e convincing logic. Don't
you sometimes find it convenient, even in my case, that your friends
are less touchy than you are?

By all means drop any paper you dislike, though if you do it for
every book review you think unfair, I fear your admirable range of
modern knowledge will be narrowed. Of the paper in question I will
merely say this. My brother and in some degree the few who have
worked with him have undertaken a task of public criticism for the
sake of which they stand in permanent danger of imprisonment and
personal ruin. We are incessantly reminded of this danger; and no one
has ever dared to suggest that we have any motive but the best. If
you should ever think it right to undertake such a venture, you will
find that the number of those who will commit their journalistic
fortunes to it is singularly small: and includes some who have more
courage and honesty than acquaintance with the hierarchy of art. It
is even likely that you will come to think the latter less important.

Yours, sans rancune,

G. K. CHESTERTON.

P.S. On re-reading your letter in order to be as fair as I am
trying to be, I observe you specially mention ----'s letters. You
will see, of course, that this does not make any difference; to stop
letters would be to stop Haynes' letter and others on your side; and
these could not be printed without permitting a rejoinder. I post
this from Beaconsfield, where anything further will find me.

It ended as all quarrels did that anyone started with Gilbert:

DEAR G.K.C.

Also I can't quarrel with you. But the Hueffer business aroused my
long dormant moral indignation and I let fly at the most sensitive
part of the _New Witness_ constellation, the only part about whose
soul I care. I hate these attacks on rather miserable exceptional
people like Hueffer and Masterman. I know these aren't perfect men
but their defects make quite sufficient hells for them without these
public peltings. I suppose I ought to have written to C.C. instead of
to you. One of these days I will go and have a heart to heart talk to
him. Only I always get so amiable when I meet a man. He, C.C., needs
it--I mean the talking to.

Yours ever

H.G.

Through the war's progress Wells appeared to Chesterton to be
expressing with a powerful and individual genius not his own
considered views but the reactions of public opini