Few people will be found to deny Mr. Belloc a considerable amplitude of mind in his undertaking, so soon as they get thus far in understanding him. Before he could even set about syndicating this _Companion to the Outline of History_ he had to incite a partisan receptivity in the Catholic readers to whom he appeals, by declaring that a violent hatred for their Church is the guiding motive of my life. He had to ignore a considerable array of facts to do that, and he has ignored them with great courage and steadfastness. He had to arouse an indifferent Catholic public to a sense of urgent danger by imposing this figure of a base, inveterate, and yet finally contemptible enemy upon it. His is a greater task than mere dragon-slaying. He had to create the dragon before he could become the champion. And then, with his syndication arrangements complete, while abusing me industriously for ignorance, backwardness, and general intellectual backwoodism, he had to write the whole of these articles without once really opening that Humbert safe of knowledge which is his sole capital in this controversy. Time after time he refers to it. Never once does he quote it. At most he may give us illusive peeps.... Now and then as we proceed I shall note these illusive peeps. I can admire great effort even when it is ill-directed, and to show how little I bear him a grudge for the unpleasant things he has induced himself to write about me, and for the still more unpleasant things he tempts me--though I resist with a success that gratifies me--to write about him, I contemplate a graceful compliment to Mr. Belloc. In spite of the incurable ignorance of French and that “dirty Dago” attitude towards foreigners Mr. Belloc has so agreeably put upon me, it is my habit to spend a large part of the winter in a house I lease among the olive terraces of Provence. There is a placard in one corner of my study which could be rather amusingly covered with the backs of dummy books. I propose to devote that to a collection of Mr. Belloc’s authorities. There shall be one whole row at least of the Bulletins of the Madame Humbert Society, and all the later researches of the Belloc Academy of Anonymous Europeans, bound in bluff leather. There will be _Finis Darwinis_ by Hilario Belloccio, and _Hist. Eccles._ by Hilarius Belloccius. I may have occasion to refer to other leading authorities in the course of this controversy. I shall add to it as we proceed.