Literary Giants Literary Catholics (14 page)

These words were prophetic in more ways than one. Within less than a decade, the concentration camps and the slaughter of the innocents really did cast Hitler in the role of Herod. But—and this is central to the present question—many Catholics regarded the anti-Franco forces in the Spanish civil war exactly as Chesterton had Hitler. The Communists and the anarchists who made up the bulk of the Republican forces, fanatically anticlerical and anti-Christian, were responsible for the murders of numerous priests, monks and nuns and for the burning and looting of hundreds of churches throughout Spain. George Orwell recorded of Barcelona, “almost every church had been gutted and its images burned.” Priests had their ears cut off, monks had their eardrums perforated by rosary beads being forced into them, and the mother of two Jesuit priests had a rosary forced down her throat. How else could Catholic Christians regard such outrages than as “attacks on the hearth and the human family” and feel about the murderers of priests and nuns what “men felt about Herod”?

Arnold Lunn, Alfred Noyes, Ronald Knox, Christopher Hollis, Christopher Dawson and a host of other Catholic writers came out in support of the Nationalists, even though many found Hitler’s support for Franco disquieting. Evelyn Waugh spoke for many Catholics when, in 1937, he replied to a questionnaire sent to writers in the British Isles asking them to state their attitude toward the war in Spain. In answer to the question “Are you for, or against, the legal government and the people of republican Spain? Are you for, or against, Franco and Fascism?” Waugh replied:

I am no more impressed by the “legality” of the Valencia government than are English Communists by the legality of the Crown, Lords and Commons. I believe it was a bad government, rapidly deteriorating. If I were a Spaniard I should be fighting for General Franco. . . . I am not a Fascist nor shall I become one unless it were the only alternative to Marxism. It is mischievous to suggest that a choice is imminent.
¹⁵

The word that best describes Catholic motives during the Spanish civil war is, ironically, the German word
real-politik
, roughly interpreted as the necessity of putting one’s own survival before theoretical niceties. Certainly Catholics, in their implicit support for Franco, found it unfortunate, even embarrassing, to be on the same side as Hitler, even on this one issue alone. Yet five years later, Churchill, in his war with Hitler, found himself on the same side as Josef Stalin, who by the most conservative estimates murdered at least five times as many people as Hitler and millions more than Franco. Does
real-politik
make Catholics Fascists or Churchill a Communist?

The sort of woolly-mindedness that could lead to allegations that Churchill was a “bolshie” or many Catholics were “Fascist” leads to the next definition of Fascism. The
too-imprecise
definition gives Fascism such a broad meaning that the term becomes meaningless, a mere expletive with which to insult anyone with whom one disagrees. A brilliant depiction of this too-imprecise use of the word was given by Evelyn Waugh in a letter to the
New Statesman
on 5 March 1938:

There was a time in the early twenties when the word “Bolshie” was current. It was used indiscriminately of refractory school children, employees who asked for a rise in wages, impertinent domestic servants, those who advocated an extension of the rights of property to the poor, and anything or anyone of whom the speaker disapproved. The only result was to impede reasonable discussion and clear thought.

   
I believe we are in danger of a similar, stultifying use of the word “Fascist”. There was recently a petition sent to English writers . . . asking them to subscribe themselves, categorically, as supporters of the Republican Party in Spain, or as “Fascists”. When rioters are imprisoned it is described as a “Fascist sentence”; the Means Test is Fascist; colonisation is Fascist; military discipline is Fascist; patriotism is Fascist; Catholicism is Fascist; Buchmanism is Fascist; the ancient Japanese cult of their Emperor is Fascist; the Galla tribes’ ancient detestation of theirs is Fascist; fox-hunting is Fascist. . . . Is it too late to call for order?

This
reductio ad absurdum
of labeling everyone and everything either “bolshie” or “Fascist” was finding tragicomic expression in Spain itself even as Waugh wrote. As the war began to swing in Franco’s favor, the Communists and the anarchists in the Republican forces began to turn their guns on each other, each accusing the other of being “Fascist”. In such circumstances it
was
“too late to call for order” because order itself was deemed “Fascist”. Interestingly, the socialist subeditors at the
New Statesman
headed Waugh’s letter “Fascist”, evidently as a juvenile gibe intended to annoy their hostile correspondent. They were only reinforcing his point.

The allegation that Chesterton was a Fascist in this too-imprecise definition of the word is the hardest to defend him against. It is too intangible to touch, too airy to grasp, too vacant to engage. It is the enthronement of meaninglessness by the assassination of meaning. The triumph of the trite. Alas, on this level, and this level alone, we must admit defeat and confess that Chesterton is indeed a “Fascist”. The only consolation is the knowledge that so is everyone else.

Apart from the above-mentioned definitions, there is also what could be called the generally
accepted
definition of Fascism. This is the definition popularized brilliantly by George Orwell in
Animal Farm
and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. Orwell cut through the cant of what has been called “that damn-fool dichotomy of Left and Right”, deliberately refraining from specifying whether the totalitarian regimes he was describing were “Fascist” or “Communist”. The point was that, to all intents and purposes, it didn’t matter. Regardless of the theory that gave them theoretical justification, they were the perpetrators of injustice. Certainly, there are deliberate parallels in
Animal Farm
to Stalin’s machiavellianism and Trotsky’s murder, but the story is just as applicable to Hitler’s machiavellianism and the killing of Ernst Rohm and Gregor Strasser in the Night of the Long Knives. Meanwhile, the image of Big Brother, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, in
Nineteen Eighty-Four
has impressed itself upon the public imagination to such a degree that the most powerful dictators—Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao—are synthesized in the name of Big Brother. This, then, is the public perception of totalitarianism, the practically and generally
accepted
definition of Fascism, and indeed of Communism, that most people have today.

Of course, as neither of Orwell’s books had been written at the time of Chesterton’s death, the general perceptions of Fascism then were different from those of today. To Chesterton and his contemporaries, Fascism was defined by one or other of the three definitions already discussed. Nonetheless, because allegations of Chesterton’s Fascism continue today, it is necessary to address the current practically accepted definition of the word.

Big-Brother Fascism involves an increase of state power and state control over everyday life; it believes in the right of government to exercise control over the private property of individuals; it believes in strong central government at the expense of local or regional authority; it promotes intolerance of its opponents, whether on the grounds of race, creed or politics; it is characterized by a xenophobic chauvinism and a contempt for foreigners; it is militarist and often has imperialist aspirations. On each of these components, Chesterton is anti-Fascist according to the modern conception of the word. For the sake of anyone who does not know Chesterton’s work, one or two brief examples may be given.

On numerous occasions, Chesterton attacked the creeping encroachment of the state into the lives of ordinary people, and particularly into the family, which was to Chesterton the bastion of freedom in any civilized society. More specifically, he was an outspoken opponent of Prohibition in the United States, partly because it was undesirable in itself but also because it was state interference in the civil liberties of individuals. The creed of distributism, distilled by Belloc from the social teaching of the Catholic Church as expounded by Pope Leo XIII, was a central tenet of Chesterton’s socioeconomic thinking. He believed in the sanctity, in the restoration and the preservation of small, widely distributed private property. These views were the antithesis of economic centralism, whether by state-run nationalized industries or by privately owned monopolies. He was the defender of small property from both big business and Big Brother, an early exponent of the creed of “Small is Beautiful” as espoused in the 1970s by E. F. Shumacher.

His views on devolved power, liberated from central government, infused
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
, which is, in its own way, as much a call for freedom from Big Brother as is
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. Chesterton’s novel was set in 1984; perhaps Orwell chose that year as a tribute to Chesterton’s earlier work. I prefer this to the more prosaic suggestion that Orwell simply reversed the numbers of the year in which it was written, 1948.

Chesterton cannot be accused of intolerance of his opponents. Almost unique among writers, he spent a lifetime arguing with everyone but quarreling with no one, a man with no enemies although he had numerous opponents. Chesterton is an icon of tolerance in an intolerant world. He was a Little Englander who loved his country without denigrating anyone else’s country, with one exception: that of Germany in its expansionism and militarism under both the kaiser and the führer. Throughout his life, he never accepted the right of one country to impose itself upon another, an anti-imperialist stance that dates to the days of the Boer War (1899-1902).

In short, Chesterton stands acquitted of the charge of Fascism in the generally accepted definition of the word even more than in the other senses. Far from being a Fascist, he seems to be the quintessential anti-Fascist. By a bizarre Chestertonian paradox, he is often accused of Fascism by means of the stereotypes, smears, superficiality and prejudice that one normally associates with Fascism itself.

A postscript may be appropriate. Speaking as one who was once attracted to Fascism, I can testify that Chesterton more than anyone rescued me from the intolerant world into which I had strayed. Reading his words, I was gradually awakened, as if from a bad dream, into the world of wisdom and innocence that Chesterton inhabited. I have more reason than most to be thankful for the fact that Chesterton was not a Fascist
.

I met at a recent meeting of the Chesterton Society in Sussex a clergyman who had been a member of both the Communist Party and the International Marxist Group. Earlier we would have despised each other, but now we were united by love for Christ . . . and for Chesterton. If, as Chesterton believed, faith alone is not enough but must be accompanied by good works, it is clear for all who have eyes to see, that both Chesterton’s faith and his good works continue to work wonderfully and efficaciously across the generations
.

9

_____

Champion of Orthodoxy

C
HESTERTON’S REPUTATION
as one of the key figures in Christian literature during the twentieth century is linked inextricably with the concept of “orthodoxy”. His book of that title, published in 1908, was, according to Wilfrid Ward, a major milestone in the development of Christian thought.

Wilfrid Ward was certainly not alone in his flattering praise of Chesterton’s book. The book’s influence on the intellectual development of a whole generation was summed up by Dorothy L. Sayers. She had first read
Orthodoxy
as a schoolgirl when her faith had been threatened by adolescent doubt. In later years she confessed that its “invigorating vision” had inspired her to look at Christianity anew and that if she hadn’t read Chesterton’s book, she might, in her schooldays, have given up Christianity altogether. “To the young people of my generation,” Sayers wrote in 1952, “G.K.C. was a kind of Christian liberator.”

In stressing firm and fixed foundations for the concept and teachings of Christianity, Chesterton had turned “orthodoxy” into a battle cry—a rapier-sharp reply to the heresies of the age. His approach would be very influential on C. S. Lewis, and there are obvious and unmistakable parallels between Chesterton’s populist approach to “orthodoxy” and Lewis‘ “mere Christianity”.

There is also a clear similarity between Chesterton’s approach to orthodoxy and that of T. S. Eliot. In
Notes towards the Definition of Culture
, Eliot captured the spirit of the Christian literary revival, of which he and Chesterton were part, in his

last appeal . . . to the men of letters of Europe, who have a special responsibility for the preservation and transmission of our common culture. . . . We can at least try to save something of the goods of which we are the common trustees; the legacy of Greece, Rome and Israel, and the legacy of Europe throughout 2,000 years. In a world which has seen such material devastation as ours, these spiritual possessions are also in imminent peril.

For Eliot, and for Chesterton, this inheritance was not merely something old-fashioned that could be shrugged off and discarded in favor of new fads. It was a sacred tradition, the custodian of eternal verities that spoke with inexorable authority to every new and passing generation. The beauty of great literature resided in its being an expression of a common culture, which was itself the fruit of the preservation of learning, the pursuit of truth and the attainment of wisdom. The highest function of art, therefore, was to express the highest common factors of human life and not the lowest common denominators—life’s loves and not its lusts. This was the mindset at the very core of the literary revival of which Chesterton was part.