Chesterton, that I am a journalist,
that I am living with the well-known and philanthropic Mr. Blank of
Ilkley, cannot have anything to do with the question of whether I have
been guilty of cruelty to vegetables. The tree is none the less damaged
even though it may reflect with a dark pride that it was wounded by a
gentleman connected with the Liberal press. Wounds in the bark do not
more rapidly close up because they are inflicted by people who are
stopping with Mr. Blank of Ilkley. That tree, the ruin of its former
self, the wreck of what was once a giant of the forest, now splintered
and laid low by the brute superiority of a Swedish knife, that tragedy,
constable, cannot be wiped out even by stopping for several months more
with some wealthy person. It is incredible that you have no legal claim
to arrest even the most august and fashionable persons on this charge.
For if so, why did you interfere with me at all?"

I made the later and larger part of this speech to the silent wood, for
the two policemen had vanished almost as quickly as they came. It is
very possible, of course, that they were fairies. In that case the
somewhat illogical character of their view of crime, law, and personal
responsibility would find a bright and elfish explanation; perhaps if I
had lingered in the glade till moonrise I might have seen rings of tiny
policemen dancing on the sward; or running about with glow-worm belts,
arresting grasshoppers for damaging blades of grass. But taking the
bolder hypothesis, that they really were policemen, I find myself in
a certain difficulty. I was certainly accused of something which was
either an offence or was not. I was let off because I proved I was a
guest at a big house. The inference seems painfully clear; either it is
not a proof of infamy to throw a knife about in a lonely wood, or else
it is a proof of innocence to know a rich man. Suppose a very poor
person, poorer even than a journalist, a navvy or unskilled labourer,
tramping in search of work, often changing his lodgings, often, perhaps,
failing in his rent. Suppose he had been intoxicated with the green
gaiety of the ancient wood. Suppose he had thrown knives at trees and
could give no description of a dwelling-place except that he had been
fired out of the last. As I walked home through a cloudy and purple
twilight I wondered how he would have got on.

Moral. We English are always boasting that we are very illogical; there
is no great h