t I Saw in America_.
Nor have I anywhere found any discussion by Chesterton of the
intellectual quality of Catholic education--any comparison with the
secular teaching--either in England or in America. But that the
problems of these two countries and of all the world could be solved
only by what that golden Dome housed he cried with no uncertain
voice. Death is in the world around, Resurrection in the Church of
the God who died and rose again.

Queen of Death and Life undying
Those about to live salute thee.

CHAPTER XXIX

The Soft Answer

_I have only one virtue that I know of
I could really forgive unto seventy times seven_.

The Notebook

ONE OF THE commonest of biographers' problems is the question of
quarrels and broken friendships. At the distance of time separating a
life from its record some of these look so empty of meaning as to
imperil any reputation--yet they happened, and when they were
happening they probably appeared full of significance. Other quarrels
involve issues of importance in which the biographer cannot take
wholeheartedly the side of his hero. Thus my own father, writing
_his_ father's life, had to pronounce judgment on Newman's side in
the issues that divided them, yet later, writing Newman's biography,
he had to admit the faults of temper that at least weakened the
Cardinal's case. For only so could he tell an entirely truthful story.

In Chesterton's life there is no such problem. Attacks on public
characters in his paper, attacks on abuses and ideas, absorbed all
his pugnacity. Fellow writers, rival journalists, friends, furnished
often enough material for a quarrel; but Chesterton would never take
it up. He excelled in the soft answer--not that answer which seeming
soft subtly provokes to wrath, but the genuine article. Belloc said
of him that he possessed "the two virtues of humility and
charity"--those most royal of all Christian virtues. In the heat of
argument he retained a fairness of mind that saw his opponent's case
and would never turn an argument into a quarrel. And most people both
liked him and felt that he liked them. While he was having his great
controversy with Blatchford back in 1906, it is clear from letters
between them that the two men remained on the friendliest terms.

Edward Macdonald writes of his experiences of Chesterton when he was
working with him on the paper.

He loved all the jokes about his size. He was the first to see the
po