rs. Some reviewers, one supposes, had not read the book; but
surely the _Daily Telegraph_ was deliberately refusing to face a
challenge when it wrote: "His whole book is an absurdity, but to be
absurd for three hundred pages on end is itself a work of genius."
That particular reviewer was shirking a serious issue. He was the
official Tory. But those whom I might call the unofficial Tories,
such men for instance as my own father, received much of this book
with delight and yet declined to take Chesterton's sociology
seriously. And I think it is worth trying to see why this was the
case.

In a letter to the _Clarion_, G.K. outlines his own position: "If you
want praise or blame for Socialists I have enormous quantities of
both. Roughly speaking (1) I praise them to infinity because they
want to smash modern society. (2) I blame them to infinity because of
what they want to put in its place. As the smashing must, I suppose,
come first, my practical sympathies are mainly with them."*

[* Letter to the _Clarion_, February 8, 1910.]

Such a confession of faith seemed shocking to the honest
old-fashioned Tory. And because it shocked him, he made the mistake
of calling it irresponsible. Chesterton frequently urged revolution
as the only possible means of changing an intolerable state of
things. But the word "revolution" suggested streets running with
blood. And, on the other hand, they had not the very faintest
conception of how intolerable the state of things was against which
Chesterton proposed to revolt. I think it must be said too that he
was a little hazy as to the exact nature of the revolution he
proposed. He certainly hoped to avoid the guillotine! And even when
urging the restoration of the common lands to the people of England,
he appended a note in which he talked of a land purchase scheme
similar to that which George Wyndham had introduced in Ireland. But
besides this tinge of vagueness in what he proposed, there was
another weakness in his presentment of his sociology which I think
was his chief weakness as a writer.

It would be hard to find anyone who got so much out of words,
proverbs, popular sayings. He wrung every ounce of meaning out of
them; he stood them on their heads; he turned them inside out. And
everything he said he illustrated with an extraordinary wealth of
fancy; but when you come to illustration by way of concrete facts
there is a curious change. In his sociology, he did the same thing
tha