is true of all the planets. This is called retrograde motion.

Now the central question is the following. Is the earth at the centre and all planets, Sun, Moon are moving round it or Is the Sun the centre and the planets move around it?

If the earth is at the centre, the planets should move across the sky, why is there backward or retrograde motion of the planets?

The ancient thinkers especially Ptolemy gave a system of Earth as the center and gave complicated motions to the planets.

But in the 16th century, it was Copernicus who got the real idea.

He proposed that the Sun is at the centre and the planets are moving round the Sun. He did this by explaining backward or retrograde motion of the planets.

If the Sun is at the centre and let us take 2 planets Earth & Mars are going round the Sun, then how will Mars look to people on Earth? This was the question that Copernicus asked.

When earth and Mars are side by side (Point A) and if Earth goes faster than Mars, then how will Mars look to people on Earth?

It will seem to go backward!

When earth and Mars are as shown in and Mars is at point B i.e. at opposite ends, Mars would seem to go forward!

So at some period Mars goes forward and during some period, it goes backward. Putting the Sun at the centre and the planets going around it explains the backward motion of all Planets as seen from earth.

The planets are not going backward and forward. They are simply going around the sun. it seems to go like that only because earth also is moving!

Now this was a great turning point in understanding motion.

Once we understood that Sun is at the centre, the next step was to state exactly, with measurement, as to how planets go around the sun.

Kepler did that work and came up with 3 Kepler’s laws.

Another great thinker Galileo came next and he measured free fall of bodies.

His interest was not just observing free fall but to measure how much distance it travelled while falling as time passed (on successive seconds).

He got the value of the acceleration as 9.8m/s2.

Now let us see how the picture looked at that time concerning motion.

The sun was at the centre and all the planets moved around it. (including earth). Things fell on earth with an acceleration of 9.8m/s2. The planets moved according to Kepler’s laws.

But the questions still remained. Why did the planets move like that? Why did the acceleration on earth of freely falling bodies have that value?

It was then that Newton came on the scene. He thought intensely and deeply over the problem, One day, the legend says, he was walking in an apple orchard and he saw an apple falling and it suddenly occurred to him that the moon falling or being pulled to earth by earth is the same pull that earth puts on the apple!

He further reasoned that the force is due to the product of masses & inversely proportional to the distance between the masses.

i.e. the earth pulls on the apple and the moon also. The force in the apple is

directly proportional to mass of apple x mass of earth.

Inversely proportional to square of distance (i.e.radius of the earth)

The force on the moon is

directly proportional to mass of moon x mass of earth

& inversely proportional to square of distance (i.e. distance between earth and moon)

Newton could, with this insight derive Kepler’s laws and at one stroke Newton made earth & heavens one!

He put all motion in the form of 3 laws of motion & called the pull of gravity between masses the universal law of gravitation.

Let us learn these laws systematically and mathematically. But before we go into it we must understand certain concepts of motion in one dimension. That will make our understanding of Newton’s laws complete.

The next section is on motion in one dimension. After that we cover Newton’s laws of motion and Universal law of Gravitation.

2. Motion in one dimension

2.1. Distance and Displacement

Look at the figure.

Suresh begins, at point A, from his house and travels on the road and takes turns crossing many houses and reading point B, his friend, Ramdas’s house.

A bird from a terrace also moves in the air from the terrace of Suresh’s house and goes to Ramdas’s terrace in a straight line.

The total distance travelled by Suresh is is called Distance. It has no direction.

The straight line distance from the initial point A towards the final point B (of the bird) is called Displacement. It has direction also. The direction is from A to B.

The figures-3&4 below illustrate this point further.

Units of both distance and displacement are the same. It is the unit of Length.

10 mm = 1 cm 100 cm = 1 m 1000 m = 1 km

1 feet = 12 inches 3 feet = 1 yard

2.2. Speed :

We know what is speed when we look at two objects moving; we can tell which is going faster. But what is involved in speed? How can we measure speed exactly?

Suppose two men come to you and the first man says, “I have travelled 100 metres”. The second man says “I have travelled 100 metres”. Just with this information, will we know who travelled faster? What else is required to know the faster of the two men?

Yes, the men must specify the time also. So the first man says “I travelled 100 metres in 50 seconds”. The second man says “I travelled 100 metres in 20 seconds”.

First man : 100 metres in 50 seconds.

Second man : 100 metres in 20 seconds.

So, in one second,

First man travelled = 100/50 = 2 m/seconds

Second man travelled =100/20 = 5 m/seconds

So second man is faster. In general if someone or something travels ‘d’ metres in ‘t’ seconds then in 1 second, i.e.

Speed=distance/time

The unit is m/sec or feet/sec or time/hr etc.

2.3. Velocity

Velocity too is speed but velocity talks about the displacement (not distance) in one second.

so, Velocity=Displacement/Time

So velocity measures how much final (net) straight line distance the body travelled (from initial to final point) in one second i.e. displacement divided by time.

eg. if the displacement was 10 metres in 20 seconds

in one second displacement = 10/20=1/2m/s

In general Velocity=displacement/time

2.4. Uniform Speed

Uniform speed is simply constant speed i.e. the body is covering equal distances in equal intervals of time.

eg: A man is going on a scooter. His hand on the accelerator is steady. He is neither raising the accelerator not lowering it. His speedometer shows 30 km/hr (8.3 m/s)

Now what does this mean?

It means that at every second he travelled 8.3 metres only.

1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec

8.3 m 8.3 m 8.3 m 8.3 m 8.3 m 8.3 m

This is the meaning of covering equal distances in equal intervals of time.

2.5. Average Speed

Usually bodies do not go at uniform or constant speed, at least on bikes!

See the figure below:

A caterpillar moving

1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec

1 c m 2 cm 0 cm 1 cm 1 cm

A caterpillar moved 1 cm in 1st second,

2 cm in 2nd second,

again 0 cm in 3rd second, (it stopped for a second)

1 cm in 4th second,

1 cm in 5th second,

3 cm in 6th second,

2 cm in 7th second.

Now what is it’s speed? We will have to give seven speeds here, isn’t it?

That is difficult. But I still want how ffast the caterpillar travelled.

So we can take how much total distance it travelled in the total time.

10 cm in 7 seconds

so speed = 10/7 cm/sec

In general average speed = Total distance travelled/total time taken

2.6. Uniform velocity, Average velocity

Uniform velocity means that equal displacements take equal ........ls of time.

To find the Average velocity we use the formula

Average velocity = Total displacement/total time taken

2.7. SIGN NOTATION

Displacement and velocity being a vectors have two signs (for straight line motion). If we take a right side motion as positive, then the left side motion is (-)

V-------------------------------------------V

If we take upside motion as (+)ve then down side motion is (-)ve.

|

Let us see why

A man moves ahead (for displacement in a straight line) 4 metres and then moves back in the same straight line 3 metres. See figure...

--------------------------------------------->C A--------------------------------->C

A-------------------------------------------->-------- --------------------------------------

B-------------------------------------4mts B-------------------------------

This displacement from A to C is +4 metres

This displacement from A t o B is -3 metres (opposite direction)

So total displacement is 4 - 3 = 1 m.

If we had not put the signs.

We would have got 4 + 3 = 7 x

It would have been a wrong answer! So clearly displacement has (+)ve and (-)ve signs.

Since velocity is only displacement (in one second) velocity too has (+)ve and (-)ve signs.

2.8. Acceleration - Non-Uniform and Uniform Acceleration

In real life, usually, a body changes it’s velocity. It may go faster, slower or come to a stop. This is clear enough. This is called acceleration.

But how do we measure this?

Usually, bodies do not go at a constant speed (as we saw in the caterpillar example). Suppose I am going on my bike. How do I go? I am at 20 km/hr now, I accelerate and reach 40 km/hr in one second. Then I stop at a red light. Then again I came to 20 in one second. I raise......

So here we have to give values and numbers at every moments. This is called non-uniform acceleration.

There can be also uniform acceleration.

Look at the following example

A body moves in the following way...

1sec 1sec 1sec 1sec 1sec 1sec 1sec 1sec Time

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

2m 4m 6m 8m 10m 12m 14m 16m Distance

What do you observe?

In 1st second it moves - 2 m

2nd second it moves - 4 m, an increase of 2m

3rd second it moves - 6 m, a further increase of 2m

4th second it moves - 8 m, an increase of 2m

10 m, an increase of 2m

12 m, an increase of 2m

14 m, an increase of 2m

16 m, an increase of 2m

With each second the distance moved is 2 m move per second.

The change in velocity per second is 2 m/s.

If a body starts with a velocity of 2 m/s and after 10 second reaches a velocity of 10 m/s. then, change in velocity is (10 - 2) m/s in 10 seconds = 8 m/s in 10 seconds.

Hence in one second, the change in velocity is 8/10 = 0.8 m/s/s

In general if a body starts with a velocity ‘U’ and reaches a velocity of ‘V’ in ‘t’ seconds. The change in velocity = V - U in ‘t’ seconds.

in one second,

change in velocity =V-U/T

a = V-U/t m/8/s or m/s

Note that the above is true in Uniform Acceleration only.

i.e. change in velocity is same through out the motion. Now, Average velocity is U+V/2

Displacement = Average Velocity x time

=(U+V/2)t

=(U+U+at/2)t

(S=Ut+1/2 at2)-2

V=U+at S=ut+1/2at2

t=(V-U/a)

t2 = U2=V2-2UV/a

S=U(V-U/a)+1/2a(V2+U2-2UV/a)

= 2UV-2U2+V2+U2-2UVa-2UV/2a

S=V2-U2/2a

V2 - U2 = 2as ——— 3

3. Newton’s Laws and universal law of gravitation

Newton was the central figure in the history of physics. He was the person who made Mechanics into a ‘whole’, comprehesive science. He gave the fundamental statement to it.

What is it that Newton said?

Lets begin with his famous 3 laws of motion

3.1. Newton’s First Law (statement)

“Every body remains at rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless influenced by an external force”.

A body remains at rest if it is at rest. Ok that’s fine. That goes with common sense and is pretty plain and obvious.

But what about the 2nd part - (A body) remains in 1. Uniform motion, 2. In a straight line, 3.Unless disturbed by an external force.

Is this true?

On Earth, we see bodies stopping even when nothing is stopping it. A ball rolled on a floor does come to a stop after moving some distance by itself.

Actually on Earth, the bodies are not free. Either the surfaces or air opposes any motion. When a body rolls on the floor, it is not really free because the roughness of the floor is showing it down. It is opposing the motion. This opposing force is called Frictm.

But think of what would happen if there were no force opposing a moving body. A region like space where there are no bodies and no air would be a frictionless area. What if a body is given a small push and then left alone. You will actually see the body moving with the same speed and NEVER STOPPING, unless something stops it, NEVER GOING FASTER or SLOWER unless something makes it go faster or slower. If a push is given in the same direction of its motion it’ll go faster. If a push is given in the opposite direction, it will go slower. If it is given at an angle only then it’s direction will change.

A body remains at rest or

in uniform motion

in a straight line

unless it is influenced by some external force.

You understand? In the universe, as such, the first law is true.

A body by itself cannot change it’s state of rest and also of motion.

It’s a wondrous thing, isn’t it? Since childhood, we are used to thinking that a body in motion will come to a stop ultimately. But now, I hope, you understand that it comes to a stop on Earth only because of an opposing force called Friction.

That’s why if the Friction is less, say on a smooth floor, the body takes longer to come to a stop. Making Friction zero and leaving the moving body totally undisturbed will make the body continue to move forever and ever....

You see motion too is natural like rest.

A body at rest will remain at rest.

A body in motion will remain in motion!

This is the principle of satellities and the motion of planets and moon etc. Once a particular motion was given, there was nothing to stop it! The Earth once was given rotation around itself and revolution around Sun and it is doing the same thing and will do the same forever and ever and ever!

Give any motion to a body it will be in that motion forever in the universe. We don’t see it happening on Earth because of surface friction.

3.2. Newton’s Second Law

“A force acting on a body accelerates it; greater the force, greater the acceleration. Greater the mass of the object, the lesser the acceleration FOR THE SAME FORCE.”

Putting it another way

The acceleration of a body is directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to mass.

(Directly proportional means if one is increased the other increases proportionately i.e. if one is doubled the second is doubled. If one is tripled, the second is tripled and so on.

Inversely proportional means if one is increased the other is decreased proportionately. If one is doubled, the other is halved, when one is tripled, the other becomes one third)

Let us try to understand the 2nd Law

A marble is at rest on a floor.

If I push it, it moves.

A marble is moving slowly on a floor.

If I push it in the direction of motion of the body, it goes faster.

If I push it in the opposing direction, it goes slower.

If I push it at an angle to it’s motion it changes direction.

So 4 things can happen to a body when a force is applied to it.

(1) It already on motion it can go from rest to motion.

(2) go faster

(3) go slower

(4) change direction

depending on the direction of the force.

Same direction to the direction of motion - faster

Opposite direction to the direction of motion - slower

at an angle to the direction of motion - changes direction.

Going faster or slower is called acceleration. But an interesting question arises here. Ok A body goes faster but how fast does it go faster?! This is not a silly question. A hard kick given to a football will make the ball go faster fast (at once)

But if I continue to give a force slowly to the same ball for a long time ultimately it will achieve a high speed but it will have taken a longer time.

A greater force makes a body go faster, faster!

A lesser force makes a body go faster but slower when compared to a greater force!

Hence acceleration is not just change of speed but the rate at which the speed is changing i.e. how fast it is changing.

More force, faster (more quickly) the speed will change.

Lesser force, slower (more slowly) the speed will change.

You understand?

Acceleration is a key concept in Physics. So one part of Newton’s 2nd Law simply says that greater the force, greater the acceleration, lesser the force, lesser the acceleration, no force - no acceleration i.e. rest or uniform motion (Newton’s first law)!

So, in a way, Newton’s 1st law is contained in Newton’s 2nd law in an obvious way.

Now, let us come to the 2nd part of Newton’s 2nd Law.

Greater the mass, lesser the acceleration for the same force.

i.e. if certain force is applied to body A and the same force is applied to body B and if A is heavier than B.

Then which body accelerates more?

Obviously B.

In plain language, it is more difficult to change the speed of a heavier body than a lighter one. Greater force is needed to change the speed of a heavier body as compared to a lighter body.

This is plain enough.

So 2 things simultaneously determine the rate of change of speed i.e. acceleration -

1.Force, 2. Mass.

3.3. Newton’s Thrid Law

Every action (force) has an equal, opposite reaction (force) and in the same straight line.

In other words, if;

Body A gives a force to body B,

Body B gives (at once) an equal opposite force to A in the same direction.

If you push the wall, the wall pushes you back. It will be quite funny if it doesn’t! If you kick a stone, the stone will get the force but you too will get it, you’ll be hurt! Force come in pairs, there cannot be only a single force. An action force will get a reaction force at the same time. Also the reation force is opposite and exactly in a straight (opposite) line.

3.4. Fundamental forces - Gravitational, Electrical, Magnetic and Nuclear (weak and strong)

Introduction

We have said that force causes acceleration and greater the force, greater the accleration proportionately and lesser the force, lesser the acceleration. We also understand that for the same force, greater the mass, lesser the acceleration.

But a great, fundamental question still remains. Where do these forces come from? What is the origin?

Forces cannot come from nothing. There has to be something that is the cause of force, that is responsible for accelerations on masses.

Forces can come due to mass of a body (gravitational forces) - charge of a body (electrical forces) - charges in motion (magnetic forces) can originate on the nucleus of atoms (strong and weak nuclear forces)

These forces are fundamental forces. At other forces - like friction, pushes and pulls, tension on springs & strings, wind forces, muscular forces ARE AT ROOT these fundamental forces!

In the universe at large, basically, 4 forces cause all motions, cause all accelerations on masses.

These 4 forces, Gravitational, Electric, Magnetic, Nuclear forces are caused, exist due to mass, charge, charge in motion and originate in the nucleus respectively.

We will discuss electrical, magnetic and nuclear force in later sections now we will consider gravitational force.

3.5. Gravitational force or the universal law of gravitation

This force is due plainly to masses of bodies. The very mass of a body on the universe has a power - a power to attract another mass! Every mass attracts every other mass in the universe!

Greater the masses greater the force between them (and it is attractive, the masses come closer). Greater the distance, lesser the force between them. In fact it is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. If the distance is doubled, the force reduces 4 times. If the distance is tripled, the force reduces 3x3=9 times and so on.

Gravitational force is a very weak force (compared to electrical or magnetic force). Masses attract, surely, but one of the mass atleast should be big enough for a visible acceleration.

Two chairs near each other do not attract but if one chair becomes Earth, the other chair ‘falls’ on it.

On the moon too an object falls but since the mass of the moon is 1/6 th of the Earth, the force and hence the acceleration due to gravity is 1/6 th of Earth. It falls slowly like in slow motion!

In space, if a body is left alone, nothing happens as it is very far away from any big object and negligible acceleration is observed because of negligible force. So a body in space left alone remains there! Nothing happens. It remains at rest because no force is acting on it! It simply hangs there!

Gravitational law discovered by Newton is a tremendously simple and a powerful fundamental fact in the universe. Masses attract!

The whole of space science is explained, almost all phenomena on a macroscopic level can be understood exactly, completely, beautifully by this law and it’s simple and yet the implications and application of this law staggers the mind, makes one’s breath stop!

It blows the mind to use a common phrase!

OUR UNIVERSE | THE BIG BANG | FORMATION OF GALAXIES | BIRTH OF STARS | DEATH OF STARS | FORMATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM | THE WONDER OF PHYSICS | PHYSICS MADE SIMPLE

OUR UNIVERSE

1. THE BIG BANG

We take the world as we see it around us as the given, as if it was always there. But science tells us strange, wondrous and fascinating things about the world. The world as we know it, not just the earth and the solar system – but the whole universe was at a point 1400 crore years back.

Think! What an imagination it needs to visualize that! The whole gigantic universe with its billions (100 curves) of galaxies, each containing billions of stars wasn’t even there as it is now but was concentrated at a point, called by the scientists, the singularity.

Now this is a strange fact, probably the strangest of all facts. So we obviously need to ask: why. Why was the whole universe at a point?

The answer is incredible and it lies in just understanding deeply the reality of an almost omnipotent force that governs the universe. That force is the force of gravity and it is universal. Let us proceed how to get a deep, real understanding of gravity. Since childhood we have observed things falling from a height if left free. We have observed it so many times that we take it for granted. We do not system, it, wonder about it, even feel it.

Yet, think!

Why should things fall? After all, we are not pushing it down and there is no contact between the earth, and the falling body. Isn’t it strange – this action at a distance. You leave a body and it moves towards the earth. The earth is a sphere and all objects get attracted to the Centre of the earth and participates in the motion of the earth. Our atmosphere, the air we have, our oceans, everything is held onto the earth along the whole of it’s surface and circumference.

The ancients wondered about this gravity on earth. But later from 13th century onwards people began looking at the heavens too and began wondering and also, additionally, began tracing the motions of the planets the sun and the moon. They collected lot of data and bit by bit they came to understand that it was not the sun that moved around a stationary earth (as the ancients had assumed) but it was the earth (and other planets) that moved around the sun.

This whole inquiry culminated in the Kepler’s laws of motion of planets which describes the regular, uniform behavior of planets round the sun (it was not random or accidental).

Then Newton began a serious, deep inquiry in to this matter. Remember it was very early. Nothing was really clear. The heavenly motions of planets had been traced out. People observed the things falling on earth but no connection was made. It was almost as if, then the heavens were different from the earth. Newton’s incredible daring and genius lay in linking it. As legend has it, he observed an apple falling and suddenly he got this great thought. Are the motions of the apple falling and the moon falling the same? The moon ‘fall’ in the sense that if it did not fall towards the earth it would go off the straight line. It was already understood that the moon’s motion and even the planets motions were a result of two motions – one horizontally and other perpendicular and vertical towards the sun.

These two motions combined to give the almost circular motion of the moon and planets. (All circular motion is a combination of two such motions.)

Well, Newton thought about this and he suddenly got it!

He understood, in a flash of genius, that actually every mass attracts every other mass!

He got the mathematics of it also the power of attraction is directly proportional to both masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This simply means the more any, or both of the masses, more the attractive force. Greater the distance, lesser is the attractive force. Also the reduction is as the square of the distance i.e. if distance is doubled the force is reduced 4 times, if the distance is tripled (made 3 times), the force is reduced by (3x3) 9 times!

This equation fitted with Kepler’s equation and Newton made the heavens and the earth one!

Just think! What a law Newton’s universal law of gravitation really is!

Every mass attracts every other mass in the universe and earth is merely one such mass and this law holds true for all the masses of the universe. Even 2 objects on earth actually get attracted. The reason we do not see a visible movement is because the attractive force of gravity is very weak. Unless the masses are of big size, there is not much attraction. This is the reason why things fall slowly on the moon – the mass of moon is 1/6th of the earth and hence the gravitational force (as it is called) is also 1/6the! That is why we see that wondrous (slow motion like) falling of things on the moon.

In space, things do not fall at all! They just ‘hang’ where they are! This is because the object is too far from any big size object to feel any attraction. So it just remains where it is! Isn’t this a wonder!!

Newton had literally swept the space clean and unlocked one of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Now, still a major, in fact, obvious question remained. If every mass attracts every other mass, how can the world as we see it – earth, planets, stars be at all? Should they not actually be together, this whole universe, at one place?

This was seriously asked, in the 1900s and no answer existed. The question, however, remained. Then in the 1900s another strange fact came into light.

Scientists discovered that the universe, as a whole was expanding. Every object was going away from every object. They came to know this by a phenomenon called Doppler effect. Doppler effect is very common with respect to sound. Sound consists of waves and if a body making sound is approaching you, the waves crowd together and the number of waves per second, that is the frequency increases. The opposite happens when the body making the sound is going away from you. Here, the waves are more stretched out and the number of waves per second is less. That is the frequency is decreased. Now the interesting thing is that light too is a wave and the same thing has been tested to happened to light too. A body emitting light, if its going away from you would change its frequency towards the red. This is called the red shift. If the body emitting

light is coming towards you, the n the frequency is increased and the light shifts towards the blue. This is called the blue shift. Now it was observe through countless experiments, that whenever you observe an object in the heavens, a star or a galaxy that is emitting light, it is shifting towards the red! This means that everything is going from away you. This actually means that the whole universe is expanding and everything is going away from each other.

It is then that they understood why the universe is not coming together due to gravity. Actually expansion of the universe was countering gravity. If the universe is expanding, then the whole universe must have been at a point and there must have been a big bang. This is how the scientist came to the conclusion that the whole universe was at a point and then the big bang happened.

After the big bang within moments, hydrogen atoms were created and began filling the whole space from these hydrogen atoms were born the stars, the galaxies and the solar system. How this happened will be understood in the following sections.

2. FORMATION OF GALAXIES

We have learnt that the whole matter of the universe was at one point 14 billion years back and that there was a big bang.

After the big bang what happened?

The simplest atoms of hydrogen gas were formed and they filled the blank space after millions of years. Because of the big bang, the expansion continued in all directions. But in many areas the cloud of hydrogen gas were a little closer and due to gravity formed huge regions of concentrated hydrogen gas. These are the galaxies!

Even in these regions, in some areas hydrogen gas got even further closer and formed stars. When the stars died they burst and again spread out. All the stars in each galaxy also attracted each other and formed systems of stars. The galaxies themselves attracted other galaxies, again due to gravity. Sometimes they push into each other giving various shapes of galaxies and also complicated motions. These motions continue to this day.

So you see its not just all galaxies expanding away from each other. They move themselves too and the motions never stop!

We live in a galaxy called the milky way galaxy. Sometimes in a clear night, we see a white spread in the sky, that is the milky way galaxy. Our milky way galaxy contains our Sun as just one of the billions of stars. So you can imagine how huge just the milky way galaxy is! Now there are billions of such galaxies! So the size of universe is literally unimaginable! We can only feel it.

3. BIRTH OF STARS

We have learnt already that after the big bang, hydrogen gas filled the emptiness of space. We also learnt that in some huge regions galaxies are formed which are nothing but masses of hydrogen gas collecting together. In these galaxies are formed stars.

In some regions a little bit of hydrogen gas comes together in the form of clumps and this begins a process that goes on. The clump starts attractive, due to gravity the surrounding hydrogen gas. It becomes bigger and bigger. The more big it becomes the more powerfully it attracts all the hydrogen gas arrounded towards its centre!

This process goes on and on. The clump becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and attracts more and more powerfully the hydroges gas around it. Now this whole attraction towards it centre creates a very huge pressure. Now pressure is related to temperature, to the producing of heat. If you rub your hands hard, it becomes very hot. Wherever there is pressure there is heat. Heat is nothing more then the internal jiggling and wiggling of atoms/molecules inside matter. More the pressure more the temperature. If the pressure becomes huge the temperature too rises to a very high level. This is what happens inside the clump which becomes very huge. There is a high temperature of lakhs of degrees created inside the star. This removes electrons from the atoms of hydrogen. An atom contains proton and neutrons in its central nucleus and electrons orbit around it. Hydrogen atom contains one proton, one neutron and one electron. When the electrons are removed due to the high heat, a process called nuclear fusion reaction take place.

Fusion means joining together. In normal circumstances a hydrogen nucleus cannot join with another hydrogen nucleus. This is because protons are positively charged and if two nucleus of hydrogen come close together the proton in one hydrogen atom would repel the proton in the other hydrogen atom (two positives charge repel each other).

But when the temperature is extremely high the repulsion is overcome and the two nuclei actually join together, fuse together and becomes another nucleus! This nucleus contains two protons and is the element helium.

So in the star, hydrogen starts becoming helium. In this process a strange thing happens. Mass is lost and converted into huge amounts of energy (by the formula of E=mc2). This creates an outward force from the centre of the star. But there is another force too. Because the star is so huge there is an internal gravitational attraction towards the centre also.

These two forces the constant creation of nuclear energy outwards and the inner sucking force of gravitation balance each other and the star is born!

How long does this last? Obviously till the hydrogen is used up in the Star. What happens when the hydrogen is used up? The star begins the process of death. What is this process?

What are all the things that happen when hydrogen is used up?

We will see that in the next section.

4. DEATH OF STARS

When the hydrogen gas is completely used up to make helium, two things can happen depending on the size of the star.

The process of death of a small sized star (like our Sun) :

When the hydrogen is used up in a small sized star, the outward force of nuclear energy created stops. Then what happens is the centre of the star shrinks but the outward covering of the star sort of floats up like a huge flare. So the star suddenly becomes big and redder. This is a red giant. Inside helium now starts a process of nuclear fusion reaction again and becomes lithium. But this does not last long as the helium is used up very quickly. After this again the outward force of nuclear energy stops and the inside of the star shrinks and the outside flares up as a second red giant. For a small size star, this is all. The red giant cools. The star becomes very small, the size of the earth but more dense. This is the white dwarf and a kind of ending of the star. The Sun being a medium sized star will go through all these processes. After 4 to 5 billion years i.e. the Sun would die.

The process of death of a big sized star:

For a large sized star too the hydrogen gets used up and there is an outward flare, this is a huge blast and it is called a Supernova. But here is the difference, inside the star the helium becomes lithium, the lithium becomes the next element and so on and there is a series of red giants. The second difference is what happens when the series ends.

Remember, if the star is huge the inner sucking gravitational force would be very huge. This huge force breaks up matter also and the star instead of becoming a white dwarf becomes a neutron star. The star contains only neutrons.

If the star is even more huge we don’t even get a neutron star it ends up as a black hole where all the matter vanishes due to the huge gravitational force directed towards the centre. Gravity here completely makes the matter vanish and light get sucked into the black hole. So this is the way stars are born and star die continuously in the universe.

In this whole universe we on earth are only a speak and in a way insignificant!

5. FORMATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

There are two main theories that explain the formation of the solar system (the sun, planets and asteroids). But the theory most widely accepted by all scientists today is the nebula theory. Long back, there was a huge mass of gas, dust and ice in the region which is now the solar system. At that time, probably due to a supernova (exploding star), this mass was disturbed. A disturbance in the universe is dangerous because if masses gets close together gravity starts acting and collapses the mass.

This is what happen the mass got closer together due to the explosion and the mass also started spinning. As they got more and more close while spinning the spinning became faster. Slowly over a period of time the whole shapeless spinning gas started becoming orderly, uniform and flat. Now this whole thing exactly like a frisbee or cake spinning very fast round and round. Slowly in certain areas this gas got closer together again due to gravity and slowly formed larger bodies called planetesimals. Even more matter flying around stuck to these planetesimals and slowly over a long period of time the solar system as we know today was formed that is the sun at the centre and the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The question now remains as to how the sun was formed at the centre. At the centre the pressure was very high and temperature rose to lakhs of degrees and the process of formation of star started i.e. hydrogen becoming helium and releasing nuclear energy outward. This nuclear energy balanced the inner gravitation force and our Sun became stable.

There is a big gap between Mars and Jupiter and this gap is filled with numerous smaller particles which is called the asteroid belt. Why was the planet not formed in this gap? This is because Jupiter is a huge mass close to the Sun’s mass. So if any planet tried to form itself was burst into pieces by Jupiter! Thus we have this beautiful solar system with the Sun at its centre and planets around it!

TRUE AND PROFOUND LIFE!!

TRUE AND PROFOUND LIFE!!

You are a man or a woman, a human being. You were birthed here, and you came on earth, and you were created by nature. And you came here for a long life, a time, of joy, and seeking, finding the truth, and living a passionate life!!

You see…so much…and ever and ever. Each day, you grow. That is your natural life and being and function, you are now and ever, flowing in thought and action and that has become ONE!!

You see the universe!

In the night you see the still, beautiful stars, hanging. You feel at home, looking at that vast incredible light years and light years of distance…and yet you feel at home, on earth, and the heavens!!

You see all kinds of life, all around, and they are your kindred spirits, plants and animals, of an incredible variety. You are among billions of people and you have seen their histories, of rises and falls, and still early, unenlightened and struggling humanity and yet you see a few, past and present, who know the world. There has been a civilizational maturity too, deeply and implicitly.

You have sciences, arts, philosophies, psychology, and mathematics. And much more…It is all part of your universe and life…knowledge and values are one to you!!

You keep knowing, like your breathing, naturally and you absorb and you fill yourself with the profound joy of learning and applying it in your field, as a profound passionate love and purpose.

And you have all arts, to fuel you, sciences to give you the literal power and philosophies and psychological insights to clear your inner self, and get full certainty and utterly free and metaphysically pleasurable state of utter joy, which too you get used to, after a while. You live like a non- stop functioning animal and man, thinking and feeling, flowing in utter joy, of the adventure of learning and creating, deeply having gotten used to do that 24/7!!

Life has been found, and lived and with peace and serenity, and you do your bit, to take man forward, for that societal heaven, which would come to all, when all would be happy and free, and you realise, it will happen. And you live your life, knowing the truth, and serene that that is all you can do. And you do that.

You can think and learn, and all fields are fascinating, and you flow, in your chosen field, and live all your life, to master and reach a great height of study, probing, feeling the universe via your field, and going on and on…with undying hunger and creativity!!

You are deeply aware of your own bird like and cat like life, to be a speck in TIME, and gone one day, and you know you will not even know that, the fact that you are not, as you will be not!!

Hence, life feels fresh, new and wondrous, with inner freedom, and all the time, waiting for you, to make use by knowing this world, and using your faculties to also create wonderful products and services.

You know your mind works as finding the essences of reality and you want to KNOW, and see things for yourself, and your whole joy, is in that. So, you are breathing thought, feeling bliss, and all the time, and even this becomes USED TO!!

You live a life-long happy life!!

BY

NARENDRA

LIVING THE TRUTH ON EARTH….

LIVING THE TRUTH ON EARTH….

Suraj was born in a forest. He had lovely parents, and they were artists, and had decided to live out their entire lives in the forest and they had him. They loved him, as more than just a son. He was simply an extension, of their mind, heart and souls. He was left free for that reason, totally, unequivocally and absolutely free!!

He grew up, and how!! All the time he would be super active, but in a deep way, in an intensely concentrating way, and fully joyous, and strangely at peace. Even his mom and dad marveled at his nature, but never said anything.

There was nothing really to say. Here was this boy, exploring everything, from books, from nature, from nature activities, music, playing, silences, and he had by six, his own plan, and routines and works and projects…

And he lived on forever, fully free, fully joyous, and all there synergistically produced such work, of such incredible originality that the world for centuries marveled at the three. They simply left all the record of their life, and creations for the world. Far far from the madding world, they brought INTO the world, a full record of life, as it must be led futuristically, and by all.

One day, earth stood, simple, still and peacefully rotating….wisdom had dawned.

It returned to its real nature of men and the wild, but with incredible and infinite forms of expressions and of material and spiritual over- abundance.

Men finally evolved to HIS stature.. and peace had come on earth…

BY

NARENDRA

67.THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD BY H. G. WELLS

67.THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD 

The scheme and scale upon which this History is planned do not permit us to enter into the complicated and acrimonious disputes that centre about the treaties, and particularly of the treaty of Versailles, which concluded the Great War. We are beginning to realize that that conflict, terrible and enormous as it was, ended nothing, began nothing and settled nothing. It killed millions of people; it wasted and impoverished the world. It smashed Russia altogether. It was at best an acute and frightful reminder that we were living foolishly and confusedly without much plan or foresight in a dangerous and unsympathetic universe. The crudely organized egotisms and passions of national and imperial greed that carried mankind into that tragedy, emerged from it sufficiently unimpaired to make some other similar disaster highly probable so soon as the world has a little recovered from its war exhaustion and fatigue. Wars and revolutions make nothing; their utmost service to mankind is that, in a very rough and painful way, they destroy superannuated and obstructive things. The great war lifted the threat of German imperialism from Europe, and shattered the imperialism of Russia. It cleared away a number of monarchies. But a multitude of flags still waves in Europe, the frontiers still exasperate, great armies accumulate fresh stores of equipment.

The Peace Conference at Versailles was a gathering very ill adapted to do more than carry out the conflicts and defeats of the war to their logical conclusions. The Germans, Austrians, Turks and Bulgarians were permitted no share in its deliberations; they were only to accept the decisions it dictated to them. From the point of view of human welfare the choice of the place of meeting was particularly unfortunate. It was at Versailles in 1871 that, with every circumstance of triumphant vulgarity, the new German Empire had been proclaimed. The suggestion of a melodramatic reversal of that scene, in the same Hall of Mirrors, was overpowering.

Whatever generosities had appeared in the opening phases of the Great War had long been exhausted. The populations of the victorious countries were acutely aware of their own losses and sufferings, and entirely regardless of the fact that the defeated had paid in the like manner. The war had arisen as a natural and inevitable consequence of the competitive nationalisms of Europe and the absence of any Federal adjustment of these competitive forces; war is the necessary logical consummation of independent sovereign nationalities living in too small an area with too powerful an armament; and if the great war had not come in the form it did it would have come in some similar form—just as it will certainly return upon a still more disastrous scale in twenty or thirty years’ time if no political unification anticipates and prevents it. States organized for war will make wars as surely as hens will lay eggs, but the feeling of these distressed and war-worn countries disregarded this fact, and the whole of the defeated peoples were treated as morally and materially responsible for all the damage, as they would no doubt have treated the victor peoples had the issue of war been different. The French and English thought the Germans were to blame, the Germans thought the Russians, French and English were to blame, and only an intelligent minority thought that there was anything to blame in the fragmentary political constitution of Europe. The treaty of Versailles was intended to be exemplary and vindictive; it provided tremendous penalties for the vanquished; it sought to provide compensations for the wounded and suffering victors by imposing enormous debts upon nations already bankrupt, and its attempts to reconstitute international relations by the establishment of a League of Nations against war were manifestly insincere and inadequate.

So far as Europe was concerned it is doubtful if there would have been any attempt whatever to organize international relations for a permanent peace. The proposal of the League of Nations was brought into practical politics by the President of the United States of America, President Wilson. Its chief support was in America. So far the United States, this new modern state, had developed no distinctive ideas of international relationship beyond the Monroe Doctrine, which protected the new world from European interference. Now suddenly it was called upon for its mental contribution to the vast problem of the time. It had none. The natural disposition of the American people was towards a permanent world peace. With this however was linked a strong traditional distrust of old-world polities and a habit of isolation from old-world entanglements. The Americans had hardly begun to think out an American solution of world problems when the submarine campaign of the Germans dragged them into the war on the side of the anti-German allies. President Wilson’s scheme of a League of Nations was an attempt at short notice to create a distinctively American world project. It was a sketchy, inadequate and dangerous scheme. In Europe however it was taken as a matured American point of view. The generality of mankind in 1918-19 was intensely weary of war and anxious at almost any sacrifice to erect barriers against its recurrence, but there was not a single government in the old world willing to waive one iota of its sovereign independence to attain any such end. The public utterances of President Wilson leading up to the project of a World League of Nations seemed for a time to appeal right over the heads of the governments to the peoples of the world; they were taken as expressing the ripe intentions of America, and the response was enormous. Unhappily President Wilson had to deal with governments and not with peoples; he was a man capable of tremendous flashes of vision and yet when put to the test egotistical and limited, and the great wave of enthusiasm he evoked passed and was wasted. Says Dr. Dillon in his book, _The Peace Conference:_ “Europe, when the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow a Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars are prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he was just that great leader. In France men bowed down before him with awe and affection.

Labour leaders in Paris told me that they shed tears of joy in his presence, and that their comrades would go through fire and water to help him to realize his noble schemes. To the working classes in Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his doctrine as their sheet-anchor of safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said: ‘If President Wilson were to address the Germans and pronounce a severe sentence upon them, they would accept it with resignation and without a murmur and set to work at once.’ In German-Austria his fame was that of a saviour, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted .. .”

Such were the overpowering expectations that President Wilson raised. How completely he disappointed them and how weak and futile was the League of Nations he made is too long and too distressful a story to tell here. He exaggerated in his person our common human tragedy, he was so very great in his dreams and so incapable in his performance.

America dissented from the acts of its President and would not join the League Europe accepted from him. There was a slow realization on the part of the American people that it had been rushed into something for which it was totally unprepared. There was a corresponding realization on the part of Europe that America had nothing ready to give to the old world in its extremity. Born prematurely and crippled at its birth, that League has become indeed, with its elaborate and unpractical constitution and its manifest limitations of power, a serious obstacle in the way of any effective reorganization of international relationships. The problem would be a clearer one if the League did not yet exist. Yet that world-wide blaze of enthusiasm that first welcomed the project, that readiness of men everywhere round and about the earth, of men, that is, as distinguished from governments, for a world control of war, is a thing to be recorded with emphasis in any history.

Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and mismanage human affairs, a real force for world unity and world order exists and grows. From 1918 onward the world entered upon an age of conferences. Of these the Conference at Washington called by President Harding (1921) has been the most successful and suggestive. Notable, too, is the Genoa Conference (1922) for the appearance of German and Russian delegates at its deliberations. We will not discuss this long procession of conferences and tentatives in any detail. It becomes more and more clearly manifest that a huge work of reconstruction has to be done by mankind if a crescendo of such convulsions and world massacres as that of the great war is to be averted. No such hasty improvisation as the League of Nations, no patched-up system of Conferences between this group of states and that, which change nothing with an air of settling everything, will meet the complex political needs of the new age that lies before us. A systematic development and a systematic application of the sciences of human relationship, of personal and group psychology, of financial and economic science and of education, sciences still only in their infancy, is required. Narrow and obsolete, dead and dying moral and political ideas have to be replaced by a clearer and a simpler conception of the common origins and destinies of our kind.

But if the dangers, confusions and disasters that crowd upon man in these days are enormous beyond any experience of the past, it is because science has brought him such powers as he never had before. And the scientific method of fearless thought, exhaustively lucid statement, and exhaustively criticized planning, which has given him these as yet uncontrollable powers, gives him also the hope of controlling these powers. Man is still only adolescent. His troubles are not the troubles of senility and exhaustion but of increasing and still undisciplined strength. When we look at all history as one process, as we have been doing in this book, when we see the steadfast upward struggle of life towards vision and control, then we see in their true proportions the hopes and dangers of the present time. As yet we are hardly in the earliest dawn of human greatness. But in the beauty of flower and sunset, in the happy and perfect movement of young animals and in the delight of ten thousand various landscapes, we have some intimations of what life can do for us, and in some few works of plastic and pictorial art, in some great music, in a few noble buildings and happy gardens, we have an intimation of what the human will can do with material possibilities. We have dreams; we have at present undisciplined but ever increasing power. Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, that it will live, the children of our blood and lives will live, in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever widening circle of adventure and achievement?

What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state, and all this history we have told, form but the prelude to the things that man has got to do.

66.THE REVOLUTION AND FAMINE IN RUSSIA | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD 

BY 

H. G. WELLS

66.THE REVOLUTION AND  FAMINE IN RUSSIA 

But a good year and more before the collapse of the Central Powers the half oriental monarchy of Russia, which had professed to be the continuation of the Byzantine Empire, had collapsed. The Tsardom had been showing signs of profound rottenness for some years before the war; the court was under the sway of a fantastic religious impostor, Rasputin, and the public administration, civil and military, was in a state of extreme inefficiency and corruption. At the outset of the war there was a great flare of patriotic enthusiasm in Russia. A vast conscript army was called up, for which there was neither adequate military equipment nor a proper supply of competent officers, and this great host, ill supplied and badly handled, was hurled against the German and Austrian frontiers.

There can be no doubt that the early appearance of Russian armies in East Prussia in September, 1914, diverted the energies and attention of the Germans from their first victorious drive upon Paris. The sufferings and deaths of scores of thousands of ill-led Russian peasants saved France from complete overthrow in that momentous opening campaign, and made all western Europe the debtors of that great and tragic people. But the strain of the war upon this sprawling, ill-organized empire was too heavy for its strength. The Russian common soldiers were sent into battle without guns to support them, without even rifle ammunition; they were wasted by their officers and generals in a delirium of militarist enthusiasm. For a time they seemed to be suffering mutely as the beasts suffer; but there is a limit to the endurance even of the most ignorant. A profound disgust for Tsardom was creeping through these armies of betrayed and wasted men. From the close of 1915 onward Russia was a source of deepening anxiety to her Western Allies. Throughout 1916 she remained largely on the defensive, and there were rumours of a separate peace with Germany. On December 29th, 1916, the monk Rasputin was murdered at a dinner party in Petrograd, and a belated attempt was made to put the Tsardom in order. By March things were moving rapidly; food riots in Petrograd developed into a revolutionary insurrection; there was an attempted suppression of the Duma, the representative body, there were attempted arrests of liberal leaders, the formation of a provisional government under Prince Loft, and an abdication (March 15th) by the Tsar. For a time it seemed that a moderate and controlled revolution might be possible—perhaps under a new Tsar. Then it became evident that the destruction of popular confidence in Russia had gone too far for any such adjustments. The Russian people were sick to death of the old order of things in Europe, of Tsars and wars and of Great Powers; it wanted relief, and that speedily, from unendurable miseries. The Allies had no understanding of Russian realities; their diplomatists were ignorant of Russian, genteel persons with their attention directed to the Russian Court rather than to Russia, they blundered steadily with the new situation. There was little goodwill among these diplomatists for republicanism, and a manifest disposition to embarrass the new government as much as possible. At the head of the Russian republican government was an eloquent and picturesque leader, Kerensky, who found himself assailed by the forces of a profounder revolutionary movement, the “social revolution,” at home and cold-shouldered by the Allied governments abroad. His Allies would neither let him give the Russian peasants the land for which they craved nor peace beyond their frontiers. The French and the British press pestered their exhausted ally for a fresh offensive, but when presently the Germans made a strong attack by sea and land upon Riga, the British Admiralty quailed before the prospect of a Baltic expedition in relief. The new Russian Republic had to fight unsupported. In spite of their naval predominance and the bitter protests of the great English admiral, Lord Fisher (1841-1920), it is to be noted that the British and their Allies, except for some submarine attacks, left the Germans the complete mastery of the Baltic throughout the war.

The Russian masses, however, were resolute to end the war. At any cost. There had come into existence in Petrograd a body representing the workers and common soldiers, the Soviet, and this body clamored for an international conference of socialists at Stockholm. Food riots were occurring in Berlin at this time, war weariness in Austria and Germany was profound, and there can be little doubt, in the light of subsequent events, that such a conference would have precipitated a reasonable peace on democratic lines in 1917 and a German revolution.

Kerensky implored his Western allies to allow this conference to take place, but, fearful of a worldwide outbreak of socialism and republicanism, they refused, in spite of the favourable response of a small majority of the British Labour Party. Without either moral or physical help from the Allies, the unhappy “moderate” Russian Republic still fought on and made a last desperate offensive effort in July. It failed after some preliminary successes, and there came another great slaughtering of Russians.

The limit of Russian endurance was reached. Mutinies broke out in the Russian armies, and particularly upon the northern front, and on November 7th, 1917, Kerensky’s government was overthrown and power was seized by the Soviets, dominated by the Bolshevik socialists under Lenin, and pledged to make peace regardless of the Western powers. On March 2nd, 1918, a separate peace between Russia and Germany was signed at Brest-Litovsk.

It speedily became evident that these Bolshevik socialists were men of a very different quality from the rhetorical constitutionalists and revolutionaries of the Kerensky phase. They were fanatical Marxist communists. They believed that their accession to power in Russia was only the opening of a world-wide social revolution, and they set about changing the social and economic order with the thoroughness of perfect faith and absolute inexperience. The western European and the American governments were themselves much too ill-informed and incapable to guide or help this extraordinary experiment, and the press set itself to discredit and the ruling classes to wreck these usurpers upon any terms and at any cost to themselves or to Russia. A propaganda of abominable and disgusting inventions went on unchecked in the press of the world; the Bolshevik leaders were represented as incredible monsters glutted with blood and plunder and living lives of sensuality before which the realities of the Tsarist court during the Rasputin regime paled to a white purity. Expeditions were launched at the exhausted country, insurgents and raiders were encouraged, armed and subsidized, and no method of attack was too mean or too monstrous for the frightened enemies of the Bolshevik regime. In 1919, the Russian Bolsheviks, ruling a country already exhausted and disorganized by five years of intensive warfare, were fighting a British Expedition at Archangel, Japanese invaders in Eastern Siberia, Roumanians with French and Greek contingents in the south, the Russian Admiral Koltchak in Siberia and General Deniken, supported by the French fleet, in the Crimea. In July of that year an Esthonian army, under General Yudenitch, almost got to Petersburg. In 1920 the Poles, incited by the French, made a new attack on Russia; and a new reactionary raider, General Wrangel, took over the task of General Deniken in invading and devastating his own country. In March, 1921, the sailors at Constant revolted. The Russian Government under its president, Lenin, survived all these various attacks. It showed an amazing tenacity, and the common people of Russia sustained it unswervingly under conditions of extreme hardship. By the end of 1921 both Britain and Italy had made a sort of recognition of the communist rule.

But if the Bolshevik Government was successful in its struggle against foreign intervention and internal revolt, it was far less happy in its attempts to set up a new social order based upon communist ideas in Russia. The Russian peasant is a small land-hungry proprietor, as far from communism in his thoughts and methods as a whale is from flying; the revolution gave him the land of the great landowners but could not make him grow food for anything but negotiable money, and the revolution, among other things, had practically destroyed the value of money. Agricultural production, already greatly disordered by the collapse of the railways through war-strain, shrank to a mere cultivation of food by the peasants for their own consumption. The towns starved. Hasty and ill-planned attempts to make over industrial production in accordance with communist ideas were equally unsuccessful. By 1920 Russia presented the unprecedented spectacle of a modern civilization in complete collapse. Railways were rusting and passing out of use, towns were falling into ruin, everywhere there was an immense mortality. Yet the country still fought with its enemies at its gates. In 1921 came a drought and a great famine among the peasant cultivators in the war-devastated south-east provinces. Millions of people starved. But the question of the distresses and the possible recuperation of Russia brings us too close to current controversies to be discussed here.

65.THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18 | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

65.THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18 

The progress in material science that created this vast steamboat-and-railway republic of America and spread this precarious British steamship empire over the world, produced quite other effects upon the congested nations upon the continent of Europe. They found themselves confined within boundaries fixed during the horse-and-high-road period of human life, and their expansion overseas had been very largely anticipated by Great Britain. Only Russia had any freedom to expand eastward; and she drove a great railway across Siberia until she entangled herself in a conflict with Japan, and pushed south-eastwardly towards the borders of Persia and India to the annoyance of Britain. The rest of the European Powers were in a state of intensifying congestion. In order to realize the full possibilities of the new apparatus of human life they had to rearrange their affairs upon a broader basis, either by some sort of voluntary union or by a union imposed upon them by some predominant power. The tendency of modern thought was in the direction of the former alternative, but all the force of political tradition drove Europe towards the latter.

The downfall of the “empire” of Napoleon III, the establishment of the new German Empire, pointed men’s hopes and fears towards the idea of a Europe consolidated under German auspices. For thirty-six years of uneasy peace the polities of Europe centred upon that possibility.

France, the steadfast rival of Germany for European ascendancy since the division of the empire of Charlemagne, sought to correct her own weakness by a close alliance with Russia, and Germany linked herself closely with the Austrian Empire (it had ceased to be the Holy Roman Empire in the days of Napoleon I) and less successfully with the new kingdom of Italy. At first Great Britain stood as usual half in and half out of continental affairs. But she was gradually forced into a close association with the Franco-Russian group by the aggressive development of a great German navy. The grandiose imagination of the Emperor William II (1888-1918) thrust Germany into premature overseas enterprise that ultimately brought not only Great Britain but Japan and the United States into the circle of her enemies.

All these nations armed. Year after year the proportion of national production devoted to the making of guns, equipment, battleships and the like, increased. Year after year the balance of things seemed trembling towards war, and then war would be averted. At last it came.

Germany and Austria struck at France and Russia and Serbia; the German armies marching through Belgium, Britain immediately came into the war on the side of Belgium, bringing in Japan as her ally, and very soon Turkey followed on the German side. Italy entered the war against Austria in 1915, and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in the October of that year. In 1916 Rumania, and in 1917 the United States and China were forced into war against Germany. It is not within the scope of this history to define the exact share of blame for this vast catastrophe. The more interesting question is not why the Great War was begun but why the Great War was not anticipated and prevented. It is a far graver thing for mankind that scores of millions of people were too “patriotic,” stupid, or apathetic to prevent this disaster by a movement towards European unity upon frank and generous lines, than that a small number of people may have been active in bringing it about.

It is impossible within the space at our command here to trace the intricate details of the war. Within a few months it became apparent that the progress of modern technical science had changed the nature of warfare very profoundly. Physical science gives power, power over steel, over distance, over disease; whether that power is used well or ill depends upon the moral and political intelligence of the world.

The governments of Europe, inspired by antiquated policies of hate and suspicion, found themselves with unexampled powers both of destruction and resistance in their hands. The war became a consuming fire round and about the world, causing losses both to victors and vanquished out of all proportion to the issues involved. The first phase of the war was a tremendous rush of the Germans upon Paris and an invasion of East Prussia by the Russians. Both attacks were held and turned. Then the power of the defensive developed; there was a rapid elaboration of trench warfare until for a time the opposing armies lay entrenched in long lines right across Europe, unable to make any advance without enormous losses. The armies were millions strong, and behind them entire populations were organized for the supply of food and munitions to the front. Then was a cessation of nearly every sort of productive activity except such as contributed to military operations. All the able-bodied manhood of Europe was drawn into the armies or navies or into the improvised factories that served them. There was an enormous replacement of men by women in industry. Probably more than half the people in the belligerent countries of Europe changed their employment altogether during this stupendous struggle. They were socially uprooted and transplanted. Education and normal scientific work were restricted or diverted to immediate military ends, and the distribution of news was crippled and corrupted by military control and “propaganda” activities.

The phase of military deadlock passed slowly into one of aggression upon the combatant populations behind the fronts by the destruction of food supplies and by attacks through the air. And also there was a steady improvement in the size and range of the guns employed and of such ingenious devices as poison-gas shells and the small mobile forts known as tanks, to break down the resistance of troops in the trenches. The air offensive was the most revolutionary of all the new methods.

It carried warfare from two dimensions into three. Hitherto in the history of mankind war had gone on only where the armies marched and met. Now it went on everywhere. First the Zeppelin and then the bombing aeroplane carried war over and past the front to an ever- increasing area of civilian activities beyond. The old distinction maintained in civilized warfare between the civilian and combatant population disappeared. Everyone who grew food, or who sewed a garment, everyone who felled a tree or repaired a house, every railway station and every warehouse was held to be fair game for destruction.

The air offensive increased in range and terror with every month in the war. At last great areas of Europe were in a state of siege and subject to nightly raids. Such exposed cities as London and Paris passed sleepless night after sleepless night while the bombs burst, the anti-aircraft guns maintained an intolerable racket, and the fire engines and ambulances rattled headlong through the darkened and deserted streets. The effects upon the minds and health of old people and of young children were particularly distressing and destructive.

Pestilence, that old follower of warfare, did not arrive until the very end of the fighting in 1918. For four years medical science staved off any general epidemic; then came a great outbreak of influenza about the world which destroyed many millions of people. Famine also was staved off for some time. By the beginning of 1918 however most of Europe was in a state of mitigated and regulated famine. The production of food throughout the world had fallen very greatly through the calling off of peasant mankind to the fronts, and the distribution of such food as was produced was impeded by the havoc wrought by the submarine, by the rupture of customary routes through the closing of frontiers, and by the disorganization of the transport system of the world. The various governments took possession of the dwindling food supplies, and, with more or less success, rationed their populations. By the fourth year the whole world was suffering from shortages of clothing and housing and of most of the normal gear of life as well as of food. Business and economic life were profoundly disorganized. Every-one was worried, and most people were leading lives of unwonted discomfort.

The actual warfare ceased in November, 1918. After a supreme effort in the spring of 1918 that almost carried the Germans to Paris, the Central Powers collapsed. They had come to an end of their spirit and resources.