rty System and of
Capitalism, and a notable feature of Mr. Belloc's editorship was that
the paper, during the time he was connected with it, reached and
maintained an extraordinarily high literary standard. It is a matter of
regret that Mr. Belloc, owing to a variety of circumstances, was
obliged, in the early part of 1912, to resign the position of editor of
the paper which he founded and which now, under the title of _The New
Witness_, is edited by Mr. Cecil Chesterton.

There can be no doubt, however, that the campaign which Mr. Belloc then
initiated has achieved some measure of success. Although it is
impossible to point to any organized body of opinion which definitely
supports Mr. Belloc's views on economic and political reform, yet it is
undeniable that those views have taken root and are to-day far more
common than at the time either _The Party System_ was written, or _The
Eye-Witness_ founded. This has come about by a very simple process--a
process which Mr. Belloc himself has analysed. In the last pages of _The
Party System_ there occurs this passage:

Truth has this particular quality about it (which the modern
defenders of falsehood seem to have forgotten), that when it has
been so much as suggested, it of its own self and by example tends
to turn that suggestion into a conviction.

You say to some worthy provincial, "English Prime Ministers sell
peerages and places on the Front Bench."

He is startled, and he disbelieves you; but when a few days
afterwards he reads in his newspaper of how some howling nonentity
has just been made a peer, or a member of the Government, the
incredible sentence he has heard recurs to him. When in the course
of the next twelve months five or six other nonentities have
enjoyed this sort of promotion (one of whom perhaps he may know
from other sources than the Press to be a wealthy man who uses his
wealth in bribery) his doubt grows into conviction.

That is the way truth spreads....

The truth, when it is spoken for some useful purpose, must
necessarily seem obscure, extravagant, or merely false; for, were
it of common knowledge, it would not be worth expressing. And truth
being fact, and therefore hard, must irritate and wound; but it has
that power of growth and creation peculiar to itself which always
makes it worth the telling.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: _Servil