And yet he must have looked at the reproductions of these rock
paintings given in the _Outline_. Because in his ninth paper he comes
out with the most wonderful of all the mare’s-nests he has discovered
in the _Outline of History_, and it concerns these very pictures. You
see there is an account of the Reindeer men who lived in France and
North Spain, and it is said of them that it is doubtful if they used
the bow. Mr. Belloc declares that it is my bitter hatred of religion
that makes me say this, but indeed it is not. It is still doubtful if
the Reindeer hunters had the bow. The fires of Smithfield would not
tempt me to say certainly either that they had it or that they did not
have it, until I know. But they seem to have killed the reindeer and
the horse and bison by spearing them. Mr. Belloc may have evidence
unknown to the rest of mankind in that Humbert safe of his, otherwise
that is the present state of our knowledge. But, as I explain on pages
56 and 57 in language that a child might understand, simultaneously
with that reindeer-hunting life in the north there were more advanced
(I know the word will disgust Mr. Belloc with its horrid suggestion of
progress, but I have to use it) Palæolithic people scattered over the
greater part of Spain and reaching into the South of France who had the
bow. It says so in the text: “Men carry bows” runs my text, describing
certain rock pictures reproduced in my book. I wrote it in the text;
and in the legends that are under these pictures, legends read and
approved by me, the statement is repeated. The matter is as plain as
daylight and as plainly stated. Mr. Belloc will get if he says over to
himself slowly: “Reindeer men, bows doubtful; Azilian, Capsian men to
the south, bows certainly.” And now consider Mr. Belloc, weaving his
mare’s-nest:--
“Upon page 55 he writes, concerning the Palæolithic man of the cave
drawings, this sentence: ‘_it is doubtful if they knew of the bow_.’
“When I first read that sentence, I was so staggered, I could
hardly believe I had read it right.
“That a person pretending to teach popular prehistorical science in
1925 should tell us of the cave painters that it was ‘_doubtful if
they knew of the bow_’ seemed to me quite out of nature.
“It was the more extraordinary because here before me, in Mr.
Wells’s own book, were reproductions of these cave paintings, with
the bow and the arrow appearing all over them! Even if he did not
take the trouble to look at the pictures that were to illustrate
his book, and left that department (as he probably did) to hack
work, he ought, as an ordinary educated man, to have known the
ultimate facts of the case.
“Palæolithic man was an archer, and an archer with an efficient
weapon.
“The thing is a commonplace; only gross ignorance can have
overlooked it; but, as I have said, there is a cause behind that
ignorance. Mr. Wells would not have made this enormous error if he
had not been possessed with the necessity of making facts fit in
with his theology.”