The matter is as plain as daylight and as plainly stated. Mr. Belloc will get if he says over to himself slowly: “Reindeer men, bows doubtful; Azilian, Capsian men to the south, bows certainly.” And now consider Mr. Belloc, weaving his mare’s-nest:-- “Upon page 55 he writes, concerning the Palæolithic man of the cave drawings, this sentence: ‘_it is doubtful if they knew of the bow_.’ “When I first read that sentence, I was so staggered, I could hardly believe I had read it right. “That a person pretending to teach popular prehistorical science in 1925 should tell us of the cave painters that it was ‘_doubtful if they knew of the bow_’ seemed to me quite out of nature. “It was the more extraordinary because here before me, in Mr. Wells’s own book, were reproductions of these cave paintings, with the bow and the arrow appearing all over them! Even if he did not take the trouble to look at the pictures that were to illustrate his book, and left that department (as he probably did) to hack work, he ought, as an ordinary educated man, to have known the ultimate facts of the case. “Palæolithic man was an archer, and an archer with an efficient weapon. “The thing is a commonplace; only gross ignorance can have overlooked it; but, as I have said, there is a cause behind that ignorance. Mr. Wells would not have made this enormous error if he had not been possessed with the necessity of making facts fit in with his theology.” THE CHASING OF MR. BELLOC BEGINS There is a real splendour in these three almost consecutive passages. And note incidentally how this facile controversialist bespatters also my helpers and assistants. They do “hack work.” Palæolithic man, speaking generally, was _not_ an archer. Only the later Palæolithic men, dealing with a smaller quarry than the reindeer, seem to have used the bow. Manifestly it is not I who am fitting my facts with my theology here, but Mr. Belloc. He is inventing an error which is incredible even to himself as he invents it, and he is filling up space as hard as he can with indignation at my imaginary offence. Why is he going on like this? In the interests of that Catholic soul in danger? Possibly. But his pen is running so fast here, it seems to me, not so much to get to something as to get away from something. The Catholic soul most in danger in these papers of Mr. Belloc’s is Mr. Belloc’s, and the thing he is running away from through these six long disputations is a grisly beast, neither ape nor true man, called the Neanderthaler, _Homo Neanderthalensis_. This _Homo Neanderthalensis_ is the real “palæolithic” man. For three-quarters of the “palæolithic” age he was the only sort of man. The Reindeer men, the Capsian men, are “modern” beside him. He was no more an archer than he was an electrical engineer. He was no more an artist than Mr. Belloc is a man of science.