Mr. and Mrs. Chesterton received the visitor in a little room with white-washed walls and book-cases, and a long desk below a window that ran the length of the room. Megroz was anxious to compare Chesterton’s ideas with those of H. G. Wells whom he had seen shortly before, and particularly wished to question the former’s opinions on patriotism and nationalism. Although such books as the jolly “Napoleon of Notting Hill” belonged to the pre-war period, G. K. C.’s own journalistic writings had shown no change in his dislike of internationalism and the kind of social organization favored by Wells.
“The trouble is,” he said, “that terms like patriotism and nationalism are very often used by people who mean something quite different from what I mean. My idea in ‘The Napoleon of Notting Hill’ was that men have a natural loyalty for their own home and their own land, I do not see why, instead of progress lying in the direction of bigger and bigger everything, it should not be found in the opposite direction, in local patriotism. I say let a man go on loving his own home, he will all the better recognize the other fellow’s right to do so.”
“H. G. Wells,” continued Chesterton, “talks about abstractions like the World State, which has no root. The League of Nations lost its grip on realities by ignoring local patriotism.”
When Megroz repeated Chesterton to H. G. Wells the latter remarked,
“Possibly the World State is an abstraction at present, but what are not abstractions are the flying machines and poison gas; electricity and wireless; the fact that the food grown in India may be eaten in England, and the food grown in Australia may be eaten at the Cape. These are hard facts, and they demand sane treatment as hard facts, and the only possible sane treatment is to bring them under one comprehensive control.”
Megroz got the impression that Chesterton was “certainly a romanticist, often escaping from reality. By fantasies, among which may be included his medievalism; but always one comes back to his great sanity, his poetic insight, his sweetness which redeemed all his propaganda, illuminated his poetry, and could fill even the detective story with a wisdom akin to mysticism.”
What Chesterton wrote his friend Mr. W. R. Titterton about Wells is pertinent, and is here published for the first time, and with Mr. Wells’ leave,
My dear Titterton:
I think we might drop the formal address on both sides; especially as I want to write to you about a personal feeling which I don’t want you to take too officially, or in that sense too seriously. I ought to have written direct to Pugh to thank him for his great generosity in giving us his most interesting sketch about Wells, which you were good enough to arrange for us. My task is made a little more delicate now, because there is something I feel about it, which I do hope neither he nor you would exaggerate or misunderstand. I was the more glad of his kind offer, when he made it, because I thought nobody could more ably and sincerely appreciate Wells; and I was rather pleased that Wells should be appreciated in a paper where he had been so often criticized. I do hope this work will not turn into anything that looks like a mere attack on Wells; especially in the rather realistic and personal modern manner, which I am perhaps too Victorian myself to care very much about. I do not merely feel this because I have managed to keep Wells as a friend on the whole. I feel it much more (and I know you are a man to understand such sentiments) because I have a sort of sense of honor about him as an enemy, or at least a potential enemy. We are so certain to collide in controversial warfare, that I have a horror of his thinking I would attack him with anything but fair controversial weapons. My feeling is so entirely consistent with a faith in Pugh’s motives, as well as an admiration of his talents, that I honestly believe I could explain this to him without offense; and I will if necessary write to him to do so; but I thought I would write to you first; as you know him and may possibly know his aims and attitude as I do not.
I am honestly in a very difficult position on the “New Witness,” because it is physically impossible for me really to edit it, and also do enough outside work to be able to edit it unpaid, as well as having a little over to give to it from time to time. What we should have done without the loyalty and capacity of you and a few others I can’t imagine. I cannot oversee everything that goes into the paper and it would certainly be most uncomfortable for either of us to exercise our rights of “cutting” stuff given to us under such circumstances as Pugh’s: but I think I should exercise it if Pugh went very far in the realistic manner about some of the weak points in Wells’ career. There were one or two phrases about old quarrels in the last number which strike a note I should really regret touching more serious things; and I should like to consult with you about such possibilities before they appear in the paper. I cannot do it with most things in the paper, as I say; and nobody could possibly do it better than you. On the other hand, I cannot resign, without dropping, as you truly say, the work of a great man who is gone; and who, I feel, would wish me to continue it. It is like what Stevenson said about Marriage and its duties: “There is no refuge for you; not even suicide.” But I should have to consider even resignation, if I felt that the acceptance of Pugh’s generosity really gave him the right to print something that I really felt bound to disapprove. It may be that I am needlessly alarmed over a slip or two of the pen, in vivid descriptions of a very odd character; and that Pugh really admires his Big Little H. G. as I thought he did at the beginning of the business. I only write this to confide to you what is in my mind, which is far from an easy task; but I think you are one to understand. If the general impression on the reader’s mind is of the Big Wells and not the little Wells, I think the doubt I mean would really be met.