the dead.

The gulf between the Socialist group and the Distributist had become
far more obvious than of yore: Shaw and Wells would still write for
G.K. but only because he was their friend. If F. Y. Eccles, if
Desmond McCarthy today contributed, it would too be chiefly from
affection for Gilbert. One article by Mr. McCarthy described the old
days when the original _Eye Witness_ was in being and he, Cecil and
Belloc sat around the table editing it and sticking triolets thrown
off in hot haste into those nasty little spaces left by articles that
did not quite fit, or supplying three or four articles and a Ballade
Urbane while the printers waited.

We have to print a triolet
When space is clamouring for matter
We try to put it off and yet
We have to print a triolet
It is with infinite regret
That we admit the silly patter
We have to print a triolet
When space is clamouring for matter.

Such joyous scrambles are proper to youth, and now none of them were
young.

All authors worthy of the name have found their platform and made
permanent engagements by middle life: professional men are absorbed
by work and life: they simply had not time to give as of yore to
build up this new-old venture. The names of Shaw and Wells continue
to appear among the contributors, often enough in religious debate.
Reading the files and visiting the two men to talk of Gilbert, I made
one discovery that is curious from whichever side you look at it. Two
able and indeed brilliant men betrayed not only an amazing degree of
ignorance concerning the tenets of Catholicism but also a bland
conviction that they knew them well. Wells in conversation based his
claim on the fact that he had long been intimately acquainted with an
ex-nun. Shaw I fancy felt he must know all about something that had
surrounded him in infancy--for, as the reader must have noticed, he
is much preoccupied by the thought of his Irish descent and education.

But what seems to me even stranger about the situation is the absence
on the Catholic side of any effort to explain to these men the
doctrines they misconstrued. When Wells, for instance, gave a crude
and inaccurate statement of the doctrine of the Fall, Belloc laughed
at him, Chesterton and Father McNabb both wrote long and picturesque
articles, illuminating to a believer but, as instruction to an
unbeliever, quite useless. A correspondence that seemed likely to
drag on forever ended abruptly w