In 1927—some twenty-three years after the Menshevik Revolution and a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia—Maurice Baring published an anthology of his earlier writings, entitled What I Saw in Russia. Lenin had died in 1924, and Stalin was on … Continue reading
Category: Great Writers
Maurice Baring’s Memorable Perceptions of War
After considering several varied, but representative, insights from Maurice Baring’s 1905 book, With the Russians in Manchuria, we shall be even more grateful to reflect upon the admonitory conclusions he draws from his trenchant depiction of modern war, which he … Continue reading
The Intellectual Magnanimity of Chesterton and Belloc’s Humor
On this manifold Sacred Feast Day, we propose to offer a perhaps unexpected, but quite illuminating contrast with the honored historical figure of Saint Joan of Arc, Virgin—who was killed by the English at nineteen years of age in 1431. … Continue reading
G.K. Chesterton in Praise of Chaucer
In 1932, four years before his death and only ten years after his having entered the Catholic Church, G.K. Chesterton wrote a vivid and capacious book on the medieval Catholic poet, Geoffrey Chaucer (d.1400). With his characteristic modesty, his book … Continue reading
Hilaire Belloc’s Canterbury Tale
In 1905, just before he entered the House of Commons for four discouraging years (1906-1910), Hilaire Belloc published a variegated and copious book, entitled The Old Road, about his eight-day journey afoot from Winchester to Canterbury, the latter also being … Continue reading
‘And You Cannot Build Upon a Lie’
In 1920, ten years after Hilaire Belloc had stepped down from his four maturing years of publicly elected service in the House of Commons, he published a lucid book-length essay, entitled, The House of Commons and Monarchy. It is a … Continue reading
Restoring a Catholic Memory
On How to Develop a Catholic Sense Without a Catholic Culture To restore to his people a true memory Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accepted almost unspeakable sacrifice and loss, and especially the cross of patience. Solzhenitsyn has attempted to draw his … Continue reading
Hilaire Belloc’s View of a Pilgrimage
When Hilaire Belloc was a rumbustious young man in his mid-thirties, and only a few years after he had completed his journey afoot to Rome, he wrote an essay entitled “The Idea of a Pilgrimage,” which first appeared in his … Continue reading
On Hilaire Belloc and a Great Wind
When Hilaire Belloc was a vigorous forty years of age, and three years before his life was shaken and shattered by the death of his wife Elodie on Candlemas 1914, he wrote an intimately evocative essay, entitled “On a Great … Continue reading
For Sobran Lovers (I’m One)
There are still persons who will open a book and read instead of watching whatever’s on television or fiddling with an iPhone when they have leisure and whether or not the time is planned. (When they are truly devoted readers, … Continue reading
The Isolation of the Soul
Examining the theme of loss and the isolation of the human soul through the thinking of Chesterton, Belloc, and Baring, this paper considers some of the theological, moral, and psychological matters — both the causes and the effects — while … Continue reading
Belloc, Chesterton, and the French Revolution
This is an essay written in 1988 for Aportes, the prestigious Historical Journal in Spain. Professor Miguel Ayuso y Torres asked the author to submit an article for an edition dedicated to the French Revolution 200 Years Later. The essay … Continue reading
Father Faber on the Salvation of Non-Catholics
If the Precious Blood had been shed, and yet we had no priesthood, no Sacraments, no jurisdiction, no sacramentals, no mystical life of the visible unity of the Church– life, so it seems, would be almost intolerable. This is the … Continue reading
Joseph Pierce on Roy Campbell
Joseph Pearce recalls the extraordinary life of Roy Campbell, who hid St John of the Cross’s letters from anticlerical Spanish militiamen. As you read Pierce’s piece, recall that here in the good old U S of A, people were led … Continue reading
What Are the Middle Ages?
The current definition of the Middle Ages implies that they are an intermediary epoch between two civilizations, and, therefore, only a break in the course of civilization. There is no term about whose definition there is more perfect agreement than … Continue reading