communism. . . . the Bank remains, The Fund remains, The Foreign
Financier remains, Parliamentary Procedure remains, Jix remains.
These are the things we hoped would go; but they are staying.

Sixteen years earlier Chesterton had in _The Victorian Age in
Literature_ characterised Hardy's novels as "the village atheist
brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot." Yet Cyril Clemens
has told me that Hardy recited to him some of Chesterton's poetry,
and I think this obituary links with that fact in showing that a
profound difference in their philosophy of life did not prevent a
mutual appreciation and even admiration.

Gilbert Chesterton entered the last years of his life having made no
enemies in the exceedingly sensitive literary world to which he
primarily belonged. Whether he had made any in the world of politics
I do not know, but he certainly felt no enmities. He said once it was
impossible to hate anything except an idea, and to him I think it
was. Against one politician who died in 1930 he had many years ago
launched his strongest bit of ironical writing--Lord Birkenhead, then
F. E. Smith, who had spoken of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill as
having "shocked the conscience of every Christian community in
Europe."--The last lines of Chesterton's mordant answer ran

For your legal cause or civil
You fight well and get your fee;
For your God or dream or devil
You will answer, not to me.
Talk about the pews and steeples
And the cash that goes therewith:
But the souls of Christian peoples . . .
Chuck it, Smith.

Later, Smith had stood with Sir Edward Carson against Cecil
Chesterton at the old Bailey. Now he was dead and many who had feared
him in his lifetime were blackening his memory with subtle sneers and
innuendo. Gilbert refused to join in this and he wrote in his paper:
"In him we were confronted by and fought, not a set of principles but
a man. . . . Lord Birkenhead was a great fighter! with one more pagan
virtue--pride--he would have been a great pagan."

Lord Balfour died in the same year. With him neither the paper nor
its editor had fought personally, but upon almost all his policies
had stood in opposition. Yet few better appreciations of him appeared
than the article entitled by Chesterton "A Man of Distinction."

The English squire was an unconscious aristocrat; the Scotch laird
was a conscious aristocrat; and Lord Balfour with all his social
grace an