As he put on his Inverness cape and black sombrero-like hat he shouted out in merry tones,
“If anyone ever tries to tell me Catholicism is inconsistent with fun and play, I’ll say did you ever hear of the University of Notre Dame?”
Before Chesterton left the University, Mr. William L. Piedmont had a pleasant chat with him. Asked what he thought of our great American sports, G. K. C. answered,
“I witnessed the Notre Dame-Navy game, and was much impressed by the popularity that your game of football enjoys. In my youth I played English football and even rounders which might be described as an English equivalent of baseball.”
“I very gravely doubt if the nations are becoming closer and closer together,” declared Chesterton when the conversation touched the League of Nations. “Quite the contrary, I feel the various countries are becoming more national. An example would be in the literary fact that in my youth Thoreau, Hawthorne, Mark Twain and the rest were as widely known and read in Europe as in America, while today the strange and awful stuff of American writers is unknown abroad with very few exceptions. I attribute this to the fact that America has become so different and in Europe the news hasn’t gotten through yet as to what it’s all about in America.”
On being asked if he thought the world (and especially, the United States) possessed any great thinkers, he replied humorously,
“If there are any people in the world today who do think, witness my ‘Age of Unreason,’ I feel America can certainly claim some of them.”
After confessing that he read very few novels, but mentioning the works of Sheila Kaye-Smith with approbation, he went on to say,
“But I consider Rebecca West the most interesting woman writer, if for no other reason than because she is gradually becoming more respectable. I suppose (with a characteristic chuckle) that her marrying a banker is not really the cause of respectability, even though marrying a banker may be a sort of worldly parallel to being confirmed in grace!”
Of the winner of the Nobel prize for literature, he said,