C. Creighton Mandell

“ But who can either suffer from or accuse the Catholic bias of Mr. Belloc?
He says to you frankly in every page: "I am a Catholic. I believe in the Church of Rome. For these and these reasons, I am of opinion that the Reformation was a disaster and that the Protestant peoples are still a danger to Europe." Can you still complain of the propagandist turn of such a man? As well complain of a professed theologian that he is biassed as to the existence of God. He warns you amply that he has a particular point of view, and he gives you every opportunity to make allowance for it. ”

“ Pater builds up his words with as grave a care, with as solemn an emotion, but how different is the result. Pater sought for an effect of strangeness and cracked his prose in reaching at it: his rhythm is false, his images are blurred. But Mr. Belloc, translating into words a deep and tender mood, has had no care save faithfully to render a thought so common and so hard to imprison in language. ”

“ If the world is not fuller and richer for their work, it is at any rate cleaner and healthier.
That their work is done, that the time is ripe for more solid things, grows clearer every day. We are weary of our voyage of discovery and wishful to arrive at the promised land. We are glutted with questions, but hungry for answers. Theories are no longer our need; our desire is for fact. The philosophy and art of to-day exhibit this tendency. In literature especially the naturalist method has seen its day: and a general return to the romantic, or better, the classical form, is imminent. ”

“ Belloc reflected in the clear stream of his own writing: and in proportion as the reflection is vivid or blurred we may rank him as a stylist and writer of English prose.
Style in prose or verse has never existed and cannot exist of itself alone. Style is not the art of writing melodious words or the craft or cunning of finding a way round the split infinitive. It is the ability so to choose forms of expression as completely to convey to a reader all the twists and turns and outlines of a character. ”

“ Belloc says:
In no matter what field of the European past we make our research, we find, from two thousand years ago upwards one fundamental institution whereupon the whole of society reposes; that fundamental institution is Slavery.... Our European ancestry, those men from whom we are descended and whose blood runs with little admixture in our veins, took slavery for granted, made of it the economic pivot upon which the production of wealth should turn, and never doubted but that it was normal to all human society. ”

“ Belloc is, we can only reply with a string of names—poet and publicist, essayist and economist, novelist and historian, satirist and traveller, a writer on military affairs and a writer of children's verses.
Such overwhelming diversity is in itself sufficient to mark out a man from his fellows; but if this diversity is to have any lasting meaning, if it is to be for us something more than the versatility of a practised journalist, it must have a reason. ”

“ Belloc's style comes very nearly as close to perfection as can be expected of a human instrument. He renders his moods, the fine shades of a transitory emotion, the solid convictions that make up a man's life with spirit, with humour, with beauty, but, above all, with accuracy. ”

“ The new dream was but beginning to take on reality and the civil power had in all fullness despaired. The old civilization, which had lasted so long and changed so gradually, required to be refreshed by catastrophe: even as some men believe of our own times. The catastrophe came, and, through the struggle with the North and with Asia, the transformation took place unseen in that lowest ebb of humanity. Europe had reached the crest of one wave in the height of the Empire under the power of the Roman government. ”

“ Our poets and our thinkers do not view the world with a settled gaze either of appreciation or of contempt: they look at it with the wild eye of a man who cannot imagine where he has put his gloves. Their condemnations and suggestions are alike undignified, whirling and flimsy. They pick up and throw down in the same space of time every human institution: they are in a hurry to question everything and they have not the patience to wait for an answer to anything. ”

“ Indeed, to the minor conventions Danton always bowed, because he was a man, and because he was eminently sane. More than did the run of men at that time, he understood that you cut down no tree by lopping at the leaves, nor break up a society by throwing away a wig. The decent self-respect which goes with conscious power was never absent from his costume, though it often left his language in moments of crisis, or even of irritation. I will not insist too much upon his great character of energy, because it has been so over-emphasized as to give a false impression of him. ”

“ We all know that as a matter of fact the Revolution was, upon the whole, successful in imposing its view upon Europe. We all know that from that success as from a germ has proceeded, and is still proceeding, modern society. But the nature, the cause and the extent of the military success which alone made this possible, is widely ignored and still more widely misunderstood. No other signal military effort which achieved its object has in history ended in military disaster—yet this was the case with the revolutionary wars. ”

“ Belloc's most copious revelation of his personality. But this is true—that the most personal expression of all for any man is in verse: even though it be small in quantity and uneven in quality. It is as though, here, in a more rarefied and more complex form of composition—we will not say "more difficult"—some kind of effort or struggle called out all of a man's characteristics in their intensest shape. Such emotions as a man has to express will be, perhaps not more perfectly, but at any rate more keenly, set out in verse. ”

“ It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known ways which they have made.
All travel is a pilgrimage, more or less exalted, and a Catholic with a mind of Mr. Belloc's type makes the performance of such an act both a religious ceremonial and a personal pleasure. He feels it to be no less an act of religion because it is full of jolly human and coloured experience. ”

“ For that masterly campaign was followed by Napoleon's first abdication, that brilliant rally ended in Waterloo and the ruin of the French army. When we consider the spread of Grecian culture over the East by the parallel military triumph of Alexander, or the conquest of Gaul by the Roman armies under Cæsar, we are met by political phenomena and a political success no more striking than the success of the Revolution. The Revolution did as much by the sword as ever did Alexander or Cæsar, and as surely compelled one of the great transformations of Europe. ”

“ It is always absolutely wise to prevent the enemy in time of war from learning things which would be an aid to him. That is the reason why a strict censorship in time of war is not only useful, but essentially and drastically necessary. But though public opinion, even in time of peace, is only in part informed, and though in time of war it may be very insufficiently informed, yet upon it and with it you govern. ”

“ Belloc is an idealist. He has ideals both for individual and communal life. But ideals to him are not, as to so many men, a delight of the imagination or a means of consoling themselves for being obliged to live in the world as it is. They are guides to conduct and inspirations to action: a goal which is reached in the striving.
Most of us go about this world imagining ourselves to be not as we are, but as we should like ourselves to be. ”

“ Descriptions of travel and of country make up a great part of them: for this is our author's own subject, if it be possible to select one from the rest. But the rest of them range from the study of history and the habits of the don, to the habits of the rich and the strange advertisements that come, through the post, even to the least considered of us. You can only take his own words, the central point of his experience, a very comforting and happy philosophy:
The world is not quite infinite—but it is astonishingly full. ”

“ Being, as he is, mystically impressed with the transitoriness of individual man and the permanence of the human race, he will not lightly condemn anything that has appeared useful to many past generations, and he cannot accept the mere charge of age as a damaging indictment against any human institution.
It is not Mr. Belloc's aim to drive us towards "a world set free." He does not visualize an ideal state which he would have the world attain. His whole object is to solve our immediate problems, practically and usefully, as they may best be solved ”

“ Internationalism, whether it be expressed in the financial rings of Capitalism or the world-wide brotherhoods of Socialism, is only made possible by a harmony of the wills of the great European nations. Should a conflict of wills not merely exist but break out into expression in war, internationalism, though outwardly so powerful, must inevitably go by the board and the ancient [47] foundations upon which Europe rests stand poignantly revealed. Such a conflict of wills Mr. Belloc has always seen to exist between Prussia and the rest of the nations of Europe. ”

“ It is living, organic history that is necessary, he would consider, to the proper understanding of present problems and the proper furnishing of the human mind. He desires to see and grasp the development of Europe as a symmetrical whole, not as a conglomeration of unco-ordinated parts or a succession of unrelated accidents. He believes that Europe has developed from prehistoric man by way of the Roman Empire, the Christian religion, and the French Revolution, in an orderly, organic manner. He believes, far more than Freeman, in a real unity of history. ”

“ It is the habit of writing in phrases, very much like building up a picture out of blocks that have on them already portions of a picture, which comes between the spirit of the writer and its true expression in a native style. ”

“ The vast growth of the proletariat, the concentration of ownership into the hands of a few owners, and the exploitation by those owners of the mass of the community, had no fatal or necessary connection with the discovery of new and perpetually improving methods of production. The evil proceeded in direct historical sequence, proceeded patently and demonstrably, from the fact that England, the seed plot of the industrial system, was already captured by a wealthy oligarchy before the series of great discoveries began. ”

“ With that more practical branch of humour, satire, the angle of view shifts a little. The power of making laughter becomes here a weapon, and its hostile purpose, as it were, sharpens the point. Mr. Belloc's satire has a hardness and a precision lacking in the broad and general effects of his quite irresponsible humour.
All satire, as we have said, has a definite moral intent, whether it be to restrain a corrupt politician or a bad poet, and this makes it serious, sometimes painful, always, in failure, heavy and unpleasant. ”

“ By the mishandling of an artificial economic revolution which was so sudden as to be overwhelming, namely, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, an England which was economically free, was turned into the England we know to-day, "of which at least one-third is indigent, of which nineteen-twentieths are dispossessed of capital and of land, and of which the whole industry and national life is controlled upon its economic side by a few chance directors of millions, a few masters of unsocial and irresponsible monopolies." ”

“ History may be called the test of true philosophy, or it may be called in a very modern and not very dignified metaphor the object-lesson of political science, or it may be called the great story whose interest is upon another plane from all other stories because its irony, its tragedy and its moral are real, were acted by real men, and were the manifestation of God.
Wherever you turn over these pages, you are more likely than not to find some such earnest and emphatic sentence: this opinion is essential to Mr. Belloc's life and thought. ”

“ A speaker or writer is great in proportion as his power of expression nears perfection.
According as we are satisfied to read in print what a writer says, and do not find it necessary to read between the lines what he intended to say, we may regard him as possessed of lucidity of thought and lucidity of style.
Many of the ideas, emotions and actions to which Mr. Belloc has given expression in his essays are so intimate a part of the collective experience of man as to allow each one of us to see that he has visualized and expressed them with exactness ”

“ To write a weekly commentary upon a campaign of this magnitude—a campaign the facts of which are concealed as they have been in no war of the past—is not only an absorbing and very heavy task, but also one in which much suggestion and conjecture are necessarily doubtful or wrong, and to pursue it as I have done steadily and unbrokenly for so many months has tried my powers to the utmost. ”

“ It depends upon truths which many men have forgotten, and upon certain political forces which, in the ordinary rush and tumble of professional politics, are quite forgotten. Let me recall those truths and those forces.
The truths are these: that no Government can effectively exercise its power save upon the basis of public opinion. A Government can exercise its power over a conquered province in spite of public opinion, but it cannot work, save [62] for a short time and at an enormous cost in friction, counter to the opinion of those with whom it is concerned as citizens and supporters. ”

“ But travel is also, quite in the sense of the platitude, an education. All that we can learn in books is made up of, or springs from, the difference between the men living on the banks of this river, and the men who live in the valleys of those hills. The man who understands the distinctions of costumes, manners, methods and thought which thus exist, is tolerably well equipped for dealing with such problems in his own country: he has had a practical education which prepares him for life.
Mr. Belloc goes about the world with a ready open mind, and stores up observations on these matters. ”

“ It is stupid to suppose, as some still do, that art and literature are not thus conditioned by the almost mechanical needs of the day. To protest that our writers should not be influenced by the special features of the newspaper would be to condemn Shakespeare for his conformity with the needs of the apron-stage or Dickens for publishing his novels in parts.
A mind of a character so actual as Mr. Belloc's is inevitably attracted by such an opportunity. The discerning reader will find the crown and best achievement of all his varied work in the seven volumes of essays which he has published. ”

“ In both these ways, travel is good and widens the mind: and here, as in his history, we can distinguish the two motives. One is practical and propagandist, the other poetic, the passion for knowing and understanding. Travel, considered under these heads, gives the observant mind a fund of comparison and information upon agricultural economy, modes of religion, political forms, the growth of trade and the movement of armies, and gives also to the receptive spirit a sense of active and reciprocal contact with the earth which nourishes us and which we inhabit. ”

“ It should be noted, however, as perhaps the most curious anomaly among the mass of anomalies which constitute modern journalism, that the newspapers do not insist upon this personal responsibility of the writer in their treatment of those matters which concern not one class but every class of the community. What the newspaper insists upon, on the ground, presumably, that it is right and natural, in the minor affairs of life, it entirely ignores in the major matters of life. ”

“ That man has a style who does sincerely and exactly express his true spirit in any medium, words or music or little dots. Such a style has the worth of genuineness and, to the curious in psychology, it has a certain positive value. A man who achieves so much deserves almost the title of poet: he certainly is of a kind rare in its appearances.
But when we begin seriously to speak of excellence in prose, or verse, we must add yet another test, to pass which a man must not only express his spirit with sincerity, but must also have a strong and original spirit. ”