In Chapter 5, it is revealed that while the Council of Anarchists used to conduct all of their meetings covertly and in hiding, they now hold all of their planning sessions out in the open at a public, ordinary restaurant. This revelation is an example of paradox:
I’d better tell you that he is carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now. Originally, of course, we met in a cell underground, just as your branch does. Then Sunday made us take a private room at an ordinary restaurant. He said that if you didn’t seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out. [...] For now we flaunt ourselves before the public. We have our breakfast on a balcony—on a balcony, if you please—overlooking Leicester Square.
Paradoxically asserting that the best method of concealment is to simply not conceal themselves at all, the anarchists plan their acts of political devastation in broad daylight—only to be laughed at by the general public as merely “a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are anarchists.” Of course, this assumption turns out to be true, in a way, as it is later revealed all of the members of the council (barring Sunday) are actually policemen undercover. The goals of this paradoxical strategy of public concealment are therefore rendered moot, as none of the detectives undercover have any intention of actually enacting any of the anarchist plans they make while out in public.
While helping the detectives escape the Secretary’s army in Chapter 11, Ducroix enlists the help of a French peasant, who he paradoxically refers to as a man who is rich because he looks poor:
“Mr. Syme is saying,” called out Ratcliffe to the French colonel, “that this man, at least, will never be an anarchist.”
“Mr. Syme is right enough there,” answered Colonel Ducroix, laughing, “if only for the reason that he has plenty of property to defend. But I forgot that in your country you are not used to peasants being wealthy.”
“He looks poor,” said Dr. Bull doubtfully.
“Quite so,” said the colonel; “that is why he is rich.”
The paradox in Colonel Ducroix’s statement speaks to Chesterton’s views on property and wealth, which are tied to a theory known as distributism (to which the author himself subscribed and promoted extensively). The colonel’s view of poverty and wealth in relation to land possession is contrasted with the supposed anarchists idealistic assumptions that call for change without taking into consideration the lived realities of the common people. By declaring the French peasant rich for the fact that he owns land, regardless of his state of dress, Ducroix (and Chesterton by extension) shows how the anarchists overlook the material improvements property can bring to people’s lives in favor of pursuing change in the form of abstract conceptions of wealth and power systems.
