Whether he was right or, as many held, wildly wrong about what underlay our failures of judgment, his views must be briefly traced because of their effect on Gilbert and others. In the financial world he saw England in the first years after the war dominated by the International Banking Power, which made us as it were a local branch of Wall Street. In his view it was the bankers both of America and England who first insisted that Germany could not pay her reparations and later made England repudiate her own war debts to America (though she had, he showed, already paid in interest and principal more than half of what had been lent). The banks did this because they had lent commercially both to Germany and England sums whose safety meant more to them than moneys merely owing to the nations—which would not benefit the banks! England thus became subservient to the United States and had to follow American financial policies. It was these policies that led to the abandonment of the unwritten alliance with France and especially to allowing Germany to rearm (helped by loans from these same banks), to reoccupy the Rhineland and remilitarise the Ruhr.
Next, in Belloc's view, came a worse stage yet in which the banks had given place to Big Business which was increasingly controlling Parliament. The plutocracy that had bit by bit eaten into our aristocracy and gained ascendancy in the Govemment was not, like our ancient aristocracy, trained for the business and was utterly uninformed especially in foreign affairs. The one remaining hope, the permanent officials, especially of the Foreign Office, were less and less listened to; latterly he held too that even the Foreign Office had lost its old sure touch. Hence a constant vacillation in our policies which weakened England's position and made certain some terrible disaster.
This fear is ever present in Belloc's articles and ever brooded on by the Editor. He rallied his forces to urge, week after week, the possible alternative to disaster—the recovery by the people of England of power and freedom, the restoration of England to its place in a restored Europe, freed from the German menace. Despite the natural high spirits a certain gloom and more than a touch of fierceness mark the work of these years. Summing up "the twenties" of the century, Chesterton saw them as singularly bankrupt spiritually and intellectually, and he foresaw from their sowing a miserable harvest.
CHAPTER XXVI
The Distributist League and Distributism
To say we must have Socialism or Capitalism is like saying we must choose between all men going into monasteries and a few men having harems. If I denied such a sexual alternative I should not need to call myself a monogamist; I should be content to call myself a man.
Advance number of G.K.'s Weekly, Nov. 1924
FROM G.K.'s Weekly grew THE DISTRIBUTIST LEAGUE. Its start in 1926 was marked by intense enthusiasm, and its progress was recorded week by week in the paper. The inaugural meeting took place in Essex Hall, Essex Street, Strand, on September 17, 1926. G.K. summed up their aim in the words: "Their simple idea was to restore possession." He added that Francis Bacon had long ago said: "Property is like muck, it is good only if it be spread." The following week the first committee meeting took place. Chesterton was elected President; Captain Went, Secretary, and Maurice Reckitt, Treasurer. It was planned to form a branch in Birmingham. Alternative names were discussed: The Cobbett Club, the Luddite League, the League of Small Property:
The Cow and Acres, however suitable as the name of a public house at which we could assemble, is too limited as an economic statement. . . .
The League of the Little People (President, Mr. G. K. Chesterton) may seem at first too suggestive of the fairies; but it has been strongly supported among us: