MR. WELLS ON SEXUAL LIBERTY
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The teaching of Mr. H. G. Wells has been much before the public of late, and the review of his new book, Brynhild,
in your last issue, is timely as serving to bring out its trend ; your reviewer's quotation therefrom will suffice to illustrate :
" Perhaps passing over from a-first exclusive lover to lovers was a natural stage in the development of a modern woman. It was a border crossed. Ir was like cutting your teeth. It was passing into a new, more adult phase. You've become something else and nothing can ever put you back again. And when that border is crossed, perhaps you may meet men face to face and be on equal terms with them.'
Is this intended to convey, as the view of its author, that where hitherto man alone has been entitled to the exercise of
sexual liberty, woman cannot hope to reach the full height of her womanhood till she asserts her claim to similar licence, and that one ultimate aim of Mr. Wells's philosophy is to bring about and establish this very state of promiscuity with the full sanction of public opinion ?
If so, may I say that the teaching is fundamentally wrong, being based on the implication that man already has some specious title to promiscuity, a notion as irresponsible as it is subversive of morality? " From the beginning it was not so," and my purpose in writing is to stress its essentially anti- Christian character. Let your readers judge of the philosophy whence it comes.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
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