Hilaire Belloc, the man and his work

by C. Creighton Mandell; Edward Shanks

So intense and so widespread, indeed, is the vogue of Mr. Belloc to-day as a writer on the war, that one is almost compelled into forgetfulness of his earlier work and of the reputation he had established for himself in many provinces of literature and thought before, in the eyes of the world, he made this new province his own. The colossal monument of unstinted public approbation, which records his work since the outbreak of the great war, overshadows, as it were, the temples of less magnitude, though of equally solid foundation and often of more precious design, in which his former achievements in art and thought were enshrined.

That there existed, however, before the war, a large and increasing public, which was gradually awakening to a realization of Mr. Belloc's importance, there can be no question.

There can be equally little question, that only a very small percentage of his readers were in a position even to attempt an appreciation of Mr. Belloc's full importance.

This was due, chiefly, to the diversity of Mr. Belloc's writings.

For example, many thinking men, who saw no reason why the common sense, which served them so well in their business affairs, should be banished from their consideration of matters political, felt themselves in sympathy with his analysis and denunciation of the evils of our parliamentary machinery, thoroughly enjoying the vigorous lucidity of The Party System and applauding the clear historical reasoning of The Servile State.

Other men, repelled, perhaps, by such logical grouping of cold facts, but attracted by the satirical delights of Emmanuel Burden or Mr. Clutterbuck, of Pongo and the Bull or A Change in the Cabinet, were led to like conclusions, and came to consider themselves adherents of Mr. Belloc's political views.

Take another instance. Bloodless students of history, absorbing the past for the sake of the past and not for the sake of the present, who knew little of Mr. Belloc's attitude toward the politics of the day and strongly disapproved of what little they did know, yet concerned themselves with his historical method as applied in Danton, Robespierre or Marie Antoinette, and were mildly excited by The French Revolution into a discussion of what (to Mr. Belloc's horror) they considered his Weltanschauung.

There are but one or two examples of cases in which men of different types came to a partial knowledge of Mr. Belloc and his work through their sympathy with the views he expressed. But far beyond and above the appeal which Mr. Belloc has made on occasion to the political and historical sense of his readers is the appeal which he has made consistently to their literary sense in The Path to Rome, in The Four Men, in Avril, in The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, in Esto Perpetua—in his novels, his essays, his poems. If many have been attracted by his views, how many more have been influenced by his expression of them?

"A man desiring to influence his fellowmen," says Mr. Belloc, in The French Revolution, "has two co-related instruments at his disposal.... These two instruments are his idea and his style. However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers' mood or cogently provable by reference to new things may be a man's idea, he cannot persuade his fellowmen to it if he have not words that express it. And he will persuade them more and more in proportion as his words are well-chosen and in the right order, such order being determined by the genius of the language from which they are drawn."