A Spectator's Notebook M R. H. G. WELLS, I understand, is
hard at work on a history of the next two hundred years or so. To be accurate he has, I believe, gal° about 2100 A.D., so far, and it must be a, little difficult to know just where to stop. This, I need hardly say, is a wholly serious undertaking, having n3thing in common with Mr. Wells' early imagina- tive remaaces. The writer's formula (I make a present of it to any aspiring authors who may be convinced that, once they knew the secret, they can write as well as Wells) is to take existing trends and work out their logical conse- quences cn the assumption that in the long run the affairs of men are governed by an underlying common sense. That process, of course, can quite well be applied to Mr. Wells himself. His own trends are known, so his predictions can be more or less predicted. His world of to-morrow, I take for granted, will be a world in which Socialism is all but universal, providing a basis for the government both of individual States and of the federated World State oa which Mr. Wells, refusing to be bothered with any such half-way house as a League of Nations, has always fixed his prophetic gaze. * *
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