stern Powers after the victory of the Central
Empires."

The reminder was needed. Far less than most people was Chesterton
subject to that weakness of the human spirit that brings weariness in
sustained effort and premature relaxation. Prussia had not, he said,
shown any evidence of repentance--merely of regret for lack of
success. The Kaiser said he had not wanted this war. No, said
Chesterton, he wanted a very different war. Chesterton might and did
say later that he himself had wanted a very different peace--the
destruction of Prussia, the reconstruction of the old German
states--but at present he wanted only to fight on until this became
possible.

I do not think he ever hated anybody--but he did hate Prussianism as
the "wickedness that hindered loving," and he had no liking for "the
patronizing pacifism of the gentleman [it was Romain Rolland] who
took a holiday in the Alps and said he was above the struggle; as if
there were any Alp from which the soul can look down on Calvary.
There is, indeed, one mountain among them that might be very
appropriate to so detached an observer--the mountain named after
Pilate, the man who washed his hands."*

[* _Uses of Diversity_, p. 40 (Fountain Library)]

His keen imagination could visualize the sufferings caused by war.
Vicariously he knew something of the life of the trenches, for Cecil
like many another C. Man* had managed to get to France. A delightful
article on Comradeship shows, what letters from soldiers confirm, how
perfectly at home was Private Chesterton among his fellows and how
much loved by them.

[* English soldiers are classed A, B, or C, according to their degree
of physical fitness, and Cecil was in Class C.]

I can understand a pagan, but not a Christian, who simply dismisses
the suffering of our soldiers as useless. He is like Dr. Hyde
scorning Father Damien or like those who cried at the foot of the
Cross: He saved others, Himself He cannot save. They saved others
these men, their suffering was that of the human race whose head is
Christ. With Him they bore, even if they knew it not, that mysterious
burden of humanity that makes some men question God's existence but
draws others into conscious membership of His mystical body. Many
were so drawn in those days and there seemed a new lifting up of the
Cross. The _New Witness_ does, I think, lack one note a little. They
were too busy hating Prussianism to give thought to the Christian
command to lov