xperience of life--French military training,
life at Oxford, wide travel and an early marriage.

Belloc, then, could teach Chesterton a certain realism about
politics--which meant a certain cynicism about politicians. Far more
valuable, however, was what Belloc had to give him in sociology. We
have seen that G.K. was already dissatisfied with Socialism before he
met Belloc; it may be that by his consideration of the nature of man
he would later have reached the positions so individually set out in
_What's Wrong with the World_--but this can only remain a theoretical
question. For Belloc did actually at this date answer the
sociological question that Chesterton at this date was putting:
answered it brilliantly and answered it truly. Every test that G.K.
could later apply--of profound human reality, of truth divinely
revealed--convinced him that the answer was true.

He had, he has told us, been a Socialist because it was so horrible
not to be one, but he now learned of the historical Christian
alternative--equally opposed to Socialism and to Capitalism--
well-distributed property. This had worked in the past, was still
working in many European countries, could be made to work again in
England. The present trend appeared to Belloc to be towards the
Servile State, and in the book with this title and a second book _The
Restoration of Property_ he later developed his sociology. After this
first meeting, two powerful and very different minds would
reciprocally influence one another. An admirer of both told me that
he thought Chesterton got the idea of small property from Belloc but
gave Belloc a fuller realization of the position of the family. One
difference between them is that Belloc writes sociology as a textbook
while Chesterton writes it as a human document. All the wealth of
imagination that Belloc pours into _The Path to Rome_ or _The Four
Men_ he sternly excludes from the Servile State. The poet, traveller,
essayist is one man, the sociologist another.

The third field of influence was history. Here Belloc did Chesterton
two great services--he restored the proportion of English history,
and he put England back into its context. Since the Reformation,
English history had been written with all the stress on the
Protestant period. Lingard had written earlier but had not been
popularized and certainly would not be used at St. Paul's School. And
even Lingard had laid little stress on the social effects of the
Reformat