The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Appetite of Tyranny, by G.K. Chesterton

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Title: The Appetite of Tyranny
Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian

Author: G.K. Chesterton

Release Date: March 17, 2004 [EBook #11605]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY

_Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian_

_By_ G.K. CHESTERTON

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

THE FACTS OF THE CASE

I THE WAR ON THE WORD

II THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY

III THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY

IV THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY

LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN

THE FACTS OF THE CASE

Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering
business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as madness.
If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate many other
people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master of the
house was burned because he was drunk; it may be that the mistress of the
house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about the
expense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they
both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story of
the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European
conflagration are quite as easy to tell.

Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most sincere
war of human history, it is easy to answer the question of why England came
to be in it at all, as one asks how a man fell down a coal-hole, or failed
to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth. But facts are facts,
and in this case the facts are few and simple. Prussia, France, and
England had all promised not to invade Belgium. Prussia proposed to invade
Belgium, because it was the safest way of invading France. But Prussia
promised that if she might break in, through her own broken promise and
ours, she would break in and not steal. In other words, we were offered at
the same instant a promise of faith in the future and a proposa