My dear Wells, being a series of letters addressed by Henry Arthur Jones to Mr. H. G. Wells, upon bolshevism, collectivism, internationalism, and the distribution of wealth

Front matter

Class.

GpightN?..

COPYRICHT DEPOSIT

Preface

My main object in writing this book has been to examine the soundness of the arguments which a popular writer uses in urging us to break up the present social order, and incidentally and consequentially to break up the British Empire. I have set myself to test the quality of his thinking, the texture of his reasoning, to question the value of his judgment. Before proceeding to make such fundamental changes in our social system as must immeasurably involve the destinies of hundreds of millions of mankind, before even considering the advisability of making these changes, it may save us much trouble if we first ask for credentials from those who advocate them. What are their qualifications for advising us on these supreme matters?

In a London journal of the widest circulation, an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Wells recently claimed that he possessed an almost superhuman sagacity and foresight in dealing with the social and political problems of our time. All through the war and since, Mr. Wells has diagnosed the world situation almost month by month, has laid out vast International schemes, has counselled various policies to vi Preface

the world's statesmen and rulers, has issued manifestoes and forecasts innumerable. Looking round upon the world today, how do its salient facts and conditions accord with the successive estimates and forecasts which Mr. Wells has made? How many of his forecasts have been fulfilled? His enthusiastic admirer acclaimed Mr. Wells as "the man who saw things coming." How many of the things that Mr. Wells "saw coming" have actually come to pass? How many of the tremendous things that have actually come to pass, did Mr. Wells "see coming"?

Before pulling the British Empire to pieces, we may surely take the precaution to ask what authority of careful thought and stability of informed judgement, are possessed by those who are seeking to draw us into these vast and irrevocable commitments. We have among us a group of "thinkers" and writers whom I call "The Haters of England." They always "think" against their own country. If there is sedition and revolt in any part of the Empire, they stir it up. If there is trouble and unrest at home, they foment it. Most of them are active fervent Internationalists with respect to their own country, but with respect to any country that is embroiled with England, they are active fervent Patriots. During the war they were worth many army corps to Germany. Now that the war has left us a legacy of new insecurities and perils, now

Preface vii

that it is a first necessity that our nation should gather itself in one great unity of aim and effort to ward off disaster, these haters of England are busy spreading disaffection and disunion both in our internal and in our foreign affairs.

Mr. Wells is one of the most popular and influentials of these "thinkers" and writers who "think" and write against England. It has been my chief endeavour in the following pages, to test the quality of his "thinking", its fibre and cogency, to demand his credentials that they may be vizeed by the final court of appeal.

The series of papers entitled "Russia in the Shadows" which Mr. Wells has recently published, afforded me the chance to examine his views upon Bolshevism, and to dissect the arguments by which he accorded to it a general and sympathetic support. My replies to those papers, which originally appeared in the "London Evening Standard" and the "New York Sunday Times," are here reprinted, and form the substance of the first eight letters in this volume. The situation in Russia has changed considerably in the last few months, but this does not in the least affect the quality of Mr. Wells's thinking and arguments, nor of my criticism of them.

The enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Wells, in the same article that I have quoted, made the further claim on his behalf — "Wells today is thinking for half Europe."

viii Preface

It is daily becoming more painfully evident that the great masses of the people in all countries are unable, or are too much occupied, to think for themselves upon any question that requires them to pursue a train of abstract and exact reasoning. They are only too glad to escape from so prolonged and painful an effort, and to get their thinking done for them by professional thinkers for other people. When this vicarious thinking is analysed, much of it is found to be a flatulent compound of vasty vague phrases and enticing catch-words. These are put into general circulation and passed from mouth to mouth, flattering the self-esteem of the users by giving them the illusion that they are solving difficult social and political problems. How many of those who used the phrase "making the world safe for democracy" asked themselves what it meant? By dint of constantly repeating it, men grew to believe that they were putting an end to war.

My secondary and ancillary object in writing this book has been to test the value and soundness of this vicarious thinking that is being turned out in such wholesale quantities by its accredited purveyors for its millions of consumers. In the "London Sunday Express" of December 20, 1920, Mr. Wells replied to Mr. Winston Churchill in a paper called "The Anti-Bolshevik Mind." In itself Mr. Wells's paper is of no great account, and the circumstances of its publication may be dismissed. But in "The

Preface ix

Anti-Bolshevik Mind" Mr. Wells offered, what seemed to me, a characteristic and extensive illustration of loose and confused "thinking' 1 for other people. In this respect it has a permanent illuminating interest for people who think for themselves. For this reason, and from this point of view, I have minutely dissected "The Anti-Bolshevik Mind" from beginning to end, almost sentence by sentence.

Further, in the course of that paper, Mr. Wells advanced and exploited his theories to such a length that he gave me the chance of examining each of his cardinal tenets and doctrines upon its merits. Concurrently then, and without digressing from the main and secondary objects which I had in view, I have in the following pages inquired into the possibilities of Collectivism and Internationalism as workable forms of government, and also into the eternally perplexing problem of the distribution of Wealth. In the ninth letter onwards, I have disputed with Mr. Wells on all these closely interknit questions.

I hope my readers will find throughout these letters an underchain of carefully sustained argument, and thereupon I finally rest my case. But in forming their opinions upon all these supreme matters, the great majority of men are guided, not so much by argument, however clear and irrefragable, as by their sympathies, emotions, and prejudices, and chiefly by their immediate individual or class inx Preface

terests. They believe not what facts tell them, but what they wish to believe.

Mr. Wells's theories appear to me to be not only inconsistent, ill considered, and unworkable, but apart from the tragic mischief and misery they may cause, they present themselves to me as a bundle of crazy but delightfully amusing absurdities. In many passages throughout these letters, I have adopted a tone and method of controversy which is perhaps not to be commended for general imitation, but which may prove to be the most effectual for achieving the objects I have in view. Those objects are of such magnitude and importance that I should not hesitate to use any form of controversy which might best serve to call attention to them, and best serve to arrest and persuade the nine out of ten of us who are impatient of solemn formal argument. If any reader thinks that I have occasionally been a little careless of the courtesies of controversy, I beg him to remember that ridicule is sometimes the most penetrating and most conclusive form of argument.

For the reasons I have given, I hope these letters may be found to have something more than the ephemeral interest which attaches to a sterile personal controversy on some passing question of the day, whose flavour the next morning is as stale as the dead end of a half-smoked cigar.

If we are to overturn the present social order,

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and break up the British Empire, let us first be sure of our grounds, and let those who can think for themselves, search into the credentials of those who are thinking for other people, and who are popularly accepted as qualified advisers on matters of life or death to our nation and to all civilised mankind. Henry Arthur Jones.

New York City.

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

MY DEAR WELLS was practically ready for publication three months ago or more. The Publishers hesitated to put the book before the public, however, owing to objections raised by Mr. H. G. Wells to the accuracy of some of its supposed statements.

A copy of the book was at once forwarded to Mr. Wells by the Publishers for his examination, with an offer to withhold the volume from publication if Mr. Wells would point out any matter therein which was either untrue or libelous or which offended in any way against good taste.

Having had from Mr. Wells no answer to or acknowledgment of their offer, they feel that there is now no longer any reason for postponing publication of this exceedingly important critical examination of Mr. Wells' theories.

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY New York October 31st, 1 92 1.

The Wells League 251

LETTER XIX. A Challenge 259

AUTHOR'S NOTE

These letters were written during the autumn and winter of 1 920-1921.

The earlier ones appeared in the London Evening Standard and the New York Sunday Times. The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to the editors of these journals for their permission to publish them in this volume.

New York, N. T.

April 4, IQ2I&

" 'E dunnow where 'e are."

"I'll tickle your catastrophe."

Letter One

MR. WELLS WILL TAKE A TRIP TO RUSSIA.

In a recent article in a morning journal, which, I am sure, must have caused you that intense annoyance which we all feel when we find ourselves injudiciously praised in the newspapers — in that article the inspired writer, after an ascription to you of a sovereign comprehension of human affairs, and a superhuman sagacity in dealing with them, went on to declare that "Wells to-day is thinking for half Europe."

Mr. Archibald Spofforth, who was reading the article aloud to me, put it down at this point and very ungraciously muttered, "Now we know why Europe is in such a mess."

I am afraid that Spofforth is incurably prejudiced against you. I told him bluntly that he was guilty of over-statement. I would not allow that you are entirely responsible for the disorders and delusions of thought that are everywhere gnawing at the foundations of ordered government, and driving the peoples towards civil war and anarchy.

I was, however, obliged to admit that your advocacy of Bolshevism as the way of salvation for mankind, your laudation of its leaders as farseeing statesmen, "shining clear," "profoundly wise," immeasurably more competent to guide the destinies of a nation than such "pretentious bluffers" as Mr. Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil — I was obliged to admit to Spofforth that if you are indeed thinking for that very large number of people in Europe who are unable to think for themselves, you are likely to lead them to great disaster.

And now you are going to Russia to find out the facts for yourself. Is that necessary?

We have abundant information about the state of that country, A great cloud of faithful witnesses have brought us full and unimpeachable evidence. Who in England except yourself is unacquainted with Russian conditions? Who except yourself has not too full and too dreadful a knowledge of the terror that reigns there ; all the securities and sanctities of civilised life abolished; all the spiritual and all the material possessions of the people seized and escheated, and scattered in the equality of the dust; sweated labour, gagged and fettered against all complaints and strikes, driven to its daily twelve-hour treadmill; a ruthless militarism, more brutal than

Will Take a Trip to Russia 3

the German, hounding its ragged, famished hordes to destroy Western civilisation; a junta of desperadoes coining the blood of wretched peasants into gold to send to England to blind and drug our workmen, and to raise them into insurrection against their own means of livelihood; the very shadow and memory of Liberty banished from the land — since this old earth spun on its axis, has ever such a cry and tale of horror gone up to heaven, or has heaven looked down upon such a bloody, sickening spectacle of man's inhumanity to man?

These are the facts about Russia, my dear Wells. And you will go there and ascertain them for yourself.

You have compared our own rulers with the leaders of Bolshevism. You have found our English statesmen to be "ignorant and limited men" — "crudely ignorant of the world of modern ideas."

The world of modern ideas !

In Russia you will find your world of modern ideas in full working operation. When you come back I would like to have a little talk with you about your world of modern ideas.

It is not by your modern ideas that the Russian people will be dragged out of their putrid cesspool of famine, pestilence and anarchy. It is only by the observance of those great unchanging rules of life and conduct, those sovereign laws of communal and national well-being, eternally fixedy and as old as the world itself, whereby through all time past nations have established themselves in peace and prosperity and happiness — it is only by obedience to these unchanging, primal laws that Russia will be rescued from her long agony, and that England will be arrested in her progress towards social rebellion and civil war.

You have been so much occupied with your modern ideas, my dear Wells, that I fear you have forgotten the existence of these great primal laws. Yet they shine aloft like stars. When you come back from Russia I should like to bring them to your attention, and to challenge you to deny their operation.

It is claimed for you that you are "thinking for half Europe." Ah, they need somebody to think for them, these blind, helpless, tortured masses !

But I do most frankly question your competence to think for those who are unable to think for themselves. In my "Patriotism and Popular Education" I examined in detail your scheme for the International Government of Africa. You will remember that you regenerated the whole continent in five minutes by giving it an International Constitution on paper. It was all so easy — on paper.

By some such means I suppose you will regenerate Russia. You will find it equally easy — on paper.

Well, go to Russia.

Yet I could wish that you had chosen England for

Will Take a Trip to Russia 5

your spiritual home rather than Russia. What is it that drives you and so many Englishmen to hate this dear, kind, blundering, stupid Mother of ours?

You have declared your preference for Russia and Bolshevism. I once knew a man who had a good cellar of rich vintage wines in his own house. Yet, instead of drawing upon it, he would go tippling at dirty little public-houses. I knew another man who had a sweet, pretty, faithful little wife, yet, instead of staying at home with her, he would go after draggled creatures in the streets.

Well, go to Russia. Let us have some further speech when you come back.

Your faithful, and I hope not too candid, friend, Henry Arthur Jones.

P. S. — If I were you, I wouldn't let your friends credit you with too much capacity for thinking for other people. Spofforth, who is always at my elbow with mal-hhpropos suggestions, has just remarked that if you are thinking for half Europe, it doesn't leave you much time to think for yourself.

1 6th September, 1920.

Mr. Wells replied to the above letter, and some further correspondence passed, the general tenor of which may be gathered from Letter 2.

Letter Two

MR. WELLS PACKS UP AND STARTS.

I accept such terms as "liar," "excited imbecile," "silly ranter," "hasty, ill-trained mind," and the other elegancies of epithet which you apply to me — I accept them most cordially, most gratefully, as evidences of your method of controversy. I will treasure them and pay them the same respect that I pay to your social philosophy.

To come to the facts. You accuse me of twisting and garbling your statements because I quoted you as saying that the Bolshevist leaders are "shining clear" and "profoundly wise." You don't deny that you did call them "shining clear;" but you explained that this applied only to the one matter of making peace with the Hohenzollerns. It is strange that you should applaud them in this matter, when at the most critical period of the war you were urging us to make peace with undefeated Germany under the Hohenzollerns. You will remember I had to curb your zeal when you advised England to throw herself on the neck of her undefeated enemy.

Mr. Wells Packs Up and Starts 7

So you say that the Bolshevist leaders were "shining clear" on this one point only. In that matter, if indeed they were shining clear, I gladly allow that they were far more "shining clear" than yourself.

You do not seem to qualify your praise of them as "profoundly wise," or to limit your admiration for them in that respect. You impute dishonesty to me because I took the general sense and tenor of your article, and did not, in a limited space, deal minutely with every particular. I am ready to deal minutely with every one of these minor points, these qualifications of your plain statements — if the editor of the "Evening Standard" thinks it worth while to give me the space to vex the public any further with them.

Meantime I repeat with the utmost emphasis that I can employ, that your entire article is one continued laudation of the Bolshevist leaders, and their farseeing statesmanship, to the depreciation of our English statesmen. Will you face that simple issue? It is the only main issue that I raised in my letter. I now put it again to you in the plainest way.

Your article in the "Daily Mail" of January 15, 191 8, is easily accessible. You do not abjure it. You defend and even reinforce it. I invite and request the fullest comparison of that article with my letter to you in the "Evening Standard" of September 16, 1920.

If by dint of argument, persuasion, search, advertisement, or by any other means you can find one single man in this country who, having read your article and my comment upon it, will come forward and say that, on the great main issue that I have raised, I have misrepresented you, or unfairly stated your opinion of the Bolshevist leaders — if you can find such a man and bring him forward, why, in that case, my dear Wells, I will pay him the same attention that I am paying to you. I will deal with him candidly, as I am dealing with you — and even more exhaustively.

After all your depreciation of English statesmen and diplomatists as "pretentious bluffers" ("Daily Mail," January 30, 1918), "crudely ignorant persons" guilty of vast general incompetence in managing our national affairs, it seems that your chief indictment against them, the head and front of their offending, is that our Ambassador in St. Petersburg did not know Russian. If you will inquire I think that you will find that, with one or two rare exceptions, no foreign Ambassador in St. Petersburg has known Russian. It is not a great matter, except in your estimation. Disraeli did not know French. That did not prevent him being a great diplomatist. Will you kindly look up the point about foreign Ambassadors knowing Russian? As it is your main charge against English statesmanship, you may as well take care to stand upon firm ground.

Another point. You claimed that the Bolshevist

Mr. Wells Packs Up and Starts 9

leaders were "trying to end aggressive militarism in the world forever." They believe that they can do this by mental work, by propaganda — that is, by words. Isn't that the fundamental fallacy of Internationalists and Pacifists ? They think they can govern and regenerate the world by a committee, by International paper constitutions, such as the one you devised for the government and regeneration of the continent of Africa. It is so easy — on paper.

And now, my dear Wells, I must not detain you any further. You are busy packing up for Russia. Let us have some further speech on all these matters when you come back.

Your sincere well wisher,

Henry Arthur Jones.

P. S. — By the way, you ask me if I don't think that the Bolshevists are "straight." No, I don't, my dear Wells. Do you? In that case I do homage to the generous simplicity of your mind. But perhaps we attach different meanings to the word "straight."

17th September, 1920.

To this letter Mr. Wells made the strange reply that I did not understand the use of inverted commas, and that therefore discussion with me was impossible. When Mr. Wells is pressed home in argument, his retort is apt to be inscrutable and incoherent. H. A. J.

Letter Three

MR. WELLS FINDS ORDER IN PETRO- GRAD.

So you are back in England. I thought it possible that you might be offered some high advisory post in Russia, which your love of Bolshevist Government would constrain you to accept. For in that country your International theories are being translated into facts, and the general condition of affairs seems to call for constant superintendence from yourself.

You have returned to our shores, and in an interview you tell us that you have had a very interesting time. It looks likely that we are going to have a very interesting time in England, and something of the same sort of interesting time that they are having in Russia.

I notice that you summarise the conditions in Russia in four words: "Hunger, want, but order." This seems to imply that if only order is maintained the hunger and the want are matters of secondary importance. What we are concerned to know is: "How much hunger? How much want?" and above all: "What kind of order prevails in Russia to-day ?"

We have evidence heaped mountain high that the hunger and want in Russia are unimaginable in their horror and their extent; that marasmus and pestilence are sweeping the land, and are only dwindling as the dwindling population offers them fewer victims. Tell me, what is the population of Petrograd * to-day compared with its population before the war? What will it be when its doomed inhabitants have paid their further toll to frost and starvation in the coming winter ? Will you dismiss these questions as negligible and impertinent in view of the dominating fact that "order" reigns in Petrograd?

What kind of order? You say: "We have been rather amused to read of disturbances and insurrections." Who are the "we" who were "amused" to read of disturbances and insurrections? You and Lenin? Or is the whole population of Petrograd rocking with laughter at the bare idea of disturbances and insurrections in their well-ordered and disciplined city? You will scarcely say that disturbances and insurrections have not taken place. Rather serious ones, eh? Not only in Petrograd, but all over the land, plunging the whole population in terror, misery, bloodshed, and ruin, and sacrificing countless thousands of innocent lives? But

* It has recently been estimated that the present population of Petrograd (March, 1921) is not much over a third of the population in 1 9 14.

those disturbances and insurrections have been subdued. Now that order reigns, the very thought of them is amusing. . . . O vastly amusing, damnably amusing, I should say.

What kind of order? How was it established? How is it maintained?

You return to England in good time. Will you tell the workers of England — those workers, many of whom were two years ago in the trenches, ready to die for you and for me — will you tell the workers of England that the order now maintained in Petrograd is the kind of order that you desire them to live under? An enforced twelve-hour day, on wages on starvation level; the right to strike, nay, the right to murmur or complain denied them under pain of death; free speech more cruelly suppressed and punished than under the worst tyranny the earth has known — will you tell the workers of England that this is the kind of order you wish them to establish in our own country?

Be sure that it is the kind of order which inevitably follows any attempt to govern a country upon international proletarian principles. Do you recommend it to us at the present moment?

How was this order established in Russia? By machine-guns at every strategic point; by shooting every one who opposed; by wholesale robbery, massacre, and imprisonment ; by inflicting transcend-

Mr. Wells Finds Order in Petrogradj 13

ent agonies and privations upon the whole people; by crimes and infamies and cruelties innumerable, indescribable, beyond all picturing.

Do you still advise the workers of England to establish international order in this country by these methods? For by no other methods can it be established. Oh, be very sure of that!

How is this order maintained? By the more and more rigorous employment of the same methods whereby it was established. Did you read the speech of Comrade Martoff at the conference of German Socialists a few days ago? He dared to arraign this order established in Petrograd, to proclaim it as a bloody, pitiless despotism, the devilish gaoler and destroyer of Russian liberty and national hope and life.

That is how order is maintained in Petrograd.

Comrade Martoff has had a much longer and closer experience than yourself of this order that reigns in Petrograd. He has lived and suffered under it, and knows it through and through. You were in Russia something just over a fortnight, I believe. You will claim that, with your astonishing capacity for formulating political theories, and imposing them upon mankind, a fortnight is ample time for you to get a grip of the whole situation, and to shape a nation's destinies accordingly.

If it came to a pinch, and I knew you were in good form, I would back you to bring out a new Constitution, or a new religion, for any country or continent, in less than a week. Don't distrust yourself. I know you can do it. Why, a year or two ago you whipped out a brand new International Constitution for the whole continent of Mid-Africa in a fortnight. It is true that it was a paper Constitution, and that it wouldn't work for five minutes. Still, you did it. It is true, also, that your International Constitution for Mid-Africa illustrated the fundamental and eternal fallacies of International government and was in itself a perfect little cameo condemnation of Internationalism. Do you wish me to re-examine it and prove this statement?

To return to Comrade Martoff and the order that reigns in Petrograd. Comrade Martoff, seemingly a good Socialist and Internationalist like yourself, denounces and curses the order that reigns in Petrograd. He finds nothing amusing in it. But then he has lived under it, and you will allow that in the matter of lengthened observation and experience you are a mere week-end tripper compared with Comrade Martoff.

You had a very interesting time, you say, not without amusement. Among the interesting and amusing things you saw, did you acquaint yourself with the conditions of childbirth in Russia under the present order that reigns there? Did you happen to observe a dreadful type of baby that Russian mothers are bringing into the world; starved in the womb, wizened, atrophied?

The babies are perishing by thousands, and those that miserably survive shall bear witness all their lives to the effects of the order that now reigns in Petrograd.

That order, you allow, is accompanied by hunger and want. You will scarcely counsel our English workers to embrace International theories for the sake of the hunger and want that they bring to the nations that put them into practice. But you seem to imply that the hunger and want must be endured for the sake of the order that is established under International government. On this point you have not yet made yourself clear. Indeed, you said: "I have seen so much that I have not yet digested what I have seen." Well, digest it as you may, humanity has not stomach for it.

However, it is announced that in a few days you will have digested what you saw in your fortnight's trip to Russia, and you are going to give us "one of the most thrilling narratives of recent years."

Already we have been "thrilled" — and re-thrilled, and over-thrilled, and thrilled again by what has happened in Russia. We have no further power of response to "thrills," What we are anxious to hear is whether your fortnight's trip to Russia leaves you to form the same opinion of the present Government that Comrade Martoff has formed with his incomparably greater experience and opportunities of pronouncing a judgement upon it. Do you agree with Comrade Martoff, or do you not?

At this grave moment, when a large body of English workers are hesitating, would you counsel them to pay the same price for a revolution that the workers of Russia paid for it? Would you counsel them to pay a tenth, a hundredth part of that price? Answer me that.