f commentators cite Wells's political liberalism (like G. B. Shaw, he was a Fabian socialist), but they also appear to have an honest respect for his ability to distinguish clearly between presentation and interpretation of facts. As Barker notes, Wells's impulse toward writing history involved the possibility of pointing mankind in the direction of social and economic reform, specifically in the form of a world government (316). What is crucial, however, about Wells's position as historian-advocate, is that his vision of a new way of ordinary government was based on facts stoutly urged and not merely on the dreams of a science fiction writer or for that matter on the dreams of a rabid revolutionary without a coherent program. For Fabian socialists, as Barker notes,
sought to change English life and government by the strength of arguments from solid evidence, not by revolution; but Wells, famous now, and, and notorious for his private life, was hardly cut out to become a major political theorist or patient reformer. He was more practical and demanding, and he identified most with the new generation, restless like himself to escape from stifling conventions and middle- class, middle-aged morality. . . . [H]e deplored wasted human potential and urged a planned global society. Today Wells's crusading protest adds another factor to his modernity. To idealistic agitators, suffragettes, and pacifists in the Edwardian years, his voice heralded genuine liberation. The alternative to utopia in Wells's opinion was world chaos and ruin; but man could reach that end through complacency alone, and Wells challenged his vast audience to change their comfortable belief in inevitable progress before it was too late (Barker 317).
It is also important to note that Wells had a high public
stature throughout his career as a historian and novelist, and that his credibility as a historian and "real-world" activist in a sense ...