early as Chesterton, and of course, on the
same side. G.B.S. who had invented "The Chesterbelloc" declared that
Chesterton felt obliged to embrace the dogmas of Catholicism lest
Belloc's soul should be damned. H. G. Wells agreed in the main with
Shaw: both were Fabians and both were ready with a Fabian Utopia for
humanity, which Belloc and Chesterton felt would be little better
than a prison. Cecil Chesterton, coming in at an angle of his own,
wrote some effective articles. He was a Fabian--actually an official
Fabian--but his outlook already embraced many of the Chesterbelloc
human and genial ideals, although he still ridiculed their Utopia of
the peasant state, small ownership and all that came later to be
called Distributism. Like the _Clarion_, the _New Age_ (itself a
Socialist paper) saw the wisdom of giving a platform to both sides,
and in this paper appeared the best articles that the controversy
produced.

Meanwhile the private friendship between G.B.S. and G.K.C. was
growing apace. Very early on, Shaw had begun to urge G.K. to write a
play. G.K. was, perhaps, beginning to feel that newspaper controversy
did not give him space to say all he wanted about Shaw (or perhaps it
was merely that Messrs. Lane had persuaded him to promise them a book
on Shaw for a series they were producing!). Anyhow, in a letter of
1908, Shaw again urges the play and gives interesting information for
the book.

Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts.
1st March 1908.

MY DEAR G.K.C.

What about that play? It is no use trying to answer me in The New
Age: the real answer to my article is the play. I have tried fair
means: The New Age article was the inauguration of an assault below
the belt. I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as
a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers
your laziness a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to
serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to
you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if
necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by
intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to
the British drama. You are played out as an essayist: your ardor is
soddened, your intellectual substance crumbled, by the attempt to
keep up the work of your twenties in your thirties. Another five
years of this; and you will be the apologist of every