But much more important than these advantages which he possesses for a writing of an Outline of History is his sincerity. He feels the importance of History to mankind, and especially, I think, to that part of mankind which he knows best—the mankind of the English Home Counties and London Suburbs. He feels instinctively that he and his must now obtain a general view. It is due to Mr. Wells to say that hardly anyone else in our restricted society feels this as strongly as he does. Our newspapers, our politicians, and even our financiers, cosmopolitan though they are, do not feel the need of trying to understand the past of Europe and of the world. They are still soaked in what is left of the old self-sufficiency. But Mr. Wells has woken up, and it is to his credit. I put his sincerity thus last in this category of his advantages for writing History, because it is the chief. He is conspicuously and naively sincere. This good quality is apparent in every line of the work as it first appeared. It is equally apparent in the first part of the new revised edition. He does really believe from the bottom of his heart all that he read in the textbooks of his youth. He does really and from the bottom of his heart believe that the little world he knows is the whole world; and that his doctrines of goodwill, vague thinking, loose loving, and the rest—all soaked in the local atmosphere of his life—may be the salvation of mankind. It is not vanity or pride (though, of course, it is ignorance); it is a perfectly honest conviction. He cannot imagine how things could possibly be otherwise; and that, by the way, is the root of his recently acquired hatred of the Catholic Church, which has now become, directly and indirectly, the universally present savour in his writing. He is sincerely bewildered and exasperated at the power of Something so different from the only world he knows. He hopes vaguely that the Church may be dying: he suspects it is not—the doubt worries him. It moves him to hatred; but that hatred is sincere. This sincerity of his, even where it is misguided and untaught, is respectable. He does sincerely desire to do good to his fellow-men within the narrow circle of his experience and understanding. If the reader will add up all these advantages for the writing of History, he will find them amount, I think, to a very notable sum. There are few men who could have produced a general history better than Mr. Wells—had he not suffered from certain graver disadvantages to which I shall presently allude. To be sincere is essential. To have the motive of History is both singular and decisive. To have clarity, economy and a sense of time is rare and of high value. To be accurate in detail of dates, etc., is a most excellent minor virtue in any historian.