G. K.'s Weekly
Encyclopedia
G. K.'s Weekly was a British publication founded in 1925 (pilot edition late 1924) by G. K. Chesterton
, continuing until his death in 1936. It contained much of his later journalism, and extracts from it were published as The Outline of Sanity.
who had served in the British Army
from 1916 and died in France in 1918. Gilbert had kept it going with Cecil's widow. That paper had been founded (as Eye-Witness) by Hilaire Belloc
.
With the continuation of G. K.'s Weekly after Gilbert's death, by Belloc's son-in-law Reginald Jebb with Hilary Pepler, the complete series of publications therefore reads as
who was Gilbert's sub-editor), is a manifestation of the political and economic doctrine of distributism
. This was mainly the work of Belloc, Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton, and Arthur Penty
, and had its origins in an Edwardian-era split of Fabian socialism in London circles, around A. R. Orage
and his prominent publication The New Age
.
In fact, in founding The Eye-Witness, Belloc took a title of a book of essays of his own from a couple of years before, and drew initially on a group of writers more associated with The Speaker.
The papers under discussion in this article became, in practical terms, the organs of the distributist group. This came together as the Distributist League in 1926, as G. K.'s Weekly appeared as a revamped publication. The main business of the League, organisationally, fell to Titterton. The League had its own newsletter from 1931.
Editorial policy in the latter days of G. K.'s Weekly was moving towards a right-wing position. Attitude to Benito Mussolini
(whom GKC interviewed, see the Maisie Ward biography) in the 1930s is close to the point; Chesterton made somewhat favourable remarks about contemporary Italy
in his Autobiography (1935). Right at the end of his life G. K.'s Weekly in editorial comment on the invasion of Abyssinia seemed to go further (but there is evidence that this was not Chesterton writing, and that he was upset by the incident).
and T. S. Eliot
.
in the past. The Chesterbelloc was the term coined by George Bernard Shaw
for Gilbert Chesterton in partnership with Belloc; the description stuck. Cecil Chesterton was the most combative, and probably the most theoretical of the three. Looking at them together acknowledges that the publications' history pieced together does represent a continuity of thought.
Barnet Litvinoff has written
This question has to be examined on a historical trajectory, from the time of the Second Boer War
to the Spanish Civil War
, via the Marconi scandal
. Bryan Cheyette speaks of Chesterton's 'literary decline' from around 1922, and writes
Litvinoff also cites Chesterton commenting on Henry Ford, Sr.'s view on the 'Jewish problem', in his 1922 What I Saw in America.
The journalism of Cecil Chesterton for the Eye-Witness at the time of the Marconi scandal, is a substantive though flawed reason why Belloc, Cecil Chesterton and G. K. Chesterton have often been considered an anti-semitic clique. This can justly be called guilt by association; which was certainly the precise tactic and fallacy Cecil himself used. One Jewish member of the government, Herbert Samuel
, was accused and no evidence was ever shown of his involvement. Godfrey Isaacs sued successfully; he was the brother of the politician Rufus Isaacs
, who was cleared by Parliament, but had a case to answer.
, the Second Boer War
seen as economically motivated, and the Jewish part in international finance. Negative fictional characters who are Jewish appear in Belloc's novels from this time.
The evidence from The Path to Rome is that Belloc at that time found anti-Semitism puzzling, if distasteful:
Belloc's own book The Jews (1922) sets out his later views in his own words. He identified a cycle of persecution, and coined the phrase the tragic cycle of anti-Semitism. The work has been construed both as supporting the case that Belloc had no animus against Jews, and as a statement of the historical view that Jewish integration 'inevitably' causes friction. Rabbi David Dalin has commented positively on Belloc's contribution in it to understanding of anti-Semitism. Belloc wrote,
Belloc also wrote,
On the integration of Jews into British society at the higher levels, he wrote, in the same book,
Belloc made the following controversial statement in a conversation with Hugh Kingsmill
and Hesketh Pearson
:
Robert Speaight
however cites a private letter by Belloc to one of his Jewish American friends in the 1920s in which Belloc pilloried conspiracy-theorist Nesta Webster
for her accusations against "the Jews". In February 1924, Belloc wrote to an American Jewish friend regarding an anti-Semitic book by Webster. Webster had rejected Christianity
, studied Eastern religions, accepted the Hindu
concept of the equality of all religions and was fascinated by theories of reincarnation
and ancestral memory. Belloc expressed his views on Webster's antisemitism very clearly:
Bernard Levin
, a leading British columnist who frequently quoted Chesterton, in The Case for Chesterton brought up some of his light verse, and said "The best one can say of Chesterton's anti-semitism is that it was less vile than Belloc's; let us leave it at that." Joseph Pearce
wrote that It is clear that such verses may cause offence, but it is equally clear they were not intended to.
Against Chesterton are also cited remarks in The New Jerusalem (1920). Chesterton was, in a real sense, a Zionist. He was not, however, a Zionist without conditions. The following is from the introductory remarks in that book:
This is seen by some as an unacceptable statement. The point is still contested. It was Chesterton's stated view, having a fondness for the dramatic, that all nations should maintain and return to traditional dress, and enjoyed wearing a classical form of dress himself in the manner of capes and swordsticks. He gave this idea free rein in his first novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill
.
In the chapter 'On Zionism', one also finds Chesterton's dim appraisal of the patriotism of Benjamin Disraeli (who had been baptised Anglican at age 13). He argues in effect that the former Prime Minister, due to his Jewish birth, would naturally have abandoned England (a Christian nation) in extremis:
Further discussion comes from comments about Jews being responsible for both the USSR's communism and the USA's unbridled capitalism (1929). John Gross in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969) commented:
Chesterton, however, opposed all forms of persecution of Jews and all violent anti-semitism. In 1934, after the Nazi Party took power in Germany
he wrote that:
Any discussion of G.K. Chesterton and the accusation of anti-semitism should be viewed in the light of the fact that in 1922 G.K. Chesterton published a book titled "Eugenics and Other Evils". G.K. Chesterton was the first and for a long time the only voice of any note that publicly challenged and comprehensively refuted the evil of eugenics, and did so unequivocally. Eugenics was the idealogical forerunner of Nazism and the Holocaust, and G.K. Chesterton's unequivocal attack on eugenics should be remembered whenever the charge of anti-semitism is made against him.
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
, continuing until his death in 1936. It contained much of his later journalism, and extracts from it were published as The Outline of Sanity.
History in sequence with related publications
Chesterton had for seven years (1916–1923) been continuing as editor of The New Witness, previously owned by his brother Cecil ChestertonCecil Chesterton
Cecil Edward Chesterton was an English journalist and political commentator, known particularly for his role as editor of The New Witness from 1912 to 1916, and in relation to its coverage of the Marconi scandal....
who had served in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
from 1916 and died in France in 1918. Gilbert had kept it going with Cecil's widow. That paper had been founded (as Eye-Witness) by Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
.
With the continuation of G. K.'s Weekly after Gilbert's death, by Belloc's son-in-law Reginald Jebb with Hilary Pepler, the complete series of publications therefore reads as
- The Eye-Witness (1911–1914) →
- The New Witness (1914–1923) →
- G. K.'s Weekly (1925–1936) →
- The Weekly Review (1936/37 – 1948, when it became a short-lived monthly).
Distributism in context
The essential continuity under the main editorial figures (those mentioned, and W. R. TittertonW. R. Titterton
William Richard Titterton was a British journalist, writer and poet now remembered as the friend and first biographer of G. K. Chesterton. Titterton and Chesterton met on the London Daily News.-Early life:...
who was Gilbert's sub-editor), is a manifestation of the political and economic doctrine of distributism
Distributism
Distributism is a third-way economic philosophy formulated by such Catholic thinkers as G. K...
. This was mainly the work of Belloc, Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton, and Arthur Penty
Arthur Penty
Arthur Joseph Penty was a British architect, and writer on Guild socialism and distributism. He was first a Fabian socialist, and follower of Victorian thinkers William Morris and John Ruskin...
, and had its origins in an Edwardian-era split of Fabian socialism in London circles, around A. R. Orage
Alfred Richard Orage
Alfred Richard Orage was a British intellectual, now best known for editing the magazine The New Age. While working as a schoolteacher in Leeds, he pursued various interests, including Plato, the Independent Labour Party, and theosophy...
and his prominent publication The New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
.
In fact, in founding The Eye-Witness, Belloc took a title of a book of essays of his own from a couple of years before, and drew initially on a group of writers more associated with The Speaker.
The papers under discussion in this article became, in practical terms, the organs of the distributist group. This came together as the Distributist League in 1926, as G. K.'s Weekly appeared as a revamped publication. The main business of the League, organisationally, fell to Titterton. The League had its own newsletter from 1931.
Chesterton as editor and campaigner
Chesterton travelled the country to local distributist chapters. G. K.'s Weekly in fact gained little financially for Chesterton; it was not a lucrative venture, but a gesture of respect for Cecil's memory. The financial state of the publications meant that contributors could expect little or no reward. One later famous name who first broke into journalism this way was Eric Blair.Editorial policy in the latter days of G. K.'s Weekly was moving towards a right-wing position. Attitude to Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
(whom GKC interviewed, see the Maisie Ward biography) in the 1930s is close to the point; Chesterton made somewhat favourable remarks about contemporary Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in his Autobiography (1935). Right at the end of his life G. K.'s Weekly in editorial comment on the invasion of Abyssinia seemed to go further (but there is evidence that this was not Chesterton writing, and that he was upset by the incident).
The League after Chesterton's death
After Chesterton died in 1936 the League was near collapse but continued in a new form, until being closed down in 1940. Arthur Penty's Distributist Manifesto was published in 1937; Belloc had taken over as President, and the vice-presidents included Eric GillEric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
.
The Chesterbelloc and anti-Semitic prejudice
There is a continuing debate about the extent of anti-Semitic prejudice to be found in the views of Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton, and of Hilaire Belloc. The discussion involves three people, who were very different in character, and who have certainly been put in the frame on grounds of guilt by associationGuilt by Association
Guilt by Association can refer to:* Association fallacy - sometimes called "guilt by association".* Guilt by Association Vol. 1 - album by Engine Room Recordings.* Guilt by Association Vol. 2 - album by Engine Room Recordings....
in the past. The Chesterbelloc was the term coined by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
for Gilbert Chesterton in partnership with Belloc; the description stuck. Cecil Chesterton was the most combative, and probably the most theoretical of the three. Looking at them together acknowledges that the publications' history pieced together does represent a continuity of thought.
Barnet Litvinoff has written
Britain had its replicas of MaurrasCharles MaurrasCharles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme...
and DaudetLéon DaudetLéon Daudet was a French journalist, writer, an active monarchist, and a member of the Académie Goncourt.-Move to the right:...
in those adornments of English letters, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
This question has to be examined on a historical trajectory, from the time of the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
to the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, via the Marconi scandal
Marconi scandal
The Marconi scandal was a British political scandal that broke in the summer of 1912. It centred on allegations that highly-placed members of the Liberal government, under H. H...
. Bryan Cheyette speaks of Chesterton's 'literary decline' from around 1922, and writes
To his detriment, Chesterton's fiction at this time seems to be unduly influenced by Belloc's Barnett quartet with its constant reference to all-powerful Jewish plutocrats [...]
Litvinoff also cites Chesterton commenting on Henry Ford, Sr.'s view on the 'Jewish problem', in his 1922 What I Saw in America.
The journalism of Cecil Chesterton for the Eye-Witness at the time of the Marconi scandal, is a substantive though flawed reason why Belloc, Cecil Chesterton and G. K. Chesterton have often been considered an anti-semitic clique. This can justly be called guilt by association; which was certainly the precise tactic and fallacy Cecil himself used. One Jewish member of the government, Herbert Samuel
Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel
Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel GCB OM GBE PC was a British politician and diplomat.-Early years:...
, was accused and no evidence was ever shown of his involvement. Godfrey Isaacs sued successfully; he was the brother of the politician Rufus Isaacs
Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading
Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC, KC , was an English lawyer, jurist and politician...
, who was cleared by Parliament, but had a case to answer.
Hilaire Belloc's views
Belloc's views from the Edwardian period, when he was in politics, are discussed in Hilaire Belloc: Edwardian Radical by McCarthy. At this period the targets were plutocracyPlutocracy
Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy. The word plutocracy is derived from the Ancient Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratos, meaning to rule or to govern.-Usage:The term plutocracy is generally...
, the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
seen as economically motivated, and the Jewish part in international finance. Negative fictional characters who are Jewish appear in Belloc's novels from this time.
The evidence from The Path to Rome is that Belloc at that time found anti-Semitism puzzling, if distasteful:
At the foot of the street was an inn where I entered to eat, and finding there another man—I take him to have been a shopkeeper--I determined to talk politics, and began as follows: 'Have you any anti-Semitism in your town?' 'It is not my town,' he said, 'but there is anti-Semitism. It
flourishes.' 'Why then?' I asked. 'How many Jews have you in your town?' He said there were seven. 'But,' said I, 'seven families of Jews--' 'There are not seven families,' he interrupted; 'there are seven Jews all told. There are but two families, and I am reckoning in the children. The servants are Christians.' 'Why,' said I, 'that is only just and proper, that the Jewish families from beyond the frontier should have local Christian people to wait on
them and do their bidding. But what I was going to say was that so very few Jews seem to me an insufficient fuel to fire the anti-Semites…
I then rose from my meal, saluted him, and went musing up the valley
road, pondering upon what it could be that the Jews sacrificed in this
remote borough, but I could not for the life of me imagine what it
was, though I have had a great many Jews among my friends.
Belloc's own book The Jews (1922) sets out his later views in his own words. He identified a cycle of persecution, and coined the phrase the tragic cycle of anti-Semitism. The work has been construed both as supporting the case that Belloc had no animus against Jews, and as a statement of the historical view that Jewish integration 'inevitably' causes friction. Rabbi David Dalin has commented positively on Belloc's contribution in it to understanding of anti-Semitism. Belloc wrote,
- "It has been a series of cycles invariably following the same steps. The Jew comes to an alien society, at first in small numbers. He thrives. His presence is not resented. He is rather treated as a friend. Whether from mere contrast in type—what I have called "friction —or from some apparent divergence between his objects and those of his hosts, or through his increasing numbers, he creates (or discovers) a growing animosity. He resents it. He opposes his hosts. They call themselves masters in their own house. The Jew resists their claim. It comes to violence."
- "It is always the same miserable sequence. First a welcome; then a growing, half-conscious ill-ease; next a culmination in acute ill-ease; lastly catastrophe and disaster; insult, persecution, even massacre, the exiles flying from the place of persecution into a new district where the Jew is hardly known, where the problem has never existed or has been forgotten. He meets again with the largest hospitality. There follows here also, after a period of amicable interfusion, a growing, half-conscious ill-ease, which next becomes acute and leads to new explosions, and so on, in a fatal round." Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, Butler and Tanner, London, 1937, pp. 11–12.
Belloc also wrote,
- "The various nations of Europe have every one of them, in the course of their long histories, passed through successive phases towards the Jew which I have called the tragic cycle. Each has in turn welcomed, tolerated, persecuted, attempted to exile — often actually exiled — welcomed again, and so forth. The two chief examples of extremes in action, are, as I have also pointed out in an earlier part of this book, Spain and England. Spaniards, and in particular the Spaniards of the Kingdom of Castile, went through every phase of this cycle in its fullest form. England passed through even greater extremes, for England was the only country which absolutely got rid of the Jews for hundreds of years, and England is the only country which has, even for a brief period, entered into something like an alliance with them." Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, Butler and Tanner, London, 1937, p. 215.
On the integration of Jews into British society at the higher levels, he wrote, in the same book,
- "with the opening of the twentieth century those of the great territorial English families in which there was no Jewish blood were the exception. In nearly all of them was the stain more or less marked, in some of them so strong that though the name was still an English name and the tradition those of a purely English lineage of the long past, the physique and character had become wholly Jewish and the members of the family were taken for Jews whenever they travelled in countries where the gentry had not yet suffered or enjoyed the admixture."
Belloc made the following controversial statement in a conversation with Hugh Kingsmill
Hugh Kingsmill
Hugh Kingsmill Lunn , who dropped his last name for professional purposes, was a versatile British writer and journalist. Writers Arnold Lunn and Brian Lunn were his brothers.-Life:...
and Hesketh Pearson
Hesketh Pearson
Edward Hesketh Gibbons Pearson was a British actor, theatre director and writer. He is known mainly for his popular biographies; they made him the leading British biographer of his time, in terms of commercial success....
:
- Belloc: It was the Dreyfus case that opened my eyes to the Jew question. I'm not an anti-Semite. I love 'em, poor dears. Get on very well with them. My best secretary was a Jewess. Poor darlings — it must be terrible to be born with the knowledge that you belong to the enemies of the human race.
- Kingsmill: Why do you say the Jews are the enemies of the human race?
- Belloc: The Crucifixion.
Robert Speaight
Robert Speaight
Robert Speaight was a British actor and writer, and the brother of George Speaight the puppeteer.He was an early performer in radio plays. He came to prominence as Becket in the first production of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. He went on to Shakespearean roles, and to direct.He also...
however cites a private letter by Belloc to one of his Jewish American friends in the 1920s in which Belloc pilloried conspiracy-theorist Nesta Webster
Nesta Webster
Nesta Helen Webster , was a controversial historian, occultist, and author who revived conspiracy theories about the Illuminati. She argued that the secret society's members were occultists, plotting communist world domination, using the idea of a Jewish cabal, the Masons and Jesuits as a...
for her accusations against "the Jews". In February 1924, Belloc wrote to an American Jewish friend regarding an anti-Semitic book by Webster. Webster had rejected Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, studied Eastern religions, accepted the Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
concept of the equality of all religions and was fascinated by theories of reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
and ancestral memory. Belloc expressed his views on Webster's antisemitism very clearly:
- "In my opinion it is a lunatic book. She is one of those people who have got one cause on the brain. It is the good old 'Jewish revolutionary' bogey. But there is a type of unstable mind which cannot rest without morbid imaginings, and the conception of a single cause simplifies thought. With this good woman it is the Jews, with some people it is the Jesuits, with others FreemasonsFreemasonryFreemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
and so on. The world is more complex than that."
Gilbert Chesterton's views
Points often made about Chesterton's attitude to Jews relate to well-known writings, both 'in the small' or casual, and in the large when he seriously addressed the question.Bernard Levin
Bernard Levin
Henry Bernard Levin CBE was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics,...
, a leading British columnist who frequently quoted Chesterton, in The Case for Chesterton brought up some of his light verse, and said "The best one can say of Chesterton's anti-semitism is that it was less vile than Belloc's; let us leave it at that." Joseph Pearce
Joseph Pearce
Joseph Pearce is an English-born writer, and Writer in Residence and Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida; previously he had a comparable position, from 2001, at Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He is known for a number of literary biographies, many of...
wrote that It is clear that such verses may cause offence, but it is equally clear they were not intended to.
Against Chesterton are also cited remarks in The New Jerusalem (1920). Chesterton was, in a real sense, a Zionist. He was not, however, a Zionist without conditions. The following is from the introductory remarks in that book:
- "I have felt disposed to say: let all liberal legislation stand, let all literal and legal civic equality stand; let a Jew occupy any political or social position which he can gain in open competition; let us not listen for a moment to any suggestions of reactionary restrictions or racial privilege. Let a Jew be Lord Chief justice, if his exceptional veracity and reliability have clearly marked him out for that post. Let a Jew be Archbishop of Canterbury, if our national religion has attained to that receptive breadth that would render such a transition unobjectionable and even unconscious. But let there be one single-clause bill; one simple and sweeping law about Jews, and no other. Be it enacted, by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in Parliament assembled, that every Jew must be dressed like an Arab. Let him sit on the Woolsack, but let him sit there dressed as an Arab. Let him preach in St. Paul's Cathedral, but let him preach there dressed as an Arab. It is not my point at present to dwell on the pleasing if flippant fancy of how much this would transform the political scene; of the dapper figure of Sir Herbert Samuel swathed as a Bedouin, or Sir Alfred Mond gaining a yet greater grandeur from the gorgeous and trailing robes of the East. If my image is quaint my intention is quite serious; and the point of it is not personal to any particular Jew. The point applies to any Jew, and to our own recovery of healthier relations with him. The point is that we should know where we are; and he would know where he is, which is in a foreign land."
This is seen by some as an unacceptable statement. The point is still contested. It was Chesterton's stated view, having a fondness for the dramatic, that all nations should maintain and return to traditional dress, and enjoyed wearing a classical form of dress himself in the manner of capes and swordsticks. He gave this idea free rein in his first novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a novel written by G. K. Chesterton in 1904, set in a nearly unchanged London in 1984.Although the novel is set in the future, it is, in effect, set in an 'alternate reality' of Chesterton's own period, with no advances in technology or changes in the class system or...
.
In the chapter 'On Zionism', one also finds Chesterton's dim appraisal of the patriotism of Benjamin Disraeli (who had been baptised Anglican at age 13). He argues in effect that the former Prime Minister, due to his Jewish birth, would naturally have abandoned England (a Christian nation) in extremis:
- "Patriotism is not merely dying for the nation. It is dying with the nation. It is regarding the fatherland not merely as a real resting-place like an inn, but as a final resting-place, like a house or even a grave... Even if we can bring ourselves to believe that Disraeli lived for England, we cannot think that he would have died with her. If England had sunk in the Atlantic he would not have sunk with her, but easily floated over to America to stand for the Presidency... When the Jew in France or in England says he is a good patriot he only means that he is a good citizen, and he would put it more truly if he said he was a good exile. Sometimes indeed he is an abominably bad citizen, and a most exasperating and execrable exile, but I am not talking of that side of the case. I am assuming that a man like Disraeli did really make a romance of England, [as did Dernberg Germany], and it is still true that though it was a romance, they would not have allowed it to be a tragedy. They would have seen that the story had a happy ending, especially for themselves. These Jews would not have died with any Christian nation."
Further discussion comes from comments about Jews being responsible for both the USSR's communism and the USA's unbridled capitalism (1929). John Gross in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969) commented:
- "Chesterton's hatred of capitalism and his dread of the monolithic state were the generous responses of a man who saw the sickness of his society far more clearly than the ordinary LiberalLiberal Party (UK)The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
and felt it far more deeply than the self-confident Fabian social engineers. Unfortunately, though, a sense of outrage often proved as bad a counsellor in his case as it had done in Carlyle'sThomas CarlyleThomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
. His diatribes against usury and corruption were those of a man on the edge of hysteria; his anti-semitism was an illness. Despite this, his fundamental decency is never obscured for long. He hated oppression; he belonged to the world before totalitarianism. But the positive side of his politics — Distributism, peasant smallholdings, Merrie EnglandMerry England"Merry England", or in more jocular, archaic spelling "Merrie England", refers to an English autostereotype, a utopian conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life that was allegedly prevalent at some time between the Middle Ages and the onset of the Industrial...
ism — led him into a hopeless cul-de-sac."
Chesterton, however, opposed all forms of persecution of Jews and all violent anti-semitism. In 1934, after the Nazi Party took power in Germany
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
he wrote that:
Any discussion of G.K. Chesterton and the accusation of anti-semitism should be viewed in the light of the fact that in 1922 G.K. Chesterton published a book titled "Eugenics and Other Evils". G.K. Chesterton was the first and for a long time the only voice of any note that publicly challenged and comprehensively refuted the evil of eugenics, and did so unequivocally. Eugenics was the idealogical forerunner of Nazism and the Holocaust, and G.K. Chesterton's unequivocal attack on eugenics should be remembered whenever the charge of anti-semitism is made against him.