The Well and the Shallows/An Explanation
Documents libres.
| The Scripture Reader | The Well and the Shallows ~ An Explanation written by Gilbert Keith Chesterton | Why Protestants Prohibit |
The last two essays in this collection have so obviously
the character of newspaper correspondence, that a word must
be added about the circumstances of their appearance.
At the request of the B.B.C., I gave an address in their
series on Freedom about the Catholic view of the matter;
an address which was very much criticised; but I sometimes fancy
that the most deadly criticism was involuntary and unconscious.
For I could not help feeling that some of my critics must have
gone to sleep, and snatched a brief respite from the recital,
only to wake again with a start and all the bewilderments
of nightmare, to hear the ruthless infliction still going on.
I should be the last to blame them; I sometimes nearly go to sleep
myself when listening to myself, let alone to anybody so remote
from me as I must naturally be from them. But the actual effect,
anyhow, was that most of the agonised questions which they asked
me afterwards I had already answered before they were asked.
At the beginning of the whole address, I explained the beginning
of the whole business; that I had been specially asked
to speak as a Catholic and therefore as a controversialist.
If they asked Sir Oswald Mosley to explain why he was a Fascist,
it might or might not be popular; but it would be a little
hard on Sir Oswald to complain that he had dragged the subject
of Fascism into politics, or the subject ot politics into
the B.B.C. Yet to read some of the innocent criticism I have read,
one would really suppose I had been asked to give a literary
lecture on Milton or Shelley, and had seized the opportunity
to deliver a wild eulogy upon Torquemada and Guy Fawkes.
If indeed, in this free country where (I am assured) all views can
be expressed, it is unpardonable to suggest that the Protestant view
of Freedom is wrong, some responsibility must be shared by those
who ask the Catholic to explain why the Catholic view is right.
For that peculiar diplomatic and tactful art of saying
that Catholicism is true, without suggesting for one moment
that anti-Catholicism is false, is an art which I am too old
a Rationalist to learn at my time of life.
The second legend that arose out of hearing, or not hearing, my wireless speech, was an extraordinary delusion that I made a speech about drink. Out of nineteen hundred words, the newspapers seemed to have selected three words, in the form of the polished epigram, "I like beer." Now I fear I am so constituted by cultural tradition, that I cannot for the life of me see anything more comic, or eccentric, or provocative, or sensational, about saying, "I like beer," than about saying, "I like bananas." But I do most certainly see that there would be something both egotistical and trivial about saying, "I like bananas," if it were not a part of an ordinary objective argument. And my remark was a part of an objective argument. Only I was arguing for the exact opposite of what they imagine. I said it was well to remember, to start with, that an ordinary poor man from Catholic countries would find what he regarded as ancient universal popular liberties forbidden in Protestant countries. The obvicus instances are Prohibition and the veto on the Irish Sweepstake. I then said that these lighter instances were balanced indifferently for me, because "I like beer; there is nothing that bores me quite so much as horse-racing. But I have some sense of human rights." In short it is self-evident that I only said I like beer in order to show that it did not matter a curse what I liked. Yet in face of this fact, an excellent cultivated weekly paper declared that I should not like Liberty if I did not like beer. The editor handsomely admitted the fact when I drew his attention to it, and my quarrel is not here with him. But further comments were made in the matter, which are the text of one these two essays.
For the rest if any one doubts that there is such a thing as Catholic liberty, I think it can do no harm to let him realise that there is such a thing as Catholic controversy; I mean controversy between Catholics. I have, therefore, included here my reply to some frank and friendly but very definite doubts about my action, that were expressed in one of the very best of the modern Catholic papers. For I feel it would not be fair to answer somewhat controversially a criticism in an Anglican organ, while in any way concealing the fact that I have been criticised also in an organ of my own communion. It will also be clear from the context, I think, that a distinguished Italian, Dr. Crespi, who speaks specially as an opponent of Fascism, attacked me at a slightly different angle. And this alone would illustrate the main fact; that the substance of my speech was concerned with all sorts of large modern problems, and had no more to do with my taste in beer than with my familiar appearance as a fashionable figure at Ascot. I pointed out that, by limiting liberty to preaching and printing, we had given a huge advantage to cranks over common Christian people; that we had lost a peasantry and were living under a plutocracy. Indeed, some critics combined the contradictory accusations; having proved that I was wholly concentrated upon booze and betting, they rushed on to rend the sky with cries against my sweeping slanders on the Press, the Parliament, the Landlord System and the British Empire. If they will try compressing all these topics into twenty minutes, they will understand how easy it is for the hearer (even if he manages to keep awake) to miss the proportion and the point.
