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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. 7
THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
HOW THE PREACHING OF PEACE FIZZLED OUT,
AND WHY
by Joseph McCabe
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS
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CHAPTER
I The War in the West ................................ 1
II Norway "Not a Catholic Country" .................... 8
III The Treachery of Leopold ........................... 14
IV France Recovers its Faith and Losses its Honor ..... 19
V The Amazing Folly of the Catholic Bloc .............. 25
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Chapter I
THE WAR IN THE WEST
Those of us who know the ways of Popes watch our papers
cynically for the first signs of a change of heart in Immutable
Rome. In the first year of a war the Pope is on the side of the big
battalions, or, in the language of modern war, the Panzer
divisions. How could a nation like Great Britain expect a Pope to
declare its cause just if it had only a score of good fighting
planes and hundreds of thousands of hospital beds and coffins ready
when it launched its thunderbolt? In the second year the Pope
becomes the Great Neutral, very eloquent in telling the virtues of
peace to a world which hardly needs that assurance. In the third
year he becomes the Arbiter of Right and Wrong. He find's that
there are limits to the world's leniency and the Catholic layman's
docility.
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
The time has come for the third phase. The German system is
ominously stretched, and expert ears listen for the first crack.
Italy, disillusioned and beggared, would hang out its tattered
flags if it heard of the death of Mussolini and Hitler. Japan sees
the great American fleet looming on the horizon. All the little
parasite dictators and Quislings tremble in their dishonored homes.
Through the world surges the first flush of confidence in three
years . . . So we begin to hear strange things from those spokesmen
of the Vatican -- the Radio, the Osservatore, and the publicity
bureau -- which can be quoted later as evidence of the Pope's
sentiments or lightly dismissed as "unauthorized," as the
circumstances require.
The latest to hand reminds us how in a world which permits
Catholics to intrigue in every newspaper office and every political
lobby the Pope can command respectful attention for any
eccentricity, audacity, or mendacity he cares to perpetrate. Myron
C. Taylor, whose secret proceedings under cover of his unofficial
office the American public might find it interesting to
investigate, recently spent a week in Lisbon on his way from the
Pope to the President. Under the devout dictator Salazar Lisbon,
not many years ago a great Liberal center, has become an important
international outpost of the Vatican. Representatives of Spain,
Vichy France, Germany, and the Church breathe its air with lordly
freedom. It was, therefore, not very surprising that shortly after
Mr. Taylor's departure the London Times had this paragraph, which
a British writer welcomed with the reminder that "good hearty
laughs are hard to come by in these days," from its Lisbon
correspondent:
"High ecclesiastical sources throw one clear ray of light on
the Pope's attitude to the war. His Holiness in private episcopal
audiences has drawn an important distinction between the Nazi and
Communist systems. His public discourses have implied the obvious
truth that the philosophy behind each is fundamentally anti-
Christian, but in private he has repeatedly said that, whereas
Nazism is almost entirely evil in its inspiration, Communism has in
it certain elements of natural good which, even if utterly
perverted, still exist. Bolshevism is in some sense a corruption of
the virtues of brotherly love and self-sacrifice, whereas Nazism is
a direct and untrammelled manifestation of hatred and greed."
I venture to think that if the reader has not seen that
passage before but has read some books of this series it leaves him
breathless. By comparison the passage in which the Archbishop of
York tried a week later to emulate his Brother in Christ seems
almost rational. He said:
"So far as I understand the economic system of Russia, as it
was when the invasion began, I see little or nothing in it with
which a Christian needs to quarrel" (London Evening News, November
13).
If we had not the Pope's words (alleged) to compare with this
we should call it a luscious example of the kind of thing that
bishops alone are permitted to say. The essential aim and operation
of the Russian economic system is to share the wealth which the
people of Russia produce, without one iota of exploitation of
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
colonies or subject nations, amongst the producers, and with
immeasurably stricter justice than could be found in Britain or
anywhere else; and Dr. Temple, who has paid attention to the ethic
of social and economic arrangements for thirty years, ought to know
it.
But his boldness in suggesting that it is not quite on the
Christian level pales beside that of the Pope. For years Pacelli-
Pius has showered upon the entire Russian system every epithet that
a man in his position is supposed to know. In a comprehensive word
it is "satanic." The Catholic world was taught to close its eyes
and shudder at the word Bolshevism and to regard the Nazis as the
Teutonic Knight whom God had chosen to destroy it. Now we are asked
to believe that while in public the Pope merely pointed out the
"obvious truth" that both systems are anti-Christian in private he
always acknowledged that Bolshevism was perverted virtue -- that is
to say, virtue without a Catholic basis -- and Nazism unreservedly
corrupt.
I need not point out to my readers that this is false. The
language which the Vatican has used about Bolshevism for years,
much of which I have quoted, condemned it vitriolically, on moral
and social grounds, as destructive of the social order and of
civilization, productive of vice, and stifling to personality. It
was almost the only justification of his eight years' courtship of
Germany and his silence while the entire German Catholic Church
applauded those "victories" of the Nazis, which the Pope is now
said to have regarded always as successes of greed and hatred, that
one day they would destroy Bolshevism and so save civilization.
That there is no other country in the world in which the Pope's
alleged ideals -- Peace, Charity, and Justice -- have been more
cherished and carried out in practice than in Russia I will show in
a booklet on the Vatican's relations to that country. But there is
a growing acknowledgment today that it is the classic land of
"brotherly love and Self-sacrifice." What shall we say of this
moral oracle of 200000000 people who, when he is supposed to be
correcting an earlier estimate of Russia, still puts it on a lower
level than Italy, Spain, Portugal, or Brazil?
If we were to accept this Lisbon report of the Pope's words as
genuine most of us would reflect, with a shrug of the shoulders,
that what these high ecclesiastical authorities say seems to be of
no interest to us common folk with our simple notions of
truthfulness and plain speech. On the other hand, since we must at
least regard it as a move on the part of the Black International we
should say that it will make Goebbels look to his laurels. From
1917 to 1924, while the rest of the world cursed Russia, the
Vatican courted it. From 1926 to 1941 when Russia emerged from the
raw conditions of the civil war and the famine and won increasing
respect, the Vatican cursed it and called for its destruction. Now
that Catholic armies unite with the armies, of "hatred and greed"
to destroy it the Roman Church puts out tentative suggestions of a
return to the early courtship. It is one of a hundred indications
given in these books that the Black International has only one aim
-- the recovery or enlargement of its wealth and power -- and one
code of action, the ecclesiastical code. All this talk about social
interests and the cause of civilization is eyewash.
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Can we suppose that, as will probably be said presently,
recent events have opened the eye's of the Pope? What events? Has
something happened recently that is worse than the ruin of Spain,
Austria, Abyssinia, Czecho-Slovakia, Albania, Poland, Norway,
Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and France? Remember that in not one
single instance of these exhibitions of greed and sadistic cruelty
has the Pope said that that was their character. Half of this
foulness had been perpetrated before the end of 1939 yet the Pope
just then elected to pay Mussolini's royal vassal and spy, the King
of Italy, more gorgeous compliments than any Pope had paid in Rome
since Italy began to have Kings. In the Christmas season the king
and queen -- probably wearing the Golden Rose he had given her as
Empress of Abyssinia -- had visited him, with rich presents, in the
Vatican. A few days later, not in compliance with Papal custom but
defying all precedent in his anxiety to do honor to the degraded
pair, he travelled across Rome to the Quirinal and exchanged the
most cordial Christmas greetings and compliments in the opulent
throne-room of the palace.
At that time, in pursuance of a policy jointly agreed upon
between Germany and Italy, the Poles and Polish Jews were writhing,
half-starved, bloodily scourged, amidst the ruins of their homes.
The Pope knew it. He proved repeatedly daring 1940 that in spite of
all German efforts to cut his communications with the country, he
continued to receive, doubtless through Swedish Catholics, news
from Poland! We remember his warm protest when, in 1940, German
soldiers and Gestapo men began, under official orders, to castrate
them by the thousand's. You surely remember how the Vatican
protested that the operation was not in accord with Catholic
theology!
And just about that time the First Murderer came in for his
share of the compliments. The Vatican Radio announced joyously that
one of the vilest of the Nazi group, Ribbentrop, a man for whom the
aristocratic Pope must have felt a personal as well as moral
repugnance, was coming to visit the Pope, and, as I show elsewhere,
there was a month of hard bargaining, although Hitler met Mussolini
a few days after Ribbentrop's visit and they decided upon and began
the enslavement of the entirely innocent democracies of Norway,
Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. We will consider later whether the
plot was communicated to the Pope like those of the Irish and the
Spanish rebellions, but it went through with all its savagery
whether he agreed or no, and the Huns were already making a vast
shambles of the roads of France when the Pope "extended his
paternal love to the German and Allied armies." It is said even
that he did not use the word Allied but Vatican officials felt that
it was expedient to add it.
We shall come later to discuss the very difficult question of
the relation of the Black International to the betrayal of Belgium
and France. Let us first get quite clear the fact that, whatever
Pius XII knew in advance about the German program -- there is high
authority for saying that Ribbentrop told him of it -- the
execution of which he never condemned, there is no question
whatever of his being ignorant at that time of the motives, and the
men. When he enjoyed a royal reception at Budapest in 1938 he
recalled according to a profoundly admiring Catholic writer in the
British Quarterly Review (January, 1940, p. 109), some words of
Pope Pius XI:
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"I thank God day by day that he has made me live in this time
. . . good and evil are locked in a gigantic struggle, and nobody
has the right to be merely an onlooker at this momentous hour."
Strange language for the Great Neutral! But what was the
struggle at that time, and what was Pacelli's contribution?
The struggle which the Pope envisaged in 1938 was not the
traditional struggle of religion and irreligion, virtue and vice.
That had, from the clerical angle, continued for decades and not
suddenly became "gigantic"! The symptoms of a new and formidable
struggle were the brutal destruction of the liberty of Spain by
rebels, mercenaries, Nazis, and Fascists: the destruction of the
liberty of Austria: the destruction of the lives and property of
tens of million's of Chinese: and the destruction of liberty in
most of the Republics of South America. These were all parts of one
struggle; the attempt of privilege and power to crush new liberties
that had been won and extinguish new claims of justice. We know
well on which side the Pope was. For him it was a struggle of
Bolshevism and Authority, and no group of bankers or corrupt
politicians had been more willing than he to enlist the services of
these new forces which called themselves Nazism and Fascism. But
was their evil character, their motivation in hatred and greed,
hidden from him?
He was crowned Pope, as I said, on March 12, 1939. Fifty
princes of royal blood, Catholics boast, stood round his throne on
the balcony outside St. Peter's when the tiara was put upon his
head with the usual formula, very fittingly spoken in a dead
language:
"Receive this tiara of three crown and know that you are the
Father of Princes and Kings, the Governor of the Earth, the Vicar
of Our Savior Jesus Christ."
American papers, in the accounts sent by their Catholic
correspondents, smilingly explained away this Father-of-Kings and
Governor-of-the-Earth business. A quaint old Roman fashion of
speaking. It certainly was not to Pius XII and the field-marshals
of the Black International who surrounded him as he sat, tall,
straight, emaciated, his large black eyes shining in his long
olivetinted face. They had awarded him the crown precisely because
he believed this -- because he was a churchman who would, as the
Jeromes and Bernards of old had commanded, walk over the body of
his mother to do his clerical duty. And no other cardinal knew the
world he was to govern as well as he did. Catholic writers boast
that he read the chief papers daily of Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Germany, France, England, and South America: which probably means
that he read all the passages blue-pencilled by secretaries. He had
lived twelve years in Germany and had travelled in twenty
countries.
It is nonsense to pretend that he did not know the real
character of his allies, the Nazis, Fascists, semi-Fascists, and
the greedy Japs; and whether it be true or false that in October,
1941, he authorized the statement that he had always recognized
this foul character, we want to know -- not as a matter of
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curiosity but because it is a vital point in our indictment of the
Black International -- why not a single word of this kind, not a
single warning to the world about the nature of the forces that
were preparing to enslave it, was uttered before October, 1941, if
it was even then uttered. It was not possible for an honest man to
doubt that character after 1939: to profess a doubt any time after
the summer of 1940 required the peculiar heroism of a Lindbergh or
a De Valera. The facts are known but let me, for a reason which
will appear in a moment, quote this passage from the authentic
account by a British soldier of what he saw in Belgium in 1940. He
was taken prisoner and like tens of thousands of other prisoners
had to walk afoot to a camp hundreds of miles away because the
trains eastward were wanted for wounded, for officers returning to
carouse, and for their immense quantities of loot. The guards had
whips and laid them upon the captives "whenever they felt like it,
just to show us and the Belgians who was boss." Any captive who
accepted an apple or a bit of bread -- they were starving -- from
a Belgian was shot or bayonetted. He goes on:
"Sometimes they'd make us run through the villages holding our
hands above our heads, cracking the whip all round the column. They
gave us no food. They were shooting all the time, for sport and to
show off, at anything that happened to be about -- cats, dogs,
hens, men, and women -- anything that came handy, and they were
hitting right in the head every time. After they'd shot a man
they'd pat their Tommy-gun affectionately and wink at us. They
treated the old women and children worse than they did us . . .
These soldiers were all young ones. The older soldiers, who'd seen
the last war, were different -- less like crafty wild animals --
much more human altogether, and they don't seem to get the gangster
idea of warfare."
So they had acted in Poland, the Italians in Abyssinia, and
soldiers and airmen of both armies in Spain; and this repulsive
blend of civilized savagery and looting was fouling eight countries
in Europe at the time when the Pope "extended his paternal love" to
the German soldiers and Cardinal Schuster visited barracks in Italy
and "distributed blessed medals to bring luck to the Italian
armies."
The point I wish to make clear here is that the Pope, like
every bishop and priest in Germany, had known for years that the
men were being trained for precisely this kind of "warfare," and it
would be preposterous to ask us to believe that his eyes were first
opened in the year 1941. Notice in the above passage the
distinction between the young and the old soldiers. It was
customary in the last war to call the Germans "the Huns." While
pointing out that it was the Kaiser who stupidly gave occasion for
this by telling his men, when he sent an expedition to China, to
"behave like Hun's". I never used the word; though, as the
Kolnische Zeitung itself mildly observed, they had done "many
regrettable things" in Belgium. The German military order of
Schrecklichkeit (intimidation) naturally led to such things. But
there had been a far more serious corruption of the German mind,
especially of German youth, from 1933 to 1939, in preparation for
the present war, and any man who suggests that Pacelli was not
thoroughly acquainted with a system of debasement which was
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
described with disgust by educationists and sociologists in every
country must mean that his vaunted knowledge of German and Germany
or his deep interest in the world's welfare and the causes of war
are mythical. Dorothy Thompson and others described it (in Assault
on Civilization) as early as 1934, see Prof. Schuman: Hitler and
the Nazi Dictatorship (1936) and other American works. It is
needless to say that it incurred no censures for the Black
International throughout Germany, which continued to woo Hitler,
the arch-corruptor.
Its basic principle was Hitler's declaration (the title of the
last chapter of Mein Kampf), "What is Necessary is Right", which
Rosenberg expressed as, "Right is what Aryans consider Right."
Since these new moral legislators had by 1933 the fully developed
idea of an Aryan conquest and exploitation of Europe and for this
a vast and completely ruthless army was "necessary", they
immediately converted the entire educational system -- in the
broader as well as the narrower sense -- into a scheme for making
callous fighters. The training began in the cradle. Every German
female capable of child-bearing was to bear -- in time government
officials said publicly that it did not matter if she was not
married -- and was to make her children war-minded as soon as
possible. One fool, the kind of fool whose writings the Nazi Party
subsidized, told the mother to watch eagerly for the first gleam of
the starlight of battle in the little Aryan eyes. Hitler himself
ordered mothers to talk war and choose war-toys "until the brain of
the smallest child glows with the prayer: God Bless our weapons."
The boy not yet in his teens swaggered about with "Blood and Honor"
on his knife and learned to shout as early as possible because, as
one educationist said, shooting makes a youth "calm and cold-
blooded". In school he chanted with his little pals: "We were born
to die for Germany."
It was far worse in the secondary (high) school the course
which began at an earlier age than in any other country. For six or
seven years boys and girls were drenched with the vilest Nazi
sentiments Science was little more than a perversion of the
teaching of genetics to instil racial pride and selfishness. The
whole curriculum, such as it was -- Hitler turned educationist and
said the aim was to "make bodies sound to the core" -- was
prostituted. So rapid was the debasement of education that in a
list of 28 countries in the Year Book of Education in 1938 Germany
was fourth from the bottom. Hundreds of thousands of youth's
trained in these, schools are in the army today -- or dead -- for
they are accepted, if strong, from the age of 17, and 700000 will
pass to the army, submarines, and Luftwaffe in January, 1942. But
this intensive training in Nazi aims is not enough. Hundreds of
thousands of both sexes were selected for special free maintenance
and training in the Castles of the New Social Order (age 15 to 25),
Adolph Hitler Schools, Napoli (National Political) Schools. Here
the future Gestapo and male and female agent's, for home or abroad
received perfect physical training and what must frankly be called
a training in callousness and brutality. In the universities the
old type of professor was extinguished or, in too many cases,
turned into a hypocrite. Nazi youths of the most brazen type ruled
the classrooms and the lecturers.
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
Education in the broader sense -- the whole environment for
communicating ideas or sentiments -- was equally captured and
debased. Everything -- books (authors, publishers, and book
sellers), the press, radio, the theater, concerts, all lectures,
pageants, etc., down to village dances -- came under a Kultur
Kammer with Goebbels as President and a colossal staff and
representatives in every village. Prizes were offered for the best
-- most hysterically Nazi -- books, and the callowest youths became
great writers. One man composed a Lord's Prayer to Hitler. An
aristocrat, Ritter von Taub, edited a Book of Popular Songs
including monstrous hymns to Hitler. It is enough to recall a line
of the famous "Horst Wessel Song: "How high Horst Wessel towers
above Jesus of Nazareth". The youth, a vile character, had lived on
the earnings of a whore -- but he had been heroically callous and
brutal.
This drenching of the mind of Germany for six years before the
war, the most massive and effective illustration possible of the
truth of the modern science of social psychology -- that there is
no "mind" or "character' other than the sum of what such influences
as I have described put into a child or man -- has been well known
for years to every educationist and moralist in the world, and
certainly to every priest in Germany. And education was the same
during all these years, if less ably controlled, in Italy and
Japan, the other countries allied with the Vatican, I still wait to
hear of a Catholic apologist who wall claim that Pacelli-Pius was
not acquainted with it.
Chapter II
NORWAY "NOT A CATHOLIC COUNTRY"
These were the men, these dynamic automata of a thoroughly
depraved force, whom the Pope saw set out, with the blessing of the
German hierarchy, in the spring of 1940 for the speedy conquest and
looting of western Europe and (they thought) the reduction of
England by a ruthless massacre of its citizens, as a necessary part
of the preparation for that campaign against Russia which the Pope
so passionately desired. How far this was the condition of the
German people generally does not properly concern me here but the
reader may care to hear what impression in this regard a very
extensive and varied literature has left on my mind. Let me point
out first that the account of German miseducation which I have
given relieves us from accepting the worst estimates of the
character of the German people. That they are a tainted stock and
must be treated accordingly is pseudo-scientific rubbish. Such
sentiments as the above were during many years before 1932 confined
to a miserable minority. In spite of all its misfortunes Hitler did
not sweep the country with his gospel of hatred and greed. He
needed the aid of monstrous lies, of very heavy subsidies from the
capitalists and of the cooperation of the, Church. I gave the
figures elsewhere.
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The correct attitude to face the problem of Germany is,
therefore, to ask whether all or what proportion of its people were
mentally and morally poisoned by this system which in its monopoly
has no parallel since the destruction of the medieval Church and in
its force, owing to modern science, has not the feeblest analogy in
any other period of history. The answer to that question is at
present impossible. In the spring of 1933, we saw, less than half
the adults of Germany voted for Hitler. The regime of brutal
intimidation and elimination, and of national bribery (the world is
our oyster), of corruption of the young, and of the influence and
bold successes won by the indolence or cowardice of the democracies
began at once, and further millions must have been attracted. At
the outbreak of the war a leading Socialist refugee said that
three-fifths of the nation supported Hitler without reserve one-
fifth applauded his successes but disliked him and much of his
work, and one-fifth, the core of the old Socialist and Communist
bodies, were secretly and bitterly anti-Nazi. The extraordinary
Nazi successes since then have probably won over large numbers. In
the summer of 1941 we would hardly estimate that one-fifth of the
people were anti-Nazi, and Ambassador Dodd, though not quite
consistent in his Diary, generally agrees. But a distinction on
paper between Nazi and anti-Nazi does not correspond to
psychological reality. Already millions who were carried away by
the rapid successes in West and East must be wavering or returning
to sanity in view of the news from Russia. What is most painful is
the spectacle of certainly the overwhelming majority of the Germans
applauding such foul victories, but, besides that millions of them
have the moral lead of the Black International on whom they have
been taught to rely in such matter's, we have the consolation of
feeling that what miseducation could do in six years sound
education can undo. The idea that aggressiveness and covetousness
are "in the blood" is a superficial conclusion of literary men who
know no science and distort fragments of history.
However, we have here to confine ourselves to the relation of
the Black International to the wave of barbarism that now rolled
over Western Europe and at one time seemed to have a chance of
completely engulfing it. Here we distinguish between the German
hierarchy and the Vatican: not because, as Catholics pretend, the
Vatican has or may have no responsibility for the former, but
because the case against the black army in Germany itself is easily
settled whereas it is too early to expect clear evidence on the
latter. Indeed, since the invasion of Poland automatically made the
Catholics of the British Empire enemies of Germany and in a very
large measure involved the sympathies of the 15000000 Catholics
of America the Vatican had now to proceed with the utmost caution.
Of the attitude of the German Black International I have given
abundant evidence elsewhere, but nobody disputes it. It was united
and enthusiastic in supporting the war. From September, 1939, to
the present hour no paper has quoted any German bishop saying or in
the broadcast language hinting that these campaigns beyond the
frontiers of the Reich were brutal conquests dictated by that
hatred and greed which the Pope is now absurdly said to have
discerned from the start. I quoted the heads of the Church cheering
on the troops only a little more soberly than the Nazi press. I
showed that when the final victory seemed to be in sight the
prelates, assembled in full strength (as they rarely were),
resolved to render solemn thanks to Hitler and his armies when the
work was complete.
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
You may ask, as some Catholics ask about the Pope himself.
What else could they do? If one replies that they might have done
what some writer's of Germany (Thomas Mann, etc.) and many writers
and other professional men of other countries did-express their
disgust at the foulness and cruelty, sacrifice all they had, and
fly from the debased country -- the retort will be that churchmen
have sacred duties to their people which forbid such conduct,
ardently as they desire to emulate it. One might justly ask whether
the duty to remain with their people required that they should open
their mouths in praise of the savagery and not at least have
maintained a dignified silence. And if it is said that this would
have brought some persecution upon their people we can point to an
enormous Catholic literature in which it is said to be proof of
the, holiness of the Church that priests and people everywhere
suffered every type of penalty rather than bow to iniquity or
injustice . . . But enough of this sophistry. The Nazi government
never persecuted priests for virtue, but for vice; and, while some
did go to prison for complaining of the government's invasion of
the rights of the Church not one ever braved punishment by saying
that the war was a campaign of greed. Nor does any sane man believe
that if the bishops had given an honorable lead and won a
consistent following the government would have shifted one-sixth of
the nation, including one-sixth of the army, into concentration
camps and aroused the anger of Catholics in Spain, Hungary, Italy,
and South America. The common-sense reply is: The bishops knew that
their people would not follow them. The Black International has no
inflexible moral principles. It follows the crowd when it applauds
a vile war as surely as when it rejoices over a royal birthday. The
myth of its moral leadership, its value to civilization, is torn to
shreds by the experience of the last ten years.
It is well to remember, when Catholics airily reply that this
is not a criticism of the Church but of local bodies of clergy,
that the supposed beneficent influence of the Church on the world
must be exercised mainly, if not entirely, by these local clergy.
What, apart from his direction and control of their conduct, does
the Pope do? He makes "allocqtions" and broadcasts addresses and
issues letters, and the world takes no notice of them beyond paying
them verbal compliments. How much influence in the world have all
Pius XII's sermons on peace had? If any, it was bad: it fostered
trust in Hitler and Mussolini. As to the Encyclicals, the more
pretentious gestures of the Popes, even those on which American
apologists have written whole libraries, like the Immortals Dei and
the Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII -- we shall see presently why
American Catholics have said so little about the Quadragesimo Anno
of Pius XI, which the Vatican considers at least equally important
-- had no influence whatever. The press was most generous in praise
when they were issued, but there was not a journalistic expert on
sound political or economic matters in the world who did not know
that what was sound in them was borrowed by the Pope from the world
and was already a platitude in social literature.
The test of the moral usefulness of Popes is to see what they
say or do when one of the local or national hierarchies under their
control is corrupted by applauding iniquity or when a crime of
world-proportions is committed which should be envisaged from an
international angle. To discuss the first point would be waste of
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time. The Pope lets his bishops in Italy, Germany, and Japan wave
the blood-stained national flag as vigorously as schoolboys. And it
is hardly necessary to say anything more on the second point until
we come to the year 1940. The rape of Abyssinia, China, and Czecho-
Slovakia and the barbaric treatment of the Jews were the
outstanding crimes of that year. The Pope blessed the criminals.
The new Pope was at once confronted with the crime of the invasion
of Albania. He did the same. Those useful unauthorized agencies of
the Vatican have put about the rumor that he urged the King of
Italy to prevent it. Did the Pope not know, what all the world
knows, that the King of Italy had as little power to prevent it as
Lord Halifax has to emancipate India? In any case there is no
evidence of such action.
Then came the invasion of the West. I have shown two things in
connection with this. The first is that it is impossible to doubt
that the plan was previously communicated to the Pope. Ribbentrop
has an hour's conversation with him on the eve of the Brenner
Conference at which the plot is finally settled and the date for
Mussolini to stab France in the back is fixed. Can one imagine any
other reason for thus sending the Nazi Foreign Secretary -- for the
first time, remember -- to the Vatican? The second point I have now
made clear is that the Pope certainly knew the character of the men
who directed the campaign and the soldiers who carried it out.
I will suggest later what Germany wanted of the Pope --
Ribbentrop was certainly not sent to secure the loyalty of the
German hierarchy, which could be relied upon whatever crime was
committed -- and what the Pope, though terribly anxious and
nervous, hoped to get out of the invasion of the West. Here let us
see what he did. The worst crime from the international ethical
angle was the invasion of Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium.
France had, with Great Britain, declared war on Germany, and must
expect attack. while these smaller powers had been lulled into a
feeling of security by the most solemnly reiterated lies, and the
invasion of them had to be excused by further monstrous lies. This
treachery and the corruption by which the Germans weakened in
advance the resistance to their superb Aryan warriors the Pope
never censured.
Since there was no hierarchy in Norway or Denmark the
annexation of those countries does not concern us here. The reader
will find it interesting, in fact, to compare the proportion of
Catholics in the four countries first invaded with the Pope's
attitude. Norway had only 2827 Catholics in a population of nearly
3000000. Hitler demanded on April 9 that the country be handed
over to him, and, when this was refused, let loose the concealed
troops and traitors that he already had in the country to paralyze
opposition to the divisions he had on the way. The country
distinguished itself by its heroic resistance to impossible odds
when the blunder of its reliance on Nazi honor was realized and
sustaining the struggle for two months and proudly resisting the
invaders ever since. Compare the conduct of this least Catholic
country in Europe to that of Belgium and France. The invasion of it
was the most flagrant and significant aggression of which the Nazis
had yet been guilty, for the excuses put forward were not even
plausible. Ever since the beginning of the war, in fact, Norway had
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protected German shipping in its coastal waters. But when the Pope
was asked to denounce the outrage, one of his unauthorized
mouthpieces explained that Norway had only 2000 Catholics and he
must think of the Catholics of Germany and not offend Hitler. I
give the quotation presently. The only respect in which one could
truly call the Pope the Great Neutral was in regard to the moral
law.
Denmark had only 22137 Catholics in a population of
3700000. One might almost call it the second least Catholic
country in Europe. It was a very happy, enlightened, and
progressive little state, a significant contrast to Poland, Eire,
or even Belgium (which, however, was only half Catholic). Of the
deputies in its Folksting (Congress) 64 were Socialists, 31
Liberals, 26 Conservatives, 14 Radicals, 3 Communists, and 11 the
usual odds and ends Roman Catholic doctrine had no appeal whatever
in that very free and stimulating atmosphere, so -- naturally --
the Pope did not shed a tear over the repulsive treachery of the
Nazis. As late as May, 1939, the Germans had signed a ten-years
pact with the Danes, swearing that under no circumstances whatever
would they use force against Denmark or injure it. As will be
remembered, they gave the Danes no chance whatever to defend
themselves, just taking the land over in a rush as it had a common
frontier with Germany. Doubtless the Pope would, if anybody had
taken the trouble to appeal to him, have explained that it was "not
a Catholic country." We used to think that Popes were interested in
ethics in all parts of the world.
Holland, which during the Middle Ages had been under Catholic
Spain, was in a different position. It had nearly 3000000
Catholics to 5000000 Protestants and Freethinkers. Its rich
colonial empire added to its importance, and although it was less
progressive than Denmark and Scandinavia, it had 23 Socialist
deputies amongst the hundred in its Congress. Catholics had 30. You
will, therefore, not be surprised to learn that, when the Germans
broke their pact with Holland and spread over the country with
great brutality and treachery the Pope awoke. Defying Hitler and
his watch dogs in Rome he sent a telegram of sympathy to the queen
of Holland. But I doubt if Hitler minded. He knew that the Pope
must be allowed to make these innocent little gestures sometimes to
blunt the edge of Catholic criticism in America and Britain and
give the Catholic press something to be enthusiastic about. The
wording of the telegram was, in fact, very cautious. Its one
approach to censure was that Holland had been invaded "against its
wish and right." It rather reminds us of the timid sort of neighbor
who venture's to say to a man who has savagely beaten a wife or
child: "You shouldn't do that, you know." Dutch Catholics seem to
have been quite satisfied, even proud of the splendid audacity of
their Pope.
Since it is as yet impossible to get evidence of the behavior
of Dutch Catholics to the invaders, such as we get in the case of
the traitors of Belgium and France, I leave the question open. They
may, of course, have behaved quite differently from their
coreligionists in France and Belgium. All that we know is that in
face of this monstrous violation of the rights of small nations,
about which the Pope is so concerned in his Five Points of Peace,
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and of the honor of international agreements the Pope merely
uttered a very mild word of protest when it involved a country with
a large and rich body of Catholics. Whether the Black International
had had anything to do with the pathetic blunders of the Dutch and
Belgians in refusing until it was too late to concert measures of
defense with the British and French we cannot say, and I decline to
speculate.
The fact that Poland had included a good deal of genuine
German territory had given a shadow of an excuse for invading that
country, yet the Pope, taking advantage of the fact Russia invaded
it at the same time, had vaguely censured the behavior of the
Germans (or both armies) in that country. The invasion of Norway,
Denmark, and Holland had not an atom of excuse. It was the first
defiant unveiling of the Nazi greed for the conquest and
exploitation of Europe. American Catholics were greatly disturbed
and pressed for a Papal condemnation. On April 12 the Vatican
correspondent of the Herald-Tribune referred to this pressure and
said that the Pope "declined to act" on the ground that "the Holy
See cannot participate in a political movement which would only
lead to further hatred amongst the belligerents."
That piece of moral cowardice and sophistry did not satisfy
people who had been reading all their lives that the Pope was the
moral governor of the earth and an inflexible judge. On April 17
the Vatican correspondent of the New York Times reported that the
Vatican would be little concerned if the war spread to the Balkans
because "no Roman Catholic country would be involved." He added
that it was rumored in high Vatican quarters that through Myron B.
Taylor the President had pressed the Pope to condemn the invasion
of Norway and Denmark, and he was instructed by one of those
conveniently anonymous mouthpieces of the Vatican to add:
"While the Holy See strongly condemns Germany's action and has
sponsored the attacks against the Reich in the Osservatore Romano,
it is pointed out that there are only 2619 Roman Catholics in
Norway out of a population of nearly 3000000. Therefore, although
the moral aspect is severely judged, from the practical viewpoint
it is stated that the Holy See must keep in mind the 30000000
German Roman Catholics in its activities."
This muddled declaration -- "strongly condemning" Germany in
one breath and explaining in the next why the Vatican must not
condemn it -- and the letter of sympathy to the queen of Holland
are all that the apologist for the Pope can quote. The above
passage could, of course, if Germany had protested, have been
explained away at once as unauthorized, and the telegram (after
weeks of pressure) cannot be called a condemnation. If one phrase
in it is so represented we must say that that kind of kid-gloved
ruling of a world in which greed and brutality had become an
appalling force is of no use whatever to the race. What sticks in
the mind is the repeated statement that the Pope is deeply
concerned only when a crime is committed against a Catholic country
-- it injures the Church -- and that his moral censures must be
trimmed in accordance with the interests of the Church. But even
this position, whether or no you regard it as morally respectable
and humanly serviceable, collapses when we come to study
developments in Belgium and France. There we find the Black
International really at work.
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Chapter III
THE TREACHERY OF LEOPOLD
We come now to those parts of Germany's western offensive on
which the mist still lies, and charges of cowardice and treachery
and fiery denials shuttle back and forth amongst the Belgians and
French themselves as vigorously as military men dispute the moves
in the campaign. Here, on the face of it, we find it difficult to
trace the action of the Black International, and recent writers
give us little assistance. There is so general an agreement that
there was base treachery to the cause of civilization that,
journalists, essayists, and authors are more careful than ever not
to "offend Catholics." Most of them, however, make one honest
blunder which distorts the perspective. They take the conventional
view that both Belgium and France are "Catholic countries". The
effect of this is to give the reader the impression that the
division of the country into supporter's of the traitors and
opponents of their policy was just a split in a Catholic body and
therefore the question of Church influence need not even be raised.
This is entirely wrong, and when we correct it we see at once that
the arch-traitors and their leading supporters, if not the main
body of their supporters (which is obscure), are docile Catholics
and their most bitter opponents. non-Catholics.
Belgium require's a few words of historical explanation. Its
Catholicism, like that of Holland, is largely due to its inclusion
in the Spanish Empire in the later Middle Ages, and its energy was
absorbed in a fight for freedom, in which patriotic priests joined
(as in Ireland) with people, at the time when other northern
countries were discussing religion and breaking away from Rome.
Austria and France in turn ruled it to the French Revolution, when
it declared itself an independent Republic. But at the fall of
Napoleon the Council of Vienna put it under Protestant Holland, and
the fierce struggle against that country to 1839, when it won its
independence, hardened its creed. To this date the Belgians had had
a splendid record of spirited self-assertion, but with the
expulsion of the Dutch the Black International fastened upon the
country, with the usual consequences.
Further, Belgium contains two different peoples, and they are
almost as antagonistic as the English and Irish. Though one's
impression in travelling amongst them is that the Walloons in the
south (including Brussels and the great manufacturing towns) are a
volatile Latin people and the Flemings, in the northern half are
closer to the Dutch, all are really of Teutonic stock, but the
southerners, whose daily speech is French, are naturally more
French in culture while the mainly agricultural Flemings are heavy,
backward, and priest-ridden. I lived amongst them for a year and am
not here repeating the impressions of literary travellers, but
these few preliminary lines will suffice for my present purpose.
By the opening of the present century Belgium, of which it
was, and still is, said in our works of reference that "the great
majority of the population are Catholics", was permeated with
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skepticism of the French type. French literature had a free run in
the French-speaking half of the country, and from the middle class,
which was for the far greater part anti-Papal, this revolt was
spreading rapidly to the urban workers. I found it extensive even
in some rural districts. In my special research (The Decay of the
Church of Rome) in 1909 I found that the Church had about 4500000
members and had lost about 2500000. The Black international
dreaded the new urban industrial conditions, as the Catholic
leaders now do in France and the Vatican does everywhere. They mean
the growth of free and informed discussion. And when, after the
war, Socialism and Communism spread amongst the workers as
Liberalism had spread in the professional classes, the Church began
a struggle for life.
The absurdity of the conventional statement that Belgians are
"for the most part" Catholics is positively proved by the electoral
statistics, which here, as in the case of pre-Fascist Italy, pre-
nazi Germany, and pre-Franco Spain afford decisive evidence as to
religion; and the fact that this was true in the democratic era and
ceased with it will give you another indication whether it is true
that Pius XII is "a great admirer of democracy", as American
Catholic writers say. At the last election (1939) the country
returned 73 Catholic deputes, to whom we may add 17 Flemish
Nationalists and 4 Rexists. Against these there were 61 Socialist
deputies, 33 Liberay (very anti-clerical), 9 Radicals, and 9
Communists. In other words explicitly anti-clerical candidates were
returned by much more than half of the adult community. Even the
Senate had only 61 Catholics out of 150.
At the previous election (1936) the number of Catholic
deputies had been reduced from 79 to 63, and a candid Catholic
French writer in the (Catholic) Revue des Deux Mondes (June 15,
1936) gives an interesting explanation of this. There had been a
grave financial scandal in which the Church had been "very guilty."
In order to "increase its strength and enrich some of its members"
it had "embarked upon sordid speculations." It is an old and
familiar clerical story. It was chiefly the Rexist Party that had
reaped the advantage at the polls of the exposure of this Scandal.
The Rexists are the followers of a young Belgian Catholic Leon
Degrelle, who marked out a path for his political ambition by
raising the banner of what we may call Christian Socialism, or that
milk-and-water blend of Socialist rhetoric about capitalists (while
defending capital) and Catholic abuse of Socialists which the late
Pope recommended in an encyclical that we will analyze in the last
chapter. By 1939, as the above figures show, Degrelle had lost a
good deal of the ground he had won, but he and his movement must be
taken into serious account. His ideal was Mussolini's Corporative
State, as modified in the Pope's Encyclical, so he was patronized
both by Mussolini and the Vatican. He used an Italian broadcasting
station to weaken the Belgian government by his abuse and to appeal
for "a joint effort of Italy and Belgium to bar the way of
Bolshevism." The usefulness of the movement to Germany is obvious,
and today Degrelle is very active under the Germans and in
cooperation with them.
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The above figures reflect a distracted and disunited country
which the unified might of Germany would easily devour unless it
kept up its old alliance with France and Britain, which had saved
it in 1918. This Leopold the Traitor prevented. On his own
initiative he had in 1936 renounced all Belgium's military
alliance's and pledged the fate of his country on the veracity and
honor of Adolph Hitler! Belgium still had a large army, but, though
the men are brave enough, its poor quality had been seen in the
last war. It is the fairly equal division of parties and the
influence of the Church that permitted a neurotic monarch of poor
intelligence to assume such power. The country had alternated for
years between Liberal and Catholic rule, and with the rise to power
of the Socialists it had Seen some unhealthy coalitions. Many
Liberals, as usual, supported even the Church they hated against
the threat of Socialism, but the Socialists themselves entered an
almost unique feature of political life -- into a coalition with
the Catholics against the capitalists. I remember discussing the
matter in 1924 during a merry dinner on the Boulevard Michel in
Paris with the Socialist leader Denis and a group of French
Freethinkers. Denis laughingly said that they would make a deal
with the devil if they could get anything out of it, I reminded him
of the proverb: He who sups with the devil needs a long spoon.
Today Socialism is extinct in Belgium and the Church and the
Rexists rule in the ruins under their German master.
This is the true perspective in which one has to see the
question of the Belgian treachery. It would be well also for
Americans to investigate closely, if they can, the movement of
their Catholic ambassador at Brussels, Cudahy. It was stated in the
British press he visited Berlin and the Vatican, then had a few
days with Kennedy in London, before returning to America to make a
defense of Leopold. There is little doubt that Roosevelt and
Churchill intend to make it one of the terms of the final
settlement that Leopold shall be returned to his throne. No one has
charged them with an intention to see that the rights of the
Socialists and Communists also are restored.
What are the known facts about the great betrayal? After
refusing until the last moment to allow his military chiefs to
concert a plan of defense with the French and British experts,
Leopold, when the invasion began, appealed to them for help. We
know now that neither French nor British armies were properly
equipped to meet the mechanized German divisions, though the
preparation of these had taken years, but, while there is a great
deal of controversy about the campaign, it is the conviction of
some leading experts that even when the Germans had thrust through
to the sea the position of the Belgian, French, and British armies
in Belgium was not hopeless. There is fair agreement that lack of
ability and energy in the higher command of each was as detrimental
as the lack of heavy equipment. The most significant pact is that
it was the conviction of the Belgian cabinet that the situation was
not hopeless.
We next have the admitted fact that on May 27, Leopold,
without consulting his ministers, entered into negotiations with
the Germans for a surrender. They at once closed on him, and at 4
a.m. on the 28th, while the troops slept and the Allies had no
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suspicion what Leopold was doing, he signed the betrayal of his
army. It is further a well-known fact that the Belgian ministers,
who were in France, issued a statement on the 30th to the effect
that the King's act was illegal and unconstitutional -- in fact the
Belgian Constitution did not recognize any royal document as valid
unless it had also the signature of a minister -- and they deposed
him.
The evil consequences of this act cannot be exaggerated. To
the King's plea that further sacrifices, by his people were useless
a Frenchman might retort in a famous line of the great tragedian
Racine who, when one character, excusing a fault, asks, "What else
could they do?", replies "They could die." It is, however, not
necessary here to discuss that. Leopold's treachery to his Allies
and to Civilization was greater than his betrayal of Belgium. It
left a large British army suddenly isolated and fatally weakened,
and the men had to abandon all the equipment which it had taken 18
months to prepare and run in disorder for Dunkirk, where the lives
of most of them were saved by a memorable piece of heroism. Leopold
nearly had to answer for 100000 or more British lives, for it was
mainly the destruction of the British army that he had -- one is
inclined to say sold -- to the Germans; and he knew it. The further
consequences were even worse but will be considered later. The
treachery confirmed the defeatists in high French military quarters
and led to an even more disgraceful apostasy from the ideals of
civilization.
Leopold and his Catholic Supporters in Belgium today, protest
that he did send word of his intention to his Allies. He had sworn
not to make a separate peace and is uneasy on this point. It is
undisputed that no such message reached either the French or the
British. Reynaud, broadcasting on the same day and branding
Leopold's act as one "without precedent in history", made this
clear. But it is not disputed. The question we ask ourselves is not
whether Leonold sent a message which the Germans intercepted but
whether he was stupid enough to fancy that they would not be on the
watch for any communication. The man is, like most European kings,
of such poor intelligence that one would not be surprised to learn
that he handed a message to the Germans who kindly promised to
deliver it. But the whole story is so improbable that we may prefer
to think that Leopold's clerical advisers recommended him to lie
for the good of the Church. This would be nearer the millionth than
the first time in history.
But how shall we estimate whether he is likely -- there is, of
course, no evidence -- to have acted under clerical influence? A
Catholic king has two separate groups of counsellors: his ministers
and bishops. We know that he did not consult the former, who were
hundreds of miles away. The latter were in Belgium, and this was
just the kind of issue on which they were apt to be consulted. His
dilemma was whether conscience overruled his oath to observe the
Constitution. It is the business of priests to solve such problems
in a Catholic Court. One of the first to defend the king was the
bead of the Belgian Church, Cardinal von Roey. In a pastoral that
he ordered to be read in every church he endorsed Leopold's act
(London Times, June 18, 1940). The telegram which the Pope sent him
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was before the betrayal and merely sympathized with him on the
invasion of his county, "against its right and wish" and trusted it
would one day recover its Independence: the least the Pope could do
in face of an outraged world.
That the Osservatore, which could be repudiated as
unauthorized, went further and charged the Germans with having
opened "a pitiless war of extermination conducted in defiance of
the laws of war" does not impress us. The Vatican was at that date,
as I will explain more fully later, trying to drive a bargain with
the Nazis and almost became bold, or at least less cowardly. It
published British and French war-news in the Osservatore (to the
great financial profit of that paper, as no other Italian paper was
allowed to do so), and the Fascist press howled that the Pope was
"the ally of the Jews, the Freemasons, the democracies, and the
English Protestants." But it very quickly lost this honorable
position (New York Times, May 18 and 21). Mussolini cracked his
whip, and the Vatican obeyed. A week later the Rome correspondent
of the most respected British daily, the Manchester Guardian (May
24), reported: "The National Socialist State has, it seems, been
able to read an understanding with the Catholic leaders." There had
been another plum-promises in regard to the Church in Poland,
Bohemia, etc. -- for the good boy. At that date, as all the world
knows, the juggernauts of Germany were plowing red furrows in the
masses of Belgian and French fugitives. The flower of Hitler's
training colleges in chivalry were treating old women and war-
prisoners with the brutality which I have described. The traitors
and quislings were getting out their swastika flags. And the Pope,
as I have already quoted, sent his "personal affection" to the
German soldiers.
The larger question, what benefit the Pope might expect to
derive from a German victory in the west, must be postponed until
the final chapter, after we have considered what happened in
France. Belgium today is Catholic, beggared, and dishonored. It
lives by making tanks and bombs for use Against England and Russia
and food for Germans who keep their fat while Europe starves.
Degrelle has reached his miserable ambition. Having looked to
Mussolini instead of Hitler he at first thought it prudent to fly.
The Germans came to an understanding with him, and he manages to
accommodate the social-political teaching of the Pope's encyclical
to the merciless exploitation of the country by the Germans. His
paper Le Pays Riel urges Belgians to "forget past quarrels" and
piously endure their new slavery. His party is the only one
permitted in French-speaking Belgium. Over the rest of it the Black
International and the Gestapo wield a benevolent control and there
is less sabotage than in any other conquered country.
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Chapter IV
FRANCE RECOVERS ITS FAITH AND LOSES ITS HONOR
There is no more pathetic chapter of recent history than the
fall of proud France from its earlier position as one of the
leading powers of modern civilization. It had led the advancing
nations of the world from the days of Voltaire to 1918. The
movement of intellectual emancipation which began in Voltaire,
Rousseau, and Montesquieu and broadened into the period of the
Encyclopaedists culminated in the Great Revolution that lit the
world. French idealism had already enkindled the revolutionary
flame in America. Now its light awakened a fever for reform in
England, Italy, and Spain and transformed Latin America. In the
long and terrible reaction which followed the fall of Napoleon
France still led. Its revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1870 are
milestones in man's laborious climb, back to the height of 1790. It
again led the world in the complete secularization of the state,
and, while priests mournfully predicted that this would lead to
degeneration, the nation fought with all its old vigor and heroism
when the test came in 1914, After 1919 every friend of France saw
a change. Scandals multiplied, the old vitality was squandered in
domestic quarrels, and when the test again came France, to the
stupefaction of the world, promptly raised the yellow flag and
bought peace with dishonor.
Is it a mere coincidence that this period of degeneration,
1919 to 1939, is the only period in modern French history in which
you will find a Catholic claim of a great religious revival? In
1909 I proved that there were not more than 6000000 genuine
Catholics in a total population of 39000000. The only serious
criticism. came from the distinguished French Protestant Scholar,
Sabatier, a high and very impartial authority on religion, who
wrote me that there were in France at that date no more than
4000000 genuine, or as the French say practicing, Catholics. The
war of 1914-1919 brought Alsace-Lorraine, with more than 1000000
Catholics back to France. This very natural development had the
unforeseen consequence of compelling the French government, which
had contemptuously ignored the Vatican and been heavily scolded by
it for 20 years, in increasing the power of the priests to a
remarkable extent. The Alsace-Lorrainers wanted independence, not
absorption in France, and the chronic unrest of the provinces,
fostered by the clergy, gave the Vatican one of its usual
opportunities: we will keep Alsace-Lorraine docile for you if you
will make concessions to the Church. As political security and
economic prosperity are far more sacred things than either religion
or irreligion the bargain was struck. Alsace and Lorraine had
brought great wealth to French capitalists and, on the other hand,
they were the weak spot in the heel of France if, or when, the
German war of revenge opened.
From 1880 to that time no French politician had taken the
Church into account. Catholic statesmen are as unknown in that
period as Catholic scientists, philosopher's, economists, or
historians of leading rank. Still in the period between the two
wars every French statesman was a Freethinker, except the
Protestant Waldeck-Rousseau, but even the most skeptical of them
now showed an ostentatious respect of the Church.
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I was at Athens in 1922 when the news came that the Turks in
Asia Minor had inflicted on the Greeks the worst defeat they have
suffered in modern history. I was in the British Legation when the
Greek Foreign Minister secretly brought the news -- it was
concealed from the public for four days -- and the secretary, a
friend of mine, told me that the minister assured them that it was
with French help that the Turks had made a sudden and overwhelming
attack. When I repeated that in England the journalistic "experts"
leered, and a few years later a Harvard professor whom I met
assured me that, though he had himself suspected it, it was not
believed in America. But as usual the truth came out and may be
read partly even in the Catholic Teeling. The Vatican did not want
the Greeks to get Constantinople, as they easily could have done --
I had been a few days earlier with a large Greek army within a
day's march of Constantinople which then had no Turkish troops --
because that would enormously increase the power of the Greek
Church in the East.
This is one of a hundred instances of "the government of Jews
and Freemasons," as Rome had called the French government for forty
years, cooperating most respectfully with the Vatican. In 1925 I
attended the Freethought Congress at Paris. The government frowned
on it and it was a total failure. But the canonization of Joan of
Arc brought out the freethinking politicians and officials in
crowds to attend the gorgeous ceremonies. After the blunders of the
fire-eating Catholic-cooperating statesmen of 1919-1924 the
Radical's under Herriot got power and tried to recall the
ambassador from the Vatican. The Church got the deputies from
Alsace-Lorraine to rebel, and the wealthy Catholics, and even the
peasants with fat stockings, held back their money from public
funds and defeated a government which really represented the
majority of the nation. So the truckling to the Vatican continued.
The Czechs, as I have earlier explained, defied the Vatican and
expelled its Nuncio. Rome turned to France, the alliance with which
was vital to Czecho-Slovakia, and the Czechs had to yield. In
return the Pope, to the scandal of good Catholics, heavily censured
the Catholic-royalist body in France, on the ground that it
detected heresy in the leaders, and seemed to relieve the French
government of one of its embarrassments.
I have in these booklets so severely to condense all matters
referring to the period before 1936 that I must run the risk of
giving the reader an inadequate impression. He should understand
that the world-tragedy of today is far more surely the culmination
of the miserable history of Europe from 1919 to 1936 than it is a
consequences of the Conference of Versailles to which so many
attribute it, and in no case is this clearer than in that of
France. Free French writers have called the appalling conduct of
the Vichy group "the Revenge of the Dreyfusards." The affaire
Dreyfus is generally forgotten -- the attempt of Catholic military
men and politicians in the last century to make a scapegoat of an
innocent Jew, foiled by Zola and the anti-Catholic politicians --
but it is profoundly true that what is happening in unoccupied
France today is the revenge of Catholic generals and politicians,
in the name of the Church and with the aid of the German bandits,
on the men and the entire modern regime of life which have kept
them in obscurity and impotence for more than half a century.
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The preparation for that revenge covers the entire period from
1919, beginning with the prestige which the Catholic generals Foch
Petain, and Weygand had won in the last war and the annexation of
Alsace-Lorraine. Lorraine brought to French capitalists and
bankers, one of the greatest iron-ore beds in the world and to
French bishops a very substantial reinforcement. So these brother's
in arms based the whole policy of France on the cry of the security
of the country, the "sacred union" of all Frenchmen (or cessation
of attacks on the Church), and close alliance with the Vatican.
Since the French press was in those years no more disposed or free
than the American and British to tell the truth about Rome, the
French people never realized that from 1933 onward the Papacy was
in close alliance with their deadly enemy across the Rhine, the man
who had sworn in print to trample France in the mud and to reduce
Britain to the status of a little island out on the Atlantic. The
same planting of Catholics in high military quarters and in the
diplomatic and civil service is taking place in the British Empire
-- see the Catholic Who's Who as in France. It might be useful if
some American writer were to make a corresponding inquiry on this
side.
But, as I said, although the most important material for
judging the question of the Black International and the great
French betrayal is found in the prewar developments, they must here
be dismissed briefly. Let us say that the country was terribly
enfeebled and its attention diverted by the passionate quarrels of
half a dozen rival parties, or of men ambitious to lead parties of
their own. The scandals in public life which occasionally occurred
reveal no worse corruption than in America but they are more
fiercely discussed. It was the dissipation of forces that chiefly
counted. Even the sound progressive body of the people was split,
in virtue of the old jibes about Socialism and liberty and the
personal ambition's of politicians, into Radicals, Radical-
Socialists, and Socialists. Read the appalling description of
France in 1938 -- "like one in deadly sickness it neither moves nor
speaks on the threshold of an agony", etc. -- in J.C. Maxence's
Histoire de dexans 1927-1937 (1938).
Two parties chiefly profited by the confusion, the Communists
and the Catholic Royalists. The Communists made their usual mistake
of encouraging pacifism because "the capitalist system was not
worth fighting for" and of saying that the Church no longer needed
watching. One wonders what they say in their ruin and misery today.
Catholic-Royalism, which is the French form of Fascism, grew
and became bolder every year. Teeling is quite wrong when he claims
that the developments in France show that the Church had regained
considerable ground, but his acceptance of a world-total of
330000000 (instead of about 250000000) Catholics shows that he
has made no study of this matter. I have elsewhere shown that the
estimates of French Catholic writers varied from five to ten
millions, and that the best of them and the Catholic Denis Gwynne
(resident in France) regard the latter figure as very excessive. If
we split the difference and say 7500000 (in a total population of
42000000) we see that, taking into account the inclusion of the
Catholics of Alsace-Lorraine, there has been no growth of the
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
Church since 1919. It is in power alone, in virtue of its intrigues
and its high military members, that the position of the Church
improved; and it is just in this respect that we look for its
influence in the betrayal of the country.
A small library has already been written on the military
collapse of France. When we allow for the folly of the French, who
would never submit to sufficient taxation to provide an army
equipped like that of Germany, in trusting to the Maginot Line and
leaving their northern frontier practically open and their very
inferior equipment we still have, as most experts admit, a very
serious situation to explain, The successive blunders -- Reynaud
called some of them "unbelievable faults" in the Chamber -- cannot
be discussed here. Shirer sums up all criticisms in the phrase:
"France did not fight." He means, of course, not with its old fire,
perseverance, and ability. When he explains that this was due to
Communist pacifism in the ranks and defeatism amongst the higher
officers we do not quite follow him. The Communists were a
relatively small minority, and any Communist soldier who wavered
would get short shrift.
On the fact that there was something wrong in the higher
command and that, specifically, Wegand and Petain showed deplorable
weakness and defeatism the majority of impartial experts are
agreed. As these soldiers, on whose verdict that a continuation of
the war was hopeless the French government had to rely, and the
bunch of admirals, generals, and politicians who at once emerged to
support them are Catholics, as the immediate result of their
assuming power by betraying the country was an intensification of
the power of the Church, and as Blum, Reynaud, Daladier, and nearly
all the non-Catholic statesmen were opposed to surrender, we very
decidedly have a case for suspecting Church influence. Only the
Vatican and Catholic countries like Brazil, Portugal, Spain, and
Eire fully endorsed the surrender and support the Vichy group of
traitors today. It is, in fact, only because the British and
American Press dare not, for fear of their Catholic censors, even
raise the question of Church influence or inquire into the
significance of the rise to power of a Catholic group for the first
time in 65 years that many are surprised at the suggestion.
Let us examine what happened. At the critical phase, when
Weygand, whose feeble appeals to the troops sufficiently show that
he was something of a defeatist from the start, completely failed
in his strategy and the Germans were rushing toward Paris, Reynaud
for some obscure reason took two well-known Catholic defeatists,
Baudoxiin and Prouvost, into the cabinet. What we shall see
presently will suggest that this was due to the intrigues of Laval
and other Catholics. A few days later (June 10) Italy delivered
what Roosevelt called "the stab in the back," and French morale
fell still lower. On the 12th Weygand reported that resistance was
hopeless. Reynaud appealed frantically to America for help and
Churchill, agreeing with him that the reply was unsatisfactory,
consented to relieve France of its agreement not to seek a separate
peace. Reynaud and the majority of the cabinet wanted to continue
the war, but "the will to fight had departed from Marshal Petain
and General Weygand, and their example was contagious." On the 16th
Reynaud resigned, and the President asked Petain, "who responded
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
with alacrity," to form a government nearly the Vichy group of
today. At once the senile Marshal (aged 84) asked an armistice
fatuously explaining to the Germans that the settlement would be
"as between soldiers" who respected each other. Daladier, Delbos,
Mandel, and other of the old ministers took ship from Bordeaux to
Africa, intending to carry on the war from there, as the elementary
dictates of French honor, when not diluted with piety, required.
They were arrested and returned to France as prisoners. Petain
signed what he incredibly called "hard but honorable" terms, and he
and his gang moved to Vichy and began to spit epithets at the one
power, Great Britain, that seemed to be left to face alone the
appalling might of Germany reinforced by all the resources, except
the fleet, of France and six other conquered lands.
That is the summary, condensed, of events which we find in the
most important and most impartial annual survey of contemporary
history, the Annual Register. But I have reserved for special
notice one part of the narrative. The thoughtful reader will, of
course want to know how Petain, a man (as subsequent development's
show) no more fitted for statesmanship than for teaching zoology,
came to be chosen for the supreme position and his bunch of
Catholic friends were waiting for his call. If I suggested that
this crucial development was due to the intrigues of Catholics I
should be accused of prejudiced imagination, but that is just what
the Annual Register states.
Laval a docile Catholic in good order at the Vatican and a
thorough defeatist, was, it says, "the most responsible for French
politics at this juncture," When the government transferred to
Bordeaux he went there and, the Annual says, intrigued with all his
energy to get "peace at any price". Reynaud, not a man of
sufficient personality to meet so terrible a crisis and assailed by
rumors of an entanglement of an unpleasant character, was worn
down. Petain, on the other hind, was flattered to his teeth and
persuaded "by Laval (who hoped to rule France through him) that he
was called by God to save France. President Lebrun and Herriot were
dissuaded from shifting the government to North Africa and
conducting the war from there, and Mandel, Daladier, and others had
to fly secretly to carry out the plan. Laval was taken into
Petain's group and became, when the members of the Senate and
Chamber (Congress's) voted themselves out of existence by 569 votes
to 80 and made Petain dictator, Vice-Premier.
In giving a summary above of indications of an increasing
Church influence in France I postponed one item. On June 9, 1935,
the Papal organ, the Osservatore Romano (quoted in Keesing)
recalled with joy that for the first time in 70 years a French
cabinet-minster was visiting the Pope and kissing his ring. He wore
the insignia of the Order of Pius IX, which had been bestowed upon
him by Pill's XI. He presented several sumptuously bound works of
Catholic piety to the Pope, who gave his daughter a gold and coral
rosary such as a Catholic maid would treasure for life. The Times
(June 10) and other papers referred to the facts as another
admirable symptom (like Mussolini's bargain with the Vatican) of
the wise reconciliation of the secular and spiritual powers.
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The devout pilgrim was Pierre Laval, who thus entered upon a
friendship with the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli. Laval is
now so universally loathed that our papers will not even mention
that he is a Catholic, much less recall his Papal decorations and
his close Vatican connection. Pacelli, a year or two later,
returned the visit. He was the first Papal Legate to be received in
Paris since 1814, and he was very royally received. And at the
following New Year's Day there was a fresh Papal decoration for
Laval, and one even for the freethinking Prime Minister.
If any readers still hesitate about the share of the Black
International in the betrayal of France let us consider what
happened. The French hierarchy at once at the surrender ordered
their people to support Petain. The Pope, who mediated in the
settlement with Italy, sent Petain a personal message and a letter
pointing out to the French bishops that the new situation made
possible "a reawakening of the entire nation." The Osservatore
surpassed itself, hailing "the dawn of a new radiant day not only
for France but for Europe and the world" (Catholic Herald, July
12). As all the world which was not Catholic-Fascist or under the
lash of the Gestapo considered the new day one of dishonor for
France and of evil augury for the world Cardinal Hinsley, head of
the Church in Britain, was compelled to ask what the Great Neutral
meant by this. The article, it was explained, was not authorized.
Even under Hinsley's nose, in his Catholic Herald, the jubilation
at the Catholic victory broke out. A writer said that "all that is
vital in the soul of France, purified and glorified in heroic
suffering, can look out once more upon Europe with a clear
Christian purpose". Next week Hinsley had to explain to an outraged
England that that was not authorized. but the paper continued (see
editorial October 11, etc.) to rejoice, more discreetly, that the
action of France had promoted the plan of a Catholic bloc and had
inaugurated "a big and vital movement." Could anything but the
interest of the Church inspire such glorification of cowardice and
treachery in a British paper?
Then the senile wreck, too dense or too pious to sense his
dishonor, began to set up the New Order in France. For the grand
(if exaggerated) cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" that had
once roused the world and was now blotted but as a blasphemy Petain
mumbled his new trilogy,"Work, Family, Country." Religion first.
The beetles, male or female, waddled back to the schools and
institutions from which they had been banished, with great profit,
for 50 years; the text-books were rewritten under Petain's personal
supervision -- surely a unique spectacle! -- and all non-Catholic
teachers (in a country with 45000000 non-Catholics to 7000000
Catholics) were expelled or turned into hypocrites. This
development went so far that the Germans had to make Petain modify
it to prevent riots. Women were shut back in the Middle Ages, and
favor, even ordinary justice, shown only to parents with at least
three children. And the good workers were to be meekly organized on
the lines of the Papal encyclical which I will analyze in the next
chapter and the employers educated in that beautiful Catholic
spirit of paternal kindliness to their helpless employees which
had, of course, been seen everywhere until this modern atheism and
the urban industrial conditions which begot it arose in the
nineteenth century. French bankers and capitalists, who are now
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
falling over each other and fighting truculently to get fat jobs
under the Germans -- are, in fact, now making fortunes by making
armaments for use against Britain and Russia -- smiled at the old
fool and his priests but encouraged him. No more Socialism or
Communism in France.
I do not care to enlarge further on the spectacle of a great
nation that has been betrayed into misery and shame by a few
priest-ridden leaders, but the consequences to the few nations that
remained civilized were appalling. Soon afterwards I watched from
my bedroom-window, five miles away, the most precious square mile
of the city of London, with its historic treasures as well as its
vast stores, dissolve in flames, and for weeks later I met the poor
maimed folk who had left their dead in the cinders of their homes.
It goes on. As I write Vichy is deliberating whether to put its
fleet (contrary to the most solemn pledges) and its vast African
empire at the disposal of Germany for the final destruction of
civilization in Europe. And Papa Pacelli continues to bless Vichy.
The one man in the miserable group whose sense of honor is not
smothered by his piety, is dismissed as if this were a disgrace .
. . France will yet -- next year, I venture to think -- rise again,
shake in the wind the defiant tricolor that spells out its old
trilogy, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and prove to the dead
traitors and their priests that it has lost neither its honor nor
its vigor.
Chapter V
THE AMAZING FOLLY OF THE CATHOLIC BLOC
What gain did the Black International think it would derive
from the German conquest of Belgium and France? I have already
established two points. First, as is made plain in every chapter of
these booklets, no human consideration -- no thought of secular
ruin and the "earthly" suffering of millions -- is allowed to stand
in the way of the clerical ambition. We have seen it from Spain to
Abyssinia, from Brazil to Vienna. The pretext is that men's
"immortal" interests outweigh all these "temporal" disasters: the
fact is that the protection or recovery of the power and wealth of
the Black International comes first. Secondly, there is no room for
doubt that the Vatican was warned in advance of the conquest of
Belgium and France and the intervention of Italy. Ribbentrop was
received at Rome, with much enthusiasm, the day before he was to
join Hitler and Mussolini at the Brenner for the final endorsement
of the plan of the conquest of the West. It is absurd to ask us to
believe that Hitler was deeply concerned at such a moment to secure
a friendly understanding of which he had not the least need, with
the Pope about Church affairs in Poland and Bohemia. It is still
more absurd to suggest that he wanted an assurance of the loyalty
of the German Catholics, which was never in doubt whatever crime
(not against the Church) Hitler committed. The Annual Register says
that "according to Vatican sources" Ribbentrop had told the Pope in
April that the German troops would be in Paris in June and in
London in August.
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The immediate gain of the Church is obvious. Socialism and
Communism were just as dangerous to it in Belgium and France as in
Spain, Austria, Germany, and South America, and a German conquest
of the West automatically involved the complete destruction of
them. It seems to me just as certain that the Vatican was promised,
or foresaw, the seizure of power in France by Petain, Weygand,
Laval, and Darlan and the setting-up of a clerical state. Think of
the situation, as I have described it. Since 1875 French Catholics
had not only never had power in France but had not had a single
statesman until the black Laval wormed and bribed his way in. Now,
in an hour of profound humiliation and misery, priests govern the
men who govern France. The price of power never matters to the
Papacy.
But a further very important gain was that the transformation
of France into a Catholic state provided a new, and most important
unit for the Pope's plan of a bloc or League -- let us call it a
League -- of Catholic powers. As far as I can trace, this idea of
the Pope was born in the spring or early summer of 1940, which
suggests further evidence that he knew of the coming degradation of
Belgium and France. Slovakia was at that time added, as a Catholic
state, to Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The Pope could have had no
illusion about the value, on a world-scale, of Slovakia, Spain, and
Portugal or the condition of Italy; and the usefulness of the
Spanish-American Republics in a League with European anti-
democratic countries was of still more doubtful value. The United
States, that exasperating democracy that sent so much money to Rome
but compelled its Catholics to profess such adulterated ideas of
the faith, might have something to say. France, a first-class
power, was a different proposition.
These Catholic states were to be constructed on the lines of
the Papal encyclical of the year 1931 Quadragesimo Anno. The title
-- the title of an encyclical consists of the first two words of
the Latin text -- means "In the fortieth year" and is an indication
that if follows up the "great" encyclical (Rerum Novarum) published
by Leo XIII in 1891. You may know how the world-press applauded
that encyclical and how American apologists still quote it with
pride. It went to the revolutionary length of saying -- in the last
decade of the nineteenth century! -- that a worker must have "a
living wage"; though the Pope, when asked by a Belgium prelate who
was pressed by Socialists, declined to say what is a living wage.
Pacelli, who was firmly in the Secretariat of State by 1931, seems
to have thought that it was a good basis to build upon. I do not
suggest that he wrote it, though to do so required no knowledge of
economics. It is a very long and rambling document, mainly composed
of the familiar solemn clerical platitudes about the wickedness and
folly of the world and the deeper wisdom which the Church is ready
to impart upon all questions if men will only listen.
You may reflect that you never heard of this important
pronouncement and would like to read it. Unless you read Latin of
the modern Italian type I fear you will not be able to do so.
Though it is intended for the whole world it is written in a dead
language, so the Vatican meant each national branch of the Church
to make a translation of it. I have heard of only two -- German and
French. In Britain at least, no translation was published, and
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there is only a booklet on it (Pope Pius XI and Social
Reconstruction, 1936) which is a paraphrase intended to conceal its
crudities. I can learn of no American translation. Strange, you may
say, if this is the supreme effort of Pacelli and Pius XI on a very
vital question and the document on which these new Catholic states
expressly base themselves.
It is not really strange. It is a manual of Catholic Fascism,
blending features of Mussolini's Corporative State, the medieval
guilds, and weird Vatican conceptions of modern life. Although
Vichy France, Portugal, Slovakia, etc., appeal to it as their
inspiration it says little about the political form of the state
but clearly assumes that it will be a dictatorship. The main point
is its solution of the larger problem, which is very simple. The
desire of the workers to have unions is, the Pope is gracious
enough to say, legitimate. But must not be democratic and
independent. They must be "directed." The employers also must have
associations -- you see the relation to Mussolini's idea -- and in
case of a difference of opinion representatives of the two bodies
must meet in Christian amity and come to an agreement. It reminds
us of the British industrial experiment of Witney Councils, which
had already been discovered to be useless before Plus XI, or
Pacelli, recommended the idea as original and profound. The Pope
does not say whether the workers or the employers are to have the
marginal superiority or how, in case they are equal, a decision is
to be reached. Such a deadlock, he supposes, cannot arise when both
sides are Catholics. They then see everything in the light of pure
justice.
But there are incidental passages which made it all the more
inadvisable to translate this gem of Papal wisdom for the workers
of America. What for instance, would they say to this:
"The workers, sincerely repressing all that feeling of hatred
and envy which agitators in the social Struggle so cunningly
exploit, will not only submit to but highly esteem the position in
human society to which Divine Providence has assigned them (p. 104,
Freiburg edition).
It is exactly the kind of language which the bishops of the
Church of England addressed to the workers a century and a quarter
ago when they were agitating for the right to form unions. The
worker who sees the marble bathing pools, the rich banquets, the
spacious and luxurious homes of the rich on the screen must, when
he returns to his dingy and uncomfortable home, repress that wicked
feeling of envy and thank Divine Providence for giving him the $15
or $20 a week job. To do otherwise leads to Socialism, and the Pope
settle's the vexed question whether the Vatican no longer condemns
Socialism. "No man", he says (p. 90) "can be a good Catholic and a
good socialist," The priests did not care to let even British
workers see that. As to Communism, it is "impious and wicked", not
simply, as the Pope is now represented as saying, natural virtue to
be condemned only because it has not a Catholic basis (in reality,
a Catholic or priestly boss). There is to be no restriction on a
man's power to make a fortune, but the rich must be generous to the
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THE PIOUS TRAITORS OF BELGIUM AND FRANCE
poor. At the same time the Liberal and very American doctrine of
"free competition" is wrong. This is supposed to be a wise Catholic
middle position between the two extremes in contemporary life: a
wonderful example of that famous "wisdom of the Vatican".
It obviously did not suit the American hierarchy to let the
American public know that their Church condemned unrestricted
individualism and free competition, but the blear-eyed Petain, like
the sleek priest-ruler of Slovakia, the truculent dictator who
protects privilege in Brazil, and the scheming Dr. Salazar of
Portugal found it a useful doctrine. It is, as I said, Mussolini's
Corporative State modified. You may choose to think that these
innocent folk at the Vatican did not realize that Mussolini's
scheme was mainly devised for the purpose of war -- to bring both
the industrialists and the workers under the despotic control of
the State. In any case the Pope puts the Church above the state. He
blandly claims that it is "the supreme authority even in these
economic matters." That also would hardly suit America, but old
Petain would not blink if it claimed to be the supreme authority
even in sanitary matters and sport. He had a vague idea that he
could, on the lines of the Papal encyclical paralyze the great
industries which by their urbanization and stimulation of the
people had certainly promoted the growth of freethought. France was
to be mainly agricultural once more, because peasants are less
quick-witted and anti-clerical, and in such industries as were
permitted the ascendancy of Catholics would be secured, not merely
by the control of Church and State but by giving low wages to all
men who were not married or had not at least three children. By
long tradition, parents of three or more children in France were
almost always Catholics.
One would not say that the Germans smiled: they must have
roared with laughter. The old fool would serve the immediate
purpose, and their patronage of him and his insipid ideas could be
put on their credit side at the Vatican, which was expected to give
further help in the African Empire and the East. As I write the
Germans seem to be about to dismiss Petain to some country cottage
or home for the aged. The truth about him is breaking through the
Catholic censorship. A series of articles in the Herald-Tribune in
the summer of 1941 by the distinguished French dramatist Henri
Bernstein punctured the Petain clerical legend. He proves that the
"great soldier" was a defeatist in the war of 1914-1918 and wanted
to abandon the English allies to the German's. His coreligionist
Foch had to silence him. It appears even that he never was a great
soldier and "the hero of Verdun." It was the priests who
manufactured his reputation. As I said, for seventy years they had
failed to get a distinguished representative either in
statesmanship, science, philosophy, or history, so in the miserable
prewar period., when they concentrated on pushing into power
political creatures like Laval, literary journalists and soldiers:
men who know nothing outside their special fields and are easy prey
to the clerical sharp.
Just about the time of the surrender of Paris even the German
papers began to discus's with respect the idea of a Catholic
League. Whether they or the Pope started it I cannot ascertain but
it became an important item in their new program of friendly
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understanding with the Vatican. Catholic papers in England and
Eire, in Portugal, Spain, Spanish America, and Hungary -- and, I
suppose. in the United States -- began to reflect the glory and joy
of the new vision that lit the Papal mind. The great League would
cross the seas and bring in the republics of South America.
"Spaniards", Franco's newspapers said, "are the only ones entitled
to look after Spanish America." Britain and America were saving
Spain from famine and collapse, and its press was telling President
Roosevelt that "his tutorship is unsolicited". Instead of a Nazi
threat to the United States from Latin America there was to be a
Catholic Fascist threat; and the main body of American Catholic's
still praised Petain, Salazar, Franco, and De Valera. Germany
hinted that this was not all. The Pope's eyes began to brighten at
the prospect of Germany conquering the Balkans and destroying for
him the ancient Greek, Russian, Serbian, and other "Orthodox"
Churches which had defied the Papacy for more than a thousand
years. This mighty League, pivoting on Italy, need not fear Hitler
even if he had won his victory and then faced the Vatican without
a mask.
The Germans, I repeat, must have laughed. Now that Italy was
sucked clean of vitality, or soon would be, the vast German force
would, if necessary, cut through these Catholic powers as easily as
the smaller armies of 1940 had cut through western Europe. When the
time came Germany would take them all over into its servile empire,
their people the helots who would grow food and hew out minerals
for the German workers and industrialists. Any doubt of that after
the terrific strain that the German onslaught has put upon Russia
in spite of its mighty resources and superb heroism would be
ludicrous.
What would Germany then say to Roman Catholicism. It would
disdainfully sweep aside all its trumpery Catholic-Fascist
institutions. It would enter upon a real "persecution of religion"
such as the modern world has not yet seen. If the Pope murmured
about promises and agreements, the cynical Nazis would remind him
how he was silent year after year when they made solemn agreements
and tore them up. It would remind him how through years of
corruption and dishonor, of bestial cruelty and ruthless
aggression, he had been silent or friendly, solely because he
thought it would ultimately profit his Church. Shall we have to
write in another year or two that atheistic Bolshevism saved the
Papacy as well as European civilization?
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