Foreign News: Wells Rasps

“Impertinent . . . unreasonably discourteous. . . Mr. Wells’s rasping tongue . . . blackguardly ”

With words and phrases such as these many a London editor flayed last week the following opinions expressed by characters in the second volume of H. G. Wells’s newly released novel The World of William Clissold: George V, R. I. is “the worthy, conscientious, entirely unmeaning and uninteresting son of plump old Edward VII.” The Earl of Balfour, “that damned madonna lily; . . . grows where he is planted.” Lloyd George is as “clever as six foxes Margot Asquith: ” Wherever— there is a foreground there also will be the Countess of Oxford and Asquith.”