Belloc saw with unerring accuracy that the bulk of what he called “official history” in the English-speaking world was anti-Catholic. He attacked the thing bitterly, brilliantly, and at great cost to his reputation. He saw that the individualist, industrial, capitalist society of England was anti-human to the core. He attacked it. He grasped the anti-Christian meaning of Prussia, and he fought against this spirit from the North of Germany with intense vigour. He analyzed the anti-intellectual and therefore anti-Catholic bias that moved the “Modern Mind” in the bewildering complexity of that mind’s activities. He detested the _Zeitgeist_ which had surrendered the best man had: his power to reason, judge, and affirm; therefore it had lost the one sure road it had of discovering the Truth of God. Belloc became committed—the French artilleryman in the service of the Church. His intransigence rendered him a marked man. Shaw wondered why Belloc should waste his profuse talents in the service of the Bishop of Rome. Wells noted critically his “partisan fanaticism.” Some Catholic academicians, to gain for themselves the reputation of impartial scholarship and save their standing in the world of learning, disavowed him. There is no doubt that Belloc entered into battle with his eyes open. If he was anything at all, he was a realist: he understood men and the motives that move them; he was aware of the doors opening to political and literary preferment. His brilliance was such that he could have risen to a Cabinet post through the Liberal Party. He could have carved out for himself an exclusively literary reputation, possibly as great as Conrad’s. He could have become the recognized first historian in the Empire. He sacrificed it all and placed his sword at the service of the Church. It has been suggested that the decisive turning point in his career occurred when he delivered a fighting speech before Archbishop Bearne against the Liberal Government’s intention to prohibit a Eucharistic procession through the streets of London.[25] At that time Belloc was a Liberal Member of Parliament, and the Tories thought that he would turn to them after his break with his own party. His political principles would not permit such a sellout. He went up to the platform a public figure, and came down an Apostle. “I begin to think this intimate religion as tragic as a great love ... as tragic as first love, and (it) drags us out into the void away from our dear homes.”[26]