the same reason.
The Frenchman and the Irishman understand the rapier of biting satire
as does not the Englishman: for direct abuse of anyone, no matter how
richly merited, nearly always puts the Englishman on the side of the
man who is being abused. What happened to Swift's Gulliver--that most
fierce attack upon the human race? The English people drew its sting
and turned it into a nursery book that has delighted their children
ever since. There are more ways than one of winning a battle: you can
win the man instead of the argument and Chesterton won many men. Or
you can take a weapon that once belonged chiefly to the enemy but
which Chesterton wrested from him; a very useful weapon: the laugh.

Orthodoxy, doctrinal and moral, was a lawful object of amusement to
Voltaire and his followers but now the laugh has passed to the other
side and Chesterton was (with Belloc himself) the first to seize this
powerful weapon. Thus when Bishop Barnes of Birmingham said that St.
Francis was dirty and probably had fleas many Catholics were furious
and spoke in solemn wrath. Chesterton wrote the simple verse

_A Broad-minded Bishop Rebukes the Verminous Saint Francis_

If Brother Francis pardoned Brother Flea
There still seems need of such strange charity
Seeing he is, for all his gay goodwill
Bitten by funny little creatures still.

I shall never forget going to hear Chesterton debate on Birth Control
with some Advanced Woman or other. Outside the hall were numbers of
her satellites offering their literature. I was just about to say
something unpleasant to one of them when a verse flashed into my mind:

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have crowned Neaera's curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls!
But Higgins is a Heathen
And to lecture-rooms is forced
Where his aunts who are not married
Demand to be divorced.

The rebuke died on my lips: why get angry with the poor old aunts of
Higgins demanding the destruction of their unconceived and
inconceivable babies?

Swinburne had mocked at Christian virtue but the Dolores of
Chesterton replied to him:

I am sorry old dear if I hurt you,
No doubt it is all very nice,
With the lilies and languors of virtue
And the raptures and roses of vice.
But the notion impels me to anger
That vice is all rapture for me,
And if you think virtue is languor
Just try it and see.

But in fact G.K. di