I am sorry to receive your letter of May 19th. May I point out to
you that Mr. Belloc has been attacking my reputation as a thinker,
a writer, an impartial historian, and an educated person for
four-and-twenty fortnights in the _Universe_? He has misquoted; he
has misstated. Will your Catholic public tolerate no reply?
Under the stimulus of this remonstrance, the editor of the _Universe_,
after a month’s delay and various consultations with Mr. Belloc and
the directors of his paper, offered Mr. Wells the “opportunity of
correcting definite points of fact upon which he might have been
misrepresented,” but declined to allow him to defend his views or
examine Mr. Belloc’s logic and imputations in his columns. Mr. Wells
was disinclined for a series of wrangles upon what might or might
not be a “point of fact.” He then offered his articles to various
non-Catholic papers, but, with one accord, they expressed their lack
of interest in either Mr. Belloc himself or in his exposition of
Catholic ideas about natural selection, the origin of man, and the
general course of history. Yet it seems to Mr. Wells that, regarded
as a mental sample, Mr. Belloc is not without significance, and that
the examination of the contemporary Catholic attitude towards the
fundamental facts of history is a matter of interest beyond Catholic
circles. Accordingly he has decided to issue these articles in the
form of a book, and he has urged the publishers to advertise them, as
freely as may be permitted, in the Catholic press. He has retained the
“cross-heads” customary in journalistic writing.