Sorry I'm late. It always seems that I'm late wherever it is that I'm supposed to be at. I apologize and wish I could tell you that I was out debating any number of my opponents. But I wasn't. I was simply out taking a walk. You see, all of my mental doors open up unto a world that I did not make, ladies and gentleman. And I have to be aware of that at all times. So I went for a walk. I wasn't that far away. I heard mention of my wife, Frances. Might I tell you just a little bit about my wedding night? Just a bit. We got to the hotel-- I do have a lecture here. Let me put it down. I may get to it eventually.

I was saying that I went for a walk when we got to the hotel and decided that I could do that. There are all kinds of wonderful things in this world. The world doesn't suffer from the want of wonders. It suffers from the want of wonder. So yes, I wanted to see where I was, and off I went. And as you might imagine, I got hopelessly lost. By the time I found my way back to the hotel and back to Frances, she was sound asleep. That is the story of my wedding night. I didn't think I could even awaken her to apologize. In fact, I have been apologizing to her ever since. Now, here I am tonight to give a lecture and no doubt I'll have reasons to apologize to you as well.

Yes, I was simply taking a walk. I wish I could tell you I was debating Mr. Shaw. That was one occasion when I was actually on time. I was standing at the podium when he walked in looking even more gaunt than usual. And I made my comment, and he got me back. I must say that. He got me back. Shaw embodied any number of things that I cannot abide. But he was my friend really. Yes.

He was certainly a political enemy in a sense, but he was my friend. Although, you know at one point, I'm going to talk a bit tonight about the family, he tried to convince Frances to divorce me. He didn't think I was taking proper care of her financially speaking. Isn't that interesting? Shaw, the socialist, was at heart a capitalist and wanting to make money all of the time. And I, not a socialist, wasn't paying enough attention, he thought, to making money for poor Frances.

Well, as you know, I did not divorce her. But what did he embody that I cannot abide? Emperialism? Feminism? Socialism? Vegetarianism? Do you know my poem by the way, The Logical Vegetarian?

You will find me drinking rum like a sailor in a slum
You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian
You will find me drinking gin in the lowest sort of inn
Because I am a happy vegetarian.

So I cleared that hint of wine and tried to climb a sign
And sought to hail the constable as 'Marion'
So he bowed me in the beak and refused to let me speak
Because I was a rigid vegetarian.

I once knew a Dr. Gluck, and his nose had a hook
And his attitudes were anything but Aryan
So I gave him all the pork that I had upon my fork
Because, you see, I am a vegetarian.

No more the milk of cows shall pollute my private house
Than the milk in the wild mares of the barbarian
I will stick to port and sherry for they are so very, very
So very, very, very vegetarian.

I'll get to the lecture, but since I've given you one poem, might I give you just one more?

If I should be a heathen, I'd praise the purple vine
My slaves would dig the vineyard and I would drink the wine
But Higgins is a heathen, whose slaves grow lean and gray
That he may drink some tepid milk exactly twice a day.

If I should be a heathen, I'd crown Neaera’s curls
I'd fill my life with love affairs, my house with dancing girls
But Higgins is a heathen and lecture rooms is forced
But his aunts who are not married, demand to be divorced.

Now if I should be a heathen, I'd send my armies forth
And drag behind my chariots the chieftains of the north
But Higgins is a heathen, who drives his dreary quill
That lends the poor that funny cash that makes them poorer still.

Now, if I should die a heathen, I'd pile my pyre on high
And in a great red whirlwind, go roaring for the sky
But Higgins did die a heathen and a far richer man than I
And yet they put him in an oven and baked him like a pie.

Now it's not for me to ponder this riddle that I write
But why this poor old heathen should sin without delight
Now it's up to you to ponder now that I am finally done
The lot of he who lack the faith, that would not have any fun.

Yes, The Song of the Strange Ascetic, it is. Oh yes, I wish I were debating any number of the enemies of the church. Let me think. You know the argument, I've had it thrust at me any number of times where someone, one of my opponents will come up to me in the middle of a debate and say, "Mr. Chesterton, your church is responsible for this war. That violence, this crusade, whatever. What do you have to say for yourself?"

I say, "Well, naturally. What did you expect from fallen man? Of course, my church has committed wrongs, but the unique thing about my church is that we admit them." Yes, we admit them. Others think we should wed ourselves to the world. Yes, we should follow what the world is doing. Ladies and gentlemen, whenever the church weds itself to the world, the church can be sure one day to be widowed by the world.

Now, I don't want a church that moves with the world. I want a church that moves the world. Besides, how do we know which way the world is going? It may very well be going in the wrong direction, following this fad or this fancy or this fashion. No. The world doesn't progress. It wobbles. It wobbles this way and wobbles that way. Besides, how do you know when it progresses if you don't have a standard against which to judge it? You must have a standard, and that standard must not be the calendar. It must be a creed. We must judge things not by whether we like the day before yesterday or the day after tomorrow. We must judge things by whether they are good and useful or not. In that sense, I am a reactionary, and I am not a child of my age. Really, the church is the only thing I think that saves me from the degraded slavery of being a child of my age.

Any numbers of the enemies of the church, for example, have told me or asked me again and again, "You don't really believe, Gilbert, in Adam and Eve, do you?"

"Of course, I do. It's common sense." Besides, it gives us the image of the perfect man in the eyes of God. Yes, the perfect man. Not that we can become that and not Nietzsche or Shaw's superman. But we have the image of the perfect man in the eyes of God as we do not have for other creatures.

For example, what would you say if you were about to see a fellow getting ready to consume his tenth whiskey? I would trust that you would slap him on the back and say to him, "Stop it. Be a man."

But if you were to witness a crocodile about to consume his tenth explorer, you wouldn't pound that crocodile on the back and say, "Stop it. Be a crocodile," would you? Because, of course, the crocodile was being a crocodile.

Now, the [inaudible 00:09:44] is the only religion-- it is a revealed religion, which tells us that omnipotence did not make God complete. God, in order to be Holy God, must have been just as much of a rebel as a king. Besides, it's the only religion that has added courage to the list of the virtues of the Creator. Courage, I have been accused on any number of occasions. And I will plead guilty to talking in paradoxes. Courage, itself, when you think about it, is a paradox, isn't it? What does it mean? It means desire to live accompanied by a willingness to die.

Here's one more for you before I-- you're here for a lecture and I will get to the lecture in short order. But the paradox, I think, that is most compelling to me is this. It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have truly achieved mental emancipation. It's only since I have known orthodoxy that I have achieved true intellectual freedom. And more than that, it's only since I have known orthodoxy that I have come to experience joy. I know modern man says that joy is a religion of pagans where sorrow is a religion of Christians. To me, the heart of paganisms is sorrow, but at the heart of Christianity is pure joy.

Joy may be the small publicity of the pagan, but it is the gigantic secret of the Christian. Why are we Christians so joyful? Here's a paradox for you. We are joyful, are we not, because we believe in original sin?

The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the doctrine of original sin is the only doctrine of Christianity that you really can prove. It gives us the only joyful version of life that there is. It says that the wrong use of the will may be righted. It says our natures are made for beatitude. The Good News of the Gospel is the Good News of original sin. And we are joyful, as pagans are not.

Many of my contemporaries have said to me, "It's terrible that today, the young are pagans." Do you know something? In truth, I wish they were pagans. Because you see, a pagan had a sense that wine wasn't just wine. It was a god. And corn wasn't just corn. It was a goddess. The pagans understood that there was something about this world that was more real than realism. But I fear that the modern youth of today are so materialistic that they don't even have that sense. I wish they were pagans. Then there might be some better hope that they will become Christian at some point.

But of course, we can hope. And it is a great Christian virtue - hope - isn't it? I much prefer the Christian virtues to the pagan virtues. There are good pagan virtues. Justice is a good pagan virtue. What does it mean? It means you should give someone his due or temperance. Temperance is another virtue. It says we should decide what should be the limits to something and do our best to adhere to it. There is nothing wrong with that.

But the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are much broader, much deeper, much more important. What is faith if not believing in the impossible? Or it's no virtue at all. What is hope if not hoping when everything is hopeless? Or it's no virtue at all. And what is charity if not pardoning the unpardonable? Or it is no virtue at all.

Well, I'm here tonight to lecture on your country, which I visited in 1921 and again in 1930 and vowed at the time I would never come back until prohibition had ended. Since it has, I have returned. I must tell you in 1930, when I was lecturing not all that far from here at Notre Dame-- I spent the fall of 1930, lecturing at Notre Dame. And I almost became a convert to prohibition. You might wonder why. Virtually every evening, I was invited out to dinner to a professor's home. And virtually every evening, that professor served wine and/or beer. They had been making it in their own homes. Then I thought to myself, maybe your Congress is smarter than I had given it credit for being. In fact, maybe your Congress should start passing laws banning the making and manufacturing and selling of jellies, jams, sweaters, woolens, and mittens. Then mothers would start making them in their own homes again.

So I almost did become a convert to prohibition. Thank goodness I was not asked my opinion of prohibition when I applied for a passport to come to your country in 1921. Instead, I was asked if I was an anarchist. It was right on the form. I didn't know what to put, so I looked at the second question. The second question asked me if I was a polygamist. Well, I thought of putting down, "Not so lucky." Or "Not so stupid." Or that the 47 women with me were all my secretaries. But again, I left it blank, then I read the third question. It asked me if I favored overthrowing the government of the United States by force of arms. Well, I thought I couldn't possibly leave three in a row blank. I had to answer at least one of them. So I picked the third question, and I wrote the following. That I didn't know whether I favored overthrowing your government by force of arms, but I would much prefer to answer such a question at the end of my journey rather than the beginning.

Speaking of polygamy for just a minute, Theodore Roosevelt, not long ago was your president. There was a great controversy in your United States Senate over seating a senator from Utah. You might remember his name - Reed Smoot. The terror from a few years ago was named part after him. The democrats didn't want to seat him, because he had been a polygamist. He wasn't any longer, but that is what he had been. They wouldn't seat him. And members of the press asked Roosevelt what he thought of this. Do you know what he said? I love this. He said, "I would rather have in the United States Senate, a polygamist who doesn't polygamize than a monogamist who doesn't monogamize."

Well, I'm here to talk about the family. To be born into a family is the most terribly wonderful experience of one's life, isn't it? It's like climbing down a chimney into any house at random and trying to get on as well as possible with the people inside. Isn't that what each one of us really began to do on the day that we were born? Of course, it is. That's why it's so thoroughly romantic because it's so completely arbitrary. I know the enemies of the family, and their legion, like to tell us that the family is an uncongenial institution. I say the family is a good institution and precisely because it can be, on many different occasions, so completely and thoroughly uncongenial. That's really the point of it in part, isn't it? Yes.

To be born into a family is terribly romantic - far more romantic than falling in love. Because you see, in one sense, we're prepared for that. But the moment we climb down that chimney into a family, we enter a world of romance and wonder, which we could never anticipate, never prepare for.

Beatrice, can you hear me? Sometimes I can't hear you. Question, Beatrice. Why did you have to die? You were only eight at the time, and I was but three. Father, Father. Why did Beatrice die? Why did you, the man with the golden key, choose to shut yourself up? Why did you turn her picture to the wall, sell her few possessions? And Father, why did you instruct Mother and me never to mention her name again? Why, Father? Why? Why, Beatrice? Why?

Two years later, my brother, Cecil, climbed down our chimney, and for most of the next 35 years, we argued. My first response when he was brought to the house was to take a look at him and say, "This is wonderful. Now, I shall have an audience." But yes, we did argue. We argued about everything, but never once did we quarrel. Quarrel, you see, should never get in the way of a good argument, of which we had plenty.

We didn't argue about domesticity, about the virtues of domesticity. Nor did we disagree that the modern world was running away from domesticity, fleeing domesticity. It's really been a drift, not a drive. It's overall following a fashion, not even that we're following a heresy. It's as if we're all sheep. We're all sheep. We aren't even following an evil shepherd. We're following, more often than not, the state. Without the family, ladies and gentlemen, we are all helpless before the state. I don't know if there's anything more important that I can say this evening than that. Without the family, we are helpless before the state.

Yes, we are in the process. I fear that Cecil, before he died at the end of WWI, was fearing this as well - that we are all sheep. I know a little dog can drive all those sheep, but where is the dog driving? He's it either driving them into the field or he's driving them home. But where are we being driven? We're being driven into the arms of the state, it seems to me. I know there are those who say that state officials can make very good parents if you pay them enough. But I also believe that there is a God in heaven who created a world in which there are always to be two people who would do, out of love, by way of raising their children. It's also said of course that raising children is boring. I believe that same God in heaven created a world in which there would be two parents who would never be bored by the antics of the child and who would pay little attention to experts. But our world is quite overrun with experts, each one of them as much more of an aristocrat than the aristocrat of old who merely thought he knew how to live well. Whereas, the modern expert is someone who claims to know better. For most things in life, I should think we are better off ignoring experts and going back to the principle behind the jury system.

Questions of guilt or innocence are really too important to be left to experts. If you want a library catalogued or a bank audited or a solar system discovered, we can turn to experts. But if we want something truly important such as determining guilt or innocence, what do we do but gather together 12 people who happen to be standing at the pub at the moment. The same thing was done, if I remember correctly, by the founder of Christianity.

I heard an expert, a lady socialist at that, give a lecture not long ago in which she said, "We must take care of other people's children as if they were our own." That's what's wrong with the world. That's the exact formula of what's wrong with the world. We must take care of other people's children as if they were our own.

Even the Bolsheviks have discovered that the family is a real institution. After prolonged and extravagant experience, the Bolsheviks have discovered something - that the family is a real institution and moreover that there is no substitute for it. I wonder when our modern industrial world will make the same discovery.

Well, you have been patient waiting for a lecture. So let me make an attempt. I call this lecture At Large In America. I'm rather pleased to know that there is something large enough that I can still hide behind. And I must tell you in all honesty, I'm hiding behind something else as well. I'm hiding behind the pose of a lecturer. No doubt, you will discover that I am an imposter all too soon, but let me at least make an attempt at doing what you have come here to hear - a lecture. Let me begin by turning to someone who was never an imposter. The individual I have in mind is not anyone I met on my travels here. But he is surely someone I felt the presence of and on more than one occasion, especially when I visited one of your small towns. I'm speaking of Abraham Lincoln.

As far as I am concerned, Mr. Lincoln is the best representative of your past and of your future, I trust as well. Whenever I lingered long enough in one of your small towns, Lincoln's presence there only intensified. Of course, sophisticated Europeans dismiss American small towns as dull and uninteresting places. Now that I think about it, supposedly sophisticated Americans do the same thing. People like Sinclair Lewis.

Now, if I am not a lecturer, I must also tell you that I am not a sophisticated European either. Therefore, it should almost go without saying that I do not find your small towns dull and interesting places. How could I possibly think such a thing when I have just told you that Lincoln came from such a place? I know. Many Americans dismiss Lincoln as a simple-minded dunce or a village atheist. But he wasn't either one. What he was really beyond anything else was a common man who became a great democratic leader. In part, he was such a leader because he never condescended to the common man. How could he? Being condescended, after all, he knew that he had a streak of something common buried within him. To be sure, Lincoln's greatness was based on more than that. He was also a wise man. Have you ever read his address to temperance reformers? He was barely 30 at the time, and yet, he revealed great wisdom in that speech in which he warned his fellow reformers against themselves.

Keep in mind that Lincoln himself abstained from alcoholic drink and yet he sympathized with the whole temperance courts, knowing that you might be tempted to think that he delivered that speech to warn them against the evils of drink. But they didn't need that kind of warning. They needed to be warned of their own potential for fanaticism. To guide against their own fanaticism. To guard against the prideful fanaticism of temperance reform, as another of others of that sort. I should think he was right to issue such a warning. Pride, you see, is the poison in every other vice, isn't it?

People can be proud of their harems, and a man can be proud of his wife. It's something else again to be proud of one's own accomplishments, one's own virtues. Not long ago, I was at a dinner party, and fellow at the end of the table, I overheard him saying to the person next to him that if a man can't believe in himself, what can he believe in? I turned to the old lady next to me, and I said, "I can tell you what he can believe in. He can believe in original sin. That's what he can believe in." Really, to believe in yourself is a dangerous belief, a horrible belief, a superstitious belief. Worse than that, it's a weakness. Perhaps even a sin. Maybe even the original sin.

Now, I'm not here tonight to accuse that fellow of being a sinner. Far be it from me to do that. But he is in danger of committing the sin of pride. Here again, I should think the prohibitionists are wrong. Most of the evil in this world does not result from staring into the bottom of a beer glass. Most of the evil results from the staring longingly into a looking glass.

Yes, I did want to praise Lincoln for warning the temperance reformers against fanaticism, against the evils of pride. If only Lincoln had been on hand in the 1920s to warn us against prohibition. Such legislation suggests to me that you are apparently a nation less a nation of immigrants than you are a nation of lunatics. To say that a man has the right to vote but not the right to choose what to have with his dinner is like saying that a man has a right to his hat but not a right to his head.

Well, prohibition has come and gone. So let me return briefly to Lincoln and to another matter that generated no small amount of fanaticism. That, of course, would be the issue of slavery. Once again, Lincoln proved to be, I think, a wise man. For most of his life, including for much of his presidency, he regarded slavery as an intolerable wrong. But an intolerable wrong that for a certain length of time had to be tolerated. As we look back at more recent American history, I could say something similar about the version of capitalism as practiced by John D. Rockefeller and others like him. Well, yes, perhaps intolerable. It seems like it too had to be tolerated. Just as Lincoln was a wise political leader of his time, any wise political leader who came after him would have managed to endure what capitalism had become later in the nineteenth century. In all likelihood, such a leader would have praised what capitalism produced without defending all of its practices. And he certainly, this wise political leader, would not have called businessmen brutes because he would have understood that few businessmen are brutes. By the same token, he would have regarded some of the enemies of capitalism as crude and inhuman just as Lincoln regarded John Brown as crude and inhuman.

This note of comparison demands that I return briefly to slavery and Lincoln. Listen to what he said when he was a very young man. He said, "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." Of course, there's great moral clarity in a statement like that. But he had always combined moral clarity with practical patience. Yes, Lincoln realized very early in his life that slavery was a great evil. But we must keep in mind that he did not move to destroy slavery, to destroy that evil until very late in his presidency, which also happened to be the point that was very late in your terrible, but somehow terribly necessary, Civil War.

Now, speaking of that war, might I risk wrath on the part of some Michiganders by saying to you that the defeat of the confederacy was not entirely a bad thing. Yes, I agree that the confederacy was a lost cause. Not only that. I agree that the cause of slavery was a lost cause that deserved to lose. But I would not agree that everything about a lost cause deserves such a fate. In fact, there might be some elements of a lost cause that deserve to be found. I'm thinking of the agrarian elements of your southern society. Yes, I'm also thinking about the suspicion of governmental power that resides there.

Yes, if there was a time when southern states left the Union, seceded from the Union because of their defense of slavery, there might be a time when my friend, Hilaire Belloc-- you may have read his book, The Servile State, warning us against the dangers of an over powerful state, the dangers, the desperatism of such a state. It may be the case at some point in the future or the south will secede to avoid slavery. I don't know if that's going to happen. I'm not a futurist at all. But there are elements that I should think we must want to defend about the South.

To be sure, Lincoln was right to believe that there really wasn't a northern nation and a southern nation but rather, one American nation. He was wise about this as well as he moved near the end of his life to quickly re-unite the country - the North and the South. To get the South into the Union again as quickly and painlessly as possible. But it is tempting to compare my England's treatment of the Irish to your treatment of the South. I do think there is at least one crucial difference. We English have conquered Ireland again and again, but we have never come close to converting it. You have had one Gettysburg. We have had many Gettysburgs and yet, we still have no union. Worse than that, we still have rebellion.

Speaking of rebellion, we are not too many years here in the 1930s removed from the Bolshevik rebellion. And any number of friends of mine have tried to tell me that this the wave of the future. I don't think it is at all. In fact, I think it will not survive. You see it against the crust of human nature. We all want to own a piece of land. We all want to have a home to call our own. We don't want the state to own everything.

This is why I call myself a distributist. Property is like muck. It should be spread around. Bolshevism will not last. I'm not a politician. I created a distributist league in 1926 in memory, in part, of my dead brother, Cecil. I did want to create that league to promote distributism but not in any political party. Politics should be left to the politicians. They're the only people dull enough not to be bored by it.

Either property is good for man or it is not. If it is good for man, then it is good for every man. If it is not, then let us all instantly become courageous communists. Every man should have a chance to have a garden of his own, have a chance to plant things of his own, to wander through his garden. That very much is at the heart of what I mean by distributism. It seems to me that the real dangerous revolution that we face is not promotionism. The most dangerous revolution is not in Moscow, but it is in Manhattan. It is the sexual revolution that is upon us. Because you see, of course, unlike Bolshevism, the sexual revolution feeds right into our fallen human nature. It is consistent with our human nature. It is therefore much more dangerous.

Every young boy and girl must learn two things about sex. They must learn that it is beautiful, and they must learn that it is dangerous. Every healthy society, every decent society throughout history has put restrictions on sex. That's not necessary that the restrictions be reasonable. It's just necessary that they restrict. That really is the beginning of all true passion. So those who say that sex should be treated any different from eating and sleeping, walking and running, of course, this is absurd. It requires a special purification, a special dedication. I might debate people over this, but I would not debate people over pornographers. But the idea of someone inciting a sexual instinct that is already too powerful in the face of it is a scoundrel, and he must be stamped upon with one's heal, not argued about with one's intellect. The moment we turn sex into just some other bodily function, it threatens to become our master. And if it becomes our master, it becomes a tyrant. So yes, I do believe that that is the revolution that we must guard against by all accounts.

Now, Manhattan. In America, there is nothing quite like Manhattan. And on Manhattan, there is nothing quite like Broadway. What a glorious garden of wonders Broadway would be for anyone lucky enough not to be able to read. When I first saw all the advertisements, I wasn't worried. After all, it seemed to me that only soft-headed, sentimental, servile people could possibly be affected by them. Certainly hard-headed, humorous, independent Americans would get the joke. Then it occurred to me that you Americans were probably more hard-headed, more humorous, more independent in the nineteenth century. Those Americans surely would have gotten the joke. But will more soft-headed, sentimental, servile twentieth century Americans get the joke? I wonder. And I worry.

If modern Americans do fail to get the joke, I wonder and worry about the future of your democratic ideal. I know these advertisements are considered to be necessary for economic progress, but is that progress necessarily consistent with your democratic ideal. Surely, it is fair even for an outsider such as myself to ask such questions. And they especially must be asked because your country was founded on an ideal. England, my country, and Germany, like you, are industrial countries. But they are different because of your democratic ideal. They do not have the same ideal. In truth, yours is the only country with the soul of a church. And that's because yours is the only country that was founded on a creed, a creed grounded in your Declaration of Independence.

Don't misunderstand what I am about to say. But I would like to propose comparing your founding document to the Spanish Inquisition. This may seem to be to you something less than a compliment to you and to your Declaration and to your Constitution. But oddly enough, I should think it does involve a truth. And still, more oddly perhaps, I think it does involve a compliment. You see, both the American founding and the Spanish Inquisition involve creeds. Now, your creed was initially set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in your Declaration of Independence. That document is perhaps the only peace of practical politics that has also sound theoretical politics as well as great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that government exists to give them that justice. Then your government’s authority is, for that reason, just.

Your Declaration certainly does condemn anarchism. And by inference, it also condemns atheism, does it not? After all, it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority, meaning the authority from whom those equal rights are derived. Of course, nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such darkness. When it comes to the matter of God and government, it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. But my point, I think, stands. There is a creed. And if in the final analysis, it is not a creed about a divine being, it is at least a creed about human beings.

To be sure, we sinful human beings are not divine. In our desire for the things of this world, we sometimes forget all about our true reason for being here. But we do have ideas. Ironically, you have become prosperous because of your ideals. Now, you are better because of your democratic ideal. But that very ideal has increasingly come under siege in modern America. Not long ago, your President Harding called for a return to normalcy. Now, please understand, I'm in favor of turning back the clock for any number of reasons. That's why I call myself a reactionary. I try to judge things that I want to defend and build upon such as Christ as Judge, by a creed, what things I want to promote like a fairer and wider distribution of property. I will fight for those as well on the basis of a creed but not on the basis of a calendar.

I know it's very hard to fight against people who think that they know what they want. Only those who can fight back best are those who know that they want something else. I think both progressors and conservatives make the same mistake here by judging things by a calendar, not a creed. Progressives are always looking toward the future. What do conservatives do but see it as their task to conserve progressive reforms. That makes no sense to me. There are things that must be turned back.

You know Harding's line. He called for a return to normalcy, didn't he? Please understand, yes, I do believe in returning to normalcy, but if you're thinking about-- or if Harding was thinking about returning to the late nineteenth century, I would submit to you that he was proposing that we return to an abnormalcy, which is to say, the kind of capitalism that Rockefeller and others practiced at that time. I'm referring to that kind of capitalism, to a version of capitalism that, in my mind, was never accustomed, for men never grew accustomed to it. But it wasn't really conservative, because it conserved nothing. And it certainly wasn't normal. What it was, was a problem. And I would submit to you that those who refuse to admit that there might be a capitalist problem are likely to get a Bolshevik solution.

I must say, I do worry about another ism. This would commercialism. Especially commercialism without rational purpose and rational limbs. Commercialism devoid and divorced from Christian values and Christian beliefs. Perhaps your Manhattan skyscraper is accurately named because it seems to have no limits, towering in insolence. It seems to scrape the stars off the American sky, the very heaven of the American spirit.

All of this leads me sometimes to wonder if there's something in your water that has resulted in your being born drunk. Perhaps I should think you need a little beer and wine to sober you up. Consuming such spirits might help you master the wonderful art of doing less or perhaps even more wonderful art of doing nothing.

Of course, advocates of prohibition didn't agree with me on this. But to me, prohibition was a retreat from liberty. To me, it was a departure from your Declaration of Independence. I can't imagine Thomas Jefferson entertaining the idea of promoting prohibition. What was the point of Jeffersonian democracy if not to give the law more general control over public matters, while giving ordinary people, all people, citizens a more general liberty over private matters? Personal liberties should be the last liberties that we lose. Instead, they seem to be the first liberties that we sacrifice. And it really seems to me that Catholicism is the religion of liberty, because it is the religion of free will. Virtually, every other religion, it seems to me, preaches some version of fatalism. Calvinism did. Islam does. And the modern secular religions of Darwinism and Marxism, Freudianism, all preach fatalism of one sort or another rather than liberty.

Speaking of Freud, I have another little poem for you if I might.

The Well-Informed pronounce it Froyd whether it a cavil or applaud.
The ill-informed pronounce it Frood.
But I pronounce it Fraud.

See, I'm running near the end of my time here. I must get to a subject that requires, before I speak about it, that I take just a brief little rest if you might, because I'm likely to be savagely attacked once we get into this subject that is related to your country - and my country as well. And this will help me get into the mood if might. Please bear with me for just a minute while I summon my strength and take a little rest. Thank you.

What day is it? It must be a lecture day. Every day these days is a lecture day. And what should be the topic of the hour? Frances! Do you have my schedule, Frances?

That was yesterday's lecture. That won't do. Morals. I can talk about morals - especially this sorry stage of modern models. But where to begin?

The only thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, I should think would be the modern strengthening of minor morals.

Today, it is thought to be in good taste to accuse someone of bad taste but not to accuse anyone of bad morals. We can say people have bad habits. Yes, we can do that. In this day and age of Eugenics, we can say people have bad genes. Yes, we can say they make bad choices. Isn't that a good one? Yes, they make bad choices. But bad morals? Never. What would I do if I were a good, modern man of good, modern minor morals? I'd get up, wouldn't I? And after getting up, I would eat something healthy, something god-awful such as grape nuts. Then I'd wash my hands. Yes, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Today, cleanliness has become Godliness. So is eating food that is thought to be good for us. I think I should have another toffee instead.

Modern man says in the name of good, minor morals that the way to health is care. To me, the mark of a truly healthy man, I should think of to be carelessness. We ought to take exercise, not because we are too fat, but because we love horses and high mountains and risks in general and because we love them for their own sake. Just as we are to eat because we have a good appetite to satisfy, not because we want a sound body to worship. So far as I'm concerned, there is more goodness and simplicity, more honesty and health in the person who eats beef steak on impulse that in the person who eats grape nuts on principle.  

Eating for health is just one more modern, minor moral. And so is getting up early in the morning. After all, who rises with the rooster and why should we admire them? Misers, I presume, get up early in the morning. And burglars, I've been told, get up the night before.

I say let people get up whenever they wish. And once they are up, let them eat whatever, whenever, and wherever they wish. All bad habits, you say? I say then, something quite alarming in this modern world of ours about the growth of good habits. Besides the things that should be constant in our lives are our principles, not our habits.

But the modern man has it the other way about. His principles such as they are, are always changing; whereas, up and out the bedtime and his lunchtime and things like this never change. Anyone can get used to rising at the same boring, early hour every morning. The question is, why should we? Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect experience if only I had a colored pencil long enough to draw pictures on the ceiling. Then great art could be performed at the same time. Of course, lying in bed or sitting is itself a great art. And if anyone should perform this art with me, they must be sure to do so for no reason at all. And when they get up, they must be sure to do so for no reason at all.

Now, that I am up, I suppose I should have a reason for being up. Now that I am up, it feels very much like lunchtime. And if it feels like lunchtime, then I should think it must be lunchtime.

Frances! Frances, my lunch. Oh, if the feminists could hear me say that, they would object to me. At least, I hope so, because you see I object to much of modern feminism. Here is where I'm about to be attacked. And the rest of it, I find amusing.

Think what the emancipation of women has come to mean in England where countless young girls rose up all at once to shout, "I will not be dictated to," and promptly became stenographers. Or perhaps that should be the topic of the hour - modern feminists.

Modern women defend their place of work as they once defended domesticity? They fight for desk and typewriter as they once fought for hearth and home, which, of course, is why women do office work so well and why they ought not to do it at all. And why is that? Because the emancipation of women has to come to mean little more than their exploitation. I agree with those feminists who rail against the shameful tyranny to be found in offices and factories throughout England. But there is something that still divides us. They want to destroy the womanhood, whereas I want to destroy the tyranny.

They want to remove women for what they consider to be the dullness and triviality of the home. I will concede the domestic life is hard, but I will never concede that it is dull or trivial. I may pity poor Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task, but I will never pity her for the smallness of it.

How can it be a small career to be a mother who's everything to someone? And yet thought to be a large career to be a bank teller who is the same thing to everyone. For that matter, how can it be a large career to be a teacher who explains the rule of three to other people's children? And yet dismissed as a small career to be a mother who tells one's own children about the universe?

I suppose I've gone too far there, haven't I? Surely, women belong in classrooms as students or teachers. But surely, women do not belong hovering over looms in textile mills or in stenographic pools or in voting booths. Whenever I put that into a lecture, the gasp is audible. And I hear people say, "He didn't say that, did he?"

Oh, yes, I did. But I would hasten to add just because I disapprove of votes for women does not mean that I disapprove of thrones or crowns for them. There's a far stronger case to be made for making the suffrages to despot and from her making her a new voter. Surely, it was a mistake to grant women the vote in the name of something called equality. Of course, men and women are equal in the sight of God. But they're also different. And out of those differences, wonderful things once came.

You see, women once tempered the gravity of politics as they tempered the gravity of golf. That is, by reminding men not to be so solemn about things that are slightly unreal. All of that is gone now. And it's all the men's fault. We told women that the vote was a frightful importance. We just never imagined that they would believe us. But they did. And as a result, a terrible thing has happened to those of us who are masculine. We won.

But before the victory, before in England, before suffrages got the right to vote, there were stories in the newspapers of suffragists punching policemen. I read this. I was terribly amused. They were doing the one thing that the policemen had no reason to fear.

Yes, of course, every real man is frightened of a woman's turn of her head. That can frighten him like a dynamite explosion. Every real man is afraid of a woman's tongue and of her silence, afraid of her sanity and insanity, afraid of her collapse and of her endurance. The one thing, however, that a real man is not afraid of is her deltoid muscle. And there they were, punching policemen.  

Now, in England, because of the suffragism, women no longer wear skirts or petticoats or other such badges of femininity. They think that such dress reveals female submission. On the contrary, it seems to me that it reveals female dignity. After all, what do men wear when they wish to appear safely impressive as kings or judges or priests? They wear not just skirts and petticoats, but long flowing robes of great female dignity. The whole world is a petticoat government because even the men wear petticoats when they truly wish to govern.

But look what else has happened. Divorce reform, birth control. As far as I can tell, birth control in England has to come to mean fewer and fewer births and less and less control. In your country, I'm now being told that people in some states may be divorced for something called incompatibility of temperament. Don't you Americans understand that's the basis for a marriage, not a divorce? I have lived a very long life, and I have known many a happy marriage. Not a one of them was compatible. That's the whole point of it, isn't it? Is a good marriage possible? Of course. Especially - my last point here - especially if it takes place at a moment of exaggerated tenderness.

You see, the sexes are really like two stubborn pieces of iron, and if they are to be successfully welded together, it must be while they are still red hot. Every woman must learn that her husband-to-be is a selfish beast, because of course, every man is a selfish beast - at least by the standards of the woman. Let her learn that about him while she's still wonderfully in love.

And every man must come to terms with the fact that his wife-to-be is sensitive the point of madness. It is of course, every woman is madly sensitive - at least by the standards of the man. But let him learn that she is mad while her madness is still more intriguing to him than anyone else's sanity.

On that note, I think I should be getting home. A neighbor was asking me where I was going when I was getting ready to come here. I told him, "Why, to Beaconsfield," where I lived. Of course.

He looked at me and said, "Well, Gilbert, you're in Beaconsfield."

I said, "Oh, yes. But I can't really see my garden, I can't really see my study unless I go somewhere else on occasion. Paradox - the whole object of foreign travel is not to set foot on foreign soil, but to return to your home as though it was foreign soil. Travel, if it's worth anything at all, narrows the mind. There is the paradox. It doesn't broaden the mind. It narrows the mind. I've been to Poland and Palestine. I've been to France and Germany, and I've seen great sights there. But all the while, what I am truly seeking is Beaconsfield.

Sometimes I think the strangest country I have ever visited is England. Unless I forget how wonderfully strange it is, I think I should be getting home. Sometimes I think the strangest place I have ever lived is Beaconsfield. Unless I forget how deliciously strange it is, I think I should be getting home. Which way, I wonder, is it to Beaconsfield?


Last modified: Wednesday, January 2, 2019, 9:41 AM