great map quotations: H. G. Wells

A quotation especially for Election Day. H. G. Wells, in his The New Machiavelli (1911, available on Project Gutenberg) described a landslide general election in Britain seen from the perspective of the new machiavelli himself (who was standing for the Liberal).

“The London world reeked with the General Election; it had invaded the nurseries. All the children of one’s friends had got big maps of England cut up into squares to represent constituencies and were busy sticking gummed blue labels over the conquered red of Unionism that had hitherto submerged the country. And there were also orange labels, if I remember rightly, to represent the new Labour party, and green for the Irish.”

From a personal point of view, Wells’s use of colors is particularly appropriate!

Matthew Edney