icles in other papers English and American and he was also writing
his _History of England_.

If all Englishmen had kept the same unwavering gaze at reality as
Chesterton much of what he called "the rather feeble-minded reaction"
that followed the war might have been avoided and with it the advent
of Hitler. Particularly he opposed the tendency to call "Kaiserism"
what is now called "Hitlerism" and should always be called
Prussianism. While agreeing that care should be taken not to write of
German atrocities that could not be substantiated he insisted that
there was no ground for forgetting or ignoring the findings of the
American enquiry in Belgium which had established more than enough.
These horrors, the bombing of civilians, shelling of open towns and
sinking of passenger ships culminating with the Lusitania, were in
the main what brought America into the war. Here, as with England,
Chesterton did not admit as primary what has since been so
exclusively stressed--the economic motive. Here as with England he
took the volunteer army as one great proof of the will of a Nation.
And those of us who remember can testify that in America as in
England the will of the people was ahead of the decision of the
politicians.

On one point Chesterton's articles have a special interest: the
question of reprisals. When the Germans broke yet another of the
promises of the Hague Convention and initiated the use of poison gas
there was much discussion as to the ethics of reprisals and G.K. used
against reprisals two arguments one of which was a rare example of a
fallacy in his arguments. If a wasp stings you, he said, you do not
sting back. No, we might reply, but you squash it--you have as a man
an advantage over a wasp and so do not need to use its own weapons to
defeat it.

His other argument is far more powerful--is indeed overwhelming. If
you use, even as reprisals, unlawful weapons, it is harder to prove
you did not initiate them. And I remember well another feeling at the
time expressed by G.K. which was I believe that of the majority of
English people--if we use these things, if we accept the Prussian
gospel of "frightfulness" then spiritually we have lost the war.
Spiritually Prussia has conquered: as she has engulfed the old
Germanies and, first imposing her rule, then gained acceptance of her
ideas, so it may be with us. Ideas are everything and the barbarians
destroy more with ideas even than by material weapons, horribl