THE WORLD SET FREE

H.G. WELLS


We Are All Things That Make And Pass,
Striving Upon A Hidden Mission,
Out To The Open Sea.


TO

Frederick Soddy's

'Interpretation Of Radium'

This Story, Which Owes Long Passages To The Eleventh Chapter Of That
Book, Acknowledges And Inscribes Itself




PREFACE

THE WORLD SET FREE was written in 1913 and published early in 1914, and
it is the latest of a series of three fantasias of possibility, stories
which all turn on the possible developments in the future of some
contemporary force or group of forces. The World Set Free was written
under the immediate shadow of the Great War. Every intelligent person in
the world felt that disaster was impending and knew no way of averting