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[handwritten] [1917?]
[Chesterton]

[typed] TELEPHONE 24 BEACONSFIELD.

OVERROADS,
AYLESBURY END,
BEACONSFIELD.

June 22nd.

Dear Mr Buchan

Thank you very much for your kind letter;
both for your appreciation of the public situation, [inserted] with [/inserted] / which
I entirely agree and your appreciation of the little book
of verses, with which I am not in a position to agree: as
it was put together during my illness and I have hardly
dared to open it. But I do not mind admitting that I
enjoyed writing "Lepanto". I think it is nearly good
enough for Fleet Street; but certainly not good enough for
the trenches.

I think you and I and others will have to continue
in the somewhat constrained attitude of crouching cats,
ready to spring at the first new movement of the rats of
plutocratic pacifism; They will certainly make a movement
soon for some immoral surrender. Buxton himself, who is