for the
Community that men should take responsibility and initiative for
themselves even if the work could be done more efficiently by wage
slaves. To his dismay he found that the Trade Unions did not dream of
applying this test and that they were aligned against the Pirates--as
the independent owners were usually called.

He had always been an ardent supporter of the Trade Unions. To him it
had seemed they were trying to do the work of the ancient Guilds
under far more difficult conditions. But after the war for the first
time a little note of doubt creeps into his voice when he is speaking
of them. They were still vocal for the rights of labour, but they had
begun to lay stress exclusively on the less important of those rights.

Writing of the loss of the allotments he suggested in one article
that the Trades Unions might well use some part of their funds in
purchasing land to be held in perpetuity by their members. But I doubt
if he much expected that they would do so. Many Trade Unionists were
working for the Bus Company and were more concerned about their
conditions of work than about the handful of drivers who were their
own masters. But the Unions had begun to stress almost solely the
question of hours and of wages; to fight for good conditions but no
longer for control or ownership: to demand security but to agree to
abandon many of their rights in return.

It was a chill fear and for long he resisted it, but in these
terrible years it had begun to shake him. Were the people of England
losing the appetite for freedom and for property? Were the Trades
Unions, from lack of leadership and confusion of thought, beginning
to accept the Servile State?

CHAPTER XXIII

Rome via Jerusalem

SHORTLY AFTER THE war Gilbert and Frances set out on their travels,
going in 1919 to Palestine, home through Italy early in 1920, and
starting out again the following year for a lecture tour in the
United States.

To his friendship with Maurice Baring Gilbert owed their being able
to make the first of these journeys as well as much else. The picture
entitled "Conversation Piece" of Chesterton, Belloc and Baring is
well known. Was it Chesterton himself who christened it "Baring,
Overbearing and Past Bearing?" Many elements united the three in a
close friendship: love of literature, love of Europe, a common view
of the philosophy of history and of life. Frances Chesterton often
said that of all her husband's friends she