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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
The Black International No. 1
THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
HOW THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL JOINED THE
WORLD-PLOT AGAINST FREEDOM,
LIBERALISM, AND DEMOCRACY
by Joseph McCabe
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS
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Chapter I
THE FOULEST WAR IN HISTORY
This war is one of the most deliberately aggressive, one of
the most bloody and costly, and the most revolting war in history.
It is not the work, of an Attila or a Genghis Khan, a man from the
wilds of Asia whose barbaric dreams of conquest had never been
checked by the ideals of modern civilization. It is the foul work
of men who know how the race has fought during a century and a
half, ever since the American and the French Revolutions, to rid
its life of the last taint of barbarism and had reached at least a
fair prospect of a final victory over violence and injustice: the
work of loathsome hypocrites, who masked with a pretense of
creating a higher social order the most monstrous greed, the most
abhorrent callousness, that ever debased the human mind.
Historians have disputed how the guilt of the war of 1914-1918
must be distributed amongst the combatants. No historian will ever
hesitate in assigning the guilt for this war. it brands for all
time a relatively small number of men in Germany, Italy, and Japan.
It puts upon them this infamy, that from a barbaric lust of power
and "glory," which ought now to be confined to the idle dreams of
young schoolboys, and from an almost insane greed of wealth for
themselves and their supporters they set out to drench the planet
and in blood and bring incalculable misery upon hundreds of
millions of innocent men, women and children.
These men, the Hitler's and Goering's and Goebbels of Germany
-- "the vilest triumvirate that has appeared in history, said the
late Ambassador Dodd, who knew them and knew history -- the
Mussolinis and Cianos of Italy, the Hirohitos and Matsuokas of
Japan saw with wide-open eyes the tragic close of the last war.
They knew that nearly 9000000 men in the prime of life had been
slaughtered in altars that were less merciful than those of the
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Aztecs; yet they were prepared to sacrifice even more on the sordid
altars of their hellish ambitions. They had seen desolation from
Calais to Poland: and they proposed to spread a worse desolation
over the greater part of the earth. They had learned how in the
last war at least $100000000000 of the wealth that men
laboriously create and meagerly share -- not to count the waste of
man-power and the paralysis of trade -- had been thrown into a
morass; yet knowing the advance of science and expecting a larger
theater of war they would squander more than that sum in the
pursuit of their greed.
The historian of the future who will coldly write these lines
will add a fourth count to the charge. During the twenty years
between the two great wars we had caught a vision of a new and
better world. That light of science which, as it slowly dawns,
enriches the imagination of man with plans that are more hopeful
and more confident than those offered us by any utopian, had grown
brighter. You remember how ten years ago America rang with
discussion of the promises of the Technocrats. Professors said that
we could, if we were wise, "smother every family in America with
commodities," Engineers became visionaries and made blueprints of
a world in which poverty would be unknown and no man would feel
that gnawing anxiety about holding the job which a dozen jobless
hungrily envied. No more of this niggardly counting of dimes when
the children want to go to the pictures, of dollars for the winter
boots and clothe's . . . An exaggeration, if you like, but every
man knows that there is a great and solid scientific truth behind
it all. And now, instead of seeing our wealth grow and brighten a
million drab homes, we must pour down the military drain a sum with
which we could have transformed the face of the earth, and we must
see our industrial productiveness pass from prostitution to
weariness.
That was only half the promise of science. Those knowing folk
who read so little and talk so much asked, when you spoke about
this promise of the future: Can you change human nature? You can
build a house for a pig but it remains a pig. And while folk were
glibly repeating this old saw science was quietly proving that it
is just one more popular fallacy like the luck of a rabbit's foot
or the ill-luck of number thirteen, the virtue of priests or the
wisdom of Popes. By 1930 the science of psychology had conducted
the "soul" or "mind" to its frontiers, thanking it for its
provisional services -- if any. What was left to study was human
behavior, and as we examined this in a scientific light we saw
that, instead of it being unalterable or requiring a prodigious
time to change, it is one of the most modifiable things under the
sun. Precisely because it is human. Man's behavior differs from the
rigid automatic behavior of the pig just in that fact that it is
not rigid and automatic. It depends upon ideas and stimulations
from without which can be changed; as Russia changed them for its
people, with stupendous results, in less than a generation.
It is one of the tragic ironies of our time that, apart from
Russia, it was only the criminal Dictators who acted upon this rich
principle of science. As late as the end of 1929 Hitler had not yet
poisoned the minds -- the mechanism of behavior -- of one in 350 of
the German people. He had 180000 followers in a population of
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60000000. Han's wanted a quiet life, his big pipe and mug of beer
and friendly neighbors, just as we do. He would have shuddered if
someone had foretold that in ten years he would, because he
accepted the lead of a criminal lunatic and a bunch of greedy
adventurers, see his wife and little Gretchen just splashes of
churned flesh and blood under the ruins of the home he had built
for them. But Goebbels changed his "human nature" in six years.
Mussolini, or Gayda, did the same, with the help of the priests of
Italy. The Japs did the same with their fishers and farmers and
textile workers, seizing and prostituting all the magnificent means
of instruction that science has provided -- the school and college,
the radio and the cinema, the printing press and the library --
these poisoners of the human race had the majority of folk in three
nations soon howling like wolves at the scent of blood. Had it not
been for this we were within measurable distance of a genuine era
of peace, comfort, and brotherhood.
This, you may say, certainly looks like what happened, but
it's impossible. How could a gang, smaller than that which looted
New York in 1860 or St. Louis in 1890, take over a whole country,
make a corrupt fortune that beggars Tammany, and have a very fair
chance of becoming super-emperors?
Think again; and start with the fact that a small minority of
men in three countries, men of the vilest character and of colossal
greed, did secure control of those countries and organize them for
war. No one disputes that. And if you have had this success
explained to you on the line that Italy and Germany had, through
the conduct of Some melodramatic villains called Reds or
Bolsheviks, fallen into an anarchy that ruined their economies, and
that Mussolini and Hitler came along with "ideologies" which
promised deliverance from this anarchy, put the theory in the
trash-basket with the stories of Washington's cherry tree and
William Tell's apple. It's worse. It is, as we shall see later, a
lie. For years Mussolini and Hitler were just small-scale gangsters
directing mobs of hoodlums with bottles of castor-oil, loaded
whips, and automatics. They ranked in the European press, when it
thought fit to notice them, as part of the scum that had boiled to
the surface in a time of trouble.
It was just because they had no appeal to thinking men,
because they had relied upon disorder and brutality instead of
order and discipline to attain such position as they had, that
certain larger and more respectable forces -- wealth, privilege,
and religion -- took them up and gave them that control of the
spring's of opinion and behavior which has enabled them to make a
lie look like a grand truth, a gangster's plan seem a schedule of
national salvation. Thyssen wandering about Europe telling
everybody how the Nazis took his millions and double-crossed him is
one of the thousands who thought they could hire the gunman as the
White Knights of Privilege and then dismiss them with a suitable
reward. The heads of the German Church are only less outspoken
because they are still within reach of the Nazi lash. The King of
Italy fumes in his Quirinal just as the Pope does in his Vatican.
It is -- to borrow a Phrase from French history -- the Day of
Dupes.
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Until we understand this the blight which has cursed our life
and the Vatican's share in causing it will remain painful and
disquieting mysteries. Advertisement is a mild variety of hypnotism
weakened by the fact that the advertiser has limited resources, and
a hundred rivals. Smith's soup is the finest in the world until you
see Jones's poster on the next hoarding. Now the Fascist system was
so successful in corrupting nations, once its highly respectable
patrons had given it wealth and power, because it uses the
hypnotism of the advertiser in its ideal form: no rivalry, no
discordant note, unlimited resources, the employment of every
device from the pulpit, to the professor's chair or the urchin with
his bit of chalk. You may object that at all events there must be
something sensible, convincing, attractive in the message that is
brayed and blazed everywhere. Is it always necessary? If you assail
ear and eye at every moment of the day for years with "Heil Hitler"
or "Mussolini Solo" millions will begin to see genius in a
neuropathic or a brutal adventurer who ought to be selling beef and
mutton. however, there was a message, and it was very convincing.
Take the case of Germany. On April 3, 1938 the leading German
scientific weekly, Die Umschau, contained an article, not too
prominently displayed, on the future of Germany in Europe. It was
the program of the New Order, yet as far as I can ascertain, not a
single paper in Britain or America noticed it. It described a
system of ship-canals and canalization of lakes, already more than
half constructed in 1938, which would connect every industrial town
in Germany along the Danube and even across France and Belgium,
with nearly every country and port in Europe. The scientific
writer, who ended with a "Heil Hitler," coldly explained how all
Europe would then supply food and raw materials to Germany and
receive payment in manufactured goods. This, in a respectable
scientific periodical, was the raw program of the future
enslavement of Europe, the paralysis of industry in every country,
and the colossal enrichment of the German manufacturer and worker.
That was the bait. Neither, Thyssen nor Hans cared the toss of a
coin about theories of Nordic blood or Nazi ideology. it was a
stupendous greed that was dangled before the eyes of Germany; and
the poor fish in Italy, who believes that he would share the loot,
used the bait to attract his own industrialists and workers. Japan
notoriously has nothing but the same shameless greed behind its
bland talk of New Order and Asia for the Asiatic.
Few took any notice when, in 1938, I drew attention to this
and similar articles in the responsible German press. At the time
there was still a world-chorus of praise for the "order and
efficiency" of the Nazi system, and it would not do to admit a
jarring note. Folk were told that, while there was no need of
Fascism in the United States and Great Britain, these other -- or
inferior -- countries were "without form and void" and "darkness
was upon the face of the deep," and it was fine that the spirit of
Fascism "moved upon the face of the waters" creating a new world.
This Fascism, it was said, menaced only disorderly folk, sadists,
atheists, corruptors of women and children -- the Reds, in short.
What a tissue of lies it has all turned out to be! Roosevelt was
deluded as effectively as Chamberlain or Reynaud; Cardinal
Dougherty as effectively as the Pope. The historian of the future
will not ask how a few gunmen nearly became the emperors of half
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the world. That is already clear. He will ask why the world looked
on supinely, even applauding, while these men built a force. of so
formidable a character that they almost compassed their sordid aim.
There can be only one answer. The statesmen, industrialists,
bankers, and bishops of America are as able and well-informed as
those of Germany and Japan and far superior to those of Italy. They
were deluded about the Fascist program because one clause of it so
far coincided with their own interests that they were not disposed
to pay close attention to the other clauses. The great thing was
that they promised to cheek the rapid world-growth of Socialism.
But the other clauses of the program were plain enough from the
start. The only change in the scheme of the gunmen in recent years
is that it has been expanded until it aims at conquering and
exploiting more than half the earth; and this is not so near to
lunacy as some would have us believe, It was due to a cold
calculation of the possibilities in view of the supineness or
complacency of the democratic governments and their press and the
support of the Black International.
Japan, Germany, and Italy have made no secret of their
aggressive imperialistic schemes during the last ten years. I
described them in full in 1937 in three booklets of "The A B C
Library of Living Knowledge," taking the facts from semi-official
and other reliable publications. There was no secrecy about these
publications. It was a necessary part of Mussolini's appeal to the
mob from the first that, once the politicians were cleared away, he
would make a greater Italy by annexing Malta, Corsica, Savoy, and
Dalmatia. Little girls read that in their balilia catechisms and
even little girls knew that this meant war on England, France, and
Yugo-Slavia. It was equally necessary for Hitler to promise that he
would restore the greatness of Germany by bringing in all German-
speaking lands (Austria, Alsace, and part of Switzerland, Czecho-
Slovakia and Denmark); and to these he added as early as 1924, in
Mein Kampf, the annexation of the Ukraine and the annihilation of
France. That meant a European War. Japan has for the last ten years
organized great patriotic societies, With millions of members,
demanding the annexation of the eastern half of Asia and all
islands of the Pacific. These three programs were the protocol of
a world war; the war by which we now suffer. In my three booklets
I showed that there was not the least uncertainty about that. It is
just another fairy-tale for adults that the Axis has sprung a
surprise upon an innocent world.
The vital question which we have to ask is why America, Great
Britain, and France permitted, without arming themselves, the three
robber nations to create so gigantic a military force that they had
a real hope of attaining their object and dividing the earth into
three Fascist spheres: into two, rather, because Germany and Japan
never regarded Mussolini as more than a catspaw. In a general way
you know the answer to this question. The Fascists were going to
destroy the Reds and that was so monumental a service to the
democracies, or to their ruling class and their Churches, that even
diplomats and statesmen and prelates took the word of the arch-
liars that they would cultivate peace when they had crushed the
Reds. They were not ignorant but they were guilty of a gross amount
of wishful thinking. Even when Mussolini publicly and brazenly said
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that he offered the world "peace resting on eight million bayonets"
they put it down as a harmless overflow of a strong man's strength.
When, in 1934, he made the most deliberate and official statement
of the nature of Fascism (in the article "Fascismo" in his new
Encyclopedia Italians), saying that Fascism regarded war as the
noblest work of the race and peace as a degrading ideal, statesmen
and journalists pretended that they had never read it. So through
five shameful years the world that was threatened with an appalling
disaster smiled and praised the "efficiency" of the butchers who
were sharpening their knives; because the world is now ruled by its
press, and of the papers on which men relied the world over nine
copies out of ten came from the editorial offices and printing
shops of rich men who wanted the Reds suppressed at any price.
But where, you ask, does the Black International enter this
conspiracy, as it really was? We are going to see immediately that
of all the privileged minorities which dreaded the Reds and were
therefore far too easily duped by the promises of the Anti-Reds the
Church of Rome had the most urgent need of relief. The cry will be
raised, of course, that I now accuse the Papacy of causing the war.
That sort of rubbish is a necessary part of the Catholic
propagandist system. What I do say is that the Papacy allied itself
with Italy, as everybody knows, with Japan, as everybody ought to
know -- it is only a year since the Vatican coined a gold medal for
the virtuous Matsuoka -- and, as far as it was allowed to do so,
with Germany, and that it used its international organization to
create that fierce and confused hatred of Communism on which the
Axis would rely when the crisis of the war was reached. Of that
international plotting in every country these ten booklets will
provide decisive evidence. It is shame enough that a Church which
makes such arrogant claims of moral superiority, a Church which
professes to have the finest international intelligence-service and
to be inflexible in the condemnation of crime, should be silent, as
it was silent, during ten years of monstrous outrages -- Manchukuo,
Austria, Abyssinia, etc. -- but the Pope has a deeper shame. He
played an active part over and over again on the side of the devil.
Because the Church of Rome was not merely threatened, like all
wealth and privilege, by the growth of Socialism -- it was in fact
breaking up under the impact, and only the violent suppression of
the Socialists, if necessary by war, could arrest this
disintegration.
Chapter II
JUST WHAT THE PAPACY NEEDED
There are various ways of divining into sections the broad
stream of events which we call human history. One might divide it
from a sociological viewpoint into two parts: the rise and the fall
of privilege. During the first 3000 years of history we find an
ever-widening gap between a privileged minority and the working
majority. Once upon a time men had chosen able and strong men to
"rule" them, and these had chosen "companion's" (Counts) and
"leaders" (Dukes) of the troops who shared their privileges. In
those days it was considered just as important to ward off evil
spirits and flatter good spirits, and cunning men who could
persuade their fellows that they were particularly skilful at this
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sort of work founded another privileged caste. With the growth of
wealth, when men began to live in cities, the glamour of the sacred
castes -- kings, nobles, and priests -- increased, The Kings were
Sons of God, and the priests were his very special friends. Palaces
and temples, the mansions of the rich, the nobles, and the chief
priests, rose high above the clutter of mean homes.
That is another story, but it is necessary to outline it
because the world-torture which we endure in this generation is a
vital stage in the second half of history; the era of the undoing
of privilege. The "profound" folk -- usually literary men whose
knowledge of any branch of positive learning would hardly fill a
five-cent note-book -- who now enlighten us about our problems by
essays, feature-articles, and sermons have made some remarkable
discoveries about our age. It is sick; it is degenerate; it is
World-weary; it has the insolence of youth; it relies too much on
old men; it misses the firm guidance of religion; it talks too much
about rights and too little about duties, and so on.
It is all bunk. For instance, one of the most persistent
charges is that, being irreligious, our younger men have lost the
Spirit of sacrifice, whereas in Europe and China at least
15000000 bravely confront the horrible dangers of a modern war,
and certainly four-fifths of them (Germans, Russians, British and
Chinese) have no religion. The truth is that our generation, our
degenerate, frivolous, selfish generation, has taken up, and more
vigorously than ever, a task which the race has approached whenever
and wherever it was free during the last 2500 years; to reduce the
harsh contrasts of privilege and service, idleness and work, wealth
and poverty. Our age does not mind paying a good price for high
service, but it doubts if the services of priests and kings are
worth billions of dollars to a nation, and the conviction spreads
that the entire system of privilege is the chief obstacle to the
scientific organization and betterment of life. The world of
privilege is, as it has always done, reacting bloodily to the
revolt.
The work of undoing privilege began 2500 years ago in the
cities of Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor, where Greeks mingled
with men of many races on free soil. There were no kings or nobles,
the priest's had little power, and the rich -- moderately rich --
men served as merchants and in their leisure did some very useful
thinking for the race. Privilege -- the Kings of Persia --
scattered them, and Greece took up the task. It got rid of its
kings and listened to philosophers rather than priests; and if the
Romans to whom the torch was next passed, apostatized to the extent
of restoring monarchy and allowing some to become very rich --
though not nearly so rich as our multi-millionaires -- they at
least exacted a princely price in superb free services to the
workers. Then the night of the Dark Age fell upon Europe.
Now that Professors as well as politicians have a great
respect for "the venerable Church of Rome" and its "august head" we
must, it appears, not talk about a Dark Age. Please yourself. The
facts are that whereas in the later days of the Roman Empire three
workers out of four had been free men, nine out of ten of them were
during the Dark Age (500-1100) serfs, which is the polite French
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way of saying slaves; whereas the Roman workers had all free
education (and free bread, free games, free medical service, etc.),
nine out of ten in the new Europe were totally illiterate and of an
incredible ignorance; and that whereas the Roman and Greeks of the
fourth century had had the protection of a fine code of law and in
general character were as good as we are, law was almost as extinct
as art in the new Europe, and the grossness of manners and morals
was indescribable. But please yourself, I am merely, in all
clarity, explaining why the work of human redemption was dropped
for five or six centuries.
What it is important to know if we want to understand our own
age is that from the time when Europe mentally awoke, in the
eleventh century, to our days this attempt to put the world right
has inspired three great revolutions, and what we witness today is
the most logical and the broadest of the three. After five
centuries of revolts -- the Popes had to fight a republican
movement in their own city for two centuries -- and bloody
reprisals Europe saw that the Roman Church was the arch-enemy and
its power must be broken. Hence the Reformation. On the last
ghastly fields of the Thirty Years' War, the War of Catholicism and
Protestantism, which was one of the most savage and squalid in
history, the race won its first great victory over privilege; and
it is pleasant as well as informing to recall that this first
instalment of freedom was won in large part through the criminal
misbehavior of the Popes themselves. They had stored away in Rome
a treasure of at least a quarter of a billion dollars to help the
Catholics when the war came, and when it reached its crisis Pope
Urban VIII gave the whole vast sum to his greedy and vicious
relatives. You can read that in the latest Catholic History of the
Popes (Hayward's, 1931).
Some of our advanced writers smile at the Reformation, but in
point of fact it released forces which brought about a rapid
progress in wealth and science and inspired the deeper revolt; the
revolt which flared up in the American and the French Revolutions
and then for a hundred years sustained a struggle against reaction
and privilege which was as heroic as any in history. The fight was
now against Church and feudalism as against priests and kings (and
their politicians) in alliance. America, having abolished
feudalism, had no share in it except to welcome refugees, and so
there is some excuse for the very shabby treatment of it in
American schools, colleges, and history books. But the chief reason
for the suppression of it is Catholic influence because it knocks
into a cocked hat everything that the apologists say about the
Church. I gave a fairly full account of it in various volumes of
the Appeal to Reason Library and must here confine myself to what
is vitally required in order to understand the Black International
and the lies of its apologists.
Five year's ago, when we began to try to help Spain and I
recalled Spain's magnificent record in the nineteenth-century
struggle, a Communist leader, a friend of mine, disdainfully swept
that struggle aside as "merely a political revolution" and -- this
was the main point -- thought it wrong to antagonize Catholics by
talking about it. I doubt if the economic revolt would have been
possible if the political-religious revolutions had not been
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carried first. In any case, a few years later Communism was extinct
in most of Europe and South America, and the Church of Rome was
shrieking for the blood of "Bolsheviks" from one side of the planet
to the other. In fact, Catholic writers are now saying everywhere
that this Liberalism of the last century is the real root of all
our modern disorder, and the official attitude of the Church is to
claim a full restoration of the royalist-clerical regime for which
it had fought in the last century. Would-be kings, semi-consecrated
loafers, wait with its blessing, on the frontiers of France, Spain,
Portugal, Austria and Hungary; and of course poor Leopold of
Belgium, whom the Church has white-washed, is going to be put back
on his golden throne.
Whatever satisfaction anyone finds in dismissing the
revolution of the last century, the fight to hold the gains of the
French Revolution, as "a mere political struggle" or a "bourgeois
revolution," the story of it is vitally relevant to our tragedy
today, and it is just on that account that it is suppressed or
toned down in our educational and historical literature. For it
shows, even as you find it told in the most important European
manuals, that it is the black priests and their white allies who
were guilty of just such murderous excesses and vindictive
massacres as they now mendaciously attribute to the Reds.
In the course of the Nineteenth Century nearly half a million
unnamed men, women, and children were done to death, on scaffolds
and in massacres and deadly jail's, for claiming less -- they were
as a rule not republicans -- than the rights granted in the
American Constitution of 1787. If we care to add the men who, from
Poland to Peru, died on the battlefield for the sacred cause the
number rises to more than a million, but let us keep to the unarmed
victims and their very moderate demands. These men and women, and
often children, were crushed with a savagery that surpasses even
the worst features of the untruthful stories about the Reds in
Spain and Russia; and the murderers and torturers were in nearly
every case directed by priests and bishops who cooperated with
monarchs (of Naples, Spain, and Portugal) of the vilest type of
character. The outrages were so revolting and the complicity of the
Church so clear, that the Catholic historian, Lord Acton, the one
outstanding historian the Church can claim in modern times, wrote
to the Catholic historian Lady Blennerhassett:
The accomplices of the Old Man of the Mountains (the
classic assassins of history) picked off individual victims,
but the Papacy contrived murder and massacre on the largest
and also on the most cruel and inhuman scale. They were not
only wholesale assassins, but they also made the principle of
assassination a law of the Christian Church and a condition of
salvation. (Selections from the Correspondence of the First
Lord Acton, 1917, Vol. I, p. 55.)
You may read the horrible details in the Cambridge Modern
History (Vol X) the greatest historical work in the English
language, or in any standard history of modern Spain, Portugal
Italy, and Austria.
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These are the undisputed historical facts and the recognized
authorities upon which I base the statement which I have put in
italic's and in bold face words. And on the same solid ground I now
make another statement in bold face words, because these are the
essential points to remember: The people recovered power from the
clerical-royalists repeatedly but they never indulged in reprisals,
much less savagery, as the Black-and-Whites always did. There were,
naturally, local outbursts against the defeated tyrants, a few
churches were burned and priests killed, but the authorities always
checked these spurts of violence. Who, then, are the real Reds?
What about the famous French Revolution, you may ask? You will
find it strange, if you reflect, that when Catholic (and some other
writers) want to show you how the "mob" is prone to commit
outrages, especially if it is deprived of "the restraints of
religion", they skip from the French Revolution of 1789 to the
Russian Revolution of 1917. They refuse to glance at the dozen
important revolutions which lie between because these were always
followed by clerical-royalist, savagery when the Whites recovered
power; a savagery which led Lord Acton, in his day one of the
leading historians in England, to denounce his own Popes and the
worst assassins in history. But they also tell long discredited
lies about the French and the Russian Revolutions.
Historians are now agreed within narrow limits about the
September Massacre and the Terror which are the chief charges
against the French Revolution, as you will find in Lavisse's
standard history of France, the equivalent of the Cambridge
History, and more recent French works. In the September Massacre
there were only about 1100 victims, and most of these were
criminals and prostitutes from the jails. It is agreed that only
about 500 men were involved in the butchery, and the hundreds of
thousands of citizens of Paris were horrified. In the Terror
(1793-4) there were about 18000 victims -- there had been at least
30000 in a few days in the horrible Catholic St. Bartholomew
Massacre -- and only one-fifth of these were nobles, priests, and
nuns, while <data type="percent" unit="%">67%</data> were atheistic working men. It was a fight
of rival political parties, and the leader of the winning party,
the director of the carnage, Robespierre was a fanatically
religious man who hated Atheism. What is worse, Catholic writers
never mention, and very few other writer's ever mention, that there
was a White Terror in 1794 and after the fall of Napoleon which
was, more brutal, than the Terror of 1793. You probably never heard
of it. That is how the education of democracies is conducted today;
to the great satisfaction of the Church and the reactionaries.
The long and bloody fight which, as I said, dragged on through
the nineteenth century and was maintained in Russia and Spain until
our own time was part of this second European Revolution. By 1920
it seemed to have triumphed everywhere, but the third revolution
had already begun. We may call this the Economic Revolution but it
was much broader. Socialism -- not the Anglo-American anaemic type
but as the world knew it -- threatened a comprehensive war on
privilege; on rank, wealth, priestly immunities, political
corruption, and all sorts of "rulers." And just because it was so
all-embracing, every variety of privilege that it threatened took
alarm, and they formed a grand coalition. The Unholy Alliance of
1814 was alive again.
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To enlist in its support the more simple-minded folk and the
masses who had no wealth or privileges to fight for the cry of
Communism, Bolshevism, or the Reds was raised. The enemy is, of
course, Socialism, because it aims to create a new social order in
which there shall be no great private wealth, no chance to make a
million, no rich landowners, no hereditary rank or office, no
parasitism, no privileges of priests. The present Pope may be as
ignorant as you like to think him outside of his theology and
Church Law but he did know, when he told his Catholics that
"Communism is the greatest evil in the world" and called for a
crusade against it that outside Russia Communism never had a
prospect of attaining power and in Russia -- the Union of Socialist
Soviet Republics, remember -- it is an ideal of the future.
Mussolini, we shall see, confesses that he laughed in his sleeve
when he raised the boogie of Communism in Italy, and in Spain the
Communists were the smallest, if not the most respectable, of the
popular parties. But it would not do to talk of extinguishing
Socialism when the Labor Party in England occasionally calls itself
Socialist, so they set up the scarecrow of Communism or Bolshevism
and clothed it in ragged stories of rape and murder.
In view of it's history the Papacy would inevitably join its
natural allies -- wealth, power, and privilege -- but in the
present state of the world it had a special and very pressing
reason. During the fifteen years -- say from 1919 or 1920 -- after
Socialism began to spread from Russia over the world the Vatican
lost, mainly through its influence, more than four times as many
followers as it had lost at the Reformation.
The Press is now so much controlled in the Catholic interest
that this will seem to many a startling statement. It is, in fact,
well within the range of demonstrable facts. If you reflect that,
as you will find, the population of Great Britain, the largest
seceding country, in the days of Henry VIII was only about
4000000, you easily see that the total loss to the Vatican at the
Reformation could hardly be more than 12000000. But beyond
question it lost, mainly to Socialism and Communism, at least
50000000 between 1919 and the beginning of the Fascist reaction.
The largest items in this total will be vindicated as we proceed
but a few words of explanation will reconcile the reluctant reader
to it.
In countries where there was a clear-cut issue of Church and
anti-Church at the polls -- Spain, the South American Republics,
Italy, Mexico, Germany, and Austria -- the election figures give a
very safe indication, and they show that in each of these cases
(except Mexico and Austria) the Church had lost, and the Socialists
had gained, at least 10000000. Add Russia (where Catholicism was
nearly extinguished), Mexico, Czecho-Slovakia (where, we shall see,
the Catholic clergy admit a loss of about 2000000), Holland, and
Austria (where the Socialists held Vienna until they were
treacherously disarmed for Hitler by gallant little Dollfuss), and
further losses in France, Belgium . . . Need I say more? The loss
was probably nearer 70000000 than 50000000. After the anti-
clerical revolution in Spain in 1932 the only countries in the
world that remained officially loyal to the Vatican were Poland and
Hungary. We will not count Mussolini's Italy.
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The Roman Church knows from seven centuries of experience,
ever since the Albigensian Massacre, that it never recovers ground
by an intellectual appeal, by honest propaganda. How was it to
check this new and appalling leakage? Only, as in all ages, by an
alliance with forces which could and would trample on the ideals of
peace and freedom. Fascism was just what it needed.
Chapter III
IS THE CHURCH OF ROME FASCIST?
America has been so drenched in recent years with Catholic
claims that the Church is ideally democratic and that the Pope is
-- or has been since democracy seemed to have won its battle
against feudalism -- the inflexible champion of political justice
and freedom that some may imagine that an alliance with Fascism is
unthinkable. We shall see largely on the testimony of Catholics, in
the following booklets that this alliance is an elementary fact of
the present situation, but it is easy to show at once that this
Catholic description of the Church's attitude which is broadcast in
the United states -- and now in the United States only -- is a
mockery.
The British Catholic writer, W. Teeling (The Pope in Politics,
1937), who has quite a reputation for boldness, almost heresy, is,
his own sect, says that there are 350000000 Catholics in the
world. How Teeling came to be described as bold and critical I do
not know. He criticizes the Church only in the matter of Abyssinia
and only the most expert clerical -- shall we say manipulators of
truth? try to defend it on that point. With his 350000000
Catholics he goes 20000000 better than the sufficiently audacious
official claim, and, recalling how Macaulay gave the total as
150000000 a century ago, he ask us to admire the miracle of its
growth. But when you reflect on the high Catholic birth rate -- you
go to hell, the priest tells Catholic parents, if you cheat the
Church of possible subscribers by using contraceptives -- and when
you learn, as you easily can, that according to the experts, the
population of a modern State would, without birth control, double
every third of a century, the miracle looks rather tawdry. The
Catholic total now obviously ought to be 600000000. It is in
point of fact less than 200000000.
You smile at the figure of 330000000 when, if you take the
trouble to look up Catholic statistics, you find that it includes
30000000 in France, where optimistic Catholic writers do not
claim 10000000; 30000000 in Germany, where Hitler plays
skittle's with the Church; 40000000 in Italy, where as long ago
as 1919 the banned Socialists polled 1840593 votes (more than
half of the literate adult males) out of 3500000; 24000000 in
Spain, where it took the armies of three nations two years to put
the clerical Humpty Dumpty back on the wall; 60000000 in South
America, where the Blacks keep power only by the use of violence,
torture, and the zeal of masses of illiterate Indians. And so on.
These are the little pleasantries of Catholic arithmetic.
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Let us say 200000000. Where are they? Now, no sophistry can
obscure the lesson of the answer to that; and it is the same
whether you prefer to speak of 150000000 or 350000000
Catholics. Apart from the "converts" on foreign missions, who might
be classed as consumers goods, nine-tenths of the Pope's subjects
live under a Fascist flag. That fact is so uncomfortable that even
the most ingenious American apologist prefers to say nothing about
it. They live under the regimes of Vichy France, Franco Spain,
Salazar Portugal, Mussolini Italy, Horthy Hungary, and in the
Republics of South and Central America, nearly all of which are
Fascist, Poland was Fascist before it became compulsorily Nazi. And
not the boldest apologist can say, even to his own flock, that this
fact gives pain to the democratic Pope. Everybody knows that he
warmly blesses the Fascist regime under which they live and urges
it as the model for all Catholic countries. He has to. In an
atmosphere of freedom his Church always crumbles.
Who are the enemies of Fascism? Russia, where the Church has
virtually perished because of its political intrigues, is the most
effective and most thorough going enemy, Great Britain, where
Catholics are less than one-twentieth of the population, is next.
I do not say the British Empire because the Catholic half of Canada
is Fascist, and the Catholics of Australia are, under the lead of
anti-British Archbishop Mannix, by no means united for the struggle
against Fascism. Third is the United States, where genuine
Catholics are less than one-tenth of the population but very much
more than one-tenth of the Isolationists. In sum, there are in
Europe and America 350000000 non-Catholic thorough opponents of
Fascism to about 20000000 Catholic more-or-less opponent's. Add
Asia, and you have 1000000000 non-Catholic opponents, fighting
or ready to fight against Fascism, and less than 30000000
Catholics.
Who were the chief traitors to the cause of democratic
civilization? Catholic France -- that is to say, the Catholic and
Pope-directed part of France, Belgium (or its Fascists, royalists,
and priests), and the Catholic Croats of Yugo-Slavia.
Who made the best fight against the invading Huns? Norway,
which has only 2000 Catholics to nearly 3000000 Protestants; the
Serbs, who are bitterly anti-Papal and were let down by the
Catholic provinces of their country; Greece, where the Pope has no
influence; and Russia, where, if you will forgive in Irishism, he
has still less. Not for a moment do I belittle the fine resistance
of Poland, but it was not fighting Fascism as such. It was already
Fascist and had for twenty years persecuted religious minorities.
It fought for its national independence and to prevent the
extension to Poland of the anti-clerical elements of Nazism.
What is the Constitution of the Catholic Church? It is the
newest approach on earth to that of Nazi Germany. The Church is a
despotic monarchy. The Pope may not only disregard the collective
opinion of his cardinals (his cabinet) but he is not bound to
submit to the decisions of a general council of all the bishops,
arch-bishops and abbots of the Catholic world. He is the Fuhrer,
with the additional prerogative of infallibility.
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What is the law of the Catholic Church? The most tyrannical
code of law in the world. The Church has two sets of laws: a code
of Public Law, which in plain English means Private Law because it
is kept in a dead language and taught to very few priests and no
laymen, and Private Law, which you may prefer to call Public Law
because it alone is translated into modern languages and accessible
to the general public. You may read this in an American
translation, if you are able to disentangle the text from the
artful commentaries of the translator's. It is Fascist enough, if
Fascism means tyranny. It treats the Catholic laity like sheep.
They must not read a criticism of the Church and its untruthful
literature without the permission of a priest who will insist on
"replying" to it. Penalty -- hell. They must not discuss such
matters with a critical non-Catholic friend or hear a lecture that
may be critical. They must urge non-Catholics to read both sides
but never do it themselves. They must not marry except on lines
prescribed by the Church whether these accord with civil law or
not. Penalty -- hell. They must never get a divorce. Penalty --
hell. But if they are rich the Church will find, even if they have
been married twenty years and have ten children, that they never
were married at all.
The Public Law of the Church is the most arrogant and most
truculent code in the history of jurisprudence, It is supposed to
define the relations of the Church to other corporations (states,
etc.) but if the Church has a bit of legislation which might look
rather naked and immodest in English, it keeps this also under the
veil of the dead language of the Public Law. For instance, it is
one of the most emphatic principles of this Public Law (which is
never made public) that you cannot leave the Church and so escape
its jurisdiction, and that if you say that you no longer believe in
it and have quitted it the Church has "the right and the duty." to
put you to death. I pass sleepless nights under the shadow of this
awful sentence which has been hanging over me for 45 years. The
fundamental principle of the law is that the Church, being the only
institution on earth that has been established by God, is the only
"perfect society," and therefore it has the right to overrule and
dictate to merely secular and human states on any point which it
chooses to regard as affecting religion or morals; and believe me,
the clerical genius could prove in five minutes that the color of
your wall-paper or the number of your blankets is a question of
morals. It follows at once that the Church will, where it has the
power, not tolerate the practice or propaganda of any other
religion, much less irreligion, or any criticism of itself or its
priests; that no priest must be tried in a civil court; that all
schools must be subject to clerical authority, and so on.
Well, you may say, a dead language means a dead letter. Pardon
me. Latin may be a dead language to you but it is the living
language of the Church. This ultra-medieval law is not dead letter
but is taught today in the international Papal (or Gregorian)
University at Rome, to which selected American priests are sent,
just as a few are sent from all countries, and Latin is their
Esperanto. It is, in fact, mainly to give them a thorough knowledge
of this secret law that they are sent to Rome, for it is not taught
in the education of ordinary priests, and not one in 100000 of the
zealous laymen (Knights of Columbus, etc.) who help the priests
knows anything about it.
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But you may be sure that the priestly writers, who tell
America about the beautiful harmony of Church Law and American Law
know all about it. The chief manual of it, Father Marianus de
Luca's Institutiones Juris Ecclesiastici Publici is in every
seminary. It is not one of those Yellow and dusty tomes that are
considered too valuable to open every day but a modern book,
published by the Vatican in the present century. It has a
particularly warm letter of authorization from Leo XIII, the great
"democratic Pope," though about ten pages of it are devoted to
chastising priests who say that the Church his abandoned its "right
of the sword" or any other medieval claims. I have quoted
extensively from it elsewhere (Appeal to Reason Library, No.1), and
you can spend a pleasant hour comparing the nice sentiments which
Catholics quote for you from Pope Leo's inspiring Encyclicals with
the sentiments he endorses in Marianus de Lucas book.
In fact, it comes a little closer to Americans. A more recent
but equally truculent manual of this Public Church Law is Cardinal
Lepicier's De Stabilitate et Progressu Dogmatis, Lapicier is a
Canadian, the oracle of the Canadian Catholics. So white priests in
Detroit were getting round Henry Ford and the American public with
stories of how Thomas Aquinas and the Jesuit Suarez laid down our
most modern principles of political morality centuries ago, and how
the Pope is the incorruptible protector of democracy, justice, and
freedom of conscience, other priests just across the river, were
chuckling over Lepicier. Perhaps they were also in Detroit.
From the ease with which the American public were duped in
this matter one would imagine that Quebec is an obscure place round
Hudson's Bay or in Greenland. Quebec is, under Church law, a
Fascist state. It is the only free country -- if you can call it
free -- in the world where Petain's miserable senile corruption of
our civilization is hailed with joy and admiration instead of
curses and derision.
A few years ago a Canadian Journalist, Grant Dexter, had an
article in the London press (News-Chronicle, August 18, 1938) with
the title "There is Fascism under the British Flag," and it opened
with the words: "The facts about Quebec are not in dispute; Church
and State are combining in an effort to suppress freedom and to
create a Fascist State on the Italian model." Dexter might have
said that there has always been Fascism in French Canada. When the
British took it over from the French the clergy made with them one
of the usual selfish deals; they would stamp out revolt in the
people if the British would give them tyrannical rights and powers
over the people. I found the place a paradise of sleek priests,
monks and nuns in 1925, but it has become much worse just when the
British Empire was getting up its courage to "rid the world of
Fascism." Under the new "Padlock Law" (1937) against Communism,
which means anything the priests don't like and was directly
inspired by the present Pope, the police became gestapo. They can
invade and close premises and arrest men without appeal to the
Courts. The censorship is tyrannical, and Protestants and Jews who
have nothing to do with Communism are persecuted. In 1940 a
respectable girl of sixteen was sentenced to jail (or a heavy
payment) for distributing tracts of the International Bible
Students' Association.
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To these French Canadians -- and they are four out of the 12000000
 people of Canada -- Franco Spain is an idyllic land, and
Vichy France is making a noble effort to reach its level. Salazar
in Portugal and Horthy in Hungary are ideal rulers, and Mussolini's
sale to the Pope of the liberties which the Italian people had won
with their blood was a grand victory over the materialism of the
age. That this encouraged Hitler and his gang, led directly to the
rape of Ayssinia, and had a considerable influence on the Vatican's
alliance with Japan is -- well, it is just one of those things.
How American priests and their writers and politicians were,
while these sentiments were rampant in canada, assuring the
American public that the Church stood inflexibly for democracy and
freedom we shall consider presently, but we must notice here one
very ironic occurrence. In 1929 the papers announced with great joy
that Mussolini and the Pope had entered into a Holy Alliance. They
did not recall that Mussolini had recently said, or roared out on
a public platform, that he had "marched to victory over the rotting
corpse of liberty." They did not mention that he had 10000
political prisoners in jail, many under torture. They said nothing
to disturb the soothing assurances of Catholic writers, even of Al
Smith during his presidential campaign, that it was only when the
founders of our liberties "wedded themselves to ancient Catholic
political principles that they were able to give birth to modern
democracy as we know it." Shades of Franklin and Jefferson!
However, just when Catholic mendacity of this sort was given place
of honor in the American press the Pope himself was angrily tearing
it to tatters in Italy.
Mussolini had bluntly declared in the Italian Camera
(Congress) that he had made no concession to medievalism, and the
Pope retorted at once, in an open letter to his Cardinal Secretary
of State which was published in the Vatican organ, the Osservatore
Romano (May 30, 1929), that in accepting the Canon Law (Public
Church Law) for Italy the Duce had conceded everything. The Pope,
exactly on the lines which I have described above said that
Mussolini had admitted the thesis that the Church is a "perfect
society" and he must accept "the logical and juridical consequences
of such a situation according to constitutive [Church] law."
We saw what these consequences are. Naturally the Pope did not
dare assert his "right of the sword" or his duty to put apostates
to death. It would have meant a claim for the execution of about
20000000 Italians; and, in spite of the Catholic censorship,
those blamed Americans might have heard of it. He could not demand
the suppression of every other religion, because the Americans and
British had chapels and missions in Italy, but he insisted on
severe restrictions, complained bitterly that it was only the
pressure of circumstances that forced him to make any concession,
and secured at least that the civil law would deal with any free or
critical discussion of religion. He did point out that one
consequence of recognizing that the Church is a perfect society is
that it is "absolutely superior to the State": another is that "in
matters of conscience the Church and the Church alone has competent
authority;" another that this particularly applies to "the matter
of propaganda" and criticism of the Church: another that "the full
and perfect right to educate does not belong to the State but the
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Church": another that "in a Catholic State liberty of conscience
and of discussion must be understood and carried out in accordance
with Catholic teaching and law"; another, referring to the Catholic
scheme of controlling marriage, that the Church "can and must
enforce it."
From the viewpoint of the man who wants to know the truth
about the relation of Catholic law to civil law, who wants to
examine whether the Church is really democratic or Fascist, this is
the most important and most explicit document that has emanated
from the Vatican for fifty years. But no American or British paper
reproduced it; and even the Catholic who wants to read his own
Pope's words on the subject will find that he would have to read
them in my books or one of Marshall's -- which he is forbidden
under pain of hell to open! Remember what Heywood Broun, a
journalist of knowledge and character, said about the Catholic
censors of the Press: "There is not a single New York editor who
does not live in terror of this group,"
One of the aims of this general intimidation of editors or of
newspaper owners by threats to withdraw Catholic advertisers or
readers is to protect the Catholic-American fiction that the Church
never interferes in polities. The Vatican, we are told, cooperates
at one time with a democratic state and at another with a Fascist
state because it leaves to the people the choice of its political
form. It must cooperate with the established state in protecting
the interests of religion. Did not the great Pope Leo XIII
formulate that principle in golden words which have been reproduced
so many hundreds of times that there is no excuse for any writer
who does not know it?
We smile. Until 1939 the assurances of Hitler and Mussolini
that they ardently desired peace in Europe were reproduced just as
many hundreds of times. And the Catholic writer who quotes the
Encyclical (Immortale Dei) of Leo XIII as a sublime utterance on
"The Constitution of Christian States" and the freedom of people to
shape their own constitutions is no more honest than Hitler or
Mussolini. The very title given to it in the English translation is
a trick. The Pope's title is "On the Constitution of Catholic
States." A few other neat little changes conceal the fact that the
aim of it was almost the exact opposite of what Catholic writers in
America pretend. It was addressed to France, and its chief object
was to chastise the French for daring to choose a constitution
which put all religions on the same level by excluding the Catholic
Church from polities, the lawcourt, and the school: which is just
what the American Constitution does. The Encyclical was written in
1885, and the French people had then lived under a Republic for
fourteen years. The Papacy had during all that time refused to
recognize the political form which they had chosen in a free
Congress and with the full support of the country. Leo XIII, who
never interfered in politics, had stubbornly insisted that they
must take back either the royal or the imperial family.
The whole Catholic propaganda on this point is nauseating in
its dishonesty. The world does not need a Pope to tell it that a
nation can choose its own political form, and the Pope forgot this
Catholic principle when the Spaniards set up a Republic in 1932. It
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is not the business of a moralist, however richly oiled he may be,
to dictate on such matters as choosing between a royalist and
republican form. But if there is any such thing as political
morality or principle in public affairs, the Fascist form of a
state, being imposed upon a people by force, does concern it. And
when those who have imposed it are corrupt adventurers like Hitler,
Mussolini and Franco, or senile splutterers like Petain, when they
lie and cheat like medieval Popes and princes, when they debauch
their people with sentiments of banditry and commit outrages on a
vast scale, it is time for the Pope, to speak out. Yet, while
statesmen all over the world who do not claim to be "holy men"
loathe and execrate them, the Pope enters into alliance with them.
He has a concordat with every Fascist ruler in Europe and South
America, but he goes far beyond that.
Does the Catholic apologist mean that men in power, no matter
how criminal they may be, must be taken into alliance if they
promise to protect and promote "the interests of religion"? What
interest of religion, in the best sense, can such men promote? And
what are their promises worth? A man's principles are suspect if he
deals with them, but his intelligence is worse than suspect.
Religion in such a case obviously means the power and wealth of the
Papacy and the Catholic hierarchy, And it will be shown
overwhelmingly in this series of booklets that for the last ten
years or more the Black International has intrigued with the powers
of darkness in its own interest and condoned every outrage and
deception that prepared the way for this ghastly crime against
humanity.
Chapter IV
HOW THE CRIME WAS ORGANIZED
Aggressive war was always barbaric. Priests reserve the
richest section of their vocabulary of vituperation (loathsome,
swinish, filthy, obscene, bestial, etc.) for the man who loves a
woman without their blessing, but they have always contrived to
keep their dignity when they condemn aggressive war. They know that
whenever their own nation enters upon one they will support it. Yet
it is a crime on so vast a scale that no individual crime can for
a moment be compared with it.
It was always a relic of barbarism. Today it stinks. There
used to be, and still in defensive war are features -- a superb
courage, a heroism, a self-sacrifice for others, a splendid
challenge to our common cowardice -- that have moved quite
respectable writers to praise it. Sir Arthur Keith, one of the most
kindly And most humane of men, said some years ago that war is
necessary. He could not say that today. Modern aggressive war,
Fascist war, the war launched by the men who mouth about their
invincible legions, their indomitable courage, their noble blood,
is an incarnation of cowardice. What is called the Age of Chivalry
in European history is a Catholic lie. Historical experts -- not
writers of manuals of general European history for American
colleges -- consider the period (1100-1400) one of the most brutal,
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dishonest, treacherous, and aggressively sexual in the chronicle of
civilization. What we see today is not a decay of chivalry but
precisely a return to the so-called Age of Chivalry, with certain
diabolical improvements (from the bandit's angle).
You prepare the way for your war by years of lying, cheating,
corrupting, prostituting your women, seducing soldiers and
statesmen, and buying traitors and Fifth Columnists. Meantime you
forge your weapons in underground arsenals. When you are ready, you
look round the map for the weakest victim, and you bear down upon
him with a force four or five times as great as his. You shelter
your men behind an advancing war of steel. You drive hundreds of
thousands of frantic women and children and old men along the roads
before them, knowing that your enemy is less inhuman than you and
it will paralyze his defense. You pour hell upon the towns where
the women and children and old men live so as -- this is laid down
in German and Japanese military manuals -- to take the heart out of
their husbands or sons in the field, and you then announce that you
have bombed their "military installations." You flood them with
poison gas -- unless you learn that they have enough to retaliate
A your cities . . . In a word, it stinks. And the Black
Internationals, the Pope and his cardinals, archbishops, bishops,
priests, monks, nuns, and paid journalists and organizers, have for
ten years or more cooperated with the arch-criminals who have
brought this blight upon civilization. They have done more. They
have summoned the bandits to the foul work and called it a Crusade.
Now that, you say, is really too strong. But is any man really
ignorant that the present Pope raised the cry, years before the war
started, before we heard those first shots in Spain which were the
curtain-raiser of the great tragedy, that the powers must unite to
"extinguish Bolshevism in Spain, Mexico, and Russia," and that the
cry was taken up by the whole Catholic world? How did Catholic's
think that Bolshevism was going to be extinguished? With rose-
water? Seldes is very frank in his work The Vatican about the way
in which the Knights of Columbus joined the Wall Street Choral
Society in demanding war upon Mexico, that is to say, of course,
upon its Bolshevism, though it hasn't got any. Is a war less
criminal when the defender is incomparably weaker than the
aggressor? Profane moralists think otherwise. Has any man now any
serious doubt that the Pope encouraged Franco to rebel and the
Italians and Germans to assist him? As to Russia, Pacelli, who is
now Pope Pius XII, has howled for the extinction of its Bolshevism,
and in particular has appealed to Germany to allow him to cooperate
in this, in explicit terms since 1936 and implicitly long before
that. Crushing Bolshevism in Russia meant, as we now see and as any
properly informed man could have foreseen, the bloodiest war in
history.
If, as one can hardly suppose, a man has any doubt about this
charge against the Black International, he will get ample
information in the following books. We shall, in fact, see all
about Pacelli Pius in the next book. But proofs meet the eye every
day. Why do you suppose that the head of the Roman Church in
Britain, Cardinal Hinsley, has warned Catholics to be prepared for
terrible propaganda against the Church when the war is over? Why is
Archbishop Mannix, the head of the Church in Australia, permitted
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THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
to make such attacks on the British effort to extinguish Nazism,
that on the latest count, only <data type="percent" unit="%">16%</data> of the Australian
volunteers are Catholics and <data type="percent" unit="%">65%</data> Protestants? Why do
international radio experts complain in England (News-Chronicle,
August 21, 1941) that Italian broadcasters address English
Catholics "as if they were a ready-made Fifth Column"? Why does the
Vatican radio find it necessary repeatedly to meet the charge that
the Pope is pro-Axis? Why does it denounce as traitors to the
Church Polish and other officials who adhere to the Anglo-Russian
alliance? Why do those servile followers of the Vatican, Franco and
DeValera, help Germany? What about the Pope's latest pet scheme, a
Catholic bloc to be formed with the help of Germany?
But this booklet must be a preliminary general survey. The
plot will be shown and proved in detail in the following booklets,
and on the most positive evidence. It is sometimes difficult, even
impossible, to prove the Vatican's share in international intrigues
and crimes. Catholicism is not the same thing in America as in
Italy. It is a minority Catholicism and most behave very prudently.
Sometimes American Catholics tell you, when you point out the
irrepressible absurdities and eccentricities of their Church, that
you "ought to see it in a Catholic country." You may be sure these
men have never seen it themselves in Eire, Spain, Italy, and
Poland. In these countries Catholics can from long familiarity see
and hear without raising an eyebrow things that would make an
American Catholic pale. Very often, in fact, they are kept in
complete ignorance of what the Vatican is doing in their own
country with its underground diplomacy and secret agreements, and
the apologist flatly denies these things -- until they come to
light years later.
What do you think of this choice specimen? In the years when
Britain obstinately refused Home Rule to Ireland there was very
serious trouble, and it was often said, and angrily denied, that
the Vatican secretly negotiated with the British Government to use
the influence of the priests to cheek the people in return for
concessions in England. The Irish leaders knew that it was true. I
have myself heard John Dillon in the last century exclaim: "I take
my religion from Rome but not my polities." It all came out in the
official biography of Leo XIII by Msgr. T'Serelaes, but it had an
ironic sequel which American papers have probably not noticed. The
British statesmen and the Catholic lords never thought that in the
end the Vatican would double-cross them, but it did. The Irish
Press, a staunch Valerist paper, said in an editorial in its issue
of May 26, 1933:
Today Ireland learns for the first time one of the most
moving and glorious stories in connection with the Easter Week
Rising [1916]. Before it took place Pope Benedict XIV received
a mission from the Irish Volunteer Executive in the person of
George Noble, Count Plunkett. The Count had a private audience
of two hours with His Holiness and disclosed to him the
decision to rise and the date of the insurrection and received
from him his Apostolic Benediction on the men who were facing
death for Ireland's liberty.
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THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
You may admire the pathetic rebellion or you may think it
foolish in its plain futility. You may acknowledge the right of
rebellion yet feel that these secretly organized revolts, when a
country is engaged in a terrible war, are not pleasant to
contemplate. But the only point of interest here is that if we had
suggested at the time that the Papacy was in any way involved in
the movement we would have raised a storm of indignation. Yet it
was not simply involved. The Pope outwardly friendly with the
British, gave his most solemn encouragement to the enterprise by
giving it his Apostolic Benediction. Now that De Valera has got all
that he expects to get out of England he reveals the truth.
Should we be unduly suspicious we suggested that the Vatican,
through the Catholic hierarchy, encouraged De Valera to refuse the
use of ports to Britain and so prolonged the carnage of seamen and
the brutality of the Nazi regime? Especially when we have the heads
of the hierarchy in Australia publicly threatening what the Church
will do if Britain forces a temporary occupation; especially when
De Valera, Franco, Salazar, and Weygand (who would grant the
Germans the use of ports tomorrow if they were more confident of
its final victors) are abjectly amenable to Papal direction. We
remember how Leo XIII's clerical biographer boasts of the
cleverness of his hero in making deals with Prussia at the expense
of the Poles, which was denied at the time, just as he boasts of
his diplomatic intrigues in London at the expense of the Irish. We
remember how American Catholics raged when Pegler in one of his
syndicated articles accused the Vatican of supporting Japan. Now
the Pope receives Matsuoka in great honor at the Vatican and gives
that arch-hypocrite a gold medal.
But do not get a false impression. This exposure of the plots
of the Black International will not at any point rely on
suspicions. It is based on such positive evidence is I have just
given of the Irish plot. The only suggestion or suspicion I
introduce is that the plot most probably goes far beyond what we
can at present prove. That is a plain inference from the historic
way in which Vatican intrigues are angrily denied at the time and
later revealed or -- as is the case with the Japanese alliance --
indignantly denied by American priests and at the same time claimed
by French and Italian priests as proof of the Pope's cleverness.
The known facts, the Pope's published words and actions, are,
however, grave enough and, in view of the criminality of the Axis
plot against the world, the infamy of the way in which it was
organized, the bestiality with which it has so far been carried
out, they make a mockery of what Catholic apologists have said in
America for half a century.
Let us first be quite clear on this organization of the plot;
and this I particularly recommend to men and women of fine
sensitivity who are tempted to say that the whole world has somehow
apostatized from its ideals. Three nations only want aggressive
war: three nations out of fifty, or one-tenth only of the race.
Another tenth (backward people) know nothing about it, but eight-
tenths loath aggressiveness and the brutality it causes. Don't
blame the world.
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THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
Even in the case of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the nation is
not so much corrupt as corrupted by a minority; and this corruption
was accomplished in ten years and can, by a reversal of the
educational machinery, be redeemed in less than ten years. Nations
like France and Spain may seem under Vatican influence to have
adhered to the corrupt gangs, but we know that the majority are
sound and when the time comes for the final and drastic,
destruction of this clerical influence they will rise to greater
heights than ever.
The second point to hold clearly in mind is that it is a
military-economic plot. It appeared first in Japan, where a score
of very wealthy families wanted more wealth and hundreds of others
wanted to reach the same position. Fortunately for them Japanese
naval and military commanders are still at the medieval or Samurai
level of mentality. They want to win "glory" by conquering half of
Asia. The miserable politicians and the heads of the Shinto and
Buddhist religions were bought -- literally -- to support the plot,
and the Vatican promised that if it were given a monopoly of the
Christian missions it would see that the Gospel was accommodated to
this noble design of exploiting the slave labor and vast resources
of China, indo-China, Thailand, etc!. In Germany the economic
element precedes the military, as it had to create the army afresh,
and in the case of Italy we will not venture to speak of military
"glory." In sum, the world is darkened by a plot of two nations to
create a vast wealth by exploiting all the other nations. Italy was
never seriously meant to share it. Mussolini ought to have paid
more heed to Hitler's emphatic statement in Mein Kampf twenty years
ago that there is no room in Europe for two great powers.
The third point to keep clear is that Mussolini and Hitler had
not at first any idea of the ultimate plot. Mussolini, a brutal,
scatter-brained adventurer, was too busy breaking the heads of
Socialists with whom he had quarrelled, to write programs, and
Hitler just put together a few Christian Socialist ideas
(especially anti-Semitism) and the already familiar demand that all
sections of the German-speaking race must unite. Add the spice of
denouncing Versailles, though it had treated Italy far too
generously. How these mob leaders and saloon-bar politicians came
to have definite and rapidly expanding programs is a long story
that will, as far as, is necessary, be told in later booklets. In
a word, it was due to the adoption of the parties by the
capitalists, who in time saw an opportunity of acquiring amazing
wealth by enslaving Europe, Asia, and Africa; the majority of the
workers, who were diverted from dreams of dispossessing their own
wealthy to a dream of taking England's lucrative place as "the
world's shopkeeper"; the army, which is always ready to "conquer"
when you give it the tools; the Churches in each country and the
Vatican for the whole world.
The question that will interest the future historian is, as I
said, not how the plot grew, which it is very easy to trace, but
how the rest of the world was so duped that it made no defensive
preparations, except the futile Maginot Line in France. Again there
can be only one answer. The world was duped by its statesmen and
its rich newspaper-owner who refused to see anything except that
privilege would be saved by the extinction of Bolshevism in Italy,
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THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
Spain, Germany, China and Russia. These are large questions to
which a full answer will be Provided in the later booklets, but
most people will remember how the press of America and Britain (and
France) was filled for years with (1) lying stories of the
confusion and inefficiency into which Socialism had led Italy,
Germany, Spain, and Russia; (2) lying, stories of the efficiency of
the Nazi and Fascist regimes; (3) sympathy with the pressure of
population in Italy and Germany, though everybody knew that
Mussolini and Hitler were forcing the birth rate, and every expert
knew that there was far less pressure than in England or Belgium.
To what extent statesmen and editors and heads of Churches
really fooled themselves into thinking that the vast armaments
which Hitler and Mussolini were creating would be allowed to rust
when they had crushed Bolshevism in Spain and Russia as well as
their own countries is not my concern. Perhaps you remember how a
few years ago an French journalist in an interview (arranged for
the purpose,) asked Hitler about his emphatic statement in Mein
Kampf that France would be ground to powder, when he airily brushed
it aside as an ebullition of younger days -- it was still printed
in every edition on a score of pages. -- the press everywhere gave
prominence to his assurance; and the same press everywhere, with a
few honorable exception's, repeated every lie and libel about
Soviet Russia that anybody cared to send in.
Chapter V
HOW UNCLE SAM WAS DUPED
The verdict of this generation of young folk, when they grow
up, will be that the "Guilty Men" -- journalists use that language
at last, forgetting that editors were as guilty as statesmen -- who
let the monstrous evil attain such proportions are only a little
less guilty than the bandits. In this respect I approach death with
clean hands. In my Haldeman-Julius publications for the last six
years, especially the Appeal to Reason Library, and the ABC
Library, and The History of the World Since 1918, I have thoroughly
exposed the current untruths, described the growth of the plot, and
made clear the true attitude of the Roman Church. This attitude and
the work of American Catholic apologists in falsely representing it
are the last point to be noticed in this introductory booklet.
The New York Times of May 12, 1940, contained a very special
apology for the Vatican by Dr. Ryan, Catholic bishop of Omaha. That
paper has, as many quotations in these booklets will show, given us
a fair news-service both from the Vatican and Russia, and it was
right to publish the Catholic case. Ryan, formerly head of the
Catholic University, is the fifteen-inch gun, the 50-ton tank, of
American Catholic apologetic on these matters. His strength is,
besides his Catholic learning, that he is so solemn that he always
gives you the impression that he believes what he says. Even when
in the course of this article he says that today "the place of
Papacy in world affairs seems to stand out in bolder relief than at
almost any other epoch of its long existence," he is quite serious,
though he cannot possibly refer to the Vatican's share in the
world-plot.
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THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
Dr. Ryan's complete vindication of the wisdom and the
integrity of the Papacy is this. In the last century it fought
"political liberalism." This is now dead and "on its ruins there
have risen such extremes as communism and fascism" which "meet on
the common ground of state totalitarianism." Against these new
dragons the Papacy steps out again in shining armor, and they "have
thrown down the gauntlet to Catholicism," which cannot possibly
"capitulate to the new theories," Thus "the democratic regimes"
have no stouter champion than the Pope, and all Americans must
rally to him.
Two months later, when the pious and purblind Petain trampled
on the last remnants of democracy in France, the Papal newspaper,
the Osservatore Romano (July 8), hailed his restoration of "the
principle of authority" with enthusiasm and Said that in this
respect "the aims of the dictatorships coincided with those of the
Church." What the leading Catholic apologist felt when the same New
York Times (July 19) gave the gist of this Papal article one
wonders. The Osservatore quoted its pet dictator Salazar saying:
"The authoritarian regimes have the purpose of creating a civic
conscience as a way to create a moral conscience", and in the name
of the Pope added: "Such are also the desire, the aspiration, and
the program of the Church." And the Times Rome correspondent, went
on to say that the Germans rejoiced at this "complete about-face by
the Vatican in its position toward totalitarian states!" You see,
the terrible case with which Germany crushed Holland, Belgium, and
France had convinced the Pope that it was going to win the war; and
from that time onward the Vatican's one great idea was to set up a
bloc of totalitarian Catholic States in cooperation with Hitler.
Pity the poor American apologist in these days. But Ryan's
plea was gross even at the time. In the last century, he begins,
the Church fought political liberalism. Yes, at a cost of half a
million lives of Liberals and with such documents as its moth-eaten
Syllabus. Political liberalism means simply democracy, sol the
Church fought democracy, which Ryan has always denied. Other
apologists prefer to say "economic liberalism" but they obviously
do not know what they are talking about because the Church joined
with economic liberalism in a violent attack upon its opposite,
Socialism. This political liberalism is now "defunct," Ryan says.
Yes -- in all Catholic countries. As we saw, nine-tenths of the
Pope's subjects live under a Fascist flag, and the Pope presses
upon them as the political ideal the totalitarian regime of Italy
and Portugal. It is upon Protestant lands that the Crusade for
democracy and against Fascism vitally depends. And Ryan's final
point that the principles of the Catholic Church compel it to fight
for democracy and freedom is even worse. If it were true, the
Vatican is guilty of a monstrous moral apostasy. But it is the
reverse of the truth. We have seen that the Church of Rome is
Fascist in its Constitution, its law, its principles, and
everything about it. It coquetted -- cocotted might be better --
with democracy as long as it paid.
The recent history of Vatican policy -- it has no "principles"
in the ordinary sense -- is not obscure. It was fiercely anti-
democratic, until the last quarter of the last century. It still
remained anti-democratic, expressing this plainly in its relations
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THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
with France, until near the end of the century. It insulted and
humiliated the heads of the Catholic Church in America by
addressing to them an Open Letter, published all over the world,
condemning what is called Americanism. What it condemned was
precisely what Ryan and other apologists teach: that there is no
lack of harmony in any respect between the spirit and law of the
Church and the American spirit and law But the "century ended with,
apparently, the triumph of political liberalism all over the world,
and the Vatican ceased its mumbling. On political matters it became
ideally neutral; and the Church in America began to store up
billions of dalliers while the Church in France and Italy shrank,
so much that its contributions to the treasury were meager. One
must keep an eye on these Americans.
Then began the golden age of Catholic propaganda in America.
The Church, they said, was essentially democratic; always had been
in fact. The apologists grew bolder and bolder. Not only is the
eternal political truth in the Encyclicals (slightly retouched) of
Leo XIII (who hated democracy) but it was now discovered in the
writings of the Jesuit Suarez (who would have had a man burned at
the stake for professing it) and even in the works of Thomas
Aquinas (who had picked a few ancient Greek ideas out of the works
of Aristotle but otherwise defended the most merciless principles
of medieval clerical tyranny). The flag of freedom had been first
set up in Catholic Maryland; which, Bancroft had clearly shown,
never had more than a Catholic minority, and these had passed the
policy of toleration in their own defense.
Year after year American Catholic writers and journals
broadcast this monumental untruth, but the Vatican itself was
meantime watching for the first opportunity to get rid of its
misalliance with the vulgar drab Democracy and recover its
association with its elegant Aristocracy. Ryan says: "Political
liberalism and not the Papacy was almost completely destroyed in
the cataclysm of the World War." He ventures to say that in one of
the best-informed countries in the world! Just think for yourself,
for no reading is necessary in order to test this.
Democracy was not destroyed in Russia, for it had never had
democracy. It was not destroyed but for the first time set up in a
pure form, by getting rid of Kaiserism and the Junkers, in Germany.
It was not in the least weakened, but invigorated by the collective
war-effort in America, the British Empire, France, Italy -- in
fact, all over the world except in Japan. Oh, Ryan will say, I take
a long view; I see Communism already growing. We will not press his
language -- that democracy was destroyed in the World War -- but we
reply that he is using one of the flimsiest tricks of propaganda.
Outside Russia, where the conditions were unique, Communism, which
must be taken in this connection to mean the dictatorship of the
proletariat, never had a chance of attaining power. Bela Kun was an
episode. What did show a prospect of gaining the world was
Socialism, and it is the only pure form of democracy. But the
Catholic apologist, like his colleagues as fellow-crusaders in Wall
Street, finds it more useful to say Communism. They could never
have made America quite so red-hot about Socialism.
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THE VATICAN'S LAST CRIME
What are the facts? Dictatorship began first after the war in
Poland; and no government in the world was more subservient to the
Vatican than the Polish, no other nation so solidly Catholic. The
democracy began next in Spain where in 1923, the King and Church
had, to prevent an inquiry into their corruption, set up a
dictator. He had the blessing and cordial cooperation of the Pope.
Mussolini had marched on Rome in the previous year, but his
dictatorship was very imperfect -- as late as 1925 more than
2500000 or half the country voted against him -- until he came to
terms with and bought the support of the Vatican. This was in 1929.
During ten years after the war the only blows at democracy, which,
instead of being "defunct," as Ryan says, was as vigorous as ever,
had been dealt in Catholic countries with the warm support of the
hierarchy, and the Pope.
In 1929 Pacelli-Pius became Secretary of State at the Vatican,
and democracy began to bleed. Japan started on China, (1931) and
the only power in the world to enter into close association with it
was the Vatican City. Germany still rejected Nazism, but in 1932
the Pope made an underhand deal with Hitler, and this was one of
the chief reasons why he won and destroyed democracy. In 1934
democracy was destroyed in Vienna, after Dollfuss had had an
interview with the Pope and with the zealous cooperation of the
Austrian hierarchy; and Mussolini, loudly cheered by the whole
Italian Church, entered Abyssinia. Next year (1935) Pacelli visited
South America, and the statesmen and generals who fawned upon him
made a bloody end of democracy. In 1936 Franco, with the Pope's
blessing, began his vile work in Spain, and the way was prepared
for the world-assault on democracy. It survives, fighting for its
life, in non-Catholic countries.
That is the story we shall tell in detail, but that this is
the true outline of it everybody knows. The Church of Rome is
vitally implicated in the most criminal and most gigantic
conspiracy in history. It blesses or courts men to whom lying is a
pastime and wholesale murder and brutality are necessities which
they defend with amazing callousness. Perhaps it is the Vatican's
last crime, for when this war is over a grim reckoning will be
required of the Pope. He clings to his infamous association while
every sane and free part of the world covers it with obloquy.
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