eform and change. A number of 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 (1:316, et passim). 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 (1:317).
It is also important to note that We...