The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-09-29
BY GRANT M. OVERTON.

Weiss new novel, Joan and Peter: The
Story of an Education, who was also d
reader of Mr. Drifting, is that Mr.. Wells
is not Getting On.
Like Mr. Drilling, the new novel-of
594 closely printed pages-deals extern
sively with the war. The war having con-
tinued after the publication of Mr. Brit
ling, We have it, in Joan and Peter up to
April, 1918.
Since the war is obviously Gettin On it
is impossible not to feel some chagrin
that Mr.. Wells should not be Getting On
too. The explanation is probably that
the war has made real .headway since
April, 1918, when Joan and Peter breaks
off.
This is deplorable, but as, under pres
ent publishing conditions, to have a novel
only six months behind the times is an al
most superhuman feat, one that, indeed,
only Mr.. Wells could accomplish, the sole
remedy seems TO be for Mr. Wells to
change his occupation. He should edit
newspaper consisting entirely Of install
ments of an endless novel, none of which
would be more than twenty-four hours
cold.
Coroners and Coronations.
Coroners have been abolished in New
York city, in tie city of Buffalo, and we
believe in Boston; but coroners still cor
onate in England and Mr. Wells is head
coroner. He loves to hold inquests and
autopsies; and to pronounce the man dead
is one of his favorite formulas. Joan and
Peter is an autopsy on England before the
war, with special reference to the Eng
ish educational organs, which appear to
have functioned very strangely, so
strangely as almost to discourage belief
in Adaptation, Darwin, Evolution and
Salvation through Science. Schools did
the Same Old Things in the Same Old
Ways with the Same Old Human Mate
rial and the Same Old Results. And Mr..
Wells exhibits those results all the way
from the Dardanelles to General Cough.
They are sufficiently appalling, in all
conscience.
His book is terrific and merciless and
largely hnanswerable exposure of Eng
lish education Never was a country SO
ripped up the back. If these are the
faithful wounds of a friend and loyal
Enghshman then the wonder is that Eng
land does not bleed to death.
There are chapters in which Mr.. Wells
writes of an English school which might
have come straight out Of the pages of
Charles Dickens. There are chapters in
which he writes Of an English school
which could only satisfy Winifred Sack
vile Stoner and Upton Sinclair. But
there are no chapters in which he writes
of an English school that would delight
II. G. Wells. None exists. Perhaps none
ever will.
But many things exist to dissaiisfy Mr..
Wells-such as Kings and Coronations
and Durbars, Sir Edward Carsons and
County Families, and Sex No, he does
not seem entirely satisfied with Sex As
1t Is.
The Shortcomings OF Sex.
There is good deal about Sex in Joan
and Peter. Peter was the son Of Arthur
Stubland, a fool who made copper re-
pousse and detained in a tenor voice
about aesthetics. Joan was the unlegalized
child Of Will Sydenham, brother of Ar
thurs wife, Dolly. Arthur and Dolly
made Joan foster sister of their Peter.
When she grew up she called him Petah.
He sometimes halloa'd for Jo-un.
Arthur was unfaithful to Dolly, but
Dolly was not unfaithful, except for
short period of emotional struggle, to
Arthur; and this despite the fervor with
which she was loved by Oswald Syden-
ham, her cousin. Oswald, one side of
whose face was pulped in his youth under
circumstances which gained him the Vic
toria Cross, became an African empire