on. As Mr. Britling
he saw the war through, and even called it "a war to end war." As Mr.
Clissold he asked of what use it had all been. Chesterton speaks of
him as a "rather unstable genius," and the genius and instability
alike can be seen in his meteor appearances in the _New Witness_ and
in his books. Several of these he sent to Gilbert, who wrote (Sept.
12, 1917):

I have been trying for a long time, though perpetually baulked
with business and journalism, to write and thank you for sending me,
in so generous a manner, your ever interesting and delightful books;
especially as divisions touching the things we care most about, drive
me, every time I review them, to deal more in controversy and less in
compliment than I intend. The truth and the trouble, is that both of
us are only too conscious that there is a Great War going on all the
time on the purely mental plane; and I cannot help thinking your view
is often a heresy; and I know only too well that when you lead it, it
is likely to be a large heresy. I fear that being didactic means
being disproportionate; and that the temptation to attack something I
think I can correct leads to missing (in my writing, not in my
reading) a thousand fine things that I could never imitate. It is
lucky for me that you are not very often a book-reviewer, when I
bring out my own shapeless and amateurish books.

In the _Autobiography_ G.K. calls Wells a sportive but spiritual
child of Huxley. He delighted in his wit and swiftness of mind, but
he summarized in the same book the quality which runs through all his
work.

I have always thought that he re-acted too swiftly to everything;
possibly as a part of the swiftness of his natural genius. I have
never ceased to admire and sympathise; but I think he has always been
too much in a state of reaction. To use the name which would probably
annoy him most, I think he is a permanent reactionary. Whenever I met
him, he seemed to be coming from somewhere, rather than going
anywhere. . . . And he was so often nearly right, that his movements
irritated me like the sight of somebody's hat being perpetually
washed up by the sea and never touching the shore. But I think he
thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the
mind. Whereas I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the
mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on somet