This was due, chiefly, to the diversity of Mr. Belloc's writings.

For example, many thinking men, who saw no reason why the common sense,
which served them so well in their business affairs, should be banished
from their consideration of matters political, felt themselves in
sympathy with his analysis and denunciation of the evils of our
parliamentary machinery, thoroughly enjoying the vigorous lucidity of
_The Party System_ and applauding the clear historical reasoning of _The
Servile State_.

Other men, repelled, perhaps, by such logical grouping of cold facts,
but attracted by the satirical delights of _Emmanuel Burden_ or _Mr.
Clutterbuck_, of _Pongo and the Bull_ or _A Change in the Cabinet_, were
led to like conclusions, and came to consider themselves adherents of
Mr. Belloc's political views.

Take another instance. Bloodless students of history, absorbing the past
for the sake of the past and not for the sake of the present, who knew
little of Mr. Belloc's attitude toward the politics of the day and
strongly disapproved of what little they did know, yet concerned
themselves with his historical method as applied in _Danton_,
_Robespierre_ or _Marie Antoinette_, and were mildly excited by _The
French Revolution_ into a discussion of what (to Mr. Belloc's horror)
they considered his _Weltanschauung_.

There are but one or two examples of cases in which men of different
types came to a partial knowledge of Mr. Belloc and his work through
their sympathy with the views he expressed. But far beyond and above the
appeal which Mr. Belloc has made on occasion to the political and
historical sense of his readers is the appeal which he has made
consistently to their literary sense in _The Path to Rome_, in _The Four
Men_, in _Avril_, in _The Bad Child's Book of Beasts_, in _Esto
Perpetua_--in his novels, his essays, his poems. If many have been
attracted by his views, how many more have been influenced by his
expression of them?

"A man desiring to influence his fellowmen," says Mr. Belloc, in
_The French Revolution_, "has two co-related instruments at his
disposal.... These two instruments are his idea and his style.
However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers' mood or
cogently provable by reference to new things may be a man's idea,
he cannot persuade his fellowmen to it if he have not words that
express it. And he will persuade them more and more in proportion
as h