ns_ was
published Gilbert Chesterton had reached the stage of saying "as much
as ever I did, more than ever I did, I believe in Liberalism. But
there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals." At
this time too he infuriated an orthodox Liberal journalist by saying
of the party leaders "some of them are very nice old gentlemen, some
of them are very nasty old gentlemen, and some of them are old
without being gentlemen at all." An orthodox church journalist in a
periodical charmingly entitled _Church Bells_ got angrier yet. "A
certain Mr. G. K. Chesterton," he wrote, had, when speaking for the
C.S.U. in St. Paul's Chapter House, remarked "the best of his
Majesty's Ministers are agnostics, and the worst devil worshippers."
_Church Bells_ cries out: "We only mention this vulgar falsehood
because we regret that an association, with which the names of many
of our respected ecclesiastics are connected, should have allowed the
bad taste and want of all gentlemanly feeling displayed by the words
quoted, to have passed unchallenged." "Vulgar falsehood" is surely
charming.

But perhaps even deeper than his disillusionment with any Party was
his growing sense of the unreality of the political scene. He has
described it in the _Autobiography:_

I was finding it difficult to believe in politics; because the
reality seemed almost unreal, as compared with the reputation or the
report. I could give twenty instances to indicate what I mean, but
they would be no more than indications, because the doubt itself was
doubtful. I remember going to a great Liberal club, and walking about
in a large crowded room, somewhere at the end of which a bald
gentleman with a beard was reading something from a manuscript in a
low voice. It was hardly unreasonable that we did not listen to him,
because we could not in any case have heard; but I think a very large
number of us did not even see him . . . it is possible, though not
certain, that one or other of us asked carelessly what was supposed
to be happening in the other corner of the large hall. . . . Next
morning I saw across the front of my Liberal paper in gigantic
headlines the phrase: "Lord Spencer Unfurls the Banner." Under this
were other remarks, also in large letters, about how he had blown the
trumpet for Free Trade and how the blast would ring through England
and rally all the Free-Traders. It did appear, on careful
exa