Mr. Wells has put his religion in a short and
challenging form. He calls it " blue prints for a world revolution," qind he tells us that the book, The Open Conspiracy (Gollancz, 5s.), contains the essential ideas of his life, to which all else that he has written is contributory or illustrative. Religion is a necessity for society, which is held together by its beliefs. And these beliefs are always really preserved by a minority, for they alone are capable of the sacrifice that religion demands. A new orientation is needed that will call out a similar devotion, and it is an orientation that reckons with what Mr. Wells conceives to be three profound marks of the modem mind. What people used to conceive of as sin is now rather regarded as silly. Individuality has come to mean less ; man is part of a greater being, which lived before him and will survive him. And life itself is a mere beginning.; creation is eternally going on. A new world-order and world-control must be
set up. This is the conspiracy foreshadowed quite volumin- ously by William Clissold. The conspirators must be open and frank both in their declaration of its aims and in their opposition to the established institutions of the world. Mr. Wells has passed beyond Socialism and Individualism : " property is not robbery ; it is the protection of things against promiscuous and mainly wasteful use." In the true world-order it will be properly classified and brought under social organization, though part will be under individual control. Many such interesting prospects are opened up by Mr. Wells, but it is difficult to feel that they are either as possible or as desirable as the author thinks, or that such aims constitute a religion as we understand it. None the less it is a book to be read and marked.
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