H. G. WELLS
lieved, and that in reality it is less like the traditional Old England than any one would ever possibly have imagined. I thought when I looked out of the train this morning that I had come to the England of Washington Irving. I find that it is not even the England of Mrs. Humphry Ward.
To complete this study of national psychology there is also a German in the family circle at first, a tutor whose hobbies are Ido and internationalism and a universal index, traits drawn from Professor Ostwald apparently. He is not caricatured but we suspect that like Mr. Direck, the American, Herr Heinrich is affected by British expectations and appears more German than he is.
The book reëchoes all the passions of the war, love, hatred, courage, despair, meanness, sacrifice, heroism, selfishness, stoicism and mad wrath, but ends upon a clear religious tone such as has been heard but faintly in any work of Mr. Wells before. What Mr. Britling sees through is not the war, for nobody can yet see so far as that, but he sees through the doubt and turmoil of his own mind and finds internal peace in the midst of warfare. When he sits down to write a letter to the parents of Heinrich, who like his own son had fallen in France, his mind is torn by conflicting emotions, but finally these are resolved into one common chord and he writes:
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