Page:Utopia of Usurers, and Other Essays - Chesterton (1917).djvu/132

 supporters, "whether my proposals are accepted?"

That's all. And I really do not see why poor Mr. Asquith should be represented as having violated the Christian virtue of mercy by saying that. I myself could compose a great many paragraphs upon the same model, each containing its stinging and perhaps unscrupulous epigram. As, for example:—

"The Archbishop of Canterbury, realising that his choice now lay between denying God and earning the crown of martyrdom by dying in torments, spoke with a frenzy of religious passion that might have seemed fanatical under circumstances less intense. 'The Children's Service,' he said firmly, with his face to the congregation, 'will be held at half-past four this afternoon as usual.

Or, we might have:—

"Lord Roberts, recognising that he had now to face Armageddon, and that if he lost this