KAMM ON, HE’S NOT THAT BAD

Oliver Kamm concludes that because of G. K. Chesterton’s views on Captain Dreyfus, an outcome of his ‘antisemitism’, Chesterton was “A writer unfit to be a saint” ( Comment, August 30).

Most commentators have not taken into account his complete literary ouevre and that of his contemporaries, whose opinions were in some cases more forcefully stated.

Chesterton began as a staunch defender of Dreyfus but succumbed to doubts about the politics of the case, influenced by his loyalties to fellowwriter Hilaire Belloc and his own brother Cecil. His treatment of Jewish issues reached its nadir after the death of Cecil, but gradually recovered, ironically coinciding with his formal conversion to the Catholic Church.

His equally strong loyalty to the Jewish people gradually reasserted itself, accelerated by the emergence of Nazi antisemitism, which he condemned.

His fiction has layers of nuance, consistently overlooked; indeed, in some instances his anti-antisemitism has been condemned as antisemitism. Perhaps the supreme irony of Chesterton, who had many Jewish friends, is that his best friend — his wife —- was most probably Jewish. Ann Farmer Chingford Lane, Essex, IG8

Chesterton is an author tainted by his anti-Jewish discourse. Kamm refers to Chesterton’s hostility towards Dreyfus and kindly cites my article. Since that article, I have discovered further evidence of this hostility.

Chesterton argued in 1927 and 1928 that: “the English newspapers incessantly repeated that there was no evidence against Captain Dreyfus. They then cut out of the reports the evidence that he had been seen in German uniform at the German manoeuvres; or that he had obtained a passport for Italy and then gone to Germany.”

His admirers have correctly observed he repeatedly criticised Hitler. However, he not only maintained his various stereotypes of the Jew, he incorporated them into the very articles in which he criticised Hitler.

In 1933 he wrote: “It is but just to Hitlerism to say that the Jews did infect Germany with a good many things less harmless than the lyrics of Heine or the melodies of Mendelssohn. It is true that many Jews toiled at that obscure conspiracy against Christendom, which some of them can never abandon.” He argued that “Hitlerism is almost entirely of Jewish origin”, he refers to it as the “Judaism of Hitler”. Dr Simon Mayers Tudor Court, Hitchin, Herts, SG5