Tesla's Thoughts and Predictions for our time

Was just reading this article in Liberty Magazine February 9, 1935 "A Machine to End War" by Nikola Tesla:
https://books.google.com/books?id=UgMdAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA11-PA61&dq=%22A+Machine+to+End+War%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjphv_j9cKRAxWW1vACHRmlEUUQ6AF6BAgMEAM#v=onepage&q&f=false

It's always interesting to read his stuff, but what really struck me is what the editor of the magazine said in the introduction of Tesla's article...

"Editor's note: Nikola Tesla, now in his seventy-eighth year, has been called the father of radio, ... Recently he has announced a heretofore unknown source of energy present everywhere in unlimited amounts, and he is now working upon a device which he believes will make war impracticable." ...

... "Were we," remarks B.A. Behrend, distinguished author and engineer, "to seize and to eliminate the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead and idle." ..."

This is 1935! What did he mean by "our electric cars and trains would stop"? We didn't have electric cars and trains in 1935... did we?

Anyway, a couple excerpts of Tesla's own words...

"It seems that I have always been ahead of my time...  the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally. ....  One of my most important discoveries - terrestrial resonance which is the foundation of wireless power transmission and which I announced in 1899, is not understood even today. Nearly two years after I had flashed an electric current around the globe, Edison, Steinmetz, Marconi, and others declared it would not be possible to transmit even signals across the Atlantic. Having anticipated so many important developments, it is not without assurance that I attempt to predict what life is likely to be in the twenty-first century.

Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors. ... .. Here the mechanistic conception of life is one with the teachings of Buddha and the Sermon on the Mount. While I am not a believer in the orthodox sense, I commend religion, first, because every individual should have some ideal -religious, artistic, scientific, or humanitarian -to give significance to his life. Second, because all the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.

There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas .... .. Today Buddhism and Christianity are the greatest religions both in number of disciples and in importance. I believe that the essence of both will be the religion of the human race in the twenty-first century.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit....

I am convinced that within a century coffee, tea, and tobacco will be no longer in vogue. Alcohol, however, will still be used. It is not a stimulant but a veritable elixir of life. The abolition of stimulants will not come about forcibly. It will simply be no longer fashionable to poison the system with harmful ingredients. ...

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. ...
Like other inventors, I believed at one time that war could he stopped by making it more destructive. But I found that I was mistaken. I underestimated man’s combative instinct, which it will take more than a century to breed out. We cannot abolish war by outlawing it. We cannot end it by disarming the strong. ..... .. But I was fortunate enough to evolve a new idea and to perfect means which can be used chiefly for defense. ... .. If no country can be attacked successfully, there can be no purpose in war.....

I do not say that there may not be several destructive wars before the world accepts my gift. I may not live to see its acceptance. But I am convinced that a century from now every nation will render itself immune from attack ... .. At present we suffer from the derangement of our civilization because we have not yet completely adjusted ourselves to the machine age. The solution of our problems does not lie in destroying but in mastering the machine....

American universities are attempting to create what has been described as a “thinking machine.” I anticipated this development. I actually constructed “robots.” Today the robot is an accepted fact, but the principle has not been pushed far enough. In the twenty-first century the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization. There is no reason at all why most of this should not come to pass in less than a century, freeing mankind to pursue its higher aspirations.

And unless mankind’s attention is too violently diverted by external wars and internal revolutions, there is no reason why the electric millennium should not begin in a few decades.