consequent consideration of our conditions--that in a reasonably
conducted civilisation no such awful catastrophe as this senseless
conflagration could have been possible. No doubt we shall profit by
the lesson, but it is one that any individual might have learned for
himself from these romances, without paying the fearful price that is
now necessary. And because humanity is apt to forget its most drastic
punishments, to revert to its original inertia as soon as the smart is
healed, I feel that when the worst is over, these books will have a
greater value than ever before. I believe that in them may be found
just those essentials of detachment and broad vision which might serve
to promote a higher and more stable civilisation.




III

THE NOVELS


I am willing to maintain that H.G. Wells is second to none as a writer
of romances of the type I have just examined. I am less certain of his
position as a novelist. He brings to his fiction the open-eyed
recognition of realities, the fine analysis of modern conditions, the
lucid consequent thought and the clean, graphic style that mark the
qualities of his other method; he has that "poetic gift, the gift of
the creative and illuminating phrase," which, he has said, "alone
justifies writing"; but he has not the power of creating characters
that stand for some essential type of humanity. On the one hand he is
inclined to idealise the engineer and the scientific researcher, on