r, not
that there is insufficient housing accommodation, but that he has not
where to lay his head . . . we must talk of the human family in
language as plain and practical and positive as that in which mystics
used to talk of the Holy Family. We must learn again to use the naked
words that describe a natural thing. . . . Then we shall draw on the
driving force of many thousand years, and call up a real
humanitarianism out of the depths of humanity.

I should like to collect all the essays and poems on Christmas; he
wrote several every year, yet each is different, each goes to the
heart of his thought. As Christopher Morley says: "One of the simple
greatnesses of G.K.C. shows in this, that we think of him
instinctively toward Christmas time."* Some men, it may be, are best
moved to reform by hate, but Chesterton was best moved by love and
nowhere does that love shine more clearly than in all he wrote about
Christmas. It will be for this philosophy, this charity, this poetry
that men will turn over the pages of _G.K.'s Weekly_ a century hence
if the world still lasts. It is for us who are his followers to see
that they are truly creative. Destruction of evil is a great work but
if it leaves only a vacuum, nature abhors that vacuum. Creation is
what matters for the future and Chesterton's writing is creative.

[* _Mark Twain Quarterly_, Spring, 1937.]

So too with the radio. In this new medium his mind was alert to
present his new-old ideas, his fundamental philosophy of life after
some fresh fashion. A letter from Broadcasting House (Nov. 2, 1932)
after his first talk records the delight of all who heard it:

The building rings with your praises! I knew I was not alone in my
delight over your first talk. I think even you in your modesty will
find some pleasure in hearing what widespread interest there is in
what you are doing. You bring us something very rare to the
microphone. I am most anxious that you should be with us till after
Christmas. You will have a vast public by Christmas and it is good
that they should hear you. Would you undertake six further
fortnightly talks from January 16th onwards?

He was asked to submit a manuscript but promised he should not be
kept to the letter of it. "We should like you to make variations as
these occur to you as you speak at the microphone. Only so can the
talk have a real show of spontaneity about it." "You will forgive
me," on