NOVELS.
THE WAR IN THE AIR.* THE prophetic romances of Mr. Wells differ widely from those of his competitors in this field of fiction. Not only is his method more circumstantial, but his scientific equipment enables him to cope much more plausibly with the task of anticipating the effect of new inventions on the coming generation. But nowhere is this divergence more marked than in his choice of central figures. The conventional plan is to assign the- chief role to some one who rises to the occasion, plays a leading part in the stilling events depicted, marries the Princess or her counterpart, and passes from our view aureoled with triumph. There are stirring events enough in Mr. Wells's narratives, but for heroes and heroines of the conventional kind we look in vain. Rather is he concerned with picturing the impact of momentous changes on half- baked, semi-educated, and insignificant personalities. Bert Smallways, who is the central figure of The War in the Air, has not the latent chivalry of Mr. Hoopdriver, the never-to-be- forgotten counter-jumping hero of The Wheels of Chance. He is of a distinctly lower moral than Kipps, as may be gathered
from the relentless summary given at the beginning of the third chapter :—
" Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limited soul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth century produced by the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his life in narrow streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, and in a narrow circle of ideas from which there was no escape. He thought the whole duty of man was to be smarter than his fellows, get his hands, as he put it, 'on the dibs,' and have a good time. He was in fact the sort of man who had made England and America what they were. The luck had been against him so far, but that was by the way. He was a mere aggressive and acquisitive individual with no sense of the State, no habitual loyalty, no devotion, no code of honour, no code even of courage."
It is in the abrupt contrast between character and circum- stance, between the gigantic issues involved and the ignoble soul of the chief onlooker, that the dramatic significance of the story lies. Bert Smallways, bilking bicycle repairer on
the outskirts of Greater London, with a seventh-standard education and a smattering of practical mechanics, decides with his partner to abandon business and set up as a sea-front serenader. But at the very outset of their campaign, while rescuing'an aeronaut and inventor named Butteridge from a disabled balloon, Smallways is carried up in it across the Channel with all the inventor's plans. During a perilous voyage across the Continent, Smallways decides to impersonate Butteridge, who has been negotiating with the German Government for the sale of a flying machine, and on landing in the middle of the great German aeronautic park is welcomed by the authorities, and carried off at once in the flagship of the aerial fleet which is starting to invade the United. States. His disguise is penetrated in a few hours by the Admiral's secretary, and he is within an ace of paying for his fraud with hie life. Prince Karl Albert, the Admiral, decides to spare him, and thenceforth he is an unwilling and helpless spectator of what ultimately develops into a gigantic world-war. The German air-fleet annihilates the American battleships which had been waging an obstinate and indecisive conflict with the German navy in the North Atlantic, and destroys New York with bombs, but is diverted by the counter-attack of a rapidly improvised American air-fleet.— We may note parenthetically that Mr. Wells insists on the rapidity with which airships can be built as compared with ironclads.—The German aerial forces, concentrating at Niagara, are suddenly confronted with a new enemy in the shape of a gigantic Asiatic air-fleet—Japan and China at the date of the story forming a federated Empire—and decisively
• The War in the Air. By H. G. Wells. With Illustrations by 11.. C. Michael. London : George Bell and Sons. [Cad
defeated. For by this time the initiative of Germany has been followed by all the great civilised Powers, and the whole world is given over to an aerial Armageddon. All the Powers, it mast be explained, had been building air-fleets on a huge scale, and had contrived to keep their size and strength a secret until Germany took action. The ultimate result is chaotic,--universal war leading to universal bank- ruptcy, the collapse of the credit system, and a general melting of the whole fabric of civilisation in the furnace of war.
The War in the Air, it will be readily gathered from this bare outline, is very far from being an irresponsible fantasia. But the great majority of readers will neglect its sociological import, its strenuous indictment of a system under which "all Europe was producing big guns and countless swarms of little Smallways." They will also overlook the skill with which Mr. Wells illustrates the peculiar Yor of the various nations under the stress of a war of unparalleled magnitude and destructiveness, and the blend of logic and imagination which enables him to differentiate the strategical conditions of aerial from ordinary warfare. They will skip the commentary and concentrate themselves on the narrative, which is indeed exciting and horrifying enough to satisfy the avidity of the most jaded appetite. With this unregenerate attitude we own ourselves to be in considerable sympathy. The story as a story is extremely well told, and Mr. Wells has done nothing better than the chapters which treat of Smallways' antecedents, his family relations, the vicissitudes of the bicycle shop, and the preparations for the tour of the watering-places of England by the Desert Dervishes, alias Smallways and his partner Grubb. The picture of that exuberantly sentimental inventor, Mr. Butteridge, is delightful. But with the landing of Smallways in Germany all humour inevitably fades out of the recital, and the gloom of the sequel is well-nigh unrelieved. Lieutenant Kurt, the ex-Rhodes Scholar, is a genial figure, and Prince Karl Albert is an impressive representative of the blond Ueberntensch of the near future. None the less, we frankly and impenitently declare our extreme regret that Mr. Wells did not see his way to develop the story on the lines of the first hundred pages, and give us not the tragedy but the comedy of aviation.
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