On inns

Now that schools have started, I have not had too much time to read on in Chesterton's works. Nevertheless, I finally started 'The flying inn', one of the three novels that Chesterton wrote shortly after 'Orthodoxy' and that illustrate some of the concepts from that book.
'Orthodoxy', however, was not the book I was reminded of most: the description of interfering government at the beginning of 'The flying inn' reminded me most of 'What's wrong with the world'. Let me explain.
This novel begins with a few loose chapters that set the stage. Chapter one contains 'a sermon on inns', delivered by an oriental man in a fez. Chapter two moves to an island in the Mediterranean, where we meet Patrick Dalroy, the 'king of Ithaca', and Lord Ivywood, the English Minister. Chapter three introduces us to the innkeeper of 'The old ship', Humphrey Pump, and  'Lady Joan'. Only in chapter four the persons and events come together: the man in the fez and Lord Ivywood have made some new legislation to 'improve the precarious financial conditions of the working class'. Their luminous idea is to practically forbid the sale of alcohol, so as to prevent poor people to spend money on drinks.
In 'What's wrong with the world' Chesterton also discusses if man should be molded to fit its environment, or if we should take the common man and his ways as the basic good to be protected. Chesterton argues there that governments sometimes look from the wrong direction: of course poverty is wrong, but for a solution you need to look first at what is good and right, not try to fit human beings to a situation that is wrong to begin with.

Love thy neighbor

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature. He is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty toward one's neighbor. 

But we have to love our neighbor because he is there - a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. Precisely because he may be anybody, he is everybody. He is a symbol because he is an accident.

From 'Heretics'

 

What's wrong with the world

I just finished 'What's wrong with the world', and I find it a difficult book to summarize. Luckily, Chesterton gives a nice example in this conclusion, in which he emphasizes his main point.

A little while ago certain doctors and other persons permitted by modern law to dictate to their shabbier fellow-citizens, sent out an order that all little girls should have their hair cut short. I mean, of course, all little girls whose parents were poor. Many very unhealthy habits are common among rich little girls, but it will be long before doctors interfere forcibly with them. Now, the case for this particular interference was this, that the poor are pressed down from above into such stinking and suffocating underworlds of squalor, that poor people must not be allowed to have hair, because in their case it must mean lice in the hair. Therefore, the doctors propose to abolish the hair. It never seems to have occurred to them to abolish the lice. [-]

Now the  whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all these pages is this: to assert that we must instantly begin all over again, and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl's hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution.

Socialism

'What's wrong with the world' discusses socialism first in part I, but it comes back in part V. I will select a few quotes that Chesterton makes on the subject in part I:

My main contention is that, whether necessary or not, both Industrialism and Collectivism have been accepted as necessities - not as naked ideals or desires. [-] Nobody likes the Marxian school; it is endured as the only way of preventing poverty. [-] I do not propose to prove here that Socialism is a poison; it is enough if I maintain that it is a medicine and not a wine. 

In part V, I encountered Chesterton's idea of Distributism for the first time:

The thing to be done is nothing more nor less than the distribution of the great fortunes and the great estates. We can now only avoid Socialism by a change as vast as Socialism. If we are to save property we must distribute property, almost as sternly and sweepingly as did the French Revolution. If we are to preserve the family we must revolutionize the nation.

 

Appropriate education

One of Chesterton's hammer points in 'What's wrong with the world' is that education should have an appropriate objective. Merely copying aristocratic educational institutions for normal people is not useful: a new focus is needed. The same goes for 'female education': Chesterton resents the 'new idea' that consists of 'ask what was being done to boys and then go and do it to girls'.
As a modern reader, this viewpoint is rather puzzling, or even repugnant. Old class distinctions are not regarded as important anymore, and though we may admit that boys and girls are different, we give them essentially the same education. What remains is Chesterton's underlying point: we still need to think about the appropriateness of the education we give to our children. How will they best be prepared for their future?

English schools

'What's wrong with the world' has an extensive section about education; Chesterton discusses both public and special schools. Apparently, the public schools of his day were often criticized. Chesterton explains the main problem:

Surely, when all is said, the ultimate objection to the English public school is its utterly blatant and indecent disregard of the duty of telling the truth. [-] No English schoolboy is ever taught to tell the truth, for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth. From the very first he is taught to be totally careless about whether a fact is a fact; he is taught to care only whether the fact can be used on his "side"

The argument continues to explain how this attitude is omnipresent in the political party system. One has to wonder if things significantly improved since then.
The 'new schools', unfortunately, are no better: according to Chesterton they are not really 'new', but merely copies of the older aristocratic educational institutions. They are not adapted to the working class that they should be serving.

Selection

Instead of reading through complete works by Chesterton, in my vacation I am reading a selection: Chesterton's 'essential writings', selected for the 'modern spiritual masters series'. I have mixed feelings about this selection, just as I had about commentaries.
On the positive side, I reread a couple of brilliant pages, mainly from orthodoxy. Reading these paragraphs without having to follow a complete argument focuses the attention on the beauty and depth of the sentences Chesterton writes. There is an invitation to contemplation.
On the other hand, I dislike reading pieces without context. I do not want anyone to come between me and the author I am reading. There is a risk that one reads through someone else's eyes, instead of encountering Chesterton himself.