art is conditioned by the social influences of the time. Mr. Belloc has
told us that the state of society which exists in England to-day, and
which he regards as rapidly nearing its close, is necessarily unstable,
and more properly to be regarded as a transitory phase lying between two
stable states of society. If we examine in its broadest outline the
literature which is contemporaneous with the general consolidation of
capitalism we find that it bears stamped upon it the mark of
interrogation. From Wilde to Mr. Wells is the age of the question mark.
In almost every writer of this period we find the same tendency of
thought: the endless questioning, the shattering of conventions, the
repeal of tradition, the denial of dogma.

It is the literature of an age of discomfort. Mr. Wells does not so much
denounce as complain; life appears to ruin Mr. Galsworthy's digestion.
Mr. Masefield, that robust and versifying sailor, is as irritable as a
man with a bad cold. 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.

We would not appear to think lightly of our contemporaries. It was
necessary that they should arise to cleanse and garnish the world. They
are symptomatic of an age, an evil age that is passing. They have
cleared the ground for other men to build. 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. In a word, the tendency to establish as opposed to the
tendency to demolish is everywhere to be seen.

By the very nature of his first principles Mr. Belloc is as much an ally
of