me because they wanted darkness,
because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a
lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash
municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And
there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So,
gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there
comes back the conviction that the monk was Right after all, that all
depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have
discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.*

[* _Heretics_, pp. 22-3.]

Every year during this time at Battersea, the press books reveal an
increasing flood of engagements. Gilbert lectures for the New Reform
Club on "political watchwords," for the Midland Institute on "Modern
Journalism," for the Men's Meeting of the South London Central
Mission on "Brass Bands," for the London Association of Correctors of
the Press at the Trocadero, for the C.S.U. at Church Kirk,
Accrington, at the Men's Service in the Colchester Moot Hall. He
debates at the St. German's Literary Society, maintaining "that the
most justifiable wars are the religious wars"; opens the Anti-Puritan
League at the Shaftesbury Club, speaks for the Richmond and Kew
branch of the P.N.E.U. on "The Romantic Element in Morality," for the
Ilkley P.S.A., on "Christianity and Materialism," and so on without
end. All these are on a few pages of his father's collection,
interspersed with clippings recording articles in reviews
innumerable, introductions to books, interviews and controversies.

There was almost no element of choice in these engagements. G.K. was
intensely good-natured and hated saying No. He was the lion of the
moment and they all wanted him to roar for them. In spite of the
large heading, "Lest we forget," that met his eye daily in the
drawing-room, he did forget a great deal--in fact, friends say he
forgot any engagement made when Frances was not present to write it
down directly it was made. She had to do memory and all the practical
side of life for him. There might have been one slight chance of
making Gilbert responsible in these matters--that chance was given to
his parents and by them thrown away. How far it is even possible to
groom and train a genius is doubtful: anyhow no attempt was made.
Waited on hand and foot by his mother, never made to wash or brush
himself as a child, personally conducted to the tailor as he grew
older,