Cammaerts, Emile, 1878-1953

Émile Leon Cammaerts CBE (16 March 1878 in Saint-Gilles, Belgium – 2 November 1953, Radlett, Hertfordshire) was a Belgian playwright, poet (including war poet) and author who wrote primarily in English and French. Cammaerts translated three books by art, history and landscape expert John Ruskin and selected G. K. Chesterton Father Brown detective stories in La clairvoyance du père Brown. He became Professor of Belgian Studies at the University of London in 1933, most of his works and papers are held there in the Senate House Library. Cammaerts is the author of a famous quotation (often mistakenly attributed to G. K. Chesterton) in his study on Chesterton: When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.