Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt: The Solution of the Economic Paradox, Paperback/Frederick Soddy

What has gone wrong with the world? In the throes of the Great War, many discovered for the first time that they were living in a scientific civilisation, and even scientific men themselves realised the difference between the leaven of theory and its practical aspect in a world boiling in ferment. Science then almost emerged from its esoteric seclusion to become a cult - at least, something worth cultivating, for professional ends. So indispensible in wartime, it seemed curiously insignificant among the public services in time of peace. Fortunately for science the danger passed. There are scientific professions, many of them, but science is not a profession. It is a quest. What has gone wrong in the world? Let us follow the quest. America, almost alone among the nations now, has any freedom of choice of its rulers and the world looks to her as its last hope of destroying what has become easily the most powerful tyranny and the most universal conspiracy against the economic freedom of individuals and the autonomy of nations the world has yet known. The state of Europe at the present time, and of its once proud nations reduced severally to internal chaos and many to despair, is eloquent of the rule of the banker. Here, what is dangerous to the banker is considered altogether too dangerous for the nation to be allowed even to discuss, and the public are most carefully and elaborately shielded from any real knowledge of the preposterous humbug which it was one of the objects of this book to elucidate.