hat
two Radical papers of the early part of last century actually called
themselves The Alfred, and that Major Cartwright spent a considerable
amount of energy in inducing the Greeks to substitute pikes for bayonets
in their struggles against the Turks, on the grounds that the pike was
used in Alfred's England.

So there we have Chesterton believing devoutly that that servile state,
stricken with plague, and afflicted with death in all its forms, is the
dreamland of the saints. His political principles, roughly speaking, are
England was decent once--let us apply the same recipe to the England of
to-day. His suggestions, therefore, are rather negative than positive.
He would dam the flood of modern legislative tendencies because it is
taking England farther away from his Middle Ages. But he will not say
"do this" about anything, because in the Middle Ages they made few laws,
not having, in point of fact, the power to enforce those offences
against moral and economic law which then took the place of legislation.

It is impossible to say to what extent Chesterton has surrendered
himself to this myth; whether he has come to accept it because he liked
it, or in order to please his friend, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, from whom
G.K.C. never differs politically. Once they stood side by side and
debated against Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells, arguing from Socialism to beer,
and thence to religion.

In January, 1908, Chesterton accepted the invitation of the Editor of
The New Age to explain why he did not call himself a Socialist, in spite
of his claim to possess "not only a faith in democracy, but a great
tenderness for revolution." The explanation is complicated, to say the
least. In the first place Chesterton does not want people to share, they
should give and take. In the second place, as a democrat (which nobody
else is) he has a vast respect (which nobody else has) for the working
classes. And

one thing I should affirm as certain, the whole
smell and sentiment and general ideal of Socialism
they detest and disdain. No part of the community
is so specially fixed in those forms and feelings
which are opposite to the tone of most Socialists;
the privacy of homes, the control of one's own
children, the minding of one's own business. I
look out of my back windows over the black stretch
of Battersea, and I believe I could make up a sort
of