BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 107, 11 June 1914, Page 5

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

MR WELLS ON THE WORLD.

Mr Wells was, as quite a young man, & schoolmaster. He has never got rid M the pedagoguish habit. On the eonJirary, it grows upon him. His later / ttovels are full of that "sermonising" ;#hich comes so naturally to the schoolmaster. Once upon a time lie taught youths elementary science. To-day he lays down the law to an adult audience, and has a broader range of subject. But «ver he is telling the world how to do it, and, perhaps, with a trifle greater how not to ere it. In his

latest book, "An Englishman looks at the j^orld'' (Cassell and Co.), Mr Wells gives the world the benefit of his contemplation bf, and thoughts not a few on, political and social problems. But in neither his point of view nor ia, the manner of its expression is he the typical Englishman. r A fact, no doubt, upon which Mr Wells Vould rather pride himself than deny. For Mr Wells holds that so far from everything being "as right as can' be" in ,016 world, and, particularly in the British world of to-day, most things are woefully, terribly wrong. It would be nardly f air to call him-a pessimist, but assuredly his' spectacles are of blue or green rather than rose-tinted glass. Backward John Bull. Especially is he severe upon the defia mild term as compared some of those employed by Mr Wells—of John Bull's education system. JThe foreigner of the middle and upper Classes, "from which invention and enterprise come- —or, in our own case, do jiot come —makes," he says, "a better <flass of man than we do."

. ' ' His science is better than ours. His graining is better than ours. His imagination is livelierl His mind is more- active. His requirements in a novel, for example, are not kindly, sedative pap; his pneensored plays deal with reality. His (fechpols are places for vigorous education instead of genteel athleticism, and •iis home has books in it, and thought and conversation. Our homes and schools 4re relatively dull and uninspiring; there -is no intellectual guide or stir in them; and to that we owe this new generation fcf nicely-behaved, unenterprising sons, who play golf and dominate the tailoring of the world, while BrazUians, Jfrenchmen, Americans, and Germans ;fly. . . . We seem to be doing feeble .next-to-nothings in the endowment of Not one in twenty of the middle and upper classes learns German or gets more than a misleading smattering of physical science. . . . Most of them never learn to speak I)rench. . .'. The universities are poor *nd spiritless, with no ambition to lead the country. ... We still have our tDerby Day, of course." Mr Wells's Ideal State. .. Mr Wells is a Socialist, a philosophical Socialist, although I believe he has iorsaken his quondam associates of the Fabian Society. Did he not rudely jqaricature those good comrades, Mr and :Mxs Sidney Webb, in one of his recent Novels? Also, he is not a Socialist pt the G. B. "Pshaw" variety. He (koes not believe that the State could tlo anything and everything better than jfeould the individual. His ideal community is a community of individual efficients —no drones or loafers encouraged or allowed on the premises—a community in which the man "will be neither under the slave tradition, aor a rebel, nor a vehement elemental man.'' "Essentially he will be aristocratic, aristocratic not in the sense that he has Waves or class inferiors, because probably he will have nothing of the sort, but aristocratic in the sense that he will feel the State belongs to him and he to the State. He will probably be a publie servant; at any rate, he will be a man doing some work in the complicated machinery of the modern community for a salary and not for speculative gain." Mr Wells goes one "better, or as some 9f us may be pardoned for thinking, one worse, than the ordinary land nationaliser, for he would nationalise all buildings as well as land! The daring pf these pedagogue-philosophers of today! They would out-George even the gefunct and venerated Henry of the gibe, albeit, in another essay, Mr Shells speaks quite slightingly of the JSoerates of San Francisco. "The Disease of Parliaments." Upon the present British Parliamen-

taty system our prophet-pedagogue is specially severe. The special object of particular discourse bearing the above , title is to advocate proportional "representation, but even Mr Wells admits that what he calls "sane voting" may not be a short cut to the - millennium. "It is, 5 ' he says, "no way of changing , human nature, and in the new type of , assembly, as in the old/ spite, vanity, indolence, self-interest, and downright . dishonesty will play their part." England—especially Liberal England—has, he thinks, relied too much in the past ' upon ''' progressive enfranchisement.'' At present, he says, there is a new situation, "the discontent of the enfranchised, the contempt and hostility of the voters for their elected delegates and Governments.'' After pointing out that the discontented workers form effective voting majorities in many constituencies, send alleged Socialist and Labour representatives to Parliament, and have their trades union officials elected officials, Mr Wells remarks that nothing is now more evident than "these Labour/members and officials" and the like "do not speak for their supporters and are less and less" able t6 control them." In the Syndicalist movement, in sabotage in France, and Larkinism in Great Britain he sees (regarded from the point of view of social stability), "the most sinister demonstrations of the gathering anger of the labouring classes with representative institutions. . . . These ai*e angry and vindictive movements. They have behiud them .the' most dangerous and terrible of purely human forces, the wrath, the blind destructive wrath, of a cheated crowd." He is severe on both parties. "The recent exposures of the profound financial rottenness of the Liberal Party have deepened," he says, "the public resolve to permit no such enlarged possibilities or corruption as .Tariff Reform would afford their at least equally dubitable opponents." "Contemporary politics" is, he tells us, for the most part "forensic claptrap." "Official wire-pullers effectually bar the election of men of real intelligence."_ • The Cabinet System. Uader proportional representation, such is his belief, Parliaments would become "a gathering of prominent men instead of a means of prominence . . . the party supported Cabinet, wjiich, is now the real government of the so-called democratic countries, would cease to be so, and government would revert more and more to the general assembly." "And not only would the latter body resume government, but it would also "necessarily take in to itself all those large and growing exponents of extraparliamentary discontent that -now darken the social future. The case of the armed 'Unionist' rebel in Ulster, the case of the workman who engages in sabotage, the case for sympathetic strikes and the general strike, all these cases are identical in this, that they declare that Parliament is a fraud, that justice lies outside it, and hopelessly outside it, and that to seek redress through Parliament is a waste of time and energy.*. Sane voting would de-. prive all these destructive movements of the excuse and necessity for violence. "

This is not a column in which politics, should be or may be discussed, but this much may and can be said, that even those who may differ most emphatically from many of the theories and arguments set forth in the chapter headed "The Labour Unrest," "The Great State,' ' and " The Disease of Parliament," must admit that much of what our pi;ophet pedagogue says "gives furiously to think," as the French expression gOes. Warfare and Efficiency.

In view of certain recent and muchdiscussed pronouncements on Dreadnoughts and submarine's, etc.—by Admiral Sir Percy Scott, Mr Wells's '' anticipations " —he has used the term as the title of a previous work—on naval warfare largely support the theory that the '' more Dreadnoughts'' cry has been a mistake. It is not an instance of " I told you so," although Mr Wells, as the author of "The War in the Air," might well be excused that expression. But it is clear he is honestly, sincerely, and most terribly in earnest in his belief that it would be next door to open ir.sanity, mere "midsummer madness" for John Bull—or John Bull's oversea sons —to rely wholly on the Dreadnoughts. Mr Wells is convinced that we "are spending upon the things of yesterday the money that is sorely needed for things of to-morrow." Wsll, "to get down to dots," what does he suggest? This: "A greater supply of able, educated men, versatile men capable of engines, of aviation, of invention of leaning, and initiative."

"We need more laboratories, more scholarships out of the general mass of elementary scholars, a quasi-military discipline in our colleges, and a great array of new colleges, a much readier access to instruction in aviation and military and naval practice ... let us begin at the top. Let tis begin with the educated and propertied classes, and exact a couple of years' service in a destroyer or a waterplane, or on an airship, or in a research laboratory, or a training camp, from the sons of everybody, who, let us say, pays income tax without deductions."

Excellent, i' faith, but, really, what about young John Bull's golf practice? And also, the sauce for the goose being, proverbially, good for the gander, what about Mr Wells's own attacks, in other chapters of hi* book, oa "conscrip-

tion?" If it be good and proper, and right and wise, for the State —oh, blessed term!—to insist upon Gerald Guy Montmorency de Vere-Tompkyns "putting in" his -two-years on a waterplane, or, in a "research laboratory," then, assuredly, plain John Jones or Bill Smith must not be coddled up by pedagogue philosophers, or anybody else, in the belief that his duty to the State is to lie low and spend his spare time in witnessing a "soccer" final or a Rugby Union finish. The range of subjects in Mr Wells's new book is agreeably wide. He lectures us, for instance, on the future of warfare, about Traffic in and the Rebuilding of cities, on the Endowment of Motherhood; he waxes as 'satirical (if not so ill-naturedly so) as does G.B.S. on Doctors and their ways; he indulges in many ingenious theories and predictions as to Coming Inventions and Possible Discoveries; he gaily banters those rival literary and social philosophers, Messrs Belloc and Chesterton; he discourses on the Contemporary Novel, and makes a rather unexpected (fro~n this quarter) attack on certain latter-day arguments for greater freedom in Divorce. Everywhere and always he is fresh, stimulating, and thought-provoking. He is rarely rhetorical, and generally gets severely "down to the dots" as the Americans say. You may like or dislike his theories, but it is, I- think, impossible to say, conscientiously, that they should be contemptuously ignored. (Price 6/-).