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ELLIOTT ELLIOTT
ELLIOTT ELLIOTT
OPTICIANS 6ApIILY'rA , 0 •ERTN IUE
OPTICIANS
John,fll'wIF E:- Ma ts Bros: Sludeof
Piccadilly Arcade Perth
Myr.
Tel.
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PERTH, WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 19".
NO. 9,190.
BELLOC-HISTORIAN
P&ME THREEPENOE.
AND
BZVENTYSECOND YEAR.
CRITIC ...
Ceaseless Struggle Against Every Form of Liberalism Prophetic Analyses of Social and Political Trends In his " Path to Rome," a beautiful that he always visits the historical travel story of his pilgrimage on foot scenes he describes, and his masterly from Tours to'Rome, he gives a very pictures of the terrain are among the intimate and human picture of the high-lights of his books. One critic reChurch, the Mother, who alone gives marked that he was so careful in his man the opportunity to enjoy life in descriptions that he measured the batits most wholesome aspects. The Ten tlefield of Waterloo with a hand rule. Commandments and the Laws of the Not only has he been a true histor. strokes he proves that the moneyed Church do not hinder legitimate enjoyian, ever searching for the truth and few in England control the vast means faithfully expressing it, but also a ment, but rather direct and guide it. of production, making the people deCritics have replied that these laws staunch and fearless defender of the pendent and depriving them of econohamper and hedge man's fullest attainCatholic Church. It was he, together mic freedom. He argues that there ment of worthy happiness. Not so, with Chesterton, who taught a forgetare only two solutions to this unfair answers Belloc. The man who breaks ful age that Catholicism made the nasituation: either to allow the state to these laws may satisfy his desire for tions of the past great, and that it control, which is communism, or to reself-indulgence, but by so doing he turn property to individual owners, a again must become the inspiring force does not increase hit happiness. On in moulding a civilisation that is to process which he calls " Distributism." the contrary he makes himself mfserstand. " Europe;' he writes, " will reBy this latter method wealth is decen. able. The happiest people were the turn to the Faith or she will perish. The tralised, with capital in the hands of saints, yet the world regarded them as Faith is Europe. And Europe is the the many instead of the favoured few. fools. Faith." The change would make " the mass of His books have had a great effect This is the theme that runs through the people more self-subsistent, rooted upon the people of England. They his books, " Europe and the Faith," in the soil and in possession of small made them realise that the Church is "ilow the Reformation Happened," land holdings." a force to be reckoned with, and where and Not only did he prophesy the in - "Characters of the Reformation, her influence is dominant there is "The Crisis of Civilisation." In these evitable economic chaos in Europe, but peace, culture, civilisation. Protestantworks he has attempted to break down he foretold, almost thirty years ago, ism, however, has sunk its roots deep much of the old prejudice against the the present war -of destruction unless in English life, and its influence has Faith, to restore Catholic culture, great changes were made. In his been carefully fostered by birth and which was so prevalent in Europe beessav, " The Modern French Temper," education. For centuries historians fore " that most staggering event since written in 1911, he said that " when the and educators have so coloured events, the foundation of the Church itself" — war is over ( should it end victoriously movements, and characters that the the Reformation. This revolt destroyfor the Allied, it will leave such a legtrue story of England has been hidden ed the unity of Europe and separated acy of hatred as even i9i0 dirt not under rubbish centuries deep. Belloc peoples from the common bond of releave in France; and that, the chief has struggled for long years to clear in its afterreality of all, will mean a legacy of on - ligion and civilisation, away this rubbish and to present the math came the wholesale looting of cuding struggle, renewed and again refacts to the glaring light of truth and Church property, the abuse of capitalnewed. it will mean a whole cycle of to the astonished eves of a complacent ism, the growth of state autocracy, the wars in which our civilisation kill sink intelligentsia. loss of human freedom, the decline in from one lower level to another—unless Not only has he jarred placid Engreligion, and chaos in political, econodisarmament is imposed by the vicl and by his historical disclosures, but mic, and social life. tors." he has proved that Europe, which grew With his pen dipped in righteous anHis Work as Historian. strong in civilisation and culture in the ger, he blames England for making the in his historical Ftudies he uses no shadow of the Church, crumbled when Reformation a success. Had she refootnotes, gives no references, biblioshe turned from the Faith to follow mained faithful, this tragedy would graphies, or "other accessories of exact her pagan seducers. To-day she is a never have happened. With her descholarship," employed, as he says, for ruin. The glories of the past lie in fection, after a thousand years of lov"ritual adornment and terror." As as hunger, famine, and rapine stalk alty to Rome, came the collapse of consequence his scholarship has been the land. War will ne\•er solve her Christendom, leaving the nations of questioned. Some bitter critics have problems: neither will the idealistic Europe disorganised, war-scarred, and said that his books were " loaded with spummings of theorists. Her only salbloodstained. papistical Has, full of rash gencralisavation lies in her return, like the Proin " Survivals and New Arrivals" he tinns and assumptions unsupported by digal Son, to her Fathers House lest nurve}s the opposition between the references and quotations." The fact, she die of w•retchedness,and hunger. Church and the modern world. " The however, that he ignores thi, method Tlis biographical studies are broad, Church." he writes, " is loved and of modern historians, is no evidence moving panoramas of characters, hated in a greater degree than that that he did not use all available sourscenes, background. in a technique which measures other loves and res. A check of his work reveals that that resembles that of Carlyle, he drahatreds: even those between nations he did, and that he used not only ori. matises the events of the past as tak. in our modern fever of exalted nationginal do•umcnts, but also old prints, ing place in the present, with the emalism. The loyalty she obtains is more maps, and even metemingical tables. phasis upon such physical details as vivid than that prnduce8 even by modin defence of his books he writes: " The dress, features, facial expressions, and ern p•utrintism. The hatred she arouses evidence on which we base our histori. gestures. Ile says that a biography is stronger than th, hatred felt for an ell conclusion must include much more lives only when told as a story, " with enemy in arms. And those loves and than documents, much more than re. vitality at its highest: with a human hatreds have immediate and tremencorded statements—we have also tradi(Continued on Page 17.) dous reactions upon all around." tion," So exacting is he in his research
.0 . Presenting the Church as the Inspirational Force of Civilisation (Continued from last week.) His Estimate of "Liberalism." With damaging effect Belloc reviewed "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon. .after conceding that it is a literary masterpiece, he says that " this great work is profoundly unhistorical. It ;epresents a thoroughly warped view of the whole vast revolution which turned Pagan into Christian Europe." Ile concludes by saying that the work is an attack upon the Church by an apostate who " falsified ,distorted, ignored, and misinterpreted the materials he employed in his work." Belloc continued the work which his old friend, Cardinal Newman, had started—to present the Catholic view to the reading public and to wage tear against - Liberalism. The latter, said Belloc, is an evil that must he destroyed wherever it lifts its ugly head. for it is " something illiberal, raw and barbaric."" Ile seemed to thrive on opposition. it inspired him to great achievements. Aftercitizen lish he hadatbecome the ageit of naturalised thirty, heEng. became an uncompromising critic of Eng•
land. He said its politics were corrupt, its religion spurious, its economic system unfair and heading for disaster. in making these accusations he was acting as it loyal Englishman bent ,,it saving his adopted country. For sa Liberal mm. four years he served a e her in the house of Commons, iris entrance into that governing body was, as somenne said, " like npening the back door to a hurricane;" the House was hndty shaken 1w the disclosures he made in ronlpInN. with Cecil and Gilhert Chesterton. The expose cent Cecil uniustly to gaol for libel. The result was twn great hooks by Relloc, " The Servile State" and " The Distribution of property." The first of these hooks is now regarded as a most prnphetir and penetrating nnalvsis of conditions that were to effect Enelanl and the Continent. Written in 1912 it foretold tF.c development of liberal capitalism into state capitalism and eventunlly into the Rate Community—enn (lit ions existing in Eurnpe to-day. " The Distribution of Property" is " a blueprint for it Christian state in economics." In hold
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