on
with Shaw--he gave different answers, but he was asking many of the
same questions. He questioned everything as Shaw did--only he pushed
his questions further: they were deeper and more searching. Shaw
would not accept the old Scriptural orthodoxy; G.K. refused to accept
the new Agnostic orthodoxy; neither man would accept the orthodoxy of
the scientists; both were prepared to attack what Butler had called
"the science ridden, art ridden, culture ridden, afternoon-tea ridden
cliffs of old England."

They attacked first by the mere process of asking questions; and the
world thus questioned grew uneasy and seemed to care curiously little
for the fact that the two questioners were answering their own
questions in an opposite fashion. Where Shaw said: "Give up
pretending you believe in God, for you don't," Chesterton said:
"Rediscover the reasons for believing or else our race is lost."
Where Shaw said: "Abolish private property which has produced this
ghastly poverty," Chesterton said: "Abolish ghastly poverty by
restoring property."

And the audience said: "these two men in strange paradoxes seem to us
to be saying the same thing, if indeed they are saying anything at
all." Chesterton wrote later of a young man whose aunt "had
disinherited him for Socialism because of a lecture he had delivered
against that economic theory"; and I well remember how often after my
own energetic attempts to explain why a Distributist was not a
Socialist, I was met with a weary, "Well, it's just the same." It was
just the same question; it was an entirely different answer, but the
audience, annoyed by the question, never seemed to listen to the
answer. One man was saying: "Sweep away the old beliefs of humanity
and start fresh"; the other was saying: "Rediscover your reasons for
these profound beliefs, make them once more effective, for they are
of the very nature of man."

Shaw and Chesterton were themselves deeply concerned about the
answers. Both sincere, both dealing with realities, they were
prepared to accept each other's sincerity and to fight the matter
out, if need were, endlessly. Being writers they conducted their
discussions in writing: being journalists they did so mainly in the
newspapers, to the delight or fury of other journalists. A jealous
few were enraged at what they called publicity hunting, but most
realised that it was not a private fight. Anyone might join in and a
good many did.

Belloc was in the fight as