96 
House & Garden 
The Great War had come. We had sent to the 
front a corps of trained writers—Arthur Ruhl, 
Frederick Palmer, Henry Beech Needham, 
Perceval Gihhon—who were filling the pages of 
Collier’s with vivid first-hand pictures of War 
as it is. 
And yet—there was something more. 
Not the shell-torn terrain, the clash of aero¬ 
planes, the mud and squalor of trenches, the 
trains of wounded. . . . but something 
more intimate to each of us. The effect of this 
war on the souls of people, people like our¬ 
selves, in the quiet towns and countrysides of 
Europe. How was it changing their feelings 
toward themselves, toward their fellows, 
toward government and such things as national 
honor and prestige, if it was changing them? 
Could any writer give this to Americans? 
Then, we learned that H.G. Wells was writing 
a novel on the war. We arranged to see the 
manuscript. 
“Mr. Britling Sees It Through,” we found, did 
achieve this thing, marvelously. The placid 
scene of English life on which the war burst 
with dramatic suddenness. . . .The ques¬ 
tions it flung in the face of complaisant theory 
.And then—the winning to an answer 
to these questions. . . .And finally the win¬ 
ning to a conviction of the only basis of a peace 
that can make future Great Wars impossible. . . 
All this not told abstractly but through a bril¬ 
liant story of real human beings, pivoting round 
the delightful, endearing, tragic Mr. Britling. 
(Who can read without deep emotion and who 
having read can ever forget that scene, for 
example, where Mr. Britling as a refuge ifrom 
his anguish at the loss of his son in battle sits by 
the roadside atlas in hand and draws, in red ink, 
new frontiers on the map of Europe, frontiers 
determined by race and language, effacing 
those made by jealousy and greed?) 
So we brought “Mr. Britling” to America as 
a Collier serial. 
As a Collier serial and now in book form, “Mr. 
Britling” is the year’s sensation, hailed in 
England and America as the one big imagina¬ 
tive work created by the Great War. 
Collier’s, in short story and serial, holds to this 
ideal— entertainment, — yes, and something more. 
We cite “Mr. Britling,” a recent instance, be¬ 
cause Wells’ novel is now in the world’s eye 
and so admirably realizes that ideal. 
For Collier’s believes that a growing body of 
Americans demand fiction that both enhances 
life’s enjoyment and, in some measure, helps to 
life’s understanding. 
This is one of the ways in which Collier’s earns 
the right to its title “The National Weekly.” 
CAREY PRINTING COMPANY, INC. 
