That is an amusing episode and wholly characteristic. The humour of Mr. Belloc's books, particularly of his books of travel, resides in a quantity of such tales, not acutely and extravagantly funny, but all amusing because they are all (apparently) true.
With that more practical branch of humour, satire, the angle of view shifts a little. The power of making laughter becomes here a weapon, and its hostile purpose, as it were, sharpens the point. Mr. Belloc's satire has a hardness and a precision lacking in the broad and general effects of his quite irresponsible humour.
All satire, as we have said, has a definite moral intent, whether it be to restrain a corrupt politician or a bad poet, and this makes it serious, sometimes painful, always, in failure, heavy and unpleasant. The little book called The Aftermath: or Caliban's Guide to Letters is not altogether a success. One might believe that Mr. Belloc's disgust with the tricks of journalism has killed, as never his disgust with the tricks of government, his sense of joy in human pretence. These sketches, by just a little, fail to give one a feeling of rejoicing in the author's wit: they seem bitter, strained, and, while one appreciates the justice of the serious charge, the humour which was to carry it off, becomes from time to time heavy and lifeless. It is even a depressing book: but this may be because the deepest rooted of our illusions, deeper than the illusion about politics, is the illusion concerning the cleverness of authors.
The skit, written with Mr. G. K. Chesterton, on the proceedings of the Tariff Reform Commission, is, on the other hand, one shout of laughter: as though that singular inquiry could not raise bitterness or indeed any emotion but delight in the breasts of true observers of humanity. It is a pity it is no longer obtainable.
The two or three satirical poems show a very definite and determined purpose, a sort of ugly competent squaring of the fists, a fighting that pleases by clean hard hitting.
It must have been a great pleasure to Mr. Belloc to write:
We also know the sacred height
Up on Tugela side,
Where the three hundred fought with Beit
And fair young Wernher died.
The little empty homes forlorn,
The ruined synagogues that mourn
In Frankfort and Berlin;
We knew them when the peace was torn—
We of a nobler lineage born—
And now by all the gods of scorn
We mean to rub them in.
It must have been a great relief, too, to have planted such sound and swinging blows on the enemy's person. The enemy is not appreciably inconvenienced, but—Mr. Belloc has probably told himself—a few have chuckled, and that begins it.