Note 59 — Chapter Three

Sidney Hook, The Hero in History (The Humanities Press, New York, 1943), pp. 119, 123. (There is hidden irony, and humour as well, in Hook’s judgment. He discusses a short essay written by Belloc that appeared in a volume called “If, Or History Rewritten”; Belloc speculated, in his essay, on what France would have been like had the Revolution failed through the Royal Family’s escaping from the country. Hook, aware of Belloc’s fame as a Catholic apologist, simply assumes Belloc to imagine a modern Europe continuing the best traditions of Christendom, had the Revolution failed. But the contrary is the case. Belloc guesses—rightly or wrongly is beside the point here—that the Faith would practically be dead on the Continent had the Revolution failed. It is difficult to see how Hook could have read the piece and said what he did.)