A Martian’s Visit to Earth. Being a Literal Translation into English of the Preface to an Account by a Martian of his Visit to England

A. L. Grey, 1909

To those of my fellow Martians who hoped to learn something fresh in the domain of sociology, to add something to their science of politics, this account will certainly come as a disappointment. Instead of revealing an advanced, highly organised, highly differentiated civilisation from which we might construct new ideals I have to tell of a quite primitive state, to find a counterpart to which we must go back in our own history some thousands of years. To bring this fact home to my readers I need only refer to one fact, that upon Earth the “strife” age is still in progress. There have, it is true, been a few moments in history when a vision of a better state, in which help shall replace strife, moral strength replace cunning, and in which men shall recognise that the welfare of all is the highest good and rigidly entails, in the surest and best sense, the welfare of the individual—when such a vision has appeared to a select band whose philosophy surrounding influences too unfavourable, died an early death.

The etheroplane, which had cost us so many years’ thought and labour, fully justified our efforts by a smooth and uneventful journey across the intervening ether. We chose for our destination the largest collection of habitations—a place called London, the metropolis of the British nations, as we considered that we should here be able to study society in its most advanced form. As we slowly descended upon this great collection of houses I noted a few particulars which I may as well describe here.

The first impression I got from the hurrying crowds of black-coated men in the streets, the knots of manual workers near the docks, upon the buildings, and passing to and fro in the factories and workshops, was that the whole was a great penal settlement where men were condemned to labour of varying degrees of irksomeness. Insufficient nourishment was betrayed by the pinched, pale faces of the sweating manual workers; worry, care, and anxiety furrowed the faces of the men in the streets, and even of the gaily-dressed crowds who were strolling about in the parks. The heaviest punishments seemed to be those of the manual workers, for they are at work long before other people are awake; they are exposed to many dangers to their lives, and frequently work without any protection against the rain or piercing cold. I concluded that they were the greatest criminals, probably murderers, for I could not conceive that for any less crime the State could condemn a man to pass the whole of his life in such discomfort and misery as these have to do. Those guilty of less, but still grave, crimes, I imagined, were the lowest grade of the black-coats who work nearly as long as the manual workers, sometimes even longer. They are cooped up in incredible numbers in badly lighted, comfortless rooms, where they spend nearly the whole of the day bent over books in which they write with a pen. I am informed that it is a very rare occurrence for one of these “clerks,” as they are called, to be promoted to more responsible and better paid work. Compared with the first class, indeed, they were as regards physical well-being in even worse plight. The dull, unhealthy monotony of their lives of endless routine was expressed in the apathy and inertia of their minds and bodies. In prominent contrast to these was a small coterie of individuals who seemed to have been selected from the nation at large, set apart, and supported at what was in effect the State expense, either as a reward for great and meritorious services to the State, or because their transcendental mental and moral qualities marked them out as teachers and advisers of the fellows, or because they were in some way indispensable to the general welfare. Their dwellings were the most magnificent of all; their evenings were spent in feasting and gaiety; they dressed sumptuously and were attended by numerous personal servants who observed towards them the greatest deference. My first conclusion was that they were sacred personages or comprised some high religious caste, but when I observed that there was a separate priestly caste with which, indeed, they seemed to have rather less connection than the rest of the community, I was obliged to revise this opinion and formed the one I have already referred to. I was early brought, however, into contact with a considerable number of this leisured class; and to my surprise I was unable to detect any of the superiority I have imagined to be theirs. On the contrary, their moral and intellectual standard was undoubtedly below that of their fellows. One of my first inquiries was with regard to this anomaly. It appears that it is the custom on Earth for property and land to be parcelled out among individuals, and that a father leaves at his death almost the whole of his possessions to his children, only a small fraction passing to the State, the result being that a wealthy caste having no regular occupation other than that of disposing of possessions left to them has gradually come into existence. Now mark the consequences. In the course of generations the qualities which originally distinguished the members of this caste gradually atrophied through disuse, for it is one of the strange laws on Earth that, although a man can only amass wealth by his own efforts or by the efforts of other individuals, when he has got it, the continued possession of it is assured him by the State, an attempt on the part of another to deprive him of his possessions being an offence punished by the State; there is, therefore, no need for the possession by the son of the qualities of the ancestor who collected the wealth. In fact, at the time of my visit to London there were persons of notoriously weak intellect in the possession of vast wealth which had passed to them from a relative.

Not only is wealth transmissible in this way, but also, in this extraordinary country, the power of government! A certain section of the idle rich caste, known as the “titled nobility,” inherit the right of taking part in the making of the law. There is, however, in the Legislature a House of elected representatives, and, as might be expected, the relations between the “Lower” House, as it is called, and the “Upper” House,¹ in which these persons of atrophied mentality and morality may sit, are often far from cordial. It is a significant fact that the progress of the nation has proceeded pari passu² with the decay of the power of the Upper House. Originally, the Upper House, or House of Lords, was a meeting of martial chieftains and men noted for their cunning or wisdom and prowess in debate, and was called as a rule for a council of war. As such it was indispensable, and even after its function as adviser to the head chieftain or king in matters relating to hostilities with neighbouring tribes or nations had undergone transformations and attenuations, the Council served a useful purpose in troublous times when each member or chief was the actual head of a band of warriors or retainers. A change, however, has taken place since the origin of this part of the Legislature in the social conditions of the race. In the case of the nation I studied the more especially, known as the English nation, this change, the change from the military state to the industrial state, was, perhaps, more complete than in any other terrestrial race, but such is their reverence for ancient institutions that they will retain them, not only after they have ceased to exercise their legitimate powers, but even after their influence is admittedly harmful. In no case is this more apparent than in the case of the British House of Lords. The Lords have ceased to be heads of bands of warriors; they are not necessarily warriors themselves; they have crests, but no helmets; armorial insignia, but no arms; territorial titles, but no consequent jurisdiction; in short, there is no vestige remaining of the right they once had, in the ages of physical strength, to govern their fellows—in the age of Intellect their only interest is for the historian, as Vestigial Rudiments.³

It will seem incredible, but it is nevertheless a fact, that all terrestrial nations who make any claim to civilisation are divided socially into two great classes, viz., workers, and capitalists or shareholders who own what the workers work with! And not only this, but under the present conditions the two classes are engaged in endless strife, each wishing to increase its share in the wealth produced at the expense of the other! Hence the social and political quagmire in which all parties are floundering. Most of the members of both classes may take a part in the election of representatives to the “Lower” Legislative House, called the House of Commons. At the time of which I write the electorate numbered 7,500,000, of whom 6,500,000⁴ belonged to the classes of workers, so that they are an overwhelming majority at the polls. In spite of this, however, the special representatives who look after the interests of the “lower” classes form less than one-twelfth of the whole House!⁵

There are very few constituencies in the country in which the shareholding class is sufficiently numerous relatively to be the dominant power on polling day. That this is recognised by the “upper” classes themselves is shown by the tone of the press, the addresses and speeches on such occasions of the political leaders, national and local, which are usually adroitly framed to inveigle the working man. Polling day is the one day in the year on which the working man feels that he is indeed a separate entity, and not an insignificant detail in the organism, which, like Sisyphus,⁶ rolls the boulder of capital up the industrial mountain only for it to return for a fresh ascent. As will be already apparent, there were many features of the present civil and political life of a typical terrestrial nation which seemed out of date, anomalous, or ludicrous, but none more amazing than this, that though industrially the workpeople recognised clearly the consequences of the antagonistic nature of their relation to the shareholding or capitalistic class and had formed themselves into unions to strengthen their positions, politically this recognition had no existence. The workers have a majority at the Parliamentary polls; they have men of intellect and learning ready to come forward as their representatives; they have, collectively, the necessary funds; they have, in short, all that is necessary for them to reconstruct the industrial system on an equitable and rational basis, a basis upon which they will be able to enjoy the whole fruits of their labour. But they do not move; the handful of Labour Members in Parliament is impotent in the face of the number of the capitalist class arrayed against them. I looked around and saw the squalor and thraldom of the many, the luxury and license of the few, and marvelled greatly. But at last I saw the reason. Why is the elephant obedient to the prod of the mahout upon his head, whom he could crush to a lifeless pulp in a second’s grip of his trunk or beneath the bulk of his mighty body? The man knows, the animal does not; that is the reason. So does the capitalist know, but the worker does not. But, unlike the elephant, the human worker has the capacity for knowledge, and once let him wake to it the time of the shareholder will be over, his place will know him no more.

I cannot better conclude this preface than by making a few reflections on more general aspects of this antiquated system and on the political state of Earth in general. The planet at present is divided among a large number of “nations,” as they are called. Each nation has its little plot of land, which it considers to be its own inviolable property, and it is considered one of the highest virtues of man for him to do all in his power to render secure for the nation in which he was born the exclusive right to its particular plot of land, even to the extent of losing his life in its defence. Each nation guards its land with the utmost vigilance and jealousy, although its right to the particular area it occupied at the time of my visit seemed problematical in most cases, as it had often been previously taken by force from another race; this species of robbery had, indeed, on Earth at all times and by all races been considered to be creditable rather than otherwise, and those warriors who have plundered other nations most and driven them from their own formerly peaceful and often prosperous land into sterile and mountainous countries have been hailed as heroes on their return, and have received great rewards and honours. It is curious that while in the individual rapacity of this kind and the taking over of other persons’ property by force is regarded as immoral, . . . a State, [is] quite at liberty to seize the property of other States. Speaking generally, the morality of the State lags behind that of the individual. It so happened that the English nation, of whom I am speaking more particularly, governed directly from London, or indirectly at local centres, a greater portion of the land of the globe than any other nation, for the defence of which, as the territories in question were most easily or of necessity approached by sea, a tremendous navy was kept, at great expense both in men and money. With regard to this colonial question, affairs are rapidly approaching a critical stage. The population of the older and more congested portions of the globe such as Europe is increasing by leaps and bounds. England has millions of square miles of sparsely inhabited territory to which her surplus population may emigrate, and this is naturally regarded with covetous eyes by the other nations who have no outlet of their own. It will not be long, in my opinion, before there will be a world-wide upheaval, either peaceful or bloody, which will result in a more equitable distribution of the land as a preliminary to the final obliteration of the artificial division of the human races into hostile nations.

In many cases the annexation of territory has been peaceful, and has finally been acquiesced in by the minor nation upon which it has conferred many benefits. In such cases, of course, very little criticism can be made, but in other cases, when the conquest has been by the edge of the sword the wound has ranked⁷ and produced an embittered, crushed people in whose midst the agitator, traitor, and anarchist have always found a home. The cases of Poland and Ireland come in this category, and in no case is the injustice of superior might more evident than in the case of Ireland, which has chafed against English rule for seven hundred years. To-day the wound is as sore as ever. The Irish race are the descendants of the primitive tribes who were expelled from England, Wales, and Scotland by the Romans and Saxons. They belong to an entirely different stock from the Anglo-Saxons and have quite alien racial characteristics. It is probably this fact which has prevented anything like a reconciliation between the two peoples. Ireland was first brought under English dominion some seven hundred years ago, but it was not until several centuries later that the country was finally conquered—if it can be said ever to have been so in view of the numerous armed insurrections which have taken place at various times since. It is true that Ireland was in a turbulent state originally and was racked by internal dissensions between various independent chieftains. It is also possible that it would have remained in this state to this day if Irish soil had never received an English foot. But this is a question for the Irish and the Irish alone, and not for the English or any other nation. To say that Ireland is better off under English rule is no extenuation—the Irish are the best judges of their own happiness, and they want the English out. Possibly France might be better off under English rule, but (such is her blindness) she thinks otherwise, and the last vestige of English property on French soil disappeared four hundred years ago. I can find no justification at all for the continued occupation of Ireland by the English. It is an act of unprincipled aggrandisement. Surely the keeping of four and a half millions of people in a political yoke which is intolerable to them, by a nation alien in origin, in religion, in almost every racial characteristic, is an act of political immorality which a nation whose policy is supposed to be dictated by principles of justice and humanity should repudiate!

There are many aspects and problems of human life on Earth which I am unable to deal with in this short sketch, but those which I have touched upon will, I think, afford sufficient grounds for my general condemnation of the present system as cruel, wasteful, and, above all, aimless and vague. What is the object of the activity of the nations, as nations? Evolutionally speaking, they are in the “amoeba” stage; their sole aim in life is existence; they seek to survive—that is all. They have yet to realise that they are only component parts of a higher organism, the world, and that strife between those parts reacts upon even the victors through the injury to that higher organism.

The same pathetic aimlessness marks the growth to maturity of the individual. His natural aptitudes and the needs of the State are often the last things considered in determining his life’s occupation. The State maintains an attitude of indifference on the point of a boy’s suitability for his occupation. He may wish, for example, to be an engineer (as many boys do), and may, or may not, have a genius for engineering, but his father, who is a doctor, wishes his son to join him in his practice. The State supplies no information as to the total number of medical men it requires for the efficient care of its sick or whether the supply already exceeds the demand; nor could it do so if it wished; it has no information, for it takes no interest in these things, being, as a rule, more intent on acquiring some desolate tract of land ten thousand miles away. The same vagueness applies to all human activities. A man’s occupation, his make, his philosophy (if any), his outlook upon life, are all allotted to him by a process of which chance is the greatest ingredient and his own needs and the nation’s needs the smallest. So long as those in power and affluence on Earth continue to lack the insight and moral stamina to prefer a happy community to a surfeited oligarchy, though the latter be themselves, so long will Earth be unable to progress toward the Martian polity in which, given an individual’s mental ability, special talents (such as for art, music, engineering, scientific research, etc.), character, desires, and disposition, the State, acting on these data on the one hand and its own requirements for its most efficient equipment on the other, allots a definite career and prospect for that individual. On no other principle will it be possible to secure justice and contentment to the man and prevent the great loss to the State of intellect and talent which takes place to-day on Earth.