Found in The Wisdom and Innocence by Joseph Pearce:
"...this splendid stir and thrum was to have a marked effect on Douglas Hyde during a train journey through south London:
Through my mind, in rhythm with the wheels, ran a verse from Chesterton's
Ballad of the White Horse I had re-read not long before:
Therfore I bring these rhymes to you,
Who brought the cross to me,
Since on you flaming without flaw,
I saw the sign that Guthrum saw
When he let break the ships of awe,
And laid peace upon the sea
Could there be so many Catholic Churches? I asked myself, as cross
followed cross. Why had I not seen them before? Through Herne Hill, Tulse Hill,
smug, suburban Streatham, the crosses came and went. And still the wheels
hammered out Chesterton's lines:
Out of the mouth of the Mother of God
Like a little word come I;
For I go gathering Christian men
From sunken paving and ford and fen,
To die in a battle, God knows when,
By God, but I know why.
Hyde was, at this time, a leading member of the Communist Pary and newseditor of its paper, the Daily Worker. Soon after, he resigned from its ranksand became a Catholic."
