e in controversial
warfare, that I have a horror of his thinking I would attack him with
anything but fair controversial weapons. My feeling is so entirely
consistent with a faith in Pugh's motives, as well as an admiration
of his talents, that I honestly believe I could explain this to him
without offence. . . .

I am honestly in a very difficult position on the _New Witness_,
because it is physically impossible for me really to edit it, and
also do enough outside work to be able to edit it unpaid, as well as
having a little over to give it from time to time. What we should
have done without the loyalty and capacity of you and a few others I
can't imagine. I cannot oversee everything that goes into the
paper; . . . I cannot resign, without dropping as you truly said, the
work of a great man who is gone; and who, I feel, would wish me to
continue it. It is like what Stevenson said about marriage and its
duties: "There is no refuge for you; not even suicide." But I should
have to consider even resignation, if I felt that the acceptance of
Pugh's generosity really gave him the right to print something that I
really felt bound to disapprove. It may be that I am needlessly
alarmed over a slip or two of the pen, in vivid descriptions of a
very odd character, and that Pugh really admires his Big Little H. G.
as much as I thought he did at the beginning of the business. . . .
If the general impression on the reader's mind is of the Big Wells
and not the Little Wells, I think the doubt I mean would really be
met.

Somehow the letter to Titterton got into the hands of a Mr. Hennessy
who, after Gilbert's death, sent it to Wells.

Wells wrote, "Thank you very much for that letter of G.K.C.'s. It is
exactly like him. From first to last he and I were very close friends
and never for a moment did I consider him responsible for Pugh's
pathetic and silly little outbreak. I never knew anyone so steadily
true to form as G.K.C."

Besides the cleansing of public life two other things were seen as
vital by the _New Witness_, the restoration of well-distributed
property and the restoration of liberty. Under the heading
"Reconstruction of Property" Belloc set out a series of proposals,
highly practical and very far from what is usually called
revolutionary: that savings for instance made on a small scale should
be helped by a very high rate of interest; that the purc