nd Cecil Chesterton established and his loyal affection
for them made him adopt. I recall him expounding to the lawyers of
the Thomas More Society the absurdity of the legal definition of
libel, arguing that of its nature free discussion meant arousing at
any rate ridicule and contempt if not hatred against men and measures
of which you disapproved. It was ridicule that he preferred to
arouse. The lawyers were quite unconvinced, as they generally are
when laymen have any complaints about the law, and they soon realized
that to Chesterton the whole idea of involving the law because of
arguments and discussions and invective was hitting below the belt.

He could be seen at his happiest in the Mock Trials which were held
every summer for the last ten years of his life at the London School
of Economics, for the King Edward VII Hospital Fund. He was relied
upon year after year to prosecute. One year it was leading actors and
actresses, another year sculptors and architects, another year
politicians, another Headmasters. He entered completely into the
spirit of an entertainment which combined two of his abiding
interests, public debate and private theatricals. That was a setting
in which he could completely exemplify his favourite recipe for the
modern world, that it should be approached in a spirit of
intellectual ferocity and personal amiability. But what marked his
own contributions to these affairs was the intellectual "ferocity,"
in the weight and content of his criticism. Most of the eminent men
who consented to take part came to play a game for the sake of the
Hospitals, and because they rarely unbent like that in public they
were wholly facetious and trivial. To Chesterton there was no
difficulty or incongruity in combining the fun of acting with the
fun of genuine intellectual discussion. When he prosecuted the
Headmasters of leading public schools for Destroying Freedom of
Thought I came down in a lift with them afterwards and found they
were volubly nettled at the drastic and serious case he had made
inside the stage setting of burlesque, and seemed to think he had not
been playing the game when he wrapped up so much meaning in his
speech and examinations. This had never entered his head; it had come
perfectly naturally to him to make wholly real and material points
even in a mock trial and with a wealth of fun.