t his best critics blamed in his literary biographies. He would
take some one fact and appear to build upon it an enormous
superstructure and then, very often, it would turn out that the fact
itself was inaccurately set down; and the average reader, discovering
the inaccuracy, felt that the entire superstructure was on a rotten
foundation and had fallen with it to the ground. Yet the ordinary
reader was wrong. The "fact" had not been the foundation of his
thought, but only the thing that had started him thinking. If the
"fact" had not been there at all, his thinking would have been
neither more nor less valid. But most readers could not see the
distinction.

It is a little difficult to make the point clear; but anyone who has
read the _Browning_ and the _Dickens_ and then read the reviews of
them will recognise what I mean. It was universally acknowledged that
Chesterton might commit a hundred inaccuracies and yet get at the
heart of his subject in a way that the most painstaking biographer
and critic could not emulate. The more deeply one reads Dickens or
Browning, the more even one studies their lives, the more one is
confirmed as to the profound truth of the Chesterton estimate and the
genius of his insight. A superficial glance sees only the errors; a
deeper gaze discovers the truth. It is exactly the same with his
sociology. But here we are in a field where there is far more
prejudice. When Chesterton talked of State interference and used
again and again the same illustration--that of children whose hair
was forcibly cut short in a Board School--two questions were asked by
Socialists: Was this a solitary incident? Was it accurately reported?
When a pained doctor wrote to the papers saying the incident had been
merely one of a request to parents who had gladly complied for fear
their children should catch things from other and dirtier children,
it appeared as though G.K. had built far too much on this one point.
It was not the case. He was not building on the incident, he was
illustrating by the incident. But it must be admitted that he was
incredibly careless in investigating such incidents; and quite
indifferent as to his own accuracy. And this was foolish, for he
could have found in Police Court records, in the pages of _John Bull_
and later of the _Eye Witness_ itself, abundance of well verified
illustrations of his thesis.

In the same way, when he talked of the robbery of the people of
England by the great