discussion is nonsense that omits this certain fact. There are Jews
patriotic first for the country they live in, the country that gave
them home and citizenship, of which often their wives and mothers are
descended; there are others who feel that Jewry is their _patria_.

This was the fact the _New Witness_ could never forget. A Jew might
not be specially pro-German in feeling, yet his actions might help
Germany by being pro-Jewish. International Jewish trading _was_
trading with the enemy and was to a very large extent continuing in
spite of assurances to the contrary. Moreover international finance
was getting nervous over the continuance of the war as a menace to
its own future: it wanted peace, a peace that should still leave it
in possession in this country--and in Germany. Gilbert Chesterton was
passionately determined to cast it out.

He was a Zionist. He wished for the Jewish people the peaceful
possession of a country of their own, but he demanded urgently that
they should no longer be allowed to govern his country. Marconi still
obsessed him, and the surrender of English politics to the money
power seemed to him to represent as great a danger for the future as
Prussianism. For a moment the two dangers were the one danger, and
against them was set the people of England.

It was at this moment that Chesterton published his epic of the
English people which he called a History. Frank Swinnerton has told*
how this book came to be written. Chatto & Windus (for whom
Swinnerton worked) had asked G.K. to write a history of England: he
refused "on the ground that he was no historian." Later he signed a
contract with the same publishers for a book of essays, then
discovered that he was already under contract to give this book to
another firm. He asked Chatto & Windus to cancel their contract and
offered to write something else for them. Swinnerton's account
continues:

[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 93.]

The publishers, concealing jubilation, sternly recalled their
original proposal for a short history of England. Shrieks and groans
were distinctly heard all the way from Beaconsfield, but the promise
was kept. The _Short History of England_ was what Chesterton must
have called a wild and awful success. It probably has been the most
generally read of all his books. But while the credit for it is his,
he must not be blamed for impudence in essaying history, when the
inspiration arose in another's