are living in a time “of more and morencomprehensive plans.” A plannednWorld-State “has become imperative.”nIt was apparent to even the most dullpatednliberal that Wells with his commitmentnto “brains” was on the rightnside.nHe was also a certified, albeit parttime,nmeliorist, enamored as he was ofnthe philosophy of progress. He wrotenfrequenriy of the impulses and movementsnof the world toward the “NewnRepublic” that would result from AnModern Utopia (1905). “We are, as anspecies, caught in an irreversible process.”nThe planned World-State is “asnmuch a part of the frame in which ournlives are set as the roundness andnrotation of the earth.” Wells’s contemptnfor tradition, another mark ofnthe liberal sensibility, was evident innhis hysterical attack on the CatholicnChurch (1943), although he was notnfinally selective. All formal religionnwas rejected: “I am an outright atheist.”nHis “religion,” as he called it, wasn”a real fascination with the perhapsnunattainable World-State I serve . . .nthe rahonal purpose of my life.” Thensupremacy of the World-State explainsnWells’s statism—his eagerness for centralizationnand consolidation, a wipingnout of all differences regional as well asnnational.nClustering is antipathetic to us.nI have always been disposed tondespise people who clusternclose in families, gangs, clansnand nations. That is my mainnobjection to Jews. AndnScotsmen. And the provincialnFrench.nAttacking the right to private propertynwas like a Masonic handshakenamong liberals. His attack came earlyn”His son’s portrait of him as a man whon’transcended his origins and made himselfna very big man indeed’ is largely convincing.n”nNewsweeknand remained a persistent idea. Thenone thing that unites all socialists, henwrote, was “the wish to abolish privatenproperty in any but the most immediatelynpersonal things.” Where Wellsnfelt superior to his fellow socialists wasnin his discovery of the need for an14/CHRONICLES OF CULTUREn”Competent Receiver” to replace privatenownership when the socialistnWorld-State was created through then”new pattern of revolution.” “Revolution”nwas always his word when describingnhow the new state was toncome about; I do not recall his usingn”reform” or “renewal.” “Revolutionarynchange” would follow upon thensense of personal disaster felt by thenmultitudes who would then be readynto join the “Open Conspiracy” ofn”honest and creative-minded men.”nLike other liberals. Wells was infatuatednwith “a vivid sense of the promisenand possibilities of change.”nThe final intellectual bylaw of liberalismnwas its faith in science. That wasnWells’s first love, and it remained centralnto his sense of reality until the end.nA startled University of London feltnconstrained, I imagine, to award him anD.Sc. for a thesis in pseudoscience hensubmitted when he was 78. The RoyalnSociety, however, never made him anmember. Science gave authority to thenconcept of planning, since it providedna rigid, if flawed, base for scheming,ncharting, and designing. Science wasnmethod and strategy. The inevitablenrevolution would produce “a new mechanicalncivilization” {Socialism andnthe Scientific Motive, 1923).nAnthony West, his son, is correct innhis view that his father came to standnfor everything that the experience ofnthe 30’s and 40’s “had shown to benfacile and false in liberal meliorism.”nWest feels, however, that this view ofnhis father in the public mind wasnwrong; he insists instead that Wells wasnone of the most influential ancestors ofn”the truly progressive outlook ofntoday.” Loyalty to parent has seldomnbeen stretched so far to cover as much.nWhat is centrally false in liberalismn— its sad little secret—was no secret innthe writings of Wells: he was curiouslynopen about his discomfort with andndistrust of people. He did not “care andamn,” as he put it, for most people.nBelief in the masses was “sentimental.”nIt was precisely on this point thatnthe famous controversy on socialism innThe New Age (1907-08) was waged bynGilbert and Cecil Chesterton and HilairenBelloc,. on one side, and G. B.nShaw, Belfort Bax, and Wells on thenother.nThe people, asserted Chesterton,nare “absolutely and eternally right” innnntheir instincts. “I believe very stronglynin the mass of the common people. Indo not mean their ‘potentialities,’ Inmean in their faces, in their habits,nand their admirable language.” Henwas not a socialist, he testified, becausenhe had “not lost faith in democracy.”nWells had, I would contend,neven though Anthony West argues thatnhe had not, that his views, for instance,nin the Sorbonne lecture, “DemocracynUnder Revision” (1927),nwere really wholesome if naive. “Thentime has come for the educated to savendemocracy from itself by becoming anpolitical force.” His views may havenbeen naive:—a common enough liberalnfault—but they were clear. Thenautobiography repeats this idea andngives it central position in his thought.nThe intelligentsia of the world—“allnof mankind that mattered”—were toncommit themselves to the liberalscientificnconsensus.nBy putting themselves in positionsnto be consulted whenever and wherevernpolitical decisions were to benmade, intellectuals would lead us tonthe World-State. “We originative intellectualnworkers [a beehive world?]nare reconditioning human life” [piecesnof furniture?]. Even the diction showsnthe dehumanizing result of the onenkind of elitism that is always tyrannical.nThat the “genuine Socialist government”nshould be in the hands of annexclusive body of rulers, “the rightnsort,” “a fraternity of enlightenednminds,” Wells emphasized as his specialncontribution to the world of thenfuture.nHis penchant for scientific planningnand his contempt for “the proletariannmasses” met in a suggestion made in AnModern Utopia: “For purposes of thenstate I propose a division into fourntypes of character, the kinetic, thenpoietic, the dull, and the base.” Thenkinetic were to be the effective rulers,nhaving all executive and administrativenpower. The poietic were to suggest,ncriticize, help legislate, and helpnto control the base. The base werenindividuals of such strong antisocialndisposition that they were inalterablynexcluded from office. The dull needednto be provided with incentive if theynwished to engage in kinetic labors.nThese classes were not hereditary, butnregulated by “the filtering processes ofneducation and the tests of social life.”n