The Passionate Friends,,

Horowhenua Chronicle, 19 May 1914, Page 2

The Passionate Friends ,,

(Reviewed for The Chronicle.)

,It is many years H. G. Wells wrote fantastic novel, "The Worlds," a book that kept readers. ; r talking reviewers - busy : for months. Since then he has written much and his books are looked forward to by thoughtful people, as there is always something to stimulate thought. Hie latest novel, "The Passionate Friends," is no exception. Stratton, now in.middle life, sets hie thoughts and experiences in book form for the benefit of his son, who, later, will want to know how life has gone with his father. One boyhood experience gives an insight into Stratton's nature. He had, when learning Latin irregular verbs, discovered a tit's nest. His tutor, Siddons, had encouraged him - in egg collecting "but he left the . tits alone, and when the egga =.. •'■ were hatched was a trusted friend of the family. One day he found the nest torn-down, ' - ' •■■'.- "Across the gravel, shreds of the nest and a "wisp or so of down

were scattered. . . . I etarted off, picking up stones as 1 went, to murder that sandy demon, the stable cat. 1 got her once." ■■-•■-

Siddons caught him and lectured him on the utter caddishness of wanton cruelty. He listened to him in rebellious silence. Closing the chapter on boyhood, Stratton remarks:

"The clue to all the perplexities of law and custom lies in ■ this: that human association is an • artificiality. We So nofr'run together naturally and easily ae grazing deer or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. We are a sort of creature which is only assum- - ing association after a long hereextreme separation. Wβ are being strongly individualised, we are dominated by that passion, which is no more and no less than individuality—jealousy." He falls in love with Mary Justin : she marries another and he goes to South Africa. __ Hβ sees war, and tells "of tlie* blood trail of a dying man who had crawled up to a dead comrade ratlier than die alone; of Kaffirs heaping limp, pitiful bodies together for burial, of the voices of inacces- . sible wounded in the rain on Waggon Hill crying in the nigh't, of a \ heap of dead men (found in a' donga) three. days dead; of the ■.„ dumb agony of shell—torn horses find the vast distressful litter and heavy brooding "stench; tEe cane and cartridge cases and filth and bloody rags of a shelled and cap- v hired laager. I will confess I have never lost my |g>rror of dead bodies. I dread their. stifi atti- ; V" their terrible intent inattention." '

After the war he helps to put the people back on the land, and for the first time in his life 'found, that he was really looking at Labour. He began to recognise the two sides of civilization; one traditional, the side "of the home-, stead, the other as old as the pyramids, the accumulation of toil-;* ers divorced from tKe soil. From South Africa Stratton travels, the East. By degrees he came to Use that the matter of expropria-„. tion and enslavement and control, which the Socialists treat as''! though it was the comprehensive • present process of mankind, is no : ' more than one aspect of an over--life that struggles out of a massive ancient and traditional common way of living. ' 'You see civilization has never yet existed.; ■ it has only continually and obstinately attempted to be. Our civilisation is but the indistinct twilight before the dawn." ■■"-... He returns to England and commences publishing books and'■•'. magazines of all nations, to create a world literature, that ft might - pave- the way for a World State. In the middle of his work he receives a letter from Mary Justin. She has heard of Stratton being mixed up in Peace and Social Re. . form congresses and considered it so—-"Carnegieish." She writes* again*: considers his beliefs fine and largo but artificial. She continues: "All this great world—,', state^ of»your man's imaginations, is going to be wrecked by us (the women) if you ignore us-, we are going to be the Goths and Huns : of another Decline and Fall. .:... . . And your dreams-of .bro-.;. therhood—we will set you Ky the/ cars. .... How are you going to protect that- Great State . of your dreams from this' anticitizenship of sex?" She touches on contemporary feminine in- ■ telligonce and continues: "Something has to be done for women, Stephen. We are the heart of life, birth and begetting, the honie where the future grows, and your schemes ignore us and slide , about over the superficialities things. ,, ,<■ :i, . Exactly. All reformers, loft- •- erals, Radicals, Labour, ists and others seem to ttaflkjthafc women are always going to remain as it present. They are not. The crazy outbursts of the suffragettes in England indicate the unrest just as plainly as strikes, indicate Labour unrest. True, we hear nothing of it in New Zealand, but then for many years we heard nothing of strikes. "The Passionate Friends" is a good book well worth reading and keeping. Mr H. G. Wells is years in advance of present thought on social questions. The book may be obtained at Thompson's Book Arcade.