Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/299

 stands; there are places when you might very well think the writer was writing about the present instead of lunging boldly into what was then the future; and it may even be that in checking its forecasts by accomplishment, the reader will find an interest that his predecessor at the beginning of the century necessarily lacked.

Remember that the book was written during the Boer War, and before the complete publication of the 1901 census returns. Since then not only these but the returns of 1911 have come to hand to confirm very thoroughly the anticipations of urban extension, of social segregation and of the altering weight of classes that constitutes the opening chapters. All that has worked out very satisfactorily, so that even quite detailed prophecies have been confirmed, such as the disappearance of literary "Boomsters," and the decay of the press and appearance of smaller newspapers. And further on a considerable claim for verification may be based upon the estimate of Russia's power, made five years before the revolt of Moscow in 1906 and the war with Japan. The whole of that chapter, the Larger Synthesis, has stood the wear of fourteen years fairly well. For the most part it might have been written yesterday. But on the other hand, there are undeniable failures. Those specialised roads for motors, for example, and particularly the one that was to run from London to Brighton, do not materialise, and the book displays a remarkable want of confidence in the immediate