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Background: When I was the editor of Gilbert Magazine, I was responsible for the "Tremendous Trifles" column. It was occasionally hard to find a sufficient amount of interesting GKC material to fill the page, so John Peterson sent me a file full of Chesterton ancedotes. They were idiosyncratic, historical, and Chestertonian. He gave me permission to use them here. I hope y'all find them as interesting as I have over the years. Most of them have never been published.

Chesterton Short(s)

In Frederick Wilhelmson's Hilaire Belloc: No Alienated Man there is a judicious comparison of Chesterton and Belloc that bears reprinting:

Belloc's attack seems to have been less effective than Chesterton's, because Chesterton brought to the battle an amazing good humour and charity for the enemy. Belloc could rarely accept the good will of men who opposed his judgments. They were either fools or liars. [Chapter 2, Sheed and Ward, 1954].

And savor this: "Today Belloc remains a writer who has not been tried and found wanting, but who has simply not been tried at all."

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