I am the least controversial of men. Public disputations have rarely
attracted me. For years I have failed to respond to Mr. Henry Arthur
Jones, who long ago invented a set of opinions for me and invited me to
defend them with an enviable persistence and vigour. Occasionally I may
have corrected some too gross public misstatement about me--too often
I fear with the acerbity of the inexperienced. But now, in my sixtieth
year, I find myself drawn rather powerfully into a disputation with Mr.
Hilaire Belloc. I bring an unskilled pen to the task.
I am responsible for an _Outline of History_ which has had a certain
vogue. I will assume that it is known by name to the reader. It is a
careful summary of man’s knowledge of past time. It has recently been
reissued with considerable additions in an illustrated form, and Mr.
Belloc has made a great attack upon it. He declares that I am violently
antagonistic to the Catholic Church, an accusation I deny very
earnestly, and he has produced a “Companion” to this _Outline_ of mine,
following up the periodical issue, part by part, in the _Universe_ of
London, in the _Catholic Bulletin_ of St. Paul, Minnesota, in the
_Southern Cross_ of Cape Colony, and possibly elsewhere, in which my
alleged errors are exposed and confuted.
In the enthusiasm of advertisement before the “Companion” began to
appear, these newspapers announced a work that would put Mr. Belloc
among the great classical Catholic apologists, but I should imagine
that this was before the completed manuscript of Mr. Belloc’s work had
come to hand, and I will not hold Catholics at large responsible for
all Mr. Belloc says and does.
It is with this _Companion to the Outline of History_ that I am to deal
here. It raises a great number of very interesting questions, and there
is no need to discuss the validity of the charge of Heresy that is
levelled against me personally. I will merely note that I am conscious
of no animus against Catholicism, and that in my _Outline_ I accept the
gospels as historical documents of primary value, defend Christianity
against various aspersions of Gibbon’s, and insist very strongly upon
the rôle of the Church in preserving learning in Europe, consolidating
Christendom, and extending knowledge from a small privileged class to
the whole community. I do not profess to be a Christian. I am as little
disposed to take sides between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant. Mr.
Belloc will protest against that “Roman,” but he must forgive it; I
know no other way of distinguishing between his Church and Catholics
not in communion with it, as I am between a pterodactyl and a bird.