trAPIrPrIrr: a
ELLIOTT ELLIOTT
I
OPTICIANS APILLYARf,
pr-- PERTH
44
John fllioR mar. Ex-Mari s" Bros:
Skidoo'
B7989
1e1.
OPTICIANS Piccadilly Arcade Perth Tel. 87988 PRICE THREEPENCE.
PERTH, WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1944.
NO. 3,128.
ELLIOTT ELLIOTT
SEVENTY-FIRST YEAR.
How the Idea and Practice of Distributism Started q A Middle Course Between in England . . . Capitalism and Socialism
The Chester-Belloc Mothered and Fathered the Charter of an Old Freedom whole point that my solution is simply human, and it is the other solutions that are dehumanised. It is my whole point that to say we must have Socialism or Capitalism is like saying we must choose between all men going into monasteries and a few men having harems." The Distributist baby in England was born about the time of the Boer War, and its parents !were undoubted-
Slavery is No Novelty to
Europe and May Return
(Condensed from an article in "The 'Daily Herald' that we must accept Irish Monthly," by Edward Collins, more or less in the way of Bolshevism because the only alternative is Trusts. S.J.) really try to 16th. century. The 'Daily Mail' cannotis itself a part ly 0. K. Chesterton and Hilaire BelAs long ago destroy Trusts; for it the great Francis Bacon crystallised of a Trust. The 'Daily Herald' can These two first met in London loc. Distributism in an epigram: "Property be if it only good it is muck, is like Mr. Nlaurise B. Reckitt, a spread." modern Distributist, and formerly a director of "Ga.'s Weekly," has defined it as "the economic expression of free will." "G.K.'s Weekly" was started as the official organ of Distributism, and if we do not care for austere definition, Chesterton himself gives a picture of the aims of both the paper and the movement in his first editorial, November 8, 1924: "I desire this paper to stand for certain very normal and human ideas. But though they are very normal and very human, it is the cold and literal fact that they will not be printed in any other paper except this one. They are not fads; they are only human traditions that are treated as negligible while fads are welcomed as fashionable. They are not eccentricities; they are only the central ideas of civilisation that are forgotten in a welBut because they ter of eccentricity. are forgotten elsewhere they will only be found here. They are simply commonsense in a world where sense is no longer common. THE CHESTER--BELLOO. "I will take as the chief example the present problem of poverty and wealth. Bolshevism; in 1895, when Belloc had just come In itself my position would seem sin- not really try to defeat backing is down from Oxford with a History gularly simple. It is simply that I am for its most sincere For them there First Honours to his credit. Chesterheartily opposed to Bolshevism and amongst Bolshevists.me there is a third ton was twenty-one, Belloc twentyheartily opposed to Trusts. I believe are sides. But for paper will defend four. The one was steeped in meit is possible to restore and perpetu- course; and no other diaeval romance, in chivalry, in all ate a reasonable, just distribution of or even discuss it. that mediaevalism that is connoted by called been has course "This third my give I will and private property; it hopes the word justice; the other, too, was reasons for thinking so in this paper. 'Distributism', signifying that property more in love with the Middle Ages, but for But the point for the moment is this: to distribute private of to call this a different reason. He had learnt beI were if But equally. can country No other paper in this (as the time !when men were honoured Review' Distributive 'The paper Bolshevboth to opposed heartily be produce cattse they had souls not money, of ism and to Trusts. For it is the whole has been suggested), it would I desire to the time when the State was an "agpoint of a paper like the 'Daily Mail' exactly the impression that a Dis- glomeration of families of varying that we must tolerate more or less in avoid. It would suggest wealth, it is true, but where by far the a Socialist: the way of Tritsts, because the only al- tributist is something like with a new greater number were owners of the And it is a crank, a pedant, a person ternative is Bolshevism. my means of production"-and hence selfthe whole point of a paper like the theory of human nature. It is -
For .Value and Service
Belloc, respecting and independent. the economist and historian, and Chesterton, the litterateur and social reformer. made a pact in those days, and we find it written in the last pages of "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" (published in 1904): "You and I, Auberon Quin, have both of us throughout our lives been again and again called mad. And we We are mad because we are mad. are not two men but one man. We are mad because we are two lobes of the same brain, and that brain has been cloven in two. And .if you ask for proof of it, it is not hard to find. It is not merely that you, the humorist, have been in these dark days stripped of the joy of gravity. It is not merely that I, the fanatic, have had to grope without humour. It is that, though we seem to be opposite in everything, we have been opposite like man and woman, aiming at the We are the same practical thing. father and the mother of the Charter of Cities."
The two friends started, as did William Cobbett, their predecessor, with the conviction that reform was urgently needed in the economic system in Socialism they vogue in England. fought because they knew that reform must be guided by the principles which are the principles of "Rerum Novarum." Capitalism they thought was too rotten to patch up. Distributism, as yet unnamed and unformed, expressed itself chiefly at this stage by calling loudly for reform. Reform could be effected in two ways, as Aristotle would say, from above and from below. Obviously it seemed that more could be achieved from above; and so Belloc stood for Salford in 1906, was elected and suffered in the House of Commons until In that year be abandoned his 1910. Parliamentary career, declaring that the British Parliament was corrupt. His chief aim in getting himself elected was to expose corruption, but he was baulked in every way from expressing his views in the House. Disgusted and disappointed, he turned to the alternative, reform from below, without, however, losing determination to show up the unhealthy side of government (for instance, he has been agitating since 1906 for public auditing In 1912 he publishof Party Funds) ed his "Servile State," and the same year, in collaboration with Cecil Chesterton, edited the paper called the "Eye Witness." Suppressed by the police (Continued on Page 4.)
Guilloyle's Hotel Australia mEsuEtie7 Registered at the G.PA., Perth, for transmission by post as a newspaper.