Its contents
are all reprinted from the _Daily News_. In some ways they are sheer and
rank journalism; they are often almost Harmsworthian in their unscrupulous
simplifying of the facts of a case, in their crude determination to
emphasize one fact at the expense of every other fact. Thus: "No one can
understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its
fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity." So there
you are! If you don't accept that you are damned; the Chesterton
guillotine has clicked on you. Perhaps I have lived in Paris more years
than Mr. Chesterton has lived in it months, but it has not yet happened to
me to understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of
its frivolity. Hence I am undone; I no longer exist! Again, of Brussels:
"It has none of the things which make good Frenchmen love Paris; it has
only the things which make unspeakable Englishmen love it." There are a
hundred things in Brussels that I love, and I find Brussels a very
agreeable city. Hence I am an unspeakable Englishman. Mr. Chesterton's
book is blotched with this particular form of curt arrogance as with a
skin complaint. Happily it is only a skin complaint. More serious than a
skin complaint is Mr. Chesterton's religious orthodoxy, which crops up at
intervals and colours the book.
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