1926.]

Father Vincent McNabb has said truly that there are no words for the
real things. Thus Distributism is not only a rather ugly word but
also a word holding less than half the content of the idea they were
aiming at. Belloc covered more of it in the title of his book: the
_Restoration of Property_, while perhaps a better name still was _The
Outline of Sanity_. This Chesterton had chosen for a series of
articles that became a book. He was asking for a return to the sanity
of field and workshop, of craftsman and peasant, from the insanity of
trusts and machinery, of unemployment, over-production and
starvation. "We are destroying food because we do not need it. We are
starving men because we do not need them."

After the first meeting of the League, the notes of the week recorded
that the printing order for the paper based on actual demand had
risen in two weeks from 4,650 to 7,000. "Of course we owe everything
to the League which in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Croydon,
Chatham, Worthing, Chorley, Cambridge, Oxford, Bath and London has
made the newsagents aware of the paper." By November 27, the sales
had risen to over 8,000. Then was held the first formal meeting of
the central branch of the League, at which it was agreed: "that
members should make a habit of dealing at small shops." They should
avoid even small shops which sweat their employees, each branch
should prepare a list of small shops for the use of its members.

And that is only a beginning. We hope to enlist the support of the
small farmer and the small master craftsman. We hope, little by
little, to put the small producer in touch with the small retailer.
We hope in the end to establish within the state a community, almost
self-supporting, of men and women pledged to Distributism, and to a
large extent practising it. Less and less, then, will the juggling of
finance have power over us; for it does not matter what they call the
counters when you are exchanging hams for handkerchiefs, or pigs for
pianos.

The Cockpit is worth reading during the months that follow, for here
were voiced any criticisms that the readers had to make of the paper
and of the League--any criticism that the League had to make of
itself. There was plenty. Many leaguers and readers felt for instance
that the spirit of criticism of others was too fully developed in the
paper, so that when attempts were made to act on distributive
principles by pe