Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 $5.50

Special Double Issue : Table of Contents: Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008

CHESTERTON & THE JEWS by Dale Ahlquist, “I Am Fond of Jews” The Marconi Scandal beginning page 20

Features No Room for the Babe 51 | :Off the Shelf with Mike Foster 37 |:Jogging with G.K.: by James G. Bruen Jr. The Merchant of Venice Running From Home 6 |:Editorial: by Robert Moore-Jumonville 52 |:Fear of Film: Chesterton and Anti-Semitism: 58 |:Encore!: A Personal Reflection The Bigot The Rosary on Celluloid 38 |:The Signature of Man: by Art Livingston by Dale Ahlquist, President of the Ameri- by G.K. Chesterton Frank Brangwyn and The can Chesterton Society Daughters of Jerusalem Departments 54 |:Chesterton’s Mail Bag: by G.K. Chesterton 8 |:Straws in the Wind: Jews and Anti-Jews A Report on My Anti-Semitism 4 |:Tremendous Trifles 40 |:The Battle with the Dragon: 56 |:News with Views by G.K. Chesterton “Those People” 5 |:Lunacy and Letters by Kyro R. Lantsberger 57 |:Clerihew Corner 13 |:ALARMS & DISCURSIONS: 42 |: the Detection Club: Interview with Robert Asch The Copy 41 |:All I Survey: by Dale Ahlquist Columns by John Peterson A Shrine Out of Time by David W. Fagerberg The Chesterton Files 11 |:SCHALL on CHESTERTON: 19 |:the Ballad of Gilbert: The Sword of Wood On “Believing in Jews” “Mediaevalism” | by James V. Schall, S.J. 45 :ALL is GRIST: Chesterton’s Bloodthirsty Heirs Love and Loyalty 18 |:A Miscellany of Men: Brief Reviews of the Contemporary by Joe Campbell Some of His Best Friends Mystery Scene by Steve Miller 34 |:the Flying Inn: by Dale Ahlquist The Rule of Law | by David Beresford 46 :the Distributist: 48 |:Book Reviews: Distributism and the Jews 30 |:the ROLLING ROAD: Whatever You Do, Don’t by Dale Ahlquist More Real Than We Mention the Jews 35 |:the Flying STars: Can Imagine Reviewed by Bradley Rothstein An Author Accused 47 |:Chesterton University: by Kevin O’Brien by Nancy Carpentier Brown The Desire of the More Vindication from Everlasting Hills Chesterton’s “Last” Book 36 |:Manalive: 32 |:Tales of the Short Bow: Reviewed by Sean P. Dailey As I Was Saying An Accidental Death Changing the Culture in Good Pope, Bad Press by John Peterson a Chestertonian Way Reviewed by Chris Chan by Chris Chan

Publisher: Dale Ahlquist, President, ACS eDitor-in-Chief: Sean P. Dailey art Director: Ted Schluenderfritz literary Editor: Therese Warmus copy Editor: Mike Foster

Senior Writer: John Peterson contributing Editors: David Beresford, Sara Bowen, Nancy Brown, Joe Campbell, John C. Chalberg, Christopher Chan, David Paul Deavel, David W. Fagerberg, Mike Foster, Kyro Lantsberger, Art Livingston, Roy Moore, Robert Moore-Jumonville. James V. Schall, SJ “News with Views” Editors: Nathan Allen, Mark Pilon, Larry Pavlicek, Ted Olsen Subscriptions: (See Coupon Page 6) Credit Card Orders: call 1-800-343-2425 or fax 1-270-325-3091 letters and Articles: Gilbert Magazine, American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437 [email protected] www.gilbertmagazine.com. Letters to the editor may be edited for length or clarity.

Gilbert Magazine is published every six weeks by The American Chesterton Society, a non-profit corporation established under Paragraph 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code. Donations to the American Chesterton Society are tax-deductible in the United States. Your contributions help support the publication of Gilbert Magazine. Please send your donations to: The American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437. The views expressed by Gilbert Magazine contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher, the editors, or the American Chesterton Society. Copyright ©2008, by The American Chesterton Society.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 3 : Tremendous Trifles: by Sean P. Dailey

elcome to this special issue of Gilbert Magazine. After years of reflection, we have decided to deal Literary London was still buzzing from the in a thorough and forthright manner with the 100 publication of Orthodoxy. The book had been oft-repeated accusation against G.K. Chesterton, years ago reviewed in nearly every magazine and news- that he was an anti-Semite. It is a charge that paper, and The New Age asked Chesterton to respond to Wcontinues to resurface, despite all evidence to the contrary. one of the more extended criticisms of the book written by Chesterton dealt with it in his own lifetime (see his essay, “A E. Belfort Bax, which called Orthodoxy “a spiritual spoof.” Report on My Anti-Semitism” on page 8) and it has contin- Chesterton replied that Mr. Bax’s criticism demonstrated not ued to resurface in the decades since his death. But as GM publisher Dale Ahlquist writes in his lengthy essay beginning that Christianity was dead but that the nineteenth century on page 20, it is “a mean and wretched lie.” The charge attack on Christianity was utterly dead. alone, he points out, “is poisonous.”

¶¶Just how poisonous and false this charge really is you on every chapter except the last two, which have yet to will see for yourself in the pages that follow. We scrutinize it appear. This is a real treasure—there are twelve essays on from all angles, beginning with a personal statement from “The Ethics of Elfland” alone!—and will be of use to schol- Dale on page 6. Dale then examines Chesterton’s boyhood ars, researchers, and anyone with an interest in Chesterton. friendships (page 18) and the infamous Marconi scandal (page 27). He also interviews Robert Asch, a Jew who ¶¶Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has a blog, and on converted to Catholicism thanks to Chesterton, on page that blog he has an essay, “Distributism vs. Redistributism.” 13. Fr. James Schall weighs in on page 11. And through- Though both Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc would guffaw out this issue, in essays from our contributing editors, in at being described as “conservative capitalists,” Pournelle’s book reviews, movie reviews, essays on Jews and Distribut- article contains many fine observations, including this: ism, and of course with Chesterton’s own original writing The Regulatory State seems determined to restrict on the subject, we take the “mean and wretched lie” that America to two kinds of companies: those with fewer than 50 Chesterton was an anti-Semite, and tear the entrails out employees and giant corporations with thousands of employ- of it. Chesterton fans can now confront this lie head on, ees. No one in his right mind would expand a company…from and not be embarrassed when this false accusation arises. 49 to 51 employees. The instant one gets to 50 (or 51 depend- Chesterton in his lifetime was as loved by Jews as he was ing on the state) a huge panoply of regulations kick in, so loved by everyone else who knew him. many that even if one can afford to comply with them all, one will also need a compliance staff of several employees to make ¶¶This issue’s cover shows Chesterton with Israel Zangwill sure one is in compliance. This means that up to 10 percent as they leave a hearing at the Select Committee on Censor- of one’s workforce does nothing productive except keep the owners out of jail. ship in 1910. Both Chesterton and Zangwill testified against government censorship of plays. Zangwill (1864–1926) It doesn’t make much sense, but that’s Hudge and Gudge was probably the most famous Jewish literary figure of the for you, who work together much more closely than either early twentieth century, and he and Chesterton had respect the Left or the Right will ever admit. Find Pournelle’s essay and admiration for one another. Chesterton called Zangwill at http://jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q4/view541.html​ “a great artist and a very earnest thinker,” and “a mystic #Distributism. and visionary Jew”; his plays include “The Children of the Ghetto” and “The Melting Pot.” Like Chesterton, he was a ¶¶The revolution continues: there is a G.K. Chesterton Zionist, and like Chesterton, he was great with a one-liner: Theatre Company, headquartered in Santa Monica, Califor- “A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreci- nia. The company’s mission, as reported on the Chesterton ate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.” and Friends blog, “is to engage the Hollywood Culture and Zangwill reviewed Chesterton’s play “Magic” and said that put on great biographical works that will move and inspire although Chesterton was trying to “put the clock back in the audience.” The company’s first production, Malcolm philosophy” he was putting “the clock forward in drama.” and Teresa, about the conversion of Malcolm Muggeridge, ran through November 16. Visit them on the Web at www. ¶¶Speaking of Orthodoxy, for all of 2008 Peter Flori- gkchestertontheatre.org. For information on future produc- ani (as Dr. Thursday) has been posting, every Thursday, tions call (310) 462-5141 or e-mail [email protected]. a chapter-by-chapter examination of that book on the American Chesterton Society blog. His “Index to the ¶¶Parting Trifle: Season IV of theApostle of Common Thursdays of Orthodoxy” can be found at http://amer​ Sense is now available on DVD. Go to http://chesterton. icanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com/2008/09/index-to- org/acs/merchandise.htm to order your copy in time for thursdays-of-orthodoxy.html. The index has all his essays Christmas.

4 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Lunacy & Letters: from Gilbert Magazine Readers Dear Sean, I’m surprised that so many win- from an invasion by a large military ning entries in the 2008 clerihew power. The attack on Pearl Harbor in contest break an essential clerihew 1941 comes to mind. The entire United rule (GM September, 2008, page 17). States was mobilized for the war effort, If we trust the American Chesterton and this effort was controlled and oper- Society’s definition of the clerihew, ated by the central government. then these poems are supposed to I would also ask how such complex rhyme. A “rhyme,” the dictionary tells products such as automobiles, micro- us, is a repetition of sounds in two or without my presence—and of several wave ovens, televisions, and computers more words beginning with the vowel fine articles inside, but I was then would be manufactured in your Dis- in the last stressed syllable of each stopped in my tracks. tributist utopia. Must Distributists do word. “Stew and blue.” “Creation I came to page 40, “In Defense without these? and automation.” See? It’s not rocket of Intolerance, by Maria MacDonald.” How many Americans or Canadi- surgery. Multiply her seventeen years by five, ans might be persuaded to leave their Examples of this year’s non- and she is still a year younger than am urban lifestyle, with all of its ameni- rhymes? “Her and nicer.” “Omar and I. (I think I’m right, but I’ve run out of ties and all of its problems, in order nor bar.” “Good twist” and “Ahlquist.” fingers and toes.) You will understand, to move to a village as a small-acreage “Law and law (these are not “two or I am confident, how very warming it farmer, or to become a store-owning more words”). “Debussy and the sea.” is to people like me at the end of our merchant, or itinerant builder or “Ripley and pimply.” usefulness and not very far from the repairman? I am not against outlandish end of this life, to watch young people Each of your arguments for rhymes. These are part of the fun, as of this calibre taking over. Distributism makes a certain amount when Chesterton rhymed “Italy” and The intellectual comprehension of sense taken by itself, but taken “Bitterly” (but of course you have read and courage in that essay impressed together the arguments all add up to it with an English accent). me very, very strongly, as did her fine an impossible dream. In my not-so-humble opinion, a use of language. I constantly say that Lyle Patterson contest judge should never fudge when if dark powers wish to destroy ratio- Miami, Florida awarding prizes of whatever sizes. nal thought and morality, they begin Arthur Quigley by corrupting language, and we are Dear Sean, Decatur, Illinois unremittingly subjected to such attacks I enjoyed Mike Foster’s review of daily. So lucid writing is important. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Dear Sean, If you are able and willing to pass in the September issue of Gilbert In vain I have searched your on my admiration to Maria McDonald, Magazine (page 44). I am a huge fan September issue for a key to the I would be grateful. of J.R.R. Tolkien’s original fiction but photographs featured on the cover. Aidan Mackey have not read much of his translations Who are these folks? Some answers Bedford, England of ancient poems. Chesterton fan can be found in the captioned photos though I am, I appreciate the frequent that accompany the conference report Dear Sean, appearance of Tolkien in your pages, (pages 12–16). Anyway, I doubt that Your recent editorial, “House of usually courtesy of Mr. Foster. I’m alone in wishing to put names to Cards” makes the case for Distribut- I disagree, however, with Mr. these interesting faces. ism, which you define as a society Foster’s characterization of Frodo’s Lana Furman based on families living in small auton- actions at the end of his quest as a Boise, Idaho omous communities (GM September, “failure.” It is a failure only in the 2008, page 7). most material sense. By the time he Dear Sean, While I agree that we have sadly stood on the threshold of the Cracks The September/October issue of become a nation that runs on bor- of Doom, Frodo was entirely spent: Gilbert Magazine arrived this morn- rowed money, and that this must stop physically, emotionally, psychologically, ing. I put aside 3,276.3 Chestertonian if we are to survive, is this credit-based and even spiritually, he had nothing tasks (every three years since 1832 I economy a result of big government? left to give. And yet the Ring was still have clearly announced my retirement, I should think it possible to have a destroyed. Because of Frodo’s humility but nobody takes any notice!) to read debt-ridden small community and a and his charity toward Gollum, Grace it, and I had intended to write my very debt-free large nation state. was allowed to play its part, as Tolkien real appreciation of the radiant front Furthermore, you will have to himself explains in his Letters. cover—which made me self-pitying demonstrate for us that a society of Francis Barreiro because you all contrived to survive independent villages could defend itself Winslow, Arizona

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 5 : Editorial: Chesterton and Anti-Semitism: A Personal Reflection by Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society

here are two kinds of people who accuse G.K. Ches- schools to major colleges and universities, from private terton of being anti-Semitic: those who don’t know homes to the House of Lords in England. I have been any better, and those who do. In either case the interviewed and consulted by the academy and the media. charge is poisonous. It has done enormous damage I am happy to say that not once, not even when defending to Chesterton’s reputation, prevented people from Chesterton in debates, have I ever had anyone ever accuse Tdiscovering and enjoying his writings, and generally added me of anti-Semitism. to the confusion in the world. While I cannot say that some of my best friends are The American Chesterton Society and Gilbert Magazine Jewish (since I don’t have any friends) I can say that some have been fairly successful in avoiding this topic until now. of my best relatives are Jewish. For most of my life I have It was a pretty good strategy: “Silence is the one unbearable had the privilege of being intimately involved with Jewish repartee,” says Chesterton, and “Neglect is the Nemesis of people, both secular and religious. I have feasted with them nonsense.” But Chesterton, of course, is a and fasted with them. I have argued with controversialist. He takes on puritans and them and prayed with them. If someone said pagans, conservatives and liberals, atheists I have devoted a that I hated the Jews, it would be laughable. and agnostics, Protestants, feminists, capital- large part of my life to It would also be slander. And yet, I can cer- ists, socialists, Eugenicists, Darwinists and tainly imagine that because of my association determinists, utopians and philanthropists. studying Chesterton’s with Chesterton, there are people who prob- If we are going to embrace Chesterton, we writings, and not ably suspect that I am anti-Semitic. When must not be afraid of controversy. But when I say I can imagine it, I mean that I really the subject is the Jews, for some reason the only studying them cannot imagine it. discussion becomes more difficult and goes but promoting them, I don’t know if the sensation is any- off track more easily. Any generalization thing close to what Chesterton felt when might spark the accusation that stops all dis- believing as I do that he was so accused. From his writings, I cussion, the catch-all catchword: anti-Semitic. he is a literary giant detect that he seemed as puzzled and It occurred to me a few years ago that frustrated as he was amused by the epithet. this toxic charge against Chesterton had to who deserves much Chesterton said that if he hated the Jews, be dealt with systematically and exhaustively greater praise than he would say so. But he insisted that he in order to address both the ignorant and did not hate the Jews. Yet the charge was the malevolent. After I began to dig into he has been given. repeated. He was famous for having no ene- the texts, I soon realized there was enough mies, for never attacking anyone personally material for a book. Unfortunately, the book but for attacking only ideas. But in spite of still needs to be written. In the meantime, we are devoting his charity and kindness, he was still accused of disliking this special double issue to covering all the main points and, the Jews. There were Jews who assumed that he was anti- as always, letting Chesterton speak for himself. Semitic until they got to know him, and who repented But I would like to take this opportunity to speak on his of their earlier resentment and who rose to defend him behalf. I have devoted a large part of my life to studying Ches- against the charge. To no avail. It was repeated again. It terton’s writings, and not only studying them but promoting is still repeated. them, believing as I do that he is a literary giant who deserves The effect of the charge is simple: the quick and facile much greater praise than he has been given. My task has dismissal of Chesterton without ever engaging him or his been a pleasant one, getting people to discover Chesterton ideas. The debate is over before it begins. And no defense and watching them be astonished. I have met other enthu- and no defender seems capable of removing the label once siasts from all around the world who share my passion for it has been stuck. Chesterton. I can say without exception that I have never met The term is lofted conveniently or carelessly at Chester- a Chestertonian who had any animosity or hostility toward ton, and with no consistent meaning. It is a term that has the Jews. If Chesterton is anti-Semitic, he has very unfaithful come to mean whatever its accusers want it to mean, which disciples. Uninterested, even. It seems that the only people always gives them an advantage. who are obsessed with Chesterton’s views on the Jews are And so, let us begin by establishing this simple defini- those who haven’t bothered to read him. tion: anti-Semitism means hostility toward the Jews. I can also say this: I have been welcomed in a wide And let us answer the charge with the same, simple clar- variety of settings to give talks on Chesterton, from small ity: G. K. Chesterton was not an anti-Semite.

6 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Editorial: from Gilbert Magazine Readers

Chesterton’s ideas about the Jews were consistent from of us. But he deserves the scrutiny, and I maintain that beginning to end. We may not agree with his perspective he bears up under it. I can speak with some authority on on Zionism, we may not like his mentioning the history the matter because I have read more of his writings and of usury among the Jews, we may not like his use of the dug more deeply into them than just about anybody else. term, “The Jewish Problem,” but we cannot ignore the I know the charges against him are false. And I will die fact that whatever his precepts, he was right in his predic- defending Chesterton. tions. He warned that if Europe continued to ignore or deny that there was a “Jewish Problem,” there would be a horrible outbreak of violence against the Jews. Again, we may not feel comfortable about his observations of Jewish behavior, we may not appreciate his assessment of Jewish weaknesses, we may not think his jokes about Jews are funny, but it is calumny to describe his attitude as hate. It is dishonest even to call his words hostile. What is the point of attacking Chesterton? It does not serve to defend the Jews; it only serves to attack Chester- ton. For Chesterton does not attack the Jews. Never at any time does he show malice towards the Jews, never does he insult them for being Jews. He said he did not dislike Jews. He said he wanted what was best for them, and he said he would die defending them. All the personal testimonies of him bear out his charity and personal good will. What does it mean that he denied the charge of being anti-Semitic? It means that either he was lying or he was deluded or he was telling the truth. If he was lying, where is the evidence? A few fragments of poetry lifted out of context? If he was deluded, how does one explain his aston- ishingly lucid thinking about virtually everything else? If he was not lying or deluded, then he was telling the truth, and it is long past time to stop defaming him with the poison- ous title of anti-Semite. Because he was such a prolific writer, because his influ- ence is still being felt, because he wrote about big things in a big way, he is subject to greater scrutiny than the rest

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Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 7 : Straws in the Wind: the poetry of the world. For instance, I should firmly claim that I am inter- An Essay by G.K. Chesterton ested in Jews. I have not, indeed, the faintest serious dislike of them; nor can I be said to be on their side. But they attract me, they puzzle me; I find myself forever fitting theories to them; I think they are a human triumph, a national danger, an intellectual inspira- A Report on My Anti-Semitism tion, and a frightful nuisance. But the people who publish little pamphlets by G.K. Chesterton about the persecution of Jews in Russia are not interested in Jews at all. will take the opportunity here of that those who are creditors will always They are interested in certain imagi- correcting a curious mistake that have a temptation to be tyrants, and nary good old men with patriarchal clings to the minds of numbers that those who are cosmopolitans will beards and ragged gabardines who of my correspondents. There is in always have a temptation to be spies. are made to wander about in the snow particular a gloomy gentleman in This has nothing to do with alleging because they never did anyone any IAmerica who keeps on asking me how that the majority of any people fall into harm. All the interesting part of the my Anti-Semite prejudice is getting its typical temptations. In this respect Jewish problem, good as well as bad, is on, and generally displaying a curiosity I should imagine that Jews varied in simply left out. about how many Hebrew teeth I have their moral proportions as much as My friends and I originally pulled out this week, and how often the rest of mankind. Rehoboam was shocked the Victorian conventions by a Pogrom is held in a tyrant; Jehosaphat saying that the Jews should be recog- front of my house. He The crank is never was not. In what is nised as a separate nation, with their appears to base it all perhaps the most cel- own national virtues and vices. Our on some statement of really interested in ebrated collection of critics howled with horror at the very mine that Jews were his subject, because Jews in human history, suggestion that Benjamin Disraeli was tyrants and traitors. the proportion of trai- not as English as the English primrose. Upon this basis his he takes too stiff and tors was one in twelve. A long controversy ensued, in the indignation is eloquent, biased a view of it. He But I cannot see why course of which they were gradually lengthy, and (in my the tyrants should induced to listen to reason. But our opinion) just. The only knows nothing of the not be called tyrants critic invariably ended up by saying, weakness affecting romantic hesitations, and the traitors trai- with undiminished self-satisfaction, this superstructure is tors; why Rehoboam “The truth is, Jews may be different the curious detail that the rich reactions that should not cause a from us; but, after all, they have their I never did say that there are in a really rebellion or Judas good points and their bad points, just Jews were tyrants and become an object like Frenchmen and all sorts of foreign- traitors. I said that a interesting subject. of dislike, merely ers. We must be broad-minded; they particular kind of Jew He cannot love and because they happen aren’t all horrible heartless devils, as tended to be a tyrant to be members of a you say they are.” and another particular hate a thing at the race persecuted for Needless to say, I never said kind of Jew tended same time; which is other reasons and anything of the sort. I never said to be a traitor. I say it on other occasions. anything except the very thing he is again. Patent facts of the root of half the Those are my views himself saying. But when I first said this kind are permit- poetry of the world. on Jews. They are it, he maintained that what I said was ted in the criticism of more reasonable than nonsense; and, now that he has found every other nation on those of the people out for himself that it is sense, he the planet: it is not counted illiberal to that wreck their shops; and much more chooses to say that I must have said say that a certain kind of Frenchman reasonable than those of the people something else. He makes a caricature tends to be sensual or a certain kind who justify them on all occasions. of my caricature of the Jew, without of Prussian tends to be supercilious. The crank is never really inter- even looking at it to see whether it was It is as plain as a pikestaff that the ested in his subject, because he takes a fair portrait; and later, when he sees Parisian tradition of life and letters has too stiff and biased a view of it. He the same portrait, he points it out to a marked element of sensuality; it is knows nothing of the romantic hesita- me as a model without even remem- as plain as a pikestaff that the Prus- tions, the rich reactions that there bering that it is mine. sian theory of the aristocracy and the are in a really interesting subject. He There appeared lately in the News- army has an element of rather crude cannot love and hate a thing at the Chronicle an only too merciful review conceit. It is also as plain as a pikestaff same time; which is the root of half of an only too vulnerable volume of

8 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Straws in the Wind: An Essay by G.K. Chesterton

sensational stories which I lately cast He was defending Jews from the much about these I should express myself as upon the world [Four Faultless Felons]. more common but completely mis- vehemently, and even violently, as any I hope I cannot be accused of taking taken charge of being stingy and mean. Irishman. I should make a particular such books of mine very seriously, and In my story, somebody had suggested point of being emphatic and even exag- I hope I am not unduly puffed up when that a certain Jewish pawnbroker was gerative in describing the snobbishness, they happen to be criticised indulgently. a miser. The financier answers that a the impotence, the intellectual inertia But there is one thing which I do take Jew is never a miser. His temptation is of my countrymen who consented to seriously, and that is the one thing not to hoard money, but to grab it and the enslavement of a Christian nation; which was criticised critically. I do take spend it, if only in vulgarity or vice. To to show that I was defending them my real opinions seriously, though not point out that Jews are not mean and from a particular false criticism, and the stories that sometimes embody miserly, even if they are showy and not denying that any criticism could be them. And I take especially seriously purse-proud, is to say something that true. I might even talk rather bitterly one particular opinion which has been might quite naturally be said by a Jew, about slavery and political poltroonery, universally misunderstood. I refer to my and certainly not something that could as the Jew in my little story talks bit- real views on the Jewish Problem and only be said by an Anti-Semite. terly about vice and greed. But the Jew the Jews, and the critic in the News- For the rest, I maintain that it is in my story does not talk more bitterly Chronicle said the only thing to which perfectly sound psychology to make about them than several Jews in history I have any right to take exception when a man repel a charge against his race have talked about them. he deduced from one passage that I am as untrue by admitting that another I prefer to make a note of this “a professed Anti-Semite.” and almost contrary charge is true. mild protest against a very satisfac- This is not true, and certainly the It is what almost all patriots do who tory critique of a not very satisfactory passage he quotes does not prove it to combine patriotism with any kind of book. For it concerns a really serious be true. He quotes a passage in which a balance and liberality of mind. I do problem, and misrepresents me in a financier declares that the Jewish vice not know who wrote the review in matter in which I do not wish to be is greed, or love of luxury or vanity; the News-Chronicle, but my thoughts misrepresented, though I generally am and concludes by saying that he knows naturally strayed to the literary editor misrepresented. If I were an enemy of this because he is a Jew himself. The of that paper, the distinguished essay- the Jews, I should call myself an enemy critic declares that no Jew could ever ist Mr. Robert Lynd, and from thence of the Jews. talk like that. This is rather surprising, to the problems of his own native land. There is one thing that nobody for I have, in fact, heard several Jews Suppose that I, as an Englishman, were seems to notice about Anti-Semitism; talk exactly like that. It seems to me trying to explain things to Mr. Lynd and that is that the very name is a that it is my critic who is the Anti- as an Irishman. I might very well say, surrender to Semites. Anti-Semitism, Semite, since he is apparently unaware for instance, that the English are not so far from being a cry of fanaticism, of one of the very real virtues of the really cruel, though they have given is a feeble and frightened euphemism. Jew—his capacity for detachment and the Irish a very justifiable impression One of the ninety-nine reasons for not objective criticism. Jews sometimes of their cruelty. But they have been, in calling oneself an Anti-Semite is that it pursue (unwisely, as I think) an exter- effect, cruel through credulity, through is so wretchedly polite and apologetic nal policy of silence and suppression in laziness and ignorance. I might almost a thing to be. A man implies that he the Press and the political world. They say they have been cruel through good dislikes the Semitic race, he dares defend it in private on the ground of nature. It was not so much that they not admit that he dislikes the Jewish real peril from real persecution. But it had too low an opinion of the Irish people. That there are such things as is very rare to find a Jew who shows as that they had too high an opinion Jews is a fact of immediate integra- in private that shamefaced, muddle- of the Anglo-Irish, of the officials and tion and experience, of which we are headed half-hypocrisy and blustering the landlords and the parliamentary all certain. That there are such things evasion only too common in British secretaries and the police; of the Anglo- as Semites is a theory of indirect and and other Western patriots. The Jew Irish garrison that was to them like the partial scientific syntheses, of which we may sometimes try to conceal the facts Anglo-Indian garrison. But to suppose are not certain at all. There are people from the world, but he does not try to that a silly spinster reading truculent who dislike Jews; though I am not one conceal them from himself, or even articles actually and directly desires of them. But I doubt if there are any from his friends. I have any number of to massacre Hindus, like a fanatical people who dislike Semites. I doubt Jewish friends quite capable of saying Moslem, is to do her an injustice—or whether any human being looks first at that the Jewish temptation is greed perhaps pay her too high a compliment. an Arab to see whether he is a Semite; and luxury. But, in any case, the critic It is almost equally untrue that most whether he has certain craniological or misses the whole point by omitting the of us were ever in a mood to enjoy the other marks, supposed to connect him preceding sentence. The point was that massacre of Catholics and Celts. But it with the same large human division as the financier began by saying, “Avarice was none the less true that we tolerated the Jews. No Anti-Semite expects the is not a Jewish vice.” the massacre of Catholics and Celts. vices of a Semite. No Zionist glories in In short, my Jew was not attack- And we did so through sins and weak- the triumphs of a Moslem Arab who is ing Jews, though many Jews really do. nesses that were really our own, and supposed to be a Semite. Nobody goes

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 9 : Straws in the Wind: An Essay by G.K. Chesterton poking about in Egypt or the Levant Irishman is an Irishman, whether or no the theory of race; and he is himself to find any qualities that are Jewish he was ever a Celt. sufficient to expose and explode the among any people that are not Jews. All this obsession with the origins theory of climate. For he has continued All men know in their hearts that Jews resolves itself into the habit of leaving to be himself, for centuries, in all the are Jews, and there is nothing like them out the story. If you ask the common climates of the world. in the world. Israel, like the Lord her conscience of men, “What has made Even those who accuse me of being God, is one; and there is not other tribe Smith a rascal?” nine times out of ten Anti-Semitic will hardly accuse me of to share with her either the admiration it will answer “Smith has made Smith being particularly Anti-Celtic. And the or the power or the persecution that a rascal.” After that, it will in due same point about the importance of attend her on her wandering way. proportion make all decent alliance for the historic will, as compared with the The truth is that the very name heredity and environment, for race or prehistoric and conjectural conditions, of Anti-Semitism dates from the same for climate. But no sane man, who does applies to the other very different case artificial age as the not know Smith, will which I have coupled for convenience contention of Anti- dream of deducing with this one. The Irish may have come Anti-Semitism. The No sane man, who where he is or is not a from the Celts; but it was not in the very title records the does not know Smith, rascal from the facts least necessary for the Celts to turn time when people of race or climate; into the Irish. That was done partly were afraid to touch will dream of deducing from the skull of his by their own conduct and partly by the Jewish problem. where he is or is not a great-grandfather or other people’s conduct; but at any rate While the majority the weather-chart of by conduct and not merely by condi- talked as if there were rascal from the facts his parish. That is, tions. Ireland made Ireland; with some no problem even the of race or climate; the same man will unintentional assistance from England. minority tried to talk recognize that the It was the Irish and not the Celts who as if it were not a from the skull of his most important thing chose to remain Catholic; and being Jewish problem. They great-grandfather or about Smith is what Catholic is a choice, while being Celtic tried, unconsciously he has done with is not. I have taken these two working perhaps, to imply the weather-chart himself; that the next examples merely as being both familiar that it was merely an of his parish. most important thing and dissimilar. But this is one more odd anthropological prob- is what other people thing to note about the comparison; a lem, to be discussed have done to him. He thing I have never understood. If you by professors: like the problem of why will want to know what has happened; tell an Irishman that he is an Irishman the Patagonian is tall, or why the Hairy and not merely what conditions existed and not an Englishman, he will say he Ainu is hairy. In other words, the very before anything happened. In short, has insisted he is not an Englishman; term Anti-Semite bears all the marks he will want history; and all this talk possibly he thanked God he is not an of the “liberal” age which denounces it. of primitive conditions of climate or Englishman. But if you tell a Jew he is It is, in the bad sense, a very Victorian anthropology is a dodge for leaving out not an Englishman, he says you’re an expression; a phrase that strikes the note history. And this is the first fact to note Anti-Semite. of the middle of the nineteenth century. if anyone asks, “What has made the I am not going to persecute any And is so chiefly in this: that it takes Jew secretive or tenacious or restless Jews. But I am going to go on talking refuge in science to escape from truth. or inspiring, or whatever we may think about them. I shall talk about them as It is needless here to recapitu- him to be?” The first answer is that freely as I should about Germany or late all the shifts to which that sham the Jew has made the Jew secretive or Japan; saying what, in my opinion, are science lent itself. Just as it confused tenacious or whatever he may be. The their dangers, defects, or neglected the Jewish problem by generalizations next most important fact is what the merits. I shall say that a group of about Semites, so it confused the Irish Gentiles have done to the Jews. This financial Jews urged on the African war, problem by generalizations about Celts. had nothing to do whether where we do because they did: I heard them doing But muddled as it was, it had in it a in fact blame the Jew or the enemies it. But I shall also say that I heard many certain magnetic power strangely akin of the Jew. It only means that what he of the equally unmistakable artistic to magic. And the worst of it is that the is mainly the result of what he does and Bohemian Jews denounce the war learned are more liable to this extraor- and what other people do; not merely fiercely. One is not supposed to insult dinary delusion than the ignorant. If the result of the physical type of the America by discussing Trusts or France anyone were to ask me why I trust a remote tribe from which he sprang. It by discussing dueling; why should the peasant or any such plain man more may be creditable to him, for instance Jews be the only people who refuse to than most intellectual aristocracies, I that through the Christian ages he be talked about intelligently? should be content to answer with this remained in isolation. But his problem Composite essay from Illustrated London News, case alone. The man I mean, and the is due to the fact the he did remain in September 16, 1911; July 19, 1913; May 26, 1923; man I trust, is the man who knows isolation; not to the fact that people September 20, 1930; New Witness, September quite well that a Jew is a Jew; whether with Semitic skulls are bound to remain 23, 1921; Daily News, June 14, 1911 or no he was ever a Semite; and that in isolation. He cannot be explained by

10 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : SCHALL on CHESTERTON: of an Anti-Semite than any Zionist or Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes detached and independent Jew who thinks that the solution of the Jewish Problem would be the separation of the races.” The point is not whether such a separation is good or bad as a solution. Rather it is whether the man proposing it is “Anti-Semitic” if he himself is a Jew. That would make the Jew “Anti-Semitic.” On “Believing in Jews” We must separate disagreements about policies from accusation of prejudice by James V. Schall, S.J. for taking a policy position that any reasonable man, including a Jew, might n the Illustrated London News for vice.” The Jewish financier, on the take on a complex issue. It may not be September 20, 1930, G.K. Ches- contrary, says it is. Chesterton goes possible “to solve the Jewish Problem terton reacted to a review of one on to explain, however, that Jews do at all.” But that is simply a question of of his books that appeared in a not hoard money. They spend it “if fact, whatever the honest means we journal called News-Chronicle. only in vulgarity or vice.” Jewish propose to solve it. IChesterton said that he takes opinions philanthropy is famous. Jews are not But Chesterton had something seriously, especially his own. Evidently “mean or misers.” Since Jews often, in more basic in mind. He wanted the reviewer deduced from one pas- their frankness, say these things of to answer the specific question of sage in the book that Chesterton was themselves, as Chesterton’s Jewish whether, as the critic implied, he was himself a “professed Anti-Semite.” Of friends have said to him, it is not “a fanatical Anti-Semite.” Chesterton this view, Chesterton states bluntly: something that could only be said by is very frank. In making his case, in “This is not true, and certainly the pas- an “Anti-Semite.” these contrary-to-fact statements, sage he (the reviewer) quotes does not Chesterton specifically attends to notice that he uses the word Jew here, prove it to be true.” this comment because “I do not want not Semite. “If I were an enemy of the The passage at issue concerns to be misrepresented, though I gener- Jews, I should call myself an enemy of a Jewish financier in the story. This ally am misrepresented. I am no more the Jews; if I were anything that could gentleman says that “the Jewish vice is greed, or love of luxury or vanity.” The character says that he knows this Our Mr Chesterton “because he is a Jew himself.” The reviewer states authoritatively that Digby D’Avigdor was one of the members of the “No Jew could ever talk like that.” The Junior Debating Club at St. Paul’s. He was one of implication is that Chesterton made this four Jews in the small group, all of whom remained statement up because he was an “Anti- lifelong friends with G.K. Chesterton. Semite” and did not know real Jews. When interviewed by Maisie Ward, he recalled, To this objection, Chesterton “I always have a vision of him wandering round the simply affirms that, in fact, he does know several Jews himself. They do talk corridors with one of his disreputable books. His Greek like the man in the story to him about primer all dog-eared, tattered, covered with drawings themselves. Indeed, Chesterton sus- of goblins, all over the text as well as in the margins. pects that the reviewer is himself rather The masters would say, ‘Chesterton, Chesterton, have “Anti-Semitic” because he cannot imag- you no care for books?’ ine how Jews see themselves. “He meandered his way through school like a rudderless bark. He put up a The real virtue of the Jew, however, smoke-screen over his real interests. I remember him called up to construe. Stand- is his capacity “for detached and objec- ing up he would sway backwards and forwards, his head bowed over a hopelessly tive criticism.” He may not say much ragged book. He would hold it in one hand and clutch it with the other to prevent it about such and such a vice in public from disintegrating. He would construe adequately enough—but he would do the but he does not try to “conceal it from minimum. You wouldn’t think he had an ounce of poetry in him. And the master’s himself.” The Jew is fully capable of attention would be all on the book. ‘Good heavens, Chesterton, how can you read parodying himself and laughing at his vices, a good sign of objectivity. anything out of that book?’ Chesterton either wouldn’t or couldn’t concentrate.” It turns out, moreover, that the All of the masters assumed from Chesterton’s appearance and blank coun- sentence of the financier preceding tenance that he had no love of poetry, but his close friends learned otherwise. the one cited, left out by the critic, D’Avigdor said fondly, “I think it was very clever of us to find him out.” was precisely, “Avarice is not a Jewish

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 11 : Schall on Chesterton: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes be called Anti-Jew, I should wish to of Semites” as more certain than delightful affirmation that he has be called an Anti-Jew.” In other words, the existence of Jews, among whom actually seen a Jew? “It is a fact that “Call me what I am and think I am.” Chesterton had many actual friends. I have seen several (Jews), and that Chesterton knows exactly what an He was certain at least that these many of them said exactly what the “Anti-Jew” is. He is not one. friends existed. He talked to them. He critic declared that no Jew could The accusation of “Anti-Semite,” had never actually met a “Semite” and, ever say.” The title of Chesterton’s however, is something else again. The even less, an “Anti-Semite.” column is: “On My Anti-Semitism.” word “Semite” and the word “Jew” Meeting a “Semite” is like walking The very charge that he is “Anti- are not equivalent or interchange- down a road and meeting a “man” but Semitic” is incoherent. able without causing much confusion. no single Socrates or Suzie. “I may Meanwhile, Chesterton talked Chesterton is adamant: “Under no suffer some of the scorn, then, poured with actual Jewish friends, who, I am circumstances whatsoever would I on anybody who said he had seen a sure, told him exactly what they think. consent to be called an Anti-Semite.” ghost,” but, “I confess that I have actu- Chesterton concluded, from his actual Why? The two words, Jew and Semite, ally seen a Jew.” How delightful that experience, that one of the finest char- have different origins and connotations. is! Chesterton prefers meeting actual acteristics of the Jew is that he never Real Jews exist, but no real Semite Jews with names to meeting ghosts or “conceals his own vices from himself”— is walking down the street. “There is abstract Semites who are a category of if this quality is what it means to be such a thing as a Jew; he might be theory from the “Higher Criticism.” “Anti-Semitic,” I believe, like Chester- hated as a Jew, though I do not hate What conclusion does Ches- ton, that every Jew is himself proudly him.” Chesterton knows language. My terton draw from this startlingly “Anti-Semitic”! dictionary defines a “Semite” in this way: “A member of any of a number of peoples of Ancient Southwestern Asia, Chesterton for Today including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, ;;St. Thomas foresaw from the first the much in the sins for which individual Hebrews, and Arabs.” Obviously, to be peril of that mere reliance on trade and sinners are pilloried, as in the sins for an “Anti-Semite” is not exactly being exchange, which was beginning about which they are not pilloried; the sins exclusively Anti-Jew. his time; and which has culminated that seem to be no longer regarded as “The word (Semite) dates from in a universal commercial collapse in sins at all…It is not that more people the days when even fanatics had to our time. He did not merely assert that have broken the law; it is that the law is disguise themselves as prigs,” Chester- Usury is unnatural, though in saying broken; broken in the sense of having ton tells us, “and I trust that, whatever that he only followed Aristotle and obvi- broken down. (G.K.’s Weekly, April 4, 1925) be the merit of my views on the matter, ous common sense, which was never ;;Invasion may be a sword; but peaceful I myself am neither one nor the other.” contradicted by anybody until the penetration is a poison…To attack the That is, Chesterton is neither a prig time of the commercialists, who have culture is to attack the country, but it is nor a fanatic. The word “Semite” was involved us in the collapse. The modern to attack it from within. It comes from a nineteenth-century “blunder, the world began by Bentham writing the the sort of culture that has already con- habit of talking sham science in order Defence of Usury, and it has ended in trived to get inside another culture; the to avoid talking real religion.” The even the vulgar newspaper opinion find- sort unpleasantly suggested by bacteria- primary meaning of Jew is to be a ing Finance indefensible. (“The Sequel to St. culture. Anybody who really loves a follower of Abraham, a believer and Thomas,” St. Thomas Aquinas) observer of the Law and the Prophets. national tradition would rather it were Chesterton thinks that religion ;;The superiority of the universal shops attacked from without than eaten away must be talked about, not pseudo-sci- is a pure superstition. It does not make from within. (Illustrated London News, April 9, 1927) for better quality in bread or meat that ence. As a Christian, he holds the truth ;;What some call the failure of Christi- the same shopkeeper should be butcher of the Hebrew Bible. In making the anity, I should call the failure of those and baker and candlestick-maker. It Jews a “race,” we miss their real impor- who chose to break up Christianity. (The only means, if it means anything, the tance. “What determines the human Forum, June, 1928) part of human history is religion and provision of bad candlesticks and worse not race, certainly not the pompous candles for the inspection of doubtful ;;If I were Grand Inquisitor, I would try Victorian theories about race.” Ches- meat and bread. (New Witness, Jan.13, 1916) to burn out of the world not so much certain beliefs as certain phrases. I terton affirms, in a bemused sentence ;;The man whom we now call a Trust would argue with people about creeds; itself a parody on modern theories of Magnate would be an ordinary criminal but I would kill them for catchwords. religion, that he will continue to believe by mediaeval morality, as much as the (Illustrated London News, June 5, 1915) in “Jews, and nothing will persuade wildest robber baron of romance could me that they are a medieval myth or a be a criminal by modern morality. (Illus- ;;The brotherhood of men is a fact: primitive folktale or an interpolation trated London News, May 26, 1923) which in the long run wears down all exposed by Higher Criticism.” other facts. (New Witness, June 18, 1914) The silliness of nineteenth-century ;;There really is a peril. It is not so science was to talk of the “existence

12 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : ALARMS & DISCURSIONS: GM What effect would you say Chester- ton had on you? Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes RA Chesterton very quickly became a great favourite with me, and ultimately Interview with Robert Asch exercised a profound influence on my life. Humanly speaking, I probably owe by Dale Ahlquist more to Chesterton in the matter of my conversion than to anybody else. Robert Asch is the co-founder We moved to Toronto He wasn’t working on a tabula rasa, and co-editor of the St. Austin in 1984 and I went to though. Review. He recently helped the University of Toronto, establish Chavagnes Inter- graduating with a B.A. GM Go ahead and tell us the other national College, an English in English and French influences. Catholic boarding school in literature in 1990. Early France. –Ed. in 1991 I moved to RA God, as the Portuguese proverb Czechoslovakia, and has it, writes straight with crooked GM Please tell us about taught English language, lines. Looking back now on the slow your background. literature, and history in and often submerged process of RA I was born in London, Prague until 1998. During my conversion, I can discern many England, on October 16, this time I’d holiday in influences—Plato, Sophocles, Bede, 1968, of first-generation London. When I made Pascal, Dr. Johnson, Newman, J.R.R. Canadians, both of them up my mind to become a Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Haw- opera singers. My ethnic Catholic, in 1994, I went thorne, George Herbert, Dickens. background is Jewish and English, to Farm Street Church for instruction There were artists, like Raphael, Giotto, and the cultural background of my every six months or so till my recep- Botticelli and Mantegna. There were Jewish ancestry is English, Spanish, tion in 1996. the great architects of the Gothic Rumanian, Dutch, Austro-Hungarian I moved back to London in 1998 and the Baroque. Above all, perhaps, and Ukrainian. I was sent to a French and began to work as an editor with there were the musicians: Mozart, primary school, and then to St. Paul’s the Saint Austin Press in 1999, since Haydn, Purcell, Handel, Tallis, Schu- School in London—Chesterton’s alma when I have been involved in Catholic bert, Berlioz—yes, Berlioz! I couldn’t mater, as it happens. publishing and education. possibly minimize the importance of My parents were both practis- Mozart and Haydn as influences, for GM How were you first exposed to G.K. ing Reform Jews, and I was brought example, particularly in their liturgical Chesterton? up a practising Reform Jew: regular and quasi-liturgical music (I know some attendance at the Sabbath Service; Bar RA I was aware of who he was at will raise an eyebrow at this, but I have Mitzvah at thirteen; celebration of the St. Paul’s (there was a bust of him no patience whatever with people who major festivals, and so on. I have never at the school), but I didn’t read any dismiss Mozart and Haydn Masses as been an atheist or an agnostic. Chesterton until I was sixteen. I had “operatic”)—the Requiem, the Credo On the other hand, we were just finished Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Mass, the Heiligmesse, the Seven Last very much a culturally assimilated Dorian Gray, which I relished, and Words of Christ, and the Creation. Also, family—more so, I would say, than most went in search of something similar— The Magic Flute, which, despite its practising Jews. Also, as I said, my something fin de siècle and rich in Masonic associations, had an influence parents were classical musicians, and verbal swordplay. I found The Man of a wholly Catholic tendency on my our house was full of music: my par- Who Was Thursday, which seemed to sensibility. ents’ work, but also lessons (my mother me just the ticket, as it proved to be. I GM It’s interesting the effect music had taught and had a studio at home), was struck with the distinctiveness of in bringing you to the Catholic Church. concerts and records. My parents had Chesterton’s wit, and that it seemed, a cultivated circle of friends, and my uniquely in recent English literature, RA Yes, music can condition one’s younger brother and I were made very to dazzle as brightly as Wilde’s. But, as sensibility, but it can only address ideas welcome in the discussions that went I say, it was distinctive: the style was obliquely. In Chesterton, however, I was on in the household. We were good not the same, nor was the substance. I confronted with the specific implica- readers early (my parents frowned didn’t read any more Chesterton until, tions of what was attracting, influencing on TV culture, and though television I think, my last year at university; but and nourishing me. I devoured any- wasn’t banned our access to it was Thursday had planted a seed, and thing of Chesterton’s I could lay my restricted), and often taken to concerts, when I found P.J. Kavanagh’s A G.K. hands on (no easy task in Prague in plays, exhibitions, museums. Now most Chesterton Anthology at a bargain the days before the Internet): The of what we assimilated in this environ- price, I bought it. That book exposed Man Who Was Thursday was already ment was of Christian—and usually me to a fairly broad range of Chester- one of my golden books; now came Catholic—provenance. ton’s work. St. Thomas Aquinas; some of the

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 13 : ALARMS & DISCURSIONS: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes journalism and writings on Dickens; the to Chesterton’s work was Kavanagh’s you ever run across anything that could comic poems; The Napoleon of Notting Chesterton Anthology. In the introduc- be labeled anti-Semitic? Hill—particularly the last chapter, which tion to that book, Kavanagh asserts RA In all the hundreds of pages of made a profound impression on me; that, uniquely in the case of anti-Semi- Chesterton I’ve read, I can think of above all, Orthodoxy. I can still see tism, Chesterton breathed the air of his perhaps six or seven instances which a exactly where I was (a café in Salzburg) time too freely. So in a sense, I never Jew today would be likely to construe— when I read it right through for the first had the opportunity of approaching incorrectly, as I believe—as anti-Semitic. time. Reading Chesterton accelerated Chesterton entirely without preconcep- There were many more provocative my progress towards the Church more tions—at least, never after Thursday. references to Muslims and to Germans rapidly and consistently than any other Jews are (unsurprisingly) very sensitive in his work than there were to Jews. My repeated experience I can recall. to anti-Semitism and perceived anti- abiding impression was that Chesterton GM How did you feel as a Jew becoming Semitism, and I assumed that there was was a very good friend—something I a Catholic? at least a fairly generally held percep- should never have felt had I considered tion that Chesterton was anti-Semitic. him to be anti-Semitic. RA I still fondly remember the rather Perhaps this was a blessing in racy pleasure of being a Jewish disguise, as it made me more conscious GM What do you say to people who say admirer and defender of things Catho- of anything in Chesterton redolent of that Chesterton was anti-Semitic? lic. But all of this was certainly not to anti-Semitism. Had he been a Ger- me merely a matter of belonging to a RA It depends on whom I’m talking to, manophile too, that might have been group (I have a constitutional distaste and whether they care to listen. Ches- a bit much for me at the time; hap- for groups) nor even of identify- terton is very much a late-Victorian/ pily, he and Belloc were Francophiles, ing with a cause or causes. It was a Edwardian writer, in style, sensibility which suited me down to the ground. much deeper and dearer thing: the and, obviously, in his frame of refer- character and the quality of percep- I know these are suasions rather than ence. It is one of the things that first tions of life—of my life, and of Life in arguments, but you must remember I drew me to him, just as it is perhaps general—perceptions with which I was was a lad of sixteen-seventeen when I the major reason that some readers profoundly in sympathy. It was my began to read Chesterton in earnest, are insensible to his stature. I am very patrimony, it was home, in a sense, and suasions counted for a good deal. much at home in the world of nine- and yet I was an alien—I was looking in In any case, I never felt uncomfortable teenth-century letters: it is my chosen from outside. Coming into the Church as a Jew in Chesterton’s company. I field; and it is a canard (and an increas- was, for me, very like Chesterton’s never felt, “Well, I’ll put up with this ingly common one) to think that any description in Orthodoxy of the discov- nasty business, because there is some figure—no matter how far-sighted or ery that this ostensibly strange country real sense in him, and, after all, he prophetic—can be taken wholly out is actually your native land. writes so well.” That would have taxed of context. Let us take a couple of There were, of course, creedal my powers a good deal at that age. And cases of changing cultural contexts: issues, which I should be obliged to one must remember that much of this Gustav Mahler was a German-speaking accept, and which I came in God’s material was polemical, the sort of Jewish convert to Catholicism, born in good time to accept fully. Had I not writing where one would expect to find what is now the Czech Republic. He done so, I suppose I should have had to a bias if the author was a bigot. Some- was, of course an Austro-Hungarian face the melancholy prospect of feeling times—though this was rare—I’d come composer, but Austria-Hungary no dislocated from all that was dearest to across a remark which gave me pain: I longer exists. What would we call him me; but you can’t lie to yourself about remember, for example, his referring, today? A German? A Czech? A Jew? things like that—I can’t, at any rate. in Orthodoxy, to Oscar Levy as a “non- An Austrian—with all that that now fails How I came to accept the dogmas of European alien”—though the reference to imply? the faith is a long story, and probably is ultimately complimentary (he calls Or suppose Quebec should sepa- best told elsewhere. him “the only intelligent Nietzscheite”). rate from Canada: would that make an There is an aspect of Chesterton’s English Canadian born in ninteenth GM Did Chesterton strike you as anti- century Montreal a Quebecois? A Semitic? thought I am not entirely in agreement with here (and which I’ll come to later), French Canadian? The same is true of RA That is a difficult question to answer but, even when I first read it, I couldn’t intellectual contexts. As circumstances with a straightforward “yes” or “no.” call it anti-Semitic as it contained an change, the conditions of discourse are Let me say straight off that I do not element of truth I was already only too altered. We must be sensitive to these think Chesterton was an anti-Semite. familiar with—although I should put it changes or we shall simply end by talk- ing about nothing but projections of But in my personal experience the differently. cards were, so to speak, stacked ourselves. Now, this is nowhere more somewhat unfairly against him, at GM You say you’ve run across rare evident than in matters of language. least initially. You will remember that, passages in Chesterton that gave you The meanings and inflections of words after The Man Who Was Thursday, pain because you did not agree with his change. William Magee, for example, the first considerable exposure I had assessment of the situation, but have the Anglican Bishop of Peterborough,

14 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : ALARMS & DISCURSIONS: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes

referred to Wilfred Ward as a pervert, a cultural and racial minority in ideologues: insofar as the Austrians, by which he meant that he had left the environments of growing nationalist Germans and Russians governed multi- Church of England for that of Rome. activism: an activism which tended to national empires, they had (particularly So the term was understood. But I can understand itself in racist terms. This in Austria) to tolerate—at least to a lim- easily imagine some modern clown was not necessarily or invariably an ited degree—ethnic groups other than declaring, “We can trace the Church’s anti-Semitic phenomenon, nor were their own; the Nationalists did not. And pedophile problems right back to the Jews themselves free from the tendency. in Chesterton’s beloved France, with its Victorian age. Why, even reputable The most famous theorist of race was aggressive political factions and endless contemporaries described Ward as a Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau social upheavals, anti-Semitic sentiment notorious pervert!” (1816-1882), whose magnum opus was rife: representatives of all parties, In this sense, should Chesterton on the subject was The Inequality of whether Republicans like Barrès, Royal- have written today some handful Human Races. Because of his racism ists like Maurras and Léon Daudet, or amongst the millions of things he wrote and influence on Wagner, Gobineau is Leftists like Clémenceau, were often ninety years ago, he would probably usually thought of as an anti-Semite, coarse or violent in their anti-Semitic be called anti-Semitic. But we must but he wasn’t. He believed the Jews language. (In fairness, I should add ask ourselves two simple questions: to be one of the superior races. The that Daudet and Barrès both renounced would he have phrased them thus today, same was true of Benjamin Disraeli, a anti-Semitism well before the advent knowing how they would be construed? great hero to most Jews, who declared of Nazism, while Maurras and And are they, in fact, what we under- in Conningsby that “Race is every- Clémenceau were Germanophobes). stand by anti-Semitism? The two points thing; there is no other truth.” Indeed, GM What about Chesterton’s use of the are connected, obviously. Did Chester- Conningsby—an enormously stimulat- term “The Jewish Problem”? ton hate the Jews—racially, socially or ing political novel—is somewhat marred ethnically—and are his comparatively for me by the author’s occasional (pro- RA To those who are intimately famil- few “anti-Semitic” remarks an expres- Semitic) emphasis on the importance iar with this era, the so-called “Jewish sion of such hatred? That, to me, is of race. Ironically, our old friend Oscar Problem” was not mere anti-Semitic the real question; and my answer is an Levy was both an admirer of Disraeli rhetoric (though the tag might make emphatic and confident “No.” (he translated him into German) and us wince today with the advantage of much influenced by Gobineau’s racist hindsight). Indeed, there were many GM Can the charges against Chesterton theories: he wrote the introduction to prominent Jews who felt the same be dismissed? the English edition of The Inequality of way—it was, in fact, one of the presup- RA Yes, but I don’t think it is helpful to Human Races. positions of the Zionist movement. dismiss the accusations out of hand as The reaction of assimilated Jews Now, as regards GKC, I should say merely cynical, stupid or dishonest. On to the hostility of their environment that three things here are of particular the contrary, it is worth looking into tended to be of two kinds: a determi- relevance: why Chesterton made the few remarks nation to succeed in defiance of every On the debit side, I believe that on which the charge of anti-Semitism barrier erected against them, or a he exaggerated the continuity of has been based. To the best of my wholesale rejection of the establish- nation-state and that, consequently, he knowledge, there is, as I indicated ment. In other words, one tends to find doubted the extent to which Jews could above, only one area where his attitudes a high proportion, among assimilated become fully and happily integrated are substantially at variance with mine, Jews, both of conservative supporters into a predominantly Gentile patria. and that is the extent of the relationship of “The Establishment,” and revolu- He could see, as a matter of daily fact, between cultural identity and politi- tionaries. This is tragic, particularly as the strife that existed between the cal autonomy: Chesterton tended to this attitude was the fruit of centuries Jewish communities and the Gen- identify nations with political states—at of proscription and abuse. In any case, tile majorities; and that there where least ideally; as is evident in his support, it is, with the new racism, one of the national sentiment was strongest, this in World War I, for the cause of Polish two main reasons for the anti-Semitism friction was most intense. He also independence (in which I agree with of nineteenth-century Nationalism: disapproved of the cosmopolitanism of him, incidentally) and Bohemian (i.e. more often than not, assimilated Jews many secular Jews, which he tended Czech) independence (in which I don’t). supported the Austrian, Russian or to see (and here I agree with him) as Now, between, say, the 1830s and 1945, German imperial governments against antipathetic to patriotism. Nationalism tended to be anti-Semitic, which the Nationalist Poles, Czechs, To his credit, however, one must culturally, racially, or both. Also, the Hungarians etc. were struggling. add two very important points: identification of nation and race was After all, to the extent that the In the first place, Chesterton’s nearly universal. While the hatred of Jews had succeeded in attaining any nation-statism didn’t translate into other peoples is as old as the hills, we measure of security and success, it anything like the fundamentally anti- tend to forget that genetic racism is a had been in the established order the Semitic position of most Nationalists. relatively recent phenomenon. Nationalists were seeking to overthrow; On the contrary, in accordance with If we turn to the Jews in this nor could the Jews expect better treat- his principles, it led him to espouse period, we find them to be everywhere ment at the hands of (often) racist the cause of a sovereign state for the

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 15 : ALARMS & DISCURSIONS: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes

Jews in the Holy Land. Chesterton was, and Byron was unusually sympathetic things to say to people on both sides of in fact, a Zionist, and said as much, to Jews by the standards of his soci- the aisle. frequently. I’m not sure that any Jew of ety. And it was Browning, a poet Jews RA Well, actually, the only anti-Semitic my acquaintance is aware of this fact, regard (rightly) as pro-Semitic, who experiences I had before my conver- but fact it is. quipped: sion were at the hands of Protestants Secondly—and perhaps more We don’t want to fight, and agnostics. Perhaps that was mere remarkably—Chesterton was one of By Jingo, if we do, coincidence, but in any case, I never the few men of his time who utterly The head I’d like to punch associated anti-Semitism with the rejected the tenets of race identity. It Is Beaconsfield the Jew. Catholic Church particularly. I certainly is impossible to read Chesterton in never remember my parents saying any depth without being confronted GM A reference to Disraeli, who was over and again with his contempt for known as Lord Beaconsfield. But that anything of the kind. As a child, I had the racist interpretation of culture. little rhyme is never brought up about learned something of the pogroms in He is forever ridiculing “Celtic” cul- Browning the same way “I am fond of Eastern Europe, but though the Poles ture, “Teutonic” culture, “Anglo-Saxon” Jews” is brought up about Chesterton. were Catholic, the Russians weren’t; culture, “Arian” culture. It led him again, the Holocaust tended to be RA Another man without a shred of to be—with Churchill—one of the few seen as a German crime, rather than a vulgar anti-Semitism, Lord Rosebery, Englishmen to be utterly, unremittingly, Christian one; certainly not a specifi- whose blissful marriage to Hannah hostile to Hitler and Nazism from the cally Catholic one. At university, when I Rothschild led to grumbles of Jewish first. And in his anti-Nazi diatribes, began to be more aware of Catholicism, political interference, has been accused we find GKC coming explicitly to the I read Pascal—who is an admirer of of anti-Semitism because of a few defense of the Jews. Again, this is a fact Judaism—before I read Kavanagh, and casual witticisms. sadly unknown to most Jews. then, in Central Europe, I found that it Chesterton was probably the was the practising Catholics I met who GM This makes your point about the most prolific major author of the last were most friendly to Judaism—much historical context all the more signifi- century, and he was a religious, politi- more so than the secularists. Again, I cant. Those who accuse Chesterton of cal, and cultural polemicist, a journalist was aware, at least from my university anti-Semitism never seem to look at with a weekly column for decades: it’s days, of John Paul II’s very warm rela- what else was going on during Chester- simply not plausible that an author tionship with the Jews, which made an ton’s time. answering to that description could impression. And I have never forgotten be anti-Semitic without leaving a large RA Yes, that’s true. And one could ask: a remark made by one of my parents’ trail behind him, particularly in the Is it irrelevant to the question of Ches- friends in a particularly interesting con- late nineteenth to early twentieth terton’s supposed anti-Semitism that versation from this time, that Luther century. It must, I think, be conceded he excoriated Hitler as a racist in his was the first anti-Semite. I don’t believe that Chesterton does not display any weekly journalism when figures—still it influenced me, but it certainly didn’t interest in the deep and ongoing rela- respectable in Jewish circles—such as incline me towards a belief that the tionship of the Jews to the Church and Shaw and Lloyd George were praising Catholic Church had a monopoly on Cosmic History that we find in the writ- Hitler as the greatest thing to come out anti-Semitism. And since becoming a ings of writers like Bloy, Péguy, Pascal, of Germany since the Reformation? Catholic (except where long-standing Solovyov or Mickiewicz—but then, Again, I wonder how many Jews ethnic frictions are concerned—among attitudes such as these have always are aware, today, of the pervasiveness the Poles or Irish-Americans, for exam- been rare, and the same could be said of racial assumptions before World War ple), I have not found anti-Semitism in of scores of authors never accused of II. Unless their attention is drawn to it, Catholic circles at all. anti-Semitism. But had Chesterton most people tend to assume that any I did harbor the suspicion, as a lived through the Second World War, I writer not identified with anti-Semitism Jew—which I am persuaded I shared should not, for my part, be surprised if was probably fairly “sound” by modern with most Jews (certainly most of my he had turned his attention to this phe- P.C. standards—especially if they acquaintance)—that Christians generally nomenon. And when Chesterton wrote, were “progressives,” like H.G. Wells. were anti-Semitic, and, vaguely, a sense in response to the early Nazi persecu- It is widely assumed (by Jews among that perhaps all non-Jews were—at least tions, that he and Belloc were prepared others) that Wells (an author whose in Europe, the Americas and the Middle to die defending the last Jew in Europe, fictions I greatly admire) wasn’t anti- East. And I’m afraid I don’t believe I am quite prepared to believe him. Semitic because he was a “progressive.” that most Jews who feel this way try There is nothing of bitterness in his But he was very anti-Semitic. very hard to rationalize (responsibly, at tone, let alone hatred; I have always Finally, people simply weren’t as least) what would appear to be such a found him the very best company, the sensitive to these issues—as hypersen- extraordinary conviction. most lovable, as well as the most engag- sitive, one might sometimes feel—as Jews tend to be extremely sensitive ing, of writers. they have been since the War. One to any perceived hostility or criti- finds anti-Semitic gibes in the cor- GM As a Jewish convert to Catholi- cism, and this is, after all, only to be respondence of Byron, for example, cism, you must have some interesting expected. What Christians must try

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to realize—if they are going to reach And now it is the Jews themselves, pagan Rome and Macedonian Greece Jews—is the extent to which centuries in Israel, who stand accused of the persecuted the Jews. If anything, it of persecution, extending well into this same crime. tended to confirm two things in my century, have branded these insecuri- Something that was apparent to mind: the peculiar history and identity ties into the Jewish psyche. I suppose me some time before my conversion of the Jews, and the reality of fallen this is a truism, but it is one which was the inconsistency of the charge human nature. Perhaps, in a genera- cannot be repeated often enough. It of anti-Semitism against specifically tion or two, conditions will be more has led to a warping of Jewish objectiv- Christian culture: Islam is quite as propitious for a more magnanimous ity. For example, nineteenth century anti-Semitic as the West, and both exchange of perspectives. England and Austria-Hungary, where opportunities for Jews and acceptance of Jews were much more widespread than elsewhere, have nevertheless been “The Jewish Problem” characterized by Jews as fundamentally ;;To recognise the reality of the Jewish popular. (Ch. 4, The Superstition of Divorce) anti-Semitic cultures. While there is an problem is very vital for everybody and ;;This is an age of minorities; of element of truth in this (and some- especially vital for Jews. To pretend minorities powerful and predominant, times more than an element), it also that there is no problem is to pre- partly through the power of wealth involves a considerable distortion of cipitate the expression of a rational and partly through the idolatry of perspective. impatience, which unfortunately can education…The majority is always at a only express itself in the rather irratio- GM And this distortion of perspective disadvantage…The minority is generally nal form of Anti-Semitism. (“The Problem of has led to what? idealised, sometimes by its servants, Zionism,” The New Jerusalem) always by itself. But my sympathies are RA The saddest aspect of this is that ;;What is called Anti-Semitism is a bad generally, I confess, with the impotent it has led to an attitude of cultural thing; just as what is called Bolshevism and even invisible majority. And my solipsism among Jews: nothing is is a bad thing. But just as denying the sympathies, when I go beyond the fully real, or at least important, out- industrial problem will certainly pro- things I myself believe, are with all the side the circle of Jewish concerns. In duce Bolshevism, so denying the Jewish poor Jews who do believe in Judaism this sense, the creation of Israel is problem will always produce Anti-Semi- and all the Mahometans who do believe perhaps the best thing that has hap- tism. (G.K.’s Weekly, April 18, 1925) in Mahometanism, not to mention so pened to Judaism in centuries, if only obscure a crowd as the Christians who because they have had to shoulder ;;What is the matter with the attitude do believe in Christianity. I feel I have the responsibility of governing other with many Jews is…the extraordinary more morally and even intellectually in peoples. And this is the key to much delusion that there is no problem common with these people, and even historical anti-Semitism. Anyone except the problem of the meaning- the religions of these people, than with with a knowledge of history is aware less malice of Gentiles. Even if this the supercilious negations that make up of the cruelty which nations visit were true…It would be the problem of the most part of what is called enlight- on one another, and particularly on why people all over the world should enment. (“The Shadow of the Problem,” The New weaker cultures, vanquished nations go mad on the subject of the Jews any Jerusalem) or ethnic minorities. And minority more than of the Japanese. As long as cultures—or former minorities—are a certain sort of quite intelligent Jew ;;The Zionist problem is complicated jealous of suffering: the attitude goes on maintaining that he and his by a real quarrel in the Ghetto about tends to be no one has ever suf- people have never contributed at all to Zionism. The old religious Jews do not fered as we have suffered. The Poles the misunderstanding, he will be more welcome the new nationalist Jews; it complain of the Germans and the misunderstood than ever. That denial of would sometimes be hardly an exag- Russians, the Jews complain of the all provocation is itself a provocation; geration to say that one party stands Poles; the Irish were abused under that denial of the problem is itself a for the religion without the nation, and English rule, yet Irish-Americans problem. (G.K.’s Weekly, April 11, 1925) the other for the nation without the have been notorious in their treat- religion. Just as the old agricultural ;;They are a problem because their ment of Jews and Blacks; the French Arabs hate the Zionists as the instru- presence presses in great bulk upon tra- Canadians also complain of abuse ments of new Western business grab ditions and instincts that are not their at the hands of the English, yet the and sharp practice; so the old peddling own. (G.K.’s Weekly, April 18, 1925) Jews and Indians could tell you a and pedantic but intensely pious Jews thing or two about the French-Cana- ;;We have been told to treat the wan- hate the Zionists as the instruments of dians; the Czechs were mistreated by dering Jew as a pilgrim. And yet…He a new Western atheism of free thought. the Austrians, the Slovaks and Gip- who is detached, disgruntled, nonde- Only I fear that when the storm breaks, sies by the Czechs; while the Slovaks, script, intermediate, is everywhere such distinctions are swept away. ( “The in their turn, have a very poor track made the excuse for altering what is Shadow of the Problem,” The New Jerusalem) record with Gypsies, Jews and ethnic common, corporate, traditional and Hungarians…and on and on it goes.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 17 : A Miscellany of Men:

The first Junior Debating Club, 1891, front row, left Some of His Best Friends to right: Lucien Oldershaw, G.K. Chesterton, Bernard Langdon-Davies. back row, left to right: E.W. Fordham, by Dale Ahlquist Lawrence Solomon, Digby d’Avigdor, Waldo d’Avigdor

t. Paul’s School in London was the alma mater of John Milton and the Duke of Wellington. But the young G.K. Chesterton attended mostly because it was Sless than a mile from his home. He was a notoriously poor student, and yet it could be argued that here he launched his literary career, thanks to his involvement in The Junior Debat- ing Club. This was a group of students who, on their own initiative, met and presented papers and argued. They printed and sold their own paper, The Debater, where Chesterton’s first prose and poetry was published. The organizing force was Lucien Oldershaw (who would become Chesterton’s brother-in-law), but the heart and soul of the group was G.K. Chesterton, who was elected unconscious—of inspiring affection and know”; who, in one of his many its chairman. The “librarian” of the trust in all who had to do with him.” accounts of J.D.C. meetings, wrote: “A group was E.C. Bentley (of clerihew Other members of the small penny bun of the sticky order caress- fame), who recalled that Chesterton club included E.W. Fordham, (whom ingly stung the chairman’s honoured had an “extraordinary power—of which Chesterton described as “one of the cheek, sped on its errand of mercy by he was, and always remained, quite most profoundly humourous men I the unerring hand of Mr. F.”); Bernard Langdon-Davies (who was probably the first to recognize Chesterton’s genius, and went on to become President of the Cambridge Union); F.R. Salter (who later became Chesterton’s attor- ney and wrote a history of St. Paul’s), R.E. Vernede (a promising poet who was killed in World War I). The Junior Debating Club, said Chesterton, was “a singular broth- erhood.” The boys reveled in each other’s company and thrilled at the intellectual fireworks in their debates. It is difficult to imagine fifteen-year-old boys expounding on history and litera- ture with the depth and wit that these young men achieved, and their school days’ friendship led to a close and lifelong camaraderie. And it is signifi- cant that fully one-third of the dozen members of the Junior Debating Club The Junior Debating Club in 1948 at the presentation of the bust of Chesterton were Jewish. The two sets of brothers— to St. Paul’s School: Fred Salter, Lucien Oldershaw, Lawrence Solomon, Maurice and Lawrence Solomon, and Maurice Solomon, E.C. Bentley, Waldo d’Avigdor Waldo and Digby D’Avigdor—would not

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have belonged to the club had it not been for the insistence of that raging : the Ballad of Gilbert: anti-Semite, G.K. Chesterton. The Solomons, said Chesterton, by G.K. Chesterton represented the Jewish “love of home, the love of children, the meek and “Mediaevalism” malicious humour, the tranquil service of a law.” He said they were “good by If men should rise and return to the noise and time of the tourney, every standard.” The name and fame of the tabard, the tangle of yules and gold, Maurice Solomon (1878-1954) Would these things stand and suffice for the bourne of a backward journey, went by the nickname Grey. Ches- A light on our days returning, as it was in the days of old? terton had to plead with Bentley Nay, there is none rides back to pick up a glove or a feather, to let Maurice into their circle of Though the gauntlet rang with honour or the plume was more than a crown: friends. Bentley not only overcame his prejudice, thanks to Chesterton, but And hushed is the holy trumpet that called the nations together ended up presenting the first book of And under the Horns of Hattin the hope of the world went down. clerihews to Maurice. For Gilbert’s Ah, not in remembrance stored, but out of oblivion starting, nineteenth birthday, Maurice gave him Because you have sought new homes and all that you sought is so, a book of stories and poems by Bret Because you had trodden the fire and barred the door in departing, Harte, signed “To Gilbert Chester- Returns in your chosen exile the glory of long ago. ton, From his sincere friend, Maurice Solomon.” (One of Chesterton’s earli- Not then when you barred the door, not then when you trod the embers, est published essays would be on Bret But now, at your new road’s end, you have seen the face of a fate, Harte.) Maurice became an electrical That not as a child looks back, and not as a fool remembers, engineer and later a director for Gen- All that men took too lightly and all that they love too late. eral Electric. It is you that have made no rubric for saints, no raiment for lovers Lawrence Solomon (1876-1940) Your caps that cry for a feather, your roofs that sigh for a spire: became one of Chesterton’s closest friends. He was a professor of history Is it a dream from the dead if your own decay discovers at the University of London, but when Alive in your rotting graveyard the worm of the world’s desire? Chesterton moved to Beaconsfield, Therefore the old trees tower, that the green trees grow and are stunted: Lawrence left London and bought a Therefore these dead men mock you, that you the living are dead: home in Beaconsfield so that he could Since ever you battered the saints and the tools of your crafts were blunted, be close to Chesterton. Or shattered the glass in its glory and loaded yourselves with the lead. Waldo D’Avigdor (1877-1947) became an executive at a large life When the usurer hunts the squire as the squire has hunted the peasant, insurance company. Chesterton dedi- As sheep that are eaten of worms where men were eaten of sheep: cated The Innocence of Father Brown Now is the judgment of earth, and the weighing of past and present, to Waldo and his wife, Mildred. Who scorn to weep over ruins, behold your ruin and weep. Digby D’Avigdor (dates unknown) Have ye not known, ye fools, that have made the present a prison, would devote much of his life to That thirst can remember water and hunger remember bread? charity work, especially on behalf of Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, which We went not gathering ghosts; but the shriek of your shame is arisen cared for unwed mothers. At St. Paul’s, Out of your own black Babel too loud; and it woke the dead. Gilbert made light of Digby’s fastidi- ous appearance, and Digby, in turn, of Chesterton’s incredibly sloppy appear- ance. Digby’s other school friends could not understand why he would and strong. Teasing him was also use- university—G.K. Chesterton, whose associate with Chesterton, whereas less. As Digby recalled, Gilbert would formal education largely ended with St. Digby thought it an honor to be his accept teasing “with such unfailing Paul’s and the J.D.C. friend: “There is no half-way house good temper that there soon ceased to The members of the Junior about it, I used to wonder why he was be any fun in it.” Debating Club continued to meet on decent to me.” He may have been the All of the members of the Junior a regular basis for the remainder of Jewish boy that Chesterton rescued Debating Club went on either to their lives. After Chesterton’s death, from bullies at the beginning of his Oxford or Cambridge, where they all the group, led by Lucien Oldershaw, school days, an account described distinguished themselves. All, but one. commissioned a bust to be carved of in the Autobiography. No one ever The one who became most famous Chesterton which they presented to St. bullied Chesterton because he was big was the one who did not go to the Paul’s, where it still stands.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 19 : CHESTERTON & THE JEWS: which would be unfair and uncomfort- able and probably cause resentment in that country. Chesterton said, “Jews “I Am Fond of Jews” must be free to be Jews.” In order for that to happen, he argued, they must In Defense of Chesterton have their own homeland, and Pales- tine was the logical place. by Dale Ahlquist For Chesterton, a nation was an organic unity, a people who shared .K. Chesterton said that his everyone. Although Chesterton spoke the same homeland, the same culture, views about the Jews were out eloquently against the ideas of the same language and literature, the “wildly misunderstood.” His people with whom he disagreed, he same religion, the same race, the same views were actually quite did not make personal attacks, and heritage, and last and least, the same simple and straightforward and even his philosophical opponents held government. This may be hard for us Garticulate, as they were about every- him in the highest regard and with to grasp because America has never thing else. It was the situation that was great affection. He was often invited to been like that. It has been a nation complicated. And still is. It is, in fact, speak at Jewish meetings and events, of exiles from its inception. And with even more complicated now because invitations he warmly accepted and at the modern upheaval of European we have to try to discuss it from the which he was enthusiastically received. governments, the concept of nation- opposite side of the event which is And, yes (I write this brashly and hood has more or less followed the the flashpoint for all discussions of defiantly), some of his best friends American idea, that is, a nation based anti-Semitism: the Holocaust. In light were Jewish. This began with several on a contractual relationship and not of that event, we can be tempted to boyhood friends at St. Paul’s School to an organic one; government is the read things into what Chesterton said whom he remained close his whole life. primary unifying factor. about the Jews that simply are not One of them, Lawrence Solomon, actu- Chesterton respected the religion there. And our narrow perspective can ally moved to Beaconsfield as an adult of the Jews and vigorously defended prevent us altogether from seeing what after Chesterton settled there, just to the rights of Jews to worship accord- really is there. The Holocaust was the be close to him. The first volume of ing to their faith. He expressed his natural fruit of the unnatural growth Father Brown stories was dedicated admiration for devout Jews, and he of all anti-Semitism that crept its way to a Jewish friend, and Chesterton acknowledged and lamented the into the twentieth century. To say that started a community theatre with oppression suffered by poor Jews in G.K. Chesterton was one of the leaves a Jewish neighbor (who hesitated England and in the rest of Europe. But on that noxious vine is a mean and because she’d “heard” that Chesterton he also lamented the fact that Jews wretched lie. was anti-Semitic, but after meeting were not only on the receiving end What is the basis for the charge of him realized that she’d been a fool to of oppression. He was particularly anti-Semitism against Chesterton? The think so). mindful of rich Jews, especially those evidence usually trotted is a few lines The shocking idea that got who had acquired their wealth through from some of his light verse, dialogue Chesterton into all sorts of trouble was usury, which was a tool for the oppres- from some of his fiction, an open his insistence that Jews were in fact sion and exploitation of the poor, letter he wrote to a prominent Jew, or Jewish. His view was that they were including poor Jews. And in contrast selected (or paraphrased) passages a distinct people, a distinction that is to the devout Jew, he pointed out the from his books and essays on history commonly recognized by both Jew and complicated situation created by Jews and economics. Also used against him non-Jew who use the terms “Jew and who did not practice their faith or take is the company he kept: his brother, Gentile.” But while they were a distinct their own religion seriously. They were Cecil, and his friend, Hilaire Belloc, people, they did not have their home- restrained neither by religious precepts both of whom have also been accused land. They were a nation without a nor by patriotism to the nation in of anti-Semitism. He also had a distant country. The “Wandering Jew” was not which they lived. The lack of restraint cousin named A.K. Chesterton who merely an image of literature but a fact culminated in two apparently opposite was the chief propagandist for the Brit- of history. Their settlement through- evils: the gross accumulation of wealth ish Union of Fascists in the 1930s. out Europe was unsettled. Though and power by certain Jewish houses Chesterton addressed not only the they often developed a loyalty to their on the one hand and, on the other, the accusations of anti-Semitism point- adopted homeland, it was different promotion of communism by Jewish edly in his writings, defending himself from the natural loyalty of a native. intellectuals, who were as certain on all counts, but throughout his life Complete assimilation was problematic about economics as they were skepti- was praised (and sometimes criti- for one of two reasons: Jews would cal about religion. cized) for being a friend and defender either have to give up their distinctive- Those who accuse Chesterton of of Jews. More importantly, he was ness, which would be unfair to Jews, or anti-Semitism often overlook his enor- both widely and intimately known as the nation assimilating the Jews would mous good humor. He did not take someone who was charitable towards have to give up its own distinctiveness, himself seriously and in his lightness,

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his playfulness, his charitableness and have a unique relationship with God; and good-natured toward all people. good nature, he could point out human that the Jews lost their homeland; Since the personal accounts of Ches- foibles and the sublime silliness of his that they were exiles everywhere terton unanimously attest to the fact fellow man without condemnation. If else on earth; that Jews were usually that Chesterton was friendly and he stereotyped the Jews in some of his protected throughout Christendom charitable with everyone, we should be generalizations, it was because he had but not at home there; that Christians careful how we react when one of his a great gift for generalization which usually recognized not only the Jews’ phrases or descriptions jumps off the was not limited to the Jews. He did the unique religion but their outstanding page at us. Should a passage smack of same thing with Cockneys, Irish, Ger- talent and intellect, which made for a anti-Semitism, or appear in any other mans, Americans, Moslems, Mormons, sometimes awkward mixture of respect respect out of character, perhaps there Puritans, Prohibitionists, Parliamentar- and resentment. might be an explanation for it. Chester- ians, Vegetarians, Christian Scientists, Chesterton also believed that ton’s character, so well demonstrated Quakers, and all the rest of us who Jews, unjustly locked out from honest, throughout his life and writings as march comically along in the grand productive trades, excelled at what was generous, humble, loving and lovable, human parade. He did not single out long an outlawed trade: finance (the should take precedence and deserves to Jews when he made fun of their noses nice word for “usury”); that Chris- be the defining criteria to how we inter- or their love of money, but neither did tians further resented the subsequent pret him. In other words, we should be he spare them, because he did not success of the Jews and exacerbated ready to grant Chesterton the benefit of spare anyone else, especially himself. the problem by indebting themselves the doubt and search for another expla- What we love we can laugh at with to Jews; that the best that small- nation for what we find, rather than the impunity, which is why a husband and minded bigots could do was call them knee-jerk “anti-Semitic” explanation. wife can laugh at each other, because, Christ-killers; that hostility toward the There are three selections from as Chesterton said, they both know Jews pushed them out of positions of his light verse that are almost always they are both fools. We need to laugh privilege and also occasionally pushed used as Exhibits A, B and C in the at ourselves when we are silly (instead poor Jews out of their homes; that case against Chesterton. The first two of being offended) and we need to Jews, as much as they may become are excerpts from longer poems that repent when we are wrong (instead of attached to their host nations, might were published during his lifetime; the rationalizing or defending ourselves). likely feel a greater loyalty to other third a short poem published posthu- Chesterton said things that can Jews, even Jews of other countries; mously. The first thing to remember is no longer be said in these hyper- and that the Jews were still a people that these are “light verse” that some sensitive, politically-correct times, but in exile, a people who deserved their people think must be taken seriously. even in his own time, he bemoaned own homeland and full, unquestioned, Explaining a joke is never funny, but people who have “a blank and blood- unmolested autonomy. explaining a joke to people who don’t curdling incapacity to see a joke.” He This was Chesterton’s position. He think it is a joke is more like torture. noted that for some reason telling a easily placed more blame on the Chris- joke about a Jew was not the same as tians than on the Jews, but he did not telling a joke about anyone else. In hold the Jews blameless. He acknowl- Exhibit A fact, even to discuss Jews was not the edged the reality of “a Jewish problem,” same as discussing any other group of the continuing conflict between Jews Oh I knew a Doctor Gluck, people. This, if anything, accentuated and non-Jews, which could not be And his nose it had a hook, his argument that there was “a Jewish solved by being ignored. And he pro- And his attitudes were anything but Problem,” that no amount of lip ser- posed Zionism as a solution. Aryan; vice to the ideal of assimilation could Of supreme importance in this So I gave him all the pork change the persistent notion that there debate is the fact that Chesterton was That I had, upon a fork; was a mutual uneasiness between the a vocal critic of Hitler, of his racial Because I am myself a Vegetarian. English and the Jews. theories and his policies towards the Some of Chesterton’s critics Jews long before most people even This is from “The Song of the claim his Zionism is proof of his acknowledged what Hitler was up to Vegetarian” from The Flying Inn, a anti-Semitism. This is an argument in the 1930s. Even though Chester- book that can only be described as that chooses to ignore everything else ton hoped for the establishment of a a romp. The song here is a drinking about Chesterton. His long support of Jewish homeland, he never advocated song, which begins: Zionism was consistent with his ideas forcibly removing the Jews from You will find me drinking rum about what nations were, and it was Europe. If they were threatened he Like a sailor in a slum, also consistent with his whole philoso- said he would die defending the last phy of the God-given rights and dignity Jew in Europe. You will find me drinking beer like of the individual. He shared the basic Jews and non-Jews alike who knew a Bavarian… ideas of Christendom that begin with Chesterton testified not merely that the foundational idea that the Jewish Chesterton was no anti-Semite, but …because he is a rigid vegetarian, God…is God; that the Jews historically that he was utterly kind and gracious of course. The song is deliberately

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 21 : CHESTERTON & THE JEWS: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes aimed at vegetarians and is even more There is no irony in giving pork to a singer of this song, which begins, deliberately aimed at prohibitionists, Dr. Swanson or a Dr. McGee. Let’s try They haven’t got no noses which is the theme of the novel. But is to remember the point of the song. The fallen sons of Eve, it also aimed at poor Dr. Gluck? The It is a rip of Vegetarians. The mock- Even the smell of roses astute observer will surmise that Dr. Vegetarian who sings for us, unloads Is not what they supposes, Gluck, based on his name, his distinc- his meat, and naturally it is pork, and But more than mind discloses, tive nose and his non-Aryan attitude, is naturally he gives it to someone who is And more than men believe. Jewish. Has he been defamed? not supposed to eat pork. Chesterton First of all, there’s this Aryan busi- considered the vegetarian philosophy It’s a jocular poem about the ness. This is not an attack on the Jews. quite misdirected. Giving up some- superiority of dogs’ noses to man’s. It On the contrary: it ridicules Teutonic thing was only meaningful if it was ends, “And goodness only knowses/ racial theories, ideas given up as a sacri- The Noselessness of Man.” that Chesterton fice. A vegetarian But what about that line about the certainly did think Comedy, said giving up meat was Jew? What’s that doing there? worth taking seri- Chesterton, is about significant only if he The assumption is that it must be ously. To say that Dr. loved meat, not if he another reference to Jewish noses, in Gluck doesn’t have the fall of man. We hated it. Vegetarian- this case, the Jewish noses that would an Aryan attitude, must first establish that ism was based either steal a smell since there is no “Law of as if a race could on extreme notions Moses” against it. But the lines don’t have an attitude, is man is dignified before about health or read that way. In fact, although the actually a joke on we establish that it is even more extreme song is about noses, there is in fact no German racism, not notions about ani- reference at all to Jewish noses here. It on Jews. funny when he does mals. Jewish dietary is Quoodle the dog who is stealing the Second, the nose something undignified, law, on the other smell, stealing it from the park, “the thing. Chesterton hand, was based on park a Jew encloses.” The Jew owns commonly made ref- such as sitting on his religion. The mis- the park, and it is not accessible to erences to the hook hat. We don’t laugh at placed priorities of the public after dark, but Quoodle can nose when describing the vegetarian are still enjoy the park without trespassing, his Jewish characters, a tree falling down, but demonstrated by the because he can smell it. but he also made we do laugh at a man fact that he would If this is anti-Semitism, it’s pretty reference to Roman give up his meat— thin stuff. noses and Norman falling down. Why? pork—but give it to Exhibit C noses, and other Because only man can someone who has an types of noses. Noses authentic and non- I am fond of Jews are generally comical. be absurd. Because only vegetarian reason for Jews are fond of money What are we to make man can be dignified. avoiding that meat. Never mind of whose of it? Are the critics Comedy, said I am fond of Jews suggesting that he Chesterton, is about Oh, but when they lose was simply determined to offend Jews the fall of man. We must first estab- Damn it all, it’s funny. even if it meant taking a cheap shot lish that man is dignified before we at their noses? Does his reference establish that it is funny when he does Chesterton’s biographer, Maisie to Jewish noses prove that he was a something undignified, such as sitting Ward, who released this poem to the vicious Jew-baiter, sneering at their on his hat. We don’t laugh at a tree world, explained the circumstances very appearance? It seems the critics falling down, but we do laugh at a man under which he penned it. In 1911, have forgotten who they are talking falling down. Why? Because only man when he was recovering from a broken about. This was G.K. Chesterton, who can be absurd. Because only man can arm, his doctor handed him a pen was himself one of the funniest-looking be dignified. and paper to see if he could still write. men in England, and who was not Chesterton thought for an instant, Exhibit B unaware of that fact. He was at every wrote a name at the top of the paper caricaturist’s mercy (though the fun- They haven’t got no noses, and then spontaneously wrote the niest drawings of him are by the artist, They cannot even tell poem. Who was it about? Maisie Ward G.K. Chesterton). If Chesterton’s When door and darkness closes said that wild horses would not drag references to the Jewish nose are to The park a Jew encloses, the name from her, but that the name be taken as evidence of anti-Semitism, Where even the Law of Moses of the subject is really “the key to then I detect an odor of pettiness Will let you steal a smell. this impromptu.” Well, we don’t know among the critics. Our discussion of name or circumstances of its subject, noses, unfortunately, continues below. This is from “The Song of Quoo- but that has not stopped Chesterton’s Third, the pork on a fork. Well, dle,” which is also from The Flying Inn. critics—obviously a humorless bunch— obviously that’s supposed to be ironic. Quoodle is a dog. And Quoodle is the to draw larger and more sinister

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conclusions about Chesterton’s atti- Leaving aside Chesterton’s poetry came from novels and newspapers, tude toward all Jews. and considering his fiction, one of and probably made up on the spur of The critic pounces: “He says he’s the criticisms against him is that the the moment.” fond of Jews, indeed! What he obvi- villains in his books are Jews. This is The other characters “seemed a ously means is that he hates them. a strong argument except for the fact little dazed by this historical digres- Says he’s fond of Jews, but he makes that it is not true. Almost all of the sion.” And one of them tactfully a generalization that Jews are greedy, Jews in Chesterton’s fiction are minor challenges Father Brown on the details and he thinks it’s funny when they characters. They might rarely be a sus- of his version of history. lose. How could anybody think it’s pect, but some one else turns out to “Perhaps that is an exaggeration,” funny when a greedy person loses be the criminal. It seems that a raging admits Father Brown calmly. “But the money…?” At this point the critic anti-Semite would make Jews the vil- plotter did not think the details of pauses. lains in his detective fiction. Or at least medieval history would matter much The problem with this poem is… the murder victims. But Chesterton to anybody. And his calculation was it’s funny. But we know we’re not sup- didn’t. He murdered many a million- pretty nearly right…” posed to laugh, and we try not to laugh, aire and not one of them was a Jew. The reason the solution to this but we do. Apart from the fact that it’s There is, however, the occasional mystery comes as a surprise (as all about Jews, we know we’re not sup- snippet of dialogue that helps people solutions to all mysteries should) is posed to laugh at anyone’s misfortune. label Chesterton as an anti-Semite, that our popular notion of medieval And one of the beauties of the poem is such as the following from the Father history is wrong. Jews may have that Chesterton himself is trying not Brown story, “The Curse of the Golden been persecuted, but, as Chesterton to laugh. He tries to hold it in, but, but Cross”: says elsewhere, “Jews were never (I know I’m not supposed to laugh), persecuted for professing Judaism as “But surely you won’t deny that but…“Damn it all, it’s funny.” Jews were persecuted in the Middle heretics were for professing heresy.” Here I will invoke Mel Brooks, the Ages?” Before you bring up the Spanish great Jewish humorist: “Tragedy is “It would be nearer the truth,” said Inquisition, Chesterton already has. He when I stub my toe; comedy is when Father Brown, “to say they were the argues that the Jews in Spain were not you fall down the stairs.” only people who weren’t persecuted accused of being heretics but of being It is a clever little rhyme with a in the Middle Ages. If you want to traitors and spies for the Moors. Yes, humorous, harmless jab at the end. satirize medievalism, you could make there were outbreaks of persecution in But because it was written by Chester- a good case by saying that some poor European history, but they were just ton, the critics make it a very grave Christian might be burned alive for that—outbreaks. When Chesterton’s matter, and assume all kinds of darker making a mistake about the Homoou- critics accuse of him of writing “selec- sion, while a rich Jew might walk implications. tive” history, they have it backwards. down the street openly sneering at Lest we think these jokes-in-a- Christ and the Mother of God…” To emphasize the persecutions is poem went only in one direction, selective. Chesterton-against-the-Jews, here is an Now, I hate to give away the Here is another bit of dialogue that example of the tables turned, indicat- ending of a Father Brown story. So is used to demonstrate Chesterton’s ing that there was some good-natured either skip a few paragraphs, or pro- anti-Semitism. It is from one of his back-and-forth on the matter. Jewish ceed at your own risk. Let’s try to put other fictional detectives, the languid poet Humbert Wolfe poked fun at these words back into the story from Horne Fisher, who at the end of story, Chesterton with this mock epitaph: which they were taken. “The Bottomless Well” erupts with, The story line is that there is Here lies Mr. Chesterton “It’s bad enough that a gang of infer- supposedly a curse on a holy relic in a Who to heaven might have gone, nal Jews should plant us here, where tomb, and the person who explains the But didn’t when he heard the news there’s no earthly English interest to origin of the curse says that part of the That the place was run by Jews. serve, and all hell heating up against history surrounding the relic involved us, simply because Nosey Zimmerman We must add, however, that when a medieval Jew who was “ruthlessly has lent money to half the Cabinet...I Chesterton died, Wolfe wrote a moving burnt” at the stake for his “heresy and don’t believe in the Empire growing tribute in verse, which concludes with unbelief.” Father Brown quickly figures until it reaches the sky; I don’t believe the lines, out that the person who told this story in the Union Jack going up and up is phony because the whole story is a eternally like the Tower. But if you He does not need to knock against phony. It is phony because, “the Jew think I am going to let the Union the Gate Jack down into the blackness of the couldn’t possibly have been burned for Who every action like a prayer Bottomless Pit, down in defeat and his religion,” Father Brown says, lead- ascended derision amid the jeers of the very ing to the dialogue noted above, which And beat upon the panels. Trumpets, Jews who have sucked us dry—no, I then continues: “It was never a story wait won’t, and that’s flat…” of the Middle Ages; it was never even For a hushed instant. We loved him. a legend about the Middle Ages. It was Read that by itself and your reac- It is ended. made up by somebody whose notions tion is, well, the same reaction of the

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 23 : CHESTERTON & THE JEWS: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes character in the story who hears it: episode in his life that his critics must especially the Jews themselves…I either flatly deny or otherwise artfully hardly know how to deal with the inno- Boyle was regarding him with a bewilderment that was almost fear, explain away. It was a personal experi- cence of a gentleman who really thinks and had even a touch of distaste. ence, and it arguably colored his views there is something wildly anti-Semitic on this matter because it was painful in the simple truth that Semites have But Boyle does something Ches- and it touched people he loved. There been very prominent both in the Capi- terton’s critics don’t try to do; he really was a case of corruption in high talist and Communist excess (the two attempts to understand the reason places involving Jews. There really was philosophies are in fact the same).” for Fisher’s outburst. He says there a Marconi Scandal. It is interesting to note that Arnold must be something horrid about the Lunn himself later became a convert things Fisher knows. Fisher replies that ; ; ; to the Roman Catholic Church. indeed there is, and says, Chesterton understood that part of When Chesterton was accused the uniqueness of the Jewish people is “I am not at all pleased with my small stock of knowledge and of being anti-Semitic, he usually just that they are both a race and a religion. reflection.” laughed off the charge because he In fact, they are that and something knew better, as did those who knew more: “The Jews are not like other And then Fisher walks away, “as if him. “The picture of me as a black races; they remain as unique to a little ashamed.” persecutor and slanderer of Israel will, everybody else as to themselves.” But Perhaps that would be enough to to those who know me, appear highly he had no time for those “wild theo- soften the blow, but let’s back up and comic…” He even gently taunted his rists who think that everything can be explain more about the context of this opponents to deliver proof of his anti- explained by ‘race’…What determines passage. It begins by Fisher saying that Semitism. Since it obviously was not the human part of history is religion he is “a little Englander.” He hates obvious, it must be secret: “It would and not race.” However, when he urges British imperialism, but loves England be an exaggeration to say that it is my Zionism as a solution to “The Jewish and will defend her. So when he finds daily habit to leap upon aged Jews in Problem,” he uses a phrase that clangs himself at a remote outpost in the Fleet Street and tear out their teeth; loudly and unpleasantly in our modern Arabian desert “that serves no British so, given my admitted monomania on ears: “separation of the races.” But it interest,” he unleashes his displeasure the subject, it only remains to suppose absolutely must not be understood to at what he thinks put him there. He that my private house is fitted up like mean anything like apartheid, which claims that the British policy-makers a torture chamber for this mode of is a gross mockery of the idea of have cut deals with Jewish financiers, medieval dentistry.” independent and organic nationhood. and he thinks the greater part of Also, then as now, when the Zionism was the hope of many Jews, imperialism is driven by Jews wanting charge was raised, it was often used but there is no question that for some to build a financial empire. Staking as a criticism of last resort unrelated of them, the prospect of relocating to out a new piece of the desert does not to the topic at hand. It was brought Palestine was akin to being banished make England greater, but “opening up only to weaken Chesterton when to Lesotho or to an Oklahoma Indian new markets” certainly benefits that Chesterton’s arguments could not Reservation or some other netherworld nebulous interest known as Finance, be weakened. A typical example was where “separation of the races” is which is only beneficial to a rich and a book by Arnold Lunn in which he simply an excuse for oppression and powerful elite. attempted to critique Chesterton’s con- exploitation. Chesterton never insisted Chesterton was opposed to version to Roman Catholicism. Lunn that Palestine was the only place for financial imperialism and believed knew Chesterton was a lucid defender a Jewish homeland, but certainly the there was a Jewish aspect to it. Did he of Christianity, but he thought it a logical and historical place. And most have any hard evidence? It is perhaps huge error on Chesterton’s part to con- Jews agreed with him. The idea was important to note that in the episode of vert. Lunn could not understand the never banishment, but autonomy and Horne Fisher, noted above, the char- decision, but finding no openings in nationhood for the Jews. This is the acter admitted knowing some “horrid” Chesterton’s defense of the faith, Lunn main thesis of “The Problem of Zion- things, and felt “a little ashamed” for attacked the one soft-spot he thought ism,” his controversial chapter in The even saying as much as he did. He he was sure of: Chesterton’s anti-Sem- New Jerusalem. was, after all, “The Man Who Knew itism. The specific issue wasn’t even When Chesterton said that Jews Too Much.” Perhaps Chesterton knew Chesterton’s Catholic faith, but his were a distinct people, he was not something more than even he was will- ideas about Distributism, which Lunn attacking them, putting them down, or ing to say about it. Or perhaps he was associated with Catholicism. Ches- otherwise maligning them. When he a maniac. His critics claim that there terton wrote in response that Lunn said that they were foreigners, exiles, was no basis to his ideas about “the “seems quite puzzled; and is forced at strangers in a strange land, he said Jewish International” and that there last to lug in the dear old legend that something that Jews themselves had rec- was nothing to the facts he claimed he I lie awake at night devising tortures ognized for more than a thousand years. knew and the actual conversations he for the Jews. Most people have learned A rabbi who read The New Jerusalem claimed he’d heard. But there was one to smile at that legend by this time, affirmed Chesterton’s observation and

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said that however much Jews come to assimilation and humanitarianism and live up to their own religious standards. love their adopted country, it is always a idealistic indifference. The presence (He would make the same point in hard love. And it is not without signifi- of anti-Semitism in America, of all The Everlasting Man about Christians cance that at each Passover, the Jews places, in his mind further supported who fall short of their own standards pray, “Next year in Jerusalem.” his arguments for Zionism. If the Jews and ideals: “The Christian is only One of the main reasons Ches- could not assimilate in America, which worse because it is his business to be terton supported Zionism was that it was, in effect, a nation of foreigners, a better.”) As for their loyalty, he does would create the opportunity for Jews mixture of cultures, and with no great not question their full and rightful to own and work their own land, like weight of a long history behind it, participation as citizens in any country, the common peasants of any other they certainly could not be expected but contends that generally they are solid country. This was a simple virtue to assimilate in a European nation still allied “rightly and justifiably” to unavailable to Jews for centuries. But like England, where in more than their own people, who may be citizens he pointed out that there were many a thousand years they still had not of other countries. He maintains that problems for Zionism. The Jew “is assimilated. a Jewish capitalist is different from an not only unpopular both in the East In 1911, Chesterton was inter- “ordinary” capitalist because the latter and West, but he is unpopular in the viewed in The Jewish Chronicle. While may be restrained by some duty to West for being eastern and in the East the interviewer expresses appreciation his native soil. What Jews need is the for being western.” In Europe, he is for Chesterton’s defense of the Jews, opportunity to live freely on their own suspected of Asiatic secrecy, in Asia, of he asks him how he dared suggest that native soil with their own people. European vulgarity, which was one of there was a “problem, and, above all, a The interviewer says that in some the reasons, he predicted, that Pales- peril, in ‘the international and largely people’s minds, Zionism and Anti-Sem- tinians would be opposed to the Jewish secret power of the great Jewish itism are one and the same. settlement of Palestine. But Chesterton houses.’” The interviewer is surprised Chesterton replies, “That is arrant said that when he stood at the Temple that Chesterton, of all people, could be nonsense. It is equivalent to saying Mount, where a mosque sits on the “afflicted with such a bogey.” that a man who is anxious for the site of the ancient temple of Israel, he Chesterton responds, “I can preservation of the supremacy of the could not escape the idea that the land only look at things as they are…and, English race is an Anglophobe.” belonged to the Jews. of course, it gets me into no end of They debate the benefits and After The New Jerusalem was troubles. When I find that a great practicality of Zionism, with Chester- published, Chesterton visited America, banking house, controlling vast finan- ton stating his belief that for “Jews where he said he was “besieged by cial resources, has branches in every who are anxious to see the Jewish Rabbis lamenting my ‘prejudice.’” He capital, I think I am correct in calling question solved,” Zionism seemed explained, of course, that he was the power it possesses ‘international.’” the right course. not prejudiced, and also explained The interviewer goes on to raise the “Otherwise…?” asks the inter- the strange American misuse of that usual objections which are still raised viewer, perceiving that something has word. “Prejudice” meant to pre-judge. against such a viewpoint: Surely other been left unsaid. Chesterton insisted that all of his businesses besides banking are interna- “Well,” says Chesterton, “his- opinions about the Jews were based on tional? Surely other people besides Jews tory will go on repeating itself for his experience with Jews, not on any are capitalists, as well as “monopolists, the Jew. As has been his past, so his preconceptions. And furthermore, his wire-pullers, war-makers and strike- future. My point is this: That the Jews, experience of Jews was that he liked breakers, and buyers and sellers of being landless, unnaturally, alternate them, not that he disliked them, as the national honor?” Surely there are Jews between too much power and too little, term “prejudice” seemed to imply. who are loyal citizens? And surely not that the Jew millionaire is too safe and On each of his two trips to Amer- all Jews are rich and powerful; are not the Jew peddler too harassed. It is not ica, he was frequently and warmly most poor? In other words, why pick likely that millionaires among you will hosted by Jews. What surprised him on the Jews: they’re no better or worse be otherwise than the very few. There- in America, however, was that he than anybody else. They shouldn’t be fore, for the many, I am afraid the observed a great deal of anti-Semitism singled out for anything at all. future will be as the past has been— in situations and from people that he Chesterton’s response is that it murder, outrage, persecution, insult, never would have expected. Pick up is historically and culturally undeni- moral and physical torture, wander- an American newspaper or magazine able the Jews are a distinct people, a ing unrest, oscillations of comfortless from around 1920 and see how short a nationality without a nation. They are abasing and uncertain toleration with time it takes to find a reference openly in most ways better than other peo- grinding, enervating, cramping, dis- offensive to Jews. Chesterton was ples, but being better does not mean abilities: in short, the Jew—at least for surprised, for instance, upon meeting being the same. And being better, he the most part—always burnt.” Henry Ford to discover that he was would expect better from them: not to Chesterton did not live to see it, anti-Semitic. Chesterton considered oppress people by the power of capital, but his analysis would prove to be hor- America much the way America con- not to oil themselves when they have ribly and explicitly accurate just three siders itself, the land of toleration and struck oil, and most importantly, to short decades after this interview.

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In 1936, in a jarringly entitled rebuttal was: “Well, there are anti-Sem- splendid scorn” of the decadents of his essay, “The Judaism of Hitler,” Ches- ites and there are anti-Semites.” own race: the Jewish millionaires. No terton argued that Hitler’s ideas of In other words, the term means gentile, says Chesterton, would dare a superior race were derived from whatever its users and abusers want it speak of the Jewish millionaires as Dr. German Protestantism, which was to mean, as long as the meaning is bad. Nordau speaks, referring to them as obsessed with Old Testament ideas It doesn’t necessarily have anything to “these money-pots who despise what we about a Chosen People rather than do with reality. It is, as Chesterton said, honour and honour what we despise.” New Testament ideas about a Uni- an “unreality [that] expresses itself Chesterton also notes that Dr. Nordau versal Church. Protestants tried to by looking at the labels of things, and says that the Jewish “plutocrats” are make themselves the Chosen People, never at the things themselves.” shown more honor and entitlements by and though Protestantism continued Though Chesterton’s accusers are the Christian community than by the to splinter and degenerate into a monotonous, they cannot get their Jewish community. multitude of sects and strange nine- stories straight. There are some who However, Chesterton casts no teenth-century philosophies that could say that Chesterton was anti-Semitic blame on the Jews for the “Jewish plu- hardly be recognized as Christian, the early in his life but then reformed, but tocratic problem.” Rather, the blame idea of “a chosen people” remained. It also those who say that Chesterton’s is placed squarely on the society that was present in Nietzsche’s theory of early writings are not anti-Semitic but dealt so unfairly with the Jews. The the Superman. Hitler took the concept that he became a Jew-Hater after his real lesson to be learned, he says, of the Chosen People and applied it to conversion to Catholicism. a nebulous grouping called the Aryan A modicum of honest research …is the utter futility of attempting Race. Chesterton found it grimly would reveal that to crush a fine race. In science men ironic that Germans would try to elimi- Chesterton was amaz- know that no force is ever destroyed; but nate the Jews, to whom they were so ingly consistent from G. K. Chesterton was the fact has yet to culturally indebted. beginning to end—not one of the truly good be learnt in politics. When the outright persecution of as an anti-Semite, but There are a thousand Jews began in Germany, it was G.K. as a defender of the people who has graced things that a wronged Chesterton who was among the first Jews. He wrote about this earth. He was good, people may become—a to speak out against it. “Thousands the Jews in one of rival, like America; a of Jews have recently been rabbled his earliest published and he did war with all clog, like Ireland; an or ruined or driven from their homes. pieces, a 1901 review the enemies of human internal disease, like They’ve beaten, bullied poor Jews in of a book entitled The Jewish commerce; concentration camps. Heartily I do Ancient Scriptures of dignity and freedom. but it always becomes indeed despise these Hitlerites.” The the Modern Jew by something. We forbade If he occasionally did to the Jews all natural rest of the world, for the most part, David Baron. In the battle with Jews, it was callings except com- was silent—especially the prigs who review, Chesterton merce, and today called G.K. Chesterton an anti-Semite. says that the Jews are not because they were commerce is what The year after Chesterton’s death, “immortal.” might be expected the great American Rabbi Stephen Jews, but because he Them we can from being eternally Wise wrote: never dethrone: felt they were on the recruited with all the most intellectual sons Indeed I was a warm admirer of they discovered the wrong side of some of a most intellectual Gilbert Chesterton. Apart from his one central thing people. We pray that delightful art and his genius in many no modern man particular argument. the error may not be directions, he was, as you know, a can help believing: repeated in certain great religionist. He as a Catholic, I as whatever we think corners of the earth. To avoid a a Jew, could not have seen eye to eye or do or say we are all bound to the repetition of it would be far worthier with each other, and he might have wheel of the stars which can only have than the frivolous Continental anti- added “particularly seeing that you a single centre. This awful simplifica- Semitism which can find no answer are cross-eyed”; but I deeply respected tion of things they discovered, as it has to Jewish triumphs, except to flourish him. When Hitlerism came, he was since been discovered by innumerable tauntingly the image of a martyred one of the first to speak out with all sages. But their unique historic interest Jew upon an Aryan gibbet. the directness and frankness of a great lies in this: that by a strange circum- and unabashed spirit. Blessing to his stance, that has every resemblance to a memory! miracle, they discovered it in the morn- Everything in this paragraph ing of the world. bears repeating. The Jews are a ; ; ; wronged people. And a great people. Regarding the problems con- They will not be crushed. The whole I once challenged a critic who cerning the modern Jew, Chesterton society is suffering because of injus- referred to Chesterton as an anti- invokes Dr. Max Nordau, the distin- tice to the Jews. There will be grave Semite, laying out for him much of the guished Jewish physician and prolific consequences if the problem is not evidence I have laid out here, and his writer and Zionist, who spoke “with solved. But instead of looking at the

26 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : CHESTERTON & THE JEWS: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes a great grown bearded man, utterly big picture, too many people are about his “dark side.” Part of it may remote from me in type and trade and distracted with minor and immediate interests and opinions, he had a sort of come from the unholy need to find resentments, “frivolous anti-Semitism,” permanent fountain of thanks for that some sort of dirt on Chesterton. They which can do no better than call the trifling incident, which was quite embar- cannot stand someone who is both Jews Christ-killers. It would be hard to rassing. In the same way, I noted that wise and innocent. Finding they are imagine a more eloquent and outright strong family bond among the Jews... no match for his wisdom, they try condemnation of anti-Semitism. Doubtless, I came to know the Jews to dredge up something dastardly in At the end of his life, in writing his because in this sense they were a little his character which they figure will Autobiography, Chesterton touched on abnormal, as I was then becoming a be enough to damage his credibility the subject one last time: little abnormal myself. Yet there is noth- regarding everything else. Critics ing I have come to count more normal, have made pathetic attempts to infer Oddly enough, I lived to have later and nothing I desire more to restore to from his writings that he was a sadist, on the name of an Anti-Semite; whereas its normal place, than those two things; from my first days at school I very the family and theory of thanks. a misogynist, a racist, a drunk, or a largely had the name of a Pro-Semite. homosexual (although I understand I made many friends among the Jews, G. K. Chesterton was one of the this last one is no longer considered and some these I have retained as life- truly good people who has graced this a character flaw, and who knows, if long friends; nor have our relations ever earth. He was good, and he did war someone can prove it, it could mean been disturbed by differences upon the with all the enemies of human dignity Chesterton’s rehabilitation among the political or social problem. I am glad and freedom. If he occasionally did intellectuals). But the criticism that that I began at this end; but I have not battle with Jews, it was not because gets the most mileage and the most really ended any differently from the they were Jews, but because he felt instantaneous impact is that Ches- way in which I began. I held by instinct they were on the wrong side of some terton was anti-Semitic. And almost then, and I hold by knowledge now, that the right way is to be interested particular argument. It is a paradox no proof is needed. The accusation in Jews as Jews; and then to bring into that when he treated Jews like anybody is as good as an indictment. Not only greater prominence the very much else, in making jokes, in holding them do his detractors not consider all the neglected Jewish virtues, which are the to the same standards, he was labeled evidence, they deliberately ignore the complement and sometimes even the anti-Semitic, but if he treated them known evidence in his favor, and they cause of what the world feels to be the as a unique people, even as a unique deliberately color the apparent evi- Jewish faults. For instance, one of the nation, he was also labeled anti-Semitic. dence against him. The result is ironic: great Jewish virtues is gratitude. I was The most unbearable part of those prejudice and discrimination against criticised in early days for quixotry and who accuse Chesterton of anti-Semi- Chesterton. He has been denied mem- priggishness in protecting Jews; and I tism is their smugness. They presume bership in the club. remember once extricating a strange to sit in judgment of Chesterton, not The smallness of his critics is what swarthy little creature with a hooked nose from being bullied…[he was] from the rather lateral position of liter- is most apparent about them. Anyone being tossed from one boy to another ary critics who are certainly entitled who spends an extended amount of amid wild stares of wide-eyed scientific to write literary criticism, but from time reading Chesterton is struck by his curiosity and questions like, “What a lofty position of self-righteousness goodness, his large goodness. It makes is it?” and “Is it alive?” Thirty years where they presume to look down on his critics all the smaller. They have not afterwards, when that little goblin was Chesterton and make pronouncements proven worthy of being his judge.

would be the state-owned telegraph The Marconi Scandal system. Marconi’s general manager was Godfrey Isaacs. Knowing of the pending by Dale Ahlquist contract, Godfrey Isaacs and his broth- ers, Harry and Rufus, bought thousands recently encountered a writer So what was the Marconi Scandal? of shares in the company. Rufus Isaacs who, in the midst of claiming that Cecil Chesterton, G.K.’s brother, was Attorney General. He sold his own G.K. Chesterton was anti-Semitic, was editor of The New Witness, a paper shares to David Lloyd George, later referred to the Marconi Scandal to which G.K. contributed several Prime Minister. After Cecil’s accusa- as “a sort of British version of the poems and a few essays. Cecil was eager tions were published, a Parliamentary IDreyfus Affair.” This crass misrep- to expose corruption in high places, and inquiry was held but the controlling resentation of history reflects the in 1912, he uncovered a case of insider Liberal Party very effectively covered whole problem with Chesterton’s trading involving some government up any evidence of wrong-doing. When modern critics. Not only do they ministers. The British government was Isaacs and Lloyd-George testified, they know nothing about Chesterton, they about to award a huge contract to the omitted relevant facts, saying they know nothing about the times in Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company hadn’t bought any shares in British which he lived. to build communication towers for what Marconi—when in fact they had bought

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 27 : CHESTERTON & THE JEWS: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes shares in American Marconi, which was trading among the international Jewish up. He really was the British equivalent owned by British Marconi. companies was in fact trading with the of Dreyfus: an innocent Jew wrongly The Isaacs brothers were rich and enemy. But he makes it clear that he convicted of a crime. But he had the were certainly influential. And they has never desired disaster for the Jews. disadvantage of being poor. And who were Jews. Cecil vigorously went after He says he understands Lord Reading’s was his chief advocate? Cecil Chester- Godfrey Isaacs in the pages of The position better than most, and he asks ton. Yet this kind of cry for justice was New Witness, and eventually Godfrey that his own position, Zionism, which simply ignored. Cecil, however, was hired London’s most was the position of not ignored when he demanded justice famous attorney, Sir The trial, amazingly, many in England, for the rich, that is, that rich criminals Edward Carson, and not be dismissed as be punished. He was attacked in an sued Cecil for libel. was not about the truth anti-Semitism when attempt to silence him. The Marconi The trial, amaz- of Cecil’s statements it “may well prove the affair ought to have been the downfall ingly, was not about last serious attempt of the Isaacs brothers, but instead it the truth of Cecil’s but only whether they to sympathise with was the downfall of Cecil Chesterton. statements but only damaged the reputation Semitism.” He fears Gilbert was not directly involved, but whether they dam- that if this position is he would always be associated with it, aged the reputation of Godfrey Isaacs. ignored “darker days especially since he had to take over the of Godfrey Isaacs. yet may come.” editorship of his brother’s newspaper Cecil, acting as The Marconi after Cecil’s tragic death. What no one his own counsel, lost. He got off with Scandal could not have been more has ever pointed out is that after Gilbert a fine instead of a prison term. Most different from the Dreyfus Affair. became editor, those anti-Semitic writ- people forgot about the scandal. G.K. Dreyfus was a Jewish officer in the ers who had previously contributed Chesterton did not. He was certainly French Army who was falsely accused articles no longer appeared in the paper. disappointed with the Liberal Party, of being a traitor and was imprisoned Chesterton’s letter to Rufus Isaacs which he had once hoped would defend on Devil’s Island. The French intellectu- may have been the most uncharac- the interests of the common man als demanded justice and talked about teristic thing he ever wrote, in tone if against the interests of big money. He nothing else in the press. The Isaacs not in substance. His critics, however, was disappointed in the justice system, brothers were not falsely accused, were attempt to portray it as something which provided no justice. He was disap- in fact guilty, and were never punished; typical, and they are quite unable to pointed with the Liberal press, which and almost everyone looked the other take into account that it was written was more worried about protecting the way with an embarrassed cough. The by a man grieving his brother’s death. Liberal Party than with telling the truth. key political players should have been Even so, the letter does nothing to Chesterton lost his job with the Daily forced to resign in disgrace; instead demonstrate that Chesterton is anti- News because he spoke out against they went on to lead the postwar Semitic. Nothing. their cowardliness on the scandal. government. It was a case that actually There are two postscripts to the Six years later, as World War I did involve high finance, international story: Rufus Isaacs resigned from drew to a close, Cecil died in a French dealings, secret deals with government the War Department four days after military hospital and Rufus Isaacs, by officials, and Jews. It may have been the Chesterton’s letter was published. then elevated to peerage, accompanied only case in Chesterton’s experience There is no way of knowing whether Lloyd-George to France to negotiate the for which there was Chesterton’s letter peace treaty. hard evidence, but had anything to do The fact that his brother had just it was real and not The Isaacs brothers were with it. His politi- given his life for his country prompted imagined. not falsely accused, were cal career, however, Chesterton to write an open letter to It does not continued, as he Rufus Isaacs, then Lord Reading, in excuse the fact that in fact guilty, and were was later appointed The New Witness. This letter is often there were indeed never punished; and Lord Chief Justice. cited as evidence that Chesterton was articles in The New By most accounts anti-Semitic. Yet there is no smoking Witness under Cecil’s almost everyone looked he was a noble man, gun here. There are actually few refer- editorship that were the other way with an and remained per- ences to the Marconi Scandal. Rather, embarrassingly anti- sonally distressed he urges Lord Reading to resign from Semitic—not so much embarrassed cough. by his association the War Department. He says pointedly what Cecil Chester- with the Marconi that he does not consider him fit to be ton wrote but what Scandal the rest of negotiating any deals on behalf of Eng- he, as editor, allowed others to write. his life. His brother Godfrey Isaacs was land. He repeats his suspicions about He was fair-minded enough to publish involved in other questionable trad- Jewish international trade and the rebuttals to such views, and he, like his ing incidents, other libel actions, and problem of divided loyalty. He implies brother, always defended poor Jews who eventually lost most of his wealth. After in the letter what he states explicitly had been treated unjustly. If you don’t his financial downfall, he converted to elsewhere, that during World War I, the know who Stinie Morrison is, look him Catholicism.

28 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 Serious about the Western tradition? WE ARE. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” Keats reads from his Grecian urn. But in a world where truth is besieged and beauty is ignored in favor of “statements,” we need to know a lot more! Discover Dappled Things, a journal of fiction, poetry, essays, and art inspired by the Catholic tradition. TRY US FOR FREE! Write to [email protected] and receive a FREE sample issue! Or subscribe for one year (4 issues, $19.99) or two (8 issues, $29.99), and we’ll send a free back issue for each year purchased (mention this ad). Subscribe by check or money order, payable to Dappled Things (offer valid only in the USA). Dappled Things Magazine c/o Katherine Cybulski 1203 7th Street, NW, # 203 Washington, DC 20001 www.dappledthings.org

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 29 : the ROLLING ROAD:

More Real Than We Can Imagine by Kevin O’Brien

RONDALE, Ala.—I used to think is devout, cheerful, and filled with that the intense joy I felt at the the joy that comes from knowing you annual G.K. Chesterton conference are right where God wants you to be. was a bit unreal. I would often feel The Blessed Sacrament is both geo- the same after a successful per- graphically in the center of the EWTN Iformance on stage—that the ecstasy campus, and more importantly at the and camaraderie of performing good heart of the intentions of the entire material before appreciative audiences network. And while all this could easily was a kind of dream or illusion and combine to produce an atmosphere Kevin O’Brien as Father Brown, Julian that the life I’d have to return to—the of sanctimoniousness, there remains Ahlquist as Flambeau, in a scene from everyday life of family squabbles and something very down-to-earth about “The Honour of Israel Gow” work troubles—was the real world. the place—perhaps thanks to the Indeed, EWTN, where I, Dale Ahlquist, charism of their foundress, Mother jocular observation, and spent the rest and a troop of actors and actresses Angelica herself. of the week fuming at Dale, at Chester- gathered in August to film Season 5 of It is true that many of the actors ton, and at the “stifling atmosphere” of The Apostle of Common Sense, was I’ve ventured with to EWTN can’t stand EWTN. the prime example of this. There is the place. I’ve seen it make people’s So EWTN is like the Church. You something ideal about the place. skin crawl. In fact, the first time I either love it or hate it. And like the First of all, Holy Mass at EWTN met Dale Ahlquist and Chuck Chal- Church, it’s a place where people can is pristine and devout, and more berg was in 2004 when I brought a grow in love for one another as they beautiful and simple than it appears crew of St. Louis actors and actresses grow in love for Our Lord. At least, on TV. Beyond that, literally every there to dramatize scenes for Season that’s what the Church should be like, other person who works at EWTN 3. One of my actresses piped up early although in most parishes I’ve been to has a miracle to recount—a miracle with effusive praise about her favorite that ideal is rarely realized. they’ve seen or experienced, often a candidate, Howard Dean. “Chesterton But if you spend two weeks at miracle that has brought them there. was right!” Dale interjected. “Women EWTN with Dale and a crew of Ches- The workers are working for all the should never have been given the right tertonian actors, you’ll swear you’re in right reasons. Everyone we encounter to vote.” Sarah did not take well to this heaven, and that the real world could never be like this. Our first week together was filled with unreality. On Day 1, Frank C. Turner (Canadian character actor who has appeared in more than fifty feature films and several television series) and I dramatized a scene from Ches- terton’s novel The Ball and the Cross in which I portray Professor Lucifer and Frank the monk Michael. Filmed before a green screen, the savvy tech- nicians made us look like we were in a spaceship hovering above London. The next day saw our versatile cast portraying the guests on Dale’s segment, “Religion Today.” As usual, before the filming I suggested to Dale that I could play all the parts. “You can’t play the feminist, Kevin,” he replied, “You don’t look enough like a man.” The character Stanford Nutting sees action in at least three episodes Dale’s set gets invaded. of the fifth season. In one, he plays

30 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : the ROLLING ROAD: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes

In the newest season of The Apostle of Common Sense, Dale Ahlquist hosts a discussion on the Problem of Evil with a panel of “experts” (Frank Turner as Dr. Thaddeus Gorgonus; Kevin O’Brien as Stanford Nutting; Ashley Ahlquist as Rev. Dr. Wilhelmina Fritz; and Eric Kaiser Johnson as Professor Kaufmann Valterhosen. That’s Director Fred Williams sneaking onto the screen.) an adjunct at a junior college, where for the DVDs to be released. The Surprise, to Dale’s annoyance he teaches his favorite class, Religion We had to wait a bit, too, for no and dismay. in the Modern World. When a student filming was scheduled over the week- So that was a “wrap,” as they say asks Stanford if he’s ever read Ches- end. So we amused ourselves with in television. terton’s Orthodoxy, Stanford replies, wine, cigars, and a good old-fashioned And to wrap this article up, I “I’ve never read Orthodoxy! I object to book-burning. We purchased a book at return to the question I posed at the the title!” Funny as this may be, it’s an a used book shop in Irondale and later beginning. Are such places of joy, as actual line an ex-seminarian spouted burned it. The book was entitled How the Chesterton conference, the stage, at a St. Louis Chesterton Society to Disagree and Still be a Faithful the studios of EWTN, less real than the meeting years ago. Little did he know Catholic. It was the best two dollars we real world around us? No. Such places, his words would be immortalized ever spent, for it kept a work of abject such joys, are intimations of heaven, on worldwide television and his very heresy out of the hands of unsuspect- and like heaven, more real than we can person immortalized in the form of ing readers. A sample: “While no one imagine. the recurring character Stanford Nut- would argue that Church doctrine ting. The inspiration is his; the sweater, should be based on public opinion, however, is mine. nevertheless public opinion can Season 5 will also see another indicate when a doctrine is wrong and segment of “Ask Mr. Chesterton,” in should be changed.” (The author was which audience members portrayed not Stanford Nutting, though he easily by actors grill our buddy Gilbert. And might have been.) new feature “Chesterton’s Toy Theater” When Monday rolled around, Dale sees one of Chesterton’s toy theater and our actors were in for an entirely plays come to life. new adventure. We spent the second We filmed this and more during week at Mother Angelica’s shrine our first week in Birmingham, includ- in Hanceville filming an episode for ing a scene from The Napoleon of my series, The Theater of the Word Notting Hill, a dramatized scene from Incorporated. The episode is a kind Chesterton’s autobiography, a selection of movie version of the Father Brown from “The Blue Cross,” and snippets story, “The Honor of Israel Gow,” featuring characters from Seneca to adapted for the screen by Dale with a Thomas Jefferson. The fifth season little help from me and Michael Masny, promises to be the best yet, and all our producer at EWTN. you’ll have to do is wait about twelve We returned to the studios in to fourteen months to see it—when the Irondale on Friday and filmed an new episodes are expected to air—and episode of my series in which dozens Dale portrays the Late Earl of Glengyle about another nine months after that of people invade Dale’s set to watch in “The Honour of Israel Gow”

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 31 : Tales of the Short Bow: “Why not just walk out?” Stan asked. “It’s not that simple. Karen had the bright idea that, instead of wasting money on rent, we should buy a condo together. You see the problem?” “I see the problem,” Stan said, An Accidental Death “—and the solution. Look, there’s a lawyer I know with an office near here. by John Peterson For twenty-five bucks, he’ll make you out a will that gives your share of the etective Lieutenant David place flirt with him. As he never condo to Karen when you become the Carlson had wrapped up his ordered a drink, even the waitresses late Al Boone.” investigation of a fatal fall from ignored Stan. “How does that help?” Boone asked. the balcony of a sixth-floor “I hate to say this, Boone,” Stan was “It’s a chess game,” Stan said. “One condominium. There would be saying, “but I don’t like the way you’re move at a time.” Dan inquest, of course, but in spite of drinking.” A few days later Boone dropped in certain peculiarities in the case, Carl- “Then buzz off,” Boone said, with at Byfield’s hoping to find Stan there. son didn’t see how anybody could be some heat. “I don’t give a damn what Sure enough, he spotted his friend in charged with a crime. you think, and I don’t need you telling the same old booth. Boone ordered a Captain Morgan seemed somewhat me what to do!” beer and sat down. skeptical. “Are you sure it wasn’t a “First of all,” Stan answered, “maybe “Everything went just the way you homicide?” he asked. you could lower your voice. You’ve got predicted,” he said. “Karen got all “I’m convinced it was an accident,” people staring at us.” Boone looked weepy, and told me she was sorry she Carlson said. Carlson’s grasp of the around and saw that this was true. had ever doubted me, and the next facts of the case was substantially He smiled and raised his glass to the day she gave me a copy of her new will. hampered because he had no inkling of onlookers who, reassured, returned to When she croaks, I get everything she what was said during certain conversa- their own conversations. has including her half of the condo. So tions in Byfield’s Tavern during the days “I have nothing against drinking,” now what?” leading up to the accident. Stan said, “if you drink for the fun of it. “Listen carefully,” Stan said. The first of these chats had taken But you’re drinking as if you expect the “Tonight there’s going to be an acci- place the previous Monday at the hour beer to solve your problems.” dent. You go out on your balcony with when the late afternoon regulars find “Well, that’s because I can’t see a stepladder and loosen the bulb in the their usual tables and barstools and let what to do,” Boone said. ceiling light.” the cares of the workday dissolve in “Let me help, then.” “How do you know…” their cocktail glasses and beer bottles. “Okay,” Boone said. “Just listen,” Stan said. “Get Karen Al Boone was sitting alone in his His answer was not as glib as it out there and tell her you get this weird favorite booth and having difficulty might at first seem. Boone knew Stan shooting pain in your arm when you deciding between heading home and made his living as a consultant—a reach up over your head, and ask her to having another Budweiser. He looked problem-solver or “trouble shooter,” change the bulb. When she gets up on up to see his friend Stan sitting across as he preferred to call it. Stan had the ladder, it’s a simple matter to topple from him. Boone, swallowed up in his explained to Boone how he helped her over the railing. Six floors later, thoughts, had not seen him sit down. people analyze the muddles they get she’s a stain on the concrete parking lot. “Don’t wait for an invitation,” Boone themselves into, and then how he Problem solved.” said. “Just make yourself at home.” devised plans to get them out of their “Somebody would see me do it,” “Hey,” Stan said. muddles. He also helped his clients Boone protested. The two talked for a while about get things they wanted but didn’t “Boone,” Stan said shaking his the impending Cubs-Dodgers series. know how to get. head with impatience, “you loosen the Boone was a tall and muscular young “Most people are clueless when it light bulb, remember? It’s dark on the man whose boyish good looks were comes to making a logical plan,” Stan balcony. Dark!” tempered by his thrice-broken and had said. He fixed his attention on hopelessly crooked nose. Stan was a Boone. “So, what’s bugging you?” ; ; ; short, thin fellow with a pale white face “It’s Karen. See, I wanted us to live that contrasted harshly with his coal together, but I still thought I could play “How did you decide it was an acci- black hair. He was the opposite of hand- around some—you know, on the sneak. dent?” Captain Morgan was asking. some, yet his brown eyes flickered with The trouble is, when the ladies find out “At first, it didn’t seem likely,” intelligence, and he had a winning smile. you’re living with someone, they treat Lieutenant Carlson answered. “Espe- Stan was often in Byfield’s, but you like you’re actually married to her. cially when we learned that these two Boone had never seen any of the Word gets around, and all of the sudden, lovebirds had just made out wills leaving friendly women who frequented the I’m off limits. It’s boring.” everything to each other. Karen’s story

32 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Tales of the Short Bow: Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes

is that she was out on that balcony on a accident. Karen’s bruises and fractured and laugh and get mad, and there was stepladder changing a light bulb when wrist support her story. never anybody there but him.” she happened to glance down and saw “And another thing, Captain,” Carl- “Maybe he was talking to a ghost,” Boone rushing at her. She says she son continued, “Sergeant Zeller talked Morgan said. couldn’t react fast enough, but in her to some people at Byfield’s Tavern, “The way things turned out,” Carl- shock her foot slipped and the ladder where Boone was a regular. They claim son said, “it’s more likely he was talking went flying and she landed on the deck. Boone had been acting crazy. They to the devil.” She says the boyfriend’s momentum said he would sit for hours all alone in Both men had a good laugh over took him over the railing. Death by a booth, talking to himself. He’d argue that loony idea.

“A Christian?” sputtered the per- No Room for the Babe plexed Dourr, tucking his knife into his belt. by James G. Bruen Jr. “Christmas is a pagan winter solstice festival all dressed up to deceive people,” now fell lightly as Ed Dourr parked and the two tumbled to the snow-cov- growled Winthrop. “German heathens his car and walked several blocks ered grass. They rolled on the ground invented the Christmas tree. The Bible through the suburban neighbor- for several minutes, flailing at each never says Christ was born on December hood shortly before midnight on other with fists flying. Dourr’s knife 25. The Bible didn’t tell us to celebrate Christmas Eve. A few homes were fell to the ground early in the melee. His birthday, either. How could we? We Sdark, but most were festive, festooned Finally, Dourr, knees on his assailant’s don’t know when it was. Our American with lights in celebration of the season. shoulders, pinned his opponent. forefathers banned the celebration of Some inhabitants were asleep, others Dourr groped for his knife. Retriev- Christmas. And the Bible never says there were at Midnight Mass. Dourr saw no ing it, he held it to his attacker’s throat. were three kings, either. These are all signs of activity in any home; not a Except for the heaving of their chests, Roman inventions. They’re un-American creature was stirring. Dourr walked the two men remained motionless for Papist deceptions. What do you think the purposefully and furtively, but not so fur- almost a minute. “I’m going to get up ‘mas’ in Christmas means, anyway?” tively that he would have been unable to and walk away,” Dourr growled once he “A Christian, huh?” repeated the explain his presence if challenged. Under had got his breath. “Meanwhile, don’t still-bewildered Dourr. He picked up the his jacket, he carried a large knife and a you move. You stay on the ground for black-clad Christian’s knit hat, which had small hammer, both tucked into his belt five minutes, then you get up and go been dislodged in their scuffle, brushed in the small of his back. back in your house and forget this ever snow from it, and handed it to Winthrop. Dourr stopped in the shadow of a happened, okay?” “I think I probably could work with you small evergreen on the corner of two “What? You think I’m the hom- anyway,” he mused. lots. One yard was dark. An illuminated eowner defending his property?” barked “We must destroy these graven ten-foot inflatable Santa, clad in red Samuel Winthrop, still breathing heavily. images,” continued Winthrop, reposition- and white, with a black belt, waved “No. I’m here to destroy these statues.” ing his cap. “We must reinstitute pure a green mitten to beckon Dourr into “You too?” said Dourr, relaxing Christianity. These Papist practices must the other yard. Dourr hesitated briefly, slightly, but still holding his knife at Win- be destroyed. They’re not biblical. They’re then crossed that yard, stooped down, throp’s throat. “These displays offend un-christian. They’re un-American. and, grasping an orange extension cord, reason. I’m amazed that anyone thinks They’re an abomination of the Anti-Christ. unplugged the floodlight that bathed Santa Claus flies around the world on They must be destroyed.” Santa in a welcoming glow. Darkness one night putting toys down chimneys. “Graven images, huh?” grunted Dourr, engulfed the inflated Santa. Dourr Or that some god sent his son to be shrugging his shoulders. “If you say so,” quickly removed the knife from the born as a man in some stable some- he muttered. small of his back. With his right hand, where. These stories are fairy tales for Ed Dourr reached under his jacket he steadied Santa. With his left, Dourr people who can’t think. I’m an atheist. I and removed the hammer from the small raised the knife, blade pointed down, believe in reason and reason alone. I will of his back. Dourr pointed the hammer above his head. Before he could plunge destroy anything that offends reason.” at an illuminated plastic crèche covered it into Santa, the holiday figure emitted Dourr removed his knife from Win- by a thin blanket of snow in the next an explosive hiss. Santa collapsed into a thop’s throat and stood. He brushed the yard. “Will you join me?” he asked his rubbery pile. “Damn,” exclaimed Dourr. snow off his clothing. former adversary. “I’m going to smash A wiry man, clad in black from his “I destroy them because I am a the infant next.” shoes to his knit cap, glared at Dourr Christian,” rejoined Samuel Winthrop, Samuel Winthrop hesitated only from the other side of the rubbery pile standing. He picked up his knife, folded briefly. “May I borrow your hammer?” he that had been Santa. Dropping the it, and shoved it into a pocket of his inquired as the two men processed arm- knife he had been holding, the man coat. He didn’t bother to brush the in-arm to the adjoining yard. “I’d like to dashed at Dourr. Dourr tackled him, snow from his clothing. smash the mother too.”

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 33 : the Flying Inn: less cooked up so that any group that closed its borders would lose. Home rule at home I, being a dogmatist, asked my pro- fessor what the rules of the game were. “Rules? Why, there are no rules! That is what has caused all the trouble in the world already, the suffocating rules born of superstition! We are sweeping away the old way with its emphasis on rules. When you play this game, you will discover that we do not The Rule of Law need any rules at all except Darwin’s rule of survival of the fittest!” said my by David Beresford professor in rapturous glee. We began the game. The mem- “Why does each small thing in the college back then. I was branded a bers of our group scattered to find world have to fight against the world dogmatist according to the question- out what the other groups had, and itself?...So that each thing that obeys naire that I had to fill out in sociology then we gathered together for a little law may have the glory and isolation class (“a simple test to see how open- conference. of the anarchist.” —G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday minded you are,” said our sociology “How about this,” I suggested. prof); a religious zealot according “First, he said no rules, so no rules. It wenty years ago I attended to the questionnaire I completed in is 9:54 a.m. right now. We divide up, teachers’ college after finishing psychology class (“a simple test to see and each of us approaches a different an undergraduate degree in how superstitious you are,” said our table. Then with a big smile we hold biology. One of our courses was psychology prof). In geography, I was out our right hand and…” Teaching High School Biology, constantly arguing with the professor This we did and, at exactly 10 Tin which we learned how to explain because I did not think that we were o’clock, we struck. We grabbed all the the DNA molecule, competition, going to run out of oil in five years and resource cards from the top of the survival of the fittest, carrying capac- use windmills and ocean currents to other groups’ tables and then raced ity, cell division, the usual biological drive our cars—I was right, it turns out. to the professor’s desk, put the cards stuff. Our professor was a kindly fellow, Not much has changed since then, and in his drawer and then linked arms soft-spoken, who believed in a new we are subjected to a constant threat around his desk. emerging world order based on reason of climate change from our secular The other groups were slow at first eliminating religious superstition— pulpits, a delightful hypothesis that is to grasp what had just happened; but which we called the Age of Aquarius not falsifiable. when they did, they got it—and good. behind his back. This new world was Our biology professor introduced There was a yell, and a charge, and going to come about through the his new game to us one day in class. then we were all being shoved over invisible hand of self-interested com- We were assigned in groups to play tables and chairs. The other groups petition. All human suffering would the role of separate nations after kept attacking but we held firm with disappear due to self-interest produc- being given a random allotment of linked arms. Lunch food and note- ing co-operation. Then, in this happy resources drawn from a hat. Our books went flying at us through the air. time, everyone would share their group (the Blues) received two cards, Some students, not knowing what else goods for the benefit of all—a kind of one saying Surplus Capital and the to do, hid under their desks. Others secular monastic paradise on earth. other saying The Ability to Extend just kept walking around saying it He had invented a lab exercise based Credit, but no Natural Resources. was unfair. on role playing, and he was keen to Other groups had combinations of The professor at first was speech- have us learn this. The idea was that things such as Large Populations of less. Then he yelled. Then he cried. we would become agents of change, Labour, or Vast Reserves of Natu- His religion had abandoned him. His missionaries of co-operation in the ral Resources but with no Surplus god had died. classrooms of the nation. Capital to develop them. The objec- I like to think that my professor The fellow had other odd ideas as tive was to win, and you won if you had learned that some rules ought well. He seemed to think that all rules produced a stable economy for your not to be taken down. But I cannot were social constructs that caused team. To do this we were to spend say for certain; he never spoke to me people to become bad, so that society the next three hours visiting all the after that. itself created criminals. In other words, groups and make agreements with he was a social Darwinian who never them. This would produce a kind of had to actually earn his living or face interconnected classroom economy Join the American Chesterton Society his own theories at work. in which everyone would benefit only www.chesterton.org I had a tough time at teachers’ if we all co-operated. It was more or

34 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : the Flying STars: When the local police blotter, as reported in the local paper, describes “What do you call the man who wants to embrace the the burglar at the local pizza place as chimney sweep?” “A saint,” said Father Brown. —G.K. Chesterton a black man, is this going too far? Perhaps we should describe the situation without the use of nation- ality-revealing language. And then, we should not describe the color of the person’s skin either. Maybe we An Author Accused shouldn’t even say if the person is old or young, or even if they are a man or by Nancy Carpentier Brown a woman. Each of these descriptions could be potentially viewed by some- ur current culture holds Surely this author is anti- one as ageism, sexism, or nationalism. the twin paradoxical views Semitic for writing such a character The local police blotter may now that racial diversity is glori- description. politically correctly say, “A person ously wonderful, but racial The reviewer who assumed appears to have stolen something descriptions of individuals that the hooked-nose character was from the local pizza parlor. If anyone Oare taboo. Celebrating diversity is Jewish, though, would not be accused has any information about the robber, good; describing diversity is bad. We of being judgmental. Instead, she please call 555-1234.” We’ll see how should acknowledge that people are would be praised as a whistle-blowing, many calls come in. of different races and be glad, but not political-correcting liberal goddess. Descriptions of people are nec- glad enough to wonder what those She’s likely to have written a best-sell- essary to the normal functioning of races are. ing non-fiction title, gone on a global society. Being of French descent, I All people are to be celebrated book tour and have her own cable have noticed that no one cares if there as humans—well, most people: not talk show by now. I’m generalizing, are francophobes out there. I recently those in the womb, those with severe but that’s how our culture treats such ate at a restaurant called “Froggies” and irreversible head injuries, those an exposer of perceived evil. which, surprisingly, turned out to be with mental competency issues, In researching anti-Semitism, I a French restaurant. Later that day, I and the terminally old or ill, but I discovered a Web site that accused was talking to my father. I told him digress—not as the product of their the Hebrew Scriptures (new-fangled about the restaurant, and he told me racial heritage. Racial heritages and language for the Old Testament) that “Froggie” used to be a derogatory diversities can be celebrated, but only themselves of being anti-Semitic. term for people of French decent. I in the abstract—not as though any I think it fair to say that we vowed never to eat there again. I will one individual actually is a member seem to be overly sensitive to the not be put down for being who I am at of a particular racial family. Racial possibility of people describing one the same time I am eating. Is this sup- diversity must be taken into consider- nationality negatively. Do we have posed to be cute? How dare they! ation when taking standardized tests the same such concern over other To write about a person with a in school; racial descriptions must be nationalities? certain racial heritage cannot be con- hushed in the classroom. Can an author of a work of fic- strued as racial profiling or be used A famous writer is accused of tion describe a Jewish character in to prove the writer dislikes that race. being anti-Semitic. A prominent figure any way or fashion that today will not Providing the race and description of in this author’s book has a hooked be accused of being anti-Semitic? If a the person merely is descriptive and nose, surely denoting a man of Jewish character happens to be Jewish, how informative, the things journalists and ancestry in a derogatory descriptive is an author to describe such a char- novelists are taught to do. Racial diver- manner. acter? Should he always be the loving, sity matters because people matter. This character has greasy black smiling father of a large and happy Racial background often means cul- hair: another sure sign of racial family, a joyful character who loves tural differences, which is one of the profiling. his work and everyone around him? things that make people interesting. This character is viewed in the A character who has no problems or G.K. Chesterton was interested book as the “bad guy.” He has no worries, no cares in the world? Here in all people. He wrote about a rich wife or children, unmercifully picks is the beginning of a very dull story. and diverse number of different on the students in his care, and And let’s talk about non-fiction. kinds of people. And the author in continuously brings up the faults and If my neighbor describes his experi- question at the start of this column? failings of others, making himself ence of being treated poorly during No, not Chesterton. I was writing superior. a meal at the chi-chi French res- about Harry Potter author J.K. Rowl- He walks with arrogance; he pun- taurant last night, is he now and ing, who joins the illustrious list of ishes children for the perceived sins forever more to be known as a prominent authors accused of being of their parents. francophobe? anti-Semitic.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 35 : Manalive: around the local library. “I mean to keep those bullets for pessimists–pills for pale people.”—G.K. Chesterton Bellairs completed eight Dixon books and four Monday novels. Though all are good, the best of the Mondays are The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn, a hunt for a priceless Changing the Culture in artifact and the only one of Bellairs’ books to be devoid of the supernatural; a Chestertonian Way and The Dark Secret of Weatherend, an adventure where Anthony and Part I: John Bellairs and Christian Children’s Fiction Miss Ells prevent apocalyptic climate change (caused by evil sorcery, not by Chris Chan global warming). The black humor and colorful characters make it hard to very issue of Gilbert Magazine is Bellairs’ corpus can be divided pick favorites from the Dixons, but two filled with denunciations of the into four categories: his early work for unquestionable classics are The Spell state of contemporary culture adults, consisting of out-of-print Catho- of the Sorcerer’s Skull, where Johnny, and the need to remedy these lic humor and one Tolkien-inspired his friend Fergie, and the local parish flaws. Indeed, much of today’s novel; the Lewis Barnavelt series, priest Father Higgins try to rescue the Epopular entertainment promotes which focuses on the adventures of a vanished Professor and The Trolley to messages repugnant to most Chesterto- boy wizard and his eccentric relatives; Yesterday, where the Professor travels nians. That is why it is so important to the Johnny Dixon novels; and the through time in an attempt to prevent recognize creative works that promote Anthony Monday books. the sacking of Constantinople. Chestertonian ideals, for a broader The Dixon and Monday books run The spiritual themes of these audience for these works will lead to a along parallel themes: intergenera- books are integral to their plots, which wider appreciation of these values. tional friendships, the value of courage, are never preachy or feel as though the This is the first in a series of essays the necessity of knowledge, the fact author is shoehorning a salutary lesson on creative works that promote the that a few ordinary people can be a into an awkward place. There is a Chestertonian ideal. The topic should powerful force for good given sufficient rather sly pattern running throughout be familiar to the readers of Gilbert tenacity, and the power of Catholicism Bellairs’ work regarding the impotence Magazine. The moral content of J.K. over diabolism. of evil in the face of goodness. The Rowling’s Harry Potter books has been Johnny Dixon is an undersized, moral of these books is that with piety, debated dozens of times; the Christian bespectacled teenager who lives with stubbornness, courage, intelligence, overtones of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit his kindly grandparents, since his and well-directed righteous anger, the and C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series have mother is deceased and his father is gates of hell shall never prevail. been mentioned frequently; and recently fighting in the Korean War. Life is Alas, Bellairs died far too young, I reviewed Vere and Miesel’s dissection fairly dull for Johnny until he meets passing away in 1991 at the age of of the atheistic agitprop in Phillip Pull- the irascible, cantankerous Professor fifty-three. Longtime fan Brad Strick- man’s fantasy (GM July-August, 2008 Childermass, a hot-tempered, elderly land completed four unfinished books, –Ed.). But to the best of my knowledge, scholar whose passions include his- and then wrote several original novels one major figure of Christian-themed torical curiosities, frosting-smothered based on Bellairs’ characters. From supernatural literature has never been cakes, and disgusting cigarettes. the one Strickland book that I’ve read, mentioned in this periodical. Despite their radically dissimilar per- The Drum, The Doll, and the Zombie, John Bellairs, author of numer- sonalities, Johnny and the Professor Strickland does a fair job of imitating ous fantasy novels, is a beloved yet become friends, and when paranormal Bellairs’ style, but the spiritual heart underappreciated figure in late twenti- events start occurring, the two team of the series is largely missing, and eth-century fiction. Although his work up to save their own lives and the the characterizations aren’t quite up is geared for adolescents, like the best world as well. to par. Another sad loss is the fact that children’s literature there are no age Anthony Monday is a gangly, new editions of Bellairs’ books have limits to his audience. Bellairs’ work socially awkward adolescent whose jettisoned the illustrations by Edward focuses on brave misfit adolescents financially insecure parents often fail Gorey that so perfectly captured the paired with elderly friends, who use to understand their son’s intellectual atmosphere of the stories. their knowledge of obscure historical interests. Anthony’s best friend is the Chestertonian parents ought to minutiae and Catholic ritual to battle prim yet feisty librarian Miss Ells, a ensure that the works of John Bellairs the forces of evil. Parents in search spirited older woman who is just as have a prominent place on their chil- of suitable reading material for their happy to attack an officious socialite dren’s reading lists. Their unique blend older children ought to check out his as she is willing to take on the forces of horror, humor mystery, and cateche- novels. of darkness that keep cropping up sis is unparalleled in fiction.

36 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Jogging with G.K.: compete with the Christmas narra- tive: “the truth is that there is a quite “Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. peculiar and individual character Look at the faces in the street.” —G.K. Chesterton about the hold of this story on human nature.” He goes on to insist, however, that it is not the story’s outward thrust that attracts us. “It does not exactly work outwards, adventurously, to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth.” It is not through activity, or Running From Home busyness, or aesthetics, in other words, that Christmas entices us—not even by Robert Moore-Jumonville through the activity of healthy running. “It is rather something that surprises hat can compare to running weathered and beaten if I could help us from behind, from the hidden and during Christmas season? her get home. She screeched, wild- personal part of our being...It is rather Crisp air, a fierce and clean eyed, “I’ve forgotten where home is.” as if a man had found an inner room world, and hope reverberat- What is it, I wonder, that we are all in the very heart of his own house, ing in human hearts—what so desperately running from, and why which he had never suspected; and Wcould be better? After all, when does our flight seem to quicken pace seen a light from within.” Christmas, if running at Christmas, we not only during Advent and Christmas? Why it is ever really found, is thus found by experience the adventures of flying out all the frantic bustling about? Why returning home quietly. The shepherds into the cold winter world, but also so uncomfortable with sitting still? did not have to run abroad to hear the the warmth and joy of returning safely I’m reminded of a friend who seems good news. Angels appeared to them home again. In G.K. Chesterton’s addicted to activity—any and every in their own region. Instead, it was the words, we realize “all the fascinating activity—as though missing an event or wise men who had to search far and terrors of going abroad combined with experience would spell tragedy for her wide to teach us how near to us the all the humane security of coming and her children. Christ child lay: home again.” Perhaps human longing intensi- Step softly, under snow or rain, Yet so many people today seem fies for many of us during the Yuletide To find the place where men can set on merely running out from their holidays, from faint echoes of failed pray, homes without the thought of ever childhood dreams and desires. What The way is all so very plain returning—people scrambling at gas was it I wanted that year so distant That we may lose the way. pumps, darting into restaurants, sprint- in my memory now—was it the magi- ing for a sale, diving across aisles at cal experience I was hoping for: the Go humbly; humble are the skies, the grocery—as though the only way perfect tree; the scent of evergreen And low and large and fierce the Star, to crown humanity with meaning were mingled with a whiff of fresh pecan So very near the manger lies through conquest abroad. “Just before pie; the two-foot-deep snow storm that That we may travel far. the great festival of the home,” Ches- turned the wide world white? Was it terton cautions, “the whole population really only a fire truck that kept my Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes seems to have become homeless.” mind racing late into the night, or did To roar to the resounding plain, While in town the other day, I I just want everyone in the family near And the whole heaven shouts and thought maybe I had missed the the fire, with a spirit of magnanimous shakes headlines announcing a new, local- calm surrounding us all? For God Himself is born again. ized Winter Olympic event. Perhaps Whatever the source of our dis- the Federal Government was promis- content, it takes a terrible toll during And we are little children walking ing greater price reductions for the Christmas. Observing this spiritual Through the snow and rain. few hearty survivors of a gladiatorial malady in his generation, as people contest designed to stimulate the frantically grasped for meaning, Ches- Don’t get me wrong. Running out economy. “The Christmas season is terton wondered aloud, “I do not know from our homes during Christmas— domestic,” chimed Chesterton, “and whether some of them disappear for through snow and rain, traveling for that reason most people now pre- ever in the toy department or simply far—may actually help exorcise our pare for it by struggling in tramcars, lie down and die in the tea rooms; but spiritual jitters. Perhaps in our seden- standing in queues, rushing away in by the look of them, it is quite likely.” tary culture it takes a bit of running trains, crowding despairingly into tea Contrast this centrifugal longing to bring us to the point where we can shops, and wondering when or whether that pushes outward with the Christ- stop and peer into “the inner room they will ever get home.” Why is that? mas story that calls us home. In The in the very heart of [our] own house,” At the local strip mall the other day, I Everlasting Man, Chesterton argued and there discover a light from within, asked one poor soul who looked rather that no other tale of divine birth could nearer than we ever dreamed.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 37 : The Signature of Man: in type, they are always subtle in inten- tion. The mob is not a mob, in the sense “It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that of men merely turned into a man, still I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.” —G.K. Chesterton less into a beast. There is every shade of every passion, or lack of passion, that may go to make up a huge human blunder or crime; as if to emphasise the deeper doctrinal conception that every man has his own quarrel with God. Many people must have speculated Frank Brangwyn and The on the possibility of expressing some special facet of the many-faced mystery Daughters of Jerusalem of a divine humanity, under the symbol of a new version of the bodily presence by G.K. Chesterton of Our Lord. Brangwyn has stressed the isolation of Christ; the keen and rangwyn comes out of the great is vigorous, with an ugly energy that is sensitive spirit passing through the Flemish tradition; and is full of more attractive than vulgar beauty. It is coarseness and carelessness of mankind. that peculiar fullness, something important to emphasise this crowded But it is keen as well as sensitive; and it that might be called a Christian and tumultuous background of all the is here perhaps that we touch on some- exuberance, which piled itself up pictures, especially in connection with thing, if not of the intention, at least of Bto overflowing in the free cities of the the grotesque distinction in every face the impression, or the effect. We have Catholic Netherlands. There is some- and gesture, because it leads up to the the sense of something that cleaves its thing more medieval in the tradition point of the most decisive distinction of way like an arrow; that cuts through the of expressing vitality, and even exuber- all. It would be possible to write a page crowd like a knife; even when disarmed ance, by the vast variety of ugliness; and about every face in that crowd. A face and defeated, something that brought a even the ugliness of the crowd. Now peering out of some dim corner is often sword into the world. these pictures are packed with exactly in the exact sense surprising; to some it There is one scene especially in that sort of Flemish vitality and variety. will often be puzzling. For though these which this imaginative impression is to Every face is different; and every face masks of the mob are often extravagant me so extraordinarily vivid, that I will venture to attempt a fuller description of it; all the more since I know that in this case the point may not be obvious or may even be repellent. Brangwyn has stuck grimly in the main to the grim old tradition of exhaus- tion and defeat. He almost exaggerates, if anybody could exaggerate, the para- dox of the impotence of omnipotence and the hopelessness of the hope of the world. Christ appears again and again prone as a felled tree or a fallen pillar, faceless in that His face is already turned away to nothingness and night. And yet it all works up, as it seems to me, to one central design in which Christ lifts His head, looks sharply over His shoulder, and his eyes shine with defiance and almost with fury. And that one flash of fierceness is shot back at the Women of Jerusalem weeping over Him. I doubt whether everybody will like it; I am not sure that I like it. But I am quite sure it is the most powerful scene in a powerful series; and that there are many thousand more things in it than meet the eye; either my eye or anybody else’s. Since this is the sharpest relief Frank Brangwyn, The Daughters of Jerusalem (1935) and revelation of that pointed profile,

38 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : The Signature of Man: “It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.” —G.K. Chesterton

against the multifarious faces of the younger woman is quaintly sentimental; the very crest of the stooping wave of mob, it will seem to many to show only she has an eye off, with some sug- this awful and pitiable catastrophe—you that sharpness of the Semitic edge, of gestion of a tear in the corner of it; do not even know what to pity. which I have written already. I can but I cannot help feeling that she was imagine people saying that it looks like wondering whether they will show the I cannot exaggerate my sense of Shylock throwing a curse over his shoul- Crucifixion on the Pictures. Another the vivid inspiration of the artist who der as he leaves the court. Well, there is woman is an utterly stolid and probably made that last look backwards as fierce a dark inverted truth even there; there sensible mother, laden with trailing as a flash of lightning. “Daughters of is that double contrasted aspect, of light children; doing her duty in a dazed Jerusalem, weep not for Me; but weep and darkness, in the same sensitive way; but I rather suspect it is chiefly for yourselves and for your children.” spirit of Israel. But in the highest exam- the duty of taking the children to the From “The Way Of The Cross” (1935) ple there is always this high paradox; show. Behind, and a little apart, a few that He has prayed for his foes, but is strokes indicate a woman who is also a protesting against His friends. Jesus is lady; but I am not sure whether she is If VI not in the least like Shylock; but there tragic or only dignified. And as I looked is some symbolic parallel between Jesus at this confusing crowd, I suddenly had ;;If you live only on newspapers, you and Job. It is not recorded, I think, a collective impression about them, will never guess what will happen that Job went out of his way to curse whether it was the impression intended next. (The Listener, Feb. 6, 1935) the robbers who had raided his flocks or no. All these people are looking at a ;;If there is an intellectual war there and herds; he could endure everyone man who is going to be hanged. Most of must be intellectual armies. (Illustrated except his comforters. But in the higher them are really sorry for him because London News, Dec. 17, 1910) example—in the highest example—there he is down and out; none of them has ;;“If you have a theory about man is a riddle to be solved by a principle the slightest doubt that he is entirely and if you can only prove it by talking much more profound; and depend- down and out. They have read all about about Plato or George Washington, ing indeed upon that central mystery it in the Sunday papers; and the Home your theory may be a quite frivolous of the human and the divine united, Secretary would not interfere. They not thing. But if you can prove it by which is the tremendous theme of the only could not conceive of there being talking about the butler or the post- whole. The theme of the Greek tragedy any hope for him; still less could they man, then it is serious because it is is the division between God and Man; conceive of there being any case for universal.” (“The Innocence of the Criminal,” the theme of the Gospel tragedy is the him. But they are sane and cannot deny union of God and Man; and its immedi- that it is sad that he should die and Fancies vs. Fads) ate effects are more tragic. disappear, when their own daily lives ;;If marriage had not existed, it The figures of the weeping women will go on in security and even prosper- would have been necessary for art- will also puzzle the spectator; or, at any ity. And it is upon them that the victim ists to invent it. If ever monogamy is rate, the superficial spectator. It is here, turns back, in sudden and burning abandoned in practice, it will linger in I think, that the peculiar value of that anger, the face of an eagle. legend and in literature. (Illustrated London variety of portraiture, with which the News, July 15, 1922) …and this is the last portent of the pencil of the artist has played upon the darkness; that you are sorry for me. ;;If the policeman regulates drinking, many-faced mob, has produced some That part of me in which you never why should he not regulate smoking, of its most delicate and original effects. believed, the madman’s dream of and then sleeping, and then speak- For they are a rather curious group of deity—you need waste no tears upon ing, and then breathing? (Illustrated London mourners, these mothers and maidens that. But that part of me that is part of News, June 5, 1920) of the holy city. I do not mean that you; that ancient and achieved thing in many of them, or even most of them, which you do believe, that tradition that ;;If you make an idol of a stone, you are not perfectly sincere in their pity was mine as well as yours; the Blood; seldom make a statue of it. (Illustrated for an unfortunate prisoner going to the Household; the Great Story—if you London News, March 4, 1916) punishment. But I do mean that there are wanting something to weep for! Because I was born Man, I was born ;;If a European peasant, who knows are singular shades and degrees, even patriot; of a place and of a people; and enough about nature and practical in that sincerity, and that in some cases if you would compassionate me for science to make a desert blossom like it is curiously mixed with curiosity, and anything, compassionate me for that; the rose, happens not to have learned in some even sinks into vulgarity. One for the Tables and the Temple and Solo- longhand, as I have not learned short- elderly woman (characteristically) in mon in all his glory. Do you imagine hand, he is refused entrance at many the background, is realistically torn to that a dream has come to an end; if you modern portals in favor of the nearest knew what reality has come to an end! the heart. She is only a face half thrust forger. (Illustrated London News, July 1, 1916) out of the shadow, into which the more If you knew the real tragedy that shall energetic have elbowed her; but I feel trail after you across the world, century ;;If we boast of our best, we must that I know all about her; she is almost after century; the wrongs you do, the repent of our worst. (“Paying for Patriotism,” exactly like a Margate landlady with a wrongs you suffer, the endless wrangle The Common Man) about wrongs. And you who stand on heart of gold—which is broken. One

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 39 : The Battle with the Dragon: created the blanket hatred and distrust of Jewish identity still throttle the “The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more human heart. clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the Dragon Hatred against the Jews, pogroms, who is wasting fairyland.” —G.K. Chesterton and forced exiles show the worst of the history of Europe and the Near East. Although now a major faux pas, the intellectual and moral temptations to seek scapegoat groups for the ills of life still exist. This spiritual malaise cannot be defeated by wrapping it in the garb of multiculturalism or sensi- tivity training—these are offshoots of “Those People” the same tree as the problem. Personal change, wrapped in sackcloth, and by Kyro R. Lantsberger penetrating self examination of con- science is the true redemption of the hose People” are always to ground in which to bring forth seduc- inner man and the only way salvation “ blame. Be it a financial fail- tive fruit. is offered to Jew and Gentile alike. ure, an athletic catastrophe, True evil never wears a red suit or a bad meal at a restaurant, with horns and cloven hooves. Ideas Chesterton is Everywhere Those People are always to bound for hell seldom trail a forked blame.T Those People could be immi- tail in warning. Yet the base ideas that Monday, November 17, 2008 grants, witches or, as the darker side of erupted against the Jews now form Western history shows, Those People the basis of much of what constitutes How to be Killer at Cocktail could be the Jews. contemporary intellectual life. Turn Parties by Firoozeh Dumas Anti-Semitism is truly a blight on the pages of a newsmagazine and it is [excerpt] Just saying this author’s the moral conscience of the human increasingly apparent that newsmakers name—G.K. Chesterton—will make race. Inadvertent remarks in this are becoming less and less preva- you look debonair, like someone who area by celebrities have all but ended lent, and that the real driving forces knows his way around a silk ascot. careers, and nations suffer ostracism behind events are inanimate forces. Chesterton’s best-known novel, and second-class status among for Demographics and market trends are The Man Who Was Thursday, is a adopting policies which either subtly responsible for financial worries. Social or blatantly embrace this strain of economics from macro to micro are metaphysical thriller full of quotable hate and prejudice. This millennia-old discussed in terms of race, educational lines sure to make you look mighty burden on the People of Israel has attainment, and income bracket. This witty. A lull in the conversation? been labeled as boorish, crude, indica- disassociation of real events from real Just throw in this line, which will fit tive of poor culture, and even poorer actions by real people forges the chain any topic from politics to religion: taste. It is the Holocaust that opened that eventually binds the culpability “Thieves respect property. They the eyes of mankind to the ghastly of individuals to the collective guilt merely wish the property to become results of inner hatreds and fears pro- of an entire group. Smokers, soldiers, their property so that they may more jected onto a group. Just as a sunrise SUV owners, and numerous others are perfectly respect it.” You need not say casts away the darkness, however, it beginning to stifle under the blanket of anything else the entire evening. also creates shadows. It is within these blame that shifts responsibility for the shadows that the anti-phoenix of anti- world’s problems onto the latest out- National Public Radio: All Things Consid- Semitism has hidden from the ashes of grouped organization. ered (http://www.npr.org:80/templates/ the Holocaust. It must be said that there is value story/story.php?storyId=97102045) At the very root of anti-Semitism in the methods and results of social are the propositions that a group can research and actuarial sciences in their be held responsible for the actions of proper place. Unfortunately, there is individuals, and that this culpability now a tendency for the face of good is transferable Irony is often at the and evil to melt back into just another heart of tragedy. The two foundations visage in the crowd. It is that gray of this cultural cancer are also ideas anonymity that turns a person into anathema to the classical traditions one of “Those People.” A repeat of of occidental thought and philoso- the Jewish experience occurs every phy. These roots, which in the past time a societal ill is laid onto one blossomed into the dark flower of of “Those People.” The vehicle may anti-Semitism, have found new fertile have changed, but the engines which

40 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : All I Survey: And so various shrines for visiting are put up, even in the woods of Wis- “It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that consin. “We must admit, if only as we I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.” —G.K. Chesterton admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.” Some members of that Puri- tan generation were also present in the dreamy landscape I have been describing, Our bus from parking lot A Shrine out of Time C had to drive past a small group of protestors—I cannot think of another by David W. Fagerberg word for the group standing at the entrance to the parking lot holding took what seemed to be a step out roses in December. The relics that signs of warning and complaint. I of time last week, but in a jumbled were being translated were those of could not make out the smaller print sort of way like a dream produces Blessed Miguel Pro, a native of Guada- of signs decrying the Rosary with when it gathers images from dis- lupe, a Jesuit priest who was executed quotations from the very book from jointed places and times. It seemed by a Mexican firing squad in 1927. which the Rosary comes. Or the II was in an Italian hill town in the And I myself arrived at the Pilgrim scattered Bible verses that would Middle Ages, for I saw a pilgrimage Center on a large yellow school bus strip Christ out of the communion winding up through a green, wooded from the shrine’s overflow parking of saints, as Chesterton’s neighbors hillside to a Romanesque dome and lot C. We were just south of Lacrosse, chipped Christ out of the arms of his a bell tower jutting out of the forest. Wisconsin (www.guadalupeshrine.org), mother. Why is there more honor in It was a shrine to Our Lady and this yet crisscrossing before my eyes was isolating Christ than finding him at was the day of its dedication. Leading twelfth-century Italy, fifteenth-century the head of his body? But one placard the procession were acolytes carry- Mexico, and my own American cen- was writ large enough for me to catch ing torches and a processional cross tury; gathered together were princes despite my startled mind. It read, before a relic container borne on the of the Church and lay pilgrims, His- “This is a pagan goddess.” shoulders of four. There were Knights panics and whites, men and women. I should have dismounted the and Ladies of the Holy Sepulcher, a And I thought of only one person who bus and asked the carrier whether twelfth-century order, in their beret could bring these spaces, times, and he meant Mary herself, or whether hats and shimmering black capes; cultures together like that. Our Lady he meant the Lady of Guadalupe. color was added by knights in feath- had summoned the tryst. I should have enlisted the aid of ery regalia. I counted about twenty G.K. Chesterton writes of the the ACLU in politically and cor- bishops; color was added by two cardi- difficulty some believers have with rectly pointing out that the latter nals in red. The shrine’s outer walls Mary, and the even greater difficulty maligns the indigenous citizens of were fieldstone and limestone blocks, any believer has without Mary. “When North America. I suspect it would and a burnt orange slate roof below a I was a boy a more Puritan generation have been easier to rally support for copper dome; inside marble and gold, objected to a statue upon my parish Hispanic culture than for Catholic capital ornamentation, and stained- church representing the Virgin and culture, but neither think Mary is glass windows that depicted the life of Child. After much controversy, they a goddess. I should have, as Evan the Blessed Mother. compromised by taking away the Child.” MacIan did to Mr. Turnbull in The Then it was as if I were trans- He found this odd, as if to wonder how Ball and the Cross, challenged some- ported to a different place and time. that would satisfy those who worried one to a duel for insulting the honor On the wall behind the altar, in its about Mariolatry. But the attempt of Our Lady. But, as both MacIan honored place, was a painting of Our turned out to be a parable, he says. and Turnbull discovered, this is Lady of Guadalupe, who had appeared frowned upon in a society that does You cannot chip away the statue to St. Juan Diego in 1531. In the of a mother from all round that of a not care what you believe so long as courtyard outside the main door of new-born child. You cannot suspend you believe it fiercely and privately. the shrine stood a bronze statue of the new-born child in mid-air; indeed Besides, a dreamy and preoccupied Xocoyte, as the Blessed Mother called you cannot really have a statue of a state had been cast upon me by Diego when she spoke to him in his new-born child at all. Similarly, you my time travel, and I was anxious native tongue at the apparition. It cannot suspend the idea of a new- to begin my ascent up that holy depicted the moment when he showed born child in the void or think of him Wisconsin hill. Bishop Juan de Zumárraga his cloak without thinking of his mother. You upon which an icon of Our Lady of cannot visit the child without visiting Join the American Chesterton Society Guadalupe had been miraculously the mother. www.chesterton.org impressed, and from which cascaded

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 41 : the Detection Club: Three weeks later, Mrs. Coblin was one extremely angry woman. Morton, “The mystery of life is the plainest part of it.” —G.K. Chesterton her head steward, had walked off the job without giving any reason or even any notice. Just walked off the job. And for another thing, a thief had opened the door of her limo, wrenched the necklace from around her neck, The Copy and fled. Now she had the bother and expense of having another copy made. by John Peterson The thief, she supposed, was just opening limo doors at random, hoping ed and his nephew Louie were You get twice the publicity, twice the for a purse or a gold watch. Well, she staying at a Florida resort, police investigation, and it’s twice as thought with bitter satisfaction, he’ll taking some much-needed time long before they take the heat off.” have a nasty surprise when some pawn off; and on this sunny morning, “Okay, fine,” Louie said, ticking broker or fence tells him he has just they could be seen enjoying three points off on his fingers. “One, stolen the world’s most famous collec- Nbreakfast at poolside. locate the original; two, take posses- tion of worthless paste. “Why don’t we steal this?” Louie sion; and, three, arrange things so the A servant announced Mrs. Coblin’s asked, handing the other man a news- theft is not reported.” new personal jeweler and gemologist, a paper. Uncle Ned studied the picture, Ned shook his head in amusement. Mr. DeNova, and brought the gentleman which showed a somewhat dumpy and “Be my guest,” he said. into the sitting room. “Your prede- overdressed society dowager named “You’ll buy the champagne?” cessor,” Mrs. Coblin said, “did quite Coblin, who was wearing a heavily jew- “Certainly, my boy,” said Ned. acceptable work, and I expect no less eled necklace. “Gladly.” from you. Here is the Burmese Loop. “You want to steal the Burmese ; ; ; Loop?” Ned asked. “How about the Louie was a likable young man Whodunit Theology: Hope diamond while you’re at it?” and people enjoyed chatting with “I don’t think anybody wears the him. Thus, when he walked up to a Father Brown on Capitalism… Hope diamond to a charity benefit,” certain table in a popular local bar, he “Communism is a heresy; but it Louie said. “Look, it was right there for had already gathered a large store of the taking.” information about Mrs. isn’t a heresy that you people take for “No, my boy, it Coblin, her mansion, granted. It is Capitalism you take for wasn’t,” Ned replied. “Never steal and her household granted; or rather the vices of Capital- ism disguised as a dead Darwinism. “The necklace in your something famous. staff. He knew that, news photo is a copy. like many who are Do you recall what you were all saying The original is no doubt You get twice the wealthy but not in the Common Room, about life being under serious lock and publicity, twice the schooled in the ways only a scramble, and nature demand- key and far removed of wealth, Mrs. Coblin ing the survival of the fittest, and how from the sticky fingers police investigation, was despised by her it doesn’t matter whether the poor of jewel thieves.” and it’s twice as employees. are paid justly or not? Why, that is the “But why have a “Hi,” Louie said, heresy that you have grown accus- famous necklace if you long before they smiling brightly, “are tomed to, my friends; and it’s every can’t wear it?” Louie take the heat off.” you here year around?” bit as much a heresy as Communism. asked. And so his The middle-aged man, That’s the anti-Christian morality or uncle explained that whose name was immorality that you take quite natu- the late Mr. Coblin had purchased the Morton, confessed he was a lifelong rally. And that’s the immorality that has renowned splash of jewelry from Sothe- resident. “Let me buy you a drink,” by’s with great fanfare. Since everyone said Louie amiably, “and ask you a made a man a murderer today.” accepts the fact that Mrs. Coblin owns few questions about the local scene.” the original, it doesn’t matter that she It would be his pleasure, the man wears a copy in public. There is no admitted. need for extra insurance, bodyguards, The two exchanged pleasantries. or additional security measures, and Morton said that he worked as head yet Mrs. Coblin enjoys the snob value steward in the mansion of a wealthy of showing the thing off. That, after all, widow. “What do you do for a living, is the whole idea. Louie?” he asked. “And besides,” Uncle Ned con- “I’m a professional jewel thief,” cluded, “never steal something famous. Louie said.

42 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : the Detection Club: “The mystery of life is the plainest part of it.” —G.K. Chesterton

How much time do you require for appeal as it had before. She took a young Louie had so unceremoniously taking measurements and photographs?” deep breath and made a decision. “You snatched from her in the limo. Mr. The jeweler inspected the necklace will make an exact copy of this copy, DeNova picked up the priceless original briefly. “Dear Lady,” he protested, “I Mr. DeNova,” she said, firmly. “The and placed the copy in its place on the was hoping to work from the original.” location of the original is a closely held folds of the black velvet fabric on the “From the...” Mrs. Coblin stopped family secret.” table. The original went into his valise. herself. She might be a mean-spirited The jeweler nodded, and opened Mr. DeNova continued taking old bag, but she was far from stupid. his valise. From this, he extracted an measurements. He had every intention She sized up the situation with remark- expensive-looking camera and various of creating a new copy of the neck- able speed. If the necklace there on measuring tools. Mrs. Coblin cursed her lace for Mrs. Coblin according to the the table were not the original, then head steward. She could not imagine commission she had given him; but there must have been a switch. That how the man had brought off the switch- he expected a much bigger payday for would mean she had been wearing the eroo. The damned sneak, she thought doing nothing more than taking her original in the limousine, and that is bitterly, he fooled me completely. He Burmese Loop from the table when what the thief had carried off. By now, wouldn’t be coming back, obviously, she wasn’t looking. Five seconds’ work. the individual gems would be making so she made a mental note to see the Of course Morton, her head steward, their way through whatever system agency about getting him replaced. would get his share for doing nothing thieves use to sell their loot. The Bur- As she amused herself with use- more risky than walking away from mese Loop no longer existed. less thoughts of revenge coupled with his job. Very clever people, these jewel But Mrs. Coblin also realized that, daydreams of what might have been, thieves, he thought. He was looking so long as no one knew the original she did not see Mr. DeNova calmly forward eagerly to joining his new had been stolen and broken up, a copy take a necklace from his valise. It was friends later that evening for that long- would have every bit as much snob the copy of the Burmese Loop that promised champagne toast.

The Chesterton Files continued in some parts of England into the twentieth century. The suspect The Dennis Tryon Casebook by Steve Miller was tied securely and thrown into a body of water. The pure water rejects The Sword of Wood a witch and the guilty suspect floats. Nooses and fires were available to deal Dennis Tryon, a local school- Restoration in the reign of Charles II with one so convicted. An innocent master, is locking up when a parson’s (1660-1685). person sinks and hopefully is retrieved daughter, Dorothy Hood, warns him Publishing History. “The Sword of before too long an immersion. Depend- that an unbeatable swordsman is Wood” was first published in Pall Mall ing on whether one is the swimmer threatening him. Magazine in 1913. Like other uncol- or the mob, this is either a no-win The Mystery. How can a school- lected G.K. Chesterton stories it is or no-lose scenario. After all, witch master with a wooden cane fight a man found in Volume XIV of the Collected suspects were seldom the most popular who defeated the seven best fencers in Works of G.K. Chesterton, published members of the community. (3) The the area? by Ignatius Press. Royal Society, which included Sir Subplot. Can true love spring up Notable Allusions. (1) To Ches- Isaac Newton among others, was in its between a schoolmaster and a parson’s terton the story is set in the time when early stages at this time. Sir Godfrey’s daughter? Merry England of medieval times was wonderful sword seems an appropriate Other Characters. Sir Guy Griffin, being supplanted by what later men contribution to the new scientific age local squire, former Royalist general have come to call the Modern Age. the Society fostered. and reported to be the greatest swords- The tactics of Sir Godfrey Skene and The Opening. “Down in the little man of the county; Jeremy Blunt, the flippant styles of the London he village of Grayling-Abbot, in Somerset, one of Tryon’s pupils who plays with represents show this is not a change men did not know that the world we a wooden sword; Humphrey Griffin, for the better. This is one of Chester- live in had begun. They did not know the eldest son of Sir Guy; Geoffrey ton’s answers to the myth of progress. that all we have come to call ‘modern’ Griffin, another son; Miles Griffin, the Is Skene progress? Should we return to had silently entered England, and youngest son; three unnamed sons; Sir the medieval values of Sir Guy Griffin? changed the air of it. Well they did not Godfrey Skene, the mysterious sword Alas, even the last monarch to love know it very clearly even in London; wielder; and a mob of local inhabitants Merry England, Charles II, knows it though one or two shrewd men like my suspecting witchcraft. is vanishing and perhaps connives at Lord Clarendon, and perhaps Prince Location. The village of Grayling- its demise. (2) Swimming the witch Rupert, with his chemicals and his sad Abbot, Somerset. The time is the was an old test for the supernatural. It eyes, may have had a glimmer of it.”

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 43 : the Detection Club: “The mystery of life is the plainest part of it.” —G.K. Chesterton

Vicki and John’s bone search takes Chesterton’s Bloodthirsty Heirs them to Italy, Germany and Egypt. “I should enjoy nothing more than always writing detective They encounter gun-toting villains and stories, except always reading them.”—G.K. Chesterton with Schmidt join a Berlin demon- stration to return Queen Nefertiti’s Brief Reviews of the Contemporary Mystery Scene by Steve Miller bust to her homeland. In Egypt, the tale becomes more somber with the Margery Allingham. claims to be the greatest swords- murders of a witness to the theft of Black Plumes (1940). In man in Europe. Tut and a female accomplice trying the Golden Age of Mystery Her boyfriend, John to double-cross the gang. There is a the character was every- Tregarth, is an allegedly final showdown in the criminals’ lair thing. Doubts about who reformed antiquities thief trying complete with a swordfight. Vicki Bliss a character really was and to support a run-down family appears in five other Peters’ books, whether he was capable of estate from a less-than- although overshadowed by murder was the mystery. flourishing antique the author’s main hero- Does a seemingly flippant shop. (His mother ine Egyptologist Amelia artist mask a murderous disdains Vicki.) An Peabody Emerson. As passion for vengeance? appeal from another an extra treat Peters, as Does an ancient matriarch possess the allegedly former crook herself, makes a cameo power to exterminate threats to her now working for the Egyp- appearance. Appropri- absent son’s business? Can the story’s tian government raises the ately we learn Schmidt young heroine survive if either her unpleasant suspicion that is already her fan and fiancé or grandmother is a killer? Mar- John may have recently has even obtained her gery Allingham adds a pair of victims stolen the body of King Tut. autograph. who deserve their fates, an explorer returned from the dead, his nerv- ily hysterical wife, suitably eccentric In Praise of Phrases servants and Inspector Bridie from the ”Half our speech consists of similes that remind us of no similarity; pictorial far isles of Scotland whose peculiar phrases that call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of which we have speech only thinly screens a ruthless forgotten.” —G.K. Chesterton mind. Allingham lays out the ambigu- ous clues and false trails of a good “Shoot the Moon.” mystery with the deft touch of a true Albert Richard Smith (1816–1860) mistress of the genre. But it is her abil- ity to make us care about fictional lives As the moon is unreachable, or at least it was before the age of space explora- and see them as real no matter how tion, we say something impossible “is like asking for the moon.” To “shoot the moon” unreal the circumstances of the story in certain games of cards or dominos, means trying to realize an extremely difficult that place her in the exalted company outcome—like taking every trick in a hand during a game of Hearts. This use of of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, “Shoot the moon” seems to be a combination of “Shoot the works” and “Go for the and Ngaio Marsh—the grand dames of moon.” mystery writing of the 1930s through The literary debut of this strange phrase traces back to author Smith’s first book, 1950s. In Allingham’s tales, human The Adventures of Mr. Ledbury (1842). In those days, its meaning was “to sneak one’s relationships are not plot devices but possessions out of a rooming house in the dead of night to avoid having them seized the story. The crime matters because by the landlord for unpaid rent.” G.K. Chesterton admired the phrase, and in Alarms it affects people. In Black Plumes the and Discursions (1902) he praised it as an excellent example of the strength and crowds gathering outside the murder creativity of popular slang: scene are the voice of public justice. Like a Greek chorus, they announce What concentrated irony and imagination there is, for instance, in the metaphor which that murder is evil and perpetrators describes a man doing a midnight flitting as “shooting the moon”? It expresses everything must pay a price in blood. about the runaway: his eccentric occupation, his improbable explanations, his furtive air as of a hunter, his constant glances at the blank clock in the sky. Elizabeth Peters. The Laughter of Stranger yet, according to an 1809 dictionary of slang, the phrase had earlier Dead Kings (2008). Vicki Bliss has a been “to shove the moon” with the same fly-by-night connotations. complicated life. She is blond, six feet Perhaps the relationship between the two meanings is that the roomer attempt- tall and built like a Playboy bunny. This ing to remove all his furniture without being caught by the landlord is similar to the can cause credibility issues working for player shooting the moon in a game of Hearts who wants to take every trick without a Munich museum. Her boss Schmidt being foiled by the other players. is an apparent buffoon who knows everyone in the museum world and

44 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : ALL is GRIST: “He made fun of the Jews in poetry and prose.” “He made fun of everyone in poetry and prose, none more amusingly than himself. Those he made fun of he took Love and Loyalty seriously.” “He also took religion seriously,” I by Joe Campbell said. “When he felt compelled to make an adult choice, he did not choose the n my way to the interview, I much as anyone else. He advocated Jews.” felt as though I were inside the establishment of a Jewish state “True,” he said, “but he chose the a paradox. The sun had just in the Middle East, their traditional Jewish Messiah, who revealed that appeared above the horizon, homeland.” through Him salvation is from the Jews. as in autumn the earth sets “He wanted powerful cosmopolitan How could he be anything but enthusi- Olate where I live. Busloads of chil- Jews out of England,” I asserted. astically pro-Semitic?” dren headed for school to unlearn “Because they were powerful and “Enthusiastically?” what they’d been taught at home. A cosmopolitan,” he said, “not because “Enthusiastically and fashionable clothing store opened its they were Jews.” unrepentantly.” doors to a posse of waiting women, all While I ruminated over the He stood up, indicating that the undressed to the nines. Several dogs distinction, he added with a flourish, interview was over. were out walking their people. “Chesterton opted for local loyalty over “It was pretty easy,” he said, “for My editor had assigned me to cosmopolitan detachment.” Chesterton’s supporters, Jews included, interview a visiting historian who said “The very thing I’ve been saying,” to clear him of charges of anti- he possessed information about G.K. I replied, convinced that I’d caught Semitism.” Chesterton that would shake the liter- him out. “His opting for local loyalty It won’t be so easy, I thought as I ary establishment. Since Chesterton is meant that he was pro-English. But to left to write my story, to clear him of one of my favorite authors, I was eager concede that and accuse him of free charges of pro-Semitism. to break the story. patriot love is contradictory.” “He was pro-Semitic,” the historian “Not contradictory,” he said. “Para- told me. doxical. Loving his own homeland, he From the Wiener Library… I was taken aback. I knew that understood how others loved theirs during the South African War, Ches- and he loved them for it.” There is no one voice that terton was pro-Boer, but I put it down “Are you saying that because he speaks on behalf of the Jews. How- to youthful indiscretion. Oh, yes, and was pro-English, he was also pro-Boer, ever, we come very close with this I was familiar with rumors that he pro-Irish, pro-Polish, pro-Semitic and official statement from the Wiener was pro-Irish and pro-Polish. But to be so on?” Library Institute of Contemporary pro-Semitic as well? This suggested a “Exactly, but he was loyal to Eng- History in London, which contains worrying pattern of divided loyalties. land alone.” the archives of anti-Semitism and “He was pro-English,” I insisted, I said I had difficulty believing he Holocaust history: when I had recovered sufficiently could be pro-Semitic given the culture to speak. “Do you accuse him of he grew up in and the literature he The difference between social infidelity?” loved. and philosophical anti-Semitism is “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he “Some of his best friends were something which is not fully under- said, “that Chesterton practiced free Jews,” he protested. stood. John Buchan, for example, patriot love.” “Spare me that old canard.” was charming towards Jewish “He was committed to England, “Even as a youth, he was pro- people he met, but undoubtedly where he was born and bred,” I Semitic,” he said. “The debating possessed a world view of anti-Sem- protested. “Why, even his traditional society he and E.C. Bentley founded at itism. With Chesterton we’ve never apparel proclaimed it, the capes, the school was one-third Jewish. That’s far thought of a man who was seriously swordsticks—” beyond the proportion of Jews in Brit- “Precisely my point,” he replied. ish society at large.” anti-Semitic on either count. He was “He wanted all peoples, including Jews “You think it was unfair?” a man who played along, and for that in England, to proclaim their national “Nowadays, many might consider it he must pay a price; he has, and has commitment by returning to tradi- prejudicial against gentiles.” the public reputation of anti-Semi- tional dress.” “He spoke against Jewish capitalists tism. He was not an enemy, and when “But the Jews had no nation,” I and socialists.” the real testing time came along he reminded him. “He spoke against all capitalists showed what side he was on. “He wanted them to have one. and socialists. He was a Distributist, He believed that they deserved it as remember.”

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 45 : the Distributist: who gained enormous wealth in the process. After Christendom started Economics as if People Mattered to backpedal on the matter of usury (when it was discovered there was money in it), a thing called banking Distributism and the Jews became institutionalized. Chesterton, however, did not backpedal; his opin- by Dale Ahlquist ion of usury did not undergo reform: “I could do a great many things before ne of the reasons G.K. Ches- protection of home go along with the I came to definitely anti-social action terton is dismissed as an natural attachment to the homeland. It like robbing a bank or (worse still) anti-Semite (which he was is logical therefore that the Jews, who working in a bank.” But we, of course, not) is due to the fact he is were without their own homeland, now consider usury something normal. also dismissed as a Distributist would gravitate toward social and eco- That is because most of us are in debt O(which he was). He attacks both capi- nomic systems that are not dependent up to our eyeballs. We’re not in debt talism and socialism, but because he on the idea of home and homeland, to a Jewish usurer in the village, but to mentions (however seldom) that Jews systems as seemingly opposite as some faceless megabank (that recently figure prominently in both these sys- capitalism and communism, that actu- merged with another megabank and tems, his critics take it to mean that ally are quite the same. As Chesterton will soon be taken over by the govern- he is actually attacking Jews, rather explains in a New Witness article in ment). It holds our mortgage, our than capitalism and socialism. “But 1921: car loan, our credit card, and our why does he bring up the Jews?” they first-born child (in the form of col- There is no contradiction here, but ask. “Isn’t this the proof that he is anti- absolute consistency. Capitalism and lege tuition). Since we’ve sold out to Semitic? He is blaming the Jews for collectivism are not contrary things… capitalism, the usury part of Chester- opposite things! His obsessive dislike they are two forms of the same thing… ton’s argument holds only the vaguest of the Jews has clouded his reasoning. men dependent on great centralized meaning for us because we’re on the Distributism is only a mask for anti- systems, doling out to them their food wrong side of it, the inside. And we’re Semitism!” and work…In short, Big Business and locked in. Okay. First, Chesterton does not Bolshevism are only rivals…making Chesterton’s point is that usu- blame Jews for capitalism and com- efforts to do the same thing…I am rers were disliked because they were munism. Second, he argues that they not surprised that the cleverest men usurers, not because they were Jews. are not opposite things. Both capitalism doing it in both cases are Jews. And Have you ever had unkind thoughts this is not in the least because I dis- and socialism are the enemies of the about your banker? Do you care what like Jews; for everybody who knows wide distribution of property. Thirdly, me knows that I do not. It is because religion he is? when he points out that Jews played I know the Jews to be cut off from We should add that there was a prominent role in both capitalism one particular ideal; which is the only one community of tentieth-century and socialism, he is not making things possible alternative ideal to their col- Jews who lived a very Distributist up. The international banking houses lectivist capitalism and their capitalist lifestyle: the pioneers who began the controlled by such Jewish families as collectivism. re-settlement of the Jews in the Holy the Rothschilds, the d’Erlangers, and Land. Chesterton personally visited the Warburgs had inordinate power and Though Chesterton portrays them and was greatly impressed. It influence over national and local com- socialists as a futile lot, he is especially certainly reinforced all of his ideas, merce and government. Ironically, the critical of capitalists who simply make including his support for Zion- radical reaction against the great wealth money from money—moneylenders, ism. But he feared that it would not and great poverty created by unbridled money traders, money launderers— last, that Jews would revert to their capitalism was communism, which was who add nothing of substance to an capitalist and socialist tendencies if first put forth by a Jew and was promul- economy in terms of honest labor and they settled in greater numbers. And gated by the Jewish cafe intellectuals. an honest product. that’s what happened. But this was This is not to say that all wealthy capi- After enjoying a period of unprec- not peculiar to the Jews. It is also talists and all revolutionary communists edented popularity, usury is starting to what happened throughout Europe were Jewish, but their leadership and get a bad reputation again. For several and the West during the same period, disproportionate representation in each centuries there was in almost every a time marked by the end of family group was undeniable. To mention it town in Christendom one figure whose farms and many small businesses, the does not make one an anti-Semite. trade was forbidden by the Church, growth of huge multi-national corpo- But it makes sense to Chesterton but who could ply that trade because rations, the growth of government why Distributism has had little appeal he was not a member of the Church. bureaucracy, great wealth, great pov- to the Jews. It is an ideal based on He dealt in the most addictive drug erty, bloody wars and unimaginable property, on the home and the land. It known to man: money. Many peasants oppression to people of all races and is follows that the feelings of love and went deeply in debt to these usurers, religions.

46 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Chesterton University: problems and all the problems of An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist the modern world on the Jews. But he does not. He does not blame the Jews as the agents of secularization, the prophets of materialism, or the More Vindication from enemies of Christian culture. He does not blame Marx, Freud, and Rothschild. Chesterton’s “Last” Book He blames Voltaire and Frederick the Great, he blames Protestants who As I Was Saying lost their faith but kept their morality, which morphed into Puritanism, who his is the last book by G.K. legislation has ridden roughshod over have infected our culture not with their Chesterton that was published the instincts of innocent and simple life, not even with their death, but with during his lifetime. However, his and yet very sensible people.” their decay. literary estate would publish Chesterton further points out that In fact, the only time he mentions fourteen more books by him the void left by the loss of religion has the Jews is to defend them. Tafter his death, and there are still new been filled with a kind of tribalism. He mentions the “New Myth” in books by Chesterton appearing almost More about that in a minute. Germany that the complete surrender every year. He apparently hasn’t Connected to the creeping of all the German armies in the World stopped writing. He certainly hasn’t secularism is a creeping skepticism. War I “was somehow or other brought stopped being relevant. Agnosticism is the new religion. Ches- about by the Jews.” Despite the “real The title indicates that Chesterton terton makes reference to the same problem of the international position is continuing a conversation he has latitudinarian turnip that was still a of the Jews,” it is ridiculous to think been having with us all along. The novelty when he wrote Heretics thirty the Jews could be responsible for the amusing observations of our world, the years before. Skepticism has attacked defeat of Germany. No one listened. striking insights, the prophetic pro- the foundations of Christianity, He also notes that there are new nouncements are all here (“In America, despite the fact that the doubts being reports that Jews are being perse- wheels have completely taken the raised against the Christian claims cuted in Europe and Russia and, place of legs”), but upon revisiting this are in themselves rather doubtful, though it probably makes no differ- volume I found something else, some- such as the new alternative theories ence to the people being persecuted, thing that I wasn’t looking for, but that to the miracle of the Resurrection: it is being called “the persecution of I happened to notice because it was on “The Apostles may have hidden [Jesus’ a race and not the persecution of a my mind. I found more solid proof that body] in order to announce a sham religion.” Ironically, it is not the old Chesterton was not anti-Semitic. miracle but it is very difficult to political systems that are persecut- If there is a connecting theme in imagine men being tortured and killed ing the Jews, but the new political these essays taken from the Illustrated for the truth of a miracle which they systems. “Doubtless those political London News, it is the problem of the knew to be a sham.” systems deal even more in political modern world, whose philosophy is While the marriage of skepticism persecution than in religious persecu- characterized, says Chesterton, by two and secularism injected doubt into tion. But that does not make them main modern ideas: “first, that it is religion, it injected materialism into less persecuting, but more. The whole often extremely convenient to do what philosophy. The hard-driving economic point of the last political theory is that is wrong; and second, that whenever theories are propped up by technologi- sectional parties and programs must it is convenient to do what is wrong, it cal innovations, and yet, as Chesterton be forcibly effaced, that the opposi- immediately becomes what is right.” points out, “Progress is the mother of tion press must be abolished, and In art anything is allowed, but problems.” Progress doesn’t seem to only one party allowed…It is a much there is no moral base for condemning get us anywhere. Materialism is hor- more profound problem than Progres- it because we are no longer a Christian ribly unsatisfying. The modern world is sives have ever found out. But it does society. If we are Christians we should filled with lots of things and is madden- measure the exact sense and degree just admit this, and then “launch a cru- ingly empty. Chesterton has laid the in which humanity does change, that sade to convert or conquer the modern groundwork for T.S. Eliot’s The Waste it should disappear in the nineteenth world.” Instead, we have formed a Land: “The whole world of mere stunts century to reappear in the twentieth.” “one-sided truce” with the modern and scoops and trading and self-adver- No one listened. world, which is to the enormous disad- tisement is spiritually dead; although And now, as the “Progressives” vantage of Christians. We do not attack it is very noisy. It is, in the precise and continue to ignore the failure of their the modern world, but we allow it to literal meaning of the phrase, a howl- political experiments in the twentieth continue to attack us. ing wilderness.” century and march further into a Increasingly, we are seeing laws Now why is this proof that Ches- “howling wasteland” in the twenty-first made that not only defy our beliefs, terton is not anti-Semitic? Because century, we can expect more persecu- but defy common sense: “Recent if he were, he would blame these tions, and not just of the Jews.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 47 : Book Reviews: bulge from Jones’ neck; if there is Jew hatred here, it is immensely cunning. I would hope that Jones’ critics would give him a fair reading rather than continuing to arrange to have his public appearances cancelled. They’re not helping their own case—whatever that case is. It’s really hopeless when Whatever You Do, Don’t anyone who tries to discuss the Jews is instantly accused of being anti-Semitic Mention the Jews if his conclusions point out any Jewish misbehavior. Of course, that was G.K. The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its years, whenever there has been a Chesterton’s fate. In fact, what some Impact on World History major movement opposed to the might consider the most astounding by E. Michael Jones Catholic Church, the Jews have tended achievement in Jones’ monumental South Bend, Ind.: Fidelity Press, 2008 to side with those movements, whether book is that he manages to avoid quot- 1,200 pages, $48 religious, social or political. Jones even ing Chesterton in 1,200 pages of writing invokes Cardinal Newman who noted about the Jews. He does bring up Hilaire that this “spontaneous heresy” has Belloc early on, however, and what he Reviewed by Bradley Rothstein been the natural position of the Jews, says sums up the whole problem around who have consistently rejected Christ trying to have this discussion: n the spring of 2008, a series of and rejected the Church. lectures on Catholic social teach- Now the question: why should this Hilaire Belloc…wrote that if anyone ing was scheduled at the Catholic thesis be considered anti-Semitic? The “exposed a financial swindler who happened to be a Jew, he was an University of America: ten different answer: I have no idea. Are Jones’ crit- anti-Semite. If he exposed a group of lectures by ten different lecturers. ics claiming that the Jews have always Parliamentarians taking money from IOn the day of the first lecture, a rep- agreed with the Catholic Church? the Jews, he was anti-Semite. If he did resentative from the Southern Poverty The difference between this no more than call a Jew a Jew, he was Law Center called the university and book and say, Constantine’s Sword an anti-Semite.” Things have gotten said that two of the scheduled lectur- by James Carroll, is that self-hating worse since Belloc’s time. Now it is ers were anti-Semitic. Without any Catholics like Carroll blame all the impossible to write about Jews without investigation whatsoever, the univer- trouble between Christians and Jews opening oneself to the charge of anti- sity immediately cancelled the entire on Christians, on an unwarranted, Semitism, as Belloc’s current place lecture series. One of the accused anti- unexplainable Christian hatred of the in the literary firmament now shows. Semites was E. Michael Jones, editor Jews, whereas Jones makes a case that It is impossible to refer to Belloc in polite circles without the mandatory of Culture Wars and author of several the Church has had to defend itself on disclaimer that he was an anti-Semite, books. more than one occasion from revolu- partly because he wrote one book It was not the first time that Jones tionary movements in which the Jews about the Jews. His views on Islam has been disinvited as a speaker after a played a part, small or large, and the are much more censorious than his phone call was made. This began hap- Jews consequently faced the resent- views on Jews, but that fact never gets pening after he started writing about ment of Christians afterwards. For mentioned. Nor is it obligatory to refer the Jews. Jones had not provoked the instance, Catholics were a little put to Belloc as an anti-Muslim. same reactions when he wrote other out when they first discovered what provocative books such as the one the Talmud said about Jesus and Mary. One of the problems, I suppose, claiming that the Medjugorje phenom- Jewish excuses for these ugly passages is that the Catholics have a Pope and enon is a fraud, or that urban planning have always been unsatisfying. the Jews do not. There is not a single and freeways have destroyed stable Jones’ account of the Spanish Jewish spokesman who can stand ethnic neighborhoods, or that almost Inquisition will provide some myth- up and represent the Jews, whether all horror movies are really about smashing material, and the accounts of defending them or taking the blame abortion. His latest work, which has Johannes Reuchlin and Josef Pepper- for them. There isn’t an official been brewing for the past few years in korn, the Anabaptist revolt, and Rabbi Jewish position on anything. Anyone his magazine, has a thesis that really Menessah ben Israel (who some Jews attempting “dialogue” with the Jews caught the attention of the people thought was the Messiah) will be com- encounters a thousand different voices, whose business it is to call up Catholic pletely new for most readers. But the some condemning, some concilia- organizations and warn them about really hot stuff is his discussion of the tory. But however the generalizations fraternizing with anti-Semites. neo-conservatives. Eyebrows will go fail, the Jews remain a distinct people. What is the thesis that has gotten up. However, here and throughout the “Stiff-necked,” says God—who has also Jones into all this hot water? He says book, his research and analysis is com- been accused of treating the Jews that throughout the past two thousand prehensive and calm. The veins never badly.

48 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 Children of Israel), who alone of all The Desire of the peoples not only worshipped only one God, but who insisted that this one Everlasting Hills God “was also the creator of all things; he, personal as any City-god, was also The Battleground: Syria and Palestine, “Syria has been of the highest universal and alone.” the Seedplot of Religion moment to our race, above all this, it Belloc makes clear throughout by Hilaire Belloc has been our Battleground,” Belloc is that everything that happened to San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008 writes. and in Syria, did so because of divine (originally published in 1936 by J.B. Lippencott design, because this Divine Unity of It has been the place of meeting and Company, Philadelphia) of shock between opposing cultures of the Bene Israel willed it, to bring about 330 pages, $17.95 (softcover) men, of conflict between those forces his ultimate purpose: the redemption which sweep and mould the world of man. Reviewed by Sean P. Dailey beyond all others, which are supreme Some thirty years or a little less above all others, those sources from after the peace of Augustus began there which all cultures flow—religions. was born to an obscure young woman wo of the greatest gifts that from Galilee…a man-child. The purpose the English Catholic liter- If you think you fully appreciate of Syria was accomplished. The Desire ary revival gave to twentieth the various conflicts going on now in of the everlasting hills had come. century literature are Hilaire what we today call the Middle East, Belloc’s The Four Men and think again. This book will show you At this point, probably because TThe Path to Rome. Ignatius Press that there is much, much more to the he could think of no other way to has just published a new edition of a story than the platitudes of politicians convey his awe at of just what this 1936 work by Belloc that deserves to and the neglectful “coverage” of most “Desire of the everlasting hills” meant, be ranked with those. major media. The history books you Belloc does an extraordinary thing. Belloc’s The Battleground: used in school probably called this He switches from history to historical Syria and Palestine, the Seedplot of region and Mesopotamia to the east, fiction to let the reader view Christ Religion is a history that, like G.K. the “cradle of civilization.” But that through the eyes of a young Rabbi, Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, too is inadequate, because history Yakoub. And Yakoub’s first encounter places the Incarnation as the focal books are written by people who gen- with Christ happens to be Christ’s point of history, the one event that all erally do not take religion into account. sermon in the synagogue at Caphar- world events before it anticipate, and Belloc knows better, writing: naum, the one recounted in John 6. As all world events following it look back he strains to catch a glimpse of Jesus Here the gods of Egypt appeared, to. Belloc makes that point every bit not without majesty, but distaining to in the throng, Jesus sees him too. as forcefully as Chesterton does, and plant their worship; here in the Syrian Those eyes were upon him. He had even more eloquently, I would argue. belt the very evil gods of Lust and heard of their compelling beauty; of The Battleground contains some of Torture were to await the proclama- their compassion; of heir authority. his most poignant, heartfelt writing. tion of Israel and to be locked in But hearing is all words, and words While Chesterton painted with a battle with the God of Israel—the One are shadows. This was the living thing, rather broad stroke, incorporating the Jehovah—and to succumb; Moloch and and there came upon him in that entire classical world, Belloc turns his Ashtaroth and Baal. Here the Spirits moment the stroke whereby men are gaze exclusively on Syria—Syria as that of loveliness were to waft in from the slain or live…Something eternal had region was classically known, the 400- West in the wake of the Greek armies, struck and shaken the central nerve of and here Aphrodite mourned for mile narrow belt of land that stretches his being. Adonis dead. Here in the fullness of from nearly Asia Minor in the north to time came the flower of our Revela- nearly the Sinai Peninsula in the south, tion, the kindling of the Gospel, the Belloc is surely in heaven, for that with Palestine only one small part of the founding of the Church, the violent, paragraph alone if for nothing else. whole. It is an area dominated geograph- obscure, creative tragedy whence our His description of the Crusaders’ first ically, Belloc emphasizes in the very first Western civilization arose. sight of Jerusalem is achingly beauti- chapter, by two long mountain ranges ful. Belloc is a sublime writer and that run nearly parallel the entire length Belloc spends the first half of the description (or is it a dismissal?) of the region, with the western range the book examining the various one often hears of him as a grumpier overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and civilizations that overran Syria in the version of Chesterton is exceedingly the eastern range overlooking the track- centuries leading up to Christ: the unfair—and Chesterton would be the less desert. Between them is a narrow Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Per- first to tell you so. The Battleground is valley that, historically (meaning, before sians, the Greeks, and the Romans. a joy, Belloc at his finest, and indis- the Turks came and laid everything to Through it all he repeatedly returns pensable if you want to understand waste) was lush and fertile, at least as far to a tiny island of people toward the how misguided Western policy toward south as the Dead Sea. south of Syria, the “Bene Israel” (the the Middle East truly is.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 49 : Book Reviews: An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist

good rabbi has taken it upon himself to Good Pope, Bad Press defend the honor of the man who did more to thwart the Holocaust than any The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius the Jews, and Pius XII even turned his other world leader. The Myth of Hitler’s XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis summer residence into a sanctuary Pope opens with a history of how the by Rabbi David G. Dalin for Jewish refugees. These works were slanders started, and moves on to Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005 not hampered by the Pope’s position describe the papacy’s long tradition of 209 pages, $27.95 (hardcover) as a statesman that required him to defending Jews (although the teachings maintain a certain level of civility of the popes were often ignored by the with enemy authorities. Papal denun- broader culture—some things never Reviewed by Chris Chan ciations tended to exacerbate already change). Pius XII’s career and legacy difficult situations, so he was forced to are next evaluated, the recalcitrance of abbi David G. Dalin’s book The temper his public criticisms in order the liberal media to accept his exon- Myth of Hitler’s Pope is far from to avoid potentially disastrous reper- eration follows, the enduring effects the first to clear the name of cussions from Hitler’s or Mussolini’s of Muslim anti-Semitism are treated Pope Pius XII, but it is an admi- armies. During the hostilities, Pius XII in turn, and the book concludes with rable defense and a welcome developed a firm friendship with Israel Pope John Paul II’s work at improving Raddition to the growing scholarship on Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome. Zolli Christian/Jewish relations. the subject. The charges leveled against gained such a powerful respect for Pius One question Dalin never answers Pius XII are widely known: during XII that he eventually converted to is what it will take to smother the the Second World War, the Pope was Catholicism. anti-Pius XII slanders for once and for allegedly responsible for the deporta- One might think that the Pope’s all. Although Cornwell renounced his tions and eventual deaths of thousands actions would have earned him a own work when dedicated scholars had of Jews. In this allegation, at best Pius reputation as one of the great heroes disproved all of the central claims of XII remained aloof and silent as the of World War II, but, unfortunately, the Hitler’s Pope, mainstream intellectual Holocaust steamrolled through Europe; opposite has proven to be the case. currents have thoroughly ignored the at worst, the Pope was an active Nazi Other European leaders were shamed truth. Dalin suggests that individuals collaborator, enthusiastically purging by the Pope’s defense of the Jews, and who wish to advance an antireligious Jews from central Italy. This portrait it appears they minimized his con- agenda, as well as Catholics who want of Pius XII is of a cold and cruel pope, tributions in order to distract from to reshape the Church into something driven by a sociopath’s sadism and a their own inaction. Pius XII did little radically altered from its current state, centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism. to promote his own good works, but perpetuate the false image of the frosty, This is the prevailing view of the prominent Jews ranging from Albert bigoted Pope in order to score political pontiff’s legacy today, and the image Einstein to Golda Meier praised the points. The mass media has shown no appears in numerous forms. It is no Pope for his accomplishments. It was interest in setting the record straight, coincidence that in J.K. Rowling’s not until the left-wing playwright Rolf and Pius XII’s defenders are often Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hochhuth, backed by Communist offi- tarred with the charges of anti-Semi- the Minister of Magic who is cursed cials desperate to discredit the Catholic tism themselves. into collaborating with the Death Church, released the play The Deputy The miscomprehensions started Eaters bears the Christian name Pius. in 1964 that the world’s perception of with a play; perhaps another play is John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope (1999) Pius XII changed. While Hochhuth’s the answer to rehabilitating Pius XII’s captured the popular imagination; work is in fact an utter inversion of image. I have an idea for a trilogy of using a slew of secondary sources, his reality, the image of Pius XII as a plays revolving around Pius XII’s life book condemned Pius XII for complic- Jew-loathing bureaucrat with liquid and legacy. The first play would be a ity in the Holocaust. Cornwell became nitrogen in his veins lodged itself into refutation of The Deputy, depicting a media darling, and countless people the public mindset and refused to be Pius XII’s true actions and character who never read his book still took the shaken, like some monstrously gigantic during the Holocaust. The second play title (which summed up Cornwell’s kidney stone. The Deputy won a Tony would be based on the production of thesis in two words) to heart. Award for Best Producer when it came The Deputy as fueled by the KGB’s The chief flaw in this papal portrait to Broadway, and Hochhuth swiftly propaganda wing. The final piece of the is that it is patently false. As Dalin gained numerous fans. The fictional trilogy would revolve around a group amply illustrates, far from being an play trumped the historical record, of present-day scholars, and how a uni- enthusiastic Nazi supporter, the Pope despite the fact that evidence proves versity might try to suppress pro-Pius was one of Hitler’s staunchest enemies. the opposite conclusions. XII scholarship in the name of political Pius XII actually saved the lives of hun- Books clearing Pius XII are correctness. It could work, but given dreds of thousands of Jews and led an often dismissed out of hand as the the tendency to believe the worst of effort to protect the Jewish population. scribblings of overzealous Catholics other people in order to cushion one’s Nuns sheltered Jews in their convents, desperate to whitewash their religion’s own prejudices, I’m pessimistic about the Vatican funded food drives to help guilty past, so it is fortunate that the the effectiveness of such a project.

50 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Book Reviews: An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist

:Off the Shelf w i t h Mike Foster money-lender. We bleed with Shylock The Merchant of Venice over the loss of his daughter, his ducats, and most sadly, his faith. We need not by William Shakespeare share that faith to find Portia’s judg- ment crueler than any Christian ever ought to be. That is why this play deserves to be ou never forget your first kiss. Portia’s paean to charity, addressed plucked off the shelf and read again. Or your first Shakespeare. to Shylock and the unfortunate Anto- For me, it was freshman year nio, who is about to lose a pound of at Spalding Institute in downtown flesh, his heart, to the money-lender’s G.K. Chesterton on Shylock: Peoria, Illinois, 1960. As yet quite well-whetted knife, is no less moving Shakespeare enjoyed the old Yunkissed, I was assigned the role of Jes- than it was when first I heard it. stories. He enjoyed them as tales are sica by Br. Donald Houde, the first—and, Dressed as a judge, Portia beseeches intended to be enjoyed. He liked read- Deo gratias, not the last—great English the bloodthirsty usurer to spare his ing them, as a man of imagination and teacher to enrich my literary life. bankrupt victim: intelligence to-day likes reading a As if a guy who was four-foot- “The quality of mercy is not strain’d good adventure story, or still more a eleven and seventy pounds in the same It droppeth as a gentle rain from good detective story. This is the one class with Lebanese blokes who were heaven possibility that the Shakespearean already shaving twice a day weren’t Upon the place beneath: it is twice critics never seem to entertain. Prob- trial enough, I had to read the lines of bless’d; ably they are not simple enough, and Shylock’s apostate daughter. Give me a It blesseth him that gives and him therefore not imaginative enough, to break! I would’ve been a great Portia! that takes: know what that enjoyment is. They The lucky lads who got to play the ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it cannot read an adventure story, or Prince of Morocco (“O hell! What have becomes indeed any story. For instance, nearly we here?”) and Launcelot Gobbo and The throned monarch better than his all the critics apologise, in a prim especially Shylock got all the juiciest crown.” and priggish manner, for the tale on lines, like this wonderful rant against which turns the Trial Scene in “The that caterwauling cat-tailed scourge of Of course, the cruel irony is that Merchant of Venice.” They explain music, the bagpipe: after all this bantering brouhaha about that poor Shakespeare had taken a mercy, is that although Antonio’s life Shylock: “Some men there are love barbarous old story, and had to make is saved through a literal and legalisitc not a gaping pig; the best of it. As a matter of fact, he interpretation of the “pound of flesh,” Some, that are mad if they behold had taken an uncommonly good story; Shylock is mandated to leave half of a cat; one of the best that he could possibly his estate to Jessica and her Lorenzo And others, when the bagpipe sings have had to make the best of. It is a upon his death. And the deepest cut i’ the nose, clear, pointed, and practical parable of all is not to Shylock’s flesh but his Cannot contain their urine.” against usury; and if a large number faith: he must “presently become a of modern people do not appreciate Re-reading this play, I was amazed Christian.” it, it is because a large number of how many passages came back intact Shakespeare has been judged anti- modern people are taught to appreci- in my sixty-one-year-old memory. Prom- Semitic, most especially because of this ate and even admire usury. The idea inently unforgettable are the play’s two play. Those charges have dubious merit, of a man forfeiting part of his body great speeches. The first is Shylock’s perhaps due to the harshness of the (it might have been an arm or leg) timeless, poignant appeal to tolerance: word “Jew” to modern ears. Lending is a highly philosophical satire on credence to the charge have been the “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? unlimited recovery of ruinous debts. productions that have exaggerated the Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen- The idea is embodied in all those truly caricature Jew, with stage directions sions, senses, affections, passions? Christian laws about wainage and calling for him to crudely cast aside the Fed with the same food, hurt with the livelihood which were the glory of the cross Antonio wears around his neck same weapons, subject to the same Middle Ages. The story is excellent diseases, healed by the same means, to get to the beating heart under that simply as an anecdote working up to warmed and cooled by the same merchant of Venice’s bosom. a climax and ending in an unexpected winter and summer, as a Christian But in the final verdict, Shake- retort. And the end is a truth and not is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? speare is not guilty of sins against merely a trick. You do prove the falsity If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If the Jews. What I recall about this of pedantic logic by a reductio ad you poison us, do we not die? and if play, from my first reading as a callow you wrong us, shall we not revenge? absurdum. schoolboy to more recent presentations If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.” at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, is (Illustrated London News, October 18, 1919) feeling great sympathy for the poor old

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 51 : Fear of Film: disguised as a man. Various and sundry strands of the subplots weave themselves into making this young lady, Portia, into a major figure in all literature. For those of us who are old enough to remember, we might call Mercy, Justice, and Redemption this act of the play “Portia Faces Life.” An aside: girl-dressed-as-boy ploys are by Art Livingston probably the least effective part of Shakespeare on film; the actresses The Merchant of Venice (2004) act of love. Every Christian character look too much like, well, women to be Written and directed by Michael Radford treats her with love; no one holds her genuinely effective. But let us call this (based on the play by William Shakespeare) race, tribe, past, nor culture against a convention and get on with the trial. Rated R (for some nudity) her. No one wishes her ill because she Shylock prosecutes his case by is who she is. No one gloats because declaring his bond, the pound of flesh, irector Michael Radford’s 2005 she left her people. Were The Mer- a point of honor. He does this by com- film of The Merchant of Venice chant of Venice an anti-Semitic work, paring Antonio to a rat and a pig. Al opens with a title card self-evi- Shakespeare’s Jessica would have been Pacino, in a truly riveting performance, dently a blatant lie: “Intolerance an object of disrespect and distrust, gives a depth of feeling to Shylock’s of the Jews was a fact of life in and Lorenzo would have been cast out sense of injury and verisimilitude to Dsixteenth century life, even in Venice...” as well. his desire to seek revenge. In truth, were they persecuted not Titular hero Antonio needs money As the judge, Portia pleads again a single Jew would have been left in to help his sworn brother, Bassanio, and again for Shylock to be merci- Venice. That Jews lived in Venice and in his need. Out of this deep friend- ful to Antonio, and finally observes, prospered is tolerance by definition. ship, he applies for a loan that he fully “How can you ask for mercy, giving Each action and title card running expects to repay, but will not scruple none.” Shylock believes he has no through the first six minutes of the film to take with usury. He gets an agreed need for mercy, but for justice—this presents variations on the theme of upon term from Shylock, a money- is the point of the story, that he who anti-Christian diatribe. I would not be lender. In one of many fairy tale lives by the law will be judged by the at all surprised had anyone with a fair elements in the plot, Shylock will exact law, as St. Paul declared. “I stand by understanding of history walked out a pound of Antonio’s flesh if he cannot the law,” proclaims Shylock. There will feeling the need to cleanse himself first repay fully in three months. Antonio be no mercy without compulsion. before going on with life. agrees, although such a bargain would “The quality of mercy is not To provide a yardstick, pre-Chris- make a man like him sullied. After strained,” is the real answer to Shylock tian Romans and post-Christian Nazis humiliating Antonio in this rather unremitting hatred. The full allegorical did not share Christian toleration. Pro- horrifying scene, Shylock delivers the thrust of what Shakespeare intended paganda, not to mention historical famous “Hath not a jew eyes” speech. becomes almost pellucid at this point absurdity, reaches its pinnacle in the The answer to his rhetorical ques- if the audience watches in the “spirit opening sequence when a Franciscan tion will finally come at the climax of that its author writ”; Shakespeare cuts religious incites an anti-Jewish riot. To the tale: “Yes, you are human, thus through Radford’s modernist smoke- add to the confusion, the actor por- making you worthy of redemption.” screen leaving a partially scorched odor. traying this religious actually uses the Shylock’s concept of just words of Martin Luther, that notorious revenge would be morally Papist. Let us be kind and say that the repellent even if he were understanding of certain ideas is not pope. That any city would this movie’s long suit, and only with a tolerate such a man reveals truly dumb final shot do the producers great forbearance; when he rear their ugly heads again. speaks most freely, his hatred Thank God, Director Radford pours forth most openly. stops pontificating and settles down It happens that Antonio into letting Shakespeare tell his own cannot repay the loan, and story; and the very first word and Shylock looks forward almost action on-screen from the action joyfully to his agreed upon instantly refutes all previous harangues bond to murder Antonio. For- and vitiates any charge of anti- tunately, the reason for Semitism in either the play or the securing the loan has ripened Bard--and that word is “Jessica.” She into a marriage contract for is not a minor character. The beloved Bassanio, and his intended of Lorenzo, he speaks her name as an bride comes forth as a judge

52 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Fear of Film: An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist

The Law is inviolable, but becomes tale both saves Antonio and epitomizes have given Antonio. Whether or not fully righteous only when touched with Christian mercy in the very place one agrees with the outcome, this is Mercy and Redemption. By his actions, Shylock would have insisted on the full what Shakespeare intended and Chris- Jeremy Irons in the performance of his measure of law. tendom believed. Discussing these life recalls the Passion of Christ; if we Let us leave with a thought about matters on a level playing field would were to suppose to believe Shylock the the character Shylock. If he initially go a long way toward clearing the air most wronged party in the story, this thinks the trial has wronged him, he of the polluting spell cast in the first is at the least a highly eccentric way will have a long time to think about six minutes of this broken-backed near of going about it. The resolution of the it, a great deal more than he would masterpiece.

The Rosary on Celluloid gleefully took the opportunity to nearly beat to death God come to earth. We by Art Livingston should watch it if only to be reminded of the human condition. And this is The Passion of the Christ (2004) Garden to Christ’s death was about Gibson’s highest purpose, to allow us Directed by Mel Gibson fourteen hours, then the ratio of to meditate on the reality of what hap- Written by Benedict Fitzgerald screen time to real time is about 1:7, pened that day two millennia ago. and Mel Gibson an enormous percentage of the time Worse than the critics have been Rated R (for scenes of graphic violence) for this kind of representation, which vituperative calumnies against Gibson appropriately exhausts the viewer by and his movie perpetrated by certain ilm has many potential uses, the time we get a brief glimpse of groups, many of which, I truly hope, only one of which is light fiction the Resurrection, our one relief from represent merely the lunatic fringe and designed for a mass audience. despair. It is not surprising that the not the mainstream of Judaism. I speak Such playlets are what most film has been misunderstood by critics of those who behave as though they people anticipate when attend- who have recoiled at the violence, but have some privileged position allowing Fing or renting movies, but a myriad they probably do not pray the Rosary them to dictate the religious teachings of other uses dot the landscape of or the Stations of the Cross. and worship of other faiths, and who, the preservation of moving graphic Those who have called Gibson’s in the face of any criticism whatsoever, imagery. I would never have seen Red work obsessive and needlessly violent, scream that their opponents are out to Grange nearly single-handedly trounce however, should be reminded that do them bodily harm, because other Michigan, nor have watched Nijinsky Gibson did not create this violence. people on another continent a long dance, nor observed the stage tech- One of the sorrowful mysteries of the time ago did them real injury. This nique of Sarah Bernhardt, had not Rosary is the Scourging at the Pillar. supposed justification allows them to someone been rolling film through a There is a physical and spiritual real- say any nastiness that happens to pop camera in their direction. One possible ity being represented. Some human into their heads; they miss the distinc- use could be to recreate as authenti- beings (and by extension all humanity) tion between critical commentary and cally as can be, without added drama, a historical event. Apply this technique to the passion and death of our Lord, with accurate Aramaic and Latin dia- logue, and the resultant artifact must be a meditation on the passion itself, a moving icon, an object of veneration. Mel Gibson called his production company Icon Productions. If his film of Christ’s passion is not iconic, all those depictions of the Nativity or the Crucifixion were merely a bunch of pretty pictures. Visually and in its rhythms, Gibson takes us through the entire passion, devoting much screen time to the five Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary, with many of the Stations of the Cross thrown in as well. If we assume that the time span from the Agony in the

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 53 persecution. No one should suffer the us and our children!” But who does the love to see it. When I was a child, the latter; no one is above the former. Cer- Church hold accountable? When we Jewish children in our school put on tainly one can understand skittishness recite the Creed we say, “He suffered a little play on this very subject at in discussing these matters, but that under Pontius Pilate.” I have never Hanukkah—one of the few days in my is not the point. The right response to heard the Italians complain about this. twelve years of public schooling that anyone who tries to put an end to an Christians are accused of saying I actually learned something I hadn’t act of genuine worship is to start by that Jews are Christ-killers. But only already known. But a dialogue works asking who the hell the other thinks once in my life—once—have I ever two ways. Let me say that again: a he is. The twentieth century produced heard someone purporting to be a dialogue works two ways. Otherwise, more Christian martyrs than any other Christian actually express that opinion. a speech becomes a harangue, and in history—where is the proffered Those who attack this film are what gets communicated is nothing sympathy for the dead in Mexico, and not merely attacking a film, but more than the speaker’s ego. We in the Gulag? openly attacking the Christian faith. I should not be surprised if in attacking In the film, we observe the actions can only think that such people are another’s religion we create hostility of the Pharisees and of the leaders trying to foment discord between where none existed before. Is it too of the Sanhedrin. The Scriptures do the two religions for some reason. much to ask humbly for a small mea- indeed indict these people, just as the Instead, why not make a good film sure of the respect that is demanded Scriptures report, “Let his blood be on about, say, the Maccabees? I would raucously by others?

: Chesterton’s Mail Bag: Gilbert Keith Chesterton Answers His Mail Islam with a glowing endurance and defiance as great as any virtue ever Jews and Anti-Jews shown by man; but they had the darker side of such warfare; they were always Dear Mr. Chesterton, and tying on to it one of the oldest struggling to deracinate a Jewish plot It’s pretty obvious that you and and shabbiest and most faded of labels, which they believed to be always sell- your whole Catholic Church are anti- the name of the Spanish Inquisi- ing them to the enemy. Semitic. How else do you account for tion. As a matter of fact, the Spanish Your friend, things like the Spanish Inquisition? Inquisition was a very Spanish Inquisi- G.K. Chesterton Signed, tion. Its story is meaningless without (Illustrated London News, June 9, Monty, the military aspect of the long and 1923; “Anti-Religious Thought in the Eigh- frightful war with the Moors, and their teenth Century,” The Spice of Life) Dear Monty, allies, the Jews. To make it merely It is the oldest of libels, the tale of theological is like saying that because ; ; ; our Christian fathers as cruel persecu- Mr. Lloyd George is a Nonconformist, tors without reason or provocation, therefore the Black-and-Tan terror in Dear Mr. Chesterton, Ireland was only the tale of a Maybe the reason you deserve to Puritan persecuting Popery. be called Anti-Semitic is because you Men in the mellow mood make stereotypical references to the of doubt had no way of under- Jews. In fact, you make stereotypical standing the fanaticism and references to all sorts of people. Maybe the martyrdom of their fathers. you should just stop doing that. They knew nothing of medieval Signed, history or of what a united Against Stereotypes Christendom had once meant to men. They were like children Dear Against Stereotypes, horrified at the sight of a battle- You cannot have that sort of field. Take the determining common sense of the countryside if example of the Spanish Inquisi- it is not allowed to say that Yorkshire- tion. The Spanish Inquisition men are this or Kentishmen are that, was Spy Fever. It produced or that one course is the best way with the sort of horrors such fever Gypsies or another the usual habit produce; to some extent even of Jews. Most people are still allowed in modern wars. The Spaniards to express these general impressions, had re-conquered Spain from until they come to the case of the

54 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : Chesterton’s Mail Bag: Gilbert Keith Chesterton Answers His Mail

Jews. There (for some reason I have as powerful as they were unpopular. That was the real case for the Jew; never understood), the whole natu- They were the capitalists of the age, and no doubt he really felt himself ral tendency has been to stop; and the men with wealth banked ready for oppressed. Unfortunately it was the anybody who says anything whatever use. It is very tenable that in this way case for the Christians that they, with about Jews as Jews is supposed to wish they were useful; it is certain that in at least equal reason, felt him as the to burn them at the stake. this way they were used. It is also quite oppressor; and that mutual charge Your friend, fair to say that in this way they were of tyranny is the Semitic trouble in G.K. Chesterton ill-used. The ill-usage was not indeed all times. It is certain that in popular (“The Rural Rider,” William Cobbett) that suggested at random in romances, sentiment, this anti-Semitism was which mostly resolve on the one idea not excused as uncharitableness, but ; ; ; that their teeth were pulled out. It is simply regarded as charity. Chaucer probably doubtful. put his curse on Hebrew cruelty into Dear Mr. Chesterton, But the real unfairness of the the mouth of the soft-hearted prior- Okay, you dismissed the Spanish Jew’s position was deeper and more ess, who wept when she saw a mouse Inquisition, but then you brought up distressing to a sensitive and highly in a trap; and it was when Edward, Yorkshiremen. Let’s talk about York. civilized people. They might reasonably breaking the rule by which rulers had What about the massacre of the Jews say that Christian kings and nobles, hitherto fostered their bankers’ wealth, in York, England, in 1190. That’s when and even Christian popes and bishops, flung the alien financiers out of the England was still Catholic. I suppose used for Christian purposes (such as land, that his people probably saw him you have a defense for that, too? the Crusades and the cathedrals) the most plainly at once as a knight errant Signed, money that could only be accumulated and a tender father of his people. Monty again in such mountains by a usury they Your friend, inconsistently denounced as unchris- G.K. Chesterton Dear Monty again, tian; and then, when worse times came, (“Nationality and the French Wars,” A Let it not be supposed that I gave up the Jew to the fury of the poor, Short History of England) regard the massacre of Jews as one of whom that useful usury had ruined. the glories of York. Far from it; though I do regard it as one of the disgraces of history that Anti-Semitic massacres The Jews which mediaeval priests tried to stop ;;Jews are almost the most interesting has influence because he alone accepts are always attributed to the fanaticism people in the world. (Illustrated London News, some sort of discipline. Man, we say, of mediaeval priests. Jan. 10, 1914) has two sides, the specialist side where Your friend, he must have subordination, and the G.K. Chesterton ;;I imagine most of us would agree social side where he must have equal- (Illustrated London News, March 28, 1925) that there is something unusual and ity. (“The Insane Necessity,” What’s Wrong with the unique about the position of the Jews. World) ; ; ; There is nothing that is quite in the same sense an international nation; an ;;The Wandering Jew is not a wander- Dear Mr. Chesterton, ancient culture scattered in different ing cad. He is a highly civilised man Let’s try one more time. Maybe countries but still distinct and inde- in a highly difficult position; the world you didn’t endorse what the Christians structible. (“God and Comparative Religion,” The being divided, and his own nation did to the Jews at York, but I know Everlasting Man) being divided, about whether he can that you have defended unconscio- do anything else except wander. (“The ;;To this day in England, as I have nable actions that have been inflicted Aristocratic ‘arry,’” A Miscellany of Men) reason to know, it is regarded as a upon the Jews. For instance, I’ve heard rabid and insane form of religious ;;I have no doubt that the Russians that you defend King Edward I throw- persecution to suggest that a Jew very have grossly oppressed the Jews. In the ing the Jews out of England. Wasn’t probably comes of a Jewish family. (“The same way I have, in my own person, that anti-Semitic? Family and the Feud,” Irish Impressions) no doubt that the English have grossly Signed, oppressed the Irish. (Illustrated London News, Monty the Third ;;Some excellent Jews suffer from a April 21, 1906) sad fallacy: they think it glorious to be Dear Monty Three, a Jew, and yet they think it insulting ;;A freethinker, a friend of mine, Edward I was never more truly a to be called one. (Illustrated London News, Nov. blamed Christianity for despising Jews, representative king, than in the fact 28, 1908) and then despised it himself for being that he expelled the Jews. The prob- Jewish. (“The Paradoxes of Christianity,” Orthodoxy) ;;The tinker and tailor often represent lem is much misunderstood and mixed the two nomadic races in Europe: the ;;The world owes God to the Jews. (“God with notions of a stupid spite against a Gipsy and the Jew; but the Jew alone and Comparative Religion,” The Everlasting Man) gifted and historic race as such. The Jews in the Middle Ages were

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 55 : News With Views: THE ROCKING REVEREND CROYDON, England—In case Compiled by the Gilbert Magazine News-Gathering Staff anyone has lingering doubts about the state of the Anglican Church the Right Reverend Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, recently published a book in which he states the Bible has become banal to the point where it cannot reach people today. Instead, Baines “When the real revolution happens, It suggests contemporary rock songs can won’t be mentioned in the newspapers.” be more effective in expressing Chris- tianity than the tired prose of Holy MERRY WINTER LIGHT FESTIVAL prior to the elections, one might have Writ. Baines believes pop song writ- OXFORD, England—The city thought Nebraska Sen. Ernie Cham- ers, because their language is so fresh, council of Oxford, England (where bers would be doing likewise. Instead, better connect with people and that that famous university is), has decided Chambers spent his energy seeking the music itself can influence them to that there will be no Christmas this a permanent injunction against God, think about life’s big questions. year. Instead, events in the city will be hoping to enjoin the Almighty from We don’t know what stations the renamed “Winter Light Festival,” osten- committing acts of violence such as good bishop listens to but we wonder sibly to make them more inclusive. earthquakes or tornadoes. Now what how he managed to miss the fact many The idea apparently came from the makes Chambers’ suit really interest- of today’s lyrics are better described brilliant minds at the cultural develop- ing is that he is an avowed atheist but with terms other than “fresh.” And, at ment agency for the county, a charity claims, “…anyone can sue anyone else, the risk of belaboring the point, we called Oxford Inspires, which runs the even God.” He further argued that don’t see the likes of Madonna, Ozzy celebrations. What the brilliant minds the judge should take judicial notice Osborne, or Britney Spears raising do not seem to realize, however, is of the existence of God. Okay, so the level of philosophical discourse that such an action outrages not only let’s try to figure this out. An atheist any time soon. But our poor cri- Christians but just about everybody wants to sue a Being he claims doesn’t tique is unlikely to bother Bishop but themselves. Not only were your exist and demands a court of law to Baines, whose book Finding Faith average shoppers in the city upset, but acknowledge the existence of that has the backing of the Archbishop of so were the very people these killjoys same Being. Canterbury. thought they were trying not to offend. We suspect that Chambers’ cam- Sabir Hussain Mirza, chairman of the paign headquarters is a place called RIDING THE WAVE OF RELIGIOSITY Muslim Council of Oxford, was quoted Hanwell. HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.— in the Telegraph as saying, “I am really Just to show that Anglicans don’t upset about this. Christians, Muslims FEELING OUR PAIN have a corner on aberrant clergy, two and other religions all look forward WASHINGTON, D.C.—As the priests from Orange County, California to Christmas.” Similarly, Rabbi Eli economy takes a nosedive we’ve been recently presided over a “Blessing of Bracknell, who teaches at the Jewish looking for bright spots, and happened the Waves.” Father Christian Mordor Educational Centre in the city, said, “It to have found at least one. In 2007 kicked off the proceedings by thank- is important to maintain a traditional the collective wealth of members of ing the Big Kahuna (elsewhere known British Christmas. Anything that Congress grew by an estimated 13 as God) for righteous waves and waters down traditional culture and percent, with legislators enjoying a killer rides for all the surfer dudes Christianity in the UK is not positive median net worth of approximately and dudettes. After the invocation for the British identity.” $746,000. Two-thirds of our senators someone blew a conch shell for good We might recommend that they are millionaires as compared with 1 luck—just in case the prayer didn’t read the words of one of their native percent of the general public. In case take. Then Father Matthew Munoz sons, a fellow named G.K. Chester- partisans are wondering, of the ten exhorted the flock with a hearty “Let’s ton, who says, “The great majority of richest senators, seven are Democrat; surf!” as he headed into the waves people will go on observing forms that Republicans hold a slight 6-to-4 edge clutching his board with the Virgin of cannot be explained; they will keep in the House. Taking into account their Guadalupe inlaid on both sides. Christmas Day with Christmas gifts $169,000 salaries and cost of living While we have no quarrel with and Christmas benedictions; they will pay increases, the 535 members of invoking blessings on recreation, continue to do it; and some day sud- Congress have a combined total net reducing God to a mere Kahuna and denly wake up and discover why.” worth of $3.7 billion. then walking all over his mother’s face Readers should be able to guess seems just a tad on the profane side. GOD IN THE DOCK…AGAIN just what Chesterton quote comes to And while some quarters of Chris- OMAHA, Neb.—With all the mind: “It is terrible to contemplate tendom might celebrate having such strenuous campaigning going on how few politicians are hanged.” “gnarly” dudes among the clergy, we

56 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 : News With Views: Compiled by the Gilbert Magazine News-Gathering Staff

suspect the gnarlier Chesterton would NO WAY TO UNTIE THE KNOT THE LIMITS OF GRAFFTITI SPEECH wish they “were already mermen and SPOKANE, Wash.—Things were not WADEBRIDGE, Cornwall, Eng- would return no more.” going well in the Jennings marriage, and land—The Wadebridge Town Council, last October Sean Jennings decided on along with the North Cornwall BLAND PARENTHOOD a novel way to improve the situation. District Council, decided that local MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.—Police As it was nearing Halloween, he lured young creative artists needed a space responded to a late evening report of his wife into the couple’s garage on the of their own to paint their creations. an unattended infant buckled into a pretense he had constructed a haunted So they built a wall for young graffiti car seat in an unlocked vehicle with house there. On the further pretense he artists to use to express themselves. the keys in the ignition. We should wanted it to be a surprise he blindfolded A local resident used the wall to mention the car was parked in the lot his wife and had her step up on a ladder. communicate his displeasure with of Derriere’s Gentleman’s Club. After To add to the surprise, he then hand- the ordinance by painting the words checking the car’s license plate and cuffed her and slipped a noose around “I paid my tax and all I got was this learning it belonged to Geoffrey Hale, her neck, saying tenderly that hanging lousy wall.” The local constable, age 27, police entered the club and her was “better than getting a divorce.” Sergeant Moorcroft, who advocated found him sitting at a table, smoking a In the ensuing struggle, Sean had a for the wall to begin with, has vowed cigarette, and getting a lap dance. Hale change of heart and released his wife to investigate the vandalism. “We told police he had just stopped in to just as she lost consciousness. Mrs. Jen- have been working hard to provide get a cell phone from his wife, a dancer nings, on the other hand, had no second something positive for the commu- at the club, and he didn’t want to wake thoughts as she reported her husband to nity and this coward and their (sic) the sleeping baby to bring her inside. authorities and finalized their divorce. juvenile delinquent act has set a As his wife was busy on stage, Hale Mr. Jennings will have twelve years terrible example to the youth of the figured he’d kill a little time until she in prison to contemplate the finer town,” he said. could take a break. Police immediately nuances of Chesterton’s statement that We’d say the graffitist understood took Hale into custody, forcing Mrs. marriage is a duel to the death. the purpose of the wall pretty well. Hale to interrupt her artistic endeavors to take custody of her child. C l e r i h e w We are tempted to offer the follow- The Originator ing variation on Chesterton: “Let all Celebrating Famous & the babies be born. Then let us drown Infamous Names with Van Eyck the parents we do not like.” E.C. Bentley’s Elusive Was christened Jan, not Mike. Light Verse Form

C orner This curious mistake SIGN, COUNTER-SIGN Often kept him awake. LONDON—Comedy writer Ariane —Edmund Clerihew Bentley Shane was offended by advertising on some London buses suggesting that An Imitator people who rejected God were con- demned to Hell. With the backing of The scholars say that Homer Kant the British Humanist Association and Is a misnomer. Wrote cant. atheist demagogue Richard Dawkins, We don’t know his name He gives great offence she began soliciting donations for a His lineage, or whence he came. Or makes no sense. “reassuring” counter-advertisement: “There’s probably no God. Now stop Socrates The composer Rossini worrying and enjoy your life.” With Loved to mock and tease Took ages to say “Al fine!” donations already exceeding the His students whenever they spoke A full thirteen days he target, the slogan might be hitting But they couldn’t take a joke. Took to write an opera—lazy! London buses as early as next January. Naturally, Dawkins is elated with these Aristotle Bach! developments. “This campaign to put Didn’t write twaddle. Nothing rhymes with it! Ach! alternative slogans on London buses “Qua motion unqualified,” is grand. He wrote fine music, but poets shrug will make people think,” he said, “and Understand? And say, “Bach! Humbug!” thinking is anathema to religion.” Right. Augustine, Aquinas, Ches- —All by Maria G. McDonald, Derwent, Alberta, Canada terton et al. were brain dead. However Dawkins is right about the sign making CLERIHEW: A humorous, unmetrical, biographical verse of four short lines—two closed people think. We think the statement couplets—with the first rhyme a play on the name of the subject. Readers are invited to “There’s probably no God” is one of submit clerihews for “The Clerihew Corner,” with the understanding that submissions the lamest statements of unbelief cannot be acknowledged or returned, nor will all be published. we’ve seen in some time.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 57 : Encore!: For this last sentence is the old, innocent, and stale thing called A Shorter Essay by G.K. Chesterton Bigotry; it is the failure of the mind to imagine any other mind. My unhappy critic is among the poorest of the children of men; he has only one uni- The Bigot verse. Everyone, of course, must see one cosmos as the true cosmos; but he by G.K. Chesterton cannot see any other cosmos, even as a hypothesis. igotry is an incapacity to con- The free man is he who sees the My own intelligence is less fine, ceive seriously the alternative errors as clearly as he sees the truth. but at least it is much more free. I can to a proposition. It has nothing The more solidly convinced a man see six or seven universes quite plain. I whatever to do with belief in really is, the less be will use phrases can see the spiral world up which Mrs. the proposition itself. A man like, “No enlightened person can really Besant hopefully crawls; I can see the Bmay be sure enough of something to hold—;” or, “I cannot understand how clockwork cosmos in time with which be burned for it or to make war on Mr. Jones can possibly maintain—;” Mr. McCabe’s brain ticks so accurately; the world, and yet be no inch nearer followed by some very old, mild, and I can see the nightmare world of Mr. to being a bigot. He is only a bigot if defensible opinion. A progressive Hardy, its Creator cruel and half-witted he cannot understand that his dogma person may hold anything he likes. like a village idiot; I can see the illusive is a dogma, even if it is true. Persecu- I do understand quite well how Mr. world of Mr. Yeats, a gorgeous cur- tion may be immoral, but it is not Jones maintains those maniacal opin- tain that covers only darkness; and I necessarily irrational; the persecutor ions which he does maintain. If a man have no doubt that I shall be able to may comprehend with his intellect sincerely believes that he has the map see my critic’s philosophy also, if he the errors that he drives forth with his of the maze, it must show the wrong should ever give himself the trouble to spear. It is not bigoted (for instance) paths just as much as the right. He express it in intelligent terms. But as to treat the Koran as supernatural. should be able to imagine the whole the expression “anyone who believes But it is bigoted to treat the Koran as plan of an error: the complete logic of in any dogma” means to a rational natural; as obvious to anybody and a fallacy. He must be able to think it if mind no more or rather less than common to everybody. It is not bigoted he does not believe it. “Yip-i-addy-i-ay,” I regret I can only at for a Christian to regard Chinamen as It is admitted, even in dictionaries, present include him among the great heathens. It is rather when he insists that an example assists a definition. bigots of history. on regarding them as Christians that I take an instance of the error of From Lunacy and Letters his bigotry begins. bigotry out of my own biography, so One of the most fashionable forms to speak. Nothing is more marked in of bigotry exhibits itself in the discov- this strange epoch of ours than the ery of fantastic and trivial explanations combination of an exquisite tact and of things that need no explanation. a sympathy in things of taste and We are in this cloudland of prejudice artistic style, with an almost brutal stu- (for example) when we say that a man pidity in the things of abstract thought. becomes an atheist because he wants There are no great fighting philoso- to go on the spree; or that a man phers to-day because we care only becomes a Roman Catholic because about tastes; and there is no disputing the priests have trapped him; or that about tastes. A principal critic on the a man becomes a Socialist because be “New Age” made a remark about me a envies the rich. For all these random little while ago which amused me very and remote explanations show that we much. After saying many things much have never seen, like a clear diagram, too complimentary but marvelously the real explanation: that Atheism, sympathetic, and offering many Catholicism, and Socialism are all criticisms which were really quite plausible philosophies. A man delicate and exact, he ended does not need to be driven or trapped up (as far as I remember) with or bribed into them; because a man these astounding words: can be converted to them. “But I never can really feel a True liberality, in short, consists man to be my intellectual of being able to imagine the enemy. equal who believes in any The free man is not he who thinks all dogma.” It was like seeing a opinions equally true or false; that is fine Alpine climber fall five not freedom, but feeblemindedness. hundred feet into the mud.

58 Volume 12 Number 2&3, November/December 2008 THE CHESTERTON REVIEW The Journal of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture Seton Hall University

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