he held should have been
foremost in criticism of these measures, were as determined to uphold
measures brought in by a Liberal Government as they had been to
attack anything that the Tories brought forward.

It has been well said by Mr. Belloc that Chesterton could never write
as a party man. But to the ordinary party newspaper such an attitude
was utterly incomprehensible. I think that we can also see at this
point how alien his fundamental outlook was from that even of the
best members of his own Party. A great admirer said to me the other
day that it had taken her a long time to appreciate Chesterton's
sociology. "You see, I was brought up to think that it was quite
right for the poor to have their teeth brushed by officials." This is
undoubtedly the normal Socialistic outlook and the outlook most
abhorrent to Chesterton. "The philanthropist," he once said, "is not
a brother; he is a supercilious aunt."

The five years of Liberal Government had been disillusioning to many
others besides Belloc and the Chesterton brothers. Probably many men
in newspaper offices and elsewhere continued vaguely to support the
party to which their own paper belonged. But there were others who
were in those days going through a struggle between principles and
Party which became increasingly acute. Gilbert has described his own
feelings in a review of Galsworthy's play _Loyalties_, written
several years later during the first World War.

. . . The author of _Loyalty_ suffers one simple and amazing
delusion. He imagines that in those pre-war politics Liberalism was
on the side of Labour. On this point at least I can correct him from
the most concrete experience. In the newspaper office where his hero
lingered, wondering how much longer he could stand its Pacifism, I
was lingering and wondering how much longer I could stand its
complete and fundamental Capitalism, its invariable alliance with the
employer, its invariable hostility to the striker. No such scene as
that in which the Liberal editor paced the room raving about his
hopes of a revolution ever occurred in the Liberal newspaper office
that I knew; the least hint of a revolution would have caused quite
as much horror there as in the offices of the _Morning Post_. On
nothing was the Pacifist more pacifist than upon that point. No
workman so genuine as the workman who figures in _Loyalty_ ever
figured among such Liberals. The fact is tha