Hilaire Belloc

“ By a law which is universal where bodies are bound in one system, an extreme of separation has wrought its own remedy and the return towards a closer union is begun. I do not refer to such ephemeral and artificial manifestations as a special and somewhat humiliating need may demand; I consider rather that large sweep of tendency which was already apparent fifteen years after the Franco-Prussian War. An approach in taste, manners and expression well defined during our undergraduate years, has now introduced much of our inmost life to the French, to us already a hint of their philosophy. ”

“ A long peace, the sterility of Germany, the interesting activities of the Catholic Church, have perhaps not yet changed, but have at least disturbed the mind of the north, and ours, a northern people's, with it. The unity, the passionate patriotism, the close oligarchic polity, the very silence of the English has arrested the eyes of France. ”

“ Seeing around us here a philosophy and method drawn from northern Germany, a true and subtle sympathy with the Italians, and a perpetual, just and accurate comment upon the minor nationalities of Europe, a mass of recorded travel superior by far to that of other countries, we marvelled that France in particular should have remained unknown. ”

“ We shall not live to see that fine unity of the west which lent the latter seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their classical repose. No common rule of verse or prose will satisfy men's permanent desire for harmony: no common rule of manners, of honour, of international ethics, of war. ”

“ We shall not live to see, though we are young now, a Paris reading some new Locke or Hume, a London moved to attentive delight in some latter trinity of Dramatists, some future Voltaire.... The high, protected class, which moved at ease between the Capitals of the World, has disappeared; that which should take its place is not yet formed. ”

“ To portray for the populace one religion welding the west together, to spread a common philosophy, or to interpret and arrange political terms, would certainly prove a more lasting labour: but you will agree with me that mere sympathy in letters is not to be despised.
We have observed together that the balance in this matter is heavily against the English. M. Jusserand is easily the first authority upon popular life in England at the close of the middle ages. M. Boutmy has produced an analysis of our political development which our Universities have justly recognized. ”

“ We are both of that one Faith which can but regard our Christendom as the front of mankind and which, therefore, looks forward, as to a necessary goal, to the re-establishment of its common comprehension. ”

“ The fifteenth century, the storm of the Renaissance, are not taught. Why, Rabelais himself might be but an unfamiliar name had not a northern squire of genius rendered to the life three quarters of his work. ”