FOREWORD
Inthe autumn of 1925 and the spring and summer of 1926 there was published a revised and illustrated version of theOutline of History, by Mr. H. G. Wells. There followed a series of articles by Mr. Belloc attacking thisOutlineand Mr. Wells. These articles were published in the CatholicUniverse, in theSouthern Crossof Cape Colony, in the AmericanCatholic Bulletin, and possibly elsewhere. Every fortnight, keeping pace with the issue of theOutline, these attacks appeared; in all, twenty-four voluminous articles. They were grossly personal and provocative in tone, and no doubt a great joy and comfort to the faithful. Mr. Wells prepared a series of articles in reply; and as no one outside the public of these Catholic journals seemed to have heard of Mr. Belloc’s attacks, he offered them to the editors concerned, proposing, if necessary, to give the use of this interesting matter to them without payment. Six articles he asked to have published—in reply to twenty-four. This offering was declined very earnestly by these editors. To the editor of the CatholicUniverseMr. Wells protested in the terms of the followingletter:—
My Dear Sir,I am sorry to receive your letter of May 19th. May I point out to you that Mr. Belloc has been attacking my reputation as a thinker, a writer, an impartial historian, and an educated person for four-and-twenty fortnights in theUniverse? He has misquoted; he has misstated. Will your Catholic public tolerate no reply?
My Dear Sir,
I am sorry to receive your letter of May 19th. May I point out to you that Mr. Belloc has been attacking my reputation as a thinker, a writer, an impartial historian, and an educated person for four-and-twenty fortnights in theUniverse? He has misquoted; he has misstated. Will your Catholic public tolerate no reply?
Under the stimulus of this remonstrance, the editor of theUniverse, after a month’s delay and various consultations with Mr. Belloc and the directors of his paper, offered Mr. Wells the “opportunity of correcting definite points of fact upon which he might have been misrepresented,” but declined to allow him to defend his views or examine Mr. Belloc’s logic and imputations in his columns. Mr. Wells was disinclined for a series of wrangles upon what might or might not be a “point of fact.” He then offered his articles to various non-Catholic papers, but, with one accord, they expressed their lack of interest in either Mr. Belloc himself or in his exposition of Catholic ideas about natural selection, the origin of man, and the general course of history. Yet it seems to Mr. Wells that, regarded as a mental sample, Mr. Belloc is not without significance, and that the examination of the contemporary Catholic attitude towards the fundamental facts of history is a matter of interest beyond Catholic circles. Accordingly he has decided to issue thesearticles in the form of a book, and he has urged the publishers to advertise them, as freely as may be permitted, in the Catholic press. He has retained the “cross-heads” customary in journalistic writing.