to do with this journal, in which I have
hitherto avoided all controversy.

Now this matter, as Mr. Belloc rightly says, is not a pleasant one, and
we owe some apology both to Mr. Belloc and the public for returning to
it here. It forms, however, so noteworthy an example of that aspect of
Mr. Belloc and his work which it is proposed to examine in this chapter
that any consideration of that aspect without some mention of this
unpleasant affair would necessarily be incomplete.

The attitude of mind expressed by Mr. Belloc in this explanation should
be carefully noted. In this he appears, not, as we have seen him in the
previous chapter, as the exponent of intellectual propositions, but as
the champion of an opinion of his own. He is here expressing and
upholding his particular view of the necessity, during the war, of unity
among social classes and of the strengthening of public confidence. This
view of his proceeds from two co-related causes; the first, his
conception of the nature of the war, and, second, his knowledge of the
part played in government by public opinion.

These two causes must be examined separately.

Mr. Belloc has made clear his conception of the nature of the war in the
following words:

The two parties are really fighting for their lives; that in Europe
which is arrayed against the Germanic alliance would not care to
live if it should fail to maintain itself against the threat of
that alliance. It is for them life and death. On the other side,
the Germans having propounded this theory of theirs, or rather the
Prussians having propounded it for them, there is no rest possible
until they shall either have "made good" to our destruction, or
shall have been so crushed that a recurrence of the menace from
them will for the future be impossible.... The fight, in a word, is
not like a fight with a man who, if he beats you, may make you sign
away some property, or make you acknowledge some principle to which
you are already half-inclined; it is like a fight with a man who
says, "So long as I have life left in me, I will make it my
business to kill you." And fights of that kind can never reach a
term less absolute than the destruction of offensive power in one
side or the other. A peace not affirming complete victory in this
great struggle could, of its nature, be no more than a truce.

The second cause, Mr. Bello