In a comparative study of modern French and English culture published in a recent number of the Spectator, Mr. D. R. Gillie commented on the ‘unnatural prolongation of the joint reign of Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw over British reason.’ Whatever explanations may be offered—and Mr. Gillie himself attaches high importance to the success of the Group Movement, despised by the great majority of thinking people—there can surely be no doubting the substantial accuracy of the statement itself. If Mr. Shaw’s influence is more that of an individual and peculiar genius whose strength lies in the field of destructive criticism, Mr. Wells has managed to identify himself with the spirit and ethos of his age in a manner altogether remarkable. He is, as he proudly asserts in his latest work, The Fate of Homo Sapiens, ‘a fair sample of the more progressive thought of my time’ (p. 99), which, as he candidly confesses elsewhere, ‘no doubt owes much more than I realize to the phrases and assumptions of the liberal, protestant, progressive world of half a century ago’ (pp. 110-11). This new book is therefore of particular interest and importance in giving us the summarized thought of one who regards himself above all as a ‘sample of a generation.’

As one reader sees it, the strength of Mr. Wells’s thought seems to lie in three very positive qualities; its consistency, its clarity and, from one aspect, its rationalism. No one can ever mistake his meaning; it is always abundantly dear.