Daily News<\/i>\u00a0Volume 3, 1905 \u2013 June, 1906<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By 1905, G.K. Chesterton, only 30 years old, had established himself as one of the great essayists of his time, and clearly, everyone knew it.\u00a0<\/i>Before the end of the year, he would be hired as the \u201cOur Notebook\u201d columnist for the\u00a0Illustrated London News<\/i>, and he continued to issue a steady stream of contributions to miscellaneous journals. But his reputation was made in his very popular Saturday column for the\u00a0Daily News.<\/i>\u00a0And even the\u00a0Daily News<\/i>\u00a0saw more of his work, as he churned out dozens of book reviews that appeared during the week, and even added letters to the editor. He wrote so much for the\u00a0Daily News<\/i>\u00a0during this time, that only a year-and-a-half worth of material manages to fit into the Volume Three. It includes not only such classics as \u201cA Piece of Chalk,\u201d \u201cWhat I Found in My Pocket,\u201d \u201cThe Twelve Men,\u201d and \u201cThe Extraordinary Cabman,\u201d but wonderful previously uncollected essays such as \u201cOn\u00a0Toys and Other Allegories,\u201d \u201cTragedy and the Gods,\u201d and \u201cA Plea for Political Unreason.\u201d We find delicious literary criticism of Euripides, Ibsen, John Masefield, George MacDonald, Andrew Lang, Shelley, Shaw, and Shakespeare, as well as art criticism of painters as different as Durer and Whistler.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is some of Chesterton’s most enjoyable writing. In the midst of his astonishing variety of subject matter, he is laying the groundwork for\u00a0Orthodoxy<\/i>, with passages that will prove to be very similar to the book\u2014touching on such things as the sameness of optimism and pessimism, the difference between a suicide and a martyr, and the uniqueness of Christianity among all religions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n All of these essays are controversial. That is, Chesterton takes a stand in favor\u00a0of a truth he has identified against an error he has also identified. \u201cIn persuasion we have nothing to do except to try and show that we are right.\u201d To what end? \u201cWhat we are all trying to do is to induce some regiments of the enemy to desert.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He has begun his war on two words that are becoming too over-used and under-considered: progress and efficiency, words that do not mean anything unless one establishes what one’s goal is. But the politicians and pundits use the words as ends in themselves, with no\u00a0reference at all to any defined aims. \u201cThe typical modern man in revolt has no positive picture at all of what he is aiming at, but only a vague (and erroneous) sensation of progress.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While the new age is patting itself on the back at its superiority over old things, Chesterton maintains that the true independent mind must assert its superiority to new things. It is easy to avoid the fads and prejudices of the past. It is much more difficult to avoid the fads and prejudices of the present. The most creative thinking involves picturing a future when the present is the past. Amazingly, Chesterton can already see past decayed socialism in Russia and express concern about a capitalist menace in Japan. This is in 1905!\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At the same\u00a0time\u00a0he predicts the future,\u00a0he does what he can to preserve the past, to prevent good things from being lost. He defends the traditions that are not only being neglected but those which are being pompously dismissed, including the old ways of generating a joyous laughter. He still wants to enjoy the \u201cold rowdy\u00a0humour\u00a0which men count humiliating nowadays,\u201d but which is actually less humiliating \u201cthan the bitter comedy and sneering psychology of to-day. The old farce only humiliated the body; which is a comic thing to begin with: the body is a beast on its hind legs. The\u00a0Zolaesque\u00a0upheavals seek\u00a0to humiliate the soul.\u201d He defends beauty to a world that is growing uglier and uglier. It is ugly, he says, because the modern world is unhappy. \u201cWherever there are happy men they will build beautiful things.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And\u00a0of course\u00a0he defends Christianity, even while conceding that most Christians fail to fulfill the Christian ideal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This bitter and bracing fact cannot be too much insisted upon in this and every other moral question. But, perhaps, it might be suggested that this failure is not so much the failure of Christians in connection with the Christian ideal as the failure of any men in connection with any ideal. That Christians are not always Christian is obvious; neither are Liberals\u00a0always liberal, nor Socialists always social, nor Humanitarians always kind, nor Rationalists always rational, nor are gentlemen always gentle, nor do working men always work. If people are especially horrified at the failure of Christian practice it must\u00a0be an indirect compliment to the Christian creed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n As always, Chesterton combines religion and politics, and while he is accurate in his predictions, he is never predictable in his controversies. When attacking party politics, he says the\u00a0evil in party government \u201cdoes not lie in the fact that Liberals and Tories hate each other too much because they are Liberals and Tories. It lies in the fact that Liberals and Tories do not hate each other enough . . . It does not lie in the fact that the\u00a0governing class is divided in the form of two factions; it lies in the fact that the governing class is a great deal too much united as the governing class.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n His reviews of long-forgotten books are completely intoxicating. It is amazing that he can write\u00a0a review that is worth reading about a book that is not worth reading, a book that will not likely ever be read by anyone ever again. He is always generous to his subject, even ending a review of a particularly weak effort from one particular author whose\u00a0book was \u201cnot properly a book at all,\u201d but \u201cIf he would write it\u00a0again\u00a0I would read it again.\u201d Could anyone ask for a better review of a bad book?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Essays from The Daily News, 1905-June 1906<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chesterton-101"],"yoast_head":"\n