tion as a
novelist and writer, we fail to see any particular in which his views on
political and social matters of the day are of extraordinary importance
to the welfare of the community at large. In a word, it seems to us that
those articles of his which from time to time occupy so prominent a
position on the leader page of the _Daily News_ might appear as fitly in
the correspondence column. Mr. G. K. Chesterton has won for himself a
high place in contemporary letters, but it is more probable that that
place is due rather to the excellence and individuality of his writing
than to the originality of the opinions he holds. It may be said,
indeed, of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, as an exceedingly competent critic has
said of Mr. Shaw, that it is his manner of expressing his philosophy
rather than his philosophy itself that will be valued by posterity. And
as Mr. Shaw has expressed most of his views in his plays and prefaces
rather than in the columns of the newspapers (and this is said in full
remembrance of his manifold and copious letters to _The Times_), so Mr.
H. G. Wells has given us his philosophy in his novels and fantasies. His
appearances in the newspapers have been rare and invariably regrettable.
The two other gentlemen whose names are mentioned, Mr. E. B. Osborn and
Mr. A. G. Gardiner, should be classed, perhaps, rather with those other
three who are in control, more or less, of the papers in which their
writings appear, since both Mr. Osborn and Mr. Gardiner are definitely
attached, the one to the _Morning Post_ and the other to the _Daily News
and Leader_, of which, before the amalgamation, he was editor. This
being the case, it is to be assumed that these two gentlemen express and
sign their views in these papers because their views correspond to a
determining extent with those of the proprietors of the papers. This
must logically be the case with Mr. Gardiner. So far as Mr. Osborn is
concerned, he occupies on the _Morning Post_ the same position as was
occupied on that paper by Mr. Belloc and on the _Daily News_ in former
times by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. That is to say, he is an essayist of
such standing as to make a regular contribution from him of value to the
newspaper so long as the views and opinions he expresses in those essays
do not contrast too violently with the opinions expressed in the leading
articles.

Of the other three gentlemen we have named, Mr. Orage, Mr. Cecil
Chesterton and Mr. Webb, it is di