The war, which diverted the energies of so many quiet thinkers to matters of immediate and practical efficiency, produced a rather different effect upon this interesting man. He began to regard things that are temporal in relation to those of eternal import. He became converted--I have no hesitation in using the good old word--and while I can see no evidence of conviction of sin, for humility is not his most salient characteristic, he did come to believe and believes now, that religion ought to be the motive power of man. What direction his ideas may take in the future I cannot divine; but I am thankful for his conversion, if only for the reason that it inspired him to produce a masterpiece, _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_. This novel is not only far and away his best book, it is the ablest work of fiction about the war that I have read. But it owes its eminence not to its accurate reporting of the course of social history during the war, for after all, the much admired hockey-game is not much higher than major journalism, but rather to the profound sense of spiritual values which is the core of the book. I regard it as unfortunate that Mr. Wells felt it necessary to follow up the triumph of this tale with a treatise on theology called _God the Invisible King_, and with a propagandist novel, called _The Soul of a Bishop_. For the last-named book illustrates all the faults of its species, as well as the cardinal sin against art. _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_ is religious; _The Soul of a Bishop_ is sectarian. And _God the Invisible King_, while it should be read with sympathy for its author's sincerity and newly-found idealism, has all the arrogance and cock-sureness of an old-fashioned theologian without the preliminary years of devoted learning that gave the old-fashioned one some right to a hearing, provided of course he could induce any one to listen to him. No orthodox evangelist has ever been more sure of God than Mr. Wells. The novel was properly named _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_; and we might with equal propriety name the treatise, _Mr. Britling Sees Through It_. Strange and unfortunate that Mr. Wells should think that the religious element in Mr. Britling needed additional emphasis. A work of art founded on eternal verities will accomplish more for the cause of religion than any tract. Solely from the moral point of view, _Anna Karenina_ is a more impressive book than most of its author's subsequent exhortations.