t:

Similarly Fr. McNabb must be given his head and I have told him he
shall be given it. I hope to be purely practical and possibly a
little sentimental. . . . The Seaman is everywhere, yet, for us,
nowhere. He carries everywhere his child's heart, man's body, hungry
unfed soul, unique power of feeding his goodness into others. The
all-round (the world) man; the sea-limited man; the man whose life
is made up of storms and stars; the most secretive and the most
open-hearted man of any. . . . Now _I_ will do all the clumsy stuff.
_You_ pull it all up into the human-sublime divine-humble air.

He has no privacy, and is more lonely than anyone. He has Water, and
God; and MUST find Christ walking over the waves towards him. And no
ghost.

Father Vincent McNabb who was to be "given his head" at this meeting
was not a new friend of Catholic days but a very old one. A friendly
critic of my manuscript asks whether he, even more than Belloc or
Chesterton, does not merit the title of the Father of Distributism.
At least he brings into the movement something none other could
bring. He bases his social philosophy closely on the gospels--of
which his knowledge is almost unique--and his articles bear such
titles as "The Economics of Bethlehem" or "Big Scale Agriculture and
the Gospels." Hatred of machinery has combined with love of poverty
to sunder him from a typewriter, and these articles are all
handwritten in most exquisite and legible script. His letters have
always come in old envelopes turned inside out; he walks whenever
possible and wears a shabby white habit and broken boots. Both
Frances and Gilbert loved him dearly and their rare meetings were red
letter days for both. Besides the link of Distributism the two men
were united in caring deeply for the reawakened interest in St.
Thomas and his philosophy.

The Benedictine, as well as the Dominican, outlook and history
especially appealed to Gilbert, and the friendship with Father
Ignatius Rice, which had begun almost with the century, grew
steadily. He assisted, as we have seen, at Gilbert's reception into
the Church: and whenever they met after that Gilbert would remind
him, "We were together on the great day."

High Wycombe was the Chesterton's parish until, largely by their
help, a church could be built at Beaconsfield. At first this church
was served by Father Walker, parish priest of High Wycombe. It was he
who had prepared Gilbert for