MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH.• Ma. Wrims's new story is
really a philosophical diary of the war, and it may be noticed as a war book with not less appropriateness than as fiction. Mr. Britling, essayist, ideologue, and talker, obviously does not see the war through. He sees through to something like stability his own theorizing, thrown off its balance by the war, and calms his torment of thoughts which tortured him as Hamlet was tortured. What the effect of the present united push of the Allies would be on Mr. Britling we do not know, as it does not come into the story. So far as we can see, it might result equally well in more stability on the plane reached by Mr. Britling when we leave him, or in a new orienta- tion due to the greater placidity of thought produced by the better progress and better management of the war. Such a narrative as this, which, as we have said, is really a diary, places art at the disposal of circumstance. For the war may go on for a long time, and then this rather full diary of its earlier phases will seem, however unjustly, wanting in proportion or selection. Nevertheless it is a remarkable commentary—the most remarkable that has appeared— on the sorrows, pains, and consternations of that part of the war which is likely to leave the deepest mark on the memories of Englishmen.
A transparent contradiction in the philosophy of Mr. Britling is that, while he tells us that man is not a rational animal, and that we shall never understand him so long as we expect him to be rational, the burden of his criticism is that things are not managed rationally. A critic, as we know, should by no means be required to prove his capacity to do what he criticizes others for not doing. It is enough that he should be a good critic. But we cannot help reflecting how many perversities and prejudices Mr. Britling displays while he laments the absence of logic and impartial purpose in others. He lies awake at night wondering where he is and what he wants. He is worried to dis- traction because he feels that he has not the confidence of his son, but it does not occur to him that the pursuit of his own amours does not put him in a position to command general respect. The account of the rather halting and aimless love affairs of this married man seems irrelevant, except in so far perhaps as it is designed to prove man an irrational animal. But past experience tells us that Mr. Wells is com- pelled by some demon to treat us to this sort of thing, though he must have been told that it has become tiresome and unnecessary. Mr. Britling gives us other causes of offence. His contempt for " the Court," though the words may be intended to represent only a passing savage mood, is an unjust and fantastic impertinence, and as far from a truthful observation of the facts as one could conceive. Every quality of " the Court " under its present inspiration shows the modesty, sim- plicity, and considerateness which we like to think are British qualities. There is not a suggestion of anything " alien " in character from top to bottom. As for being " uninspiring," if an unceasing devotion to a laborious round of dutiea is to fail to inspire others, it is the people's fault, not that of the example set them. But if Mr. Britling had opened his eyes to what all men, women, and children in the street see and know, he could have spared himself some of his exercises in mental torture by excluding unnecessary rubbish from his mind.
But let us put the offences away. Perhaps Mr. Wells cannot help them ; and after all, Mr. Britling adores his country, in secret thinking her perfection, and always resenting criticism that does not come from himself. By far the greater part of the diary has a personal freshness, reality, and vigour which no one but Mr. Wells could have imported into it. We find Mr. Britling at home with his family in an Essex village entertaining an American visitor. If the American took this English family as typical, he has many puzzles in store for him. But it is a delightful picture of intellectual people who are not prigs. The astonishment of the American at the weekly game of hockey on Sunday afternoon, his initial polite consideration for the athletic girl who plays opposite him, and his final necessity to play as hard as he can in order to show himself a worthy pupil of so brilliant and determined a teacher, are described with supreme point and humour. Incidentally there is an entertaining tribute to the delights of Essex, in which Surrey is brought in, with several sly sallies, to distinguish the simple from the sophisti- cated. The threat of civil war is still hovering over Ireland. Then comes the murder of the Archduke at Serajevo, the distracting days of doubt, the growing plainness of Germany's intention, and the crash of war. The pink-faced German tutor who had lived in the Britling family returns unwillingly to Germany, leaving behind him in his bedroom, as a symbol of German forethought and logic, the _enormous bough of oak by means of which ho had tried to convince a captive squirrel that it was still really living in the woods. As we read of the early days of the war we live terrible days over again. All the absurd
• Mr &Wing Sala It Tarough, By B. 0. Wells, Leaden Cason and 0a je•.J hallucinations, the misgivings where there should have been none, and the easy confidence where there should have been searching anxiety, return upon our memory. Hugh Britling, Mr. Britling's eldest eon, " joins up," although he is under the military age. Like all young men of spirit and sanity, he could not keep out of the struggle, though he had no love of war. He bad wanted to go to the University and learn from Cardinal, the great man of science, but everything now went by the board :—
" I don't want to go,' said Hugh with his hands deep in his pockets. ' I want to go and work with Cardinal. But this job has to be done by everyone. Haven't you been saying as much all day ? . . . It's like turning out to chase a burglar or suppress a mad dog. It's like necessary sanitation. . . You aren't attracted by soldiering 7 Not a bit. I won't pretend it, Daddy. I think the whole business is a bore. Germany scorns to me now just like some heavy horrible dirty mass that has fallen across Belgium and France. We've got to shove the stuff back again. That's all. . . "
Mr. Britling himself was attracted for a moment by the Volunteer movement as a field for his own services. But he came to the conclusion that the War Office did not regard it seriously, and therefore he became a special constable. But he might have become both. Really Mr. Britling ought to have seen the very simple fact that War Office dis- couragement could make no difference at all in the long run. If the Volunteers trained themselves and the war went on long enough, they were bound to be wanted. The decision was with them. But, oh, these very wise men who make a profession of criticism I What useless con- clusions they come to sometimes I Mr. Britling is at his largest and sanest when he sees the pettiness of malignant criticism of political leaders during war :—
" Under that strain the dignity of England broke, and revealed a malignity less focussed and intense than the German, but perhaps even more distressing. No paternal government had organised the British spirit for patriotic ends ; it became now peevish and impatient, like some ill-trained man who is sick, it directed itself no longer against the enemy alone but fitfully against imagined traitors and shirkers ; it wasted its energies in a deepening and spreading net of internal squabbles and accusations. Now it was the wily indolence of the Prime Minister, now it was the German culture of the Lord Chancellor, now the imagina- tive enterprise of the First Lord of the Admiralty that focussed a vin- dictive campaign. There began a hunt for spies and of suspects of German origin in every quarter except the highest ; a denunciation now of traitors,, now of people with imaginations, now of scientific men, now of the personal friends of the Commander-in-Chief, now of this group and then of that group. . . . Every day Mr. Britling read his throe or four newspapers with a deepening disappointment.'
The end of the book is the tenderest and truest part and touches nobility. Hugh is killed. The drawing together of husband and wife under the shock, and the stabilizing of Mr. Britling's thoughts under the greatest strain of all, are beautifully told. The awful spectacle of the butchery of youth, while older men with less strength, less hope, less prolonged power of usefulness, aro preserved, paradoxically does not cause Mr. Britling to break away from all his moorings when the horror touches him personally. He bases himself on a substantial good, and sees, at least in prospect, an order, and what Stevenson called an " ultimate decency of things." He frames for himself a creed resembling that of the familiar theology that God works within self-imposed limits. He sees his soul through. Ile talks of the nature of God to his secretary's wife :— " ' They always told me he was the maker of Heaven and Earth.'— 'That's the Jew God the Christians took over. It's a Quack God, a panacea. It's not my God.' Letty considered these strange ideas. ' I never thought of him like that,' she said at last. It makes it all seem different.'—' Nor did I. But I do now. . . . I have suddenly found it and seen it plain. I see it so plain that I am amazed that I have not always seen it . . . It is, you see, so easy to understand that there is a God, and how complex and wonderful and brotherly he is, when one thinks of those dear boys who by the thousand, by the hundred thousand, have laid down their lives. . . . Aye, and there were German boys too who did the same. . . . The cruelties, the injustice, the brute aggression —they saw it differently. They laid down their lives—they laid down their lives. . . . Those dear lives, those lives of hope and sunshine.. . . Don't you see that it must be like that, Letty ? Don't you see that it must be like that No,' she said, I've seen things differently from that.'—' But it's so plain to me,' said Mr. Britling. If there was nothing else in all the world but our kindness for each other, or the love that made you weep in this kind October sunshine, or the love I bear Hugh—if there was nothing else at all—if everything else was cruelty and mockery and filthiness and bitterness, it would still be certain that there was a God of love and righteousness. If there were no signs of God in all the world but the god iness we have seen in those two boys of ours ; if we had no other light but the love we have between us. . . . You don't mind if I talk like this 7 ' said Mr. Britling. It's all I can think of now—this God, this God who struggles, who was in Hugh and Teddy, clear and plain, and how he must become the ruler of the world. . . .'—' This God who struggles,' she repeated. I have never thought of him like that.'—' Of course he must be like that,' said Mr. Britling. How can God be a Person • how can he be anything that matters to man, unless he is limited and defined and—human like ourselves. . . . With things outside him and beyond him.' "
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