At a public debate between Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton at Kingsway Hall in London in 1927, the chairman Hilaire Belloc made this prophecy:

” The industrial civilization, which, thank God, oppresses only the small part of the world in which we are most inextricably bound up, will break down and therefore end from its monstrous wickedness, folly, ineptitude, leading to a restoration of sane, ordinary human affairs, complicated but based as a whole upon the freedom of the citizens. Or it will break down and lead to nothing but a desert. Or it will lead the mass of humanity to become contented slaves, with a few rich men controlling them. Take your choice”

[BBC Broadcast October 1927]