GoKawiilWhen I began writing Material World I tried my hardest not to spend too much time thinking about the newsworthiness or otherwise of the content. This is not, shall we say, especially easy for a journalist. But the whole point of the book is that it needs to stand the test of time; to be readable in a decade as well as today. Let me know whether you think it passed that test.
But the upshot of all that is that I do wonder whether some of the lessons from the stories are a little subtle.
With that in mind, here is the story of the “glass famine”, one of the earliest tales in Chapter 1, in a slightly more “unsubtle” format. Hopefully for those of you who haven’t read the book it’ll give you a sense of some of the stuff I cover in there and for those of you who have it’ll drum in the relevance for modern policy.
Before I begin, it’s worth emphasising that the below is only a very brief rendition of an issue and set of events covered in much more depth in the book, which is available in most territories (save for North America) at the time of writing. Please buy it!
Order Material World
August, 1915
War is raging on the Western Front. Thousands are dying every day. It’s already shaping up to be the bloodiest war in history. Guns, bombs, even chemical weapons like chlorine and mustard gas.
Amid the fighting, a spy is despatched from the Ministry of Munitions in London to Switzerland, there on a very special mission. He is there to procure one of the world’s most advanced pieces of military technology.
That technology is… glass. Or, to be more precise, optical glass: binoculars, telescopes, sniperscopes.
Now while these things may sound somewhat trivial today, in 1914 advanced lenses were a massive deal. This was the first great war fought at long distances. Advances in ballistics & weaponry meant ranges went up to 40,000 to 60,000 yards. And those with the best lenses had the best chance of hitting their targets. They had an enormous advantage.
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