SOURCE: "Mr. Chesterton's Allegory of Anarchism," in The Bookman, London, Vol. XXXIV, No. 199, April, 1908, p. 23.

In the following review, Barry praises The Man Who Was Thursday as a skillful attack against anarchistic and decadent intellectual stance.

There are many ways of preaching a lay sermon; and it would be strange if Mr. Chesterton did not take his own. For he combines gifts which are seldom found together. With rare insight he has detected the glory of the commonplace; he is certain that genius and the ordinary man agree in their judgment about life, death, marriage, morals, and all the things that signify. Therefore he despises in good-humoured fashion the crank, the law-breaker, the "immoralist"—senseless persons who strike an attitude because they can do nothing else. But while cleaving to the old, he arrays it in new garments of a most surprising cut and lively colours. Why should...