e admits, and the
Lecture, he insists, grows worse. His thesis is that "the besetting
evil of all educated people is that they tend to substitute theories
for things." The uneducated man never makes this mistake. He states
the simple fact that he sees a German drinking beer: he does not say
"there is a Teuton consuming alcohol."

At Toronto the Chairman--a professor of English--thought that there
must have been an error in the title as printed, and announced that
Mr. Chesterton would speak on The Ignorance of the _Un_educated.
Another Detroit newspaper quotes from the lecture:

There is a deeper side to such fallacies. The whole catastrophe of
the Great War may be traced to the racial theory. If people had
looked at peoples as nations in place of races the intolerable
ambition of Prussia might have been stopped before it attained the
captaincy of the South German States.

The only other lecture subjects mentioned are "Shall We Abolish the
Inevitable" and "The Perils of Health." There are innumerable
caricatures. One by Cosmo Hamilton is accompanied with a story of how
he once debated with Chesterton. The subject was: "There is no law in
England." G.K. made so overwhelming a case that Hamilton decided the
only way of making reply possible was to twist the subject making it
"there are no laws in England" and "go off at 1000 tangents like a
worried terrier."

To hear Chesterton's howl of joy when he twigged how I had slipped
out, to see him double himself up in an agony of laughter at my
personal insults, to watch the effect of his sportsmanship on a
shocked audience who were won to mirth by his intense and
pea-hen-like quarks of joy was a sight and a sound for the gods.

Probably Chesterton has forgotten this incident but I haven't and
never will, and I carried away from that room a respect and
admiration for this tomboy among dictionaries, this philosophical
Peter Pan, this humorous Dr. Johnson, this kindly and gallant cherub,
this profound student and wise master which has grown steadily ever
since.

In the _Daily Sketch_, Hamilton later described G.K. speaking in this
debate:

During the whole inspired course of his brilliant reasoning, he
caught the little rivulets which ran down his face, and just as they
were about to drop from the first of his several chins flicked them
generously among the disconcerted people who sat actually at his
feet. Fro