Answer: That the people of England were unprepared for an attack.
In the first chapters of The War of the Worlds, Wells criticizes the fact that human beings were unprepared for a Martian attack. He tells us that people were too busy focusing on the Earth and its problems, so that they did not think of what else could be out there in the universe. Moreover, those who did think about it did not believe that intelligent creatures could exist anywhere else. This is a real world criticism of England and its unpreparedness for war.