MR WELLS’ IDEAS

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20733, 17 February 1939, Page 8

MR WELLS’ IDEAS

HITLER AND MUSSOLINI “THOSE MEN ARE FREAKS'’ Mr 11. G. Wells said in an interview in Melbourne on January 4 that he regarded Herr Hitler as a lunatic and Signor Mussolini as a fantastic renegade from the Socialist movement. “Those men are freaks," he added, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. It was for this that he was rebuked bv Mr J. A. Lyons). Mr W ells, who arrived in Melbourne from Adelaide, smiled when discussing a recent attack on him by the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff. “It would have cleaned up things a lot for Europe if Germany had gone Communist,” he said. "It might not have weakened Germany, and it would have made Germany a lot more interesting than this Germany, which seems determined to have no rational dealings with the rest of mankind.” “Yes,” said Mr Wells to his interviewer, “you can use that. It will be some time before they can get me into a concentration camp.” “As the author of “The Shape of Things to Come.” Mr Wells was asked what he thought of the shape of things as they are. He said that he had recently written a full expression of his views on that subject for a London newspaper. We are dealing with big social forces which are very much influenced by irrational personalities,” added Mr Wells. “It is a personality period. For instance, there is a little group of men iu Germany, particularly Hitler, whom I regard as a certifiable lunatic. “Then there is Mussolini, who is a fantastic renegade from the Socialist movement. These men are freaks, fudging by the fancies they take into their heads, and they have power over human affairs, which is more like thestate of affairs under the criminal Caesars—the worst of them. He Changes History “Hitler decides that all our ethnological science is wrong. He wants to have history changed, so it is changed. He alters the past, he alters German history, and he invents fantastic ideas about a wonderful blonde race, which never existed, and a terrible Jewish race, which also never existed. “Then Mussolini picks up the same system of fantasy for the purpose of propaganda against the British in Palestine and the Near East. It is not an econamic process. It is merely fantastic.”

When Mr Wells was asked what he thought would be the end of the Hit-ler-Xlussolini system, he replied that he did not think there was much of a system. There was no real Nazi or Fascist philosophy, and "the corporate State” seemed to be "a bit of compromise between capitalism and an attempt to hoodwink the workers.” “In Russia,” said Mr Wells, “you have the remains—only the remains—of a real historical philosophy, but still you have something coherent and a certain tradition of respect for the common man which does not exist in Fascist countries. “We knov<’ so little about'collective human nature. Most of our economic. science and our financial science seems to be bunkum—or, at least, to be not more than working conventions. They give good results for a while and then break down because they are not really scientific. “We have not got a map of the conditions in which we are moving, and so we are like people who are wandering in strange country without a map. All human life is just chance and a jumping at conclusions. Everything is a struggle, and it will always be so until organised knowledge and other intluences give better understanding between the peoples of the world.” “English” Australians Mr Wells would not express any opinion about Australia or Australians yet beyond saying that he had met a number of "very charming Englishmen” —"for, you know,” lie added, “Australians are just the same as Englishmen except for their environment. Put an Australian in England and leave him there for a couple of years, and you will not be able to distinguish him from a native-born Englishman. In that sense, then, Australians cannot regard themselves as a separate nation.”