Mr. Wells' Wonderland

THE AUTOCRACY OF MR. PARKHAM-- H. G. Wells--Doubleday, Doran ($1).

Author Herbert George Wells, onetime first-class novelist and short-story writer, is now propagandist perennial. Lately his novel-pamphlets have preached the necessity of peace. The Autocracy of Mr. Parham, besides much Wellsian argumentation many Wellsian men of straw, gives Author Wells's parable of what will happen to the world if old-fashioned people remain in control of it. Few present-day Wells readers will be surprised that the story proper begins on Page 90, that all before that is argument, exposition, setting the text.

Mr. Parham, supercilious Cambridge don, meets Sir Bussy Woodcock, self-made millionaire, at a dinner. They are mutually fascinated by each other's queerness. They become occasional companions though never intimates. Sir Bussy's intellect is insatiable, restless; he has the money to gratify his curiosity. When he decides to investigate spiritualism, he does it thoroughly, holding seances in specially-constructed laboratories. At one of these seances, "ectoplasm" from the medium takes independent shape, absorbs Mr. Parham, announces itself as the Lord Paramount, savior-dictator of England. Sir Bussy and his skeptical companions acknowledge the dictator, do his bidding. There is a coup d'etat, Parliament is closed, England put under martial law. The Lord Paramount wants a war and gets it, but it is more than he bargained for. In a desperate attempt to seize the privately-controlled laboratory where the world's most powerful poison gas is stored, the Lord Paramount, his lieutenants and England itself, are all blown to smithereens. Luckily it was all a dream. But, says Author Wells between the lines, it is a nightmare that might come true.

The Author. Herbert George Wells, 63, with Playwright George Bernard Shaw, was one of the potent pre-War prophets of the then younger generation. Post-War youth looks at him askance, thinks him unreliable, refuses to take him seriously. His enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, missionary spirit have made him one of the most versatile writers (in subject-matter) of his century. Son of Professional Cricketer Joseph Wells, he was educated as a biologist, has written on religion, science, history, politics, international relations, socialism, tactics, education, philosophy. Onetime socialist, onetime passionate patriot, he is always promulgating some new social religion. Short, stout, bright-eyed, he has a short-clipped mustache, a high voice, coughs apologetically as he talks. In a vote on "Britain's best brains" tabulated last week by The Spectator, Mr. Wells ranked sixth, preceded (in order) by George Bernard Shaw, Sir Oliver Lodge, Lord Birkenhead, Winston Churchill, Dean Inge. He has written more than 50 books. Some of them: Tono Bungay, The History of Mr. Polly, The Wife of Sir Isaac Barman, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, Tales of Space and Time, Anticipations, New Worlds for Old, God the Invisible King, The Outline of History.

The Autocracy of Mr. Parham at $1 is not only indistinguishable in size and format from novels selling at $2.50, but is illustrated by famed English Caricaturist "Law" (David Low).

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