Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History"

MR. BELLOC’S ARTS OF CONTROVERSY

I am the least controversial of men. Public disputations have rarely attracted me. For years I have failed to respond to Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who long ago invented a set of opinions for me and invited me to defend them with an enviable persistence and vigour. Occasionally I may have corrected some too gross public misstatement about me—too often I fear with the acerbity of the inexperienced. But now, in my sixtieth year, I find myself drawn rather powerfully into a disputation with Mr. Hilaire Belloc. I bring an unskilled pen to the task.

I am responsible for an Outline of History which has had a certain vogue. I will assume that it is known by name to the reader. It is a careful summary of man’s knowledge of past time. It has recently been reissued with considerable additions in an illustrated form, and Mr. Belloc has made a great attack upon it. He declares that I am violently antagonistic to the Catholic Church, an accusation I deny very earnestly, and he has produced a “Companion” to this Outline of mine, following up the periodical issue, part by part, in the Universe of London, in the Catholic Bulletin of St. Paul, Minnesota, in the Southern Cross of Cape Colony, and possibly elsewhere, in which my alleged errors are exposed and confuted.