Daily Herald<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When G.K. Chesterton left the\u00a0Daily News<\/i>\u00a0in February of 1913 and started writing for the\u00a0Daily Herald<\/i>, it was itself news in all the other papers. He had walked away from\u00a0the liberal paper that had built his great reputation but that had also benefitted greatly from his weekly column. It happened after a major falling out with the editors, who did not have the courage to take a stand against the corrupt leadership of the Liberal Party during the Marconi Scandal. Chesterton’s parting shot was to call the paper’s owner \u201ca cad and coward.\u201d The\u00a0Daily Herald<\/i>\u00a0was a Labor newspaper, and its editors gave Chesterton the freedom to write whatever he wanted. Chesterton used the platform to excoriate the government in general and the Liberals in particular. But, with equal force, he also went after big money capitalists, who were largely the source of the government corruption. People forget that the Marconi Scandal also exposed the existence of secret party funds, which Chesterton calls \u201cpublic money disposed of in private.\u201d And since this phenomenon was not exclusive to the Liberal Party, he points out that \u201cThe party system has become a deadlock of mutual blackmail.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In the\u00a0Daily Hera<\/i>ld<\/i>, Chesterton continues his attacks on the party leaders for covering up their crimes, and is subsequently attacked by an article in\u00a0The New Statesman\u00a0<\/i>that hauls out the\u00a0old chestnut against\u00a0Chesterton, calling him an anti-Semite, saying that he never would have criticized Rufus Isaacs but for the fact Isaacs was Jewish. GKC rebuts this with one of his most passionate and forthright denials of this ugly charge against him:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I know I do not write in insincerity, I do not think I write in anger (but of this no man can be sure) when I say that I think the writer of that note about my Anti-Semitism really ought to be ashamed of himself. There is such a thing as Anti-Semitism; as there was such a thing as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew or the Massacres of September. It is a cruel thing, though often produced by cruel provocation. It may be that Anti-Semites may have written for this paper or the \u201cNew Witness\u201d: because (queer as it may sound to modern Liberals and Socialists), we think a man has right to be an Anti-Semite if he chooses. But the suggestion that my motive is Anti-Semite is one of the very few things that are contradicted by every fact in existence. It is contradicted by the facts of the Marconi Case; in which we denounce two Gentiles to one Jew. It is contradicted by the facts of every public controversy in which I have been concerned, from opposing the unjust sentence on\u00a0Stinie\u00a0Morrison to supporting the splendid and generous crusade of Dr. Eder. It is contradicted by the facts of the whole of my private life, which has been less private than most. It is contradicted by myself and my nearest friends on our personal word, which is certainly not a more damaged security than that of the politicians we attack. We joke about Jews; but\u00a0so\u00a0do the\u00a0Jews. We\u00a0recognise\u00a0a difficulty about the Jews; but\u00a0so\u00a0do the Jews. But if you say we should not have said the same if no Jew had ever been near the Marconi Case, then you talk rubbish. I have\u00a0analysed\u00a0this small handful of the rubbish; and I hope we shall\u00a0hear of it no more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sadly, this hope remains unfulfilled even today.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Chesterton has been accused of focusing on Rufus Isaacs, a Jew, in the Marconi Scandal instead of the equally guilty David Lloyd George, a non-Jew. But this isn’t true, and the\u00a0evidence is in the\u00a0Daily Herald<\/i>. Long before he wrote his infamous Open Letter to Lord Reading (Isaacs) in the\u00a0New Witness<\/i>\u00a0in 1918, he sent an Open Letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Lloyd George) in the\u00a0Daily Herald<\/i>\u00a0on May 3, 1913, lambasting him. A reader subsequently demanded that Chesterton apologize to Lloyd George, and GKC pens a very crafty \u201cApology\u201d that shows that his attack is not personal. \u201cI do\u00a0apologise\u00a0to you for the causes of your own fall\u2026You did not make the mess; its mud is on us\u00a0and on our children.\u201d He implores Lloyd George to \u201csmash the system\u201d and \u201cbe the deliverer of Democracy.\u201d Another unfulfilled hope.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Chesterton predicts that the ruling party would try to change the subject rather than dealing justly and openly with the corruption exposed by the Marconi Scandal. (\u201cThe whole point of conjuring is to make unimportant anything that is important; and that is the whole point of modern politics.\u201d) He gets more specific in his prediction and says what the subject of distraction will be: Women\u2019s Suffrage. And sure enough, the Liberals suddenly and loudly embrace the cause of Women\u2019s Suffrage, after having ignored it for years. Thus, we could argue that women got the vote in England not because of their poignant demonstrations, but because of the corrupt Liberal party trying to draw attention away from the Marconi Scandal. The ruling party did not care about justice for women, but about preserving its own power, and was now engaging in the same sort of sensationalism as the Suffragists, \u201cfixing the limelight on Mrs. Drummond so as to shift it away from Mr. Lloyd George.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Chesterton is opposed to Women\u2019s Suffrage on the principle that the political process is flawed and women have more influence in society (especially in a democracy) in realms other than the political process. For women to think that their lot would be better if they had the vote is a kind of insult to the laboring men whose vote has not helped their lot whatsoever. \u201cI have read carefully all the serious arguments; and\u00a0they all start from one of two assumptions: that a voter has political power (which I deny), or that a modern employee has economic independence (which I also deny); and there we stick.\u201d Chesterton objects to the methods of the Suffragists, which he calls\u00a0\u201cimpolite but not\u00a0impolitical.\u201d However, he defends them against the men who have mistreated them: \u201cI think there are masculine emotions, and bad ones, mixed up with this detestable mobbing of women by men. But while the roughs may have thought of thousands of things, I will swear they have never thought once about their votes. If it interests Mr. Housman [Laurence Housman, a proponent of Women\u2019s Suffrage] I may tell him that I was pelted with eggs myself for protecting Suffragists in my house; and I still\u00a0do not see how anyone with popular sympathies could have failed to foresee such things.\u201d Moreover, after Philip Snowden had made a speech that attacked the methods of physical violence used by the Suffragists as \u201can example of their reason not being sufficiently developed to carry on the contest in the intellectual sphere,\u201d GKC responds by saying, \u201cAfter reading Mr. Philip Snowden\u2019s lecture, I feel almost inclined to dress up as a woman, a stout elderly, respectable woman, and go and knock down the Nelson Column by leaning against it.\u201d He said the remark is \u201c(1) bad manners, (2) bad reasoning, (3) bad history and politics.\u201d He goes on to defend the intellect of the Suffragists and the use of physical violence, even though he disagrees with them, and savaging\u00a0Snowden, even though they are both against the Suffragists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My critic says that any paper would print what I wrote, evidently meaning anything written against Suffragettes. Why, yes; if I wrote tosh; if I said a woman\u2019s skull was smaller than a\u00a0man\u2019s; if I said that in war women would be unpatriotic (they are much more likely to be brutally jingo); if I repeat all the rubbish of Schopenhauer; if I really\u00a0did<\/i>\u00a0despise the woman\u2019s intellect, and the reader\u2019s as well,\u00a0then<\/i>\u00a0probably any paper would read what I wrote. At least their only difficulty in printing it would be that I should not write it. But if you think I could print my sincere argument, right or wrong, in any other daily paper than this, I say to you again that you do not know the land you live in, nor the crisis to which your countrymen have come. I also tell you that I know more about it that you do, having tried to get it printed in the other papers, and failed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Though he is grateful for the freedom to say whatever he\u00a0wants, it is ironic that the\u00a0Daily Herald<\/i>\u00a0contains some of Chesterton’s most ephemeral journalism. When he felt more restricted about what he could write, he wrote for the ages, and not just for the day. Though some of these essays were collected in book form, it does not qualify as one of his timeless volumes. Published in America under the title\u00a0The Utopia of Usurers<\/i>, the book has never been published in England. For the rest of the essays, while there is interesting material concerning Chesterton’s life\u00a0and personal ideas, they will always lack that universal appeal that most of his writing enjoys. The anger, though he wishes to deny it, is palpable. We can sense that Chesterton is ready to explode. And that is precisely what happens. His writing for the\u00a0Herald<\/i>\u00a0came to an end when Chesterton suffered a complete physical collapse in November, 1914. He would lay semi-comatose for the next six months, while his body, mind, and spirit, had to recover.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Essays from The Daily Herald <\/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-38991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chesterton-101"],"yoast_head":"\n