What do you think?
Rate this book
The Appetite of Tyranny: Including Letters to an Old Garbaldian
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.
We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.
We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1915
About the author
G.K. Chesterton
4,610 books5,933 followersGilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 13, 2013
It is never fun to find fault with one's favorite writers. G K Chesterton, however, is such a prolific author that one can, without too much difficulty, find some pretty dicey volumes in the lot. The Appetite of Tyranny: Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian is one of several books that its author wrote around the beginning of World War I that represent a low point in his opus.
Granted that England was in a particularly bloody war with Germany at the time, but a book consisting of nothing but platitudes about national characteristics partakes of a particularly low form of political discourse. Sentences like the following abound: "But a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon to be what the English call 'out of place' in particular circumstances." No one is spared the broad brush strokes: GKC uses the N-word against Blacks, and "Heathen Chinee" against, you guessed it, the heathen Chinese. Germans he mostly refers to as Prussians, and treats them all as if there were no variation between individuals.
The one thing a person can count on, however, is that there is a wide spectrum of behavior even in a place such as Chesterton's "Prussia." Even the French realized that in Jean Renoir's great WWI film epic, The Grand Illusion, with his German characters, especially the camp commandant played by Erich von Stroheim.
Fortunately, Chesterton got better than such observations as:
Granted that England was in a particularly bloody war with Germany at the time, but a book consisting of nothing but platitudes about national characteristics partakes of a particularly low form of political discourse. Sentences like the following abound: "But a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon to be what the English call 'out of place' in particular circumstances." No one is spared the broad brush strokes: GKC uses the N-word against Blacks, and "Heathen Chinee" against, you guessed it, the heathen Chinese. Germans he mostly refers to as Prussians, and treats them all as if there were no variation between individuals.
The one thing a person can count on, however, is that there is a wide spectrum of behavior even in a place such as Chesterton's "Prussia." Even the French realized that in Jean Renoir's great WWI film epic, The Grand Illusion, with his German characters, especially the camp commandant played by Erich von Stroheim.
Fortunately, Chesterton got better than such observations as:
Rome, at her very weakest, has always been a river that wanders and widens and that waters many fields. Berlin, at its strongest, will never be anything but a whirlpool, which seeks its own center, and is sucked down.
October 25, 2021
While generally I'm a fan of G. K. Chesterton, this is little more than a rant with sweeping generalizations about how horrible Germans are vis-a-vie the English. Of course, since it was published in the middle of WWI, Chesterton's bias is understandable, if not forgivable. But that he would resort to such blatant propaganda about an entire nationality/race of people is surprising and disappointing. It's as though he has little understanding of human nature, when through his other works he clearly demonstrates a limpid perspective on mankind and its foibles. Far from his best.
July 26, 2016
Anti-German propaganda in part. Understandable since from 1910s. Fair amount of opinions along with factual reasoning. Expected more.
February 9, 2019
Chesterton's defense of British involvement in WWI. Interesting critique of German exceptionalism. Provides some good rebuttals of policy arguments which are still used today in some quarters.
February 21, 2012
Listened to by Librivox recording:
Chesterton does not disappoint. This short writing deals with the European national and political dynamics before WWI.
I must admit I lack enough historical understanding of this time to always follow Chesterton's opinions and criticisms.
Perhaps, if this had been written today it would not be well received. Our ears would potentially hear too much ethnocentrism and borderline racism. This is not Chesterton's intention or his method, though it is quite evident of his view of the Prussian's and German's. He was merely a man of his time and context.
As I listened I did imagine what he would write about concerning the current Eurozone financial crises. I'm sure it would be written with wit, style, and profound insight.
Chesterton does not disappoint. This short writing deals with the European national and political dynamics before WWI.
I must admit I lack enough historical understanding of this time to always follow Chesterton's opinions and criticisms.
Perhaps, if this had been written today it would not be well received. Our ears would potentially hear too much ethnocentrism and borderline racism. This is not Chesterton's intention or his method, though it is quite evident of his view of the Prussian's and German's. He was merely a man of his time and context.
As I listened I did imagine what he would write about concerning the current Eurozone financial crises. I'm sure it would be written with wit, style, and profound insight.
November 8, 2015
This was ok, I think. Not one of his best, though my interpretation of its value is hindered significantly by my woeful ignorance of the politics surrounding the beginning of WWI and the life of G.K. Chesterton. I was also put off by some of his generalizations about various countries and people, including his own, which sounded to my modern ear a lot like racism. Perhaps this is partially the result of a lifetime of training in political correctness and taboo words, but at least some of his statements I cannot excuse as anything other than a misunderstanding of the nature of a people group. However, the ending was undeniably boss. I might suggest everyone to read the final chapter.
January 3, 2014
This is very interesting - my interest in the Great War mainly stems from the ways in which it caused the Second World War to occur. I found it particularly interesting that in this instance the UK stood by the treaty they had signed and I wonder how directly that fed into the policy of appeasement that delayed the start of and lengthened WWII.
January 23, 2018
This is basically "The Barbarism of Berlin" with some letters at the end. He makes some excellent points, particularly on the racism show by the German people in their reasoning, and then blows up his entire argument by being even more racist than the people he's condemning.
April 18, 2009
Interesting introduction so far
January 19, 2017
A VERY dry read and more that a bit dated. I would say do not waste your time.
July 7, 2020
Oy! This book could be subtitled Why Prussians are Horrible. In light of the events of World War I, the author has ample justification for his points, but man does he rip the Germans to shreds.
("He avows that when he promised to respect a frontier on Monday, he did not foresee what he calls "the necessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short, he is like a child, who at the end of all reasonable explanations and reminders of admitted arrangements has no answer except "But I want to.")
As a person of largely German ancestry, I was not offended by his remarks, but could only acknowledge them to be shrewd insights into the peculiar tendencies that original sin has worked in my own race. As I am currently reading about World War I in other books, and just picked this Chesterton title at random because I had listened to almost everything else by him on Librivox, the coincidence of the topic was serendipitous.
It is somewhat amusing that even while he lambastes the Prussians for being grossly racist, Chesterton himself is still racist to some degree according to the prevalent prejudices of his age. He scorns the Prussians for their obsession with Teutonism and blue eyes, but doesn't have a problem with regarding the black races as barbaric or inferior. (for a mild example: "Now the German and the Englishman are not in the least alike—except in the sense that neither of them are negroes.") This is just one example of how we can read with discernment and appreciate the advances someone has made within the limitations of their own time, even while acknowledging their errors.
I especially appreciated his definitions of barbarism, such as in the following -
"The Russians, having nothing but their faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense in which one can call such backwardness barbaric, by comparison with the Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia.
Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if their trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call them barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we should know that it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an imperfect civilisation by accident. We mean something that is the enemy of civilisation by design. We mean something that is wilfully at war with the principles by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Of course it must be partly civilised even to destroy civilisation. Such ruin could not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or inert. You could not have even Huns without horses; or horses without horsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships, or ships without seamanship. This person, whom I may call the Positive Barbarian, must be rather more superficially up-to-date than what I may call the Negative Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions: but for all that he destroyed Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos could have done it at all neatly. But (in our meaning) barbarism is not a matter of methods, but of aims. We say that these veneered vandals have the perfectly serious aim of destroying certain ideas, which, as they think, the world has outgrown; without which, as we think, the world will die."
Text copied from Gutenberg.org
("He avows that when he promised to respect a frontier on Monday, he did not foresee what he calls "the necessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short, he is like a child, who at the end of all reasonable explanations and reminders of admitted arrangements has no answer except "But I want to.")
As a person of largely German ancestry, I was not offended by his remarks, but could only acknowledge them to be shrewd insights into the peculiar tendencies that original sin has worked in my own race. As I am currently reading about World War I in other books, and just picked this Chesterton title at random because I had listened to almost everything else by him on Librivox, the coincidence of the topic was serendipitous.
It is somewhat amusing that even while he lambastes the Prussians for being grossly racist, Chesterton himself is still racist to some degree according to the prevalent prejudices of his age. He scorns the Prussians for their obsession with Teutonism and blue eyes, but doesn't have a problem with regarding the black races as barbaric or inferior. (for a mild example: "Now the German and the Englishman are not in the least alike—except in the sense that neither of them are negroes.") This is just one example of how we can read with discernment and appreciate the advances someone has made within the limitations of their own time, even while acknowledging their errors.
I especially appreciated his definitions of barbarism, such as in the following -
"The Russians, having nothing but their faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense in which one can call such backwardness barbaric, by comparison with the Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia.
Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if their trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call them barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we should know that it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an imperfect civilisation by accident. We mean something that is the enemy of civilisation by design. We mean something that is wilfully at war with the principles by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Of course it must be partly civilised even to destroy civilisation. Such ruin could not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or inert. You could not have even Huns without horses; or horses without horsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships, or ships without seamanship. This person, whom I may call the Positive Barbarian, must be rather more superficially up-to-date than what I may call the Negative Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions: but for all that he destroyed Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos could have done it at all neatly. But (in our meaning) barbarism is not a matter of methods, but of aims. We say that these veneered vandals have the perfectly serious aim of destroying certain ideas, which, as they think, the world has outgrown; without which, as we think, the world will die."
Text copied from Gutenberg.org
May 17, 2018
I don't have it in me to give the dreaded "one star" to ANYTHING by Chesterton but this was a rough read. Some of his word choices were jarring and it was an incredibly dry reading of his thoughts on Germany, Prussia, and Russia.
February 26, 2022
Essay listening 🔰😀
Another will written essay this on WWI by G. K. Chesterton which is not what I expected. Give it a try. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶 to 👍novels 🏰👑🏡 2022
Another will written essay this on WWI by G. K. Chesterton which is not what I expected. Give it a try. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶 to 👍novels 🏰👑🏡 2022
April 25, 2018
GKC has many reasons that he does not want a more German Europe. Some of these are cruel, some are merely witty, some are wise and some are prophetic.
August 10, 2022
fun and insightful as always, if quite dated.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews