enemy? It is external enemies that create and intensify patriotism. Can human beings as a whole organise themselves against war as the enemy with the same thoroughness with which Englishmen organised themselves against Germany as the enemy? Mr. Wells obviously believes that they can. But it is to the great religions, not to the great patriotisms, that he looks for examples of how this can be done. He recalls how the Christian religion spread in the first four centuries and how the Moslem religion spread in the seventh century, and he believes that these precedents "support a reasonable hope that such a change in the minds of men, whatever else it may be, is a practicable change." His gospel of human brotherhood, indeed, is propounded as a larger Christianity rather than as a larger patriotism. He realises, however, the immensity of the difficulties in the way of the spread of this gospel. He sees that the majority of men are still indifferent to it. Unless they are in the vein for it, "it does not really interest them; rather it worries them." That is why he believes so ardently in the need of a new Bible-a Bible of Civilisation-which will restore to modern men "a sense of personal significance, a sense of destiny, such as no one in politics or literature seems to possess to-day."

That is why he scorns such a compromise and concession to the frailty of human nature as a League of Nations and calls on men to turn their eyes from all such conveniences and makeshifts and to concentrate on the more arduous ideal of human unity. Of the League of Nations he writes:

The praise has a thin and legal and litigious flavour. What loyalty and what devotion can we expect this multiple association to command? It has no unity-no personality. It is like asking a man to love the average member of a woman's club instead of loving his wife.

For the idea of man, for human unity, for our common blood, for the one order of the world, I can imagine men living and dying, but not for a miscellaneous assembly that will not mix-even in its name. It has no central idea, no heart to it, this League of Nations formula.

Many people will agree with much of Mr. Wells's scornful criticism of the League of Nations. He is obviously writing the plainest common sense when he declares that it has failed so far to solve the problem of modifying the traditional idea of sovereign independence and the problem of a super-national force that will be stronger than any national force. The average statesman is still an Imperialist at heart, even when he praises the League of Nations with his

lips. He desires a world-order that will confirm the present order of rival Empires rather than a world-order that will supersede it. He desires to avert war, but only if he may preserve all the conditions that make war inevitable. Mr. Wells is impatient of all this as a treachery to the greatest ideal that has come into the world in our time. On the other hand, I think that the advocates of the League of Nations and not the advocates of the World State are going the right way to propagate the sense of world-unity that Mr. Wells desires. The League of Nations, whatever its shortcomings, does make human nature a partner in its ideal. It remembers the ordinary human being's affection for his own country, and does not treat it as a mere prejudice in the path. It realises that the true victory of internationalism will be not as the destroyer of individualism but as its counterweight. It used to be thought that a man could not be loyal to both his church and his country unless the Church were a State Church. Some Socialists have believed that the family and the State were inevitable rivals. As a matter of fact, every man is in a state of balance among conflicting loyalties-loyalty to himself, to the family, to the school, to the Church, to the State, to the world. The religion of the brotherhood

of man must bow to this fact, or it must fail. To ignore it is to be a doctrinaire-to fail, that is, to bring home one's doctrine to men's business and bosoms. It is to sit above the battle so far as the immediate issues with which mankind is faced are concerned. Mr. Wells has rendered an immense service to his time by compelling us to remember the common origin and the common interests of mankind. He has invented a wonderful telescope through which we can look back and see man struggling out of the mud and can look forward and see him climbing a dim and distant pinnacle. I am not sure, however, if he has pointed out the most desirable route to the pinnacle-whether he does not expect us to reach it as the crow flies instead of by winding roads and by bridges across the deep rivers and ravines. He may take the view that, as man has learned to fly mechanically, so he may learn to fly politically. One never knows. The glorious feature of his prophetic writing, meanwhile, is its driving-force. He is one of the few writers who have given momentum to the idea of the world as one place.

V

MR. CLUTTON-BROCK

Mr. Clutton-Brock is a critic with an unusual equality of interests. He seems to be the centre of an almost perfect circle, and literature, painting, religion, philosophy, ethics, and education are the all but equal radii that connect him with the circumference. Many writers have been as versatile, but few have been as symmetrical. He has all his gifts in due proportion. He is not more æsthetic than moral, or more moral than æsthetic. His idealism and his intellect balance each other exactly. His matter and his manner are twins. He produces on us the effect of a harmony, not of a nature in conflict with itself. Had he lived in the ancient world, he would probably have been a teacher of philosophy. He has gifts of temper as well as powers of exposition and understanding that make him a teacher even to-day, whether he will or not. He does not speak down to us from the chair,