es are never hidden
by yellow fog. But is it a false idealism? If it is, it is that
conception which has made men leave their homes in England to build up
the Imperial Empire which is the daughter of the Great Imperial Island.
The vision may not be always useful, but Imperialism has done much to
make England and Empire synonymous.

Business is, according to Chesterton, a nasty thing that will not wait.
It hates leisure, it has no use for brotherhood, it is one of the things
that is wrong in the world--not, of course, that business is wrong in
itself, but the method. Thus he disagrees that if a soap factory cannot
be run on brotherhood lines the brotherhood must be scrapped. He would
have the converse to be better.

He contends that it is better to be without soap than without society.
As a matter of fact, society without soap would be an abomination.
Society without any brotherhood would soon cease to be a society at all.
Utopia is a little soap, a little society, with a flavouring of
brotherhood in each.

Another and obviously good reason that the world is wrong is that it is
only half finished. This is a matter for extreme optimism; it is the
one great thing that makes it certain that the world will be found all
right if it comes to an end. That is, if it delays long enough for the
Irish question to be settled.

This is what Chesterton contends in this fine book, that reforms are not
reforms at all, rather the same things dressed up in other clothes.
Values are set up on false standards. Women in trying to become
emancipated are likely to become slaves; the fear of the past is given
over to a too delicate introspection of the probable vices and virtues
of generations not yet born.

Imperialism is liable to a false idealism, drawing men from Seven Dials
to find Utopia in Brixton. The public schools are weakening the country
in some respects. Education is not education at all; in fact, we really
must start the wrong world over again. I don't quite see where
Chesterton proposes we are to start, or exactly how, whether backwards
or forwards. Perhaps, as in 'Orthodoxy,' the middle course is the happy
and safe one.

* * * * *

'Tremendous Trifles' is a Chestertonian philosophy of the importance and
interest of small things. It is a remarkable thing that we never see the
things that we daily gaze upon. Chesterton finds scope for all kinds of
subjects in this book, from a 'Piece