f this movement and at its basis lies
the insistence on adult education which shall make ordinary men
"Masters of their Destiny." Surely it is the authentic voice of
Chesterton when Dr. Tompkins says "Trust the little fellow" or Dr.
Coady declares "The people are great and powerful and can do
everything."

In Australia Distributism has given a fresh slant to both Labour and
Catholic leadership. The direct debt to Chesterton of the _Australian
Catholic Worker_ is immense, and while the paper also owes much to
_The Catholic Worker_ of America and to the Jocistes of France and
Belgium, we find too that in America, France, and Belgium, Chesterton
himself is studied more than any other Catholic Englishman. The
Campion Society founded in Melbourne in 1931, the Catholic Guild of
Social Studies in Adelaide, the Aquinas Society in Brisbane, the
Chesterton Club in Perth and the Campion Society in Sydney have all
based their thinking and their action on the Chesterbelloc
philosophy. These groups have closely analysed Belloc's _Servile
State_ and _Restoration of Property_ and have applied its principles
in their social action in a most interesting fashion. Thus they
opposed--and helped to defeat--a scheme for compulsory national
insurance chiefly on the ground that "the social services in a modern
State were the insurance premiums which Capitalism paid on its life
policy." With wages high enough to keep families in reasonable
comfort and save a little, with well distributed property, national
insurance would be rendered unnecessary. Yet on the other hand they
supported--and won--national "child endowment" because although
fundamentally only a palliative this at least strengthened the family
by supplementing wages and helping parents towards ownership and
property.

Most important however of all the Australian developments has been
the approval of the main Distributist ideal by the Australasian
Hierarchy as the aim of Catholic Social Action. This was especially
set out in their Statement on Social Justice, issued on occasion of
the first Social Justice Sunday in 1940.* The Hierarchy of New
Zealand joined with that of Australia in establishing this
celebration for the third Sunday after Easter. Indeed, the social
policy of Australian Catholicism has produced the slogan "Property
for the People," while the policy has been brought into action both
by many scattered individuals in that huge but thinly populated
country and in organi