Hugh Pembroke Vowles
He was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey and at the Technical School, Gloucester, where he served an apprenticeship and passed through the shops and drawing office of W. Sisson Ltd, power plant engineers from 1901 to 1906.
After gaining experience as a junior draughtsman with G Waller and Son Ltd of Stroud, Gloucester, he was employed from 1909 to 1913 as a contract engineer with Messrs Williams and Rugby Robinson.
In April 1921, he was resident at Redcliff, Caswell Bay, Glamorganshire and was described as "general manager and Chief Engineer to a large industrial concern"[1] In 1922, he went to join W.H.
He recognised that there would be increased competition for resources and markets as productivity rose and that this would impact upon people's lives both by taking resources away from good causes, such as health and the advancement of science and by the effects of war: In "post-war conditions of politics and trade... trade ... must find a vent in export for the huge increase of capacity in the productive machinery of this and other countries, leading to fiercer and fiercer competition for foreign markets and for 'control' of the raw material producing regions – particularly coal and oil areas – and so to another large scale war beside which the last will pale into insignificance, a war possibly with America, as part of the price I have to pay for the goods I buy under the present system.
The Price We Pay[4] He felt that in the 1920s political change was around the corner, in particular to the left: "Nevertheless, in spite of all my doubts there are times when I am upon the whole more hopeful of the world ridding itself of its innumerable burdens; when I see signs of more and yet more fires being kindled in the minds of men; smouldering as yet, but soon it may be to blaze up and spread the knowledge that a time of great change is at hand.
In "Ukraine and its People" (1939), he wrote "There is good reason to believe that Herr Hitler proposes to make use of (Ukrainian minority movements) to serve his own ambitions.
His religious ideas are particularly interesting given that he was the son of a Wesleyan Minister and became a communist in an era when socialism was popular amongst western intellectuals.
This matter is, I believe, to be discussed more fully in another paper in this book, but the present writer now ventures to offer a few remarks that seem to fall within his scope.
Whatever broadens the basis of sympathy and mutual understanding is a force operating in the constructive direction, and so it would seem probable that Christianity will at least survive in its spirit and intermingle with the more elaborate traditions of the future.
Contemporary Christianity must purge itself from a multitude of defects before it can possibly be acceptable to the clear-headed men who will be the normal citizens of the Great State.
Christianity as we know it at present makes no insistence upon understanding and mental alertness as duties, nor upon the supreme necessity of thoroughness in thought and work.
