Evidently people keep on reading Mr. H. G. Wells' forecasts and advice about the new world that is round the corner, for Mr. Wells keeps on writing them. In his role of prophet he can be as entertaining as he was in his more suitable role of novelist, provided he is not taken seriously. His latest But, unfortunately, Mr. Wells expects to be taken seriously. book: "Guide to the New World. A Handbook of Constructive Revolution," published recently by Gollancz and sold for 4s., is dealt with appropriately in this comment, which appeared in the "Tablet" from the nimble pen of Christopher Hollis. WELLS has done it again. The world's great thinker has begun anew, all over again. NIT.. Wells reminds me of a War WeaThe little village of pons Week. llogsnorton set itself the task of raising some apparently fantastic sum of In the event, not only does money. it succeed but goes far beyond its quota. So one would have thought that Mr, Wells would not have the face to write the same book all over again more than about a hundred times run MR.
"
CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS. amusing is the excursion into Mr. Wells' religious opinions,"
ning, but it is not so.
Here it is for
the hundred and twenty-sixth time, and no reason at all why he should not go on like Johnny Walker until he has reached at least a thousand. Since there can no longer be any living human being who has not at one time or another reviewed a book by Mr. Wells about the World State and who is not very well aware what there is to be said for it, and what there is to be said against it, there would be
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little purpose in reploughing that field. More amusing is the excursion into Mr. "No one," Wells' religious opinions. Mr. Wells tells us of himself, 'has paid than I to the more emphatic tribute role of the Catholic Church in preserving learning and insisting on the dig On nit), of the human individual." the very next page, however, we are told of Catholicism that 'simple, credulous, obedient souls are trained to do evil. It is dreadful how their priests -
mobilise them. You can no more trust a devout Catholic in your household and in your confidence than you can risk frankness or association with a Nazi spy." And on another page: "There are endless priests who believe that they can fool credulous souls into heaven. They lie about their adversaries' views and try to stifle and suppress their statements," If this is Mr. Wells' notion of an "emphatic tribute,' it would be indeed interesting to know what he really thought when he was not going out of his way to be polite. "Endless" is so frightfully good-not just a lot, but a line stretching out to the crack of doom, as if there was a regular shuttle service, and the moment Father A. gave out from exhaustion there was Father B. ready to take up the lying without a moment's pause. and so on ad infinitum. Now what is the reason for all this "emphatic tribute?" It is because, it seems, the Pope does not agree with Mr. Wells about aeroplanes-with Mr. Wells' plan for World Aerial Control after the war. It is not that there is any particular reason to think that the Pope disagrees, but he has not said anything about it one way or the other. He has shown himself interested. And the reason for that is that he does not hear about such things because of a regrettable habit prevalent among Roman Catholic priests. As Mr. Wells tells us on three separate occasions, "They burn books instead of reading them," What he is talking about I confess that I do not very clearly know presume some memory of the Spanish Inquisition-but he writes as if it was the general habit of every priest, whenever he saw a book, at once to throw it on the fire. "Bridget, Brid.
-I
get, this fire's nearly out. Bring some snore books." Hut it seems that the failings of the Pope have not been confined to neglect to read Mr. Wells' books. Over and above that, the Pope has a plan of his own for the future of the world, and a very bad plan it is. His plan is to recreate the Holy Roman Empire. "Its temporal arm is to be that pleasant young man, the Archduke Otto, raised to Imperial rank; its spiritual leader, the Pope; its capital, Vienna.. The Holy Roman Empire idea is unhappily the declared policy of the present Pope.' This is the basis of his charge, and a very curious charge it is for one who makes such an endless fuss about the scientific spirit and reading books and looking at evidence. For whence on the earth Mr. Wells can have derived the idea that the Pope has put Catholics under obligation to fight for the reconstitution of the Holy Roman Empire at Vienna, it passes comprehension to conceive. Mr. Wells has been wandering about in America. He is full of scorn for all other Englishmen who go to America in war -time and thinks of them only as rich men in a funk, but apparently it is quite all right that he should go, since his motive was not to escape from bombs but merely to abuse Lord Halifax. Why does he want to abuse Lord Halifax so much, seeing that the only definite statement of fact that be is able to make concerning that statesman's career throughout the whole of his book is that Lord Halifax was the author of "The British Case" which, of course, happened to be written by Lord Lloyd? However, in the intervals between failing to distinguish between Lord Halifax and Lord Lloyd, it is possible that Mr. Wells came across in America some romantic Austrian enthusiast, exhilarated after a bout of wishful drinking, who told him of hopes Out of of a Hapsburg restoration. that he has evolved the fantastic notion that this is the programme of "the new Vatican party" and, as I say, "the declared policy of the present Pope." The "new Vatican party.' may mean anything and does obviously in fact mean nothing, but as for "the declared policy of the Pope," if Mr. Wells is anxious to now what it is, it is really perfectly easy for him to find out. He has merely to go round to Westrninister Cathedral, ring the bell and ash for the stoker, and beyond doubt it will be possible for him to anticipate some passing priest and rescue from the flames the Pope's Peace Points. He will then be able to discover for himself that none of those points have a word to say about the reconstitution of a Holy Roman Empire at Vienna or anything remotely resembling such a scheme.
H. G. WELLS, Compared Catholics with Nazi Spies. Of course I know very well that not even thus will Mr. Wells be convinced. He knows the answer to such a simple trick. "Never will the devout Catholic be really frank with you. Always there will be a reservation; always the priest will be lurking in the background." Of course we pretend to him that all that the Pope said was that nations should be freed from aggression and a lot of apparently harmless stuff, but Mr. Wells knows better than that. lie knows very well that, as soon as his back is turned, we press the secret button and say, "All right, Father, Mr. Wells has gone. You can come out now. Now as to sending Otto back to Vienna. ." and then we set to again at the jolly game of piling up the books on the fire until we have got a real blaze going, worthy of so delicious a cause, and the secret radio is turned on where the Pope's real orders can be heard, There are free thinkers and freethinkers. There are some who do think freely; there are others who are the least free men on the face of this earth. Thus "The Literary Guide and Rationalist Review" in its current number does me the honour of holding up to scorn a passage which I wrote concerning the advantages of not taking a deep interest in politics. It describes this passage with general contempt as "one of the most accurate descriptions of the Catholic attitude I have ever come across" and suggests that I ought to write a book under the title "I Don't Think." But it fails to notice that the opinions recorded in that paragraph were not my own but those of Mr. Bertrand Russell, a theologian who is not commonly considered completely orthodox in the strictest Catholic circles. Such writers have (Continued on Back Cover.) .