MY DEAR G.K.C.
The sample number has followed me out here. What a collector's treasure!
Considering that I had Cecil's own assurance that my Quintessence of Ibsenism rescued him from Rationalism, and that it was written in 1889 (I abandoned Rationalism consciously and explicitly in 1881) I consider John Prothero's introduction of me to your readers as a recently converted Materialist Rationalist to be a most unnatural act; and it would serve her right if I never spoke to her again.
Rationalism is the bane of the Church. A Roman priest always wants to argue with you. A Church of England parson flies in terror from an argument, a fundamentally sensible course. George Fox simply knocked arguers out with his "I have experimental knowledge of God." St. Thomas Aquinas was like me: he knew the worthlessness of ratiocination because he could do it so well, and yet despaired of the Inspirationists in practical life because they did it so badly.
J.K.P. doesn't know her way about in this controversy; and I cannot take up her challenge.
What makes me uneasy about the prospectus is that you drag in anti-prohibition. You might as well have declared for Brighter London at once, or said that the paper would be printed at the office of the Morning Advertiser. You run the risk of the money coming from The Trade. However, non olet. Only, remember the fate of all the editors—Gardiner, Donald, Massingham, etc., etc.—who have written without regard to their proprietors. The strength of your position is that they can hardly carry on with your name in the title without you. But they can kill the paper by stopping supplies if it does not pay; and the chances are that it will not. I have never had a farthing of interest on my shares in the New Statesman, and don't expect I ever shall. Therefore keep your list of shareholders as various and as uncommercial as you can: get Catholic money rather than beer money.
As I am the real patentee of the Distributive State, and the D.S. is Socialism; and as, furthermore, the Church must remain at least neutral on Prohibition, as in the United States, where a Catholic priest has just set a praiseworthy example of neutrality by bringing about a record cop of bootleggers, and as the success of Prohibition is so overwhelming that it is bound to become a commonplace of civilization, you must regard it as at least possible that you will some day make the paper Socialist and Dry (with a capital). Therefore do not undertake to oppose anything: stand for what you propose to advocate, whether as to property or drink or anything else, but don't state your solutions as antitheses.
By the way, don't propose equal distribution of land. It is like equal distribution of metal, rough on those who get the lead and rather too jolly for those who get the gold. Your equal distribution must come to equal distribution of the national income in terms of money.
The £500 a year is absurd. Do you realize that it is £250 at pre-war rates, and subject to heavy taxation: net £375—pre-war 182-10-0? You have sold yourself into slavery for ten years for £3-10-2 a week. Are you quite mad? Make it at least £1500, plus payment for copy.
Ever