AUTOBIOGRAPHY-Chesterton

serious or otherwise, seems to hate the Japanese. Why are we not only allies of
the Japanese, but forbidden to say a word against them in any of the
newspapers? Why is it the fashion or convention to praise the Japs everywhere
and all the time?” But at that, I think, Mr. Churchill smiled the inscrutable
smile of the statesman; and that veil of vagueness, of which I have spoken,
seemed to descend upon everybody; and we never had an answer to the
question, either then or since.
Charles Masterman, of whom I have just spoken, was a very remarkable
man. He was also a very subtle and curious character; and many of my own
best friends entirely misunderstood and underrated him. It is true that as he
rose higher in politics, the veil of the politician began to descend a little on
him also; but he became a politician from the noblest bitterness on behalf of
the poor; and what was blamed in him was the fault of much more ignoble
men. What was blamable, as distinct from what was blamed, in him was due
to two things; he was a pessimistic official. He had had a dark Puritan
upbringing and retained a sort of feeling of the perversity of the gods; he said
to me, “I am the sort of man who goes under a hedge to eat an apple.” But he
was also an organiser and liked governing; only his pessimism made him think
that government had always been bad, and was now no worse than usual.
Therefore, to men on fire for reform, he came to seem an obstacle and an
official apologist; but the last thing he really wanted was to apologise for
anything. He had a startling insight into character, and a way of suddenly
expressing it, so that it braced rather than hurt. As Oldershaw once said to me,
“His candour is beautiful.” But his melancholy made him contented, where
happier men were discontented. His pessimism did the worst work of
optimism. In person he was long, loose and lounging; and nearly as untidy as I
was.
Apart from these various glimpses of various parties, my main work was
on the Daily News, then practically controlled by Mr. Cadbury with Mr. A. G.
Gardiner as its well-read and sympathetic editor: and I only dimly appreciated
what I now see to have been the process by which the press came to be run
like a big business. I remember gazing blankly at the poky little entrance being
replaced by a revolving door; then a novelty to me, though probably to nobody
else. It reminded me vaguely of a cattle-gate, and I remember asking old Mr.
Cadbury whether it was meant to keep cows out of the office. He laughed
immensely at this simple jest, having himself an attractive simplicity; but the
incident is connected chiefly in my mind with a jest rather less Arcadian.
There was working in the office a very prominent journalist of the
Nonconformist culture, who took himself so seriously that in any crowd of
common men he was certain to be taken frivolously. I am ashamed to say that
I circulated, about this bland and blameless publicist, a legend that the
mechanical structure of the new door was the key to the mystery of his