The modern man no longer presents the memoirs of his great grandfather;
but is engaged in writing a detailed and authoritative biography
of his great-grandson. Instead of trembling before the specters
of the dead, we shudder abjectly under the shadow of the babe unborn.
This spirit is apparent everywhere, even to the creation of a form
of futurist romance. Sir Walter Scott stands at the dawn of
the nineteenth century for the novel of the past; Mr. H. G. Wells
stands at the dawn of the twentieth century for the novel
of the future. The old story, we know, was supposed to begin:
"Late on a winter's evening two horsemen might have been seen--."
The new story has to begin: "Late on a winter's evening two aviators
will be seen--." The movement is not without its elements of charm;
there is something spirited, if eccentric, in the sight of so many
people fighting over again the fights that have not yet happened;
of people still glowing with the memory of tomorrow morning.
A man in advance of the age is a familiar phrase enough.
An age in advance of the age is really rather odd.

But when full allowance has been made for this harmless
element of poetry and pretty human perversity in the thing,
I shall not hesitate to maintain here that this cult of
the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age.
It is the peculiar evil of this epoch that even its pugnacity
is fundamentally frightened; and the Jingo is contemptible
not because he is impudent, but because he is timid.
The reason why modern armaments do not inflame the imagination
like the arms and emblazonments of the Crusades is a reason
quite apart from optical ugliness or beauty. Some battleships
are as beautiful as the sea; and many Norman nosepieces were
as ugly as Norman noses. The atmospheric ugliness that surrounds