ive, through his characters, inspired answers: G.K.
instances _Candida_, with its revelation of the meaning of marriage
when the woman stays with the strong man because he is so weak and
needs her. And Shaw had brought back philosophy into drama--that is,
he had recreated the atmosphere, lost since Shakespeare,* in which
men were thinking, and might, therefore, find the answers that the
age needed. And here again we come back to the world which these men
were shaking and to the respective philosophies with which they
looked at it. It was a world of conventions and these conventions had
become empty of meaning. Throw them away, said Shaw and Wells; no,
said Chesterton; keep them and look for their meaning; Revolution
does not mean destruction: it means restoration.

[* Hard on Goethe and Ibsen, to say nothing of Mozart's Magic Flute
and Beethoven's 9th symphony. G.B.S.]

The same sort of discussion buzzed around this book as around the
controversies of which it might be called a prolongation. Shaw
himself reviewed it in an article in the _Nation_, in which he called
it, "the best work of literary art I have yet provoked. . . .
Everything about me which Mr. Chesterton had to divine he has divined
miraculously. But everything that he could have ascertained easily by
reading my own plain directions on the bottle, as it were, remains
for him a muddled and painful problem." From an interchange of
private letters it would seem that the move to Beaconsfield took
place later in this year than I had supposed. Bernard Shaw's letter
is probably not written many days after an undated one to him from
G.K.:

48, Overstrand Mansions,
Battersea Park. S.W.

DEAR BERNARD SHAW,

I trust our recent tournaments have not rendered it contrary to the
laws of romantic chivalry (which you reverence so much) for me to
introduce to you my friend Mr. Pepler, who is a very nice man indeed
though a social idealist, and who has, I believe, something of a
practical sort to ask of you. Please excuse abruptness in this letter
of introduction; we are moving into the country and every piece of
furniture I begin to write at is taken away and put into a van.

Always yours sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON.

10, Adelphi Terrace, W.C.
30th October 1909.

CHESTERTON.
SHAW SPEAKS.
ATTENTION!

I saw your man and consoled him spiritually; but that is not the
subject of this letter. I still think tha