I am quite willing to withdraw the words, to admit my blunder, and to apologise to Mr. Wells for having made it. Every man is the judge of his own thoughts, and if he assures me that he hates his country, or is even indifferent to its fate, I will readily accept the statement. I will substitute in my book for the word “patriot” the word “national,” my only point being that Mr. Wells is highly local in his outlook. I was careful to say that the patriotic (or national) motive was, in my opinion, an advantage to the historian; but that its great danger was limitation, and that in the particular case of Mr. Wells the limitation was so narrow as to be disastrous to a general view of Europe: making him unable to understand anything that was not of his own particular suburban world.
He is wounded because I pointed out his odd reaction against the idea of a gentleman, and his dislike of the gentry, and says that I bid him “revere” them. I never asked him to do anything so silly as to revere the gentry. I am sure I do not revere them myself. What I did say was that it weakened an historian and pretty well put him out of court when he wrote, not with balanced judgment, but negatively, out of hatred; and that piece of criticism I must maintain.
As for his attitude towards the type called “a gentleman” in history, and in contemporary life, it would be easy to give examples out of other books from the same pen. But I am rigidly confining myself to this book—the Outline of History—and I submit that right through this work you see this strong dislike appearing. It appears in his treatment of the type, Roman, French or English, ancient, mediæval or modern. To take one instance out of a hundred, his sneer at the late Lord Salisbury in the pamphlet against me is characteristic. He suggests that this great man and considerable scientist was incompetent to discuss a simple question in biology, and had to be coached for the purpose, and badly coached. All our generation is a witness to the great talent of Lord Salisbury and to the range of his learning, and since he was no man’s enemy, and certainly never can have done any harm, direct or indirect, to Mr. Wells, I can only suggest that the word “Lord” was sufficient to throw Mr. Wells off his balance.
Now for the condemnatory words to which he objects,—presumably on account of their force—words which I have, indeed, used in connection with his work, and shall certainly use again: such words as “ignorance,” “blunders,” “childish,” “unscientific,” etc. I see I must again explain to Mr. Wells an obvious principle in criticism which he fails to grasp. A word is not out of place in criticism unless it is either irrelevant or false in statement or in degree. The mere strength of a word does not put it out of court. On the contrary, if the strength of the word is exactly consonant to the degree of error noted the criticism is more just than if a milder word had been used. To say that a man who poisons his mother in order to obtain her fortune is “reprehensible” is bad criticism. To call him an “inhuman criminal” is sound criticism.
Irrelevant condemnatory words are very properly objected to by their victims. But relevant condemnatory words are not only admissible, but just and even necessary.
I must not fill the whole of this little reply of mine with a mass of quotation illustrating the justice of the words I have used, but I can give a few examples which are conclusive, and which the reader has only to hear to be convinced.
As to “ignorance.” This is a word exactly applicable to point after point in the Outline which I have thoroughly exposed. For instance, it is ignorance not to appreciate the overwhelming effect of Latin literature upon all our civilisation. It is not mere omission which has left out this capital factor from Mr. Wells’s strange idea of Rome; it is, and could only be, an insufficient knowledge of what that factor was. If a schoolboy, writing an outline of the Battle of Waterloo, leave out all mention of Blücher, that is not a mere omission, it is ignorance.
There is an example of ignorance on a very wide general point. Next let me give an example of a highly particular point. It is really startling in its effect.
Mr. Wells nourishes the idea that the technical name for the Incarnation is the Immaculate Conception!
It is perfectly legitimate to say that the man of average education is not bound to be familiar with technical terms in a special department, such as that of religious terminology; but when he sets out to discuss that particular department, he must at least have the alphabet of it. Had he never mentioned the Immaculate Conception at all, the accusation would not lie: as he has foolishly blundered into mentioning it, the accusation does lie. A Frenchman who has never been to England cannot be called ignorant because he is unfamiliar with the streets of London. But what of a Frenchman who writes a guide to London and mixes up Victoria Station with Buckingham Palace?