Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936 -- Criticism and interpretation
on another he will speak of
The whole divine democracy of things,
a line which is a challenge to the unbeliever, a statement of a
political creed which is the outgrowth of a religious faith.
The same year Chesterton formally stepped into the ranks of journalism
and joined the staff of The Daily News. He had scribbled poems since he
had been a boy at St. Paul's School. In the years following he had
watched other people working at the Slade, while he had gone on
scribbling. Then he had begun to do little odd jobs of art criticism
and reviewing for The Bookman and put in occasional appearances in the
statelier columns of The Speaker. Then came the Boer War, which made G.
K. Chesterton lose his temper but find his soul. In 1900 The Daily News
passed into new hands--the hands of G.K.C.'s friends. And until 1913,
when the causes he had come to uphold were just diametrically opposed to
the causes the victorious Liberal Party had adopted, every Saturday
morning's issue of that paper contained an article by him, while often
enough there appeared signed reviews and poems. The situation was absurd
enough. The Daily News was the organ of Nonconformists, and G.K.C.
preached orthodoxy to them. It advocated temperance, and G.K.C.
advocated beer. At first this was sufficiently amusing, and nobody
minded much. But before Chesterton severed his connection with the
paper, its readers had come to expect a weekly article that almost
invariably contained an attack upon one of their pet beliefs, and often
enough had to be corrected by a leader on the same page. But the
Chesterton of 1900 was a spokesman of the Liberalism of his day,
independent, not the intractable monster who scoffed, a few years later,
at all the parties in the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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