those people at the Albert Hall. A young Anglo-Catholic
curate has just told me that the crowd there cheered all references
to the Pope, and laughed at every mention of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. It's a queer state of things. I am concerned most,
however, about somebody I value more than the Archbishop of
Canterbury; Frances, to whom I owe much of my own faith, and to whom
therefore (as far as I can see my way) I also owe every decent chance
for the controversial defence of her faith. If her side can convince
me, they have a right to do so; if not, I shall go hot and strong to
convince her. I put it clumsily, but there is a point in my mind.
Logically, therefore, I must await answers from Waggett and Gore as
well as Knox and McNabb; and talk the whole thing over with her, and
then act as I believe.

This is a dusty political sort of letter, with nothing in it but
what I think and nothing of what I feel. For that side of it, I can
only express myself by asking for your prayers.

The accident of his having to speak at this Congress, where he was
received with enormous enthusiasm, probably led to a fuller analysis
of this element in his thought. I put here a letter he wrote to
Maurice Baring soon after his conversion, because it sums up the
Anglican question as he finally saw it:

Feb. 14th, 1923

Please forgive me for the delay; but I have been caught in a
cataract of letters and work in connection with the new paper we are
trying to start; and am now dictating this under conditions that make
it impossible for it to resemble anything so personal and intimate as
the great unwritten epistle to which you refer. But I will note down
here very hurriedly and in a more impersonal way, some of the matters
that have affected me in relation to the great problem.

To begin with, I am shy of giving one of my deepest reasons because
it is hard to put it without offence, and I am sure it is the wrong
method to offend the wavering Anglo-Catholic. But I believe one of my
strongest motives was mixed up with the idea of honour. I feel there
is something mean about not making complete confession and
restitution after a historic error and slander. It is not the same
thing to withdraw the charges against Rome one by one, or restore the
traditions to Canterbury one by one. Suppose a young prig refuses to
live with his father or his friend or