g. He must be content with these mere hints of its
existence; but he cannot define it, because it is like a person, and
no book of logic will undertake to define Aunt Jane or Uncle William.
We can only say, with more or less mournful conviction, that if Aunt
Jane is not a person, there is no such thing as a person. And I say
with equal conviction that if Ireland is not a nation, there is no
such thing as a nation. . . .

* * * *

In September 1916 Cecil Chesterton bade farewell to the _New
Witness_. He was in the army as a private in the East in the East
Surreys, and G.K. took over the editorship.

I like Chesterton's paper, the _New Witness_ [wrote an American
journalist in the _New York Tribune_ (no, _not_ yet Herald-Tribune)],
since G.K.C. has taken it over. . . . Gilbert Chesterton seems to me
the best thing England has produced since Dickens. . . . I like the
things he believes in, and I hate sociological experts and
prohibitionists and Uhlan officers, which are the things he hates. I
feel in him that a very honest man is speaking. . . . I like his
impudence to Northcliffe. . . . As a journalist Chesterton gets only
about a quarter of himself into action. But even a quarter of
Chesterton is good measure. . . . He works very hard at his
journalism. That is why he doesn't do it as well as his careless
things, which give him fun. But for all that there is no other
editorial page in England or the United States written with the snap,
wit and honest humanity of his paragraphs. I hope he won't blunt
himself by overwork. It would be an international loss if that sane,
jolly mind is bent to routine. England has need of him.

The overwork and the high quality of it were alike undeniable, but
after the long repose of his illness G.K. seemed like a giant
refreshed and ready to run his course. Each week's _New Witness_ had
an Editorial, besides the paragraphs of which the _New York Tribune_
speaks (not all of these however written by himself), and a signed
article under the suggestive general heading "At the Sign of the
World's End." The difference between articles and a real book, and
the degree of work needed to turn the one into the other, may be seen
if the essays on Marriage in the paper be compared with _The
Superstition of Divorce_ for which they furnished material, and those
on Ireland with _Irish Impressions_. There were besides very many
art