Hilaire Belloc's views in detail Belloc's views from the Edwardian period, when he was most engaged in political writing, have been discussed by later authors such as in the work Hilaire Belloc: Edwardian Radical by McCarthy. During this period, Belloc's social criticism frequently had in its targets corrupt business practices, what he saw as a ruling plutocracy, the nature of the Second Boer War (seen as economically motivated by Belloc), and the machinations of international finance. Negative fictional characters who are Jewish appear in Belloc's novels from this time, and his writings contain condemnations of industrial capitalism and its dehumanization in which the role of Jews in business and finance is arguably quite emphasized. Later commentators have argued about the degree in which Belloc's anti-capitalism and anti-communism crosses into antisemitic canards about supposed Jewish involvement in international politics, with his work being both criticized (by figures such as Frederic Raphael) and defended (by figures such as J.B. Morton). Belloc responded to criticisms in his own lifetime, writing in 1924, that he would never support works in which "a Jew has been attacked as a Jew". In terms of Belloc's personal relationships, he apparently held no animus, or little enough animus, that he corresponded with on friendly terms and maintained close connections with numerous Jewish individuals. Several examples exist, an example being his intimate friend and secretary for many years Ruby Goldsmith. In his specific work The Path to Rome, Belloc describes (at least at that time) finding antisemitism against ordinary laypeople puzzling, if not outright distasteful: "At the foot of the street was an inn where I entered to eat, and finding there another man- I take him to have been a shopkeeper- I determined to talk politics, and began as follows: 'Have you any anti-Semitism in your town?' 'It is not my town,' he said, 'but there is anti-Semitism. It flourishes.' 'Why then?' I asked. 'How many Jews have you in your town?' He said there were seven. 'But,' said I, 'seven families of Jews-' 'There are not seven families,' he interrupted; 'there are seven Jews all told. There are but two families, and I am reckoning in the children. The servants are Christians.' 'Why,' said I, 'that is only just and proper, that the Jewish families from beyond the frontier should have local Christian people to wait on them and do their bidding. But what I was going