BOOKS OF THE DAY
Angry Common Sense
THE thesis of Mr. Wells's book is (a) " that the world is now one, (b) that there has been so enormous a release of mechanical power in the world that only a world control of it can save our species from destroying itself, and (c) that any practical excuse for the two-
.. class social organisation of master and man has ceased."
With this thesis, although point (c) needs clarification," few intel- ligent people, not being rogues, would disagree. Nevertheless, all the intelligent mice agreed that the cat should be belled. They also agreed that there were many wise things that could be done. Mr. Wells, of course, sees this difficulty. His solution is knowledge: " Knowledge or extinction. There is no other choice for men." Obviously this knowledge is not yet acquired and, if it were acquired, could not be condensed into 200 pages. Mr. Wells therefore (i) suggests, positively, the directions in which knowledge should be acquired, and (ii) shows, negatively, that our destinies are at present largely in the hands either of clever rogues or of honest fools who have not yet tumbled to the first of the two conclusions reached by the intelligent mice. The negative sections of the book are amusing, over-petulant and sometimes a little cruel. Cruelty, as Mr. Wells himself points out, is no cure for stupidity and will not take us far, even against rogues.
The positive side of the book demands far more consideration than is possible within the limits set (unnecessarily) by the Paper Control to serious reviewing. Hence I must leave out compliments and say only that Mr.. Wells has done in the past more than any man living to liberate my own mind. What he has done for me, he has done also for many thousands of others. He would thus want all of us to judge him by the standards which he has taught us. By these standards Mr. Wells's doctoral dissertation—included as a long appendix to the book—is outside my range. My one comment would be that this dissertation restates, in a different setting and new language, some of the conclusions with regard to human personality reached by the great Christian mystics (and, I should guess, by the great Buddhist mystics).
When Mr. Wells generalises about the course of history since the Periclean age, I feel more competent to judge him. I must say that he seems to me to fall short of the dispassionate submission to the authority of ascertainable fact which is the proper mark of scientific work. Consider this summary of " social reality " in the fifteenth century. " Dirt, mutual contempt, smothered resentments and cringing acquiescences. . . . This reeking slum of human indignity is lit up by the flattering brightness of the subservient chronicler and the blazons of heraldry, and it is only when we subject them to a closer scrutiny that we are able to grasp the squalid facts of human life during that period." Are all chroniclers " subservient "? Is our knowledge of social history derived wholly or even mainly from chronicles? Mr. Wells himself uses, though to exaggerated effect, two good historie1 of costume. He might get a clearer view of the relation of the Black Death to social change if he were more familiar with the patient work on manorial records done by the professional historians of whom he is so contemptuous. If he knew mote of the ascertain- able facts about mediaeval institutions, he would not deride them under the later term "feudal system." In the early part of the war Mr. Wells' and some of his friends set out to draw up a declaration of the rights of man. They formed a committee which included neither a historian nor a political philosopher. Hence they wasted, unscientifically, a great deal of time in going over old ground ; finally they produced a document which eludes most of the awkward questions about natural rights. The Middle Ages could not deal with a Gilles de Rais any more sensibly than we have been able to deal with a Hitler, or, for that matter, with a Zaharoff, but scores of young masters of arts at Oxford in the fifteenth century would have known more than Mr. Wells' committee men about human rights and the rule of law.
Mr. Wells's book is dedicated to the memory of John Ball. William Morris, who, like Mr. Wells, wanted an end of the " master and man " relationship, also wrote a book about John Ball. In his book Morris described the social environment of the fifteenth century. Morris understood no less than Mr. Wells the significance of the preaching of John Ball, but he realised something which Mr. Wells has over- looked. Where Mr. Wells notices only squalor, Morris observed high and widely diffused standards of craftsmanship and inferred that the common man still shared in the pleasure of artistic creation. I have had under my care for twenty years and more a fairly large building of the fifteenth century not by any means intended for the comforts of the rich. I am sure that Morris wa's right " in so far forth." I am sure that, in many respects, the social environment of the fifteenth century made for human happiness more directly than Mr. Wells imagines. Human happiness is perhaps too elusive to be included under the category of " ascertainable facts," but a science of man—and Mr. Wells rightly wants nothing less—cannot just ignore half the evidence for a whole century of recorded history.
Here, although I have reached only page 3o, I must leave Mr. Wells's argument. I would add one complaint. This book is priced, deliberately, at two guineas. Mr. Wells, angry, not always scientific, and at times a little rattled, is more worth reading than anyone else now writing. The most important cross-section of English life to be found today among junior officers and men in the armed forces these men, all of them young, have intervals of time in which the! can do a good deal of reading. Only the B.B.C, thinks them half- wits ; but how many of them can pay two guineas for a book?
E. L. WOODWARD.
Previous page
