portrait of Mr. Barnstaple, a typically Wellsian hero, the story is also connected with the third group: that of the novels pure and simple.

In his Streifzüge durch die neueste Englische Literatur Dr. Fehr has said: "H. G. Wells kann die phantastischen Einwohner des Planeten Mars überzeugender darstellen als Menschen von Fleisch und Blut". Dr. Fehr wrote this in 1911 and seeing that Wells had by that time already surprised the readers accustomed to his romances with that brilliant trio of "ordinary" novels: Kipps, Tono Bungay and Ann Veronica, containing several beautifully conceived, life-like characters, this statement seems too sweeping in its generality and was perhaps only thus phrased to make it more telling and picturesque. But if it should not be taken too literally, there is certainly a kernel ot truth in it. For first of all, however improbable, however much beyond human experience Mr. Wells's fantastic creatures really are, his uncanny creative power compels us to accept them for some time at least as realities, and secondly the characters of his other novels nearly always show a tendency to live on in our imagination as general types rather than as definite, sharply individualized personalities.

On this first count Mr. Beresford in his little book on Wells (1915) makes some interesting remarks, which we think well worth quoting here; they are elucidating and apply again to the method used by Wells in his latest book. That his strange unearthly creatures have become so strikingly convincing is of course mainly due, as Mr. Beresford says, to the brilliance of his imagination and his power of graphic description, but the way in which he has used these gifts in the fantastic romances has also been instrumental in creating the powerful impression of reality they make on the reader. For Wells does not elaborate the wonder of his theme by direct description. "He is far more subtle and more effective. He takes an average individual, identifies him with the world as we know it and then proceeds gradually to bring his marvel within the range of this individual's apprehension. We see the improbable, not too definitely, through the eyes of one who is prepared with the same incredulity as the reader of the story, and as a result the strange phenomenon, whether fallen angel, invisible man, converted beast or invading Martian, takes all the shape of reality..... Our approach to the wonderful is so gradual and so natural that, when we are finally confronted with it, the incredible thing has become inevitable and expected. Finally it has become so identified with human surprise, anger or dismay that any failure of humanity in the chief person of the story reacts upon our conception of the wonderful intrusion among familiar phenomena."

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In Men Like Gods we find once more the same method of narration employed to excellent purpose. We see the whole wonderful community Utopia reputed to exist quite near our own imperfect world, hidden from us only by some dimensional trickery through the eyes of Mr. Barnstaple, an average well-educated liberal-minded Englishman, in many respects resembling Mr. Britling, and for all his life-likeness more a general type again than a definite peculiar individual, constituting as such a new illustration of the second point to which we referred as lending some colouring of truth to Dr. Fehr's contention.

If for convenience' sake we forget for a moment all the other distinctive features which enter into the composition of an author's originality, we may divide novelists into two great groups: some show a marked preference for the particular, others for the general. Mr. Wells may then be said to belong to the latter, which comes out the more clearly when we compare him in this respect with such an author as Joseph Conrad, a typical representative of the former group.

The sincere mutual admiration which these two great artists feel for each other, can hardly be said to emanate from an intimate relationship between their work or their conception of the ideals of art. There are of course in the great complex of their oeuvre some corresponding tendencies to be observed, but the main directions of their literary ambition are distinctly opposed. Conrad's interest is almost always concentrated on the particular, he sees the details, the slightest deviations in the various personages and situations he describes; the reader remains continually conscious of the fact that no two moments of life ever wear precisely the same aspect, the nicest differences are always taken into account. Wells on the other hand appreciates and emphasizes the general; he sees everywhere in the various incidents and individuals the corresponding; in his works the conformable, the great laws underlying the complicated phenomena of life come to the fore. Conrad's characters live on in the reader's imagination as independent, strongly marked individuals; we believe in them unconditionally, they enrich the circle of our acquaintances, they remain in our remembrance quite distinctly apart both from one another and from people we already knew, even from such as resemble them in some chief points. The characteranalysis in Wells's novels is less deep, the personalities less complicated; because the petty individual differences are not insisted upon or left out altogether, his personages do not as a rule maintain themselves in our imagination as independent figures, they soon connect themselves with the image of other similar individuals whom we have met with in reality or in our reading they resolve very readily into a type, for which they then form a further confirmation. We believe in them, because we recognize them or because we so clearly see them as representatives of a class, a group, an attitude to life. The author himself at times specially directs our attention to this type-forming quality of his characters, as in Marriage, to quote only one of many instances:

"Mr. Pope was one of that large and representative class which imparts a dignity to national commerce by inheriting big businesses from his ancestors.....'

"At first it seemed to Trafford that when he met Dowd he was only meeting Dowd, but a time came when it seemed to him that in meeting Dowd he was meeting all that vast new England outside the range of ruling-class dreams, that multitudinous greater England, cheaply treated, rather out of health, angry, energetic and now becoming intelligent and critical, that England which organized industrialism has created.... Dowd became at last entirely representative."

Authors whose characterisation shows this generalising tendency, are apt to repeat a favourite type, their chief personages will often bear a more or less marked family likeness, which, however, need not mean that they must necessarily strike the reader as less life-like. But the 'calling-up of spirits from the vasty deep' is with them hardly ever the only concern. They are not content to depict the world as they see it, they also want to interpret it, to give direct expression to their opinions about a right conduct of life or to indicate what appears to them a possible or desirable development of mankind. H. G. Wells is one of these novelists of ideas; the desire to embody in his art his views on morals, politics and kindred subjects has always been one of the sources of his literary activity; we find it more or less suppressed in the novels proper, quite prominent in most of the other books. That he holds such a high place of honour among them is not only due to the brilliance and daring originality of his ideas, but to his great creative power, a combination of gifts not often met with.

Men Like Gods is again essentially a novel of ideas. As has been said, it describes a Utopian world, as seen through the eyes of an average mortal, and its structure recalls quite a little series of similar well-known English books, for the Utopia is more frequent in English literature than in any other. The plan offers the writer a twofold opportunity to put forth his opinions about the merits and more often the demerits of the society of his times: in the description of the fanciful world the reader is shown the state of happiness which ensues, when the principles the author so passionately believes in, are put into practice; and on the other hand the stories told by the chance visitor to the happy Utopians will astonish and horrify them, a procedure admirably calculated for a sly sort of sarcasm. Some of Swift's stories are run on these lines, notably that of the voyage to Brobdignag and in its general construction Men Like Gods strongly resembles this strange satiric tale. But here the parallelism ceases. The community of the giants can hardly be called a Utopia, though the Brobdignagians are on the whole gentle, civilized people, who are appalled at the English methods of warfare Gulliver proposes to them. But their state is not very far advanced compared to that of Gulliver's countrymen, whereas the Men like Gods are in all respects immeasurably superior to the earthlings. And the difference in spirit between the two writers is of far greater importance yet. Wells believes in mankind in spite of all the faults his keen critical eye detects; he sees in history a steady progress towards a brilliant future, he is more firmly convinced than any novelist before him of the practicability of the 'working out of the beast'. This faith colours all his works and from nearly every one of his books we might extract some passage in which it has found direct expression, as e. g. in The Passionate Friends: "What man has become and may become beneath the masks and impositions of civilisation, in his intimate texture and in the depths of his being, I begin now in my middle age to appreciate. No longer is he an instinctive savage, but a creature of almost incredible variability and wonderful new possibilities. Marvels undreamt of, power still inconceivable, an empire beyond the uttermost stars; such is man's inheritance." This glowing faith, which not even the direst experiences of the war have been able to shake, as Mr. Britling Sees it Through amply testifies, has of course, greatly influenced the grain and quality of his satire. For unlike that of many other writers Mr. Wells's satire does not spring from a dark subsoil of bitter disappointment or disgust, it is rather an outburst of impatience at the futile occupations, the self-deceit and egotism, the narrow moral codes, the stupid prejudices he sees people still clinging to; it is with him only a means to try and clear away more quickly the impediments standing in the way of that brighter future which he knows must come sooner or later; in his satire there is never a vestige of despair.

Mr. Barnstaple has been made the type of man who can fully appreciate the new world into which he has been accidentally thrown, because this world corresponds with the ideals he has always cherished in his heart of hearts, ideals for which, however remote they had seemed, he had tried to pave the way as far as his little strength allowed and for which he would at all times be ready to make a sacrifice. Now that he so unexpectedly sees it realized, he recognizes that it was a world "the very fellow of which had lain deep beneath the thoughts and dreams of thousands of sane and troubled men and women in the world of disorder from which he had come". And when he learns that Utopia had once passed through the same misery, the same crises our earth is passing through now, he commemorates in one of the beautiful passages in which the book abounds, the pioneers who in

spite of the bitterest discouragement, the apparently fatal defeats had always kept the ideal alive in their hearts and had patiently continued working at the tremendous task of preparing for a better state of things: "How few of these pioneers had ever felt more than a transitory gleam of the righteous loveliness of the world their lives made possible! And yet even in the hate and turmoil and distresses of the Days of Confusion there must have been earnest enough of the exquisite and glorious possibilities of life. Over the foulest slums the sunset called to the imaginations of men, and from mountain ridges, across great valleys, from cliffs and hillsides and by the uncertain and terrible splendours of the sea, men must have had glimpses of the conceivable and attainable magnificence of being. Every flower petal, every sunlit leaf, the vitality of young things, the happy moments of the human mind transcending itself in art, all these things must have been material for hope, incentive to effort".

With a shock of surprise at first, with better understanding afterwards he perceives that the other earthlings do not all share his enthusiasm for the Utopian institutions, manners and morals. For Mr. Barnstaple is not the only one that has suddenly been transposed from the Maidenhead Road to a corresponding Utopian highway. Two motorcar-loads of other human beings have been whisked into it by the daring dimensional experiment of some Utopian scientists. Among them is a priest, Father Amerton, and no sooner has he got some inkling of Utopian conceptions than he begins to preach against them in a violent and abusive manner. Among them are also Mr. Catskill and Mr. Burleigh, easily recognizable as Winston Churchill and Balfour, the changed names being wellnigh the only disguise allowed to them in this daringly direct portraiture. As great and experienced politicians they are more guarded in the utterance of their opinions than Father Amerton, but they too disapprove of much they see around them. The whole party, including a lady, a war-profiteer, a Frenchman and an American, are treated very politely by the Utopians who do everything in their power to make them comfortable. But the earthlings have unknowingly brought the germs of fever, measles and influenza with them and as the atmosphere of Utopia was definitively purged of all infectious diseases centuries before, the inhabitants have lost the last trace of resistance against such pernicious bacteria; many fall ill and the spreading epidemic necessitates the isolation of the earthlings. They are carried to an old fortress in a remote mountain region and are told that the Utopians will try to devise methods for their complete physical cleansing by meant of injections. This announcement infuriates Fater Amerton, for he is a confirmed anti-vaccinationist, holding vaccination to be an outrage on nature. He wants to issue a flaming protest. But Mr. Catskill surprises and delights him with a stupendous plan of retaliation. They are in possession of some effective weapons, he will use them, make war upon the Utopians, hold the fortress and then gradually conquer this new evidently quite undefended world. The proposal is received with enthusiasm. And almost immediately a fierce dispute ensues over the claims of the various nations to dominate the lands to be conquered, a dispute which enables the author to bring out the characteristics of the English, French and American diplomats and to give us a very clear satirical exposition of the present political conditions of Europe.

In vain Mr. Barnstaple protests against the preposterous and iniquitous plan, saying that they are like a handful of Hottentots in a showman's van at Earl's Court planning the conquest of London. He is outvoted, and when at last actual fighting appears unavoidable, he betrays his compatriots to

prevent some harmless Utopians, who come to bring them food, from falling into an ambush. He is pursued by the furious Earthlings and eventually he falls on a ridge of rock where no one can reach him, but from where there seems no escape. His reflections in this strange situation with certain death before him form one of the finest parts of the book.

Thanks to the prodigious powers of the Utopians he is rescued after all and the revolt of the earthlings is easily subdued.

For some time Mr. Barnstaple now lives alone with the Utopians and in the last hundred pages of the book he tells what he saw and learned among these enlightened beings. Their history appears up to a certain period to run pretty nearly parallel with our own, a resemblance which of course again fosters Mr. Barnstaple's belief that the progress of civilisation on earth will lead to the same happy results as in Utopia. "There is confusion in all struggles; retractions and defeats; but the whole effect seen from the calm height of Utopia, was one of steadfast advance..... There was no knowledge in this Utopia of which Earth had not the germs, there was no power used here that Earthlings might not use. Here but for ignorance and darkness and the spites and malice they permit was Earth to day....." Guided by a Utopian woman Lychnis and later on by a schoolboy Mr. Barnstaple makes many rambles through the beautiful domains. He describes in detail the more purely material aspect of the wonderful planet and from the long conversations with his guides we also learn much about the spiritual life of its inhabitants. They all work hard, but as in the News from Nowhere work has become a pleasure and everybody is always strongly conscious of being a member of a great community for whose welfare they are willing to sacrifice everything. He discusses finances, science, education, love, freedom, religion and the noble conceptions of the Utopians, their high and pure morals make him feel a 'more beastly earthling' than ever before. With great reluctance he at last leaves these happy regions, finding some consolation in the faith that similar conditions will once prevail on earth and in the resolution to work as hard as he can in the small army of pioneers preparing for a better state of things.

The ideas embodied in this last part are of course not all new. It is in the main a restatement and development of the views expressed in Wells's former books on social, religious and political questions: Mankind in the Making, New Worlds for Old, A Modern Utopia etc., and it also owes something to forerunners as Morris and Samuel Butler. There is however, a less well-known author with whom in spirit Mr. Wells is more closely allied, although he wrote some fifty years ago: Mr. Winwood Reade. Their conception of history is all but identical and Reade's powerful and very curious work: The Martyrdom of Man, a kind of universal history, a storehouse of facts and theories, intermingled with eloquent pleading, fierce denunciation and grim sarcasm, leads up to a concluding chapter of almost every passage of which we find a parallel and further development in Men Like Gods. A single quotation may show the affinity:

"All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors or philanthropists but all men can join in that gigantic and god-like work, the progress of creation. Whoever improves his own nature, improves the universe of which he is a part.... Our Faith is the Perfectibility of mankind.... A day will come when.... Love not Fear will unite the human race. The world will become a heavenly commune to which men will bring the inmost treasures of their hearts, in which they will reserve for themselves not even a hope, not even the shadow of a joy, but will give up all for all mankind. With one faith,