Chesterton's prescience

Submitted by Ann Farmer (United Kingdom), May 28, 2014 at 08:32

Chesterton was also prescient in distinguishing between fascism - an over-zealous patriotism that recognised boundaries, even in over-stepping them – and the racist Pan-German movement: "Chesterton had discovered very early that Hitler's funny crooked cross represented something quite different from Mussolini's bundle of fasces. The latter stood for the glory of an empire which once had really existed, whereas the swastika represented something the world had never known";[i]

In 1915 Chesterton noted: "By the way, I see the Germans have actually done what I described as a wild fancy in the Flying Inn; combined the Cross and the Crescent in one ornamental symbol".[i]

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[i] G. K. Chesterton, Letter to E. C. Bentley, July 20, 1915, M. Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, op. cit., 398-399); in the Flying Inn "Dr Moole" suggests '"some sort of double emblem"' for St Paul's Cathedral, '"combining cross and crescent"' (G. K. Chesterton, The Flying Inn (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1914/1958), 38).

[i] G. K. Chesterton, "The Tool," G. K.'s Weekly, September 6, 1934, in J. P. Corrin, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc: The Battle Against Modernity, op. cit., 183-185.

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