H.G. Wells and the New Liberalism

This article offers a new interpretation of H.G. Wells's politicalthought in the Edwardian period and beyond. Scholars have emphasisedhis socialism at the expense of his commitment to liberalism,and have misread his novel The New Machiavelli as an anti-Liberaltract. Wells spent much effort in the pre-1914 period in thequest for a ‘new Liberalism’, and did not believethat socialists should compete directly with the Liberal Partyfor votes. It was this latter conviction that lay behind hismuch misunderstood dispute with the Fabian Society. His politicalsupport for Churchill was one sign of his belief in the compatibilityof liberalism and socialism, in which he was far from uniqueat the time. He also engaged, somewhat idiosyncratically, withthe ‘servile state’ concept of Hilaire Belloc. Althoughhe did not articulate his Liberal identity with complete consistency,he did so with increasing intensity as the First World War approached.This helps explain why key New Liberal politicians includingChurchill, Lloyd George and Masterman responded to his ideassympathetically. The extent of engagement between Wells andthe ‘New Liberalism’ was such that he deserves tobe considered alongside Green, Ritchie, Hobson and Hobhouseas one of its prophets.     

A History of the Future

Does history have to be only about the past? “History” refers to both a subject matter and a thought process. That thought process involves raising questions, marshalling evidence, discerning patterns in the evidence, writing narratives, and critiquing the narratives written by others. Whatever subject matter they study, all historians employ the thought process of historical thinking. What if historians were to extend the process of historical thinking into the subject matter domain of the future? Historians would breach one of our profession’s most rigid disciplinary barriers. Very few historians venture predictions about the future, and those who do are viewed with skepticism by the profession at large. On methodological grounds, most historians reject as either impractical, quixotic, hubristic, or dangerous any effort to examine the past as a way to make predictions about the future. However, where at one time thinking about the future did mean making a scientifically–based prediction, futurists today are just as likely to think in terms of scenarios. Where a prediction is a definitive statement about what will be, scenarios are heuristic narratives that explore alternative plausibilities of what might be. Scenario writers, like historians, understand that surprise, contingency, and deviations from the trend line are the rule, not the exception; among scenario writers, context matters. The thought process of the scenario method shares many features with historical thinking. With only minimal intellectual adjustment, then, most professionally trained historians possess the necessary skills to write methodologically rigorous “histories of the future.”     

端纳致田伯烈函

1938年10月24日端纳(W.H.Donald)随蒋介石离开汉口,视察鄂、湘、赣、桂前方阵地,12月前往重庆。同年12月28日和次年1月1日,端纳分两次给田伯烈(H.J.Timperley)写了这封长信,详细介绍他随蒋介石视察的所见所闻。     

Settlement and Society: A Study of the Early Agrarian History of South Lincolnshire. By H. E. Hallam

Among the most important groups of English sixteenth-century tombs are those of the Howard family in the parish church of St Michael at Framlingham, Suffolk. Their history is extremely complicated and their dating controversial. In 1965 Howard Colvin and Professor Lawrence Stone published an article on the tombs in this journal which, based on exemplary documentary research, remains the most detailed (and best) study of the subject (Stone and Colvin 1965). Since then some new material has been discovered which throws fresh light on the problems surrounding the tombs. Discussion will be confined mainly to the tombs of the second and third Howard Dukes of Norfolk and that of the first two wives of the fourth Duke. The monument to the third Duke's son, Henry Howard, the poet Earl of Surrey, who was beheaded in 1547, is excluded as it was not set up until 1614.