H. G. Wells
You Can’t Be Too Careful
A Sample of Life—1901-1951
To Christopher Morely, who richly deserves it, this book is dedicated
Introduction.
Plain Common Sense
“What are ideers?” said Mr Edward Albert Tewler. “What good are they? What good do they do you?”
Young Tewler had no answer.
“You get these here books,” said Mr Tewler senior.
“You don’t ’ave to read ’em. It can’t be good for your eyes, especially nowadays with all this light-saving and everything. And what, do you get out of them?” He paused for his own contemptuous reply....“Ideers!”
“I made good,” Mr Tewler continued, trampling over the rebellious silence of his offspring. “And why? Because I took jolly good care to steer clear of all these Ideers. I made up my mind and I did. What the world wants of a man is Character—and you can’t have much character left if you’ve muddled yourself up with Ideers. See! I ask you—’ow I made good?”
“You got the G.C.,” said young Tewler. “We’re all proud of you.”
“Very well,” said Mr Tewler senior conclusively.
There was a pause. “All the same,” said young Tewler.
“Ah!” said his father.
“All the same,” said young Tewler. “You got to keep up with the times. Things do change.”
“You don’t change human nature. There’s such things as the Eternal Verities, ’Enery. Ever ’eard of ’em?”
“Yerss. I know. But all this stuff that’s getting about. Like abolishing distance, stopping this air war, having a sort of federal world. If we don’t end war, war will end us. All that.”
“Claptrap,” said his father. “Bawls.”
“Well,” said his offspring. “I was reading a book—”
“There you go!”
“Well, he said anyhow, he wasn’t talking about Ideers. He was talking about facts. That’s what he said. Just as you and me might be.”
“Facts! What are these precious facts of ’is? In a book!”
“Well, I’m telling you. He says that what with all this invention and discovery that’s been going on life isn’t the same as it used to be. We’ve got so that everybody’s on our doorstep. We’ve got power, more than we ever ’ad, so as to be able to smash our world to bits. And ’e says we are smashing it to bits. And what he says is that whether it’s hard, whether it goes against the grain, we can’t go on in the old way. We got to exert ourselves. War, ’e says, will last for ever unless we get a lot of new things going....”
“Now listen to me, ’Enery. Who is it ’as been putting all these Ideers into you?—for Ideers they are, say what you like. Who is it, I ask? Some one who’s written a book? Eh? Some professor or journalist or something of that sort? Some devilish clever chap who isn’t reely anybody at all. Somebody who’d just jump at the chance of getting a ’undred pounds for writing a book to depress people and not mind what happens. Well, let’s come down to brass tacks. Put him on one side there. As it might be—so. Now here on the other ’and you’ve got real people, thousands of those who know. Here’s our great Leader. Don’t he know anything, ’Enery? Who are you and your book-writer to criticise and sit in judgment on ’im? Here’s all these men of experience in the government, older than you are, wiser than you are, brought up to deal with just these particular things. Here’s business men with great businesses, businesses you haven’t the beginnings of a notion. Don’t they know anything? No? You got ideers about India. Have you ever bin to India, ’Enery? They ’ave. You’ve got notions about Japan. What do you know of Japan? There they are, they got the best science, the very fullest information, the knowledge, they’ve learnt everything they could teach ’em at the universities, let alone the experience, and along comes some—some unresponsible scribbler with his ideers... Unresponsible scribbler, I said, and I repeat it, unresponsible, with his twopenny-halfpenny ideers, arguing and suggesting. ’E knows this and ’e knows that. And everybody else is wrong. And off you fly!”
“Well, the world now isn’t so particularly satisfactory.... Falling to pieces like.... Don’t seem to settle down; does it?....”
“It’s as right as it can be. What do you know of the difficulties they got to contend against? You got to trust ’em. Who are you to set yourself up?”
“All the same you can’t help thinking—”
“Think? yes—I admit that—you got to think, out think in the right way. Think like people round you think. Don’t go rushing about like a dog with a wasp in his ear, with ideers that don’t stand to reason. All this talk of a new world! Brave new world it would be! As the saying goes. Brave New World! Stay put where you are, boy. Do you want to be queer? Do you want to go about talking all this sort of thing just to be larfed at? Suppose—now suppose even there was something in all that stuff you get in books. There’s ’undreds of books saying this that and the other thing. Who’s to tell you which is right? I ask you. I do put it to you, ’Enery.”
Edward Albert Tewler’s face was very grave and earnest and full of parental solicitude. His voice lost its faint flavour of querulous protest and became simply affectionate. “You’ll grow out of all this, ’Enery,” he said. “It’s a sort of measles of the mind. It rubs off. I had it. Not as bad as you, I admit, for I didn’t run the same risks. I was never a great reader, thank God, and when I did read I stuck to safe books. Still I know how it goes....
“Frinstance I was brought up a bit narrer. My mother, she was an angel if ever was, but she was narrer. She got narrer. She was too good to suspect them as got ’old of her. When it came to Total Immersion and all that and going to meeting Sunday after Sunday I struck. It wasn’t that I lost my faith. No. It grew. It broadened out, my boy. Simple earnest Christianity, says I, and none of your Creeds and Ideers and complications. And that’s what I am, a Simple Believing Christian in a Christian Land. The Lord died to save us, ’Enery, me and you, and there’s no need to make a song about it. Or risk ketching your death of cold as they wanted me to do. Trust in God and honour the King. That’s good enough for me. Yes.”
He paused. He smiled indulgently at his past.
“A little religious trouble I did ’ave even after that. I didn’t take things for granted.... That’s not my way. About the ark it was. Curious! I’ll tell you. You see, I bin to the Zoo and suddenly I doubted about whether the ark could ’ave ’eld all them animals. I did, ’Enery. Being clever, that was. Being silly, my boy. It was the Devil put it into me to make a fool of me. Just as though God Ormighty couldn’t pack anything into anything if ’E ’ad a mind to. Why, if he’d wanted to. He could’ve put all them animals into a nutshell—all of them. Leastways—a cokernut, say. Easy—
“I saw the light, and so will you, ’Enery. All this Brave Noo World of theirs! Bunkum New World, says I. Gord larfs at it. Ferget it!... You’ll grow out of it. At heart you’re sound, my boy. You’re the bulldog breed. At heart, when you’re put to the test, you’ll stand up to it as I stood up to it and come out right side up.”
The young man looked mulish still, but he said no more.
The conversation hung fire for a moment.
Then Edward Albert Tewler resumed. “I’m glad to have this talk with you. Now you are going away, I’ve been a bit worried. Seeing you reading so much. There’s other subjects I might talk to you about as father to son—but nowadays people seem to know such a lot. More than ever I did. We won’t go into all that, No.... You may be away a long time, and it’s not so easy to get about now as it used to be. I’ve never been much of a letter-writer....