Crux Ansata : An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church.
(Penguin Special. 9d.) MR. H. G. WELLS has no difficulty in presenting in this book a concise and effective historical criticism of the political machina- tions of the Papacy. He is not impartial, but he has endeavoured to be truthful, and even a devout and enlightened Roman Catholic a might well agree with his strictures on the political activities past and present of his Church. Nevertheless, Mr. Wells shares the singular myopia peculiar to rationalists which prevents their seeing wherein the power of the Roman Catholic Church resides. Many of the sanest intellectual i of today, who are not even Christians, are in sympathy with the Church, because, in spite of its errors and imperfections, it appears to be the ordinary man's strongest sup- porter against his complete domination by an exclusively materia- listic State. They may be wrong in thinking this, but they will never be convinced by such an old-fashioned catalogue of past crimes as make up the bulk of Mr. Wells's book.
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