To begin with, I am “an intense patriot.” This will surprise many
readers. I dread its effect on Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, whose favourite
tune upon the megaphone for years has been that I am the friend of
every country but my own. Will he intervene with a series of articles
to “My dear Belloc”? I hope not. I might plead that almost any chapter
of the _Outline of History_ could be quoted against this proposition.
But Mr. Belloc is ruthless; he offers no evidence for his statement,
no foothold for a counter-plea. He just says it, very clearly, very
emphatically several times over, and he says it, as I realise very
soon, because it is the necessary preliminary to his next still more
damaging exposures.
They are that I am an Englishman “of the Home Counties and London
Suburbs”--Mr. Belloc, it seems, was born all over Europe--that my
culture is entirely English, that I know nothing of any language or
literature or history or science but that of England. And from this
his creative invention sweeps on to a description of this new Wells
he is evoking to meet his controversial needs. My admiration grows. I
resist an impulse to go over at once to Mr. Belloc’s side. This, for
example, is splendid. This new Wells, this suburban English Protestant,
has written his _Outline of History_ because, says Mr. Belloc, “he
does not know that ‘foreigners’ (as he would call them) have general
histories.”
That “as he would call them” is the controversial Mr. Belloc rising to
his best.
Mr. Belloc, I may note in passing, does not cite any of these general
histories to which he refers. It would surely make an interesting
list and help the Catholic soul in danger to better reading. The
American reader, at whose prejudices this stuff about my patriotism
is presumably aimed, would surely welcome a competing Outline by a
“foreigner.” Mr. Belloc might do worse things than a little translation
work.
Then the Royal College of Science shrivels at his touch to a mechanics’
institute, and the new Wells, I learn, “does really believe from the
bottom of his heart all that he read in the text-books of his youth.”
The picture of this new Wells, credulous, uncritical devourer of the
text-books supplied by his suburban institute, inveterate Protestant,
grows under the pen of this expert controversialist. I have next to
be presented as a low-class fellow with a peculiar bias against the
“Gentry of my own country,” and this is accordingly done. “Gentlemen”
with whom I have quarrelled are hinted at darkly--a pretty touch of
fantasy. A profound and incurable illiteracy follows as a matter of
course.