To-morrow's Yesterday

This satirical novel (published in 1932) captures much of the growing tension of Europe in the early 1930s and accurately predicted that the Great War had not been ‘the war to end all wars’.  John Gloag (born 10 August 1896) opted not to present his sensational science fiction scenario as the main plot but instead to feature it is a film being promoted by the ruthless writers of the advertising agency who are the central characters of the novel. The attempts by the advertising agency to manipulate the opinion of the masses brings to mind the propaganda machinery of the totalitarian regimes on the rise in Europe at that time.

Early in the novel Bryce muses about the First World War:
“I'm sorry in a way that if there's going to be another war that it won't come in my time...I was just old enough to take part in the last and I'd love to put a spoke in the next lot of nonsense by proclaiming to everybody that I was going to be a conscientious objector and as I'd fought in the Great War they couldn't say it was because of my skin and I'd make it clear it was because of my sense.”
This might well be considered autobiographical comment. John Gloag had himself fought on the Western Front. As an old man he recalled the impact that his experience of conflict had had on him:
“I served in the Welsh Guards during the latter part of the 1914-18 War, and was in France (as a subaltern)... with the first battalion... and took part in the big push that smashed into the Hindenburg Line in August 1918, when I collected some lungfuls of poison gas (our own, chiefly, for we were far ahead of our barrage in the attack when I was knocked out) and invalided home... What I experienced in the army and on active service had a profound effect upon my imagination and to some extent coloured my fiction when I wrote short stories and novels after the Great War. (Engraved on one of the routine medals... suspended from... the Victory ribbon... are the words: ‘The Great War for Civilisation’. That’s a laugh, in view of the sort of civilisation we’ve had ever since!)”

The advertising agency has been entrusted with a campaign to promote a new theatre in London for which the opening attraction is the science-fiction film To-morrow's Yesterday.  The film depicts a world war and its drastic consequences for civilisation. The levels of destruction resemble that expected in any World War III in popular imagination during the Cold War:
“An official declaration of war against the United States of America has not yet been made by the United Soviet States of Russia and China but... a fleet of long-distance planes... raided California, completely destroying San Francisco, Los Angeles and Hollywood... thus dealing a crushing blow at America's ability to organise war propaganda. A note radiogrammed from Washington to Moscow demanding and explanation has not been answered. It is 79 years since the U.S.A. waged a successful European war and the victories of 1918 have not been forgotten in the Great Republic.”
Within a short time, rival alliances went to war in Europe —
France invaded England; “All London south of the Thames has been on fire for thirty hours”; Paris and Bordeaux were “gassed out”; Italian planes “reduced Vienna, Salzburg and Munich to ashes”. (As an aside, Gloag correctly foresaw Irish neutrality in the Second World War: “The Irish Free State declared itself an independent republic at 15.30 yesterday afternoon. President Mullins immediately proclaimed the strict neutrality of the republic and followed the proclamation by a message to the President of France, wishing all success to the French arms.”)
Later the U.S. war secretary seeks to notify Moscow of America's desire for negotiations but “Moscow does not reply, having been razed to the ground with high-powered bombs by combined French and Polish air squadrons”.

What survives is a world that returns to a primitive pre-industrial way of life. The tribal ritual of sacrificing a man to satisfy the animal masters of the jungle is prefaced by ceremonial words remembering what once was:
“We could shoot our arrows with the sound of thunder and none could withstand them; we were the masters and the lords of all that flew in the air, or ran on the earth, or swam in the waters under the earth. We remember the glory and the power. We were the lords of creation.”
The film then skips to a scene in the distant future: “it is now the year three million, one hundred and ten thousand, three hundred and eighty-eight... There have been no men in the world for over two million years.”
The ‘society’ of that era was said to have “evolved from the savage mammals that preyed on the last men.”

After the première of the film has been described in detail, the novel moves on to describe the public response to the sensational storyline and the continuing promotion of the film by the advertising agency. The film had received much negative criticism in the media but the agency sought to use all this publicity to increase the commercial success of the film.


A newspaper was “indignant that out-of-date war scaremongering should be thrust upon the British public under the guise of entertainment”. Gloag’s prescience, however, is revealed on the final page. Bryce read the stop-press column on the front page of the newspaper:
“A Royal Proclamation, declaring a State of Emergency, was signed at 10.40 p.m.”
The final sentence of the novel foresees events only a few years from the time when it was written:
“As he walked home to Knightsbridge at midnight the sky was barred with searchlights.”