omething back out of
life. France and America aim alike at
equality--America by similarity; France by
dissimilarity. But North Germany does actually aim
at inequality. The woman stands up, with no more
irritation than a butler; the man sits down, with
no more embarrassment than a guest.

And so on. It runs very easily; we recognize the old touch; the epigrams
are not worked to death; and the chains of argument are not mere strings
of damped brilliancies. And before 1914 had come to its end, in another
pamphlet, _Letters to an Old Garibaldian_, the same style, the same
freshness of thought, and the same resurgent strength were once again in
evidence. Then illness overcame.

* * * * *

Of all futures, the future of literature and its professors is the least
predictable. We have all, so to speak, turned a corner since August,
1914, but we have not all turned the same way. Chesterton would seem to
have felt the great change early in the war. Soon he will break his
silence, and we shall know whether we have amongst us a giant with
strength renewed or a querulous Nonconformist Crusader, agreeing with no
man, while claiming to speak for every man. Early in the course of this
study a distinction was drawn between Christians and Crusaders.
Chesterton has been throughout his career essentially a Crusader. He set
out to put wrongs to rights in the same spirit; in much the same spirit,
too, he incidentally chivvied about the Jews he met in his path, just as
the Crusaders had done. He fought for the Holy Sepulchre, and gained it.
Like the Crusaders, he professed orthodoxy, and, like them, fell
between several "orthodoxies." He shared their visions and their faith,
so far as they had any. But one thing is true of all Crusaders, they are
not necessarily Christians. And there is that about Chesterton which
sometimes makes me wonder whether, after all, he is not "a child of the
French Revolution" in a sense he himself does not suspect. He has cursed
the barren fig-tree of modern religious movements. But there comes a
suspicion that he denies too much; that from between those supple
sentences and those too plausible arguments one may catch a glimpse of
the features of a mocking spirit. Chesterton has given us the keenest
enjoyment, and he has provoked thought, even in the silly atheist. We
all owe him gratitude, but no two readers of his works a