CHRISTIAN CRISIS

By

MICHAEL DE LA BEDOYERE

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
FSINTED IK THI UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
O o ,S
37

AEOIDIO . QUINTINO . SIMONI

HUNG DEDICO LIBELLUM
EA SPE
UT QUAE IN EO SUADERE AUSUS EST PATER
FILII FRUENDO SINT FELICIORES
 CONTENTS
PAGI
Introduction ........ ix

Part One
YESTERDAY
I. The Problem 3
II. Christianity and the Last War . . -13
III. Socialism ....... 26
IV. ' Dawnism ' 36
V. Nationalism 43
VI. The ' Dawnist ' Peace ..... 5a
VII. Catholics accept the Post-War World . 59
VIII. The Right Revolutions .... 71
IX. Catholic Right Reaction .... 87
X. Conclusions—I . . . . . .103

Part Two
TO-DAY
I. The Catholic Renaissance "5
II. The Christian Person . 126 /
III. The- Training of British Catholics 140
IV. Where British Catholics Fail 155
V. Catholics and Anglicans 171 /
VI. The Present War . . . . 182
VII. Conclusions—II . 197 »/
vii
 INTRODUCTION

iHE time has come to face and answer the question :

Shall Christianity be taken seriously—by Christians
A as well as non-Christians ? Or shall it be left as a
personal faith for those who happen to find comfort in its
teaching ? The old Europe has been smashed. Twenty-
five years ago the Powers which claimed to be fighting for
Christian ideals of justice, liberty, civilisation, democracy
won their chance to remould the world according to their
faith. They failed utterly. We do not yet know whether
a second chance will be given ; but we do know that if it
is the task will prove far harder. We also know that the
faith that inspired our fathers in 1918 must prove hopelessly
inadequate to the work. Indeed that is admitted. Whereas
the last war was fought with a great faith in the future, the
present war raises no comparable hope. Though in a
negative way it may be called a crusade because of the
philosophy that is being fought, it is in reality a desperate
resistance to stark danger. We do not pretend even to
ourselves that we know what to do with such victory as we
may gain. The future lies in so dark a mist that not all
the natural optimism of men can pierce any part of it.
Every ideal that has inspired us in the past has been
crushed, and we are living amidst the wreckage of those
ideals. Democracy, so far from evangelising the more
backward nations, is finding it hard to defend itself both
on the material and the moral plane. It has been swept
out of half Europe and, in battle to-day, it discovers its
worst enemies in those ' Fifth Columns,' the bitter oppo
nents of democracy in the heart of democratic lands.
Liberalism sees in the emancipated individual the willing
victim of mass-hysteria, the half-starved unemployed, the
ix
 INTRODUCTION
slave of the State, the fodder—and poor fodder at that—of
war. Capitalism, which once dangled before men the pros
pect of ever-increasing wealth, automatically distributed for
the general good, has been forced to maintain artificial
scarcity and to watch its own final destruction by the engines
of war which it itself had created. Socialism has had the
choice of converting itself into one or other of the forces
against which it rebelled, Liberal-capitalism or Fascism ;
and its contribution has been to infect both with yet more
deadly poison so that socialised Capitalism has spelt
national chaos and anarchy, while socialised Fascism has
manifested itself in Bolshevism.
All this, however, we know well enough. What alterna
tive have you to offer, is the insistent demand. And if we
answer Christianity we shall be met with the answer that
Christianity has failed, too. For a thousand and more
years the civilised world has been Christian, and what has
it got to show for it ? At one time Christianity was the
sole effective ordering force in Europe, and what did it
accomplish ? Even in these later times the majority of
Europeans (outside Russia and Turkey) were not only
nominal Christians of a sort but baptised Catholics, and
what help have they been ? Worse still, the Western world
has in the last half-century boasted of large numbers, not
merely of baptised Catholics, but of devout practising
Catholics, members of a spiritually rejuvenated Church,
brilliantly led by a series of the best Popes in history, and
what effect have they had upon the world ? If Christianity
is to be considered the hope of the future it can only be
after it has satisfactorily explained why it has failed to be
the salvation of the past, and pointed out what steps it has
taken to improve upon its previous performance.
Such questions, it seems to me, are well put and they
should be answered. One is tired of hearing the preacher
and the apologist repeating that all will be well with the
world if it returns to Christianity. We have the right to
ask what sort of Christianity, and how precisely will Chris
tianity accomplish the task that awaits it ? Have we any
guarantee that even if all men became Christians the world
 INTRODUCTION xi
would be a better ordered place ? All the world was Chris
tian before and even after the Reformation. And when in
the nineteenth century men gave themselves up to the
worship of Progress, the State, Socialism, Fascism, would
it have been possible for an outsider to sort out the devout
Catholics from the unbelievers by the sole consideration of
their practical attitudes towards these and other new
faiths?
It is already extremely late—perhaps too late, for God
has given no guarantee that Christianity may not be vir
tually wiped off the face of the globe, leaving only a few
faithful apostles to keep the Church intact—and all the more
urgent and imperative is the Catholic duty to face up to the
practical failure of Christianity in the past as an ordering
force in the world, candidly examine the reasons for it,
discover the remedies and give some proof to the disillu
sioned peoples that some well-grounded hope of restoration
of civilised order lies in the spiritual and moral inspiration
of Christianity. Until this is done we cannot complain if
even in the hour of supreme disillusionment men remain
cold and sceptical about this last hope.
To put it otherwise, Christianity must prove itself to the
world to be a serious business in the eyes of the world.
Catholics know well enough the truth and vital necessity
of their faith. They know that by it alone they can be saved,
just as by it alone they can lead here on earth good and
happy lives, according to God's will. They know that,
whatever their lives may have been, it will be their Catholic
faith alone that will count with them at the supreme
moment of death. But all this, impressive as it may be to
the outsider, is of no real concern to him. He does not
possess the faith, and, if he lives up to his convictions, God
will take care of him in His own way. What the outsider
wants to know is the degree of hope and trust that may be
placed in this mighty and historic structure of Catholicity.
He recognises its antiquity, its continuity, its impressive and
unchanging moral teaching. He is filled with wonder at
the loyalty it evokes from its adherents. Moce than ever
to-day he is moved by the moral authority and courage of
zii INTRODUCTION
the only supra-national world figure, the Pope. Surely in
this majestic institution if anywhere, he argues, the torn
world should find guidance. But is the performance of
Catholicity proportionate to its promise ? Of the strictly
religious field the outsider is not competent to judge—
though he may well express surprise at the religious apathy
of Catholics of his acquaintance or of nominally Catholic
lands. Of the moral field he is entitled to judge. He may
well ask, as I have asked above, why Christianity with its
millions of adherents has failed notably to affect the direc
tion the world has taken. He may ask why to-day it is
hard to distinguish between the corporate moral perform
ance of Catholic countries and other countries. He may
well ask how Catholics, themselves more or less wedded to
the doctrines and values of the world, propose to set it on
to straighter paths.
And if he is really discerning he will ask himself an even
deeper question. He will want to know with what authority,
what claim and what special power the Church, as a
religious institution, proposes (under the name of Chris
tianity or Christendom) to re-order and save here on earth
such temporal institutions as States, societies within the
State, or inter-State organisations. Might it not be, he may
ask, that the Church is adequate to the task of saving souls,
but unsuited to the task of saving States ? And if this is
the case, do not Christians habitually make false claims
when they suggest that all will be well if mankind turns
again to Christianity ?
In the following pages I have tried to face up to some
of these questions, in particular to discuss why Christianity
has in fact in the past failed to be the ordering force that
might have saved us from disaster and to suggest certain
lines of reform which would go some way towards satisfying
the complaints of a sincere critic by giving the hope that
the Christians of to-morrow (if another chance is given us)
could accomplish what we and our predecessors have failed
to do.
What I have said has been said throughout under a
heavy but inevitable handicap. I am not a theologian,
 INTRODUCTION xiii
and still less do I make any pretence to have understood or
absorbed by any personal experience other than that which
is given to the least faithful of Catholics, the mystical and
devotional sources whence spring the spiritual life of the
Church. This handicap might be fatal were it not for two
considerations. In the first place, there has been no lack
of literature covering this vitally important aspect of the
Church's life. What has been written elsewhere by the
masters of the spiritual life must throughout supplement
anything that I may venture to say here. Everything, too,
is said subject to their correction and to the necessary
deepening which they would provide. In the second place,
it seems to me that the weaknesses of Christianity are to be
found much less in the theological and devotional aspects
of the Church than in its general moral, cultural, social,
political and international aspects. For this reason it may
not be wholly a bad thing for a very ordinary Catholic
journalist who feels himself completely incompetent to
touch on the mystical and devotional life of the Church to
enter boldly into the wider and generally less studied fields.
For some years I have been writing every week in the
Catholic Herald signed and unsigned articles in the course
of which I have tried within the limits of weekly journalism
and in relation to immediately topical events to maintain
the point of view discussed in these pages. I hope that
those who have been interested enough to read that paper
will find here more fully elaborated and perhaps more
candidly stated the justification of that outlook.
In re-reading these pages in proofs I cannot but recognise
that certain chapters at the beginning (especially chapters
3-6 of the 1 st part) make comparatively difficult reading.
They are essential to the full argument, but may I here
suggest to any reader who may make heavy weather of
them that the second and more practical part of the book
is easier to follow. I very much hope that the ' man in
the street' will accept this book, and if he finds these
chapters a little stiff he can at a pinch skip them and
(I trust) return to them after.
PART ONE

YESTERDAY
 CHAPTER ONE

THE PROBLEM

I AM dealing in these pages with the only crisis that

ultimately matters, even in an age of daily crises and
periodic cataclysms : the crisis that lies behind them
all. It is simply this : Can Christianity, the source of the
spiritual and moral values of Western civilisation, inspire
and re-order that civilisation once again, or will it be
finally abandoned except as a personal faith for the private
lives of those who believe in its religious dogmas ?
Even the issue of the war itself is a less important matter,
except in so far as it may be clear that the victory of one
side may prepare the way for the re-establishment of
Christian values and the victory of the other necessarily
drive Christian values from the public way of life of Western
man. It is hard at this moment to believe that the victory
of either side will re-establish a Christian order : yet
Christians must feel that victory will be in vain if we cannot
ensure that it will be made the foundation upon which can
be re-established an order in the contemporary world
corresponding to the mediaeval idea of Christendom and
without the latter's gross defects, for the history of the nine
teenth and twentieth centuries has shown that the post-
Christian spiritual and moral forces which challenged
Christianity are either doomed to bankruptcy through their
inner contradictions and mutual rivalries or will be forced
to their logical conclusion, which is none other than the
fullness of Nationalism and of Socialism in the all-powerful,
but impersonal State.
Various spiritual factors, whose origin cannot be traced
to Christianity, have played their parts in the making of
3
 4 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
our civilisation, but each of them has reached the point of
full insertion into the structure of the West only after it
had been given its effective form through the hand of
Christianity. Thus the pre-Christian spiritual elements of
1 Greece and Rome have undoubtedly contributed in very
large measure to the making of the values dominating the
development of the West, but this heritage of natural
philosophy and political theory played its due part only
after it had been Christianised. Equally, as we shall see
at length, from the eighteenth century onwards a number
of new spiritual forces began to have a rapidly increasing
effect on the West, but these forces were still unconsciously
aiming at diverting and canalising something of the Chris
tian inheritance to make, as it were, Christianity more
Christian.
The history of the West since the Middle Ages can be
read as the interplay between the genuine Christian tradi
tion and the emerging new forces to ' better ' that tradition.
It is only in our own time that the effort to ' better ' that
tradition converted itself, by a logical process, into the
avowed attempt to uproot Christian values altogether.
The first real threat from within to Christianity came in
the fourteenth century when the long conflict between the
respective fields of authority of Catholic Church and
Catholic State hardened into a conflict between the
universal spiritual and moral claims of the Pope (often
exaggerated in their detailed application to temporal
matters) and the separate secularist States, composed of
Catholics whose leaders, political, intellectual and often
religious, fell under the influence of the sudden inflow of
classical Paganism. From this blow Christianity never
fully recovered, even though for many years the different
reactions and reformations were either in the name of
Christianity or powerfully influenced by Christian ideals.
The first and best known Reformation was marked on the
whole by the desire to return to the severe ideals of primitive
Christianity—not, as some historians try to make out, by
any broadening and liberalising of the human spirit in the
commonly accepted sense of these terms. But the Reforming
 THE PROBLEM 5
fervour (because it rebelled against a Papacy, itself severely
affected by the Renaissance) allied itself to the separated
nations, and the quarrels of religion between the Protestant
and Catholic States that marked the epoch, divided
Christendom permanently, cutting off most of the Christian
world from the single authentic source of Christian spiritual
ity and order, the Papacy, thereby paving the way for the
Absolute State to which Catholics as well as Protestants
were in danger of becoming permanently subject in all
spiritual and moral matters of public importance. And
matters were made worse rather than better in that the
authority of the absolute monarchic State in Protestant
England or Catholic France was commonly conceived as an
authority with the spiritual force of Christianity at the
service of the Divinely-appointed ruler. Except for the
religious life of the faithful and as a moral support for a
Catholic ruler (or a cock-shy for the Protestant one) the
Papacy was relegated to a position of comparative unim
portance.
The second blow to Christianity came when some of the
best minds of the seventeenth and eighteenth century,
sickened by the religious wars and impatient at the harsh
ness and servility of this State-Christianity, felt their way
towards an order based upon Reason and Nature, seeking
such ends as humanitarianism, toleration, progress and
whatever facilities and comforts the development of physical
science could achieve. None the less, the seeds of the
Enlightenment, as the movement was called, were to be
found in the best Christian humanist traditions of the
thirteenth century, and the movement itself could have had
but little meaning, if it had not taken over the Christian
belief in a personal God who created every man in His own
image and likeness so that every man might attain to his
natural, as well as supernatural, end by fulfilling his proper
part in a moral and material order—an order, which, when
achieved, reflected the universal, orderly and purposeful
mind of God. Another side of the Enlightenment, however,
marked the break-away from Christianity in ' by-passing,'
not only the Papacy and the national Churches, but the
6 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
very idea of the supernatural. The Christian order was
literally inverted. It was no longer seen as a supernatural
ideal to which the natural order should tend, but as a
natural ideal which the supernatural philosophy and values
of Christianity could subserve. Instead of God and citizen
ship of the next world being the ends of human existence—
a belief essential to the Church and still nominally held by
the religious States—man himself, considered solely as a
citizen of this world, became the end of human existence.
The nineteenth century marked a third and even graver
departure from Christianity because the non-Christian
stream of thought began to flow in great rushes, representing
positive and in themselves self-sufficient spiritual forces
claiming to be alternatives to Christianity—and better
alternatives. These contrasted sharply with Christianity
itself and even with the ideals of the Enlightenment because
they were opposed, not only to the supernatural ends of
Christianity, but also to the natural, rational and universal
Christian philosophy upon which the Enlightenment rested.
These new forces, however, while logically bound to reject in
the end everything that was Christian, looked for a long
time as though they were compatible with a better or
emancipated Christianity, partly because they were less
consistent and doctrinaire than the Deism of the Enlighten
ment and partly because they made use, whenever possible,
of Christian motives and Christian values in their headlong
rush to unknown ends. So much so, that Christians them
selves were deeply affected by them. Thus, throughout the
nineteenth century, men—including the best of Christians—
found themselves rendering worship to false gods, of which
the most powerful, perhaps, was the Nation—no longer the
religious State with its national Christian Church, but an
entity-in-itself, ultimate, glorious and adorable. Another
new god was Humanity, whose deification would be com
pleted through automatic progress, regardless of any
rational philosophy that could account for the divine grace
of ' every day and in every way growing better and better.'
Another god, in due course, began to emerge, the god who
could provide an earthly paradise for the ' under-dog '—
 THE PROBLEM 7
that growing portion of mankind which showed no signs of
bettering its lot by worshipping the gods of Nationalism and
Progress. And these new ideals, partly influencing and
partly being influenced by the rapid changes in the tech
nique of social life, gave rise to more material but not less
potent forces, forces in the economic and political order, to
which homage akin to worship was paid, such forces as
Capitalism (the belief that the making of money is a worthy
end in itself and that it necessarily results in the best possible
division of wealth among men) or State-ism (the belief that
man is best off when all power and influence are gradually
concentrated in the impersonal hands of the State that
can alone control the complex machinery of modern
life).
But it needed the cataclysm of world war with its dire
economic consequences to blast away what now seemed
like the lumber of the Christian heritage and to give oppor
tunity for what was genuinely new in these spiritual, moral
and material forces to thrive. In the midst of the rapid and
general decay of Christian values the religions of godless
Nationalism and god-hating Communism developed at
incredible speed, dragging into their service whatever was
useful to them in the discredited philosophy of Progress and
neo-Pagan emancipation. Now that Christian values
themselves had apparently ceased to be an effective spiritual
and moral force within the political and social order, there
was no force sufficiently strong to check the rush. Nowhere
in society could an alternative and living conviction be found
which could resist the convictions behind Fascisih, Nazism
and Bolshevism, until it was too late to influence them
otherwise than by the sheer physical force of war in defence
of what survived elsewhere of faith in Progress, Nationalism,
Capitalism and rival Socialisms, all of them now appealing
again in a blind and confused way to Christian values.
In the meantime what had happened to Christianity?
It was not lost. Not only did Christian principles survive
in ordinary society, though in a way that was totally in
effective outside personal life, except in times of intense
national danger ; not only did millions still believe in
8 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Christianity ; but the Church herself had in many ways
grown stronger than she had ever been before. Just as the
Renaissance laxity led to the Counter-Reformation in
which personal religious life blazoned forth, so the great
advance of secularism led to a new spiritual organisation
and fervour.
Though in general the different sects of Protestantism
appeared to be rapidly weakening through widespread loss
of real belief in God, in some of them a genuine spirit of
revival was apparent. But no one will see mere sectarianism
in the view that the future of Christianity depends to-day
upon the Catholic and Roman Church. Ever since the
reign of Pius IX the Catholic Church has grown both in
numbers and—let us put it—in ecclesiastical fervour.
(Spiritual fervour is a difficult thing to measure, and it
would be hard to compare the sanctity of the Church to-day
with that, say, of early Christianity, of the flower of the
Middle Ages or of the days of the Counter-Reformation
when many of the most glorious saints of Christendom were
alive.) But the standard of private morality and of ecclesi
astical observance, both among the clergy and the laity,
has probably never been higher. Moreover, under the
leadership of the last four Popes doctrine, as appreciated by
the clergy and the faithful, has been purified and deepened,
while teaching has regained much of that breadth and
universality, particularly in regard to social problems,
which it tended to lose after the wounds of the Reformation.
Lastly, the very isolation of Christianity, as the last refuge
of traditional morality and manners, has raised the Church
in the eyes of all mankind, so that it seems to many to offer
a solution for the personal problems of life and to Western
society in general as a great international structure, centred
in the Pope and the Vatican, towards which eyes in times of
exceptional stress can be turned for moral guidance and
spiritual help.
And it is this survival which creates the problem dis
cussed in this book. The fervour of the Counter-Reforma
tion did little or nothing to save even Catholic nations
from making religion an instrument of State, and in recent
 THE PROBLEM 9
history likewise we have to admit that the Catholic revival
of the last half century and more has done extraordinarily
little to diminish the common (and often Catholic) worship
for the new false gods.
How is it then that contact between the political and
social world, on the one side, and Christianity, on the other,
has been so completely lost that we can watch the growth
and development of two utterly opposed forces side by side
and in mutual independence ? How is it that this refreshed
and reinvigorated Christianity has done so little to check
the rush ofanti-Christian philosophies and failed, apparently,
to provide to contemporary society that light and that fire
which could inspire effective opposition and fight ? How is
it, above all, that at a time when these new forces are
betraying their inner and mutual contradictions in the
actual destruction of the new world—for there has been no
peace since 19 14—Christianity, to all intents and purposes,
still remains powerless to inspire the counter-attack ?
That is the problem. And since it is plain now that none
of the new forces possesses the spiritual prestige to mould a
new world acceptable to the spirit of man, the world crisis
really amounts to this : can Christianity still save the
world ?
The question may seem strange on the hps of a Catholic.
Yet, it is well to remind ourselves that our faith, as Catholics,
tells us no more than that the gates of Hell shall not prevail
against the Church. This promise need not necessarily
mean more than that Christianity will not be destroyed by
its enemies and that it will preserve its doctrine intact. It
certainly cannot be taken as meaning that Christianity will
necessarily remain the dominating spiritual force in any
particular civilisation or region. There is no guarantee that
Bolshevism will not spread in some form or other across the
face of Europe, still less that anything resembling our
present civilisation will endure. Pius XI, we are told,
believed that something of this kind was a possibility to be
reckoned with and prepared against the day of such disaster
by encouraging the missionary activity and even autonomy
(within limits consistent with the oneness of the Church) of
10 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
the Church in non-European lands. At war to-day, we
cannot but realise in how great a degree the future must
depend upon the play of material forces, whether those of
actual armaments and their use or of economic wealth. It
is true that in the abstract the spiritual force of Christianity
could conquer even these material forces. Spiritual force,
however, does not normally make itself felt in sudden
spectacular ways, but rather through the slow and difficult
leavening of what is material and worldly. The trouble is
that there is little sign at present that such leavening is of
such potency as to prepare immediate and decisive results.
On the contrary, the characteristic of the recent history of
our civilisation is undoubtedly the weakening of the
Christian leavening in it, despite the spiritual strengthening
of Christianity as divorced from temporal society. It is as
though Christianity has developed to the side of this society
rather than within it. It may indeed be already too late.
The revolution may have been accomplished. Our civilisa
tion may be destined for a totally new spiritual order or it
may cave-in altogether with a prolonged Dark Age ahead
of it. If such things prove to be the case, we, as Christians,
cannot complain. Europeans (and among them many
Christians, still professing the name) have for generations
rejected the Christian order as the spiritual force of society,
even though they may still owe three-quarters of their out
look to it. If Christianity is true, we must expect disastrous
consequences, at the threshold of which we may be standing.
As Mr. George Glasgow has written : ' The sin was general,
and so is the price. We have to pay the price and nothing
can stop it. The laws of nature, moral as well as physical,
cannot be dodged.'1
Still the price may be paid in various ways, and however
dark the outlook, despair would be the supremely non-
Christian act. The paramount consideration for all
Christians to-day, as it seems to me, is how far can
Christianity succeed in shouldering the burden that in
evitably has to be carried by our generation and, in the act
of shouldering it, convert it into something that will profit
1 Catholic Herald, so/ 10/39.
 THE PROBLEM ii
rather than weigh-down our fellow men and women ?
What should Christianity do in order to prepare itself to
render first aid under any given circumstances, and, having
perhaps achieved this, to become once more the permanent
healing force which may carry Europe and the world to new
health ? How can Christianity give back conviction to a
world in disillusion before the evidence of coming destruc
tion ? And the first question to be asked is how can this
great and healthy reserve of spiritual force, to be found in
present-day Christianity, once again establish contact with
the world which has rejected it and still rejects it ?
These notes—and they can be no more, written as they
are, at odd moments in a busy journalistic life—are directed
towards the analysis of this, the greatest crisis in history,
from the point of view of a Catholic observer. The questions
being asked throughout are, : where and how and when can
the spiritual force of Christianity insert itself again into what
remains of the structure of our Western civilisation ? With
this end in view, the following chapters will divide them
selves into two parts. The first, covering the earlier chapters,
attempts to re-read the history of the years that separate the
world-war from the present conflict, not so much in terms
of the sequence of events and the apparent forces at work,
but in terms of the spiritual, moral and material forces at
work in the nineteenth century, forces whose full effects
have been reserved from this melancholy interval of black
peace or white war. In the second part I shall attempt, in
the light of the knowledge gained, to study Christianity from
within, as it manifests itself externally at the present day.
Here we may be able to see how far the impotence of
Christianity, externally displayed, can be related to both
the strength and the weaknesses of the present day working
Church. Because I have a far better acquaintance with it,
I shall largely confine my analysis to the Church in this
country. Nor will this be a disadvantage, for Britain is
still the leader of that neutral secularism whose future must
lie either in Christianity or a positive pagan faith. As a
field for possible Christian action it is at once promising and
important. Lastly, we may be in a position to see what
12 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
could be done in practice to make Christianity again the
dominating force of the Western world, especially under
the stress and strain of every alternative force in the war
that threatens to destroy all that the average, man still
values.
 CHAPTER TWO

CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAST WAR

WHEN I spoke of the spiritual forces of Christianity

I opposed them to forces of Nationalism, Bol
shevism, Neo-paganism and that progress-
philosophy which has been aptly named ' Dawnism,'1 and
allowed it to be inferred that these also were spiritual forces.
And, however anti-Christian, however anti-religious, how
ever pagan these may be, they do make their appeal as
spiritual forces. The fact is that man and still more societies
of men are invincibly spiritual. They always act—or at
least feel it to be necessary to give themselves out as acting—
in terms of transcendent ends which they seek to reach or
from which they deliberately turn away. It may be that
they seek no more than what they term their pleasure or
their convenience, but even so that pleasure or that con
venience will not be thought of as a mere series of concrete
advantages, but rather be rationalised into a higher way of
life, a better order of things, a great cause for which they
must labour and sacrifice themselves. In this respect
Christianity, Bolshevism, Fascism, Liberalism present the
same appearance. Man's mind seeks the good, and what
ever he may mean by the good, he will seek it as something
that can be universalised and participated in by others as
the end of life as such. It is true that the ordinary run of
men commonly live their fives as a habit rather than as part
of a great ideal, but they would not be moved to any kind of
corporate action unless they could be inspired to see it as a
great ideal. It is also true that there are creatures in plenty
1 The word ' Dawnism ' was coined by Hugh Kingsmill in his novel The
Dawn's Delay. I use it throughout as a much more significant and compre
hensive word than the commoner ' Liberalism ' or ' Progress.'
13

!
14 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
who feed on the idealism of others, seeking only personal
gain and power. But these last will never dare come out
into the open and admit their motives, for they know that
their fellow men, whatever the real worth of the ideal that
calls them to action, would turn against this mere self-
seeking as evil.
Accordingly, we must expect, whatever the nature of the
idealism that happens to be in fashion (whether for God or
against God) to see men pursuing it as within a moral-
spiritual system wherein men will have their struggles and
temptations, their successes and fallings-away. Within it
there will always remain an ought, some idea of duty to
which a man may or may not be faithful. That is why man
always makes use of a moral terminology, talking of virtue
and vice and finding it possible to analyse his actions in
terms of such words as justice, charity, honesty, etc., and, in
truth, these words, within whatever moral system it may be,
will bear meaning analogous to the meaning they bear in
true religion and true morality. We must not therefore make
the common mistake of supposing that, because the moral
terminology which we associate with the Christian ethical
order is invoked and often lived up to, these modern move
ments cease to be dangerous or anti-Christian. The
evidence that men are still seeking for the good, as they see it,
is indeed in one way re-assuring, for it gives the hope that
they can be converted by coming to see the full truth, but in
another way it adds to the danger, partly because it is a
potent cause of confusion and partly because it provides for
those who are wrong the only strength that matters, the
strength of moral conviction. Though it is probably true
that so long as a man genuinely seeks what he believes to be
good, there is a limit to the degree in which in the long run
he can be perverted from the right, the more moral con
viction is added to objective error in moral judgement, the
worse the situation is.
When we enter upon the scene of these observations, we
find that, despite the weakening of Christianity, moral
values and moral terminology have become more rather
than less fervently invoked. The last great war was viewed
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAST WAR 15
as a holier war than any since the Crusades, for moral
motives, though more diffused and infinitely vaguer in
content, certainly penetrated into the consciences of a far
greater number of the people in the belligerent countries
than for centuries before. Never before had whole peoples
supposed that a war could be waged for such glorious moral
causes as the ending of all war, the establishment of per
petual liberty and freedom, the making of the world into a
paradise fit for heroes to live in. Never before even had the
concrete and genuine motive, secondary though it was, of
saving a little country from wanton aggression been raised
to such a degree of spiritual and moral fervour. Here
indeed were spiritual forces in plenty at work.
The Church, face to face with this war, was brought up
against a virtually new problem. Ever conscious of the
sufferings entailed by war and ever aware that a war
revealed a state of disorder within the unity of Christendom,
the Church at her best had endeavoured to prevent war, to
mitigate its sufferings and to restrict this ultimate means of
settling human differences within clearly defined moral
bounds. None the less the occurrence of war had only
gradually become a challenge to the dominating spiritual
force of Christianity. Wars had either been religious or
political. The end of a religious war, from the Christian
point ofview, had been to preserve by the only human means
possible the human instrument through which orthodox
Christianity could penetrate into temporal society. Abuses
there may have been, but the principle did not militate
against the generally recognised understanding of the
spiritual mission of Christianity. Political wars were mainly
fought for motives of temporal advantage on one side or
another, matters to which—unless warfare were considered
intrinsically immoral—the Church might be indifferent.
Moreover, such wars had not affected the lives of peoples
in general, but only professional soldiers and comparatively
limited districts. From the revolutionary wars at the end
of the eighteenth century onwards wars began to be religious
wars again but for aspirations that had little or nothing
to do with Christianity.
i6 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
The war of 1914-1918 in particular presented itself from
the beginning as a matter of conscience. The implication was
that certain universal moral ideals could only be safe
guarded by the military victory of one side which was looked
upon for the time being as something approaching a verit
able religious or moral institution. Secondly, for technical
reasons due to the development of our civilisation, this war
for the first time entered fully into the lives of all the
peoples in the belligerent countries, being, as it were, per
sonally fought by each one of them on the home front, if
not at the actual front. And so the root problem of Chris
tianity confronted with this new kind of war was as follows :
Christians, by hypothesis in agreement with one another
all over the world about the spiritual end of life and the
code of morals according to which temporal life should be
ordered so that it might lead to the attainment of this
spiritual end, found themselves fighting one another all
over the world in a war in which moral motives were deemed
more important than political ones and in which the carry
ing through of the war to victory was made dependent in
an unprecedented measure on keeping up the morale of the
people through a religious or moral fervour. In other
words, unless the moral motives of one side were really
Christian (and therefore those of the other side non-Chris
tian), Christianity had to stand by and watch the faithful
fighting each other for a medley of moral and spiritual
motives, many of which must be cutting across the ideals
of Christianity itself. It was hard indeed to reconcile such
a situation with the effective maintenance of Christianity,
even for Christians themselves, as an important, let alone
a dominating, spiritual force in that Western society of
which the majority was still nominally Christian. Indeed,
this contradiction could not possibly have come about
unless our civilisation had already in many respects alienated
itself from Christianity.
This alienation was, ofcourse, the direct result ofthe progress
made by two of the new spiritual forces which characterised
the history of the nineteenth century : faith in Nationalism
and faith in ' Dawnism.' Julien Benda in one of the most
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAST WAR 17
striking books written since the last war, The Treason of the
Clerks, indicted the whole of the modern intelligentsia for
having betrayed their calling and used their arts to preach
brute nationalism instead of defending the universal values
of religion and culture. ' The clerks,' he wrote, ' adopt
political passions. No one will contest to-day that through
out Europe the immense majority of men of letters, artists,
a considerable number of savants, philosophers, ministers of
God take their places in the choir of race hatreds and
political factions.'1
It is conceivable, however, that some of the elect would
have resisted the temptation of prostrating themselves
before the altars of Nationalism if the service of the nation
had not been carried through in the ritual of ' Dawnism.'
On the side of the Allies the temptation was especially
subtle, for the philosophy of a new era of progress, enlighten
ment and justice had been so closely associated with the
future of the Western democracies that a man might be
pardoned for confounding the establishment of imperial
power with the establishment of liberty, the securing of the
world's wealth with the securing of the reign of social
justice, the dissemination of Anglo-Saxon tradition with the
dissemination of toleration, humanitarianism, etc. In fact,
we are faced with the curious paradox of nations like France
and Britain, which had for generations rejected the Christian
God as a factor of any importance in the determination of
temporal society, claiming to be fighting to the death for the
defence of values and decencies in the name of God. We
get a vivid idea of the degree to which the Allies succumbed
to the temptation of identifying their cause with that of
God when we remember that so pontifical an English news
paper as the Tablet of the day rejected the peace proposals
of Benedict XV on the ground that the military situation
made possible an eventual peace nearer to its British heart's
desire and, presumably, British religion. The rejection by
the most orthodox Catholics of Papal proposals for making
peace is, of course, a commonplace in Christian history,
but this was done either because the Pope was acting in a
1 La Trahison des Clercs, p. 56.
i8 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
political capacity or because no bones were made about the
purely political ends of the war. It was a new and, under
the circumstances, a scandalous thing for Catholics, at the
very heart of the Church, to reject what amounted to the
Pope's spiritual advice in a conflict waged ostensibly for
spiritual and moral reasons. And the fact that the Pope
was so wholly right, whereas the Nationalists in France and
Britain were so wholly wrong, confirms the scandal.
From the beginning of the war it had been generally
considered in the Allied camp that the Vatican was pro-
German. This in itself was another sign of the times. We
were the leading spiritual force, and the Vatican's outlook
had been reduced to mere temporal taking of sides to spite
anti-clerical France and defend clerical Austria. Actually
Benedict XV, faced by an insoluble problem through the
wholesale, though unconscious, betrayal of Christianity by
Christians in all belligerent countries, could for the moment
do no more than set a personal example of unimpeachable
Christianity. Where there was a genuine moral issue he
spoke out, his condemnation of ' every injustice by what
soever side committed ' being meant, as Cardinal Gasparri
explained in a letter to the Belgian Minister at the Vatican,
to include the invasion of Belgium.1 But it is doubtful
whether he could see anything more noble in the moral
protestations and phrases under cover of which the Allies
fought for complete conquest than in the more openly
admitted political designs of Germany. The real test of
sincerity did not come in 1914, but in 191 7, when the Pope
thought that there was some chance of impartial peace
proposals being accepted. If a new era of ' peace and
justice ' could be concretely envisaged it was surely to be
found in the Pope's proposals for ' simultaneous and recipro
cal diminution of armaments,' ' the establishment of arbi
tration with sanctions ' and ' complete and reciprocal con
donation ' in regard to damage and cost of war. Germany's
crime in invading Belgium was to be set right by ' complete
evacuation of Belgium,' which, however, in view of German
complaints must have ' a guarantee of military, political
1 Rev. Humphrey Johnson : Vatican Diplomacy and the World War, p. 16.
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAST WAR 19
and economic independence towards all Powers what
soever.' ' On the part of other belligerents there must be a
similar restitution of German colonies.' And the incredibly
complicated and artificial conquest settlement, which finally
embodied the high moral cause of the Allies to make the
new world in which the trinity of Nature, Man and Reason
could be safely worshipped, was completely ' debunked '
before the event by the Pope's gentle and wise advice :
' The same spirit of equity and justice must reign in the study
of the other territorial and political questions, notably those
relating to Armenia, the Balkan States and to the territories
forming part of the ancient Kingdom of Poland, to which,
in particular, its noble historical traditions and the sufferings
endured, especially during the present war, ought justly to
assure the sympathies of the nations.'
It was these proposals which were frigidly received by
every belligerent Power, the Catholic population in each
one showing no signs of disagreement with the verdict of
their rulers, but it is an English Catholic historian who
concludes from a study of the actions taken in the different
countries that ' had the Allies made an honest declaration of
their willingness to conclude a moderate peace, the Pope's
efforts in Berlin and Vienna would certainly have led to
very different results.'1 And it was left to the High Priest
of the New Dawn, Woodrow Wilson, to make the most
crushing reply to the whole Christian intention of the Pope's
efforts : ' To deal with such a power (Germany),' said the
President, ' by way of peace upon the plan proposed by
His Holiness the Pope, would, so far as we can see, involve
a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy ;
would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile com
bination of the nations against the German people who are
its instruments.' Such was in effect the ' Dawn ' seen
through Nationalist spectacles, the distortion which the
moralists tried to bring into being and to-day threatens to
repeat precisely the same sins.
But the indictment here is not directed against the lay
States which had long ceased to take Christianity into
1 Rev. Humphrey Johnson : Op. cit., p. 36.
20 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
serious consideration, nor against the peoples into whose
ears had been preached the new Faiths with their simple
moral codes urging to glorious action for the new Cause ;
the indictment here is directed against all who in their
degree were responsible for the weakness shown by Chris
tians in succumbing, almost without realising it, during the
nineteenth century to the new Paganisms. The result of
this was that the masses of Christians themselves, having
found themselves at the beginning of the war in a contra
dictory moral position, fighting against each other for
opposite moral faiths, did not so much as lift a hand to
help the Father of Christians when he, in a statement of a
few hundred words, tore to shreds the charters of the new
moralities and indicated the only possible way out for
Christianity. Not only did they not lift a hand to help ;
most of them lifted one hand to shield their eyes against
the advice of the Pope and the other to God for complete
victory that their country might conquer and create a
better world than the Pope, apparently, could envisage.
One could scarcely wish for a better example of the ineffec
tiveness of Christianity as a social force in our days, the more
so in that the individual Christian could hardly be blamed
so late in the day for faithfully serving his country during the
war : indeed, on the face of it it was his duty to do so, for
obedience to legitimate temporal authority in all that is not
sin has ever been taught by the Church. And when did
war, pursued for such lofty moral motives, ever seem so far
removed from sin and injustice ! The Christian, while he
could most certainly have entertained doubts as to the
soundness of his country's ends, was by now caught up in a
false position from which there was no escape. If he did
his duty to his country, he implicated himself in a spiritual
and moral atmosphere that was far from Christian ; if he
refused to do his duty he failed his country where, according
to Christian teaching, his country had the right to expect
his service.
The advent of peace released him from his dilemma,
and it should have given him his opportunity to labour for
a settlement that would guarantee Europe against another
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAST WAR 21
such contradiction between Christianity and the civic
duties of Christians. All the more was this his duty in that
the Pope, who was able to speak in war-time, had been
silenced for the duration of peace-time by the clause in the
secret Treaty of London in which Britain supported the
Italian demand that the Pope should not be represented
at the Peace Treaty—another article of ' Dawn ' morality for
which Italian and British Catholics shed their blood !
The treaties that settled international order after the
war have by now been fairly generally condemned as the
embodiment of the real political aims of the victor countries.
But that was far from being the general view of the time.
It is a mistake to condemn Versailles simply for its severity.
As a political treaty it was no worse and no better than
previous political treaties. The real evil of Versailles lay in
the fact that it attempted to carry through to a permanent
peace settlement the moral emotionalism under which the
Allies had fought. In fact, in this respect it was not a treaty
at all ; it was a religious-moral judgement passed against
the vanquished by the victors who embodied the roles of
God, judge, counsel for the prosecution and witnesses all
rolled into one. Remarkable as such an assumption of
supernatural and natural powers might be, the general moral
exaltation for the triumph of ' Dawnism ' might have carried
it through had the actual judgement shown any signs of
being consistent with this high idealism. Unfortunately, the
essence of the judgement, as mentioned above, was the
imposition of severe political terms in the full tradition of
the bad old political history which the future was to
transcend. And the Allies made no attempt to carry out those
self-denying ordinances, e.g. disarmament, that alone might
have excused the moral indignation. Between the unfulfilled
moral aspirations which probably did tend to mitigate a
little the political severity (and therefore consistency and
effectiveness) of the Treaty and the political severity which
made those moral aspirations intolerable to the condemned
(and ultimately to the wiser of the victors), the Treaty
turned out to be a worse calamity even than the war which
had preceded it. It literally let loose all the non-Christian
22 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
forces, that had been simmering before the war and harnessed
during it, and thereby imposed upon Christianity a peace
task which, if not as impossible as its war problem, made
even greater demands upon the Church and the faithful.
After the war Catholics, for the most part, fully shared
the widespread hope that a new era of peace, justice, liberty
and international understanding had been ushered in.
What was concrete in these aspirations was, after all, a
Christian heritage and, at any rate as abstract ideals, they
can be fitted into any and every social system which man
kind can devise. Even Socialism, Bolshevism, Nazism,
Fascism declare themselves to be aiming at precisely these
ends, differing from one another and from Liberalism or
Christianity solely as regards the means whereby they are
to be attained. The nationalistically inspired and war-
heated suspicion of Germany was still too strong to enable
the masses to appreciate the contradiction between the
moral and political sides of the peace treaties ; the estab
lishment of the League of Nations appeared to be a greater
practical advance towards Christianising the spirit of inter
national relations than anything the Church could hope to
effect or, for that matter, ever had effected since the dim
days of the Middle Ages ; and the visible enemy lay revealed
in Russian Sovietism, around which a cordon sanitaire was
being diligently created after the failure of Anglo-French-
supported counter-revolution. Those whose Christian con
sciences had not been troubled by the war between Chris
tians would certainly not be worried by this religiously-
neutral dawn of practical Christianity. The loss of a for
mally Catholic empire in Central Europe, the surrender of
Eastern Europe to the persecuting Soviet, even the complete
absence of any reference to God and Christianity in the
new settlement, these seemed to be a small price to pay for
an all-comprehending natural philosophy of international
behaviour (in all its details in close harmony with the
teaching of theologians on this subject) and for the ushering-
in amid States, old and new, of liberal regimes wherein
Christians could make themselves freely felt either as
individuals or as political parties.
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAST WAR 23
The almost universal feelings of Christians, and indeed
of all men of goodwill, were expressed by Benedict XV in
his Encyclical, Pacem Dei, of May, 1920, in which the newly
created League was welcomed as a first step along the path
leading to a real society or family of nations which would
make modern war unthinkable and create a situation in
which the demand for justice and charity could be met.
' To the nations,' wrote the Pope, ' united in a league founded
on the Christian law, the Church will faithfully lend her
active and eager co-operation.'
Two years later Pius XI in his Christmas Encyclical,
Ubi Arcano, sounded more emphatically the Christian warn
ing note : ' There still exists,' he wrote, ' a Divine institu
tion to which all nations belong and yet which is over them
all, which is furnished with the highest authority and is
worthy of reverence for the fullness of its piety, the Church
of Christ. She alone can undertake this task, thanks to her
age-long glorious history.'
Though, of course, neither Pontiff intended to emphasise
one aspect at the expense of the other, we may conveniently
take these two quotations as representing a dualism of
Christian attitude towards the new era. On the one side
there was the strong force, destined rapidly to weaken,
which, hoping that a natural morality had emerged from
the non-Christian spiritual forces that had developed in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, put its faith in the peace
settlement as a foundation from which Catholicity could
rise ; on the other side the weaker force, destined rapidly
to grow, which suspected the possibly deceptive appearances
and found it hard to conceive how positive and workable
religious and moral convictions could develop from so
negative, neutral and naturalistic a basis. Both subsequent
history and any serious analysis of the elements that went
to make up the philosophy of the ' Dawn ' have justified the
doubts and condemned the optimists. None the less it is
even now a task of some difficulty to persuade many a
sincere Christian that the League which—to quote a recent
Catholic moral code—' belonged to Christian tradition, was
embodied in the Christianity of the Middle Ages and was
 24 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
invoked in memorable circumstances by the Holy See M
could justifiably be criticised by Catholics. Evidently it is
not the idea of the League nor the general sense of the
Covenant (which strove to fulfil the suggestions made by
Benedict XV in time of war) which can be criticised, but
the use to which so admirable a theory would inevitably
be put by the three real faiths which still held sway,
striving to ' by-pass ' the Christian faith : faith in
Nationalism defended by the conservative elements, faith
in the ' Dawnist ' and neo-pagan destruction of the religious,
social and cultural traditions of Christianity and national
entities defended by the intellectual Liberal elements, and
faith in a new, class-less, economic, authoritarian State
defended by the Socialist or Marxist elements. These were
the real forces, often of a genuinely spiritual character,
which drove the politicians to make the League in the
first place an instrument in the service of whichever faith
or combinations of faiths they happened to serve and in the
second an object of abuse when the League, in serving one
faith better than another, became in turn an object of hatred
for one side and then a useless encumbrance for the other.
The reality was, as it always is, a question of the spiritual
and moral driving power behind the machine ; the illusion
lay in believing that the perfection of the machine could
compensate for the intentions of those who worked it. The
story of the League is seen in retrospect to have been little
more than the recording by the convenient Geneva gauge
of the hectic risings and fallings and interactions in post-war
Europe of precisely these non-Christian spiritual forces.
And the gauge was rarely able (except in non-political
fields) to record the effect of the sincere spiritual force
behind its aspirations, a force which at the beginning had
behind it the weight of Catholic opinion, because that force
was not sufficiently rooted in any effective social structure
or in any passionate conviction to make its influence felt in
competition with the others.
If, then, we are to trace the action of the Church and
the fidelity to Christian principles of the faithful during the
1 Code of International Ethics, p. I S3.
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LAST WAR 25
interval between the two wars, we must try to see where
and when and how the spiritual force of Christianity
encountered the rapidly developing and altering forces of
Nationalism, Liberalism and Socialism. The real story is
there, not in the sequence of political events and the antics
of statesmen which are but recordings of the stages in the
clash of spiritual and moral forces.
 CHAPTER THREE

SOCIALISM

F the three dominating non-Christian spiritual

forces which we have roughly classified as Socialism,
V.^^ Nationalism and ' Dawnism ' the one which com
bined the worst and the best elements of the almost universal
search for a new order of things was Socialism.
The long and intricate story of the development of
Socialism in its many manifestations cannot be told here ;
nor need it be, for all we require to understand is the
relation between Christianity and what is essential to any
real Socialism. The basic points in mind are these : (i)
True Christianity from its side comes very close to the
spiritual driving force behind all Socialism (and it is because
of this that Socialism contains easily Christianisable elements
in the new order) ; (2) Socialism in its actual historical
development has proved itself more bitterly hostile to
Christianity than either Nationalism or ' Dawnism ' (and so
contains also the worst elements of this order).
The industrial and economic changes of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries have constituted the field within
which the interplay between the new forces has taken place,
and we must here briefly consider this highly important
material factor, namely the social changes which inevitably
followed physical, economic and technical changes in the
tools, so to say, wherewith mankind shapes the future which
his spirit conceives.
It does not matter how far back we trace the Industrial
Revolution, whether to BakewelPs stock-breeding experi
ments or to Hargreaves' spinning-jenny or to Watt's steam-
engines, the point to notice is that a series of changes in the
26
 SOCIALISM 27
technique of production necessarily carried with them vast
changes in the manner of living of peoples of all classes.
Thus the great improvements in agricultural methods in
the second half of the eighteenth century inevitably led to
the enclosure of the common land, and this led to the
enriching of a lessening number of landlords, the depressing
of the yeoman or middle-classes and the pauperisation of
the poor. And all this despite the actual increase in the
agricultural wealth of the nation. In the same way the
rapid development of labour-saving machinery, driven by
the coal that lay close at hand, proletarianised the urban
population, rapidly reinforced by the evicted men of the
land and the swarming new generations. In this era technical
industrial and agricultural changes led to the rich becoming
richer, a few poor rapidly rising to immense wealth, the
creation of a large commercial middle-class and the poor
increasing in numbers and becoming pauperised wage-
slaves of the rich.
Such changes, in their nature accidental in origin and
inevitable in their development, constituted a challenge to
the human spirit. Man, being a religious and moral crea
ture with an inescapable appetite for the good, could not
merely acquiesce. He might (and did) attempt to ration
alise the changes, arguing that here was a law of nature
which in time would operate towards the best good of all.
The immense increase in wealth made possible by new
invention, he would argue, must by free exchange ultimately
benefit the whole community. Such was the most convenient
phase of the ' Dawnist ' reaction ; and it meant in practice
that the rich could grow indefinitely richer without troubling
their consciences. Nor was such a reaction without an
arguable Christian foundation, being connected with that
aspect of Christianity which demands resignation to God's
will, the despising or even despiritualising altogether of tem
poral affairs and the expectation of a generous reward in
heaven if earthly expectations happen to be too long
deferred.
As it happened, the first reactions were universally of a
' Dawnist ' character. On the one side you had those who
28 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
merely accepted the changes as necessarily leading to a
more progressive and happy era for everybody through free
exchange of the new wealth ; on the other side you had
those who recognised in various degrees the present evils
as being ineradicable unless further progress at all levels of
human activity were made, a progress which in these fields
would correspond with the progress made in science and
technique. This was the view taken by all early revolution
aries and Socialists. Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier,
these early experimenters in Socialism, were hoping that
the throwing off of all the superstitious and antiquated
restraints of the past would automatically lead to an eman
cipation of the mind and body of man, especially through
a purified environment and a modern education, corre
sponding with the emancipation already gained through
progress in invention. This view seemed far less consistent
with Christianity, since Christianity was by comparison a
pessimistic force and considered to be closely associated with
the bad past that had to be destroyed.
So far then we have not reached the distinctive Socialist
reaction, as distinguished from the ' Dawnist.' True
Socialism began with Karl Marx.
Marx proclaimed that the present order (capitalism, i.e.
the interpretation of these changes as proving the existence
of a wealth-producing law of nature that would in time lead
to the best good of all) was evil ; that no amount of im
provements along the line of progress, as recommended by
a Robert Owen, could do more than make things worse ;
that this order must and would be smashed in a fight ; that
through this victory a totally new kind of paradise, on earth
and not in heaven, would be won.
This genuinely revolutionary view is of a far more spiritual
character than ' Dawnism,' and yet it is far more radically
anti-Christian in its ends. With Christianity it rejects
mere worldly progress, comfort, wealth as too shallow for
the depths of the human spirit ; with Christianity it rejects
the pagan hope that these things, if indefinitely improved,
can of themselves grow to man's stature ; with Christianity
it rejects the hypocritical pretence that the present essential
 SOCIALISM 29
human rights of the individual can be sacrificed, or for
gotten, because their acceptance happens to be convenient
or is held to be the inevitable way towards a happier future.
With Christianity, too, it accepts the view that the spirit
can only conquer through battling against the flesh and that
the victory to be gained must differ in quality rather than
mere degree from victories gained by the world. But
despite these resemblances, which in their own order go very
deep, Marxism is also the contradiction of Christianity
because it is in direct opposition to the supernatural,
seeking its goal in a new order which is intangible indeed,
but only in the sense that it is a dream, a nebulous un
worldly worldiness. It rejects the bourgeois order and the
philosophic dawn as too shallow, but substitutes for it a
social paradise in which the individual is caught up, as it
were, in a perfectly running mechanised society whose
smooth functioning transcends his earthly appetites. In
the last analysis this is either an empty dream or a sub
human ant-heap. In practice it becomes some more or less
inefficient stage of the same kind of State-capitalism to
which the ' Dawnists ' and Nationalists, as we shall see,
were also inevitably approaching. It accepts the Christian
insistence upon the essential human rights of every individual
but limits them to the materialist and economic sphere,
confines them to the class of those at present oppressed and
envisages a future where those rights will cease to have any
meaning. With Christianity it calls for a fight against evil,
but the fight degenerates into a material war between
classes in which innumerable individual sacrifices are
called for without any hope that these absolute sacrifices can
profit the individuals themselves, but only other, unborn,
individuals no more intrinsically important than those who
have died or suffered in the battle. Lastly, by a perhaps
unnecessary accident due to the common misunderstanding
of the true nature of Christianity (itself often the result of
actual Christian infidelity), Marx and Marxism openly
proclaimed Christianity to be an enemy as dangerous as
Capitalism itself. As such, religion was counted amidst the
evil to be conquered in the battle. It may be, however,
3<^ CHRISTIAN CRISIS
that in doing so it rendered a service to Christianity, for
there has never, as a consequence, been any real danger of
Christians failing to appreciate the incompatibility of
Marxism with Christianity, whereas the more negative
attitude to Christianity of even extremes of Nationalism and
' Dawnism ' has led to perilous confusion and, sometimes,
tragic compromise.
Though the Communist Manifesto was issued in 1848, the
radical divergence between Marxism and the more revo
lutionary aspects of ' Dawnism ' which, at this date, can be
called without doing too much injustice to the name,
Liberalism, could not be appreciated until much later.
Hence we find that the Church throughout the nineteenth
century was more concerned with the dangers of Liberalism
in all its phases than with Marxism as such. We shall refer
to this concern in the next chapter. Though all that was
understood of Socialism proper at the time was condemned
by Pius IX in the Syllabus of 1864,1 the subject was not
fully faced until the Pontificate of Leo XIII. That
courageous and sincere Pontiff understood that Liberalism
(and for that matter the growing Nationalism associated
with it) had once and for all destroyed any ecclesiastical
hopes of preserving or re-establishing the traditional
relations between Church and State. To all intents and
purposes the State had become either hostile to the Catholic
Church or indifferent to it. Such Christianity as it might
still recognise was no more than a secularised legacy of a
moral code where its preservation was necessary to State
purposes. In so far as live Christianity still influenced the
State it was in the degree to which Liberalism, through its
theory of toleration and its defence of individual rights,
permitted individual Christians to bring their weight to
bear upon the State. Leo XIII wisely abandoned in practice
the long-drawn-out and painful efforts to regain the old
positions, and he probably did this with all the more confi
dence in that for many Catholics this struggle had really
become little more than an attempt to ecclesiasticise their
1 The Syllabus was a list of eighty condemned propositions which followed
the Encyclical Quanta Cura.
 SOCIALISM 3*
conservative-nationalist feelings and their dread of revolu
tionary change because it spelt personal danger to them.
But Leo only gave up the fruitless struggle because he
possessed the vision of a far better alternative. Instead of
endeavouring to recapture the now secularised State he
would try to re-Christianise society, thereby, as it were,
passing over the whole post-Renaissance period of Christian
endeavour and seeking inspiration in the Christianity of the
Middle Ages. Because of this he found himself talking a
language which had really more rapport to the new Marxian
Socialism than to the sporadic revolutionary movements
springing from Liberal or ' Dawnist ' outlook. His pro
gramme was to defeat Marxist Socialism by initiating a
Christian social reform which comprised much of what was
good in Marxism. And the mainsprings of this programme,
which would appear to have been germinating in his mind
from the early days, when he, as Nuncio, saw modern
industrialism at work in Belgium, were found in the social
and economic practice of Christian society before the
advent of the modern State.
Consider the following extracts from the 1891 Encyclical
Rerum Novarum :

' The conditions of the working people is the pressing

question of the hour. . . . Misery and wretchedness press
unjustly on the majority of the working class. . . . Society
is divided into two widely different castes : those who
manipulate for their own benefit the sources of supply,
and the needy and powerless multitude, sick and sore in
spirit. . . . Working men have been surrendered to the
hard-heartedness of employers and the greed of un
checked competition. ... A small number of the very rich
have been able to lay upon the teeming masses a yoke
little better than slavery itself. ... It may truly be said
that only by the labour of the working-classes do States
grow rich. ... It is shameful and inhuman to treat men
like chattels to make money by. ... A workman's wages
should be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support
himself, his wife, and his children. ... It is just and
32 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
right that the results of labour should belong to those
who have bestowed their labour. ... If the State forbids
citizens to form associations, it contradicts the very
principles of its own existence. . . . Wage-earners should
be specially cared for and protected by the Government.
. . . God granted the earth to mankind in general, not
in the sense that all without distinction may deal with
it as they like, but rather that no part of it has been
assigned to anyone in particular, and that the limits of
private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own
industry, and by the laws of individual races. The law
should therefore favour ownership, and its policy should
be to induce as many as possible of the people to become
owners. . .

In this deep sense of the wrongs suffered by the people,

of the fact that the wrongs have resulted from the disorder
of modern economic society with its emphasis of the wealth-
getting by the few, and of the immediate need for thorough
going remedies springing from a totally different
inspiration, we detect at once the presence of a social
consciousness in harmony with Marxian rather than Liberal
grievances.
Though Leo's solution is the very opposite of Marx's
and though Leo condemns with the full spiritual authority
of the Church Marx's class-war, all materialist philosophy
and outlook and the denial of the natural right to private
property, Leo does wholly admit the reality of the social
maladjustment which Marxism undertakes to blast away.
Leo only disagrees because he sees that Marxism has only
another material maladjustment to offer in its place, in
other words that the Marxian revolution is purely negative,
while the Christian social revolution is positive.
We cannot doubt that in the social teaching of Leo XIII,
anticipated, as it was, and prepared for by lonely pioneers
of Catholic Social Action, such as Manning in Britain, de
Mun in France and Ketteler in Germany, modern Christian
ity should have been able to build up a social reforming
movement more powerful even than Marxism. Had it
 SOCIALISM 33
done so, the contemporary almost universal embracing of
anti-Christian spiritual forces would have been checked,
modern history would have followed a very different path
and the spiritual force of Christianity would have in large
measure been restored to the Western world.
But the great lead was not followed ; it was scarcely
heeded until the problem had become almost insoluble.
The reasons for this tragedy are to be found in the attach
ment of Catholics, clerical and lay, to the established order,
an order which, outside the ecclesiastical and private
domains, was permeated with either a non-Christian spirit
or a spirit falling very far short of Christian ideals worthy
of the name.
But as we saw before in relation to Catholics and the war,
it is a mistake to blame the ordinary Catholic or Christian.
He was the victim of generations of gradual attachment
towards paganising secularism in public life, so that at any
given moment he was unprepared for (and often completely
unaware of) needed sacrifices reaching heroism in their
execution and much moral and intellectual training for
their very understanding. In political matters he had only
been trained to take a purely negative view, a view of little
more than ecclesiastical opposition to all liberalising
tendencies, whether good or bad in themselves. In practice
this left three courses open to him. A small and often heroic
band of innovators kept on attempting to find a via media
between Liberalism and Christianity through the acceptance
of what seemed good in Liberalism and the condemnation
of its excesses. These men, the Lamennais, the Montalem-
berts, the Rosminis, the Dupanloups, the Newmans, the
Actons, as well as the above-named social workers, could
and should have inspired a tradition which, when the time
came, would have responded to the lead of Leo and carried
his revolutionary social reform through the ranks of the
Church from the richest to the poorest, the Cardinals to the
humblest cleric. For reasons which we shall touch upon in
the next chapter it proved impossible to form a sufficiently
sturdy and widespread tradition in this sense. A far greater
number took a second course. Accepting the letter, rather
34 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
than the spirit, of the Church's condemnation of Liberalism
they took refuge in a mere conservatism which made them
more than ever attached to the spirit of growing Nationalism
and Capitalism disguised in the dress of Christian fidelity
to authority, order, respect for one's betters, etc. What they
wanted was to endow non-Christian forces with the halo of
Catholic religious sanction. To such minds as these the
Leonine reform, both in political and social matters (e.g.,
the acceptance of the French republic and the doctrine of
Rerum Novarum in its stark phraseology), seemed little short
of a public scandal. They had to bow, but they could never
be pioneers of such reform which therefore broke down
through the failure of the natural links between the Pope
and society. A third group felt in substance that the Church
was simply becoming obscurantist in her relations with the
State and social order. They had their jobs to do as citizens
and their responsibilities in both the political and the
economic world. They must stick to these, remain true to
their Faith in their private lives and in its ecclesiastical and
devotional aspect, but ' by-pass ' it, as it were, when it
ventured to intrude upon public affairs. These men,
Nationalist and ' Dawnist ' in their outlook, had little
sympathy with anything that smacked of genuine Socialism,
so that when Leo put forward a radical programme of
social reform they could disregard this forward-moving
policy with as little spiritual worry as they had disregarded
the Church's previous ultra-conservatism.
The upshot was that there was no existing tradition into
which the Leonine lead could fit itself and no natural
articulation within the Church whereby it could express
itself in action. Even to-day this is only very slowly being
created, and nine Catholics in ten, clerical as well as lay,
are either suspicious or frightened of the plain letter of
Christian social reform.
In honesty it should further be added that the pro
gramme, taken literally, did present great difficulties and
perplexities. Probably Leo himself was not aware of the
revolutionary and economic social changes that would have
been needed to carry Rerum Novarum into execution. Im
 SOCIALISM 35
pelled by the progress of invention and the avalanche-like
nature of economic changes, the economic world was being
swept along towards the almost complete divorce between
the power of wealth and personal responsibility. The worst
of the more superficial injustices were being remedied by
legislation passed largely under the threat of the better-
organised working classes, but the system could not have
been changed without a revolution of the order envisaged by
Marxism. Had Catholic social reform attempted the task,
it would have had to envisage a revolution of the same
magnitude though, of course, directed towards an opposite
end. Even to-day it is to Marxism itself that Catholic social
reformers owe the state of solubility in capitalist society
which makes Catholic social reform a possibility. It is not
surprising that the traditionally conservative Catholic and
Christian body never even got within the range of such
ideas, and still fears them to-day.
Thus the vast masses of Christians were left the victims of
the economic evolution, enforcing the code of the day as
employers or submitting to it as employees, with nothing
but the spiritual force of ' Dawnism,' Nationalism and what
was left of Socialism when its anti-Christian, materialist and
revolutionary teeth were extracted to oppose to its growing
disorder. As for their Christianity, it tended more and more
to become a matter of Sunday observance and private life.
Marxian Socialism developed unimpeded except by the
strong arm of the secularist State.
It was, as we know, destined to find root under the very
exceptional conditions of a defeated Russia where a debased
religion and a still more debased and out-dated political
and social order left no spiritual forces whatsoever capable
of resisting the tidal wave.
 CHAPTER FOUR

« DAWNISM '

SHORT and compressed as has been my description of

the growth of Socialism, it will probably be more
satisfactory than any brief account that can be given
of ' Dawnism.' The very use of this convenient term
indicates how vague and wide is the ideology covered by
this second spiritual force from which we have all been in
greater or less measure affected. The commoner name for
it U Liberalism, with Democracy as its political and social
expression, Laissez-Faire as its economic aspect and Scientific
Progress as its working philosophy.
To trace the origins of the general conception and of its
different aspects would take too long, and we only need
one or two general clues, if we are to understand its relation
to Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The belief that through the use of unfettered human
reason, as exercised by the more intelligent of men, the
dawn of a coming golden age could be ensured for mankind
became widespread in the eighteenth century. But from
the very beginning one can detect two separate and, at
bottom, contradictory currents running through this idea.
One current emphasised the idea of ' unfettered ' and the
other the idea of ' reason.' One was a movement of libera
tion and the other a movement towards control.
Reacting to the mass of bad and antiquated restraints
over social and individual action exercised by the ancien
regime, men began to look forward to an order of liberty and
democracy in which sweet reasonableness alone would
ensure happiness, justice, and the exercise of the inborn
rights of man. ' Man is born free, but is everywhere in
36
 ' DAWNISM ' 37
chains.' On the other hand, every person who tried to go
any distance in outlining the nature of the future free order
of society under the dominion of Reason found himself
planning the imposition of a new authority no less complex
and compelling than the old one. This new system, no
doubt, differed from the old in that it was rational and not
superstitious, but, just as much as the old, it was in contra
diction to the liberalising current. The reconciliation of the
two currents could only be made by a supreme act of faith
or by a patent trick. The act of faith consisted in the
belief, not only that Reason could guide man, but that
every man and every society of men would inevitably act
reasonably if left to their own devices ; in other words, that
Reason would operate through the freedom of mankind.
In practice no one had the courage to act on this hope, and
the difficulty was resolved by a trick. Rousseau, for example,
having asserted that men living together in society can
remain as free as they were before through obeying their
pooled wills, is gradually forced to give a totally different
meaning to this ' general will.' This will, instead of remain
ing a pooled will, becomes man's best will or what man ought
to will, that is, a Sovereign Reason compelling the behaviour
of individuals and which individuals would will if they
understood their own best good. The idea of liberation in
fact collapses before the idea of authority for the happiness
of society depends upon the imposition on men of the duty
to act in accordance with the general will seeking the real
good of all. In less philosophic and more practical fashion
the same contradiction was resolved in Britain. Here the
Utilitarians, Bentham and Mill, sought both to emancipate
and to impose a new authority which should advance ' the
greatest good of the greatest number.' Their solution was
the representative system (objected to by Rousseau as a
fake) in which the political liberty of individuals was
confined to the election of nominated deputies who, once
elected, imposed their authority in the name of utility or
reason.
Still, in the earlier phases of ' Dawnism ' all were agreed
that Reason, whether reached through the mere breaking
38 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
off of the bonds of the past or through a despotic imposition
by the few really enlightened people, must in time achieve
the ' Dawn.' The inherent contradiction between the two
ways became infinitely more serious when Science came
into its own. Science showed itself to be less and less
reasonable in the earlier sense of reason. The more men
studied with fidelity the behaviour of nature, animals and
men, the more clearly they realised that they were not
automatically approaching the golden age. Nature turned
out to be red in tooth and claw ; men propagated at a rate
which must at an early date catch up with the possible
increase in food and therefore spell misery ; the stupendous
forces, unleashed by the physicists and chemists, were
completely indifferent to the ' good,' and could be used
just as easily to destroy mankind as to make him happier.
Mere liberation, it seemed, so far from leading to sweet
reasonableness, led to disaster ; while Reason itself was
being deprived of the basic principle upon which its use had
rested, namely that nature was intrinsically reasonable.
Thus throughout the ' Dawnist ' movement there ran the
contradiction between the idea of emancipation and the
idea of the imposition of a new authority of Reason, a con
tradiction at first reconciled by an act of faith or a trick,
but later to be openly revealed through the gradual realisa
tion that Man and Nature, whether liberated or directed
by exceptionally rational leaders, did not, after all, progress
towards a golden age.
These contradictions, however, were not apparent, and
they made themselves felt like the fires within the earth
which from time to time explode and dam the channels
which have hitherto been followed. ' Dawnism,' as it
were, kept on coming to sudden stops, but the spiritual
force of liberation behind it was so strong that the dams
were again and again surmounted.
It was this liberalising force which brought ' Dawnism '
into opposition with the Church. The French Revolution
and the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 seemed like the
attempt to destroy the established order of society, of which
the Church itself was a part. Indeed Liberalism and anti
 ' DAWNISM ' 39
clericalism were always very closely associated. But the
destruction of the ancien regime, of which the national
Churches in practice had not always formed too glorious
a part, was in fact the best element in ' Dawnism.' Its real
danger to Christianity lay in its naturalistic faith in human
Reason, divorced from God, destined soon because of its
inherent self-contradictoriness to dissipate itself into Nation
alism, Socialism and a whole host of petty Utopias deprived
of any but purely emotional foundations. And the danger
of this positive side was far less readily seen by Catholics
and Christians in general. On the contrary, at different
periods many Catholics have sought to ' cash in ' on
' Dawnism,' emphasise its superficial resemblance to Chris
tian doctrines and seek a place in the sun for the Church
herself. Thus the relations between Christianity and
* Dawnism ' in the nineteenth century read like the defence
of a beleaguered religious city with a series ofparleys arranged
in the hope of extracting special terms, chiefly toleration for
the Church in the new era of toleration, a place for Catholic
learning in the world which science would direct, and the
right of Catholic citizens to further Christianity through
the democratic machinery. Looking back, we can see that
it might have been a much better policy to abandon the
negative policy of mere self-defence and carry the war into
the enemy's territory with spiritual and philosophic weapons
sharpened upon the arms of the enemy.
All that was good in ' Dawnism ' was in fact of Christian
inspiration. To free society and individuals of largely
meaningless fetters externally imposed by mere tradition or
secular authority was in harmony with the spiritual and
rational Christian ideal ; still more was it in the spirit of
Christianity to relieve man from unjust oppression, inequit
able laws, cruelty and everything that made him the
instrument of another's will. The claim that every person
should be guaranteed his essential human rights and the
wish that he should have his say in the making and running
of the society of which he was a member was not only
consistent with Christianity, but could only rest upon the
spiritual teaching that every single human being was a
40 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
person, an end-in-himself, a being made in God's image
with an eternal destiny and equal in these fundamentals to
all other men. Lastly, the act of faith in Reason could
only make sense if Reason was the expression of a personal,
all-wise and omnipotent Providence. Thus ' Dawnism '
only ceased to be Christian after kicking away the ladder
upon which the whole ideology rested and up which it had
in fact climbed. Here then was an opportunity for Chris
tianity to come out into the open with its tremendous
armoury of spiritual weapons and take ' Dawnism,' left
standing high and dry, to establish it upon the firm founda
tions for which it craved and for want of which it would
become a danger to our civilisation. This was not done
for two interrelated reasons. In the first place Christianity
itself had become so involved in the secular errors and
infidelities that had been heaping up since the Renaissance
that the first requisite would have been a thorough-going
reform of its own practice outside the purely doctrinal and
devotional field. And in the second place the new move
ment swept on with such force that there was no time for
Christianity to disentangle the good from the bad either in
the movement or in itself in relation to the movement.
Christianity was therefore forced on to the defensive,
defending not only the good but also not a little of what
was bad in its practical behaviour. Courageous pioneers
like Lamennais and Montalembert in France, Manzoni in
Italy, Newman in England, and a number of less well-
known Catholics in Germany attempted to take the fight
on to the enemy's ground, but the work was under the
circumstances so dangerous, both in maintaining their own
orthodoxy and in committing the Church to unpopular
changes, that they were disheartened or actually stopped.
Much more popular were the attempts, such as those of
O'Connell in Ireland or the Catholic-freeing revolts of
1848, to gain islands of liberal tolerance for Catholicity
within an anti-Christian framework of ideas. In the long
run the apathy and indifference of Catholics in the con
ception of their moral duties as citizens left the Church no
alternative but to negotiate, often with a nominally Catholic
 ' DAWNISM ' 41
State, for the securing of the minimum religious liberties
due to any sect in a liberal State.
The failure, however, of the pioneers and the deceptive
nature of early successes in obtaining a place in the sun for
Catholicity led to the greatest attack on Liberalism and all
its works in 1864 under the Pontificate of Pio Nono, himself
sadly deceived by subsequent events in his early hopes of
coming to terms with ' Dawnism.' This attack consisted
of the gathering together in the Syllabus of all the errors con
tained in the contemporary political and social movements.
The Syllabus was a remarkable example of the spiritual
and moral capital of the Church in that its full justification
could only be appreciated many years after its issue. At
the time it seemed highly obscurantist, and it might almost
be said to have been issued for insufficient motives, Catholics
themselves being busily engaged for years in trying to
explain it away. In the fear lest the liberal ideas of the
time should drive the political and social doctrine of the
Church off the map, the Syllabus, relying upon traditional
teaching in its most uncompromising form, seemed to
condemn with the bad all the seeds of good in Liberalism.
It appeared as though the Church was giving up the
attempt to disentangle what was Christian from what was
Pagan and secularist, and making it impossible for the
Catholic to take his place at ail in the modern world, still
less to re-found liberal aspirations upon that foundation of
faith in God and redeemed man from which Liberal ideals
in the Middle Ages had naturally grown. Many concluded
that the Church had once and for all plumped, as it were,
for the ancien regime. Yet looking back over the historical
developments of ' Dawnism ' between the days of the
Syllabus and the present time, we can see how wise the
Church was in bringing up and sharpening again the whole
armoury of Christian doctrine, for all the errors which the
Syllabus then condemned in an ideology that seemed com
paratively harmless and in many respects good have mani
fested themselves to such a degree that they threaten to
smash the structure of the West, leaving Christianity but
a small hope of saving the situation at the last moment.
42 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Unfortunately, between the anathemas of the Syllabus and
the practical compromises of Catholic citizens the Church
herself was left steering between doctrinal severity and
practical accommodations with the secularist world. She
could never trust her faithful to risk the hazards of a sea
uncharted save by Christian dogmas.
 CHAPTER FIVE

NATIONALISM

FROM the first the idea of liberation from ancient

thraldom conflicted with the imposition of a new
kind of rational or scientific authority which was in
fact to force menforward in a direction whose precise nature
became less and less satisfactory as philosophers and scien
tists began to realise that Nature and human reason were
not the open sesame to the golden age.
This new authority ran in many different currents.
There was in the first place the sheer reaction to anarchy
and disorder produced by the liberal emancipation, as, for
example, when the Napoleonic Empire succeeded to the
French Revolution. In this reaction the rousing of popular
aspirations towards the dawn of liberty, equality and
fraternity was converted to the popular support of a national
Empire, where the word ' national ' stood for a communal
pride of the emancipated people in their united strength
under a leader sprung from the people. And this Napoleonic
Empire, though it left but small territorial changes, initiated
many characteristics of the modern State. Because it broke
so sharply with precedent and custom, the power of the new
State was morally irresponsible, despite the vague respon
sibility to the people from whose national will it was sup
posed to spring. The new State claimed a new and, in
many respects, far more complete authority over its
' sovereign ' subjects who, after all, in Rousseau's ter
minology were only ' obeying themselves ' in submitting to
slavery ; an important example was the new State's ability
to conscript for national military purposes the manhood of
the nation. This made the force of militarism and the ideal
43
44 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
of Nationalism one single thing, irresistible on the moral
and material plane. The new State was made vastly more
efficient by the new codification of laws, the undertaking of
public works, the building of new roads, all of which, while
they added to the comfort and often scope of the individual,
had for their ultimate purpose the increase of national
power and the underlining of its glory. The new State by
its sheer effective power was able to force upon the Church
a bargain, called a concordat^ which substantially denied
Christianity's universal religious and moral claims, while
allowing to it a limited and harmless toleration, and then
to refuse to keep its promises. The new State in seeking
widespread national empire aroused equal and opposite
national movements throughout Europe, thus initiating the
era of national wars between peoples for justice's sake.
Though patriotism is as old as man and nationalism goes
back many centuries, the Napoleonic Empire created the
omnipotent national God, making the first claim on the
services of all citizens.
Nothing indeed is more striking than the way in which
the Napoleonic Empire, in carrying through the construc
tive ideas of the French Revolution and reacting against its
purely negative ideas, anticipated the slower course of a
hundred and fifty years of history. The years 1 798-1 815
were like the first violent and localised eruption of a disease
destined, despite an apparent cure, slowly to work through
the whole body in all its original phases.
What took place in this period of French history was
rationalised by the philosophers of the ' Dawn,' Rousseau,
Hegel and Marx. In substance this second channel along
which the new authority ran can be understood by reference
to Rousseau's view that a community of men who place
national sovereignty in their own united wills ' obey them
selves ' when they submit to the orders of the national
sovereign, i.e. of their own ' general will.' (This, we saw,
was the way in which the philosophers tried to reconcile the
opposite ideas of liberation and authority.) The ' general
will ' becomes ' not what the community wants,' but ' what
it would want if it understood its own best business.' Thus
 NATIONALISM 45
social authority no longer springs from your will or my
will or even the will of all (reached, let us say, by an elec
tive machinery), but from a totally new will which under
stands what is good for us, and which we, as rational
creatures, must spontaneously approve of since we cannot
wish ourselves harm. In Hegel, whose thought influenced
the history of Prussia, this idea is fitted into a determinist
metaphysics which, when applied to society, made the
State the expression of the Absolute or God. For him,
therefore, the idea of true freedom leads necessarily to the
absolute authority of the highest thing on earth of which
we can conceive, namely the State in which the abstract
individual finds his good and his completeness. And since
only a German metaphysician could seriously hold that the
Prussian State was the best available manifestation of God,
it was not surprising that others found his doctrine a con
venient excuse for deifying the national State as such.
Marx, who was his disciple, with slightly greater plausibility
identified the Absolute with the materialist necessity of the
victory of the proletariate after capitalism had been smashed
up in the class war.
Another highly important current of the new respect for
State authority was to be found in British political history.
England, the home of the Industrial Revolution, was faced
with the biggest problems arising from the tremendous
economic changes of the time. Characteristically, it was
only in the economic field that she propounded a theory,
the theory of laissez-faire. According to this view God had
'created the order of the world so much for the benefit of
the rich men in England that you had but to leave them
alone to grow rich through free and unimpeded exchange
of wealth and labour to be certain of reaching in time a
universal economic Utopia. This belief died hard in the
economic field, but in the social and political field (where
it was important to keep men in discipline) utilitarianism
with representative democracy were the order of the day.
The utilitarian reformers, like the Continental Enlightened
Despots of the eighteenth century, imposed in the name of
' the greatest good of the greatest number ' legislation
46 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
mainly directed towards making the country into a suitable
instrument for wealth production. The traditional British
idea of political liberty was safeguarded by reforms in the
representative system which, as far as making any real
change was concerned, were of no avail in the face of the
growing wealth of the governing class. Very slowly but
methodically Britain was moulded into the financial capital,
the factory and the communications of the new age with
nationalism and imperialism subservient to this ideal and
with as much freedom as was reconcilable with this ambi
tion. Behind the backs of citizens who thought themselves
politically and economically free because they could vote
and enjoyed free speech, there grew an irresponsible and
all-powerful plutocracy. In time Britain's example was
imitated by others.
Lastly, a fourth and very important current of authority
arose from the rapid progress of Science. Having dis
covered in biology and economics that Nature was the seat
of an unending struggle with ' the survival of the fittest,'
and having also found that in physics and chemistry progress
could only be obtained by making use of Nature's laws for
definite ends, the goodness or badness of which Science
itself did not reveal, the Scientists set the mood for a pessi
mism that counteracted the optimism of ' Dawnism.' Men
began to suspect that with mankind, as in animal and
inorganic nature, results could only come from ruthless
planning for a clearly understood purpose and through the
use of compulsion for the ordinary man's best good. The
prestige of the expert behind the scenes increased on the one
side, and the appeal to the doctrine of direct force became
more common on the other. Democracy, even though it
might seem on the surface to be growing, became in fact
more and more of a pretence in the face of the rapidly
increasing power of the State with its army of experts,
economic, sociological, diplomatic, political, scientific ;
democracy also found itself in conflict with the weapon of
direct action as resorted to by organised labour which
gained by strikes or the threat of strikes infinitely more than
it ever could gain at the polls.
 NATIONALISM 47
This new development, which arose from the spiritual
force of ' Dawnism,' is best called ' State-ism ' : the
immensely increased authority of the impersonal State
which, as it were, gathered into itself all the currents making
for the imposition of authority over the individual.
The masses, for the most part, were induced to accept
with such freedom as they possessed the new slavery because
they were cleverly persuaded that it was still all in the
interest of the new ' Dawn ' and because they were steadily
injected with the feverish fervour of Nationalism. The
intellectuals, the ' clerks '—to use Benda's words—not only
fell for the same fallacy, but devoted their arts to its propa
gation. The majority, perhaps, of all classes rationalised
their personal desire to share in the growing wealth by per
suading themselves that the capitalist order was ultimately
in the best interests of the whole community, poor as well
as rich. They did this, at any rate, until Socialism became
sufficiently widespread to establish a new hope and a new
spiritual force for many of the working classes and some of
the intellectuals, a force that could smash the present order,
but for the purpose of establishing another materialist and
State-ist Utopia for their own benefit and the redemption
of their deceived betters. The establishment of a Socialist
force, on the other hand, added to the strength of the
' Dawnist,' Nationalist and Capitalist appeal for those who
tended, as time went on, to group themselves more and
more into an anti-Socialist front.
It must unfortunately be confessed that, except in the
case of Socialism (for reasons explained in the last chapter)
and in the case of the revolutionary aspects of ' Dawnism '
(which were far less important than the consequences to
which it led), Christianity failed to realise the danger. The
Syllabus, it is true, did condemn practically everything
represented by all these tendencies, but it was, to some
extent, a condemnation per accidens. In order to oppose the
anti-clerical effects of the new doctrines, it drew upon all
the doctrinal and moral resources of the Church, and so
also achieved the condemnation of the implicit errors con
tained in this Nationalism, State-ism and Capitalism.
48 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Furthermore, this condemnation was wholly negative, en
visaging a return to an age that was past rather than the
construction of a new Christian order which could provide
the needed spiritual foundation for the new aspirations, a
foundation that could have supported much that was good
and much that was inevitable in ' Dawnism.' For this
reason the action of Pius IX encouraged the obscurantists
and depressed the pioneers. On the generality of the
faithful, as affected by the forces of ' Dawnism ' and
Nationalist-Capitalism, it made no difference whatsoever.
Exactly like the rest of the people, they submitted to
State-ism or propagated it in the guise of ' Dawnism ' and,
still more, Nationalism. Nor was the clergy behind the
laity in its manifestations of civic allegiance to the new
faiths (with the exception of Socialism and anti-clerical
revolutionary Liberalism).
To Nationalism in particular clergy and laity fell com
plete victims. There were various reasons for this. In the
first place they confused it with patriotism, a Christian
virtue, and, in the second, support of Nationalism seemed
like the proper Christian acceptance of God-willed, legal
authority in a world where other aspects of this authority
were less enticing. Lastly, there was the hope that the
Church could strike a reasonable bargain if Catholics were
conspicuous for their fidelity to their country. We must
also add that they were untrained to establish an alternative
Christian ideology.
Love for one's country and due submission to one's
lawful superiors in all that is not sin have always been
characteristics of the Christian. Christianity, because it
is truly a religion, has never fallen into the error of trying
to found a theocracy, i.e., it has never attempted to identify
the eternal with the temporal and material, an attempt for
which the excuse is always the spiritualising of the material
but of which the consequences are invariably the material
ising of the spiritual. Christianity is like a form which
' orders ' or gives shape to the temporal so that the temporal
may help man to gain his eternal salvation and attain the
full realisation of his person on earth. Creation is like a
 NATIONALISM 49
kingdom of ends, the lesser ends being subordinated to the
greater ends and the greater to the supreme end. Christianity
keeps before man the knowledge of his supreme end and
protects the way along which he should approach towards
it. Though the supreme end in its fullness was specially
revealed in time and though the Church was founded at a
definite date for its supreme purpose, the kingdom of ends
was not an external imposition upon formless matter.
The universe was created in a natural order of means and
ends, and man was created with a natural appetite for the
good, and in God's own image. Thus we find that, despite
the Fall, the reasonable nature of man leads him to behave,
personally and socially, according to a law or pattern,
of itself conformable to the supreme design, but requiring
supernatural grace, mediated either through the Church
or the interior action of the Word which enlightens every
man that comes into the world, to bring it to fulfilment.
The association of men in an ordered society, delimited
in territory and demarcated by common characteristics
acquired by environment and tradition, i.e., the State, is
one of the natural orders in the general pattern. The
Church then, so far from attempting to destroy this natural
foundation in order to impose a new and artificial one of
her own invention, preserves it, respects it, enjoins the
fidelity of her faithful towards the authority in it and in
its own particular customs, and finally seeks to guide it
where it may be out of harmony with the supreme end of
mankind. Patriotism, which is a natural love for those
who are thus associated with us in such a society and the
natural desire for their welfare in and through this society
(to which each of us owes many services) is therefore
inculcated by Christianity. So is due submission to an
authority which, because it is natural, is God-willed and an
expression of God's own supreme authority.
Because of all this the Church is never in a position
to order Caesar's execution, nor even to bid the faithful
cease to render to him allegiance in his natural function.
When, therefore, Caesar exceeds his power or makes
quasi-divine claims, it is an extremely delicate business
50 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
for the Church to distinguish where his proper authority
ends.
Moreover, Catholics in the nineteenth century, fearing
the effects of Liberalism on the Christian establishment in
the different countries, felt themselves to be thrown back
all the more on this teaching of Christian allegiance to
Caesar, as likely to preserve discipline and order against
the revolutionary elements and as a possible counter in the
Church's favour when it came to bargaining with the
secularised authorities.
For such reasons Catholics, clerical and lay, tended to
become strong Nationalists and upholders of the estab
lished economic order, unless these very obviously indeed
(as in the special case of Italy) spelt great danger to the
Church. They were very far from realising that their
allegiance was not only to their particular country as a
historical and social entity, but in practice an allegiance
also to rapidly developing spiritual forces, in the political,
social economic and ultimately international fields, destined
to reveal themselves shortly as incompatible with Christi
anity. The Syllabus had not exaggerated in this respect.
When the realisation of the truth came it was often too
late to do anything that would not have involved a revolt
that seemed incompatible with Christian citizenship.
In most cases, however, the process of integration into
the Nation-State was so regular and subtle as to make the
realisation of the truth unlikely.
While the ' Dawnists ' still hoped on, ready to take
advantage of any favourable turn to see the beginnings
of a possible new age and maintaining their propaganda
for more and more freedom and relaxation from established
custom in morals and religion ; while the Nationalists
intoxicated themselves and others with the idea of national
greatness and power ; while the majority saw in this
freedom and in this national strength their best chance of
preserving or making wealth in abundance ; while the
Socialists plotted to found a new materialist Utopia for
themselves and resorted to violence to obtain workers'
rights—those who really counted, the financial and economic
 NATIONALISM 51
moulders of the new State drove the West on, confident
in the fact that the experts on the one side could enslave
the people in precisely the degree in which this was needed
and that the politicians, national leaders and soldiers, on
the other, could build up an Empire, guaranteeing sources
of wealth and protecting the riches acquired and to be
acquired.
To this challenge to the whole spiritual force of
Christianity as it had been exercised with varying degrees
of success for nearly two thousand years and as it had been
universally acknowledged in Western civilisation, the
Church in the nineteenth century only responded twice :
pioneers made on the whole unhappy attempts to conquer
the ' Dawnist ' movement for the Church by establishing
it on the Christian foundation it lacked ; and Leo XIII
invited Christianity to conquer Marxism with Christian
social reform. Both sorties were unsuccessful, and the
Church herself remained strictly in a state of siege, pre
serving intact her own spiritual, doctrinal and moral life.
Unfortunately the masses of Christians, with their dual
allegiance to Church and State, could not remain within
the fortified walls of the City of God. Unprotected against
the false philosophies abroad, unaware of their peril, not
rarely even encouraged to quicken their allegiance to their
countries, they tended to achieve a dual personality. On
week-days they were wholly men of the world, slaves, like
their fellow men, of the new spiritual forces and victims of
the new economic State-ism ; on Sundays and in their
purely private lives they remained, many of them, model
Christians.
When the war came they conscientiously fought one
another to establish the dominion of the rival anti-Christian
spiritual forces, not heeding even the advice of the Pope,
and yet prayed together in spirit and in the Mystical Body
of Christ for the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.
The crisis had come to a head.
 CHAPTER SIX

THE 'DAWNIST' PEACE

THE account which I have tried to give of Dawnism '

may lead to a misunderstanding, for I have made
it appear that ' Dawnism ' was a spent force at
least by the end of the nineteenth century. Such an impres
sion must necessarily arise from an analysis showing that
the actual changes coming about in Europe were due not
to ' Dawnism ' itself, but to Nationalism (with its secondary
aspect of big-business Capitalism, working for a strong
nation, able to increase markets and protect business
freedom) and to Socialism, both of which were encouraging
the industrial, technical and economic changes that made
for State-ism, i.e., the increase of the impersonal forces of
the State. ' Dawnism,' or the rapidly spreading faith in
progress and the golden age through the breaking-down of
superstitious restrictions on human liberty and antiquated
traditions and through the encouragement of democracy,
humanitarianism, social equality, etc., did practically
nothing to stem the enslaving forces of Nationalism and
* Socialism or the natural development towards State-ism
of the economic and technical changes of the century.
But while ' Dawnism ' was ineffective, in this sense, its
popularity did not diminish. That is why I stated in the
chapter before last that ' Dawnism,' as it were, kept on
, coming to sudden stops, but the spiritual force of liberation
behind it was so strong that the dams were again and again
surmounted. *
The hopes for a new dawn, so strong was the new gospel
preached by a Wordsworth or a Shelley :
52

s
 THE 'DAWNIST' PEACE 53
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree.
(Prometheus Unbound.)
grew and grew, in almost complete dissociation from the
facts of contemporary history, reaching their climax during
the war and the peace-making that followed it.
A world-war, in fact, exactly suited the mentality of the
' Dawnists.' Subconsciously aware that their noble ideals
are in fact far removed from the day-to-day nature of man
and, still more, of society as it works in practice, and sub
consciously doubtful of the practicability of a peaceful
evolution of man to angel, they welcome an explosion from
which, like the conjuror, they hope to bring out a marvel
lous surprise that in the ordinary course of things cannot
be reached. Violence, whether of internal revolution or
external war (though not consciously desired and generally
reprobated in words), is not unwelcome. It was in this
sense that Anatole France wrote : ' When one starts with
the supposition that all men are naturally good and vir
tuous, one inevitably ends by wishing to kill them all.'
This world-war, then, was greeted as a gigantic bonfire
in which once and for all could be consumed all the evil
men, all the evil forces and all the litter, left over from the
ancien rigime, which stood in the path of progress. That is
why the war raised to fever pitch the moral enthusiasm of
millions : the war to end war ; the war to make democracy
safe ; the war to make the world safe for heroes ; the war
to free small nations and small men in large nations ; and
so on. And the peace-making (put into operation through
the charter of Wilson's fourteen points) was undertaken in
exactly the same spirit.
But human nature is a dangerous and a double-sided
force. This humanitarian love of violence is not only a
subconscious confession of weakness ; it closely represents
the inevitable working of a fallen nature, a nature in which
reason rapidly comes under the empire of irrational passion.
If you want something very much, you are tempted to do
54 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
almost anything which will procure it ; and the more
sublime the end, the less regard is paid to the means. The
cruelty of modern warfare (while due in large measure to
technical causes) is a natural response to the sublimity of
the ends for which men believe themselves to be fighting.
The same reason accounts for the increase in hatred and
the desire for revenge. Those who felt most strongly the
righteousness and holiness of the last war tended to be the
very persons who refused to consider a negotiated peace.
It was they who welcomed or fanned propaganda, they
who demanded the extermination of the enemy, they who,
when it came to peace, called loudest for the hanging of the
Kaiser and making Germany pay, they who made them
selves judge, counsel for the prosecution and witnesses,
when the enemy was to be tried. Why not ? Were they
not fighting for a new ' Dawn ' ? And who stood in the
way of this glorious future ? The enemy. ' Down with the
enemy, at any cost.'
From the French Revolution onwards, this close associa
tion between noble idealism and cruel passion can be
traced. The attempt to deny the doctrine of the Fall of
Man always leads to behaviour which sinks deeper than
the Fall itself would warrant.
' Dawnism ' automatically yields excessive Nationalism
and revolutionary Socialism. But perhaps this apparent
law of nature would not have such evil consequences, if
it did not lend itself to an important and never-failing abuse.
I have tried to insist throughout that these forces are
spiritual, sincerely held, meant to raise the moral level of
human society ; and I would certainly not make an excep
tion in this regard for the philosophers of the ' Dawn,' the
patriotic leaders, the prophets of Socialism and Bolshevism.
But behind these and their myriad of followers there lie
two kinds of people : the self-seekers and the servants of
the times. In every society and religion there are men and
women in whom selfishness definitely overcomes idealism
and who ruthlessly seek power for power's sake, wealth for
wealth's sake, career for career's sake. In whatever walk
of life they may be, they are on the look out for the main
 THE 'DAWNIST' PEACE 55
chance of getting ahead. I think one may say without lack
of charity that they are common among politicians and the
financial community. They are also to be found in numbers
among the uprooted Jewish race. Far more honourable,
but unconsciously dangerous also are the servants of the
times. This is the army of experts who by profession are
solely concerned with carrying through and improving
whatever their particular business may be. Civil servants,
scientists, doctors, judges, lawyers, the main body of the
clergy—their life's work consists in blind and faithful
service to their jobs, which they, as it were, pick up at a
certain stage of development and influence on the com
munity and drop, when they retire, at a later stage. What
ever be the line of development—from the point of view of
the community, whether good, bad or indifferent—their
profession makes them its servants. Thus they serve
inevitably the prevalent forces of the day without concerning
themselves about their actual value. (In private life, they
may of course be, and often are, supporters of a spiritual
force, but their influence on the community is infinitely
stronger in their professional capacity than in their private
views.)
Now the common conjunction of idealism of ends with
indifference to means, where the great spiritual forces of a
period of history are concerned, provides, as it were, the
junction between spiritual forces and the actual changes in
history. The prophets with their numberless followers set
the ideal, but, under cover of the idealists' indifference to
forceful, revengeful and cruel means of attaining the ideal,
the self-seekers find their opportunity and the servants of the
times blindly work for the attainment of the next stage of
history which will inevitably prove to be very different from
what the prophets had hoped.
We have seen how this way of evolution was exemplified
in the French Revolution. The Prophets of the ' Dawn,'
in preaching a golden age, stimulated the use of violence.
Under cover of this the self-seekers found an opportunity
of gaining their ends, impressing in their service the pro
fessionals. Thus France passed from idealist revolution to
56 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Napoleonic Empire. In its turn Nationalism became an
ideal with its own prophets, and self-seekers in the political
and economic field made use of the excesses of Nationalism
to advance themselves, while the professionals laboured
hard to develop the impersonal, expert tyrannic State
which suited the seekers after wealth and power. Exactly
the same process can be traced in the evolution of Socialism
and the creation of Bolshevism. Our main concern for the
moment, however, is the development that took place
during and after the world-war.
By this time ' Dawnism ' and Nationalism seemed equally
strong. The vast majority, moreover, of those who would
have called themselves Socialists were still ' Dawnists,' in
the sense that their Socialism was a moderate international
ism for the benefit of the workers of all countries, in a
better world.
The outbreak of war had at once proved that Nationalism
went much deeper than ' Dawnism.' We know the reasons
why. Nationalism was not only the outcome of ' Dawnism,'
in the sense that most of those who looked for a golden age
had been easily persuaded that the use of national force
against bad peoples was the way to bring it about, but the
self-seekers and the professionals had for generations been
strengthening the power of the State as against the in
dividual. As soon, then, as war came, the ' Dawnists ' all
became violent Nationalists in the belief that victory would
bring the ' Dawn ' ; the Nationalists (and most ' Dawnists '
had by this time become Nationalists as well) obviously had
it all their own way ; and most of the Socialists at once
threw over their international hopes for the workers and
joined the national ranks. (Christians, as we have seen,
had become so imbued with ' Dawnism ' and Nationalism
that they did not hesitate for one moment to kill one another
for these new spiritual ends, while the Church herself,
strong in her own ecclesiastical fortress, was impotent to
make a sortie to save either the world or her own subjects.)
When peace came, it seemed as though the ' Dawn ' had
really arrived. Everywhere there was a feeling that
democracy, with all the noble ideals of liberty, justice,
 THE 'DAWNIST' PEACE 57
toleration, peace, etc., which it connoted, could be estab
lished across the breadth of the civilised globe. And as for
the relations between nations, these would at last be settled
once and for all by the League or Community of Nations.
(Christians could scarcely help being leaders in a cause so
evidently in harmony with the social and international ends
of Christianity. Curious, no doubt, that it had all come
about by ' by-passing ' Christian dogma, but there the
ideal clearly was.)
Alas ! the fatal junction between noble aspirations and
mean feelings had not been avoided. A peace, weak where
it should have been severe (if Nationalism alone was to be
served) and unprecedentedly cruel and revengeful where
it should have been charitable (if the noble ideals of
' Dawnism ' were to be attended to), was imposed. The
' Dawnists ' wanted the ' Dawn ' through the throttling
of the defeated enemies of the ' Dawn '—and then began
to have scruples. The Nationalists (and remember that the
two ideals were generally to be found in the same person)
wanted national greatness and security at the expense of
the conquered. And under cover of this the politicians and
the financiers sought power and wealth in every article of
peace which they dictated. The professionals set to work
to fit the peace into the inevitable framework imposed by
the economic, financial, technical, industrial, scientific
forces which they alone understood, pressing, as it were,
from under, so that what was impracticable in the peace
was broken and trying to force the course of history to
follow their impersonal and silent dictation. ->
The absurdity and artificiality of the whole settlement was
not long in manifesting itself. The ' Dawnists ' began to
regret the effects of their harshness, and, feeling that their
opportunity was lost, worked to destroy the peace settlement
in seeking after new opportunities, chiefly of a ' pink '
socialist character. The Nationalists regretted that they had
listened to the ' Dawnists ' at all, and watched with horror
the growth of their own sentiments among the defeated
enemy countries ; they too nursed their lost opportunity
and made frantic and futile efforts to repair the damage by
58 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
creating more. The Socialists, most thoroughly caught of
all, either abandoned themselves to the Nationalist-State-ist
forces, hoping sooner or later to control them by Parliament
ary majority, or looked with longing eyes to Moscow where
world-Bolshevism had been established, not by national
victory but by national defeat. Meanwhile the day was left
in the hands of the politicians and financiers, on the one
hand, and the professional experts, on the other, who tried
to make sense of the whole business, the first (not without
success) to strengthen their own position ; the second (with
out much success) to provide some sort of working order for
the communities.
Such then was the general distribution of forces as they
were to govern the twenty years separating the two wars.
I hope that the reader will bear their general nature in
mind so that he may the better understand the meaning of
the chief events during these years, as I try once again to
relate them to the spiritual force of Christianity.

-
 CHAPTER SEVEN

CATHOLICS ACCEPT THE POST-WAR WORLD

^~>l HRISTIANS, as we have seen, shared to the full the

prevalent post-war optimism. But just as the whole
V*_>! of Europe, with its different interests and forces, was
forced slowly to reconcile itself to the fact that the making
of a peace settlement, as opposed to a peace treaty, was going
to be a very long, arduous and dangerous business after all,
with the rival forces thrown again into the melting-pot, so
the Church and Catholics were forced to study the whole
situation very carefully to see how far Christian forces could
survive.
The Church in the nineteenth century had, on the whole,
set her face against Liberalism because of Liberalism's anti
clerical associations and its implied challenge to established
authority. At the same time she had hoped that the prin
ciples of Liberalism and toleration would be applied to the
Church, leaving her freedom of action where this was essen
tial to her mission. In some countries Catholic political
parties had been formed and Catholic associations of a
liberal character had been founded. These political parties,
one of the chief planks of whose programmes was always
the safeguarding of the freedom and independence of
Catholic education, had merited the strenuous support of
the ecclesiastical authorities ; but the movements of a
liberal and social character, such as the Christian Demo
crats, had been frowned upon by the clergy and the chief
Catholic personalities as dangerous and compromising.
And throughout the century there had not been any serious
practical criticism of the growth of Nationalism, nor even of
the increasing claims of the State over the rights of the
59
6o CHRISTIAN CRISIS
individual person, even though the Encyclicals of Leo XIII,
Rerum Novarum, Immortale Dei and Libertas Prtestantissimum,
had given theoretic expression to principles that should have
undermined Christian allegiance to these errors.
After the war, the Church found herself in a different
world. The fear of the anti-clerical and the revolutionary
in Liberalism had diminished, for the democratic lay State,
now tolerant to a Catholicity which had supported it in war
and itself the established rightful authority, seemed to have
come to stay. Equally, the excessive rivalries arising from
Nationalism now appeared, in the aftermath of war, to
belong to an age that was past. Thus the main lines of the
Church's programme seemed clear. In the favourable
atmosphere she could, first of all, continue with the great
work of developing her own spiritual character, recovering
the full depths of her theology, intensifying the appreciation
of her liturgy and, above all, incorporating into her apostolic
endeavours the spiritual action of the laity. This spiritual
work seemed all the more necessary in that the dangers
of Liberalism were no longer to be found so much in the
public action of States as in their tolerance of moral anarchy
and neo-pagan behaviour in private and social life among
their peoples. Leo XIII's prophecies had come true. The
State, divorced from the Church, had not, seemingly,
brought ruin to international order or to the Church her
self ; but the consequent dissolution of the traditional moral
code within society had gravely endangered individuals,
Christians included, and, unless remedied, threatened a
future social collapse. In particular the family was threat
ened as never before. The Church's business, therefore, as
Leo had suggested, was to restore to society by spiritual and
social means the healing force of Christianity.
In the second place, the Church sought to profit by the
new and secured Liberalism and to establish wherever
feasible a legally grounded code of Christian liberties. The
number of concordats, directed to this end, would greatly
increase.
Thirdly, in an attempt to spiritualize and regain
for Christ the institutions of the new Liberal order, the
 CATHOLICS ACCEPT POST-WAR WORLD 61
Church and individual Catholic leaders sought, wherever
the opportunity occurred, to reform in a Christian sense by
democratic means the new constitutions. It is important to
remember that whatever practice the Church might accept
she has never surrendered at any time, even under Leo, her
claim of indirect authority over the State wherever religion
and morals are in question. And if individual Catholic
leaders have in practice renounced the hope of restoring the
' confessional ' State in the great secularist countries, they
never desist from the attempt to keep lay constitutions in as
much harmony as possible with that natural morality of
which the Church is the expert expounder and spiritual
guardian. After the war opportunities of making Christian
progress in this direction were not wanting. Virtually new
countries where the population was predominantly Catholic,
like Ireland, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria, offered
much better chances than were ever given in the nineteenth
century for the establishing of regimes that were both
Christian and modern. And elsewhere, notably in Italy
and Germany, the new order made it possible for Catholic
parties with far more constructive aims than those of their
predecessors (parties that combined the legal status of the
old negative Catholic parties and the constructive principles
of the pre-war Catholic liberal movements) to establish
themselves and do good work. A notable example was the
Italian Partito Popolare. These new parties, in fact, offered
the first real opportunity for the articulation into national
societies of the principles taught by Leo XIII. Favoured by
ecclesiastical authority, reaping the fruits at last of the
spiritual and social study that had been pursued in the back
ground since Leo and taking advantage of the general
search for the foundations of a better order, the Catholic
popular and social parties promised to be the best solution
to the Christian crisis. Lastly in completely secularist or
non-Catholic countries, like France, the United States and
Britain, the general atmosphere, both on the side of the
Church and of the country, encouraged the initiative of the
Catholic laity, the best minds of which set to work to study
the relations between Christianity and the modern world in
62 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
its political, economic and philosophic bearing and to
suggest far more seriously thought-out ways of stemming
through Christian influence the flood of error which they
discerned under not wholly unsatisfactory appearances.
This work went hand-in-hand with a spiritual and devo
tional renaissance, and in France, for example, Catholicity
effected a revival in intellectual and spiritual circles that
gave greater promise than any movement in that country
since the post-Napoleon romantic revival. In Britain, the
new spirit, necessarily on a much smaller scale and indebted
to Continental writers, was not without its influence in
spiritualising the nucleus of the Anglican Church, and
educating the Catholic community to some sense of its
responsibility.
But Catholics everywhere were conscious of one lowering
cloud overshadowing all this progress : the advance of
Socialism.
Socialism had, in fact, become a greater menace to
twentieth-century Christianity than Liberalism had been
for the Church in the nineteenth century.
The Church's attitude towards Socialism since the last war
has, for better or for worse, had a decisive influence on the
relations between Christian and Western civilisation. We
must therefore study it with the greatest care.
Let me begin by very briefly gathering together what has
already been said on this subject. Socialism began as one
aspect of the general movement towards a new ' Dawn.'
The early Socialists were Utopians who concentrated,
amidst the common desire for emancipation, on emancipating
in particular the ' under-dog.' Return to nature, simplifica
tion of social life, education and peaceful Communism—
this was the original recipe. Added to it gradually were the
reform of the democratic system to give the working man his
full share in altering the laws in his own favour, the strict
organisation of the working classes in Unions for bargaining
purposes with the sanction of the strike, and the clearer
realisation of a genuine Socialist gospel of State ownership
of the means of production to be carried through both by
Parliamentary action and further co-operation in ' direct
 CATHOLICS ACCEPT POST-WAR WORLD 63
action,' culminating in the General Strike. Though the
strike weapon was scarcely in sympathy with the ' Dawnist '
ideals of peaceful evolution through Reason and Back-to-
Nature, this Socialism was fundamentally optimistic and
constitutional. It remained throughout one special aspect
of ' Dawnism.' In contrast stood the real Socialism of Karl
Marx which sought a totally new world order to be attained
by hard-fact logic of the class-war. This Socialism was
pessimistic in regard to the present world, and revolutionary.
Marxism, of course, greatly affected its milder-mannered
brother, but the two forms remain throughout distinct.
For convenience sake, we shall in future call the first variety
' Socialism ' or ' Labour ' and the second ' Communism ' or
' Bolshevism.'
Until the pontificate of Leo XIII both varieties were
treated by the Church as manifestations of the dangerous
tendencies in Liberalism. But the problem of ' the two
nations,' as Disraeli termed it, grew ever more serious as,
under the new industrialism, the rich became richer and
more powerful and the poor more numerous and more
oppressed. In spite of increasing prosperity and political
reforms, the human person was rapidly losing his tradition
ally defended human status and becoming in the elements
of his life the helpless victim of a highly unstable economic
system. Christians who, a generation earlier, could still
comfort themselves with the reflection that ' the poor we
have always with us ' and that suffering will be made up in
the next world were beginning to wonder whether this was
the sort of poverty Christ meant and whether this particular
suffering was a law of nature or the result of culpable human
greed and disorder. Slowly a consciousness of ' the social
problem ' from the Christian point of view developed in the
sense that it was not merely something to be eased, but
something to be changed. (It may fairly be said that in
Britain this consciousness had developed more rapidly in
certain circles of the Church of England than in the Catholic
Church wherein, however, Cardinal Manning was out
standing.) Consciousness of the social problem culminated,
as we have seen, in Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum which,
64 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
however, failed to stimulate the general Catholic body to
action.1
The Christian answer to Communism was undoubtedly
contained in Rerum Novarum, but despite the possession of
this treasure, mined, let us remember, from the quarries of
Catholic social practice before the Reformation, the Church
before the war in practice maintained a purely negative
and hostile attitude to both Socialism and Communism.
The first was frowned upon in company with Liberalism,
while the second was condemned root and branch for three
main reasons : its acknowledged hostility to religion ; its
doctrine of class-war ; and its denial of the natural right to
private property.
Two developments changed the position after the war.
On the one side the Bolshevist regime was established in
Russia and, on the other, the programme of Christian social
reform began to take a more positive, actual and generally
approved character.
Bolshevism-in-being more than confirmed the worst
suspicions of the Church. In three respects it outdistanced
the most morbid anticipations. Its persecution of religion
was more thorough and cruel and positive (as contrasted
with the negative anti-clericalism of Liberalism or Socialism)
than could have been expected. It organised an effective
and determined world-wide Bolshevist propaganda that, in
the troubled after-war years, threatened almost all European
countries and spread in time to the most distant parts of the
world. And lastly its own internal rule proved to be com
pletely tyrannic and ruthlessly oppressive. Bolshevism was
' anti-Christ,' the gravest threat since Mahommedanism to
the heart of Christianity and Western civilisation. In the
shadows thrown by this tremendous threat, everything else
seemed by comparison friendly ; but also everything took
on a suspicious look just in case it was a disguised part of
the Bolshevist threat.
On the other side, however, the growing interest in
1 Fr. Vincent McNabb tells the story that on one occasion he was censured
by a bishop for the social doctrines he defended in a sermon. He submitted
the text to the bishop, marking the passages taken directly from the Pope's
encyclical, passages which in fact made up the substance of the sermon.
 CATHOLICS ACCEPT POST-WAR WORLD 65
Christian social reform made Catholics more tolerant of
the constitutional Socialism (which had now generally
dropped its anti-clerical character) of the Second Inter
national. Catholic parties in general were willing to
co-operate with constitutional Socialist parties and, in
countries where Catholics were not politically organised,
they were not prevented, but sometimes even encouraged to
join the Socialist or Labour party. Nominally Catholic
parties were ready to coalesce with Socialists. Christian
Trade Unions, where they existed, sought opportunities for
working in with secular Trade Unions.
On analysis it will be found that the Catholic attitude in
both respects was a curious and unconvincing one. That
Catholicity had to oppose Bolshevism goes without saying,
but the actual operation of this opposition was largely
uncritical. As I stated in an earlier chapter, Bolshevism
contains the best, as well as the worst, elements in the non-
Christian spiritual forces of our times. It is a spontaneous
and, in a perverted way, a religious reaction to the appalling
economic and social injustices arising from the national and
personal scramble after wealth that characterised the
nineteenth century. The establishment of Bolshevism in
the thoroughly un-typical conditions of Russia, where a
couple of hundred years of political and economic change
were concertinaed into a couple of years by the mysterious,
mystical-minded, nihilistic, convulsive Russian character,
gave the first Communist experiment peculiar charac
teristics which anti-Communists too readily accepted as
inevitable accompaniments of Bolshevism. Nor can it be
doubted that the quality of the Christian opposition to
Bolshevism was chiefly determined by the religious persecu
tion and the positive Godless creed, rather than by the
social and economic contents of the Communist theory.
Indeed, the denial of the right to private property, the
public ownership of the means of production, the increase
in the political and economic power of the State, even the
class-war in milder forms were tolerated in practice, though
not in theory, where they formed part of the ultimate
programme of constitutional Socialist parties. And if one
66 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
may argue that Christians failed to distinguish between the
typical and the un-typical in Russian Bolshevism, treating
the whole movement as a terrible bogey whose structure
need not be analysed, one must also say that willingness in
practice to co-operate with constitutional Socialism was
equally uncritical and opportunist, arising from a false
confidence engendered by the optimism and tolerance of
the times. For the fact was that this Socialism hastened
everywhere the political, social and economic evolution to
impersonal State control over the lives of the citizen. Like
' Dawnism,' an extreme form of which it really was, its
vision of a golden age was nothing but a mirage of the
reality, viz., the capitalist State tyranny of a mechanised,
materialist, impersonally directed social machine reducing
the individual to the status of a well-oiled cog. Moreover,
as the years passed by and the constitutional Socialist
parties found themselves more and more caught up in the
complexities of the modern State running through political
and economic crises, so more and more of the intelligent
moderate Socialists began to look to the pure theory of
Marxism and, in doing so, recruited growing numbers of
' Dawnists,' left high and dry by the receding tide of pro
gress. From these advanced elements in every class there
grew a veritable army of what may conveniently be called
' Pinks ' whose theories were increasingly disintegrating,
anarchistic and morally chaotic, and who, far better than
the Komintern could of itself manage, were preparing the
way for the moral, social and economic collapse of Europe.
In particular, their repudiation of the traditional Christian
restraints on moral licence in social life tended to destroy
the fibre of society and its resistance to poisonous theories.
Thus the fear of the Bolshevist bogey had tended to
weaken Catholic confidence in its own constructive social
reform programme and to make Christian forces the instru
ments of the dangerous ' Dawnist ' constitutional Socialism
(in itself not less contrary to Christian ideals) . And when
the economic crisis of 1929, revealing the weaknesses of
constitutional Socialism and its subservience to the im
personal and badly-working economic machine, drove
 CATHOLICS ACCEPT POST-WAR WORLD 67
thousands, who would have appreciated genuine Christian
Social Reform, into a semi-Bolshevist Pinkism, vast numbers
of Christians, appalled by the threatening disintegration,
reacted with extreme violence into the support of Nationalist
Totalitarianism. By that date anything seemed better than
hastening social and political chaos, almost universally
attributed by Catholics to Bolshevism, but actually the
logical consequence of the errors inherent in Socialist
' Dawnism ' and National ' Dawnism.' Bolshevism, it need
hardly be said, made the best of its opportunities, but the
opportunities themselves were created by the political and
economic and moral maladjustments which a forceful
Christianity (almost wholly engaged in pointing out the
Bolshevist danger and making the best terms possible with
the rest of the world) could have laboured to prevent.
So much for post-war ' Dawnism ' in its Socialist aspect.
We must now consider the no less dangerous consequences
of its Nationalist aspect.
Despite the general optimism (which included that of
Christians) the Peace Treaty, the League and the Covenant
were not settling Europe down to a ' no more war ' con
dition. As we look back over the years we have no difficulty
in seeing why. To take only two reasons. We had got rid
of the Kaiser (sparing him the rope), the German army, the
German politicians who wanted the war ; and in their stead
there ruled in the ex-enemy country a highly democratic
and up-to-date regime wherein popular, Socialist and
Christian influences heavily outweighed anything that might
have been left of the bellicose, domineering, Prussian
Nationalist spirit. In other words, we had put an effective
end to the Germany of the war, the enemy-Germany,
and enabled a new Germany, heavily charged with all the
best modern spiritual forces, to come into being. If ever,
after a war, an enemy country was converted into a friendly
and safe country, a potential partner, it was after the war
to end wars. In this respect ' Dawnism ' had pulled it off
brilliantly. But, having achieved this genuine work of
peace, we then proceeded to treat the new Germany in
exactly the same way as we should have treated a Germany
68 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
that had remained unaltered, except for military defeat,
since the days of Bismarck. The contradiction was glaring
and fatal, yet practically no one noticed it. The aspirations
of the ' Dawn ' were utterly powerless, even in the case of
Christians united with their ex-enemies in religious com
munion, to soften the forces of Nationalism and the rooted
suspicion of the ex-enemy. It proved to be a field day
for the militarists, the politicians and the financiers who
could play to their hearts' content the old power and wealth
game as the ' Dawn ' itself was breaking. Nor could it
even be pleaded that the ex-enemies were unreasonable.
The attempt to settle Europe for permanent peace had
involved not only the gravest economic distress in Central
Europe, but revolutionary changes in frontiers, with the
creation of new countries, that inflicted unprecedented
damage to Germany, Austria and Hungary. Though such
changes had, perforce, to create revisionist movements in
each of the countries, the democratic leaders of Germany
freely accepted the new frontiers in the West, together with
the demilitarisation of the Rhineland, and undertook not
to force revision by war in the East. These guarantees,
given seven years after the war, at Locarno at last gained
for Germany the privilege of becoming a member of the
' Dawnist ' and brotherly League of Nations.
The second reason was even more shameful, for it involved
the actual breach of our own guarantees. We disarmed
Germany under the promise that we ourselves should also
disarm. But so far from disarming, we laboured, with
the help of the League, to encircle the new, friendly and
mutilated Germany with a ring of powerfully armed States,
while she was expected to remain totally undefended. To
crown the ' Dawnist ' achievement, under the inspiration of
the United States which had refused membership of the
League, we sealed the affair with the Kellogg Pact for
the Outlawry of War, to which the unfortunate Germans
gave their signature, thereby binding themselves for ever
with legal and moral chains.
It is even now almost impossible to believe that this
grotesque structure could have been sincerely believed in
 CATHOLICS ACCEPT POST-WAR WORLD 69
by the simplest-minded ' Dawnist,' and much easier to
suppose that it was the sinister creation of victors solemnly
dedicated to ruthless Nationalism as their god. In fact it
was the curious product of the confusion between ' Dawn-
ism' and Nationalism, optimistic Reason with its attendant
passion for revenge and security, which we studied in some
detail earlier on.
For Christians, carefully trained for generations not to
think of high politics as Christians (owing to the separation
of Church and State), these political developments were not
a matter of direct concern. They simply followed in peace
as in war the prevailing views of their respective countries.
But there were aspects of the settlement which gradually
began to worry them. It is unfortunately not possible to say
—as one would like to be able to say—that the French
Catholic, even the French Catholic leader, began to worry
about the divorce between the moral aspirations of the
League and the crudely Nationalist settlement which it
fathered. On the contrary the French Catholic leader often
pressed for even greater security against the Boche. Catholic
criticism of the League on these grounds was exclusively
reserved to Catholics who belonged to countries that had
had a raw deal, and these Catholics in their turn became
violently Nationalist when it became a question of getting
their revenge. It is, however, only fair to say that criticism
of the peace settlement on Christian, as well as political
grounds, was common enough in this country. Even so,
criticism by Catholics on the defeated side, though national-
istically inspired in the first instance, was the prelude to a
more thorough-going criticism of the League which was
gradually taken up, even in the victor countries, as the
League showed itself to be more and more a ' least common
denominator ' of Christian, ' Dawnist,' Nationalist, Socialist,
Agnostic, Godless forces, and less and less a positive in
fluence for the establishment of that law of natural morality
which underlies Christianity.
Criticism based on the first grounds hailed in the first
instance from Italy where the Fascist regime (to which we
shall refer in greater detail in the next chapter) felt itself
70 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
to be a victim rather than a beneficiary of Versailles.
Catholic criticism on this ground was summed up in an
article in the semi-official Vatican paper, Osservatore Romano,
which instanced four fatal defects. They were : (i) non-
recognition of the fact that war can only be suppressed if
its causes are suppressed ; (2) all the members of the
League are in a state of non-fulfilment of the Covenant ;
(3) its blind inability to see the need for revision of treaties ;
and (4) the lack of penal tribunals to judge between the
nations. Subsequent history has shown the justice of
these criticisms and at the same time condemned the
superficiality of the original Christian enthusiasm for an
international order, resembling the Christian ideal, but
founded on false and mixed aspirations instead of on that
Christian teaching which understands so well human
nature as it really is.
Criticism on the second grounds developed slowly until
the entry of Soviet Russia into the League. Even so, this
strange attempt to run an international moral order with
the double team of vaguely Christian States and the regime
which had boasted of its policy to overturn every value in
Western civilisation and, if possible, destroy it altogether
met at first with a considerable amount of Christian opti
mism. There were still many Catholics who felt—or at
least hoped—that the entry of Russia might mark a change
in her policy and that the League would soften Bolshevism
rather than Bolshevism destroy the League.
Such hopes did not long survive, and more and more
Catholics began to look on the League as the happy hunting-
ground of all the dangerous elements in the West, Bol
shevism, Pinkism, Freemasonry, Jewish Finance, ' Dawnism,'
Nationalism and the like. But this era coincided with the
great Christian reaction against post-war Liberalism and
all its works, to which we briefly referred in discussing
Bolshevism and which must be the main subject of the next
chapter.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS

iHROUGHOUT the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries the Church's most important reaction to
JL the forces that were developing in the world was
to deepen and strengthen her own spiritual and doctrinal
position so that she stood like an impregnable fortress in
swiftly running and dangerous waters. And on the whole
her chief concern with this outer world was to strengthen
her defences where the waters appeared to be making an
inroad into them. In other words, she left the world to
its own devices except when she scented a clear attack on
religion, and she was indulgent to the world where she saw
the chance of coming to terms with it for the protection
of the faithful. Probably no other method of defence against
the numerous and subtle anti-Christian currents was prac
ticable, but, looking back with eyes made wise by the
knowledge of the historical outcome, we can see where the
weakness of this strategy lay. The Christian does not enjoy
the status of an enclosed religious. He is, and must be, a
man of the world, a citizen, a member of a trade or pro
fession. To concentrate solely upon the preservation of his
religion, while allowing him to imbibe in his week-day life
the non-Christian philosophies of the world, must result in
the steady sucking out of the world of the spiritual energy
of Christianity precisely at the points where that force
should be being pumped in, namely by the Christian
influence, example and apostolicity of the millions of
Christians. However pure the Church may become and
however religiously faithful her subjects may be, an abyss
that grows steadily deeper is created between the Church
72 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
and the world. And individual Christians find themselves
forced into the extravagant and unnatural position of men
whose feet bestride the abyss, one foot in Christianity and
the other in what is, to all intents and purposes, anti-
Christianity. The Church's constant hope that the abyss
may be locally filled up by bargains or concordats does not
really alter the unnatural situation. Such more or less
successful efforts only result in external and artificial roads
(too often with only one-way and very restricted traffic),
and they can do little to re-create the organic unity that
should exist between the spiritual force of Christianity and
temporal society.
The Church opposed Liberalism because of its anti
clerical and revolutionary character, drawing freely on her
doctrine in the Syllabus which numbered the only too well
founded doctrinal, moral and philosophic errors of the
movement ; but this in itself did little to help the millions
of Christians, who had to live their lives within liberal or
secularist regimes and atmospheres, to distinguish the good
from the bad in Liberalism and reset the good upon its
natural religious foundations. With Socialism there de
veloped in time a far more positive Christian defence
which, unfortunately, was not articulated through the body
of Christians because of the prevalent fear of the anti-
religious and revolutionary nature of Socialism. The
Christian Social Reform, promulgated by Leo XIII and
vigorously re-stated by Pius XI at the time of the great
slump, undoubtedly implied the condemnation of Capitalism
and State-ism in its economic aspect. But the condemnation
by Leo XIII found an unprepared Christianity, while that
of Pius XI (though infinitely more effective) seemed already
too late. I would suggest that the comparative failure of
both was due in large measure to the fact that the Church
omitted to note the anti-Christian element in the rapidly
growing Nationalism.
I have already explained why the dangers in Nationalism
were less apparent than the dangers in Liberalism or
Socialism. The Church has always been most scrupulous
never to exceed the limits of her commission, and, with the
 THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS 73
exception of certain periods in the Middle Ages, she has
always been ready to restrict rather than to seek to increase
that moral authority over the State's temporal affairs which
is necessarily implied in her claim to be the true guardian
of God's revelation in Faith and Morals. Hence she has
always encouraged loyalty to the State and tried to avoid
any interference with the Christian's civic allegiance.
Moreover, the Church's doctrine, reiterated with special
emphasis by Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, that the civil
authority, whatever the human arrangement whereby its
source and execution are determined, comes from God
gives to the constituted State a moral position that the
Church always tries to uphold.1 Next the very strong
element of conservatism in churchmen and their natural
preference for any kind of order to the perils of disorder
stimulated them to encourage the virtues of obedience,
submission, resignation and patriotism. Lastly, in an age
where the new forces seemed anti-clerical, the clerical bias
was towards the status quo, even though the status quo at
any given time be the result of the legitimising of revolu
tionary forces, human or economic.
With this traditional partiality towards any national
establishment there was a danger of overlooking the precise
nature of any particular establishment and the forces for
which it stood. It is hard to believe that in two important
respects at least the Church—and here I mean the whole
ecclesiastical establishment in its day-to-day work rather
than the Popes whose warning Encyclicals were emphatic
enough in all conscience—did not fail to discern the
seriousness of Nationalism as a threat to Christianity.
Politically, national passion grew apace in the nineteenth
century because the ' Dawnist ' philosophy of emancipation
and the coming golden age demanded some concrete frame
work within which it could be pursued. Abstract Reason
being too tenuous and Christianity having been rejected,
all that was left was the nation. Hence, in Germany, the
1 It is interesting to note in this connection that Pius XI was the first Pope
to lay down the moral conditions under which rebellion against established
authority is permissible. This he did in his encyclical letter to the Mexican
Hierarchy, Nos es Muy.
 74 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
iHegels, the Fichtes, the Nietsches, the Wagners, and in
France the Victor Hugos, the Lamartines, the Barrel,
the Maurras, and in Italy the Mazzinis, the Garibaldis, the
d'Annunzios preached in various ways, but always in the
name of the ' Dawn,' a veritable worship of the nation.
No wonder, since it was indeed the only tangible God left
to them. The demands of that god in the way of service
and submission are only too well known, as are the conse
quences of this universal worship of gods who by their very
nature can only aim at the destruction of their rivals.
Economically, this national passion helped to organise
the State so that it could gradually and easily take over the
impersonal direction of the new economic wealth-producing
structures ; and—an even more urgent need—it afforded
security for the protection of the new wealth and a stimulus
for the imperialist hunt for new sources of wealth and
markets that was so characteristic of the colonial expansion
of the nineteenth century and destined to be so important
in causing the mighty wars of this century.
One must confess that until very recent times indeed the
Church in its action gave little or no warning about these
dangers, but that, on the contrary, Christian leaders, not
least the clergy, encouraged wholehearted Christian par
ticipation in such Nationalism under the guise of Christian
patriotism and Christian loyalty to the established civil
authority.
Some of the consequences during and immediately after
the world war have been noted. We come now to the
critical period when the great reaction against Versailles
and Liberalism was set in motion with tremendous results
for Christianity.
The movement began with the rise of Mussolini in Italy
—an unfortunate accident for the Church since the fact of
the Church's capital lying in that country had always made
the relations between Church and Italy exceptional and
un-typical.
Fascism was, without doubt, the direct result of the
futile excesses of ' Dawnism,' Nationalism and Socialism.
Nationalist passion and blindness at Versailles had forced
 THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS 75
a weakened and suffering Italy to accept peace terms, far
less advantageous than those of Britain and France. The
' Dawnist ' Nationalism from which modern Italy had
sprung had enjoyed brilliant initial successes, but it had
never succeeded in creating a stable democratic tradition.
Thus the peace terms and the incompetence of the Italian
political leaders, facing a more than usually desperate
financial position, led to virtual anarchy after the war. It
seemed, if ever, a chance for Socialism. But leadership
and a practical plan were lacking. Moreover, the renais
sance of Italian Catholicity as a political force in the
Partito Popolare constituted an effective opposition to
Marxism but did not prove strong enough to save Italian
democracy in time. Under such advantageous conditions
a man arose who instinctively grasped the truth about all •
these forces. Mussolini realised that Nationalism was in
fact the strongest spiritual force by far among the rivals,
that what was real about Socialism could serve his turn,
that Catholicity, carefully nursed, could provide an invalu
able moral support, while Capitalism, carefully controlled,
could provide invaluable financial support, and that
' Dawnism,' deprived of any concrete foundation, was so
much hot air. Brilliantly seizing his chance, he established
Fascism and developed it into a highly efficient Totali
tarianism.
To those who have followed what has been written so
far it will not seem surprising that, despite its dangers,
Fascism was considered a blessing by the Church. First
and foremost, it was exceedingly friendly towards the
Church, solving the Roman question, making Christian
morals the basis of the new State and encouraging a Catholic
religious revival. Mussolini's motives may have been
Machiavellian, but he had the sense and independence of
mind to see that in a traditionally Catholic country the
Christian establishment was an extremely powerful and
beneficent force. In fact, this real free-thinker understood
what should have been plain enough (since it stands out
through history) that the spiritual force of Christianity is
indispensable to a successful civilisation and a culture that
76 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
has derived from it. And Mussolini's French and Italian
critics, for all their righteousness and respectability, have
got to face the truth that Mussolini did the simple thing
that ' Dawnist '-Nationalist-Socialist France and Italy had
refused to do because of their prejudices and their stupidity.
It generally takes a very ordinary man, as far as religion
and morals are concerned, to prick the bubbles of the false
prophets. But, apart from this, the realism of Fascism in
exploding ' Dawnism,' in taking over what was genuine in
Socialism and in strengthening civil authority, instinctively
appealed to the Catholic mind. It answered, in a crude
but at least practical way, the subconscious desires of the
Church through a century and a half of growing opposition.
Into all of this the spiritual force of Christianity could once
again penetrate, and the Italian citizen could once again
apparently relate his Christianity and his citizenship.
There was only one danger—but it was a very grave one.
Fascism was very far from being of Christian inspiration,
and Mussolini, himself an avowed and open free-thinker,
never pretended that the Church would be more than a
useful instrument for the maintenance of his rule. A
generation brought up in the heated atmosphere of the
' Dawn ' and in a world of unprecedented economic, social,
political and international complexity would need some
tremendously strong quasi-religious and spiritual force to
carry it through to a task demanding discipline, self-sacrifice,
the spirit of work, the overcoming of obstacles, the imposing
of all kinds of restraint—the very qualities that had been
most despised, except under revolutionary excitement, by
' the sons of Liberty.' Mussolini did not have to look far
to find what he needed. Nationalism—no longer only the
Nationalism that sprang from the ' Dawn,' but the patriotism
innate in men's hearts, allied to the State-ism that had been
steadily growingxthrough economic changes in the direction
of Socialism—lay to hand. He could take over, for severely
practical purposes, the philosophy of the Absolute State,
worked out by the German philosophers, absorb into it (as
they had done) whatever ' Dawnist ' illusions about democ
racy and freedom survived in his people and fit it to the
 THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS 77
stern task of moulding a modern State, economically strong
within by forcing its wealth to subserve the national good,
and powerful without through the discipline ofits united will.
Thus he reached the theory of ' Nothing outside the State,
nothing above the State, nothing against the State.'
Mussolini, in a bound, had reached the logical conclusion
of all the non-Christian spiritual forces of the nineteenth
century working within the material forces sprung from the
Industrial Revolution : the absorption of empty ' Dawnism '
into the combination of the Nationalism and Socialism
which had steadily grown under cover of its substanceless
clouds. Utterly un-Christian as the conception was, it had
at least the advantage of being a spiritualisation of what
was real and concrete and understood, whereas ' Dawnism '
had been a mere abstraction, camouflaging and feeding the
growth of uncontrollable and enslaving forces of whose
effects men were scarcely aware until it was too late.
It was because the controlled reality counted in Fascism,
while the spiritualisation was scarcely expected to be more
than a highly necessary myth to obtain the needed support,
that the Church in practice was able to come to terms with
it. So long as the theory was not over-emphasised, except
for propaganda purposes, the Church could be content to
deal with the commonsense realism of the Duce. She was,
we repeat, all the more ready to do so in that notable
advantages, denied her by the higher idealism of others,
were offered to her and because she had always tended to
favour a securely established civil authority. None the less,
the position was a highly dangerous one. Au fond she had
made another bargain and this time with a force which
was nakedly anti-Christian in its mythical setting and full
of potential peril in its concrete reality. She had once
again postponed her mission to re-Christianise society, pre
ferring to bridge the abyss by numberless and very con
venient paths over one part of it delimited by the frontiers
of Italy. The existence of those paths might weaken her
spiritual influence elsewhere ; any one of them could be
removed by Mussolini's will ; and all of them together
might well in time be eaten away by the myth proving
78 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
itself more potent than the reality (for men, as we said at
the beginning, are incurably moralist and spiritual, attach
ing in the long run more importance to the ends of life
proposed to them than to the successful pursuit of it) . The
ordinary person can come to his own conclusions regarding
the success or failure of this policy by noting what has
happened in Italy during the early months of the war. On
the one hand the Papal influence has been much greater
than it would have been in any liberal Italy, and the stand
taken by the Vatican against the breaches of international
law more eloquent than ever before ; on the other hand
Italy herself, despite her outward Catholicity, has not found
it necessary to take these world issues into account in decid
ing her practical policy, and ultimately coming into the
war on the side which the Papacy, by implication at least,
had condemned.
In Germany Nazism was brought about by a similar
combination of circumstances, but with striking and
instructive differences. Nationalistic grievances were far
more deep-seated and excusable : indeed the Nationalism
of the Allies created Hitler. Despite the remarkable work
of the Catholic Centre Party in making German Catholicity
felt as one of the main forces of post-war Germany, it had
to pay the price, namely complete freedom for Socialism
and Communism also. Moreover, the new Republic
tolerated a dangerous licence in manners, in economic and
financial activities and in extra-Parliamentary political and
social action. Though the broad views of the Centre Party
had resulted in its achieving more than any previous
Catholic party to put Catholicity as a constructive political
and social force on the map and had enabled a remarkable
Catholic renaissance to begin, it also had made the bargain
with the world, and those who lived in Germany a year or
two before the advent of Hitler may have wondered whether
it had been a good one. Communism was also making
rapid headway in the financial distress of the slump when
Germany tried to save herself from a second financial
disaster by a terrible deflation involving universal distress
and seven million unemployed. This distress was, of course,
 THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS 79
felt to be due to the imposition by the Allies of impossible
financial terms from 1919 onwards. Thus, while the crisis
and disorder in Italy had been more acute, there existed
in Germany troubles whose roots ran far deeper into the
system. And just as Mussolini, essentially a realist, almost
a condottiere of old, suited the sharp, short-range Italian
crisis, so Hitler, idealist, mystic, prophet, was the man to
make the best of these deep and running wounds.
For him there was no question of a myth through which
to rally the German people to action. Spiritual force
counted above everything else, and he took over all the
spiritual forces that had flourished in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, tightening them up, as it were, and
giving them concrete direction. He allowed the force of
Nationalism, soured by defeat and repressed during the
post-war years, to explode with unprecedented violence.
He encouraged and canalised the economic grievances that
were heading for Bolshevism, so that they should serve his
own revolutionary purpose. Resentment against Western
Capitalism and hypocritical ' Dawnism ' was turned into
the practical and obvious current of anti-Semitism. And a
new sort of fierce German ' Dawnism ' was created in the
idea of the rise of the German Volk (as opposed to the
atomic, purposeless army of unemployed created by the
liberal ' Dawnism ') and the domination of the superior
German race. Hitler, himself a prophet burning with
righteous wrath, never doubted that the religious and
spiritual motive was the factor that counted, and that,
disciplined and directed to realistic ends, it could conquer
everything. The non-Christian forces that had been
steadily eating into the structure of Europe were forged by
Hitler into a veritable religious crusade. There was really
no comparison between this ardour and the cynical and
moderate Fascism of Italy or the mechanical tyranny of the
Russian Bolshevism of Lenin with its diffused and meander
ing world propaganda. Its effects changed the face of
European history within a few months.
Confronted with this phenomenon, the Church hesitated.
Though Hitlerism, unlike Fascism, directly damaged a
8o CHRISTIAN CRISIS
healthy and prosperous Catholicity in Germany and
though its early campaigns had been sternly condemned
by the Bishops, there were elements in it that appeared
confusing. The national grievances of Germany were only
too well founded, and the fierceness of the reaction was only
to be expected by ecclesiastics trained to understand human
nature far better than their opponents. Even more im
portant, the Nazis claimed—and not, as it seemed, without
good reason—to have saved Germany, and even Europe,
from the dreaded Bolshevism which, in its Russian form
or in its more diffused ' Pinkism ' spreading throughout the
Continent, threatened to arise from the ashes of the great
slump. Lastly, it was at first uncertain how Hitler would
deal with Christianity. There seemed a good chance that
his hatred of Communism would prompt him to make use
of Christian spiritual and moral force as a valuable ally.
Christianity in Germany, whether Catholic or Protestant,
was stronger and more healthy than Christianity in pre-
Fascist Italy. Indeed, at the beginning Hitler undertook
to ' consider the forces of Christianity as indispensable to
the moral renascence of the German people ' and to cultivate
' friendly relations with the Holy See.'
The situation seemed to call for yet another bargain, and
a very favourable (on paper) Concordat was signed in 1932
—with what results we know only too well ! Catholic
ecclesiastical and devotional life survived and even, maybe,
strengthened, but it was utterly impotent to check the
raging Nationalism, ' Dawnism ' and ultimately near-
Communism of the Reich.
Thus we see how the problems set by Italy and Germany .
led the Church, as the abyss between Christianity and the
world grew deeper, to throw up hastily more and more
bridges crossing that abyss. And, without doubt, the chief
reason for this desperate remedy lay in the hope that these
external links between the Church and firmly established
modern regimes would enable a strong defensive front to be
set up against the greater danger of Bolshevism and social
anarchy in countries where the philosophy of the ' Dawn '
was visible crumbling.
 THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS 81
But Christianity—it need hardly be said—was far from
happy about these desperate remedies. The new Totali
tarianisms, unlike the vaguer Liberalism and Nationalism
of pre-war days, clearly proclaimed philosophies in
thorough-going conflict with the philosophy of Christianity.
It was no longer any mere question of dangerous tendencies :
it was the devil himself. And the best hope was to tame a
devil who, at least, could be considered to know his own
mind and his own best interests.
On two fronts, therefore, the Church worked hard to
strengthen herself against the coming dangers. Religiously,
she intensified her call to devotion and deepening of doc
trine, relying particularly upon the development of Catholic
Action whose principle was the re-ordering of society
through the apostolic action of the laity. (To this we shall
refer at greater length in the second part of this book.)
There was also a great increase in missionary effort in the
distant parts of the earth and a widening of the policy of
acclimatising Christianity to the cultures of those parts.
Morally and socially, too, the Church developed a very,
active policy. By this time the social teaching of Leo XIII,
gradually taken up and worked out by clerical and lay
students throughout the world, had developed into some
thing approaching a modern and well-defined Christian
politico-social system. It was given its charter by Pius XI,
in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), exactly forty years after it
had been first proposed in Rerum Novarum. It is often called
for convenience ' Corporatism.'
The Church's approach to the problem was wholly moral
and social, for she has always held that politics as such are
not her concern. Corporatism is in itself therefore scarcely
more than a statement of moral principles as they relate to
the economic structure of society. Its purpose is to restore
the natural organic bonds between the different con
stituents of human society : the person, the family, the
associations of persons for common ends, the classes and the
State itself. This can be in large measure effected, suggested
both Leo and Pius, through the hierarchical organisation
within society of vocational corporations, freely springing
82 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
from the people engaged upon their different necessary
common tasks, articulated together to form an organic and
economic structure and maintained within their proper
limits and functions by the authority of the State. This
system appears like a cross between the laissez-faire, non
organic, external links developed by the individualist or
atomic economic system of liberal-democracy and the
unifying, all-comprehensive discipline of Totalitarianism.
In reality it is opposed to both, because it escapes the
fallacy in both. That fallacy is the substitution of non
organic or materialist bonds for organic ones. In the
individualism of democracy, where competition is the
principle, men associate themselves together for the purpose
of more effectively downing their competitors, so that
gradually the original atomism develops into a compara
tively small number of rival bands, representing the various
economic interests of capital and labour, with the in
dividual oppressed and the State, a giant policeman with
more and more to do. The logical conclusion is that the
policeman takes over everything and restores order by
imposing his will and discipline : the totalitarian outcome.
Christians have gradually come to accept this principle
of Corporatism (though, too often, confusing it with the
artificial and external Corporatism of the Fascist State) as
the principle of the Christian solution to the economic and
political problems of the day, and where there existed
Catholic countries with genuine Catholic leaders, a serious
attempt was made to fill in the abyss between Christianity
and the world by applying it. Notable examples were
Austria, Portugal and, in certain respects, Ireland. Political
and economic troubles in the truncated Austria, as well as
the low ebb of Christian life in that ancient Catholic Empire,
made the experiment a failure and, in any case, Austria was
destined to lose her independence. The close economic
associations between Britain and Ireland have not so far
allowed of any far-reaching changes in the Catholic island,
though in many other respects Ireland has gone far to
Catholicise a modern democratic and liberal inheritance.
In Portugal, the genius of Salazar has erected on the ruins
 THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS 83
of anti-Christian, ' Dawnist ' Republicanism a regime
which is an example of what can be achieved by the true
marriage between Christian spiritual principles and all that
is good in modern progress and ideas.1 Unfortunately
Portugal is very small and of little direct world importance.
Salazar's work may, however, have been decisive in prevent
ing the Bolshevising of Spain in the Civil War, for a liberal
Portugal would have made common cause with the Spanish
Republicans.
Spain, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth cen
turies, presented a typical example of anti-religious ' Dawn-
ism ' at its worst, eating into the heart of a Catholic culture
which had lost much of its spiritual vitality. Though there
were ups and downs, the importation into the land of the
proud, rough and fundamentally religious Spaniards of the
alien ideas of progress, democracy, the golden age of
Reason, contempt for the traditions and customs of the past
proved a bad failure. Half the country remained more
than faithful to the past, preserving the good and the bad in
it with an obstinate contempt for innovations ; the other
half embraced the new theories with a savage and irrational
ardour. The combination of obscurantist reaction with the
forceful attempts to impose the worst of ' Dawnism ' in all
its crudity led Lenin to prophesy that Spain would be the
second country to go Bolshevist. In 1931 one of the chief
reactionary forces, the monarchy, fell, and there seemed a
chance of Spain settling down to a middle-way. Certainly
the Church, which had been subject for generations to an
intermittent persecution by the Liberals that amply punished
her for such faults (usually grossly exaggerated) as she may
have committed, was ready loyally to play her part in the
establishment of a reasonable Republican regime. The
younger Catholic leaders and the majority of the clergy
saw, indeed, the opportunity of revivifying Spanish
Catholicity by offering a programme of Christian Social
Reform and Catholic Action in the spirit of Leo XIII and

1 The 1940 Portuguese Concordat deserves special study as an example

of how a modern secular State can come to terms with the religious claims of
the majority of its citizens.
84 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Pius XI. They were undoubtedly actively encouraged to
take this line by Rome. But it was too late. Extremist
Socialistic, Communistic and Anarchistic doctrines, fanned
by Moscow, had established themselves, and they looked
upon the Christian revival as a more serious threat to
themselves than the ancien regime had been. They might
have carried the day and established some Spanish form of
Bolshevism, but for the timely resistance of the Army. The
clash between the revolutionaries and the Army forced all
Spaniards back into the opposing camps to which they had
really long belonged. The working classes, the liberal
intelligentsia, the towns and the Basques (for special reasons)
supported the Left ; the peasantry, the Church, the land
owners supported the Right. After the bloodiest civil war
in history the Right emerged victorious. But this war,
fought on Spanish soil, took on the status of a veritable
world-conflict between revolutionary Socialism and revolu
tionary Nationalism. It is important to note that ' Dawn-
ism ' was fading out of the Continental picture. Though an
attempt was made for propaganda purposes to suggest
that the Spanish Left was fighting for the ideals of the
democratic ' Dawn,' an attempt that deceived few outside
the Anglo-Saxon countries whose understanding of con
temporary events was as remote as the deep intervening
seas could make it, there never was any doubt that a Left
victory would mean—at any rate for a time—a Spanish
form of Bolshevism. Abstract ' Dawnist ' ideas no longer
had much weight behind them. On the other side, however,
there was a chance of moderating the threatened national
Totalitarianism, for the violent and inhuman persecution of
the Church, which marked the early stages in particular of
the war, drove all that was Catholic in Spain (with the
exception of the Basques and a few intellectuals) on to the
side of the Right. And Franco, who happened to be a
fervent Catholic, put the restoration of Catholicity in the
forefront of his programme. Thus, by accident perhaps
rather than by the sheer logic of the position, the anxious
question of what the Church should do, confronted with the
clash of two intrinsically non-Christian forces, was almost
 THE RIGHT REVOLUTIONS 85
universally resolved in favour of supporting the Right. The
position, from the point of view of the universal Church,
was not however wholly a happy one, for if the anti-religious
Bolshevist, Socialist and Pink world support for the Left
confirmed the accuracy of the Christian choice, the support
of Totalitarian Italy and, still more, anti-Catholic Germany
for the Right was very awkward. Furthermore, difficulties
arose through the savage nature of the warfare, Christianity
being saddled with part responsibility for the atrocities or
alleged atrocities of the Right.
We are now in a better position to understand how it came
about that the Church found herself, at the time of the great
struggle between the conflicting spiritual forces springing
from ' Dawnism,' leaning rather heavily towards the new
Totalitarian Nationalism. Foremost among the reasons was
the deliberate opposition to Christianity and religion on
the part of Bolshevism and the many movements across the
face of Europe that, consciously or unconsciously, looked to
Bolshevism as their magnetic pole. The second—and at
bottom more serious a reason—was the sense that ' Dawn
ism ' had disintegrated, threatening the collapse of the
bonds that kept Europe and its individual countries together.
In other words, not only was formal Christianity threatened
—and formal Christianity would of course in some way
survive any persecution—but the very structure of the West
was threatened, and from its collapse there could be no
recovery. The United States and, in a lesser degree,
Britain were not so directly threatened, but it is doubtful if
the Church held these exceptional countries, where
Catholicity was fully tolerated and yet of little national
influence, to enter fully into the problem. However this
may be—and we shall return to these countries later—her
natural bias towards a strong Nationalism and a secure
civil authority made her look indulgently at the excesses of
the Totalitarianism which might save Europe from anarchy
and Bolshevism. Lastly, historical accidents played an
important role. The fact that Rome was the capital of
Christendom and the capital of Fascist Italy undoubtedly
counted for much. The possibility of establishing a quick
86 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
bargain with Hitler because of the strength of Catholicity in
Germany helped to decide the day in that country. And in
Spain, as we have seen, circumstances dictated a decision
that might otherwise have been much harder to make.
As against what might seem like a set policy, we must
remember that the Church never for one moment weakened
in her regard for democratic countries, great or small,
where the social and political structure remained reasonably
strong and the Church was tolerated. With many smaller
countries she had made Concordats that proved satisfactory,
but the best example was her attitude towards France. In
order to study this, however, it will be necessary to analyse
in another chapter the general reaction of world public
opinion to the apparent Catholic bias towards the Totali
tarian reaction.
 CHAPTER NINE

CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION

I DOUBT whether sufficient attention has been paid to

the effects of the Abyssinian adventure upon the spiritual
and moral status of Catholicity in the eyes of the world.
That episode had a double effect : it caused grave scandal
outside the Church, and it forced many Catholic apologists
to dig themselves deeper than ever into a Fascisicing
philosophy in order to provide consistent justification for
the Church's attitude.
The world's point of view was simple and understandable.
I must here repeat the warning that the views of the world
were not based upon an anti-Christian or anti-spiritual
attitude. As I have maintained all along, genuine spiritual
and moral aspirations were moving public opinion, both
before and after the war, and never more so than when the
post-war ideals about war and international justice within
the League of Nations framework were in question. From
this point of view the Abyssinian affair, as it related to the
Church, can be summarised as follows. Italy, reputedly
a Catholic nation—wherein a Catholic revival was pro
ceeding—attacked with the might of modern armaments a
small and weak native people for purposes of naked imperial
istic conquest. She did this, moreover, in defiance of the
Covenant of the League of Nations and the Kellogg Pact,
after having actually sponsored Abyssinia's membership of
the League. Information subsequently established proves
that so far from the Abyssinians having given excuses for
Italian police action the Italians had been deliberately
engineering the coup for many months before. It would be
difficult to find a clearer case on paper of deliberate unjust
87
88 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
(and cowardly) aggression in the face of international
machinery, accepted by Italy and expressly designed to
prevent the recourse to force as the instrument of policy.
The common and natural moral sense of all, whether
Christian or not, who had hoped for a new, juster and
rational order in international relations was outraged by
such a deliberate attack upon such hopes and efforts by a
European Power which boasted of its Christian traditions
and practice. Yet so far from protesting against such action,
the Church seemed to condone and even to defend it. The
Catholics of Italy enthusiastically supported the Duce ;
the clergy, even the higher clergy, apparently allowed
Nationalism completely to overshadow their moral sense
and the traditional teaching of the Church about just and
unjust wars ; even the Vatican, by its silence during the
war, could be interpreted as tacitly condoning the affair.
In view of plausible charges of this nature it was not
surprising to find something approaching despair about
the possible chances of organised Christianity ever coming
to grips with evil in the world even among those who could
appreciate the spiritual values of Christianity and under
stand the difficulties facing the Catholic Church. As for
anti-Christians, the effect was not so much to increase their
opposition to the Church as to cause them to dismiss her
altogether as nothing better than the servile instrument of
Fascism. <
To understand the full nature of this tragedy on the eve
of what looked like being—and what in fact turned out to
be—the collapse of European order, let us consider again
the spiritual and material forces of Europe as they were
arrayed.
The strongest spiritual and moral force in the Anglo-
Saxon world still remained ' Dawnism.' The popular will
behind the sanctions policy—recommended, be it remem
bered, by Benedict XV—was undoubtedly inspired by a
feeling of ' now or never ' in regard to the establishment of
a rational international order in which war could no
longer pay. Not less striking was the popular reaction to
the Hoare-Laval plan according to which Italy would be
 CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION 89
granted a legal right to a portion of her ' loot.' That plan
was killed by popular Anglo-Saxon indignation. These
were remarkable and, indeed, unprecedented testimonies
to the strength and genuineness of the popular will for
decency in international affairs. In fact the popular
' Dawnist ' will prevailed and dictated the outline of inter
national policy in dealing with Italy. This ' Dawnism ' was
vigorously supported by Socialism and Communism,
though the real intentions of both were of a disruptive
rather than constructive character. The Socialists or
' Pinks ' constituted themselves the practical leaders of
the anti-Italian ' Dawnist ' feeling. They organised the
people by ballots, resolutions and every sort of propaganda
which effectively prevented the remotest popular under
standing of any case the Italians might have. They whipped
up reasonable and justifiable moral indignation into hatred
and the pursuit of violent action which inevitably increased
Italian misunderstanding, violence and hatred, thus creating
a division of opinion in Europe which would ultimately lead
to war. Above all, in doing this, they failed to put forward
any constructive solution which would, for example, ward
off the danger of anarchy in Italy itself, should sanctions
succeed. Hence it was not surprising that many began in
time to fear that this negative Socialist leadership could
have but one end, namely the disruption of European peace
in favour of Bolshevism. Thus, as has proved so often the
case, the good aspirations of ' Dawnism '—of which Mr.
Eden was a typical representative—were converted by a
stronger and more purposeful force, that of Pink Socialism,
into pursuing violent and disruptive action, in the name of
the highest morality, thus preparing the way, not only for
the intriguers, financial or power-seeking, but for the
strongest force of all, Bolshevist Totalitarianism.
Nationalism also had a big role to play. Baulked by
evidences that the opposition to Italy was far from being
purely moral, as for example in our refusing the Hitlerite
equal-disarmament-all-round offer, Germany threw herself
on the side of an Italy where Nationalism was rising to the
point of frenzy. On our side, Nationalism itself was not so
 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
deeply stirred, because no one really feared Italy, but under
the shelter of Nationalist considerations the sanctions
policy was never carried out in full. National economic
structures—it was pointed out by those more directly
interested in the financial aspects—would be imperilled by
complete sanctions, especially of those commodities whose
loss would most severely affect the Italian campaign. As a
result of this breach of moral faith, Italy was able to pull
through. The Socialist hatred for Italy left her vowing
revenge on her enemies, and the Nationalist-Capitalist
interests had enabled her to survive and wreak that revenge.
Between them, the good and sincere elements in popular
' Dawnism ' had once again proved to be but the instrument
for unhappy, dangerous and immoral ends.
In the face of all this what had Christianity to say and
do ? There was, of course, a vast amount of Christian
(Catholic as well as Protestant) support for the ' Dawnist '
protests. Outside Italy, Germany and one or two
smaller countries whose interests were identified with these
Powers, Christians were practically unanimous in their
moral opposition to the Abyssinian war. While many
Catholics, already deeply perturbed by the inclusion of
Soviet Russia, without any conditions, in the League of
Nations, and instinctively aware that the problem was not
as simple as the ' Dawnist ' chorus would have it, began to
plead for a better understanding of Italy's position, I know
of no formal Catholic defence at that date outside the above
countries of Italy's action in invading and conquering
Abyssinia. The defences and excuses were retrospective.
What would have- been the effect of a formal or even
clearly implied condemnation by Pius XI of the Italian
action and a protest, on his part, against the Nationalism of
the Italian clergy ? (I here pass over the many and serious
reasons adduced by Catholic writers to prove that Pius had
no moral obligation to make such a condemnation. The
24th Article of the Lateran Treaty, while it bound the Holy
See not to interfere ' in temporal competitions between the
States and International Congresses,' expressly reserved
' the right in every case of making its moral and spiritual
 CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION gi
power felt.' And it is, of course, evident that the Pope
always possesses the supreme religious and moral right to
condemn what is contrary to Christian morals, whether a
nation or a person is responsible, whenever he thinks fit.
His duty to do so must, on the other hand, depend upon
his own judgement as to whether such a step is or is not
in the best religious and moral interests of the Church and
the world.) One would like to think that a Papal con
demnation of Italy in her act of aggression would have
provided the stable foundation which the popular indig
nation against that country lacked, and for want of which
it was once again destined to disruptive rather than con
structive consequences. Unfortunately the plain fact is
inescapable : the divorce between the spiritual forces in the
world and the spiritual force of the Church had become so
complete that the organised Church could no longer by her
solemn word marshal the strength of Christian spiritual and
moral force so that it should permeate the action of the
world, even when the latter happened at the moment to be
on the right path. Before this could be effective, Christians
and non-Christians would have to be far more penetrated
with the social and political spirit of Christianity, as we
shall see in the second part. What would happen instead
is that the solemn warning of the Church would only be
listened to when it could be made use of as a confirmation
of one particular moral view, itself so embedded in dis
ordered spiritual and moral forces, that the religious
confirmation would become an instrument in the hands of
one ideology and, consequently, an attack on another. In
other words, the voice of Christianity is now inevitably
reduced in practice to a mere party cry. If this was the case
in the last war when the Pope, seeing the faithful fighting
one another for opposite moral and spiritual ideals, could not
pronounce a Christian verdict without being misunderstood
by Catholics as well as others, it had become infinitely more
the case by the time of the Abyssinian affair when Europe
was ranging itself into two or three ideological camps, and
Christian moral verdicts, however just within the limits
intended by the judge, must simply become the sport of
92 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
rival factions, into whose make-up there was always a
mixture of unanchored good and of bad. When the Papacy's
authority over Christendom was generally recognised, as in
the Middle Ages, the condemnation of a nation's behaviour
could be and was risked because the moral sense of the world
understood and supported the meaning of the condemnation,
though an individual nation might maintain its opposition.
Nowadays the Papacy is only expected to take spiritual
action when it is in the interests of those who have done
their best in the past to render ineffective the moral authority
of the Holy See by serving spiritual ideals divorced from
those of Christianity. In other words, the Papacy has been
too much weakened in the eyes of the world to exert a
habitual spiritual authority over it, and yet its personal
prestige remains too high to allow of any convenient con
demnation remaining, as it were, solely a matter of private
conscience. The nature and meaning of the pronouncement
will be exaggerated by those who appear to be favoured
and who will then make an improper use of this valuable
moral support, while it will be misinterpreted, as a political
gesture, by those who appear to be condemned. It is a
situation for which the blame must be shared by all, whether
opposed to the Church or within it, who have deepened or
fail to fill up the abyss separating Christianity from the
effective spiritual forces at work in the world.
In this particular case then of the Abyssinian war Chris
tianity would not have been responsible for the inevitable
misinterpretation on both sides of any Papal intervention,
but the spontaneous Nationalism of the Italian clergy,
blinding them apparently to the moral excesses of the
nation's conduct, must find its cause, at any rate in part,
in Christianity's failure to detect the potential evil of
Nationalism as a powerful and intoxicating spiritual force
leading to disastrous spiritual consequences. The scandal
which the Italian clergy gave to thousands of good and
sincere men outside Italy was undoubtedly grave—nor can
it be excused on the grounds of there having been a great
deal of misunderstanding of Italy's motives, for, even if this
was the case, scandal arises precisely from otherwise licit
 CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION 93
actions that are easily misunderstood and must be guarded
against just because of this.
It seems to me to be useless and foolish to deny that the
long conflict between the spiritual force of Christianity and
the spiritual forces of Dawnism,' Nationalism and Socialism,
together with the long series of misunderstandings and false
positions on both sides to which the conflict had given rise,
led in this crucial instance to a state of affairs where the
Vatican appeared to general public opinion to be failing
in its moral duty and the Catholic leaders of a Christian
people actually failing in the observance of the elementary
principles of their Faith. In that alone—whatever the
ultimate rights and wrongs—lay the real tragedy. As I
suggested at the beginning, the same kind of scandal was
involved in the fact that in the last war Catholics were
fighting one another for spiritual and moral ends, but this
was not generally observed. Had it been, no one could
at that date say what the Christian answer to the effect
of an evil arising from a long sequence of causes was.
In the case of the Abyssinian war the scandal was
observed, and equally no one can say what the Vatican
should have done to remove it without causing perhaps
greater harm.
It is possible that in an age when Catholics felt them
selves freer to criticise the behaviour of ecclesiastics there
would have been a much more violent and widespread
denunciation of what in general may be called the Church's
attitude to the Abyssinian war. But whether such a
denunciation, even ifjustified, would have been a good thing
is doubtful. It could only have been good in so far as it
tended to re-infuse a genuine Christian outlook into the
popular outcry against Italy. Under the actual circum
stances it is much more probable that it would only have
served the negative and disruptive ends of those who wanted
to take advantage of the disturbed feeling to promote
Socialism or Nationalism or their own financial ends. In
effect more hatred and violence would have been generated
rather than Christian justice, charity and peace. As it
happened, Catholic opinion tended to take the path of
94 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
least resistance, and in retrospect to justify rather than
condemn Italy.
The reasons why Catholic opinion drifted in this direction
are many. A very strong, though not wholly admirable,
reason was founded upon an uncritical loyalty to the Holy
See. I will refrain from studying the causes and effects of
this modern interpretation of Catholic loyalty to the
Papacy here, as I shall have occasion to refer to it at greater
length in the second part of the book. But as a matter of
obvious fact the present-day Catholic feels it to be incum
bent upon him to defend the actions of the Holy See under
all circumstances, and the sense of this loyalty often prompts
him to defend, as far as reasonably possible, the actions of
Italy, the country accidentally in the closest relations with
the Holy See through geography and the Lateran Treaty.
Another reason sometimes adduced for the Catholic attitude
is that the conquest of Abyssinia opened a new missionary
field for the Church. This ignoble attempt to justify what
would otherwise have been considered immoral because of
ecclesiastical and apostolic advantages may have been
resorted to in Italy—though there the conquest was not
considered immoral in itself—but I have never seen or
heard the argument used by Catholics elsewhere. But
while the Catholic attitude may have been prompted by
the desire to stand by the Vatican and Italy, its real reasons
went far deeper. It formed part of the steadily growing
feeling that ' Dawnism ' was bankrupt and that the still
popular aspirations towards a new world order, based upon
natural virtue, reason and common sense, were becoming
but the convenient tools of openly anti-Christian forces or
the self-seeking of politicians and financiers. By this date
the international shrine at Geneva, with persecuting Russia
one of its high priests, had been too often polluted by pro
moting one-sided interests and trying to avoid trouble to
command much respect. Never, for example, had Geneva
protested against religious persecution, never had it sought
to tackle in a spirit of justice or charity the grievances of
Germany or the all-important cause of rearmament. In
fact, it was a little better than a sacred and legal cloak
 CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION 95
wherewith democratic Nationalism and Socialism could
veil their nakedness for the edification of the world. In
the democracies themselves it was becoming obvious that
the so-called ' progressive ' forces were rapidly despairing
of democracy in any sense conformable to Christianity and
looking towards that kind of Socialism which in conjunction
with Communist propaganda blossomed as the ' Popular
Front.' And the actual failure of the League, through
economic rivalries, to carry to success the sanctions against
Italy deprived the League of its last possible justification :
power to carry through its own chosen policy. Catholics
prejudiced in favour of Italy and prepared for the collapse
through previous suspicions, were quicker than others to
seek an alternative solution which, of its nature, must have
been more favourable to the Italian thesis. If anything
was wanted to complete the disillusion the Spanish war
and the grossly ignorant and unfair attitude towards it of
what was left of ' Dawnist ' opinion amply provided it.
The prevalent sense now was as follows. The whole of
the post-war edifice of spiritual and moral ' Dawnism ' had
been without foundation. Moral aspirations, often in them
selves good and true, had been pursued in abstraction from
a consistent, stable and thought-out order within which
they could be attained. Men had willed the ends without
either understanding the means or the need to sacrifice
themselves in carrying them out. Of this nothing, for
example, was more typical than the disarmament conference
where all nations were agreed about the desirability of the
end and not one ready to make any sacrifice about the means.
Inevitably, these good intentions, instead of creating a new
order (of which no one had any definite conception), simply
subserved the forces which were rooted in an understood
order : the order of rival nationalisms ; the order of re
building Europe in terms of impersonal State-ism, run in
the interests either of the leaders of the working-classes or
of the controllers of financial credit or of the intellectual
theorists ; the order of Communist world-revolution.
Was it not under these circumstances wiser, and ulti
mately more Christian, to wash out the past, with its good
96 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
and its bad, and ask oneself what could in practice be done
with the various competing forces as they now stood and
in terms of their respective strengths ? Even though this
looked like compromise with moral principles, the con
donation of the breach of pledged words, the admission of
the success of policies of violence, it might at least be prac
ticable—and if being practicable often appears to mean a
weakening of regard for abstract justice and right, it is also
a basis for truth and charity, virtues considered no less
important by the realistic and broad Christian mind. To
put it succinctly, many Catholics faced with the choice of
supporting the international outlook of a Mr. Eden and the
international outlook of a Mr. Chamberlain preferred the
latter—and before Mr. Chamberlain had felt his way
towards it.
This view prevailed among the clergy and Catholic
writers in the British Isles and, after the Spanish war but
to a lesser extent, in America. It is, I think, fair to say that
it prevailed at the Vatican and in the columns of the
Osservatore Romano, though with at once a greater Italian
bias and a greater caution not to jeopardise principles. It
was, however, much less noticeable in France where
Catholics found themselves divided among ultra-nationalists
and those who were seeking, though not without much
bias, a more Catholic and constructive solution. There the
French Catholic renaissance had developed deeper roots.
The need for a Christian social revolution and the realisation
of its character were by 'now deeply imprinted in French
Catholics, exemplified in Catholic Action, particularly
among the Christian Trade Unions and the Jeunesse
Ouvriere Catholique, studied by Catholic thinkers and
voiced by the Hierarchy, in particular by Cardinals Lienart
and Verdier. This emphasis tended to make French
Catholicism much more tolerant of Socialism itself and
therefore more hostile to the Totalitarian ideals. The
so-called logical French 'mind also found it much harder
to side-track, as it were, plain breaches of moral law, even
when the observance of the letter of the law might be
killing its spirit. Nor should it be overlooked that this
 CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION 97
emphasis on social revolution and on the principles of the
natural law among nations, whatever the circumstances,
tended to favour the French Nationalist thesis, ever
jealously regarded by French Catholics. It is not unfair
to suggest that French national interests played their part
in determining the attitude of many French Catholics, even
the most distinguished such as M. Maritain, to the Spanish
war. But there wa^s not wanting, especially after 1939,
a Catholic element whose suspicions of Anglo-Saxon
" Dawnism " were growing. The standpoint of French
Catholicity was throughout deeply respected by the Vatican
which rarely missed an opportunity of expressing its appre
ciation of and love for the Faith and Works of the ' Eldest
Daughter of the Church.' But if the French found that
their national prejudices conveniently reinforced a deep and
constructive Catholic ideal, Italian and Spanish Catholics
made no bones about putting national interests first and
suiting the philosophy of their religious Faith to the new
national ideals. Herein lay the deep danger to Catholic
nationals and to Christianity in general of the Totalitarian
system. This ideology did much to balance the opposite
defects of ' Dawnist ' democracy, and the recognition of this
service at the Vatican or in Catholic Great Britain was all
to the good. But in so far as it tended to enslave the moral
outlook of the faithful under its own rule, it was gravely
injurious to the Catholics concerned and a source of scandal
to others. It cannot in fact be doubted that, though the
national regimes in Italy and Spain have recognised
Catholicity as the State religion, they have made and been
allowed to make extravagant claims on the Catholic con
science. - The false dualism between ' Sunday ' and ' week
day ' religion, which was characteristic of the general
Catholic reaction to the lay State, has been developed into a
fine art in Italy and—in a somewhat different fashion—in
Spain. In Italy worship and devotion have been notably
encouraged while the laws of the State governing the per
sonal relations between individuals are Catholic. The
price paid for these privileges has been heavy. Though
religious education is safe, education in the wider sense of
98 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
the development of the human spirit is overwhelmingly
nationalist and militarist. Catholic Action, in any but a
purely devotional sense, is made impossible. And—in the
long run perhaps gravest of all—the Italian Catholic is unable
to think as a Catholic about the spiritual and moral prin
ciples that should govern the social and public intercourse
of men. Not only may he not publicly oppose the spiritual
and moral force of Fascist ideology, but the continued pro
cess of Fascist education and propaganda makes the Italian
Catholic, from the higher clergy downwards, gradually
unable to oppose it because he has been subtly assimilated
to what is, in short, a false and anti-Christian religion. In
theory the same errors obtain in Spain, but there the Catholic
tradition is far more strongly implanted in the national
character and in its public life. For this reason there are
grounds for hoping that, once the state of emergency is over,
the philosophy of the National State will in itself incorporate
a Catholic outlook for public as well as private affairs. In
other words, while Italy will remain a Fascist, i.e. a non-
Christian State, Spain may develop into one of the many
forms which a Catholic State can take. Even so, the
strength of the Nationalist force in the new Spain is such
that it will remain a grave danger against which the Church
in Spain should be constantly on guard. The record of
Spanish Catholicity, deeply religious as it has been at its
best and intimately linked with the best in the Spanish
character, does not warrant any undue optimism about the
Spanish Church's ability or willingness to fight as it should
on this front.
The case of German Catholicity, like the Abyssinian
affair, was destined to mark another milestone in the history
of the attitude of the Church to the modern world, and in
this case the milestone was as popular with the world as
the Abyssinian affair had been unpopular.
Whatever hopes may have been entertained at the
Vatican when the Concordat with the Nazis was signed,
they were not destined to be fulfilled. Hitler, though a born
Catholic, was far too much of a mystical prophet to share
condottiere Mussolini's deep respect for the spiritual force
 CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION 99
which had shaped the mind and history of Europe. The
universality of Christianity and the clash between the claims
of God and the claims of Hitler made him the bitter enemy
of any spiritual force that was not purely Germanic and
Hitlerian, even though such enmity might be against his
own best temporal interests. At the same time his claim to
be the champion of anti-Bolshevism made him unable to
persecute religion in the old-fashioned way. He was forced
to have recourse to a subtle, but supremely effective, solu
tion. Accepting the Christian teaching which recognised
the distinction between allegiance to the things of God and
the things of Caesar, he made himself the judge who indicated
the respective fields of allegiance. Thus he had but to
declare that such-and-such a matter fell within Caesar's
territory to obtain for himself an ostensible Christian right
(true to the spirit of the Concordat) to forbid Christians
from interfering in it. Thus little by litde he narrowed
down the field within which the spiritual force of Christian
ity could act to purely devotional matters. And when he
required an excuse to apply exceptionally severe pressure,
he trumped up or greatly exaggerated criminal charges
against Catholics, such as breaches of the currency laws or
immorality within religious houses. It should be noted that
this method was only another form of the traditional prac
tice of limiting the action of Christianity in the Liberal
State, where, however, some regard for political and civil
liberty enabled Catholics to protest. In Germany they were
effectively silenced by the Totalitarian system.
So anxious has the modern Church always been to avoid
infringing upon the legitimate claims of Caesar or to cause
civil unrest within a State that her patience has to be taxed
beyond endurance before she will protest against such forms
of persecution. Only when her freedom of worship is
attacked or when her faithful are compelled to submit to
immoral laws affecting their private lives will she protest.
But there is one subject, where the claims of State and
Church are constantly clashing, about which she will at
once speak : education. Her claim to safeguard the reli
gious education of her children has always been jealously
IOO CHRISTIAN CRISIS
pressed. And it was principally over education that the
clash between the Vatican and Nazi Germany came.
The power to mould the mind of youth is essential to the
new ideologies, whether Fascist, Nazist or Bolshevist, and
Hitler could not afford to pick his steps delicately between
State and Church in this matter. The Concordat guaranteed
the retention and State maintenance of Catholic schools.
Open breaches of the Concordat in a subject-matter of the
deepest concern to the Church were therefore inevitable.
This particular quarrel undermined Hitler's endeavours to
emasculate the Church without weakening the allegiance
to Nazism of the large body of German Catholics, number
ing about a third of the whole population. The Protestant
Churches, less concerned with the maintenance of good
relations between the State and their religious communities,
had not hesitated to divide themselves into servile creatures
of Hitlerism or bitter and outspoken opponents of his
spiritual and moral claims. The courageous stand made by
the latter, the Confessional Church, encouraged an ever
broader Christian opposition to the many aspects of Nazism
that were in clean contradiction with the principles of
Christianity. And so, despite (it is said) much advice to the
contrary, the ageing Pius XI issued in 1937 the Encyclical,
Mit Brennender Sorge, in which, with considerable skill, the
extravagances of German Nazi doctrines are picked out for
condemnation in a way that would not involve the con
demnation of political and social Totalitarianism. This and
other evidences of Pius XI's growing opposition to Nazi
Germany were, of course, liberally quoted and used by
Germany's ideological opponents, not excluding Socialists
(who were now, in some places, offering to Catholic workers
the ' outstretched hand ') and they powerfully served to
restore the international moral and spiritual prestige of the
Church which had been so shaken by the Abyssinian war.
None the less the Concordat was not denounced, diplo
matic relations between the Holy See and Berlin were not
broken, the civil allegiance of Catholics to the Nazi Reich
was not made impossible, still less, of course, was German
foreign policy, involving the destruction of Catholic Austria
 CATHOLIC RIGHT REACTION 101
and largely Catholic Czechoslovakia, in any way repro
bated. Hitler, in fact, had pulled off a persecution, scarcely
less serious in the long run than the persecution of the
Soviets, without incurring any really serious damage to his
authority at home or his influence abroad. On the con
trary, a widespread Catholic opinion was becoming so con
vinced that the foundations of peace and order in Europe
could only be restored by effecting a reasonable settlement
between the democracies and the Totalitarian States that
the persecution in Germany was often regarded as one of
the many deformities due to Germany's struggle to grow in
a bitterly hostile environment. The fact that German
Catholics were still perfectly free to practise their religion
and that, in fact, a religious renaissance in this sense was
commonly reported was underlined, and the hope expressed
that, with a general settlement, this particular deformity,
with many others, would atrophy.
On the eve, then, of the new European war we find the
Church endeavouring still to maintain, even at high cost,
contact and friendship with all the conflicting interests, save
only Bolshevism. Though her popularity and general
influence—especially marked at the death of Pius XI and
on the occasion of the accession of Pius XII—had been
enhanced by her denunciations of religious persecution in
the Reich, no breach sufficient to undermine the national
loyalty of the Catholics in Germany either to Hitler's
internal or external policy had been made. In Italy, now
somewhat uneasily allied with Germany, the reward for the
Vatican's extreme patience might, it seemed, be coming,
for in the shaping of Italian policy the Catholic view might
prove decisive. Nor may one doubt that the understanding
between the Pope and Mussolini—despite the unfortunate
consequences of the Abyssinian affair—was resulting in the
permanent mitigating of the internal asperities of Fascism
in spite of considerable temptations put in the Duce's way
by his fellow Dictator. No doubt, too, the middle view of
the Vatican, shared by Catholics in many countries and
notably in Great Britain, helped on both sides to further the
slow rapprochement between Italy and Britain under Mr.
 102 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Chamberlain, a rapprochement whose ultimate consequences
might have proved very important indeed. Ultimately and
with the ending of the Spanish war, French Catholics of the
Right and of the Left also rallied more easily to this general
feeling that ' bygones must be bygones ' and that peace
could only be built upon new foundations, following in this
a national policy which had begun belatedly to recognise
the impossibility of harnessing a violent nationalistic anti-
German policy with the weaknesses associated with ' popular
front ' ideas.
It may be said, therefore, that despite ups and downs
Christianity on the eve of the war had reached a position
where she was everywhere firmly supporting the policy
summarised in the new Pope's motto : ' Peace, the Fruit of
Justice.' Christians in general, moreover, had acquired a far
deeper realisation of the futility, not only of war itself, but of
most of the efforts made in the interval between the two
wars, to avert it. This sense, however, was weakest among
Italian and Spanish Catholics, but what the feelings among
German Catholics really were, no one perhaps will ever
know.
Alas ! whether because the conversion came too late or
because in the democracies it was too artificial, being
caused solely by fear, or because Hitlerism had become
finally and permanently distorted, excessive Nationalism
proving itself to be as dangerous to peace as Bolshevism
itself, peace, with or without justice, was not destined to
- endure.
 CHAPTER TEN

CONCLUSIONS—I

IT is time now in the last chapter of the first part of this

book to try to gather together what has so far been
ascertained ; to see how it applies to the present circum
stances and to relate all this to what was my original purpose
in writing, namely, to examine, and especially in the
particular instance of English Catholicity, the possibility of
finding a new and effective point of insertion of the spiritual
force of Christianity into the contemporary world before it
is too late.
Moving backwards and forwards in the history of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we have watched the
beginnings, the complex developments and the consequences
of the new spiritual forces at work within the economic,
industrial and scientific changes that marked the epoch.
We have also tried to follow the reactions to them of
Christianity which, up till this period through her ' unity of
doctrine, faith, customs and morals,' governed Western
civilisation in its ' religious beliefs and moral convictions.'1
May I again emphasise the fact that, while, from the
Renaissance onwards, the seeds of the new spiritual forces
were planted and while the Reformation divided Christen
dom and thereby gravely weakened its authority and ren
dered inevitable the ultimate disruption of the separated
Churches, it was only from the beginning of the nineteenth
century that Western society passed from the stage of being
more or less unfaithful to the spiritual and moral teaching
of Christianity to the totally distinct stage of professing open
and acknowledged faith in new anti-Christian spiritual
1 Phrases taken from Encyclical, Summi Pontificates.
103
104 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
forces, even though still with much Christian content,
enough indeed to deceive the elect ! The essence of the
Christian crisis is whether this new worship has gone too
far for Christianity to be able to recover her spiritual
influence or whether the patent bankruptcy of the new
spiritual forces will enable Christian authority to recover
before Western civilisation is dragged down to a state of
anarchy or slavery.
T have divided these new spiritual forces into ' Dawnism,'
Nationalism and Socialism, the two latter relating them
selves very closely to the steadily increasing effects of the
technical changes of the nineteenth century which of their
own accord were making for impersonal State-ism, i.e. the
effective concentration of moral, social, political and
economic authority over the individual person in the State,
no matter who happened to run the State or how it was
organised. Running parallel with this State-ism was a
rapid increase in wealth, acquired through the exploitation
by a comparatively few unrestricted individuals of scientific
progress and invention at the expense of the many. The
defence—often spiritually motivated—of this economic free
dom can be called Capitalism, a Capitalism which was con
tinually purchasing instalments of economic and financial
freedom from the increasingly powerful State and which
therefore tended to uphold Nationalism, but a Capitalism
also which provoked the growing opposition of the ' under
dog,' thereby strengthening Socialism which aimed at
increasing State-ism for the benefit of the oppressed.
' Dawnism ' (more usually known by the much less
satisfactory and much more equivocal word, Liberalism) has
proved itself to be, throughout this period, the real rival of
Christianity among the democracies and the source whence
the spiritual character of Nationalism and Socialism has
sprung. It is essentially the optimistic belief that man and
society must inevitably progress towards better times,
spiritually, morally and materially, if they are freed from
the shackles imposed in the ancien regime directly or indirectly
by Christianity. Freed from these superstitious and
irrational restrictions, man and society can by means of
 CONCLUSIONS—I 105
their natural Reason and their natural goodness progress
towards a reasonable human order from which vice and
stupidity (in varying degrees, according to the degree of
optimism) will be eradicated. So strong has been the
spiritual and moral force of this ' Dawnist ' influence that it
has motivated social behaviour throughout this epoch, sur
viving every disappointment and every contradiction to
which it gave rise. Because it could not, of itself, provide a
concrete framework within which to act, nor a consistent
formula which it could follow (because, in other words, it
was only a series of abstract aspirations unanchored to either
the facts or the possible ways of relating facts together) it
attached itself everywhere to the national spirit, which
proved to be the simplest and most effective way of holding
together the masses of emancipated people. In the new
democratic nations (the development of Parliamentary
democracy from the British model, itself founded upon
Christian conceptions of the dignity of the individual person,
being perhaps the only genuine concrete contribution of
' Dawnism ') and/or in the absolute States, fathered by
Rousseau and Hegel, this Nationalism was regarded as the
simplest road to the Dawn. At the same time, and far more
conveniently, it cloaked the process of economic exploita
tion, whether by the individual or the imperial State, and
it helped along the evolution of State-ism. These develop
ments were only seriously challenged by the passionate
reaction to the growing oppression of the many, the reaction
of Socialism. Marxism revolted against optimistic ' Dawn
ism '-cum-Nationalism, offering a new gospel of redemption
through violence and suffering for the proletariate, a gospel
ultimately, however, not less founded upon the ' Dawnist '
faith in the possibility of a golden age on earth. Ordinary
Socialism or ' Labour ' retained the full ' Dawnist ' faith,
but hoped by both ' direct ' and democratic action to win
the future for the worker, at the expense of those who were
running the State for their own benefit.
In their interrelation the best founded and most realistic
of the spiritual forces, Nationalism, together with the
material force of economic competition for wealth-grabbing,
io6 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
proved the strongest, dragging the whole world into the
war of 1914 to 1918. The object-lesson of that calamity
did not, however, turn civilisation towards the truth, for
the Church had proved unable during the nineteenth
century to make her teaching felt in society. Its effect, on
the contrary, was to turn men back again to an even more
vigorous form of ' Dawnism,' reinforced by even more
Nationalism.
To account for this relative failure of Christianity, one
must of course remember that the growth of ' Dawnism '
was a long process in the history of Europe from the Middle
Ages until the Enlightenment, a story which we have not
touched upon in these pages.1 Our interest here is solely in
the action of Christianity, face to face with a full-grown
' Dawnism.'
' Dawnism ' or Progress, as Christopher Dawson has so
convincingly shown, has throughout been dependent upon
religious belief for its stimulus and for its philosophy.
Christianity—the religion of the historic Incarnation—alone
of the major religions accepts the full reality of the time-
process in the course of which real changes, worth the
making, can take place. To the Christian therefore the
future always holds out hope : a hope of the attainment of
man's supernatural end through the better ordering of his
natural and temporal ends. Much therefore of the optimistic
aspirations of ' Dawnism ' appealed to the best Christian
mind, just as the discoveries of the treasures of God's
creative scheme in Science appealed to it. ' Dawnism '
therefore carried over a great deal of the Christian inspira
tion, an inspiration that in this respect had to a large extent
been sterilised and frustrated by Christian practice. In that
sense there was genuine spiritual liberation at work. Alas !
the liberation was more like an explosion, destroying the
structure in which these forces had grown and been pro
tected. Christianity was much more conscious of the
destruction than of the spiritual liberation, and it recoiled
from the danger instead of seeking to repair the damage.
The bien-pensants Catholics of the nineteenth century,
1 The best account is to be found in Don Sturzo's Church and State.
 CONCLUSIONS—I 107
clerical and lay, were simply not intellectually prepared for
the revolution, and they could discern little but the dangers
to the established Church and the constituted civil authori
ties. And because of this, while they expressed horror at the
new doctrines, they encouraged Catholics in practice to
give whole-hearted allegiance to those same doctrines when
they were made respectable by being incorporated into the
established State and the accepted social and economic
order. In particular they accepted Nationalism as a sound
force buttressing up the civil authority and leading to useful
bargains between Church and State. The consequence was
doubly injurious : the Church, as the Church, remained
hostile to the new ideas, separating herself off from them
instead of endeavouring before it was too late to re-anchor
them into a Christian foundation, and Catholics, in ordinary
life and practice, became permeated with the national,
political, social and economic standards of the day. It was
left to Leo XIII to attempt to bridge the gap between the
Catholic spirit and the non-Christian practice through a
social teaching in which what was good in the new ideas
was re-incorporated into the eternal spiritual and moral
principles of Christianity. Unfortunately it proved impos
sible to diffuse this teaching rapidly enough among the
Christian body to make it effective in stemming the tides of
Socialism and Capitalist-Nationalism. Thus by the out
break of war Christians were as Nationalist and as much
the agents of the economic and financial systems as their
neighbours. And since the voice of Pius XI warning the
world against the dangers of Liberalism, seemed by this
date to be obscurantist and, in any case, hopelessly out of
keeping with the practical behaviour of Catholics, the latter
also commonly shared the ' Dawnist ' aspirations with which
Nationalism and Capitalism veiled themselves for greater
decency.
After the war, the interplay of the new spiritual forces
was much more obvious. Victory for the Allies was treated
as a victory for ' Dawnism ' at last, but in fact Nationalism
prevailed all along the line. So much so that within a very
few years Europe, and indeed the whole world, was divided
io8 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
into armed Nationalist religions—veritable theocracies
enslaving the bodies and souls of all who happened to live
within the frontiers that marked the territorial distribution
of these ideologies. The ideology of Bolshevist Socialism,
while strictly nationalised in its home territory, Russia,
claimed, it is true, to be a universal religion, and it was
enabled to spread its propaganda among the much less
strictly controlled ' Dawnist ' democratic Nationalisms of the
West. But if this was the case it was not so much because
the ideology of these democracies was more tolerant, but
because they had less faith in themselves and were gradually
assimilating their vague and negative ' Dawnist ' ideals to
the sterner and much more concrete faith of Socialism. The
widespread reaction to these dangers, actively encouraged
in the end by the Church and most Christians, came too late
to prevent the consequences. Thus the Europe of 19 19,
greeting the ' Dawn ' at last, found herself twenty years
later entering into war again to save what was left of
' Dawnism '—and, apparently, Christianity—from an aggres
sive Nationalism and Socialism, now swollen to monstrous
and hideous proportions. The fact that the national
element in that post-war ' Dawnism ' had steadily helped to
swell these monstrosities and would in all probability, if
victorious, begin the vicious circle all over again was any
thing but a consolation or an encouragement to fight with a
pure conscience.
What part did the spiritual force of Christianity play in
this tragic last act ? In view of the climax and the lessons
which it has taught us, one may, looking back, wish that
Christianity had from the beginning warned the world of
the dangers inherent in naturalist ' Dawnism ' and in
Nationalism as boldly and uncompromisingly as it had
warned us of the dangers of Bolshevism and Socialism. But
on reflection one is forced to agree that neither the world
nor Christians themselves were ready for any such warning
and the Church would have been too much misunderstood
had she given it. Outside specific matters of Faith and
Morals the effectiveness of the Church's authority and
spiritual force is limited by the degree in which Christians
 CONCLUSIONS—I
and the National Churches are prepared to understand and
respond to leadership. If in social matters they have been
half secularised themselves the forceful leadership of the
Church may do more harm than good. Bolshevism could
be denounced by the Church because its errors were patent
and its anti-religious policy notorious. But the practical
' Dawnism ' which created the League of Nations con
tained on paper good as well as bad, while Nationalism
itself contains much that is right and much that the Church
cannot denounce. Nor is it even possible for the Church
simply to denounce Capitalism, for much of the economic
system to which the name Capitalism is given is in itself
necessary, just and proper. These things do not require
condemnation but thorough-going and universal criticism.
Christians, unfortunately, have become so wedded to
Nationalism, the ' Dawnist ' mentality and to the prevalent
economic system that any sudden attempt to tear them
away even from what is erroneous and dangerous in these
things would at this date add to the general disruption and
chaos rather than found the beginnings of a new Christian
order. At the same time one may, judging entirely for
oneself, wish that in the difficult dilemma the Vatican and,
still more, the local Hierarchies had taken more active and
constant steps at least to prevent the actual increase after
the war of the confusion in the Christian mind. By such
teaching—as it seems to me—the enslavement of the Catholic
mind to the excessive Nationalisms of Italy, Germany,
France, Spain, Ireland might have been mitigated and
Christians made readier for the only sort of leadership that
can save civilisation to-day. At the time it would have
tended to delay the tragic climax, not only by weakening the
Nationalist forces in these countries, but by preventing the
general weakening of Christianity in the eyes of the world
through the scandal, let us say, of Italian clerical behaviour
at the time of the Abyssinian war. But, whether a bolder
and more radical policy in denouncing and warning against
the various evils in public affairs would have been wiser or
not, there can be no question but that the evils were too
deep-seated and too subtly woven into the fabric of the
I
no CHRISTIAN CRISIS
society to which millions of Christians belonged to be
eradicated by the sort of denunciation for which some
romantic Christians sigh. If the Totalitarianisms grew into
monstrosities and the ' Dawnist ' aspirations were trans
formed into a vicious and ignorant national policy or a
flirting with Socialism, it was not because the Pope and the
Bishops failed to warn the world in time. Christianity,
indeed, must take her full share of the blame, but she shares
it, not through omissions after the war, but through such
parts of her policy and behaviour as helped the new spiritual
forces to grow up before and especially through the nine
teenth and twentieth centuries. Above all, it is important
to note that the Church's weaknesses did not arise from the
Papacy whose political and social action is limited to what
the faithful can ' stand,' but from the persistent infidelities
to the true Christian spirit on the part of millions of Catholics,
clerical and lay, in every generation. These infidelities
accumulate and weaken the national Churches so that the
possible leadership of the Pope is severely diminished out
side the specific doctrinal and dogmatic fields. These
infidelities go with widespread ignorance on the part of
Christians about the full meaning, obligations and scope of
Christianity. Between them, these infidelities and this
ignorance simply mean that the Church is deprived in
practice of the natural avenues relating her to the world and
compelled instead to resort to a state of siege with only
artificial contacts with society. It is not from Vatican
pronouncements only that we have to look for the Christian
social renaissance, but from the reform and enlightenment
of the multitude of Christians throughout the world.
But it must not be thought that, because the Church
attempted between the two wars to make the best of
generally bad bargains, she attached most importance to
this aspect of her manifold activities. Her object was
undoubtedly to gain time during which she could make
spiritual and moral progress within the body of the faithful,
for she judges—and obviously with supreme correctness—
that the evils of the time can only be overcome in the end
through the gradual education of Christians to that full
 CONCLUSIONS—I m
conception of Christianity, religious and secular, which
obtained in the Middle Ages but which was gradually
lost after the Reformation.
Now that we have seen something of the nature of the
forces against which Christianity has contended in vain
and something of the disastrous consequences to civilisation
through the practical triumph of these forces, our task is to
study this movement towards a spiritual renaissance of the
full Christian mind, and to endeavour to find out, with
particular reference to our own country, where and how it
can come to grips with the forces at work in the world.
PART TWO

TO-DAY
 CHAPTER ONE

THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE

ET me recall the nature of the problem, as it was

stated at the beginning of the book. Throughout
M. J the last hundred and fifty years the spiritual force of
Christianity has counted for less and less in shaping the
course of history and yet throughout that same period
Christianity has grown spiritually stronger in doctrine and
corporate action, while at the same time being able to point
to an increasing degree of fidelity and devotion among the
growing number who recognise its claims.
About the first assertion I need hardly say any more.
We have briefly traced the nature of the forces which have
moulded our times, and we have seen that the dominant
spiritual forces at play within the field of economic, tech
nical and scientific changes have been anti-Christian, not
necessarily in the crude ' anti-clerical ' sense, but in the
sense that they have stimulated men to seek ends which are
inconsistent with Christianity and yet are offered as some
thing better than Christianity can provide, and that they
have induced a high degree of devotion and sacrifice so that
these ends may be achieved. That the various promises
held out have not been fulfilled, but that, on the contrary,
the world has progressed like a ship slowly settling down in
shallow waters and breaking up on ridge after ridge of
unseen reefs, is no proof that intentions were not good and
actions sincere. It only proves that the ends envisaged were
false, untrue to human nature and untrue to the laws of
created things. None the less, despite the non-Christianity
of the ends and the actual failure to achieve them, the
spiritual force of Christianity was not only unable to check
"5
u6 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
their advance, but unable even to protect the best of its
faithful from being largely governed in their day-to-day life,
their businesses, their public behaviour by these conflicting
spiritual influences. We started our observations, it will be
remembered, by noting the fact that Christians were
engaged in the last war in fighting one another for con
flicting moral and spiritual ends. We end them by having to
note that once again Christians all over the world are
deeply divided, and in many cases actually fighting one
another, for similarly conflicting moral and spiritual ends.
Though we have not heard from the German pastorals or
pulpits claims to the effect that Germany and Italy are
fighting for civilisation, decency and Christianity, as is
steadily maintained from the Allied Catholic leadership,
we can hardly doubt that the majority of German Catholics
are convinced that the defence of their Fatherland is a
sacred enough cause to allow them to ignore the objective
rights and wrongs of the conflict, and that they all see in the
German claims to lebensraum and to rectify the injustice of
Versailles a positively just cause, hardly less urgent than
the Allied defence of Poland or the Allied determination
that wanton aggression shall cease. This much—reinforced
by the belief that the Allies stand for social and international
injustice, for masonic and pagan ideals, for Bolshevist and
Jewish values—is apparently the common belief of most
Catholics in belligerent Italy and non-belligerent Spain.
Indeed the tragic thing is that Catholics throughout the
world, having reached, apparently, a reasonable identity of
views at the beginning of the present Pontificate under the
middle Papal thesis of ' Peace, the fruit of justice,' have
now split again into pro-democratic ideology and pro-
totalitarian ideology through the actual outbreak of war—
and they have done this, even though the one great acknow
ledged enemy of Christianity, Russian Bolshevism, has
entered into alliance with Germany. (This, of course, was
made easier through the fact that the democratic side,
despite its high ideals, did not hesitate to court Russia
before the war and would not for a moment hesitate to-day
to take advantage of Soviet help.) In some ways the
 THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE 117
division between Catholics is sharper than it was in 19 14,
for the side which merited the consistent commendation of
the Vatican newspaper and seemed to fulfil the principles
of war and peace laid down by Pius XII had fewer Catholics
fighting for it than the opposite side. On the other hand, in
some respects the position at the beginning of this war was
better than it was in 19 14. There must, for example, have
been a big minority of German Catholics, heirs of the
Centre Party and convinced anti-Communists, who were
profoundly disturbed in conscience by their position,
though circumstances silenced them, and few German
Catholics could feel wholly satisfied in conscience. In this
country, too, there is plenty of evidence that Christians no
longer accept the simple thesis : my country, a hundred
per cent right ; Germany, a hundred per cent wrong. On
the contrary, the prevalent view would seem to be that,
however wrong we have been, Germany has now put herself
so completely in the wrong that we must take action,
however much we hate it. We are in the position of a
citizen deeply troubled in conscience about many things,
notably the un-Christian way in which he has acquired
his wealth, who sees a thief waylaying a passer-by, knocking
him on the head and taking his pocket-book. The citizen's
scruples would not and should not prevent him trying to
catch the thief though the duty of restitution of ill-gotten
goods remains. Furthermore, there has been rather less
of the ' holy war ' and ' crusade ' vocabulary, both in the
pulpit and elsewhere, just as few of us are very sanguine
about the likelihood of the ' Dawn ' breaking as soon as the
thunderstorm is past. In neutral countries—at any rate
until the big Nazi successes—the more prevalent Christian
feeling seemed to be a scepticism about the purity of motives
of either side, a scepticism that is very marked in the case of
Catholics in the United States. Lastly, the Pope himself,
more happily placed for some months than his predecessor
in the last war owing to the non-belligerency of Italy,
summed up the immediate rights and wrongs of the conflict
in a more concrete way than did Benedict XV, and, while
more definitely blaming Germany's policy especially in
n8 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
regard to Poland and leaving his feelings about the invasion
of the Lowlands to be easily inferred, has not spared us by
indirectly criticising the Versailles peace. Both camps,
moreover, are about equally indicted when the Pope
speaks of the deep-seated moral and spiritual errors which
have led to the catastrophe. And in the very earliest stages
of the conflict the Pope felt it possible to give to the world
five definite points or principles upon which a Christian
peace could be effected to-morrow, if the Christian moral
order were taken seriously by Europe.
This progress was partly due to the general break-down
of the non-Christian spiritual forces, or at any rate to the
rejection of the pseudo-Christian content in them, and
partly to the Christian renaissance that has taken place
since the last war and whose effects are beginning to mani
fest themselves.
The ' Dawnism ' and moral optimism of 19 14 are no
longer so strong. Our experiences have been too bitter.
The war to end war has led to another. Democracy has
not been made safe, but, on the contrary, weakened and in
many places collapsed. Heroes have not found a place in
the sun, but rather endured a twilight existence in the ranks
of the unemployed or under-paid. Justice has everywhere
yielded to force. Only ' Dawnism ' itself—though it does
not lack votaries even to-day—could survive such a record,
while Nationalism, Capitalism and Socialism have too
plainly indicated their true characters to be able to make
the easy appeals of old to popular opinion.
The position changed somewhat when France was over
run in the summer and Italy entered the war. Mutual
hatred rapidly increased, and the Allies became too con
cerned with the imperative needs of self-defence to bother
about the rights and wrongs of the war itself. On the other
hand, the rapid German victories drew Italy and Spain
more deeply than ever into the German ideological orbit,
and it became easier to argue that the destruction ofmasonic,
Jewish, liberal France and Britain would give Europe the
chance of recovering under an authoritarian and unified
leadership more consistent with Christian traditions than

J
 THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE 119
had been the pluto-democratic secularism of London, Paris
and New York. Though this view is bound to influence
some national hierarchies, there is reason to believe that it
makes little appeal to the spiritual authorities of the Vatican.
The great question of the future is whether Christianity
is sufficiently prepared to be able .to hold out against the
temptation to associate itself too closely with the new
' Dawnism ' that would follow a British victory or the new
Authoritarianism that would follow a German victory. In
other words, it is a question of examining whether
Christianity, despite its easy surrender in the past to un-
anchored ' Dawnism ' and to Nationalism, whether mani
fested in the Totalitarian reaction or in the capitalist
imperialism of the Democracies, has sufficiently increased
its sensitivity to these evils so that it can slowly spiritualise
the general sense of disillusion on the Allied side and temper
the possible triumph of the enemy cause.
The preparation for this tremendous responsibility goes
back to the pontificate of Leo XIII who was the first modern
Pope not only to offer the principles of a positive Christian
solution to the particular problems and grievances upon
which ' Dawnism ' and Socialism fed, but also to indicate
the great guiding lines upon which a Christian intellectual
revival should proceed. The Encyclical, JEterni Patris,
decreeing the return to the living philosophy of the Middle
Ages which culminated in the thought of Aquinas, was the
answer to the state of affairs in Catholic intellectual training
thus graphically described by Lecanuet :
' They (teachers) are given chairs quite beyond their
capacity. And there are deplorable gaps in the curricu
lum ! In most seminaries there is no course in the
Sciences to prepare the students to meet scientifically the
objections against revelation : no course in Civil Law
or Canon Law. The most incredible thing of all one
hardly dares to write : in many seminaries there is no
course in Church History. Scripture means only an
hour or two a week given to a running commentary—from
the pointofview ofpiety—upon the Psalms or the Gospels.'1
1 Quoted by Maisie Ward in Insurrection versus Resurrection, p. 27.
120 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Pius X developed the Renaissance in two ways, negatively
by putting an end to Modernism and positively by
strengthening the devotion of the Church and restoring the
Liturgy to its rightful and fruitful place. Modernism was,
of course, the violent reaction of the Catholic intellectuals
to the Church's apparent inability or unwillingness to take
notice of what was happening in the world around. It
fastened on to what appeared to be good and right in
' Dawnism ' and modern Science and, adopting the manners
of the ' Dawnists ' whose single-minded fervour turns so
easily to violence against their rivals or opponents, many of
the Modernists indulged in a hostility and mockery that
ruined their own cause. Modernism was stamped out, but
the lesson was learnt. The Church broadened her outlook
where a broadening was needed, and the intellectuals
served her without eating away at the foundations of then-
own philosophy. But the saintly Pius was more concerned
to ward off the errors and growing paganism of the times by
purifying the Church's religious and devotional life, in
particular by centring it around the celebration of the
Sacrifice of the Mass and the frequentation, especially
among the young, of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
During and after the war, as we have seen, Benedict XV
endeavoured to make applicable to the times and the
tempers of peoples the traditional teaching of the theo
logians to the Natural Law as i% refers to international
society, but this philosophic foundation was swept away by
passions and uncritical optimism, so that too many Christians
were caught in the flood. Meanwhile the many seeds sown
by Leo XIII and Pius X were germinating, and Pius XI,
while faced with insuperable problems in trying to make
contact between the spiritual force of Christianity and the
many non-Christian forces driving civilisation to its doom—
the effort on this plane was coming too late—was able to
tend and strengthen the rapid growth of these springs of
new spiritual life and action within the Church. One
phrase conveniently labelled this many-sided effort : it is
Catholic Action.
Catholic Action was a phrase in use before the war and
 THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE 121
even before the present century. In Italy and France it
stood for a number of movements, attracting especially the
young and more vigorous Catholics, promoting Christian
ideas in social and political questions among the faithful
themselves and among secularist society. As such, these
movements were among the first spontaneous expressions
of a Christian renaissance in the face of a world becoming
ever more pagan. These movements, however, tended to
come under ecclesiastical censure or shadow because of
political or social or philosophical connections that seemed
dangerous to the authorities, and every offort was made to
discipline such ' Catholic Action ' by fixing it into a diocesan
framework, under the direct authority of the Bishops, and
limiting its scope to ecclesiastical, devotional or, at most,
cultural ends.
The insistence that Catholic Action should remain
wholly non-political has endured, but, under Pius XI, the
movement gradually took on a fuller and wider character
in keeping with the rapid development of the Church's own
action. The realisation that the Church, despite the enrich
ing of her own spiritual and moral life, was remaining out
of touch with what was vital and dynamic in society was
spreading, and, springing from many sources, a new system
of spiritual strategy developed. Essentially it consisted of
organising the Catholic laity to accomplish the sort of apos
tolic work which was becoming ever more difficult for the
clergy to perform. By vocation the clergy are cut off from
the world. This suited the traditional apostolic work of
the Church which is really based upon the supposition that
men on the whole have the right ideas about the meaning
of life, moral values and the way society should be ordered.
Tradition and a Christian education are expected to guar
antee this, while weakenings of the fabric here and there
can be dealt with by the Christian State in the first instance
and by exhortations and, if necessary, disciplinary action
on the part of the Church, when the action of the State does
not suffice. What the Church does expect is human failure
to live up to the ideal. To keep mankind up to the mark,
to strengthen his will by the sacraments and preaching and,
122 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
above all, to mediate through the sacrament of penance
God's forgiveness for the past, a clergy, separated from the
world, amply suffices. Even so it was found at different
times in the Church's history, notably at the time of the
foundation of the Friars and, later, of the Jesuits, that
avenues into the heart of society were needed with a clergy
specially equipped to advance along them. But, as we have
seen, the nineteenth century ushered in a very different
problem : the problem of a world which was rejecting the
Christian ideal, rather than not living up to it, and sub
stituting for it other and alien ideals. The separated clergy
and the traditional apostolic and pastoral methods became
less and less able to cope with the danger. Those who
accepted the new ideas not only rejected their authority—
and this was as true for Protestantism as for Catholicism—
but never came into any sort of contact with them. Even
worse than this, the faithful themselves, bound to live their
week-day lives in intimate contact with men and women
professing anti-Christian ideas and working within a society
governed more and more by such ideas, were rapidly being
affected by these spiritual forces, some to the extent of reject
ing Christianity altogether, but most to the extent of living
double lives, a Christian life in private and personal matters
and a more or less non-Christian life in public and business
matters. The obvious answer was to associate and organise
Catholic men and women in the world to do some of the
work of the clergy, namely in maintaining Catholic fidelity
to Christian ideals in public life and in gradually winning
back their fellow-workers and citizens to Catholicity.
And while this idea was popularising itself and being
slowly put into practical effect the theologians, spiritual
writers and intelligentsia, clerical and lay, were re-stating
Catholic teaching and outlook in a form at once more
fundamental and more suited to the way the contemporary
world was thinking. Typical of this change, for example,
was the renewed insistence upon the social or organic
nature of the Church, a point constantly stressed by St. Paul,
but stated less and less emphatically in the post-Reformation
period when the Church concentrated upon the work of
 THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE 123
saving individual souls in a society too divided and disturbed
to be considered as a whole. An interesting example of
the great change in this direction that came about in these
years is provided by the fact that the Catholic Encyclopedia,
published in 1907, gave only a few lines to the explanation
of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ. In a con
temporary edition of this publication, this great Pauline
doctrine of the oneness of all members of the Church in
Christ would undoubtedly be given an important treatise
covering many pages. The renewed emphasis upon the
Liturgy as the great corporate act of worship and prayer,
the dynamism, as it were, of the Mystical Body, is another
example of the new spirit.
It is easy, therefore, to understand how ' Catholic Action '
gathered under itself these different but harmonising ten
dencies. It stood, on the one side, for the co-operation of
the laity in the apostolic work of the Church and, on the
other, for the carrying into this modern apostolate of this
social restatement of the spiritual force of the Church.
Thus it was like a new army, trained in the most up-to-date
tactics and expected to carry out a new strategy (which, as
it happened, was nothing but the presentation in a form
suited to modern times of the older tradition which had in
some degree been allowed to lapse after the Reformation).
This Catholic Action was not thought out by one com
mander, even the Pope, and imposed from above : it was
rather spontaneously generated and developed everywhere
under the vigorous encouragement of the Popes in order
to meet the perplexing situation. For this reason it has taken
many forms and concentrated upon different aspects of the
Christian attack upon the world. Thus in France and
Belgium where a democratic regime allowed considerable
freedom of social and political action the relatively numerous
Catholics have organised themselves in all walks of life,
factories, workshops, universities, businesses, for the purpose
of strengthening and developing their own corporate sense
of oneness in Christ and for the infiltrating into French
society of Christian values, especially in the social sphere.
Political action which might at first sight seem to be the
124 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
natural development of such a movement is, of course,
barred. In Italy the presence of a Fascist regime made
this form of Catholic Action impossible, and the movement
is in effect limited to diocesan and parochial formations for
maintaining a high level of religious fervour and protecting
Christian morals and decency in social intercourse. In
Great Britain, where Catholics are relatively few, and still
far from conscious of the meaning of Catholic Action, the
organised movement is limited to the Italian model with
considerable vagueness about its precise aims. In the
United States the rapidly growing Catholic community
still relies for the most part upon a machinery calculated to
make Catholicity a spiritual force, alongside rather than
within the general community, but there are signs that this
machinery may rapidly adapt itself to something more like
the spirit of Catholic Action, and the present Pope appears
to set great store on the development of Catholicity in the
United States.
But whatever the local differences may be and however
varied the rates of progress in different countries, we can
discern the spirit of Catholic Action as a new, consistent
and potentially strong force at work for the precise purpose
of regaining the lost contact between Catholic Christianity
and the secularist world. The notes common to its spirit—
which is far wider than its organised expression—are as
follows. It incorporates the laity in the work of re-Christian
ising society and individuals. It aims at effecting this by
strictly spiritual action under the direction of the Bishops,
thus, as it were, forming a more or less organised elite of
devout and world-conscious Catholics, drawn from the
world for the purpose of carrying out their mission within
the world, i.e. the actual places where the world's work is
carried on, whether it be Government departments, par
liaments, stock-exchanges, businesses, factories, shops, etc.
The dynamism working the movement is spiritual fervour
drawn from corporate participation in' the Church's sacra
mental life lived in the full spirit and meaning of the
Liturgy. The all-important intellectual and moral force of
the movement is derived from the being trained to under
 THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE 125
stand the meaning of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of
Christ whereby all Christians are members of one another
in an all-comprehensive organic unity whose spiritual and
moral life should be a ' form ' ordering and vivifying the
manifold temporal orders and activities of human societies.
By being trained to understand the nature of this form or
pattern, as it should apply to this or that temporal activity
of society, whether it be economic or cultural or political or
industrial or recreational, the Catholic Actionist, as an
individual and as a part of the Body of Christ, should by
example and encouragement be a constant element of
' re-ordering ' within secularist society.
Evidently the ideal is a high and ambitious one, but it
is genuinely dynamic and practical, for it depends upon the
work and training of small bodies of generous and fervent
Christians that should be easily found and whose influence
must necessarily be felt among ever widening (if also
weakening) circles of both Christians and non-Christians.
The reader may recall that political theorists, like Aldous
Huxley and Middleton Murry, who have a deep sense of
the disorder of the world and yet of its immense self-pro
tective armoury, are driven to the idea of the cell of devoted
reformers, converted to right ideas themselves and con
stantly at work to convert their fellows, as the only hope
of saving the world. And we also know that it is through
the hidden work of the small cell that revolutionary move
ments begin their work of undermining an existing order
and adapting it to the ends which they propagate.
Such then, in brief outline, are the armoury and organi
sation of the Church at the present time as she awaits the
problems of a post-war world.
Are they sufficient ? Do they warrant the hope that
Christianity can play a major part in the determination of
the order that is to follow war, if either Germany or Britain
are crushed, or if the war end in a tired stalemate ?
We shall see.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE CHRISTIAN PERSON .

TIHOSE who have followed me so far may have been

puzzled by an apparent confusion in my method
of approaching the problem set in these pages. It
may well be asked whether I am not all the time supposing
that Christianity can and should effect certain things which
in reality fall outside its proper scope. I have deplored, it
may be said, the way in which the world has revolted against
the spiritual force of Christianity and substituted for it
other and rival spiritual forces, and I might be read as
blaming the Church for failing to recover her influence.
Yet, given the nature of Christianity, was anything else
possible ? The loss of the Church's hold upon the public
manners of Western society can, no doubt, be traced back
to infidelities, failures and stupidities on the part of Christian
leaders and people through a number of centuries ; but
once the loss has taken place—and this particular subject
has not been our concern in these pages—what methods are
at the Church's disposal for recovering the lost ground ?
Surely only spiritual methods. And spiritual methods are
a matter of faith. If men, for whatever reason, lose their
faith in the dogmas of Christianity and the consequent
Christian interpretation of the meaning of human life, they
must be reconverted. Indeed, we have constantly suggested
here that ' Dawnism ' has failed as a spiritual force, just
because it was a vague and irrational feeling, unanchored
in any factual reality or any consistent interpretation of the
meaning of God, man and the world. Christianity, there
fore, cannot really hope to make any headway except in so
far as it regains converts through spiritual and, indeed,
126
 THE CHRISTIAN PERSON 127
religious action, for it is Christian teaching that God's grace
alone can enable a man to see the truth. What hope,
moreover, is there of creating a Christian conviction, unless it
be a spiritual one ? And have we not admitted from the
beginning that Christianity has been making great strides
in this direction, recovering not only numbers but strengthen
ing the fervour, observance and quality of attachment of
the faithful ?
And there is another difficulty. One often hears it
remarked that Christianity is failing by comparison with
such contemporary movements as Fascism or Communism.
A handful of determined Fascists and Communists can effect
a national revolution within a few years. Millions of
Christians, on the other hand, are apparently unable to
make their spiritual influence felt in nation or society in the
course of a century. If only we, the true spiritual force,
possessed something of the fervour, spirit of sacrifice, will
power of these devotees of a false spiritual force, could we
not sweep them out of our path and bring about a Christian
revolution ? But the comparison is seen, on reflection, to
be unfair and superficial. Fascism or Communism, while
they appeal to spiritual qualities in man, have a temporal
end, whereas the end of Christianity is solely spiritual. We
have constantly suggested that the Church has been
weakened in her public action through her continued
scruple lest she invade the sphere of Caesar. Because her
mission is spiritual, the Church has no right to order or
impose the Christian way of organising temporal affairs, e.g.
the Christian constitution for a State, the Christian order of
economic relations, the Christian business, the Christian work
of art, the Christian book. As St. Paul says : ' There are
diversities of graces . . . there are diversities of ministries
. . . there are diversities of operations.' This limitation
constitutes a heavy handicap for both the Church and the
individual Christian. The Fascist or the Communist can
inspire his followers with a completed positive programme
of revolution. Communists can all work together to bring
about a new and definite order which they can envisage
and which thrills them. But the Christian, as a Christian,
128 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
has nothing positive to offer in the way of a temporal pro
gramme. In facl^ in practice he is limited to pointing out
what is wrong about other peoples' programmes—wrong,
because such and such items or characteristics of the pro
grammes cannot be fitted into the spiritual and moral order
revealed to Christianity by God and protected by the
Church. If the Church, perceiving the excesses of any
particular Caesar, could offer herself as a substitute for him
she would be much quicker to denounce and expose his
errors, calling for active support from her faithful. But the
moment she tried to do this she would herself be exceeding
her Divine commission, attempting something for which
she possesses no special ability or experience, losing her
legitimate authority over her faithful, and necessarily
creating a disorder infinitely worse than the one she wishes
to remedy. It is true that in the past she often surmounted
the difficulty by calling in the aid of a rival Caesar (a
Christian one, however) to give temporal effect to such
spiritual condemnations as those of excommunication or
interdict. This method, whether legitimate or not, cannot
be resorted to to-day, and her condemnations of temporal
princes necessarily remain entirely negative in the temporal
order and would probably do more harm than good.1
They may weaken their authority, but they provide no
positive alternative to make up for the weakening. And
since some form of social authority, order and stability are
necessary for the good of mankind, the Church must be very
slow in making use of so negative and disrupting a method.
When people, then, talk of the Christian Revolution they
are talking nonsense if they have in mind anything com
parable to the Fascist or Communist Revolution. What
they should mean is a re-conversion of man and society to
the Christian spiritual pattern or framework within which
any temporal order of political, social, international, cul
tural, economic relations and all the infinite varieties of
nation and race can be fitted and worked. Such a revolu
tion, positive only in its religious and spiritual content and
necessarily negative and vague as to the particular temporal
1 See Part I, Chapter IX.
 THE CHRISTIAN PERSON 129
object which this spiritual force may promote, is far more
complex, far more difficult to organise and carry through
and far less obviously and immediately appealing to men
in general than the appeal of Fascist or Communist.
Thus in two ways Christianity's hope of recovering the
lost ground is handicapped by the very nature of its mission
and its meaning : it ultimately depends upon faith (a
supernatural gift of God) on the part of individuals in its
dogma and moral authority ; and it has no commission to
impose any special order upon nations and men in their
temporal affairs.
Hence, once faith in the Church's supernatural claims is
lost she can do little to save mankind from the consequences
of its own errors. While she may and must do everything
possible to strengthen herself, religiously, morally and intel
lectually, so that she may keep her faithful and increase
their Catholicity and spread the message of the Gospel
among those who have rejected her, she cannot, it would
seem, hope to do more with society and nations themselves
than fight at almost any cost to preserve her freedom of
spiritual action within the existing temporal orders.
But is this the whole story ? It represents and accounts
for the action of the Church during the greater part of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but does it fully cover
the meaning of the claims of Christianity ?
The answer is surely to be found by considering the
nature of a Christian society in being. Before the Reforma
tion and, to-day, in isolated instances, we have examples
of Christian States or orders in being. In such States or
orders there exists a very intimate relationship between
Church and State. While it is true that such a State may
be a monarchy or a republic, authoritarian or democratic,
Latin or Anglo-Saxon, black or white or yellow, enclosed
by tariff barriers or free trade, rich or poor, with its wealth
evenly or unevenly distributed, the one spiritual and moral
authority of Christianity will penetrate so deeply into the
texture of society and into the views and ways of behaviour
of individuals that all these differences are in fact reduced
to comparative unimportance. This arises from the fact,
13° CHRISTIAN CRISIS
as I have stated, that man is incurably spiritual and moral.
' There are diversities of graces, but the same spirit ; there
are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord ; and there
are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh
all in all,' says St. Paul. So long as men are in agreement
about the ends and values of life, the particular means
whereby they are attained and the particular media within
which they are attained do not greatly matter. Men may
or may not live up to their ideals—to a large extent they
do not and therefore Christian States fall far short of what
they ought to be—but as long as they possess them in
common and in the degree in which they have the character
and will to attain them, the particularity of the means
matters little. We see this truth illustrated across the face
of history. The most perfect paper institutions for running
a country are completely useless if they do not suit the
character and natural ideals of a race, as is clear from
democratic and liberal experiments in many a continental
country, whereas the jumble of tradition, history, conven
tion, contradiction which makes up the British Constitution
serves brilliantly to establish in England the values and
way of life which the English spirit desires. It is likewise
evident that the particular machinery set up in revolutionary
countries like Germany, Italy or Russia is a mere haphazard,
hand-to-mouth series of devices through which the burning
spirit of the people can express itself. In each case it might
have been different, the only thing that matters being its
power to implement and articulate the needs and ends of
the nation placed in a certain environment.
Thus, despite the myriad possible temporal differences,
any two societies which truly shared the Christian outlook
would resemble one another very closely. The differences
in technique, constitution, culture, traditions, etc., would
only matter in so far as they exemplified the richness and
fertility of Christianity which is able to illuminate and guide
to the same purpose, both in this world and the next, the
multitude of different human ways of behaving. Nothing
could seem more different, for example, than the art of the
negro and the art of Michelangelo. Yet both in their
 THE CHRISTIAN PERSON n 131
totally different ways and without any sort of identification
or confusion or loss of their respective creative powers can
express the same outlook upon the values and meaning of
life. On the other hand, a technique, degree of education,
a tradition closely resembling that of Michelangelo could
express an outlook in direct contradiction with his. If this
is the case with such obvious disparities of human genius
and powers, how much more must it be true of the rela
tively minor differences of behaviour and traditions between
the ways of running various European countries.
These considerations do not, however, directly meet the
original difficulties. It still remains true that the Christian
outlook can only be directly attained by a spiritual con
version (limited to comparatively few individuals and not
possible to men without Divine Grace) and it still remains
true that Christianity as such cannot offer a positive pro
gramme of temporal action through which its spiritual ends
could be attained.
I would suggest—and the remainder of this book is meant
to suggest—that the overlooked answer is to be found in the
individual Christian who has so long been falling between
two stools, the chair of Peter and the throne of Caesar, that
the oneness of his personality has been forgotten.
The Christian person is a world in himself. The spiritual
and the temporal, Church and State, are intimately linked
and at work together within him. This must be the case.
No man is wholly spiritual, nor is any man wholly material.
He has to live his temporal, material life in the society of his
fellows, working with them and taking his due place in the
social order which protects and enriches him and to which'
he makes his own contribution. - At the same time, in some
degree or other, he possesses a philosophy of life and judges
according to a standard of values. Existence has some sort
of ultimate meaning for him, even if it be no more than the
seeking of pleasure or comfort in any way of which he can
conceive. However low his spiritual values, they can at any
moment be whipped up by his fellows or his conditions of
life to a Nationalist aspiration, or a Socialist one or a
' Dawnist ' one, or to religion itself. In every man, then,
132 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
we find what may be called a temporal life and a life,
perhaps dormant, of the spirit. In many respects the two
may be in conflict, but life on the whole is a process of
reconciling or harmonising them. This is obvious enough.
What is not so obvious, however, is the extraordinary extent
of the struggle by existing institutions to possess the whole
creature or, if possession is impossible, to tear him to pieces.
The State demands the individual person's whole-hearted
allegiance, body and soul, and if it cannot get it, it tries to
tear his real spirit out of him, leaving only a pretence of
superficial allegiance to his own conscience or to any rival
spiritual institution which is fobbed off with values of
importance in the ' next world ' only where even Caesar has
no pretence to empire. The Church—in a much more
justifiable way, it is true—also demands the individual's
whole-hearted allegiance. The Church, as we have seen so
often, cannot and does not wish to possess or control the
temporal services he renders to Caesar nor to interfere with
the temporal order of his life, private or public, but in a non-
Christian society Christian authorities often tend to get
effective possession of these all the same by heavily depreciat
ing their importance in the Christian's own estimation. He is
persuaded that they do not much matter by comparison with
other things. As a result the person whose spirit is thus
gained by the Church tends to react in one of two different
ways according to his character. Viewing religion as
the only thing that matters, he either devotes himself
to it entirely and strives to bring every secular matter
under the empire of ecclesiasticism, or he tends to take
literally the suggestion that secular and temporal affairs
have no real importance and devotes himself to them, on
weekdays, with little regard for the moral quality and the
spiritual ends towards which they are making. Thus we
find good Catholics divided into the ' pious ' who see all life
in terms of making-religious, or indeed ecclesiasticising,
secular things, rejecting what is not susceptible of such treat
ment as bad, and into the ' sectarians ' who cut off religious,
spiritual and moral values from secular things and keep
them separated off for Sunday and personal life, while they
 THE CHRISTIAN PERSON 133
willingly hand over to the care of the State in terms ofthe pre
vailing standards of the times their weekday and public lives.
Both types, evidently, overlap a good deal in practice, since
for both whatever cannot be labelled ' religious ' tends not
to matter. The difference between them arises from the
extent to which they feel they can carry this label. Both are
also unwittingly playing the game of the State since they
are likely to leave in its spiritual keeping the very things
which the State wishes to control in its own interests.
This attitude, on the part of both the State and the
Church, succeeds in tearing into two parts the personality of
the individual, State and Church both thinking that they
are in possession of the part of him which really matters.
The Church possesses all that appertains to the next world
and the State all that appertains to this. A convenient
solution if man consisted of two separate parts or if there
were two separate orders with nothing to do with one
another, a supernatural order and a natural one. But there
is only one God and one truth—and for that matter one
indivisible person. What is right in the natural order is
right in the supernatural and what is wrong in the super
natural order is wrong in the natural order. We cannot
reach our eternal end by following a special set of rules,
but only by living according to the law of nature, which is
an application to temporal matters of God's eternal law, and
raising it to the supernatural order by means of God's grace,
mediated either through the Church or through the action
of the Word which enlightens every man that comes into the
world.
This, of course, is the staple doctrine of Christianity, and
we have to explain why the ecclesiastical outlook often
appears in practice to deviate from the spirit of the teaching
which it is constantly inculcating. It is evidently not
through any infidelity to what is so essential, but rather
through the wish to be literally faithful in the most direct
and obvious way to the Church's Divine commission to
preserve revealed dogma and the one moral law among men.
The Church is the guardian of supernatural truth and
morals as revealed by God and applicable to all mankind.
'34 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
She is also the normal way of salvation. She must therefore
always insist upon her duty to provide the fullest religious
and moral protection for all the faithful. Like a good
shepherd she carefully guards her sheep from danger and
holds them fast in her fold. She wishes that everything
concerning them should be under her guidance and direc
tion. She knows better than others how great is the spiritual
and moral content of secular actions and how easily the most
apparently innocent and right acts can be fitted into a false
or evil framework ; she knows that nothing can really be
said to fall outside the spiritual and moral design willed by
God for man's happiness on earth and hereafter. Her
spiritual policy, being itself nothing but the carrying out of
God's own will as revealed to her, is necessarily totalitarian,
and, taken by itself alone, it would logically lead to a position
of theocracy, ratione peccati, as theologians would put it.
Secular human action can so often be sinful that the Church
claims an indefinite indirect dominion over it to keep it
straight. At the same time the Church, being a spiritual
power, fully recognises that men must freely accept her
authority. Force is useless as the spiritual benefits of reli
gion depend upon the voluntary and rational co-operation
of the human person recognising the truth and willing to
live by it. Furthermore this authority, being spiritual, does
not extend directly to the temporal order. Hence while on
the one side the Church strives to gather into her fold all
that is human so that she may guide and protect it, she
respects on the other hand the voice of conscience guiding
every man, whether in or out of the Church, along the way
of natural morality, prompting him to form stable societies
and recognise secular authority, to live decently by his
fellows and so on. This natural morality, the voice of God
in the human conscience, is, of course, the basis of her own
supernatural province. Moreover within this natural moral
framework men may freely choose how they wish to live,
what sort of society they shall choose, what trade they shall
follow, what things they shall do, what clothes they shall
wear and a million other things. Over such things the
Church has no direct authority. They are matters of per-
 THE CHRISTIAN PERSON
sonal taste and tradition. Her authority is limited to
deciding when and where such action infringes God's law.
But since this indirect spiritual and moral authority of hers
is commonly denied by numberless individuals and by
secular or temporal societies, she seeks to exercise it as far as
possible by concentrating upon the faithful, held as closely
as possible and in as many respects as possible under her
wing. The great majority of Christians, however, whether
they like it or not, belong in nine-tenths of their lives to
secular society and are obliged to be guided by their own
consciences in this weekday life of theirs, lived according to
the rules and traditions of the society to which they belong
and under the authority of the State, so that the Church's
actual success in protecting the moral quality of their actions
is severely limited. The more devout, as I have said, seek
the protection of the Church in everything and dismiss as
sinful or at least suspicious whatever cannot be brought
under the direct authority of the Church, while the rest,
lost without the habitual guidance of the Church, tend by
reaction to accept without any moral enquiry whatever ' is
done ' in the secular field. It is this phenomenon which
accounts for the common complaint that Catholics have a
lower moral standard in public and social affairs than others
or that so-called Catholic countries achieve only a low
standard of public morality. What happens is that Catholics
tend to look to the Church to direct them and even to think
for them, and are lost when that direction and guidance are
not available. The Church is forced to exercise her universal
direct or indirect authority, as it were, by short cuts leading
straight to as many individuals as possible and to as much
of such individuals' lives as possible. Her authority being
denied elsewhere, Catholics who have perforce to live else
where are left without the guidance they expect and have
been insufficiently trained to guide themselves on Christian
principles.
The position, in theory at any rate, was very different in
the Middle Ages because the Church was then able to
exercise her indirect as well as her direct authority over all
people and the whole of society in all kinds of ways. The
136 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
secular authority fitted into the Christian framework, and
the prince or emperor was in a kind of midway position
between the laity and the clergy, having received an
ecclesiastical consecration or anointing. Schools and learn
ing in general, whence the springs of social action were to
be found, were directly under the Church's care. While it
was left to secular authorities and institutions to carry on the
temporal work of the world, they were trained by the
Church so that Christian principles of social justice and
national ends consistent with Christianity were exemplified
in such work or at any rate recognised as the common ideal.
And if secular societies strayed too far from the right order
they could be made to pay for it by the moral authority of
Christendom exercised at times by other secular societies
which felt themselves to be morally and spiritually united
for the really important ends common to all civilisation.
The Christian, living under such a dispensation, remained
one person, exercising the whole of his personality in his
religious life and the whole of his personality in his secular
life, for there was no essential conflict between them. In
their own orders, each remained entirely separate and under
different authorities, the secular life being wholly secular
and directed to immediate secular and temporal ends and
the religious life being wholly religious and directed to
eternal ends, but the one order fitted perfectly into the other,
in some respects the religious side being subordinate to the
secular and vice versa, and the two, working together, making
up the one Christian outlook. The individual for his part
had no difficulty in remaining the one indivisible Christian
person while living a purely secular (though Christian) life
in secular things and a complete religious life wherever
religion was the factor that mattered.1
No doubt it is not possible to return to this Christian
1 I have purposely described the ideal of mediaeval Christendom, not its
practice, for the ideal at least was commonly accepted. In practice the ideal
broke down partly because the Church even then was more concerned to
safeguard the faithful than to train them to look after themselves, but chiefly
because the_ Church herself succumbed to the temptations of wealth and
worldliness in the exercise of her immense power. The Church then had
too much power and too little fervour, just as to-day she has too little power,
but far more fervour and discipline.
 THE CHRISTIAN PERSON 137
order, which at all times was more of an accepted theory
than a fully established practice, but the ideal remains, and
it seems to me to afford the clue we need if we are to find a
way to restore to our modern societies the spiritual force of
Christianity. It must be done by the Christian, who com
prises within himself the spiritual and the temporal, the
religious and the secular, seeking to establish once again the
natural harmony between the two orders within his own
personality. The State is in conflict with the Church, and
they can only meet externally and, as it were, to strike
essentially unsatisfactory bargains, but within the individual
the two remain in intimate contact. The tearing apart of
the two orders inside the one person can be prevented by the
individual, if he once again understands what their proper
relationship should be. In so far as this could be achieved
every Christian living in a temporal society would be, as it
were, a focus of Christendom, a living example of the har
mony that should exist between Church and State. Hun
dreds of millions of such foci could scarcely fail to restore to
society its heritage of Christian spiritual force and order, nor
could they fail powerfully to influence the life and conduct
of their non-Catholic fellow-men.
Catholic Action, in so far as it trains Catholic citizens to
understand the spiritual riches and the dynamism of the
Faith, is producing an army of Catholics far better fitted
than their fathers to carry into secular life the all-pervading
spiritual force of Christianity. Through its influence,
Catholics will be much less in danger of forgetting that week
day life must remain Christian and be spiritually and morally
guided in exactly the same way as Sunday and personal life.
In other words it will prevent, and does prevent, the error
of supposing that secular matters, because they are not under
a religious label, are matters of Catholic indifference.
Catholic Action, moreover, in organising and enlightening
the laity is breaking through the fatal wall separating
Sunday and personal life (under the direction of the clergy)
from weekday life (under the direction of the State or the
established custom). On the other hand, there seems to me
to be a danger of Catholic Action, taken alone, leading back
 138 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
again to the complementary error, that of bringing more
and more of secular life within the province of religion,
devotion, piety. Catholic Action, to begin with, is a
specifically ecclesiastical organisation and it caters only for
the specially devout. It obviously has certain superficial but
not unimportant analogies with the cells that break the ground
for a political revolution, and, despite the most important
prohibition of political action (which would give it a
theocratic character), it is somewhat like an ecclesiastical
army of laymen, officered by the Bishops, seeking to take
secularist society by storm. And yet, in so far as it succeeds,
it would, being an ecclesiastical body, have nothing con
crete to offer in the way of a positive programme wherewith
to replace what has been destroyed. No doubt there is little
likelihood of its bringing off a coup of this character, but one
must judge it by its logical end. Moreover, just because it
will not succeed in actually breaking down secularist society,
it is likely either to fall back upon a policy of merely redeem
ing Catholics and converts from the world, thereby leaving
the secularist world stronger than ever and Catholics less
and less fitted to play their proper part in it, or to associate
itself with some existing secular movement, e.g. a Catholic
political party or a party which can be made Catholic, and
in doing so to ecclesiasticise that party. Whereas the true
ideal is all the time to Christianise what is secularist (to
make it, in other words, Christian and yet completely
secular), not to ecclesiasticise or make religious what should
properly remain entirely secular.
I need hardly say that I write this, not to weaken or even
criticise the ideal of Catholic Action, which is meant by the
Popes to be a religious movement, but only to point out its
possible dangers if misinterpreted, and to suggest that it
alone will not suffice.
To break the ground, to arouse Catholics to their task, above
all to begin their training as full Catholics, Catholic Action
is indispensable. And, whatever happens, the burning
spiritual fire of this Catholic lay elite will carry into the lay
fife of Catholics the all-important spiritual fervour and
enthusiasm that alone can sustain the generality of Catholics
 THE CHRISTIAN PERSON 139
in the task that lies ahead of them. But the actual work of
overthrowing the empire of non-Christian spiritual forces
within secularist society will not be achieved by organised
Catholic Action alone. This can only be achieved by
enlightened Christian minds, whether less or more devout,
working in secular capacities and for secular ends and yet
insisting at whatever cost in reconciling within themselves a
full secular life and yet a full religious or spiritual life so that
they stand out as single-minded Christian persons, properly
balanced as between the two aspects of human life, the
secular and the religious, neither over-religious at the
expense of appreciating the worth of secular life, nor indiffer
ent to religion as providing the norm for right moral action
in secular or weekday life as well as in Sunday and private
life, nor yet dividing life into two separate compartments
with one set of values for what seems religious and another
for what seems secular. Thus the Christian person should
be—and under any circumstances to a great extent can be—
a microcosm of the harmony that should ideally exist as
between Church and State in a Christian order.
Such an ideal can only be achieved by a considerable
change of outlook in the average Church-man, and by a
thorough overhauling of our educational system.
 CHAPTER THREE

THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS

I PROPOSE now to examine Catholicity in Great

Britain in the light of the ideal which I have outlined
in order to see how far it should be possible for Catholics
there to stand firm in the face of non-Christian spiritual and
material forces and thus set an example which could
influence the Christian body in general and promote
co-operation between its divided parts. The situation,
together with its possibilities, here will not be very different
from the situation in the United States or other countries
which may retain genuine religious freedom. From this
enquiry therefore it may be possible to reach certain general
conclusions about lines which could be followed by Chris
tianity as a whole—if post-war conditions permit—in the
vital task of making actual again the spiritual force of
Christianity within modern society ; thus enabling it to
take advantage of the present world-wide disillusion with
contemporary secularist forces to bring into being something
that could for our times correspond with the work envisaged
by the mediaeval ideal of Christendom. Needless to say, so
immense a subject can only be roughly blocked out in these
brief notes, but it may be that some of the suggestions,
thrown off here, will attract the attention of others more
capable of balancing and sifting them and of working out
into more considered and practical shape whatever may
stand the test of serious examination.
I take England as an example solely because it happens to
be the one country of whose religious state, especially as
regards Catholicity, I have intimate knowledge. But it
also happens to be not a bad field for enquiry suited to my
140
 THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS 141
general purpose. Catholics there are sufficiently numerous
to be able to make their influence felt, and yet not so well
established as a national institution as to have become set
in a way of action that can be altered only with difficulty.
Furthermore they enjoy an unusual degree of freedom, the
pressure of the State and the social system being exerted by
tradition and persuasion rather than by force. By general
consent the Catholic Church in England is recognised as
being in a very healthy spiritual condition with a high
standard of observance on the part of the people and a fine
record of devotedness on the part of pastors and clergy. In
spite of this, the spiritual force of Christianity, as Catholics
understand it to be, has very little influence on the national
life and one may doubt whether the sudden disappearance
of Catholicity would make a notable difference to the
manners, behaviour, policy and aims of this country.
Lastly, England is neither anti-clerical nor anti-religious.
On the contrary, there endures in it a feeling for Christian
ideals and Christian standards, rather vaguely understood,
a feeling nursed by existing Christian denominations and
other religious or spiritual bodies and preserved in the
morally sensitive individual conscience of the Englishman.
In other words, the field for Catholic or full Christian
influence appears to be a favourable one.
On the other side there exist handicaps special to Great
Britain that must inevitably retard the development of a
full Christian outlook. Catholicity there is commonly
regarded as an alien creed. It is also poor.
It is regarded as alien not only in the sense of foreign,
but also in the sense of being strange and difficult to under
stand. Englishmen regard it as foreign, partly because it
is Roman (i.e., somehow Italian, Latin, Southern, Con
tinental) and partly because of the very high percentage of
Irishmen or men of Irish descent among both clergy and
people. Apart from the Irish clergy, there are a good
number of French and other foreign priests who for some
reason or another have found refuge with us. The English
man whose feelings are easily moved for the moment
welcomes political exiles when they first arrive, but the
142 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
affection does not endure. Ecclesiastical exiles do not
greatly interest him at any time. ' Catholics abroad
generally get what they deserve ' is his unspoken comment.
And this is because of the strangeness and unintelligibility
to the average Englishman of Catholicity. This distrust is
rooted, of course, in English history since the Reformation
and the way it has been taught and popularised. It is part
of the national suspicion of the Latin and Catholic countries
and of the British sense of being superior to them, especially
when they stand for anything above the average English
man's head. English common sense and hard-headedness
have hitherto won all the prizes in modern history and they
have done this without stooping to the shabby tricks which
appear to be the Latin political stock-in-trade ; it is obvious
enough therefore that when the Latin uses long words and
complex arguments he may be talking above the English
man's head, but he is certainly up to no good. Catholic
theology with its subtleties, Catholic moral teaching with
its casuistry and confessional, Catholic devotion with its
convents and superstitions, Catholic writing which always
seems to make the worse the better cause, these things all
hang together with the anti-British Irish and the Roman.
They are alien to the Englishman. This attitude, as it
seems to me, accounts far more plausibly and fairly for the
strong anti-Franco bias in the Spanish war than any Masonic
or Communist conspiracy—though it must be admitted that
those who had a direct interest in propagating ' Dawnism '
and Socialism found a ready-made response in this anti-
Catholic attitude.
The poverty of the Catholic Church in a highly capitalised
country with an immensely high standard of living is also a
tremendous handicap. Christianity is dealing to-day with
spiritual, intellectual and social forces whose development
and propagation are always dependent upon financial
resources. Money cannot turn a bad man into a good one
or a stupid one into a clever one—still less can it make a
saint ; but money alone under present circumstances can
achieve the degree of organisation and education and the
status which enables the average man to be well led by
 THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS 143
average leaders. In sheer competition with other forces
Catholicity, which cannot in the nature of things rely at any
particular time on saints or leaders of genius or mass fervour,
requires the means whereby it can create an efficient and
widespread organisation that can train and carry through
what lies within the competence of the average Catholic.
Moreover, respectability, or, in default of it, a deep and
exploited sense of grievance are especially highly prized in
England. The Catholic community cannot live down its
foreignness by possession of that respectable wealth which
enables a man to change his name from Riccardi to Richards
or Levi to Lawson, nor can it exploit a sense of economic
grievance.
I mention these handicaps to show that I am fully aware
of the dead weight of difficulty that lies in the way of
progress, and that I am not crying for the moon. But I
hope to show that much more than is done could be
attempted in order to offset them.
If I am right, our aim should be to make the two million
or so Catholics in this country into properly balanced
Christian persons, religious wherever the field of religion
properly extends and secular wherever it is a question of
secular affairs. Note once again, for it is vital to the argu
ment and yet easily misunderstood especially by Catholic
readers, the meaning I attach to ' secular.' I do not mean
' secularist,' for ' secularist ' means making secular or
temporal matters ends-in-themselves. In other words, it is
making a false religion of temporal affairs as though the
good of the State, the happiness of society, the running of a
successful business, the dawning of a worldly golden age
were all that mattered. ' Secular ' in the Christian sense
means trying to achieve these secular and immediate ends
within a system or pattern which carries out God's will and
design for human life. The immediate temporal ends,
while fully studied and pursued on their own merits, are
all the time being fitted into further, wider and higher ends
which themselves move towards the supreme ends of human
life, God's glory and man's salvation. The Catholic who
lives as though religious and moral values did not concern
144 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
many of his secular activities is in so far a ' secularist '
person and therefore a worshipper of false gods, while the
Catholic who is only interested in what can be given an
ecclesiastical or devotional or pious label is subtly denying
God's creative action and dominion over nine-tenths of life.
He comes near asserting that what God made good and
what can be kept good by being used in accordance with
its ends and in harmony with other ends is evil or as near
evil as he dare believe. Such a man is implicitly denying
that the running of a State in accordance with the temporal
ends of a State, the making of a living in terms of business,
the painting of a picture according to the best canons of
art, the producing and acting of a play at its dramatic best
—that these secular things, done through and through in
a secular way, can be truly Christian as compared with
running a Church organisation, painting a pious picture or
acting a miracle play. The truth is that these activities,
while remaining wholly and entirely secular in their own
order, can fit in with the design that corresponds to God's
plan, and, when they do so, they are a hundred per cent
Christian, though possibly not in the slightest degree
religious, or devotional or pious. Unfortunately the name
' Catholic,' which should stand for all that is ' in order,'
whether religious or secular, has become almost exclusively
applied to what is religious or ecclesiastical in Catholicity.
This, of course, is the result of secular activities having in
the modern world become almost exclusively ' secularist,'
i.e., done for purely temporal or non-Christian ends.
Because of this truly tragic confusion in nomenclature
Catholics are in danger of losing the grand Christian
significance of ' Catholic ' and reducing it to something that
is, in truth, more sectarian than Christian.
This last reflection gives one some idea of the disentang
ling that has to be done if Catholics are to become again
fully-balanced Christian persons in a secularist country
like England.
If we except converts—whose intellectual, cultural and
even devotional output is out of all proportion to their
numbers—Catholic persons are formed in the last analysis,
 THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS 145
under God, by the Catholic clergy. The home, naturally,
plays a great part, but the home itself is very much what
the clergy do and leave undone. Social environment and the
imbibing of ideas derived from countless channels from the
secularist world count perhaps even more, but, if so, these
ideas and views pass through a mind which has been
prepared or left unprepared by the clergy. In other words,
the vast proportion of the education of Catholics, either
directly in schools or indirectly through church and parish
influences exerted to a greater or less degree throughout life,
is in the hands of the clergy. In particular the secondary
education, which produces the Catholic teachers in the
elementary schools, and most leading Catholic lay men and
women, is directly in the hands of religious, male or female.
What are the nature and objects of this vast clerical
educational system ? They are twofold. The first is to
provide religious education and training so that the child
shall be a good Catholic and remain a good Catholic.
The second is to bring up the child to that standard of
learning and mental efficiency which the State requires
and which he needs if he is to have a reasonable chance in
his secular life. It would seem that this twofold scheme is
ideal for our purpose, the purpose namely of producing a
balanced Christian mind that shall treat religious things as
religious and secular things as secular, the two harmonising
within the one indivisible Christian outlook. But notice
that the emphasis in this idea of a Christian person is not on
the separation between what is religious and what is secular—
that is the error of the pious or the sectarians—but in the
distinction of function between them within one indivisible
Christian outlook. Therefore the test of this Catholic educa
tion is not to be sought in the relative emphasis that is
given to religion on the one side and to secular learning on
the other, still less in the degree in which either religion
swallows up secular learning or vice versa, but in the measure
in which the two, while remaining distinct in their own
orders, are harmonised and united to forma Christian person.
I suggest that this ideal is very far from being reached,
and that in most cases it is not even sought after. What is
146 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
sought after, on the contrary, is an actual separation
between the religious side and the secular side, disguised by
the external imposition of a framework of a religious or
ecclesiastical or devotional character which gives the
pretence of a unity that is in reality spurious.
One must recognise that, since the educational system is
national and since Catholics have to live their lives in
competition with others in a non-Christian world, Catholic
education has no option but to provide a secular education
that is practically identical with that of the rest of the
country. But in some cases, especially in our public schools,
it goes even further, imitating as far as possible the spirit,
the code and the manners of non-Catholic schools. This may
not be very serious, though it does train Catholics to think
themselves identical in spirit with their fellow-men in
everything that escapes the direct religious label. One
fears, however, that this slavish imitation of the public-
school spirit, code and class-conscious is a symbol of a
tendency running right through our education : to be as
like others as we dare wherever it is at all permissible. Such
a view, standing on its own, would seem scarcely consistent
with the ideal of Catholic education, and for this reason it is
heavily compensated for by a tremendous insistence upon
religious and especially devotional training. The result
might be described as the Eton three-quarter back in a
cassock and cotta. The life of piety and the scrupulous
observance of the commandments, especially where they
concern personal and family morality, are put forward in a
way that tends to give a child or youth a lop-sided set of
values. While on the one side worldly values and ambitions
and codes ' in all that is not obviously sin ' are inculcated,
the boy or girl is persuaded that the only things that really
matter are the life of devotion in an inner Catholic world
where vice has never been heard of except as the sort of
thing that is constantly happening in the outer world.
And the moral map of that outer world, into which they
must enter and whose social and intellectual values they
are taught, is to be charted through life solely by a rule of
humb that forbids certain things and permits others, by
 THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS 147
Catholic authority. It is not surprising that the child, when
it finally enters the world, according to its temperament, its
character, its cast of mind, either clings to the inner world
of Catholic piety—becomes religious or pious in an emotional
or negative way—or gets very soon lost in a maze whose way
of life and prestige it has been brought up to respect but
which turns out to be far too complicated to be charted
by a simple moral rule of thumb. In either case such a
Catholic is lost to the full Christian vocation of being
firmly balanced in both religion and in secular business.
Yet the solution is not so very far to seek. It depends
upon two things, an understanding of Christianity itself and
a certain realism about human nature.
Obviously religious training is the paramount necessity,
but it must be a deep and balanced training in the meaning
of the Christian religion, and when I say ' deep and
balanced ' I do not mean anything that cannot be grasped
in its essence by any young man or woman. Such a training
might almost be called a training in knowing God, who
created the world and founded His Church. The things
which the child learns in his books and in his exercises and
in his recreation, these are of the utmost importance to him
not because they belong to that outer world so full of
prestige and possibilities, but because each one of them in
its own right is an expression of God's will and order. They
claim respect for themselves ; they demand to be used in the
way in which they were intended by God, their natural way.
Fundamentally there is no moral difference between doing
ordinary worldly things that are ' in order ' as well as possible,
i.e. giving oneself up to them with one's whole heart and
soul and in saying prayers or going to church.1 The essence
of that truth having been appreciated, it is easy to explain
exactly where the real danger from the world arises. It arises,
not from the things and actions of the world being dangerous
or suspicious in themselves, but from the fact that mankind
has fallen and is therefore extremely liable to do right things
1 The lesson is well conveyed in the famous story of St. Charles Borromeo
who, when playing a game of chess, was asked what he would do if he knew
he was going to die in five minutes : ' I should just have time to checkmate
my opponent,' he is supposed to have said.
148 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
for the wrong reason—not because they are worth doing for
themselves, as expressions of God's will, but because they
can be made to give nothing but pleasure, or power over
other men, or self-esteem and the like. The need for the
special help of God's grace, to be obtained through religion,
through the Church which God founded for this purpose,
and the need for special light about what really counts and
what only appears to count in this world, a need provided
for by God's revelation to the Church and her special
authority in making clear what is right and what is wrong,
these truths can then be fitted in so that the child is not
tempted to despise things in themselves because they are
not specifically religious or pious. The importance of
building up the character, in other words, of becoming holy,
with the help of God through prayer and the sacraments,
and therefore the teaching of the vital importance in its own
order and for its own purpose of religion, with emphasis on
the guidance and training it can give, are naturally based
upon this foundation. From then onwards it is possible to
pass in review the history of the Church and the effects of
the world's rejection of her truth, moving slowly up to the
social, cultural, political, even philosophic principles which
must guide the Christian in the world. Such a training,
which could be given to a large extent pari passu with the
inculcation of secular learning and the training for ordinary
life, reaches its natural conclusion with the building up of
pride in being a member of this living corporate source of
truth and order in a world that is lost without it, and this pride,
which is no longer a kind of inferiority complex because one
is that strange thing, a Catholic, in the great big, but naughty
world, creates the genuine apostolic spirit throughout life.
The second condition I have mentioned is a realism about
human nature. This seems to me immensely important.
There are diversities of gifts and graces among men and
immense differences of characters and tastes. Yet Catholic
education—and to some extent all education—seeks to
force children into one mould. But I am only concerned
here with this danger as it touches upon religious training.
We try to impose on all children exactly the same standard
 THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS 149
of devotion and interest in religious matters. It can
apparently be done, but we see the result in the extra
ordinary diverse outcome in later life. Since differences
between children are not known at the beginning, one
must, of course, start with the same training and standards.
But differences soon begin to show themselves, if children
are not coerced or not expected to behave in what is con
sidered the ' right ' way. Some children are naturally more
pious, some less ; some take readily to the understanding of
prayer, for some it means much less ; some, on the other
hand, are quicker to appreciate the intellectual content of
the Church's action and to interest themselves in her history
and her great guiding principles for the life of society ;
some from the beginning are deeply attracted by secular
learning, science, what not ; some show signs of getting on,
having character, the gift of leadership, knack. All these
different gifts have their place in the Christian outlook, and
through special interest in any one of them—so long as
what is essential about the rest is safeguarded—a man may
reach salvation, and do it better than he could ever hope to
by being forced into a mould that did not suit him. Yet on
all we impose that one commanded interest in the highest
possible standard of devotion and piety. Daily mass, so
many hours in church, so many prayers, so much spiritual
reading, such and such a way of talking about religious
things and about the world. I insist on this in what may
seem an exaggerated form, given the difficult conditions of
school-life, because its consequences appear so important.
That same artificial pious mould is imposed upon Catholics,
consciously or unconsciously, throughout life. It is always
preached. The unspoken test of being a good Catholic is
the frequency of going to communion and the degree of
outward devotion. Now the Church herself has laid down
certain minimum degrees of religious observance, attend
ance at mass on Sundays, yearly communion, fish on
Fridays and so on. Moreover, in the sacrament of penance
there is offered the means of recovering the sanctifying life
of grace, if these minimum degrees are not observed or any
other infidelity committed, of however grave a nature. In
150 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
other words, the Catholic remains a Catholic even if he
fails to fulfil the minimum requirements in the way of con
duct. He only excommunicates himself if he, either to
himself or in public, deliberately denies Christian dogma
and positively rejects the claims of Catholicity. So, if the
bad or non-practising Catholic may still remain Catholic
and perhaps continue to have a real Catholic mind or
outlook, however deplorable and inconsistent his conduct,
surely we should be in practice far more broad-minded
about the quality and degree of Catholic observance—the
more so as God, the individual and perhaps a confessor alone
know the exact circumstances. What matters outwardly,
I contend, is the evidence of a Catholic mind, the belief in
Catholic dogma and moral authority, love of our neighbour,
the understanding of the importance of Catholic principles
in one's own life and the life of society, the respect for what
God has created and intends us to use, and the readiness to
stand for these according to our opportunities. While it
is right and necessary to exhort the faithful to the highest
degree of observance and the most pious life that they can
sincerely and honestly follow, given their natural interests
and temperaments, and while, above all, it is spiritually
imperative to insist upon the Catholic retaining or recovering
the life of grace, this aspect of the matter—short of scandal—
is private. As far as the world is concerned and as far as the
clergy or the parish are concerned, a man is fully a Catholic
if he declares himself to be so and expresses his Catholicity
in his attitude of mind, so long, that is, as his life does not
give reasonable scandal. The latter must of course depend
upon what people expect. Thus in this country a Catholic
who was careless about mass, the more so if he was known as
a Catholic in other respects, would certainly give scandal—
though he might not abroad. But no one has the right to
expect more than the Church herself expects. And it may
well be that there exists a far fuller Catholic life and, even
a far more pious life in a yearly communicant than a daily
one. In any case it is nobody's business, except God's, the
man himself's and his confessor's.
Looking at it from another angle, we are surely not so
 THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS 151
rich in Christian minds as to be able glibly to dispense with
the services of the many who have no particular taste for
religion, who do not like praying, who find going to mass a
duty, not a pleasure, who are morally weak in this or that
respect, when very often these same people are the firmest
apologists for Catholicity, both by word and example.
They have the faith and, perhaps, they have the mental
qualities which enable them to discern very clearly indeed
the claims, position and possible influence on social order
of Christianity. Yet because they faithfully try to do their
minimum duty, rising and often falling again, and because
they have no taste for parish life or for this or that sodality
or confraternity, they are commonly considered, often by
the clergy and always by the members of such sodalities, as
half-Catholics, weaker brethren, scarcely Catholics at all.
Nor can it be denied that the emphasis on a high standard
of moral conduct and religious observance centres round
one subject : purity and the occasions of sins connected with
it. To be consistent we should pay as much attention to
charity, kindness, truth-telling, the observance of social
justice and the many overlooked sins of omission, or reduce
purity to the apathetic level with which we habitually
regard these. To read a sexy magazine or see a vulgar film
is highly dangerous, but we may read or write hate-inspiring
nationalist sentiments to our hearts' content.
One need hardly say that this ' sectarian ' and lopsided
way ofjudging the Catholicity of one's neighbours solely by
their conduct in certain respects and their degree of devotion
or observance is utterly repugnant to the traditional spirit of
the Church, which not only finds room for and welcomes
every kind of mind, character, taste, but is the refuge of
sinners : the one, true Church, entry into which is barred
to no one, who has received the gift of Faith and retains that
Faith. This is commonly held in words, but the sectarian
dualism whereby religious and secular life are separated,
with the first trying to swallow up the second, has developed
a serious and widespread tendency to reserve Catholicity
in practice for those whom the pious believe to be pious
according to their own prescription. It links up evidently
152 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
with the ' state of siege ' mentality in which Catholics only
feel secure when cut off from the territory in which their
apostolicity should be at work.
And this tendency leads to another pervasive and tragic effect :
it turns away from the Church or, at any rate, from a living
interest in Catholicity a vast number of people who otherwise
might be leading thefull Christian lives ofwhich we have spoken.
Even to Catholics themselves, and, of course, still more to
non-Catholics, Christianity has become a pious thing or a
thing for the pious. Not rarely it is thought in practice to
have a hypocritical flavour. God's design for the world,
that order which the world rejects at its peril, has been
reduced in common estimation to a mere sect for those who
happen to be interested in religion and a certain code of
virtue. The label ' Catholic ' which, even when its claims
are rejected, should stand for a factual, hard-bitten, critical,
historical interpretation and answer to the riddle of existence
and the constant offer of an absolutely practical solution to
the spiritual and moral problems of everyday individual and
social life, has been debased into a label cutting offthe contents
from the attention of all who do not make religion their hobby.
The result of this is that the practical effectiveness of
Catholic ideas, either in action or in writing and preaching,
as a spiritual force penetrating into our common way of life
is heavily diminished. Catholic books, Catholic journals,
Catholic organisations in the social field, Catholic reso
lutions and protests, all these, whatever their intrinsic
worth and the weight of opinion behind them, are regarded
by the world as the expression of ' pious ' or sectarian
opinion and, as such, not to be listened to seriously as a
contribution to the country. And Catholics themselves,
sensing this and often themselves feeling that the world of
the specially devout and active Catholics is not their world,
make a point of having nothing to do with Catholic action
and activities. Their brains, skill and training are wholly
given over the world in the different professions they adopt,
and it is often only with something approaching a sense of
shame that they admit their Catholicity in their week
day life. For this they are sometimes heavily blamed by the
 THE TRAINING OF BRITISH CATHOLICS 153
pious, but it is the pious who are largely responsible. If
Catholics were trained from the earliest years to see
Catholicity as it really is, God's order within which are to be
distinguished the religious and the secular, Catholics of
every different quality, taste, and training would find their
particular field for the fullest Christian, and indeed apostolic,
action, the pious in piety, the learned in learning, the man
of the world in the world, the statesman in his art, the
business man in his business and so on. And just as each
and every Catholic would understand for himself the proper
relation between these different Christian fields with God's
order, explaining and giving them their Catholic oneness
in idea as well as in action, so the world itself would be
forced at last to understand that the ' Roman Catholic '
religion together with the different Christian bodies in their
degree are not bodies of queer religious people with excep
tional and slightly morbid tastes, but bodies standing for a
factual, realistic interpretation of the meaning of human
existence with all its facets from which springs the religious
element. In other words, they would learn that God is
not an invention of those who happen to feel a particularly
urgent need for Him and His companionship in prayer and
devotional exercise, but the Author of all existence and the
Designer of the laws that relate means to ends in every part
oflife, that God, if we may so put it, is just as much a worldly,
secular Reality, to be ignored at human peril, as the Object
of the prayers of those who understand not merely His
creative and providential role, but His love and the intimacy
with which He has bound us to Him who came on earth to
live, suffer and die for us.
This is the Catholic contribution, the source of the
spiritual force of Christianity in the world and in the order
of society. But so long as the leading Catholics are educated
and expected to try to monopolise God and reduce Him to
the level and narrow confines of their own minds and outlook,
the world will never find Him again, and because it cannot find
Him it will neither be able to find and understand the Church
which God founded to mediate His grace and enlighten the
mind of man to the adequate perception of His truth.
154 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
In saying all this I am inviting the criticism of being a
laxist. I deliberately answer that a well-balanced Catholic
mind in the condition of the world to-day is worth more for
the average highly peccable human being than the sort of
religious and narrow moral fervour which is apparently
consistent with a complete practical betrayal of Christian
principles in political, social and economic life. I see no
reason to admire in the Catholic citizen a narrow religious
fervour that only operates within the shadow of the sacristy
and within the privacy of the home. Prayer, the religious
life and the observance of the sixth and ninth Command
ments are required and must be preached until the end of
time, for without them the Church is deprived of the springs
of her spiritual power—as too often happened in the Middle
Ages with disastrous results. But they are not all that is
required. If piety is one of the marks of Catholicity, so
should be charity, forgiveness, charm and a sympathy with
weak human nature.1 And what ultimately distinguishes
Catholicity from non-Catholicity is truth, truth about the
nature of God, man and the world. The true Catholic
must be trained in truth, a truth to-day set in opposition
to the paganism of a State and wealth-worshipping
world. Far better, I contend, a thorough training in that
truth, than the attempt to impose on a man half given
over to the ways of the world an artificial and circumscribed
religious fervour for Sunday use. Far better an army of
fully trained Catholic minds, rising and falling and rising
again in their devotional observance, than an army of
devout half-Catholics and half-worldlings, half-alive and
half-dead. Let there remain, as always, the religious, the
contemplatives, the saints whose fervour and prayer make
the spiritual power of the Church ; but let us not condemn
the others, the Catholic world, to an ignorant exile that
weakens the Church and leaves them too often so little hope
that they swell the great leakage.
1 I cannot here resist quoting a saying of Roger Fry (himself very far
indeed from orthodoxy) : ' Whereas piety or holiness make goodness stink in
the nostrils, saintliness is the imaginative power to make goodness seem
desirable.' I should amend this to : ' Whereas piety or holiness can some
times seem to make . . . saintliness also involves . . .'
 CHAPTER FOUR

WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL

IT would be an endless, and largely unprofitable, business

to survey Catholic life in Britain in the light of the
failure to train the Christian to that unity of outlook
within which are harmonised the varied and distinct
aspects of human life within God's pattern. As I have said,
the Catholic community suffers from a high degree of
poverty with the consequence that a big proportion of
Catholics, clergy and lay, even among its leaders, have not
been afforded the opportunity of the wider and deeper
culture of school and university such as is so common among
the Anglicans. Petty criticism of the shortcomings of the
clergy and the narrowness of the more ' professional ' class—
if I may use the phrase—of the Catholic laity, i.e., those who
make it their business to be ex professo apologists for the
Church in one way or another, nearly always overlooks this
fundamental handicap for which there is no remedy—and
which indeed is a glory. It will be more useful—and more
in keeping with the argument running through these pages
—to seek for the deeper flaws which tend to make the
separated Catholics play into the hands of non-Christian
Britain, and to relate them to the great non-Christian
spiritual forces whose nature we have studied in the first part.
In my view, these deeper flaws are all, more or less,
directly related to this dividing up of the Christian into two
parts, the religious that counts and the secular that does not
count, of which I have written in the last chapter.
We saw that Nationalism was the least considered of the
non-Christian spiritual forces and yet the one that in the
end has done more than any other to deprive Christianity of
155
 156 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
its spiritual power within society. Let us now try and look
at the way in which this flaw runs through practical
Catholicity in this country.
At first glance it would seem that British Catholics are
singularly free from this particular fault. And in one sense
they are. The Church in Britain appears to be, and in many
ways is, foreign. It is, as I have pointed out, very Irish and
very Roman. But readers will not have overlooked the
truth, which I have reiterated, that the Church is not and
cannot be a substitute for the nation. Christianity is not a
theocracy. It does not—outside the strictly ecclesiastical
sphere—order what men shall do to fill their days. On the
contrary, it presupposes that the individual and the society
pursue the ends which they freely choose, and then it warns
them when these ends or the means to these ends cannot be
fitted into the design ordained by God. Hence, with the
exception of those who for special supernatural reasons
pursue a religious vocation, cut off from the world, it is
unnatural for Christians to feel themselves not to be free to
pursue the avocation and way of life of their choice or not to
belong to a society which regulates the order of their
temporal and secular concerns and which, in doing so,
becomes itself something more than a mere mechanism.
Just as the individual has his personality, character, pride,
ambitions, family tradition, so the society into which he is
born, his country, enshrines in a more permanent and
outward form the traditions, customs, aims, ambitions
common to a society linked together in time and space.
Now if this is the case, it can never be a good thing for a
Christian to feel alien from his secular avocations and
interests and from the society within which he works and
of which he is a member. And since everything that is
unnatural constantly strives, if only sub-consciously, to be
natural, but does so in forced and artificial manner, so
where Christians or a Christian Church feel themselves to be
alien from the very matter which they should spiritually
' inform,' they will attempt to compensate for their sense of
being alien by forced and unnatural attempts to be more
nationalistic than the nation.
 WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL 157
That is what we find in English Catholicity. We find
marks of exaggerated detachment from the country and
marks of a Nationalism that is not consistent with full
Christianity. And we shall find the division precisely where
Christians tend to be divided within their persons, namely
into a religious compartment that is labelled ' Catholic '
and a secular compartment that is left to fend for itself.
In the ecclesiastical aspect of the Church in England,
there is much that repels our countrymen, and some of it,
at least, is unnecessary. I am not thinking so much of the
Irish element, partly because this cannot be helped and
partly because many of the Irish in England become more
English in spirit and loyalty than the English. To Ireland
Catholicity in England owes a mighty debt, perhaps the
debt of three-quarters of the extent of the Cathojic Faith in
England as it exists to-day. And, while it may be the case
that a number of English Catholics dislike the degree of
Irishness within the four walls of the churches, I do not see
that this noticeably affects the views of the non-Catholic in
regard to the Church. The Irish clergy and the Irish laity,
no doubt, carry within them the sense that nothing really
matters which has not specifically been labelled, blessed and
approved by the Church—a sense extremely strong among
the Irish clergy in Ireland itself where secular life has been
so interpenetrated by a Protestant and foreign tradition—
but I do not know that it survives for long in a stronger form
than the same sense among English Catholics. In any case,
as I have said, we owe so much to the Irish that we cannot
be ungrateful and must accept the defects as well as the
qualities of that great Catholic race. If English Catholics
set a firmer and better-founded standard, the Irish in
England would be quick enough to conform, for they have a
better Catholic sense of the balance of Christianity despite
the long years when we did all we could to destroy it.
I refer rather to the desperate slowness of Catholicity in
England to re-link itself with pre-Reformation English
Catholicity and detach itself from post-Reformation Conti
nental Catholicity. No country has a more glorious
tradition of native Catholicity than ' Mary's Dowry,'
 i58 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
and yet it is only in recent years—and that very slowly—
that we see any evidence in the cult of saints,1 in the use of
prayers, in ecclesiastical architecture, in the material
organisation of the Church of any attempt to bring back to
our countrymen proof in picture of the fact that England
was once Catholic, and that Catholicity can still be as fully
English as it is elsewhere fully French, Italian or Spanish.
This failure is by no means entirely our own fault. We
cannot overlook the fact that England has become deeply
Protestant and daily becomes thoroughly secularist. Devia
tions from the idea of a Catholic Society have been as
marked elsewhere, with the result that Catholicity in general,
as we have seen, has turned in on itself and set itself up as a
purely religious or ecclesiastical institution over against the
modern world, instead of being the form that shapes and
orientates the latter. This, together with rapidity of
communication between the centre and the parts, accounts
for the centralisation of the Church, the ehminating of
differences between its various parts, and the fine, but in
some respects uncritical, loyalty of the faithful to the See of
Peter and the ecclesiastical establishment. The Church has,
as it were, become a block, and whatever is attached or can
be attached to the block becomes the test of full and loyal
Catholicity. So much so that Catholics can rarely be found
to differentiate between the spiritual and temporal policy of
the Vatican, between either and the national Churches,
between the offices and the men. In this particular
country this sense has reached the pitch when it may
almost be said that many Catholics before the war dared not
criticise the behaviour of Catholic nations, especially Italy,
for fear of committing the Holy See. And public criticism,
not merely of the Vatican and national hierarchies but even
of the ordinary clergy in Britain, is commonly looked upon
as disloyal and dangerous—a sign in itself of weakness.8
1 It is scarcely a tribute to British Catholicity that the revival of devotion
to Our Lady of Walsingham was due to Anglicanism and that so few churches
are dedicated to British saints. The vast number of foreign-sounding orders
of nuns is another example.
* Perhaps only the editor of a popular Catholic paper can fully understand
how deep and widespread is the resentment, among clergy and laity, of the
slightest criticism in public of priests. To print any such criticism is to invite
 WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL 159
It is scarcely then any wonder if this ' totalitarian '
Roman mentality prevents the growth of a Catholicity that
could be called native and which would not repel the
millions of good and sincere people who might well come
again under the spell of the faith and outlook of their
ancestors, the faith so wonderfully illustrated in the monu
ments, traditions, place-names of the land.1
I purposely do not enter the vexed controversial field of
how such changes might come about, and I leave severely
alone the question of the use of the vernacular in parts of
the liturgy, suggesting only that if this reform really did
make it easier to familiarise Britishers with true Catholic
^Worship, it would surely be obscurantism to refuse any
alterations because it has never been done before !
One may hope, after all that has been said already about
the dangers of Nationalism in modern times, that I shall not
be interpreted as suggesting that Catholicity in democratic
Anglo-Saxon countries shall enslave itself to the prevalent
values and forces of the country. But the tragedy of this
foreignness of the Church in England lies precisely in the
fact that it is to-day extremely difficult to stand for the
values of Christianity in this country without seeming to
increase the prevalent sense that Catholicity is alien and
un-English. Not only in general mannerSj but in the
increasing strength of State-ism within, as well as the
devotion to vague ' Dawnism ' and the irresponsible power
of finance, and in the foreign policy of the country without,
there is little which is not, in my view, matter for the most
serious criticism from the Catholic point of view. Catholic
writers and journalists, to their credit, have not been slow
letters from a large number who threaten to refuse to allow the paper to be
sold at their churches. A correspondent on one occasion wrote to me a letter
strongly critical of certain aspects of English clerical life. I answered, sug
gesting that the English clergy were so overworked with pastoral cares that
they scarcely had the time to consider the points he mentioned. In his answer
to this letter my correspondent asked me to stay in his parish and watch how
many hours of the week the clergy spent on the local golf course !
1 At a recent Conference of the Catholic Truth Society I heard two talks.
One was a sermon by the late Archbishop Goodier pointing out the surviving
Catholicity of Britain, the other a lecture from Mr. Belloc emphasising the
degree in which Britain had been Protestantised, including even the mentality
of Catholics. The two speeches, in their apparent contradiction, graphically
illustrated the point I am making.
i6o CHRISTIAN CRISIS
to point it out. But, because we are already considered
alien, this criticism either falls on deaf ears or is attributed
to the perverse foreignness of Catholics. It adds to the view
that we are alien and does nothing to change the behaviour
of our country and countrymen. In other words, because
we are foreign and remain foreign in our ecclesiastical aspect,
we are unable to make contact with our countrymen on
those all-important points where the universal part of the
Church's teaching, values and outlook does infinitely
matter.
And note to what a degree this maladjustment affects
Catholics themselves and, in a certain degree, the Church
itself in England. Sensing this feeling of being alien in
their religion, Catholics tend to become all the more
national, all the more English in their public and secular
lives. We have seen that in the apeing of the code of the
public school, but it runs right through. The diplomat who
is Catholic, the statesman who is Catholic, the man of rank
who is Catholic, the Catholic in the British Broadcasting
Corporation, the Catholic actor, the Catholic business-man,
the Catholic working-man, while they may all be excellent
Catholics in their private and personal lives and indeed
publicly defend the Church whenever it is attacked as the
Church, are all particularly careful to accept the English
tradition, the English code, the ways of their fellows in all
their professional behaviour where the label ' Catholic ' is
not obviously involved. And the same fear of being thought
disloyal or alien affects the Church itself in Britain which, in
the pronouncements of its Bishops, is always exceedingly
careful to demonstrate the ultra-loyalty of the Catholics in
all that is not quite obviously sin. Never make a fool of
yourself, never risk anything, keep to the well-beaten path,
play for safety, and, for goodness' sake, never risk giving
Catholics a bad name, such are the maxims that uncon
sciously guide any public or open Catholic action, especially
in a difficult time.
And this is only natural, for it would be fatal to the
highest and most spiritual interests of the Church in this
country, as it would be to many perfectly legitimate interests
 WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL 161
of individual Catholics, for Catholicity to stand in a public
matter, where it is not absolutely essential, for anything
that could add to the general sense of the Church being
alien from the country. But if the appearance of the Church
and the spiritual and cultural training of Catholics in
education, both at school and through the parish, the Press,
the organisations during life, were more in keeping with the
special riches and traditions of our country, if Catholics were
from the beginning brought up to see the essential Cathohcity
of secular and national life as within the Christian whole,
every bit as much as the ecclesiastical and devotional side
of life are within it, then the vital Christian criticism of and
contribution to England would penetrate and be welcomed
for what it is really, namely truly English because truly
Christian. And instead of this fatal differentiation between
life, labelled ' Catholic,' and life labelled ' old school or
club or trade-union tie,' we should gradually develop a
generation of Catholics, clergy as well as laity, who would
feel secure in being a hundred per cent Catholic—and yet
not odd or sectarian or pious or un-English—in their daily
lives as well as their Sunday ones, Catholics who, according
to their capacity and opportunity, would carry with them
the full force of Christianity affecting, as it was meant to
affect, every aspect of human life, and yet not in any sense
smothering or destroying the nature of every action, as God
meant it to be, nor limiting the human choice before each
man of the infinite variety of ways of action, all—so long as
they are ' in order '—fully Catholic and Christian.
It cannot be said that Catholics in Britain have played
any notable part in strengthening ' Dawnism,' except where
' Dawnism ' is reasonably justified, namely in the British
liberal and democratic institutions. With no exception,
except perhaps among a Fascist minority, all that is Catholic
has solidly stood for British political and civic traditions, for
it is recognised that these things are truly English, good in
themselves and in close affinity to the Christian interpreta
tion of the value of the human person. There is a world of
difference between the working of these institutions in a
country where they have gradually developed from the tone
 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
of the people's character and genius and where they are
deeply planted in the soil of national history and their
working in countries where they have been imitated from
without and imposed as a new revelation that will solve all
problems like a magic charm. Just as philosophically
' Dawnism ' can only have meaning if founded upon the
Christian view of God, man and the world, so historically it
can only be happily established if rooted in a national
character and tradition which of itself respects these par
ticular values of human liberty in outward life and which
still retains close links with Christian dogma and morals.
Though religious toleration was a' comparatively late
development even in this country, the spiritual, moral and
educational liberty which the Church enjoys naturally
makes the Catholic feel that Britain is an earthly paradise
for Catholics as compared with so many places on the
Continent. In particular there is deep appreciation of and
pride in the fact that under the British flag, flying in the
four quarters of the globe, religious freedom and the right
to develop missionary enterprise are safeguarded and,
indeed, furthered by the civil authorities. In the same way
Catholics, for all their grievances, know that they get a
comparatively square deal in education, in an absolutely
free pulpit, platform and Press. Indeed, any considera
tion of this freedom can only lead to the conclusion that if
we stand for so little in public life to-day, the fault is our
own, not that of the State. The only serious criticism,
emanating from Catholic sources, is to be found in the Irish
element which recalls the way Britain treated the Catholics
of Ireland in the past and the way Ulster, to Britain's shame,
remains the solitary exception to the reign of religious free
dom under the British flag. The remarkable way in which
Ireland herself, having achieved her own freedom, safe
guards absolute religious toleration only adds point to the
grievance.
But if we find this fine and healthy association of every
thing Catholic with the best in British political traditions—
indeed Catholics may prove to be the last defenders of
democratic liberty in England—the dualism makes itself
 WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL 163
felt again when it comes to the less well-founded aspects of
' Dawnism ' in the economic, social and cultural fields.
The cultural field is perhaps less important, but it is
worth briefly mentioning, because it brings out a point of
some interest. I have said that the lack of a unified Christian
culture, as compared with the division between what is
religious and what is secular, is one of the chief defects of
Catholic education. And this continues throughout Catholic
life. This is much more the fault of the ' professional '
Catholics (including many of the clergy) than of such
Catholics as devote themselves to secular learning, art,
literature, etc. We have almost reached the stage in
Catholic public opinion when nothing is regarded as Catholic
unless a religious or pious or apologetic label can be attached
to it. The Catholic scientist, working in his field of research,
the Catholic novelist, engaged in the study of contemporary
life as it is, the Catholic artist, following his natural inspira
tion, to none of these is the name of Catholic publicly given,
unless, maybe, one of them marries or dies or becomes
engaged in an accidental religious controversy or happens
to be materially useful to the Church. Then perhaps he
may be mentioned in the Catholic Press. Whereas the
name is freely bestowed upon a second-rate professor who
writes C.T.S. pamphlets, the story-writer who resolutely
shuts his eyes to reality and indulges in edifying tales, the
picture-maker who devotes himself to ' sacred art.' Our
standard of judgement in all this is not the intrinsic worth
of the production (and therefore its intrinsic Catholicity)
but the degree of obviousness with which the label ' Catholic '
can be attached. I am not intending for a moment to deny
the need for religious, pious and apologetic literature and
art, where indeed magnificent work can be accomplished,
but this should be a department of Catholic work, not the
whole of it. And criteria suited for this department are
quite unsuited to others. If we apply the test of suitable
spiritual reading for enclosed religious women to the novel,
we shall of course simply cease to produce novels worth the
name. And that, expressed in an exaggerated way, is our
tendency when we review such subjects as literature, art,
164 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
the drama, the cinema and the like. Not ' is it intrinsically
good, intrinsically in God's order ? ' but ' is it safe reading,
is it edifying, is it obvious ? ' Nor am I pleading, I hope,
for mere licence. There exists through the history and
teaching of the Church a strong and healthy tradition about
what can properly be said and done and what cannot.
That tradition is something living, not a dead rule of thumb.
It takes people and circumstances into account. It dis
tinguishes between the absolute and the relative. At
certain times a puritanic element makes itself felt and at
others we find, when perhaps Christianity is more secure,
that a broader view is tolerated. It is not surprising that
to-day, in the face of the general decadence of manners and
absence of all standards, the Church should be doubly on
her guard against the slow infiltration into the Catholic
mind of a disregard for all the barriers which prevent the
decay of the conscience, as well of the nation as of the
individual. But this is a very different matter from failing
to perceive the essential Catholicity of good secular work
that does not bring in the word ' Catholic,' from applying
the standard of the convent to serious literature and art or
from admitting serious historical and scientific writing
because it may not pat Catholics on the back, but actually
criticise them. It is odd, for example, that in a world that
denies the existence of moral evil and the Devil Christians
should deprive themselves of the opportunity of bringing
them home to the world because they are not edifying. It
is even odder that when the very basis of moral order is
threatened so many Catholics should apparently be unaware
of anything except the enormity of illustrations of ladies in
underclothes in advertisements or the danger of the modern
bathing dress. No wonder there is no Catholic fiction or
drama or art worthy of the name it is only too easily
accorded !
And, as usual, this lop-sidedness brings its own retribution,
for Catholics who sense the lop-sidedness simply come to pay
no respect at all for the great Christian tradition, and, in
their work, ape and even go beyond the accepted customs
of the world.
 WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL 165
This is why we shall find, together with the above-
mentioned narrowness of mind, signs of an insistent and self-
conscious breadth of mind in which values of ' Dawnist ' or
' Progressive ' art, literature and philosophic outlook are
cultivated. When in the United States—to take an example
from another country—Bertrand Russell's appointment to a
State professorship was prevented because of his moral
views, an American priest aptly remarked that the most
surprising thing about the affair was that no Catholic had
come forward to protest on behalf of Russell. That example
illustrates the tendency of certain Catholics to react to
general rigidity by trying to be more, let us say, Shavian
than Shaw or Wellsian than Wells.
It must be stated, however, that the phenomenon is not
common in the field of culture, and that the main trend is
all the other way. In history, science, literature, political
writing, art and the like there is offered to the Christian in
this country the liberty enjoyed by all, and no better channel
for carrying the spiritual force of Christianity to the world
can exist in the natural order. But so long as we deliber
ately stop it up by a pious and sectarian filter through
which nothing of interest to the world can pass, we are at ,
once depriving the world of what it should hear and see,
destroying the effectiveness of the ' professional ' Catholic
talent, as well as greatly lowering its standard, and letting
go, from a Christian point of view, of the work of many
Catholics and non-Catholics which might otherwise have
formed part of a truly Christian cultural and intellectual
front.
In the economic and social fields, we find Catholics once
again divided into artificial groups, where the one religion
fails to produce harmony and unity of action between dis
tinct interests and avocations. But, at any rate, under the
more developed and conscious inspiration of the Church's
social teaching there exists some evidence of an attempt to
work towards a solution.
Politically Catholics may belong to any party, except the
Communists. This was the definite ruling of Cardinal
Bourne who in 1931, under the general thesis that ' the
1 66 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
Catholic Church as such has nothing whatever to do with
any political party,' came to the following practical con
clusions : ' First, in this country a man or woman is free to
join the political party which makes the greatest appeal to
his sympathy and understanding. Secondly, having done
so, he or she must be on guard against erroneous principles
which, on account of the affiliations which affect these
parties, are to some extent at work within them. Thirdly,
he may never deliver himself, or his conscience, wholly into
the keeping of any political party. When his religious faith
and his conscience come into conflict with the claims of his
Party, he must obey his conscience and withstand the
demands which his Party make upon him.'
We have seen how fatal and repugnant to the Catholic
ideal would be the attempt to form—where Catholic
interests do not absolutely require it, e.g. for the safeguard
ing of Catholic education—a Catholic Party. But, unfor
tunately, the prevailing dualism between the religious and
secular side of the Catholics, as well, no doubt, as the poverty
of the Catholic community, tend to prevent Catholics from
political work, whether in national or local politics. In
modern politics, where the moral aspect is always in the
forefront, it is hard for the religiously well-educated Catholic
to feel at home. He prefers the completer emancipation
from religious and moral considerations, as he thinks, of the
business or professional world. Hence the paucity of
Catholics in Parliament or in local government to the detri
ment of Christian influence in the nation. And, on the
whole, it will be admitted that such Catholic representatives
as we have do fairly good work in defence of Christian
principles, earning thereby into the bargain the deepest
respect of their fellow politicians. None the less it is obvious
that in politics generally there lies a magnificent field for
Christian influence that has scarcely been tapped at all.
The most politically conscious Catholics are undoubtedly
the Catholic members of trade unions and Labour generally.
Now here the avowed principles of the Labour Party are in
many respects in opposition to the Church's social teaching,
so much so that some critics wonder how Catholics can still
 WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL 167
in conscience belong to ' Socialism.' Yet we know that in
fact there is little relation between the avowed aims and the
actual work of Labour and trade unions. So long as these
conditions remain—and they may not endure for ever—the
opportunity for working within the Party towards Christian
social ideals is exceptional. Is it taken ? Are young
Catholics in our elementary and grammar schools trained
to make the best of the opportunity ? Do we not find an
extraordinary amalgam of watered-down Marxism with
Catholic religious observance, instead of the one loyalty to
Christianity expressed in complete devotion to concrete
Labour ideals (irrespective of non-Christian ideologies) and
complete devotion to Christian social teaching ? It may be
contended that Catholics here are too few to set their own
independent standard within the aims^of the movement.
Alas ! there is little to show that they would act differently,
if they were stronger. We have the example of Irish Labour
which is almost wholly Catholic and yet prefers in practice
to pursue an emasculated Marxism to a far more revolu
tionary Christian Labour ideal, a Party which, if properly
led and filled with knowledge and enthusiasm, would sweep
Ireland and make her the first Christian social-democracy,
yet fully Irish (rather than Continental) and completely
free from clerical or ' totalitarian ' Catholic influence.
And if it is true that the trade unions are in practice
reconcilable, at any rate in their industrial policy, with
Catholic teaching, it is certainly not true that the political
outlook of the Labour-Liberal intelligentsia is innocuous.
In the extraordinary inconsistencies of their leadership there
at least was the thread of an unbroken suspicion of Christian
influence, especially abroad. Few Catholics, it is true, are
to be found among these leaders, but neither do we hear of
any Catholic protest from the Labour ranks against that
leadership, even though the Catholic Labour vote is no
mean political force. In the Spanish Civil War it was this
intelligentsia which was most responsible for the popular
view that the Reds were true democrats, but Catholic
Labour missed its chance of standing for a constructive
middle line in denouncing the Spanish Reds for what they
168 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
obviously were, while refusing to accept the Nationalists at
their face value. Instead the vast majority, adopting an
' emancipated ' secularist attitude, followed their Party's
lead, while a tiny minority, the ecclesiastical, accepted
without questioning the official Catholic view that the
Nationalists were crusaders. I am not now arguing whether
this last view was or was not justified ; I am simply suggest
ing that here was an occasion when a Catholic Labour man,
had he been trained to integrate his political and economic
views with his Catholicity, might well have taken an
independent view, at once Catholic and in keeping with his
secular interests. But no, Catholic Labour automatically
divided itself into the ' weekday ' Catholic attitude of all
for the world or the ' Sunday ' Catholic attitude of all for
the ecclesiastical policy. And the first was far stronger than
the second.
The Conservative classes have a harder task, because
their way is not so clear. As Professor Oakeshott has
written : ' And, as far as this country is concerned, I venture
to suggest that many of the principles which belong to the
historic doctrine of Conservatism are to be found in this
Catholic doctrine.'1 On the other hand, Conservatism
is associated through the country with those Capitalist
economic theories and values that are scarcely less clearly
envisaged in the condemnations of the Encyclicals than
Socialism itself. The Conservative Catholic recruits—
and I am not thinking only of actual politicians, but of
the general supporters of the established order—come
mainly from the more prosperous part of the community,
the richer schools and those who have made their
way. Here we often find the most obvious examples
of Catholics, devout and observant in their religious lives,
and yet completely accepting the political, social and
economic order of the country. Hence, outside clear morals
and definite ecclesiastical interests, we find that this class of
natural Catholic leaders have little or nothing to say in
constructive Christian criticism of anything but Socialist,
Bolshevist and perhaps Jewish and Masonic influences. To
1 The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe, p. xx.
 WHERE BRITISH CATHOLICS FAIL 169
their fellows there is nothing, except upon exceptional
occasions, to distinguish them from non-Catholics and to the
masses they appear as Catholic defenders of vested interests,
privilege, the rights of wealth, etc.
That there exists the opportunity of developing a speci
fically Catholic Conservatism along the lines of national
defence, realist foreign policy (in harmony with the attitude
of the Vatican) and social and economic reform, patterned
after the model of the Encyclicals, is surely not open to
doubt in the case of anyone who has read, for example,
Douglas Jerrold's The Necessity of Freedom or followed the
columns of the Tablet (though this review is strangely
reticent about social and economic reform). Individual
Conservatives have indeed openly stood for this, but there
is no sign that the body of Catholic Conservative candidates
and voters, the Catholic gentry from the public schools, the
Catholic business-men are interested enough to make them
selves felt as a political influence distinct from orthodox
British Conservatism, itself either Die-Hard Tory or tinged
with international Liberalism. Any such departure might
smack of Fascism, and Fascism sounds anti-British, and that
must be avoided at all costs, even if there is not the remotest
resemblance to Fascism except in the eyes of the Liberal,
Labour and Communist Press. And the clergy, too often,
are in sympathy with this outlook.
Thus in practice we find again that the burden of such
criticism of ' Dawnism ' and Nationalism, on the one side,
and of Socialism, on the other, is left in the hands of a few
' professional ' Catholics, considered to be alien and extrava
gant and therefore of little importance, while the Catholic
community, which should be doing the real work, is divided,
politically and socially, into the Conservative class that
glories in the British status quo and the Labour class which
flirts with Marxism. Luckily there are signs in some Catholic
journalism, in the Catholic Social Guild and, especially, in
those associated with the Young Christian Worker movement,
of better times ahead.
I contend that a training from the beginning to a fuller
and more unified Christian outlook, within which religious
170 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
and secular matters have their appropriate and yet har
monising place, would indefinitely increase the Church's
opportunity in England to contribute once again of her
inherent spiritual force. This she must do, if Christianity
is again to be a national force, and the task, though it calls
for wise leadership from the hierarchy and the clergy, is
essentially a lay one. But the laity cannot be blamed so
long as they are not being educated up to it from the
beginning. Would it be presumptuous to say that lay
leaders and writers are far more alive to the needs of the
times than the clergy, with very honourable exceptions here
and there ?
 CHAPTER FIVE

CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS

UNFORTUNATELY we have reached a period in

the world's history when the march of events
catches up only too rapidly with the best laid plans
of men and out-distances them in the briefest space of time.
We are in the midst of the crisis of Christianity, a crisis that
has been long in preparing but whose effects, once they are
at work within our midst, may not yield to any sort of
treatment in time. The crisis of Christianity, moreover,
has become the crisis of Western civilisation, and Christian
ideals are not only being undermined by specifically anti-
Christian forces, but they are in danger of being extinguished
in society at large by the conflicting forces, spiritual and
material, which, at the time of writing, seem to be anni
hilating our very civilisation and the work of centuries that
has gone to build it.
Under such circumstances, we must be prepared to con
sider the most rapid way in which, should God permit, the
essence of Christianity may be preserved and made effective
to save at the last hour our civilisation itself.
Clearly Catholic Christianity in England cannot, short of
the miraculous, effect this, even if it could suddenly be made
perfect. It is true that revolutionary minorities have made
amazing progress in a few short years or even months, but
Catholicity is not a revolutionary force in the temporal or
political sense. God might indeed quicken the spiritual
revolution by sending us a great leader and saint, but we
have no right to rely upon this. We must work, as best we
can, in the humdrum way, both on the supernatural and
the natural plane.
171
172 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
For these reasons, it seems to me that we should study
more sympathetically and constructively than we have in
the past the possibilities ofjoining forces, outside the strictly
religious and ecclesiastical field, with non-Catholic
Christianity.
It is not easy in this delicate and difficult subject to
choose only such words as will not bear compromising
meanings, and, since I am no theologian, it is very likely
that what I say may be open to misunderstanding. For this*
reason, I should like to say at the beginning that there are
few things which I believe more sincerely than the hopeless
ness and falsity of attempting any form of reunion on the
basis of dogmatic or moral compromise. It is very clear to
me from the consideration of the history of Europe alone
that the maintenance of social stability depends absolutely
upon the preservation of the integrity of Catholic dogma and
moral teaching. One could, I believe, trace every fatal
deviation—as opposed to weakness arising from infidelity of
practice—in the order of society to the loss or weakening in
that society of belief in some dogma or moral principle of
the Church. Indeed, as I have suggested throughout, the
Church herself, or more generally local Churches, by
compromise in what is not essential, has played her own
part in hastening the drift towards chaos. Moreover it is
amply clear that Anglicanism has lost three-quarters of its
spiritual force by a policy of fatal compromise on much
that is essential and by a wholly inexcusable tolerance of
error among her faithful.
I said at the beginning that Christianity in the social and
political field lacked the conviction that could impel the
world towards spiritual resistance to evil and disorder—and
nothing could be less likely to restore conviction than any
kind of compromise in the very essence of Faith. The idea
then of finding a least common denominator in Britain
between Catholic Christianity and non-Catholic is to me
quite fantastic and repugnant.
But if I am right in my general analysis of what con
stitutes a fully unified Christian outlook, then it should
prove possible, without the slightest compromise, to find
 CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS 173
ways and means of effective collaboration towards the ideal
of restoring a Christian order, a co-operation which would
lead to the increase of conviction among Catholics them
selves where social matters are concerned, and to its wider
sharing.
Christianity, I have said, is the right order which God
intended for the world. Its application is universal, and
we only get non-Christianity when men try to substitute for
God's order their own privately-invented order, either by
thinking out new ends for men or society or by turning
lesser and limited ends into the highest and universal end.
Thus ' Dawnism,' or the golden age on earth by purely
natural means, is a human invention which implicitly
rejects God as He really is, whereas Nationalism is the
converting of a lesser end, with its subordinate place in the
full hierarchy of ends, to the supreme end. Now mankind,
after the fall, unilluminated by God's revelation and un-
strengthened by God's grace, is not able to see enough of
God's order, nor live up to the ends proposed by God (and
still more attain to salvation) ; hence the Incarnation and
the founding of the Church. Through the Church which is
the treasury of the merits of Christ, man is enabled, directly
or indirectly, to rise to the supernatural and to see, as well
as to follow, far more clearly and securely the right order of
conduct. Thus while the Church, in virtue of its all-per
vading spiritual mission of gathering all men into the Body
of Christ, is indistinguishable from Christianity, its actual
function is limited in extent to the spiritual. The Christian
is wholly a Christian, but within his Christianity there are
various distinct activities, that may be roughly divided into
religious and secular, which differ from one another in
that some are directly under the Church's authority, and
some only indirectly, ratione peccati. Thus, in any event,
the Christian must co-operate with the nOn-Christian in the
greater part of his ordinary life. So much so, that the
Church is the first to recognise the legitimate authority of
the most violently anti-Christian State, even a Bolshevik
State itself.
But in actual fact the majority of temporal societies in
174 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
the West preserve a great deal of their Christian origins in
morals, manners, customs, etc. And non-Catholic Christian
sects or societies preserve in a greater or lesser degree the
actual religious content of Christianity. Surely, therefore,
it is possible and right that Catholics, while jealously
preserving the full and vitally needed truth and always
insisting that the solution and the necessary spiritual con
viction and grace can only come through the recognition of
this full truth, should endeavour to co-operate with others
in conduct, in the field of natural morality and even in a
common recognition of what they still share with non-
Catholics of Christian dogma and moral doctrine.
This is all the more the case in that Catholic Christianity
makes no claim to be perfect in accidentals, still less to
perfect fidelity to its own standards and ideals. That is
how it comes about that non-Christians and even non-
Christian societies can on occasion give the example of
lives more holy than that of Christians or of furthering
moral and social reforms hitherto neglected by Christianity.
There should then be nothing to surprise us or disconcert us
if we find that the Anglican Church or the Nonconformists
can still teach us many things that are not essential to dogma
and doctrine—provide, in other words, further matter to
which the spiritual force of Catholicity can be applied.
While, I repeat, non-Catholic Christianity in this country
has been severely weakened and to a large extent has lost
public respect and confidence through its gradual surrender
in dogma and doctrine to the superficial advance of the
world, it still possesses great advantages in not unimportant
respects over Catholicity. Thus it is not considered foreign
and alien, though on the other hand it is perhaps more
commonly considered a ' class ' religion. ( We, however,
have come to be regarded as a ' Fascist ' religion.) Its
cultural and intellectual level is higher, though its best
output in religious and philosophic literature since the last
war has not perhaps been equal to our own. In this respect
Catholic writers, Catholic periodicals and the Catholic
press have exerted a considerable and a deepening effect
upon the Anglican circles that come closest to Catholicity.
 CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS 175
There exists in Anglicanism a closer and more equal co
operation between clergy and laity, with the latter able to
criticise freely and play a part that interests and gives
genuine responsibility, even as compared with ' Catholic
Action ' in Catholicism. And in the same way there are
Nonconformist bodies where fervour and action, albeit
mainly emotional, would seem to be stronger and better
diffused than among Catholics. But apart from such
variations—wherein there is much that we, in true Christian
humility, might learn—Anglicanism possesses the immense
advantage of being the nationally established Church.
Not only in its intimate relations with the governing bodies
of the country, but in its cathedrals, churches and parishes
whose life throughout the land is intimately linked with the
life of the people, the Anglican Church stands in a position
from which it could, from one day almost to the next,
become the efficient generating power of the spiritual force
of Christianity.
There is no tragedy greater to-day than this vast spiritual
machinery—if I may use such a phrase—lying idle through
want of heat, light and energy, while there lies alongside in
the Catholic organisation and churches the stored up
spiritual force of Christianity, unable so largely to express
itself in a working form and to create the machinery it
requires if it is to exert its fullest effect.
There can, I repeat, be no compromise, because to
compromise is to fritter away the precious store of spiritual
energy to no purpose at all, and for this reason there cannot
be any simple way of bringing the two parts of a fuller
Christianity together again, unless and until Anglicanism
accepts what we have to offer with all the necessary con
ditions of its proper use. But there is surely very much that
could be done on our part to help the Established Church
to lead the country back to Christendom, just as there is
much on their side which they could learn from us so as
more effectively to do so.
Exaggerated Nationalism, ' Dawnism,' Capitalism, in
creasing State-ism, Socialism and Bolshevism, neo-Paganism
of every kind, present at bottom the same danger to all
176 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
who have any roots of Christianity in them, to all indeed
who are intelligent enough to understand and value the
essence of any social order which can save humanity
from itself. Even in the face of this danger differences
between Christians cannot be minimised because we know
that it is only from the one, true Church that can be derived
the fullness and purity of spiritual force so urgently needed
to stem the advancing tide ; but in the face of such danger
we should both be agreed—however deep in their own order
our differences—to work together wherever it is possible.
But to make anything possible, both sides must be ready
for sacrifices. I believe that most of the criticisms made
above under the general head of a more unified and fuller
Christian outlook would in themselves go far to diminish the
suspicions of the average Anglican, if only because they
would tend to make Catholicism appear less sectarian and
foreign, less poured out over non-essentials in outlook and
devotion that are disliked, perhaps mainly because they are
misunderstood. Even more necessary is it for the average
Catholic to study charity—I might almost say, decency—
when judging Anglicans. Their errors we know. This is
for us an established fact. The extraordinary views held
by some of the more ' progressive ' bishops and clergymen,
views in certain cases amounting to a denial of the essence
of Christian dogma and in others, as in regard to Spain,
only made possible by a combination of bitter prejudice and
deep ignorance of Europe, these must be admitted and
denounced, certainly with no less boldness and courage
than they are denounced by many Anglicans themselves.
We may also, if we wish—some Catholics have an idee fixe
on this matter—suspect the sincerity of a good deal of the
Romanising tendencies on the sixth storey. But behind
exaggerations and extravagances there lies a solid mass of
plain and sincere Christianity that only need enlightening
and electrifying by real Christian leadership. And for this
the Anglicans must seek some at least of their inspiration
from the Catholic Church. While they may and should
jealously safeguard their genius for expressing Christianity
in and through the thoughts, habits, traditions, social
 CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS 177
organisations, life of the different kinds of people who go to
make up a community, it is imperative that this should no
longer be done at the expense of the dilution of dogma and
moral doctrine. The British race, we know, has a remark
able power of picking a practical way by instinct rather
than logical reasoning. All the more reason, therefore, why
certain principles should be clearly marked and constantly
drummed into them. A sound instinct can make a good
choice between different courses that open out before it
under familiar circumstances, but it becomes useless when
it has gradually deviated into unknown territory. There is
no virtue in broad-mindedness and tolerance when all
certainty is lost. And if in general Catholicity has become
in practice too turned in upon its purely religious and
devotional content, Anglicanism has surely gone very
much further in the opposite direction by becoming in so
many instances little more than a social convention, hallowed
by the atmosphere of religion. Again, if Catholicity
neglects or rejects those of its faithful who appear to wander
too far from the religious label in their secular work—
unless there be some tangible advantage in recognising
them—Anglicanism sometimes goes to the other extreme in
taking seriously the latest scientific or philosophic or critical
fashion. Anglicanism, furthermore, compensates for the
' alienness ' of Catholicity by an excessive and often ignorant
insularity and snobbishness. Lastly, while one must
acknowledge magnificent pioneer work in the social question
on the part of many Anglicans, there remains plenty of
room for reforms which shall remove from the Established
Church its reputation for being an upper-class religion,
bound up with the fortunes of institutions that are often
far from Christian. And a very great deal of social work,
done under Anglican inspiration, suffers from the lack of a
realistic sense of the right or Christian order which demands
reform, not in the name of such emotional things as benevo
lence, philanthropy, humanitarianism, but in the name of
justice and the real Christian charity for our individual,
living brother in Christ. In other words, there is room for
progress from ' Dawnist ' feelings and abstract theorising
i78 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
to the idea of the social order envisaged in the Encyclicals
and the burning charity that has inspired so much of the
Church's work of mercy in history.
If when Catholics and Anglicans and Nonconformist
bodies can come together and learn from one another,
where learning without the least compromise is possible,
we could create in this country the weight—so to say—
behind the spiritual force of Christianity, and go far to
restore this force to our public society and institutions.
In a remarkable book, The Idea of a Christian Society, T. S.
Eliot has outlined the principles and the essential practice
wherewith what I should call ' Christendom ' could be
restored in Britain. The Christian Society, according to
him, is composed of the Church, the Christian State, the
Christian Community, and the Community of Christians.
The Christian State presupposes a framework of Christian
institutions with its Christian rulers ' trained to be able to
think in Christian categories,' though not necessarily
Christians themselves, still less saints. The Christian
Community are the people in whom ' the Christian faith
would be ingrained,' but of whom one would not necessarily
expect more than ' a largely unconscious behaviour, as a
minimum,' a behaviour guaranteed, as it were, by the
existing harmony between social customs and their own
religious life. The Community of Christians—a rather
more difficult conception—should consist (I am not sure
how far I am following Mr. Eliot here) of what one might
call the good Christians, those, necessarily limited in
numbers, who set: the example of the full Christian life, not
merely in learning, natural leadership, conscious desire
to relate life at all points to Christian doctrine and inspira
tion, but also by the realisation of the meaning—at any
intellectual or cultural level—of the Faith and the practical
example of observance and holiness which they give.
Mr. Eliot holds that in this country only the Church of
England can realise this idea of a Christian society. ' And
I am not overlooking,' he writes, ' the possibility and hope
of eventual reunion or reintegration, on one side and
another ; I am only affirming that it is this Church which,
 CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS 179
by reason of its tradition, its organisation, and its relation
in the past to the religious-social life of the people, is the
one for our purpose—and that no Christianisation of
England can take place without it.' We can at least agree
that, short of some very unexpected event taking place in
the spiritual order, the Catholic Church in England could
not realise this society within measurable time ; and one
may doubt whether the Church of England can do so
without very great reforms and a tremendous influx of
spiritual energy and religious enlightenment. But the two
working together within the limits of co-operation, under
standing and sympathy without compromise might.
I do not see that Mr. Eliot has set his standard too low,
for it does not seem to me that Catholic States in practice,
either in the past or the present, achieve a greater degree of
Christianity in their society than he proposes. ' The
Kingdom of Christ on earth,' as he well says, ' will never
be realised, and also it is always being realised.' There
need be no limit to the growth of the Community of
Christians, who, as it were, set the true Christian pace
within a social order where there obtains ' a unified religious-
social code of behaviour ' and where the orientation of the
State is towards the attainment of temporal ends, not
inconsistent with the supernatural ends of man.
I may be wrong, but I feel strongly that, while we must
always retain completeness and purity of dogma and moral
doctrine and while we may never lower the standard of the
holiness within the grasp of the Christian fully co-operating
with grace, we are also apt to frighten away from Christianity
vast numbers by presenting Christianity to them at its
religious maximum—a religious maximum, moreover, that is
often unbalanced or ' totalitarian '—instead of at its religious
minimum. I do not, of course, mean that we should ever
present a negative ideal. ' I'm terribly sorry, but you can't
possibly do that ; on the other hand, you can get nearly
as much fun by this and that and that,' but that we should
appreciate the vast differences between the qualities,
talents, tastes, tasks of different people, and be ready to
offer that degree of positive Christianity (preserving, of
i8o CHRISTIAN CRISIS
course, all the essentials) suited to people as they are, while
never failing to try to raise them, according to their capacity
and interest, to the fullness of the Christian vocation. The
alternative turns out in practice, whether among individuals
or in society, to be the casting forth into non-Christianity,
not only of millions who might be Christians but also of
one half of the personality of so many Christians them
selves who become secularist in their weekday life, however
observant they may be in their Sunday life.
It is not easy, I admit, to translate these ideals into
practice, for they depend upon great changes in outlook on
both sides. It may, however, be that people are more pre
pared for them than one imagines. At any rate, I believe
that a very great deal could be done to stimulate interest in
the possibility by far-seeing workers and publicists on either
side, as well as by the beginnings of contact wherever the
opportunity offers. The subjects of Christian education in
the face of State-ism and neo-Paganism, of the defence of
the family, of a common Christian front in the social ques
tion would alone provide endless opportunities for effective
joint action.1 Catholics on their side are shy of starting
because they are afraid of being misunderstood by Catholics
and Anglicans alike. Anglicans are rarely sufficiently con
fident of the reception they will receive, and many of them
are at present completely uninterested. It seems to me that
leaders, especially the most reputable and highest leaders,
including Bishops, on our side, should give the required
confidence by the careful and sympathetic study of the
possibilities, and, having satisfied themselves that good
work, indeed vital work, if this country is not to be entirely
lost as a country to Christianity, can be done, to take the
plunge and arrange to study the ways and means of practical
co-operation through conferences between representatives of
the two sides. Here the leadership of the Cardinal, on our
side, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the Anglican
side, would change the whole atmosphere and make the
long-awaited Christian revolution possible. And if such
1 The social manifesto in "Towards a Christian Social Order," by Captain
T. W. Curd, is an obvious example of a concrete programme that could at
any rate serve as a basis of discussion.
 CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS 181
conferences were a success—and I believe they could be—
there is no knowing how quickly prejudices, antagonisms and
misunderstandings would break down everywhere, nor to
what directions practical co-operation could be extended.
In particular I cannot see why Catholics, Anglicans and
Nonconformists (but particularly the first two) should not
make contacts in every town and village of Britain. In
many cases such contacts would not prove fruitful because
of divergences or prejudices on one side or the other or
because of a sheer inability to distinguish where co-operation
is possible and where it is not possible ; but we should be
surprised, I suggest, at the number of instances where it
could prove successful, leading to concrete results in the
defence of the dogma and moral teaching of Christianity in
the face of a semi-pagan world.
The subject of reunion should of course never be men
tioned or even consciously aimed at in the course of this
particular form of co-operation. Reunion will come of its
own accord, if and when God wills, but only so long as
Catholics and Anglicans grow spiritual, wise and human
enough to co-operate sincerely and with generous Christian
minds in the many matters upon which they are, or should
be, already united in the face of secularism and paganism.
 CHAPTER SIX

THE PRESENT WAR

IT will be noticed that while I have more than once

deplored Christianity's slowness to recognise the great
dangers in modern Nationalism, I have nevertheless
pleaded, in the case of Britain, for a Catholicity that reflects
more closely the characteristics and traditions of the country.
There is no inconsistency in this, for the kind of Nationalism
that is repugnant to the universal and eternal spiritual
values of true religion is by no means the same thing as the
fruitful differences, as between nation and nation, which
manifest the infinite richness and variety within what God
has created. ' I came not to destroy, but to fulfil,' Our
Lord said, and we may always suspect any interpretation
of Christianity which destroys or lessens the fertility either of
created things in themselves or of man's God-like power of
drawing out from mind and matter the riches implanted by
God within them. It is only in the relation of things to
ends that evil arises, and it is therefore only when what God
has created or what man has made are forced into a false
order, being made into ends-in-themselves or to subserve
ends for which they are not fitted that Christianity may
interfere. Thus it is only when these national differences,
which are to be enjoyed and gloried in, are converted into
ends-in-themselves or into the means whereby the nation is
to be made into an all-powerful god, demanding the absolute
service of the whole person, that love of country and pride
in its special characteristics turns into exaggerated
Nationalism.
When then we look at Christianity in act across the face
of the globe, we must be very careful to avoid a fallacy
182
 THE PRESENT WAR 183
common to most contemporary ideologists. Whether these
are Socialists or Fascists or Liberals we shall always find
them propagating their doctrines as though the final good
of man could be secured by the imposition of one outlook,
one code, one organisation, one way of doing things ; and
they are ready to apply with the utmost rigidity one absolute
and highly detailed standard in judging of the progress and
virtue of any man or any country. To the sincere and
ardent Christian this seems like an encouragement, for, he
argues, if these propagators of false religions can demand so
much, surely Christianity, the true and really all-pervading
religion, should demand no less. He forgets that Christian
ity can only make the universal claims which it does because,
in one sense, it demands so little. Its universal claims are
spiritual, not temporal. Christianity does not destroy any
thing, substituting for it a new thing ; it only claims the
right to maintain the infinite varieties of personal and social
life within the bounds ofthe spiritual order that will ultimately
lead them to serve the supreme ends of human life, the glory
of God and the salvation of souls.
It is therefore quite wrong to seek for identity of ways of
living, social orders, political institutions, international aims
as between different countries even when they claim to be
equally Christian. The Spaniard, the Italian, the German,
the Frenchman, the Englishman, the Irishman, the American,
all of them could pursue very different aims in life and yet
all be excellent Catholics. Even more, because Catholicity,
as the spiritual form giving ultimate meaning and direction
to the national material, associates itself with extreme
intimacy with that material, we shall not be surprised to
find apparent differences in Catholicity itself, as it is mani
fested in different countries. And perhaps this will be most
obvious in the imperfections of the Church in different
countries. No one claims, nor could claim that the Church
which is embodied at any given time in fallible and sinful
men does not fall far short of what it ideally should be—
being preserved solely as to its essentials by the promise of
Our Lord and the supernatural gift of Infallibility as to
Faith and Morals—and we shall therefore expect to find that
i84 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
the shortcomings of the Church in Spain are closely associ
ated with the shortcomings of the Spaniards, just as the
shortcomings of the Church in England are closely associated
with the faults of Englishmen. That was a truth very much
overlooked during the Spanish Civil War, when Englishmen,
including English Catholics, tried to apply to a Catholic
people, whose faults as well as virtues were brought to the
surface by the shock of severe war, purely abstract Christian
standards of conduct without a thought that Christianity in
England had its own faults, faults likely to come to the
surface under a comparable tension. This lack of imagina
tion reached the pitch of the ridiculous when Anglican
bishops and clergymen, themselves in receipt of vast salaries
and part and parcel of the British State, condemned the
Spanish Church for its wealth and its interference in politics.
If then we are to try and see how the spiritual force of
Christianity can once again be restored to the West, we must
be on our guard against facile generalisations and the
temptation to confuse a living religion with any sort of
political ideology. Christendom can only be restored by
working, as it were, from both ends, the spiritual unity of
the Church, at one end, and, at the other, the differences
that exist between living Christian persons and societies of
persons, embodying more or less of Christianity, in the
different parts of the globe. As I have said, nothing can
better prepare the way for vigorous Catholic leadership than
the Christianising of the different individuals and societies
of individuals, each with their special characteristics, who
make up the Church in all its richness and variety.
It would take too long—nor do I possess the requisite
knowledge—to analyse the Christian condition of the differ
ent countries, as I have tried to analyse it in Britain. ■ I have
already referred to various countries in the first part of this
book, and the reader is likely from his own reading and the
general considerations I have tried to put forward to have a
rough idea of the faults—if not always the great merits—of
Christianity in the countries that most matter, France, Italy,
Spain, Germany, the United States. As to each of them it
would be possible, without doubt, for someone well enough
 THE PRESENT WAR 185
acquainted with them to see how in detail the force of
Christianity could be made to penetrate better into public
and social life and how that force itself could be purified of
the excessive Nationalism, Capitalism, State-ism, ' Dawnist '-
Socialism, or whatever the errors may be, which have
sullied it. And let us remember that nothing could give
greater courage to Christians held down by Totalitarian
regimes than the sight of a vigorous Christian life and
leadership among their more happily-placed neighbours.
It will be more useful for me to bring these reflections to
a conclusion by presuming that this can be done in other
countries as well as in England by wise leadership in both
clergy and laity and by a better appreciation of the meaning
of Christianity as the unifying and harmonising factor in
both person and nation, and trying to see how these different
Christian societies within the unity of the Church could
work together towards the restoration of Christendom in the
tragic conditions of the world of to-day.
The present war is, of course, infinitely more complicated
in its issues than the different nations will allow. It is, very
literally speaking, a melting-pot in which the different forces
that have gone to make—or rather un-make—our era are
mingling together and generating a destructive and explosive
heat whose ultimate effects cannot even be guessed. It is a
civil war of ideas, as well as a war between countries. It
is as futile to suppose that the whole story has been told
when we say that we are attempting to put an end to
dominion by fear of force as to accept the German thesis of
lebensraum. There are dozens of interconnected issues at
stake, and they can all be related to the interplay of the
forces we have studied in earlier chapters. The war is
obviously the continuation in a new and sharper form of the
national, social and economic disturbances that have
governed the whole history of the peace, and, though war
itself might have been postponed and even avoided, we
should still to-day be in the midst of clashes of forces, some
times designated as a ' white war.' In other words, the out
break of actual war is really an accident, though the trial
by naked force, once it has begun, must inevitably lead to
1 86 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
very different results—and certainly not more rational ones
—than the continuance of a ' white war.' The defect of the
latter kind of war is that it can be indefinitely prolonged,
and that simply means that nations can indefinitely postpone
the genuine attempt to seek a solution. The defect of real
war is that while it does bring the snapping of tension which
leads to a solution, that solution itself is likely to be wholly
irrational, not only because it depends upon the accident of
which side wins but because it is imposed in the flush of
victory after terrible sufferings.
Here then are some of the issues involved in this war.
They can be catalogued under the different forces of which
we have spoken. In the first place, there are the Nationalist
issues. These are the most obvious. Nationalist aspirations
in what are often called the ' have-not ' nations, Germany,
Italy, Japan, Spain, Hungary, are in conflict, open or half-
concealed, with the Powers who got the best deals in the
era of the industrial awakening of the world, deals which
were stabilised and sealed by the rapid intensification of
Nationalist feeling. Nationalism necessarily breeds counter-
Nationalism, and, short of being able indefinitely to hold
down by permanent superiority of numbers and force a
potential rival, the triumph of Nationalism in one country
must inevitably breed war with others in the course of time.
Moreover the economic inter-relatedness of the modern
world will certainly draw into the ambit of any major
Nationalist war a great number of other countries, including
small neutrals falling within the sphere of political and
economic influence of greater Powers. Only one great
country in the present war has been, as it were, artificially
drawn into the Nationalist rivalry, and that is Soviet Russia.
Soviet Russia's Nationalism is wholly subservient to her
revolutionary Bolshevist ideals. The whole world, as at
present organised, is felt by her to be an enemy, and her
policy has been plain. Having done all she could to hasten
the war by spiking any possible appeasement influence, she
hopes to play one side against the other, meanwhile seeking
every safe opportunity of safeguarding her own frontiers.
She feels herself to be the great nation of the future, and her
 THE PRESENT WAR 187
sole interest in this war—the last war of the capitalist era—
lies in making it serve her future destiny. Even if the sense
lessness of another major conflict between the great Powers
of the West were not obvious in itself, the policy of anti-
Christian and Asiatic Russia should surely be standing out
as a blasting warning against such madness. But National
ism has eaten so deeply into the countries of the Christian
heritage that both sides pitifully look to Soviet Russia for
help instead of combining to isolate her. And for this
reason no betrayal in this war compares with the signing of
the Nazi-Bolshevik Pact in August 1940. Hitler on that
occasion sold Europe and Christianity to Anti-Christ. But
we should find it easier to condemn this terrible bargain if
we did not know that there were and remain powerful
political elements in the Western Powers anxious to do the
same.
The ' Dawnist ' issues link up, of course, with the National
ist issues. The liberal faith in the capacity of the ordinary
human being to live happily, intelligently and peacefully in
a progressing universe under the sole empire of science,
common sense and the free exchange of rapidly increasing
material wealth governed the rise of the great ' have '
Powers which, being favourably situated in the general
scramble for all these blessings, obtained the lion's share of
them. Only one great Power arose after the division had
seemed to have been permanently settled, namely Prussian
ised Germany. Badly placed for obtaining a share of the
wealth that came to Europe by the Atlantic, her position
enabled her to threaten the South-East of Europe, the Near
East and the overland route to India and the Far East.
Her aspirations in this quarter were defeated in the first
European war, and the peace of Versailles was intended to
mark the final division of international wealth, a division
heavily in favour of Britain, France and America. Unfor
tunately ' Dawnism ' then began to manifest its inherent
weaknesses. In the first place the permanent division ofinter
national wealth, obtained at the cost of a four years' war,
did not seem notably to improve the lot of the ordinary man,
overburdened by taxation and continually threatened by the
1 88 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
loss of his means of livelihood. Hence a great pressure from
below to put an end to the whole business of war and
armaments and self-defence before any real international
justice had been secured and before any country could be
considered safe. As a result the way lay open for a gradual
weakening of the possessing Powers and a gradual re-
strengthening of the non-possessing Powers. Together with
this, the premature triumph of ' Dawnism ' led to a tre
mendous spiritual and moral weakening of Britain, France
and America, where, as Marshal Petain has put it, ' the
spirit of pleasure prevailed over the spirit of sacrifice and
people demanded more than they gave.' The non-possessing
Powers had only to find leaders determined enough to do
for their countries the exact opposite of what was happening
among the possessing Powers to secure a decisive re-balance
of forces before the former countries awoke to their danger.
This is precisely what happened. Democracy was answered
by tyranny with a kind of super-democratic appearance of
the whole people behind the man of the people. Pleasure,
short hours of work, reliance on the League and international
treaties or lines of fortification for defence were answered by
an intense spirit of youthful sacrifice, gigantic rearmament
with fresh theories of war and self-reliance. The liberal
economic theory of free exchange, free currency, free labour
was answered by a ' natural ' sphere of economic control.
And so while the ' have ' Powers went on blindly believing
in the past, the ' have-not ' Powers grew to a strength that
took the former completely by surprise and ultimately suc
ceeded in crushing France in a few weeks. And the best we
could say was that they had not played fair !
And linked up again with these ' Dawnist ' influences are
the Socialist ones. In this case the self-constituted leaders
of the millions who got a raw deal out of Liberalism, whether
in the ' have ' countries or the ' have-not ' countries, aimed
at securing a new international order in which the whole of
the past could be reprobated, its religion, its culture, its
Nationalism, its imperialism, its division into classes, etc.
In practice, however, even this movement was not strong
enough to overcome Nationalism, the workers' movements
 THE PRESENT WAR
cither siding with their countries when endangered or
creating a new Nationalism in Communist Russia. More
over the Fascist leadership, sprung from the lower bour
geoisie, did not fail to try to meet the demands of Socialism,,
thereby obtaining a considerable measure of genuine support
for itself in the new regimes—enough at any rate to make it
possible to hold down the rest of the workers by sheer force.
In this division between the patriotic workers of the demo
cracies, the Fascisised workers of the Totalitarian countries
and the Soviets of Russia, there lies the deepest cause of
future dissension, the seeds of the troubles that will follow
the war. All these groups believe themselves to be fighting
for identical ideals while fighting one another, and so
artificial a position cannot endure. Running through the
political war there is the thread of civil war, and as the
political war motifs weaken through strain, so will the civil
war motif strengthen. The appalling economic conse
quences of the war must also increase the danger. There is
indeed a very real danger that in course of time the war will
disintegrate into a conflict between two rival approaches to
the self-same Socialism, the ' Dawnist ' approach, via the
Popular Front ideology, and the Fascist approach, via Bol
shevist or Nazi Totalitarianism. If that should happen,
good-bye to both liberal democracy and to Christianity as
an international force in Europe.
Lastly, intermingled with all this there are the genuine
moral feelings of millions, feelings compounded of Christian
beliefs or traditions, the natural law, ' Dawnist ' aspirations,
patriotism, preservation of the ' Decencies,' the urge to
defend oneself and to defend the things one values. These
latter feelings, in the actual belligerent countries at any
rate, are the dominant motif that impels the majority to
actions and maintains the efforts and self-sacrifice of war.
And within their own terms many of these feelings are justi
fied on Christian principles. Allowing for what has hap
pened in the past and for the existence of all these conflicting
issues, which are the result of false or exaggerated philo
sophies taught for a hundred and fifty years, the immediate
political causes of the war, as interpreted in the rival belliger
igo CHRISTIAN CRISIS
ent theses, are inescapable. We, on our side, at any rate
feel compelled by the highest motives to prevent further
German aggression and to redeem at least in a moral sense
Poland and other small countries and, feeling this, we cannot
desist from the fight until our aims are realised or we are
overcome by a force superior to our own. And even those
Christians who see the dangers most clearly and analyse the
weakness of Liberalism most accurately cannot but admit
that in the Fascist doctrine of force there is something more
evil and inhuman than can be found in all the failings of the
' Dawnist '-Nationalist tradition. Moreover, we have com
mitted ourselves so far that any withdrawal must spell serious
danger to our political, social and economic interests. But
this conviction that certain things are wrong-in-themselves,
whatever their antecedents and the resolution to have them
put right at any cost, does not remove the sheer fact that
around and about this moral abstraction and the intrin
sically justifiable motives of self-defence, patriotism and
Christian values there exists the bitter conflict of a dozen
forces that are far removed from the immediate causes and
moral justifications for the conflict. So long as the major
energies ofthe great countries are occupied with and awaiting
the decision by irrational arms, these forces can do no more
than jockey for a favourable ultimate position, though one
or other may at any time burst through, changing the whole
character of the conflict, as, for example, if the Christian
elements in Europe or the workers in any belligerent country
refused any longer to co-operate in a war that seemed likely
to end in the defeat of their own ideals or particular interests.
The defeat of France, for example, appears temporarily at
any rate to have released certain Fascist-Christian forces that
are protected by Germany with the result that Britain finds
herself in opposition to her old Ally. But a subsequent
defeat of Germany would almost certainly release far more
powerful Socialist-Communist forces in France, no less
dangerous to British ideals. It may even be, as after the
last war, that peace will be dictated by a force that can over
ride any but Nationalistic interests. But it is absolutely
certain that sooner or later—and sooner, rather than later—
 THE PRESENT WAR 191
these rival interests will find a way of making the force
behind them felt to an extent that, whether in nominal war
or nominal peace, will disrupt our civilisation in a manner
that will make war itself tame by comparison—that is, they
will do this unless out of war or out of peace a rational and
just settlement that takes all these issues into sympathetic
account can be effected. What sort of peace we should
impose is uncertain, but who can seriously doubt that a
German victory would be followed by a Carthaginian peace
that would make Versailles benevolent by comparison ? To
put it differently : if we or Germany maintain that we are
fighting for a moral conviction, we have got to educate our
selves to the point where that conviction or faith becomes,
not a mere abstract and negative opposition to injustice, but
a positive, concrete and all-embracing realisation of the sort
of order which can once again achieve the peace we have
not known since 19 14. That order must somehow be com
pounded of the Christian and humanitarian heritage of
Liberalism, the radical social reform of Socialism and the
order and discipline which have been so caricatured by
Nazi and Fascist Totalitarianism. It is an inescapable fact
that the Christian programme embodied in the great
Encyclicals and set into operation by Christian leadership
permeating Western Society can alone achieve this necessary
fusion.
If it is true—and who can deny it?—that this war is
fundamentally the outcome of the complex interplay and
rivalry between these dominating forces of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, what hope for Europe, what hope
even for the stoutest upholders of any one interest, can there
be in the apparent triumph of any of the rivals ? For where
all are so closely interwoven, no one of them can really
triumph. If Germany wins, she will ruthlessly try to impose
her own Nationalism and the Totalitarian economic system
which she favours on to a Nazified Europe. But she will
still have to deal with the forces of the international money
power, with the Communising tendencies in her midst, with
smouldering moral forces, Christian, liberal, ' Dawnist,'
among the defeated, with the desire for national revenge,
192 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
made all the keener by poverty and economic distress. Even
if Germany, learning one at least of the lessons of Versailles,
uses the mailed fist with all its strength to keep her enemies
down for all time, she could only create an artificial peace
against which sooner or later the spirit of man would
succeed in rising. If we win, we may perhaps profit by the
other lesson of Versailles and seek genuine justice as between
nations, but this can be no more than a hope and prayer,
given the real forces at work behind us. Nor is it likely that
this politically and perhaps even economically just settle
ment would touch the social problem and remedy the griev
ances that make for socialist and even liberal-' Dawnist '
unrest. If neither side wins, but both exhaust themselves
in prolonged and indecisive war, we may look for that period
of disintegration and anarchy that would mark the end of
Europe as we know it and usher in another Dark Age.
Whence then shall we derive that positive moral conviction
that can give significance to the fight that is being waged
and that alone can really justify the use of force against any
thing that stands four-square in the way of its realisation,
the moral conviction, which perhaps could never have
arisen in the period of armed peace or white war when men
were more concerned to defer the day of settlement than to
make the sacrifices needed to bring it about ? It can only
be derived from a return to Christendom, but a Christendom
so different from what most of us conceive a Christian order
to be that we might scarcely recognise it.
This Christendom—and I use the word in a different
sense from Christianity or the Church—at one and the same
time respects and accepts the world as it finds it, with all
its differences and rivalries, distinguishing only between
what is ' Christian material ' and what is intrinsically anti-
Christian, and yet seeks to guide these forces towards the
genuine good that is inherent in them and to harmonise
their apparently antagonistic ends. Another dream,
another Utopia, it will be objected—and indeed it would
be—were it not for the fact that behind the endeavour there
could lie the spiritual and moral force of Christianity itself,
but given an effective leadership, authority, conviction, order,
 THE PRESENT WAR 193
and penetrating into the political, social and international
body.
Let us try and study this in some detail.
We have as ' givens ' the existence of the universal
Church, together with a large number of separated Christian
bodies, each one adhering to some part, more or less, of the
dogma and moral doctrine that makes Christianity. And
even beyond these we have numberless societies, organisa
tions, peoples who at least share with Christianity some
part of the moral values and some part of the order of
behaviour in personal and social life which derive from and
express that Divine design which Christianity raises to a
higher plane and understands far better and from which
the Church herself derives her meaning and function. As
I said at the beginning, man is incurably moralist, and he
cannot but behave in terms of ends which he sees as having
a moral significance, i.e., as being good in themselves and
applicable to his fellow-men as such now and at all times
and as being worthy of self-sacrifice and hardship in order
that they may be attained. Hence it is not surprising that
even though men can go a very long way towards turning
good into evil through fixing their attention upon some partial
good at the expense of all other goods, they do habitually
retain in practice a very great deal of right morality, not
only in that they consciously aim at what they think or
persuade themselves to be good, but also in preserving
genuine moral values in matters where their attention is not
specially aroused or where it is necessary for their own ends.
Thus a Communist may wish to destroy religion as the
opium of the people, but he will nevertheless not only set
himself and his followers a high standard of observance, but
also retain in personal and social life a great deal of the
natural law (e.g., keeping his word, repaying his debts,
being kind to a suffering neighbour, etc.), as well as en
forcing for his own good such civic virtues as obedience to the
constituted authority and the various obligations of the law.
Thus we are presented with a world which, whether it
knows it or not, retains a good deal of what we Christians
can fit into the Christian framework.
194 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
And if we look at the reverse side of the picture we shall
find another kind of identity. Man, though an incurable
moralist, is also morally extremely weak. ' For the good
which I will, I do not ; but the evil which I will not, that
I do.' Not only does he fail to live up to his ideals, what
ever they may be, but he can gradually pervert his character
so as to become indifferent to any but purely selfish ends,
and even apparently love evil for its own sake. Now this is
true, not only of non-Christians or anti-Christians, but of
Christians themselves.
Thus if we are seeking the causes of social disorder, we
have to look not only for the sincere, moral and even
spiritual pursuit of ends, believed to be good, but which are
nevertheless disorderly, but also for failures to live up to
ideals, whether they are right or wrong. Equally in seeking
for that which makes for social order we shall look not only
to the ideals of Christians, but to the great amount of good
(however disorientated) in non-Christian movements and
forces.
If this is the case, the restoration of Christendom—
which we take to be the true solution to our troubles—will
not be effected by seeking to force on modern society the
Christian faith, still less by waiting for a sufficient number
of men to be converted to it, but by trying to see, on the one
side, how far the good in the modern ideals is to be found in
the philosophy of Christianity itself and, on the other side,
in setting up this good, together with the good of Christi
anity, in opposition to the real evil and harm that arises,
both in Christianity and elsewhere, from an infidelity to
moral ideals or an indifference to them that amounts to an
actual perversion of what is good and what is, therefore,
in order.
If this can be accomplished, then the Church itself from
which springs the strength to live up to the good, the light
to see it clearly and the devotion that can make for the
required self-sacrifice, example and spiritual and moral
leadership can once again play its full part, not only, as it
were, in its more temporal and preliminary stage of per
meating society with its moral and social doctrine, but also
 THE PRESENT WAR 195
in its specific work of apostolate, namely bringing to more
and more men the grace of Christ.
The task must obviously rest upon the shoulders of
Christians themselves, not Christians, divided into two
parts, Christians in religion and secularists in the world,
nor Christians, thinking in terms only of religion, but
Christians who, envisaging the full Christian ideal of a
way of life that covers secular matters in a secular, yet
Christianly-ordered, way and religious matters in a religious
way, form part and parcel of the countries or movements to
which they belong and whose legitimate aims they fully
share.
Under different circumstances and even a few years ago
such a hope might have been fantastic, for the rival spiritual
forces were so greatly in the ascendant and possessing to
such a degree many Christians themselves that they could
not be broken by this universal and gentle pressure. One
could not have expected that any amount of Christianity—
even if Christians themselves had remained free from con
tamination—could have arrested the development of ram
pant Nationalism and grabbing of wealth, of the vision of
the new ' Dawn,' of the attempt to remove injustices by the
obvious and powerful remedy of Socialism. But to-day each
of these forces has proved itself, at best, to fall far short of
the expectations to which it gave rise. Yet, in default of
anything better, men cling desperately to the element of
genuine good that they can find in them, while avowedly
evil forces arise from the debris to threaten all that men, of
whatever belief, hold dear. Then Christianity was fighting
against anti-Christian ideals, thought to be an advance on
Christianity ; to-day Christianity is only fighting the
material forces and the anarchy which alone remain of the
great hopes of yesterday. It may be more uncomfortable
and more dangerous to stand up against the tanks of Ger
many, the armies of Russia and the mobs of dissolving
democracies, but, even so, it is more hopeful to fight for
what is clearly good against what is clearly evil than to
fight against what is commonly believed to be a better good.
The virtue of Christianity, I repeat, lies in the fact that it
1 96 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
does not seek to impose in the secular order an alternative
plan. It is not a rival to the multitude of 'isms. It seeks
only to guide and check and harmonise the ends which men
freely choose, according to their tastes, traditions, national
ideals and the like. Thus the true Christian in Spain will
see things in a Spanish way, the true Christian in a Labour
movement will see things as Labour sees them ; but both,
in doing so, should all the time be doing what he can to
maintain these different ideals within limits that are con
sistent with God's order, as he knows it from his religion to
be. In fact we shall find that what men of goodwill still
really cling to in Nationalism, ' Dawnism,' Capitalism,
Socialism is that part of such ideals as are or can be in
harmony with one another in a Christian order. But if
this basic fact is somehow to be made effective, a number of
conditions must obtain. We shall study them in a last
chapter.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

CONCLUSIONS—II

THE conditions to which I refer can be grouped under

two general heads : the conditions of which
Catholics and real Christians should be made
^specially aware and the conditions of which non-Christians
should be made aware. And if I begin with the second, it
is not because I think them the more important, but because
they include what may be called the basis condition which
is essential for success.
If there is one thing which the peace has taught us, it
is the hopelessness of attempting co-operation between
people of differing views on the basis of the ' least common
denominator ' of their views. The League of Nations was
built up on the belief that this was possible, as we have seen.
And in general the ' Dawnist ' ideology presupposes that all
men—if only you get under their skins—are in agreement
about the values of decent life. Religious dogma, moral
doctrine, national traditions, this special social plan or
that one, all these differences are looked upon by the
' Dawnist ' mind as idiosyncrasies that are important only
in so far as they may be harmful because ' out-of-date ' or
' ignorant ' or ' superstitious.' Otherwise they can be
tolerated but disregarded. Yet the rise of the various
Nationalisms, of Fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, should have
amply proved that there is no better way of ensuring the
radical division between men than the attempt to reduce
their divergences of view to zero in the hope of finding a
basis of co-operation in what is left over. Just because any
faith or inspiration worth the having ' informs ' all the
actions of a man, nothing is left over when men are really
197
1 98 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
striving to live up to an ideal. Hence co-operation on the
basis of the ' least common denominator ' simply leaves the
field open for the intrigues of those who have no ideals but
are ready to take advantage of the ideals of their neighbours.
That is what happened to the League and that is what
caused its rejection in time by all to whom conviction
meant anything at all. The same fallacy in a less ex
travagant form underlies most attempts at reunion or
co-operation between the different religious bodies.
Successful co-operation always depends upon discovering
where men, in apparent agreement or disagreement, are
in reality moving together in the same direction and where they
are moving in an opposite direction.. It equally depends upon
the honest and uncompromising rejection of whatever
may seem, in the last and best analysis, incompatible with
one's own beliefs. While it is essential that those who differ
should endeavour in all sincerity to dissipate differences
due to misunderstanding, still more to mere prejudices or
stupidity, it must be recognised that the limits of human
vision—as well as the evil in man—do bring one up sooner
or later against irreconcilable divergences. Above all,
the fact of the fall of Man must always remind us of the real
evil that exists and often lurks under the best appearances.
To pretend not to see these things will sooner or later
destroy all co-operation where such is possible.
Now Catholic Christianity stands out, whether we like it
or not, as a coherent and all-permeating system of beliefs
and an order of action based upon these beliefs. The whole
system and order hang together logically, and it is utterly
impossible for a Catholic to attach more importance to,
let us say, murder than divorce, to belief in God than
belief in Papal infallibility. The reason is, of course, that
it is exactly the same natural law which, in his view, forbids
divorce as well as murder, and it is the God in whom he
believes who, according to him, has guaranteed the in
fallibility of the Pope. (I do not, of course, mean that a
Catholic necessarily considers that divorce is as evil as
murder either in itself or in its consequences, or that a man
might just as well not believe in God if he does not believe
 CONCLUSIONS—II 199
in Papal infallibility ; I mean that to the Catholic who
understands how they all form part of the same system, the
same faith, the realisation of the evil of the less evil thing
or the acceptance of the less fundamental belief are just as
necessary, just as binding, as the realisation of greater evils
or acceptance of more fundamental acts of faith.) It is
therefore impossible for a non-Catholic to co-operate with
a Catholic, unless he is prepared to accept this fact and
take it into account, just as it is utterly impossible for a
Catholic to co-operate with a non-Catholic on the basis that
the differences between him and his neighbour are not also
of supreme importance. But so. long as both parties agree
to recognise the differences and to respect them, I cannot see
why there cannot be co-operation upon all matters where
they do happen to be moving in the same direction. And
the same is true of co-operation between men of widely
different views, so long as there remains positive matter
upon which they still agree and common ends for which
they are striving.
I have argued earlier and in different ways that the
failure of the great diverging movements which have been
characteristic of the last hundred and fifty years is evidenced
to-day by their clash in peace time and in war to the point
when our civilisation itself is put into immediate jeopardy.
I have also argued that in each of these movements there
has been an element of genuine good, carried by those who
saw it to extravagant and partial lengths. The failure of
such attempts has tended to cause disillusion in many, but
with others it has impelled a self-examination which is
pushing them back from the exaggeration of their views
toward a more balanced appreciation of what they want.
The Nationalist, the Socialist, the ' Dawnist,' the Fascist is
being forced to ask himself how much of his creed can hope
to survive, how much is genuinely good and how much is
exaggeration ? And the answer in every case—though he
may be unaware of it—is ' about that amount as is con
sistent in Nationalism, Socialism, " Dawnism," Fascism
with Christianity.' On the other hand, there are those who
cling with all the greater fierceness to their one-sided views
200 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
when they see them in danger of collapsing, and those—
far more dangerous—for whom disillusion means the loss
of any sort of spiritual faith and the determination to get
what they can for themselves out of the general wreckage.
The forces for which these last people stand are negative and
evil, and not only is any sort of co-operation with them
impossible, but co-operation against them is essential if
they are to be defeated and not infect the whole world
again. In a defeated or severely strained country there is
always a great danger of men seeking salvation in extremist
doctrines, not for their own sake, but because they alone
seem to stand out above the incoming tide of disaster.
Unless the forces of order (i.e., in essence the forces which
Christianity can mould) remain strong enough and flexible
enough to resist and retain the loyalty of the people
(especially the distressed middle classes) sheer negative
anarchy and gross tyranny will triumph.
Now we are in a position to see something of the picture
I have in mind. In a time like this three conditions for
co-operation exist. There is, or could be, first, leadership
and order towards which such co-operation can look—this
comes from convinced and rooted, yet sympathetic and
understanding Christianity ; there is, second, a natural
movement from many different sources towards that
leadership ; and there is, third, a clear principle of differ
entiation between the objects of such co-operation and the
ends of those who are opposed to it. And the struggle is,
in truth, for the souls of the masses of the ruined middle-
classes and unemployed or underpaid working-classes. For
these reasons, while there must remain acceptance of and
respect for the deep divergences between those who can
co-operate, the points of identity, at whatever level, take
their character not from their mere accidental identity,
but from the fact that they share a common direction, a
direction which is towards the fullest expression of what is
common to them and against those who would make any
such co-operation impossible and who would destroy the
ends for which it is undertaken. Thus, even when two
people have apparently practically nothing concrete in
 CONCLUSIONS—II 201
common, approaching the point where the ' least common
denominator ' reads zero, there may still be a common
movement upwards towards the possibility of a wider
identity of view, while others who superficially resemble one
another may at heart be working for opposite ends.
But all this will come to nothing, unless two things are
made clear to all, first, the nature of the common end to
be attained and, second, the nature of what has to be
destroyed.
I contend that, under the circumstances of to-day, it
can be made clear to the vast majority of men and women
in the countries of the West that the common end—the end
which they themselves are trying, more or less uncon
sciously, to promote—is Christianity. The values for which
they stand, human liberty, social justice, a world in which all
men can fulfil their nature through a reasonable sharing of
the material, cultural, moral and spiritual wealth that lies
around, the values, in fact, for which they seek in their
service of ' Dawnist,' Nationalist, Socialist ideals, are the
values which Christianity has taught to the world and
which Christianity alone can preserve to-day. And the
reason why Christianity alone can preserve them to-day is
because Christianity alone understands the setting, the
framework, the design of life within which they can survive.
To put it at its simplest, Christianity alone preserves the
fundamental truth that the good things of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness, can have neither guarantee nor
even meaning unless the world itself is rational and pregnant
of good, and the existence of God alone can account for any
faith in the rationality and goodness of the universe. And,
since the word ' God ' may mean anything or nothing, it is
equally imperative to relate these values to the nature or
kind of God who alone can account for them. Unless it be
a God who has specially created men as spiritual beings,
sharing something of His nature and destined, each one of
them, to enjoy that which makes existence worth while,
there is no accounting for our appetite towards what we
know to be good or even decent in life, still less any guarantee
that that appetite can possibly be satisfied. And in fact the
202 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
only conception of God corresponding to this interpretation
of human life is the Christian conception of an Incarnate
God who has given permanent value to the strivings of each
and every man in the accidental, perishable order of space
and time.
One realises that the full acceptance of these and other
truths lying at the basis of Christianity cannot be imposed,
nor even expected of a generation that has been taught so
much in a contrary sense, but one can ask for the public
establishment of a social order which expresses the goal to
which all men of goodwill can strive.
The great fallacy, as I have said, of all attempts at co
operation has been co-operation on ' the least common
denominator ' of beliefs. A co-operation that will work
demands the recognition of that which is fullest and best
among the beliefs of those who wish to co-operate with the
right of all to dissent from this full standard where their
own personal conviction does not rise to it. In other words,
the Christian faith in its essence must become again a vital
part of public institutions, and the test of those who are
for or against the common idealism is willingness to abide
by this, even though personal faith may be absent and the
minority right to criticise be fully allowed.
It is in that sense, I say, that the non-Catholic or the non-
Christian must be prepared to make his sacrifice. If our
Western civilisation is to be saved, it must be saved by a
clear realisation of the true design of life and a burning con
viction that this design shall be achieved. That can only be
done by convinced leadership in institutions that express the
framework of this ideal, and Christianity alone can provide
that convinced leadership and establish those institutions.
But within the framework of Christianity there lies, as I
have said again and again, an infinity of possible differences
in race, nation, political institutions, culture, taste, etc.
And within the social framework of Christendom, as
opposed to membership of the Church herself, there is room
for the sincere and conscientious dissent of all who cannot
accept the fullness of the truth. The only degree of universal
assent required is an assent towards the common direction of
 CONCLUSIONS—II 203
society, a direction indicated by the conviction of Christian
spiritual leadership and preserved by the public establishment
of institutions that are substantially Christian, that is, that
recognise and proclaim the existence of God and defend the
natural moral order written in the heart of man, and a
direction that will necessarily oppose whatever is plainly
moving in the opposite way, moving towards the disintegra
tion of human society or attempting to override the
spiritual and moral values recognised by the vast majority
in the interests of a force or an idea so dominant and enslav
ing as to be in effect a rival religious and spiritual force,
whether apparently good or apparently bad. Doubtless
many might for a long time hesitate before so unfamiliar a
choice, and it would depend upon Christian leadership, in
its sincerity, honesty, and—in the right sense—broad-
mindedness whether they would make it right.
Even so, such an ideal may seem far-fetched and
impossible ; but it will appear less so if we take seriously
the second set of conditions, the conditions that demand
changes and sacrifices on the part of believing Christians
themselves.
It will be remembered that the change indicated can only
come about by the work of full Christian persons within
society and by the intelligent, but strong, pressure of the
great national Churches within their own national societies.
And what both have to do—if it be not presumptuous to
speak in such a manner—is to unlearn a great deal of what
they now take for granted and learn a great deal which they
now do not take seriously.
Of the un-learning I have spoken at length. In the case
of Catholics and the Catholic establishments in the different
countries it consists chiefly of moving away from the state
of a closed ecclesiastical body, separated off from the outer
world and with an inferiority complex in its regard, from
the haunting and almost morbid fear of minor compromise
in those clear fields of ecclesiastical observance and personal
morality (the Sunday side of religion, as it were) while the
great issues of social, cultural, economic and international
life, where the way is obscurer, are by comparison neglected,
 2o4 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
from the apron-string mentality which leaves the clergy to
do all the thinking for the faithful where the clergy are
competent and the faithful to wander without any thinking
at all where they are not, from the complacent feeling that
the second-rate will do, so long as it is well labelled with the
Catholic name—in a word, from that religious sectarianism
which implicitly denies the universality of Catholicism, con
fusing the ecclesiastical establishment and its purely spiritual
commission with the Catholic order of a worldly secular,
temporal life, lived by free Catholic men and women in
their personal and social lives, informed and shaped to the
supernatural order by the guidance, authority and sacra
mental dispensation of God's Church. In the case of many
Protestant establishments, it is often the opposite that has
to be un)earned : the Christian religion can never be a mere
social convention or spiritual fashion, a kindly hallowing of
anything men of good will wish to do. Men expect the
Christian to be a man of spiritual certainty, conviction and
courage, a man who by his religious faith and membership
of Christ's Body can do something more in the way of action
and guidance than even the best of other men. If the
Christian implicitly denies his ecclesiasticism and the super
natural character of his religion, he denies everything and
loses even the respect commonly accorded to those who
make lesser claims. The kind of modernism that eats away
at the doctrinal and moral foundations of Christianity can
only logically end in the very errors we have been consider
ing in this book, and from these it must lead either to
spiritual, moral and intellectual bankruptcy or to one of the
monstrous anti-Christian growths against which we are
engaged in fighting on the material plane, if not on the
spiritual.
But the learning that is needed is even more important.
Though the grace of God will, we may trust, continue to
make converts in plenty so long as the Church stands before
the world as the spiritual treasury of Divine Grace, exempli
fied in the oneness and purity of her teaching and the
holiness of the best of her faithful, we cannot—as I see it—
expect to make contact again with the world as the world,
 CONCLUSIONS—II 205
still less become its spiritual leaders in the way I have sug
gested, until we break away with the errors of the past, and
rise to the opportunities of the present. How can we expect
the world to take us seriously so long as we, in our millions,
put the advantage of the Nation before the spiritual demands
of our own faith ? And this does not mean attempting to
kill patriotism or the rightful service we owe to the temporal
and natural community or communities of which we are a
part. It does, however, mean a highly critical attitude to
modern States into which have been crystallised so many of
the disordered social and economic forces of our time.
Until Christians of different nations are prepared to pray
that the British Empire may not in so many ways be in
compatible with the God of Christians, that Germany may
smash with the political conceptions which should make, for
German Catholics, the phrase ' Gott mit uns ' a veritable
blasphemy, that ' Catholiques et Francais may be recon
cilable once again, and until national Churches even in
time of war retain the courage to speak and act in this
spirit, we are all, in greater or less degree, living a lie. And
if the excesses of twentieth-century Nationalism in every
great and many small countries are incompatible with even
the essence of Christian teaching, even worse is the Christian
practical acquiescence in the social and economic disorders
that have produced Socialism, National-Socialism and
Communism, not to mention the vaguer social unrest which
runs through the civilised world. Here the test is simple,
though it implies a veritable revolution. Are man and
the instruments of human life considered in fact to be
at the service of wealth and money-production, whether
it be for the State and its aims or for individuals and
their ambitions ? Or are the production of wealth and
the existence of money regarded as the right and necessary
means of providing for the welfare and development of all
free men of whatever country, called by God to live lives
in His service through the utilisation of their talents and
through co-operation with their fellow-men in making
1 This phrase,' Catholiques et Frangais toujours ', is taken from a French
hymn constantly sung in church by French children ; the phrase in other
contexts and places would be innocuous.
 206 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
human existence fuller and better ? To which of these two
alternatives do Christians in practice subscribe ? Which do
they preach and teach ? Which do they further ? Just as
the Christian criticism of excessive Nationalism does not
involve the denial of national differences, nor the reasonable
service of the national society with its own particular
characteristics, so the promotion of the Christian social and
economic ideal does not involve ' selling all one has and
giving it to the poor.' That is a special vocation for the
Christian who feels called to obey that special counsel for
the good of his soul. I mean that it is as foolish to turn
Christianity into an exaggerated social revolutionary move
ment which would of its own accord solve the social problem
as it would be to make it into a political State. It is, however,
absolutely essential that all Christians should have as their
conscious aim—whatever the means may be—the putting of
the goods of the earth at the service of each and every man,
thought of as a particular person with a human right to
what he needs if he is to have a fair chance of making his
life, and not the putting of men at the service of wealth-
creation, money, profits as ends-in-themselves.
It is not as though the Christian ideal were an impossibly
high one. It is, in truth, as high as any man can conceive,
for it is the ideal of God, the supreme goodness, but God is
reflected in all His creatures, even the lowest, so long as
these are in order, within the design which He willed.
Hence the Christian ideal is also moderate and within the
reasonable compass of any man. The essential throughout
is to be on the right path, moving in the direction of God,
concretely understood, however distant from Him one may
still be. Thus to make contact again with the world
Christianity and Christians do not necessarily require even
the heroism and self-sacrifice of the secularist revolutionary
—spiritual strength and fervour will spring from the reli
gious, sacramental and devotional aspect of Christianity—
/ but they do require from all Christians, from the most fer
vent and enlightened to the least so, the consciousness of
God's order and Christian values as permeating society and
pressing it in God's direction. These forces which we have
 CONCLUSIONS—II 207
studied, ' Dawnism,' Nationalism, Socialism, even Capital
ism and State-ism, they are not in themselves bad or anti-
Christian. They only become bad when they are directed
towards the wrong end and in particular towards themselves
as final ends. Progress, national and other differences
between men and men, radical social reform, a proper
measure of economic freedom, the authority and control of
the State where circumstances make it imperative, these are
all necessary ingredients in the Christian social order. But
each of them requires to be consciously directed towards the
essentials of Christian living, towards God's design. The
revolution that is required is not a revolution from apathy
to fervour on the part of all of us, but a revolution from
acquiescence in the prevalent values of the times, values
inherited from the anti-Christian forces of the nineteenth
century, to the determination to work for Christian values.
The Christian who puts his country before all else in his
ordinary day-to-day life, the Christian who is content with
a servile State, the Christian who, in the face of neo-
Paganism and moral disintegration, is content to shut him
self up in the fortress of the Church, such a Christian betrays
his faith even in living it.
There are three hundred million Catholics and many
millions of non-Catholic Christians, retaining the essence of
Christianity ; in every Western country Christianity exists
as an organised institution, still the acknowledged religious
and spiritual force of the country ; outside the body of
Christians there are millions who seek precisely what
Christianity as a social and moral force teaches, millions
who, disillusioned with the ideologies they have followed,
are more than ready to listen to a Christian leadership which
they can respect when they can discern it, understand it and
see it in terms of their own best desires. Is it impossible to
translate all this into action ?
We have studied the case of Britain, and seen a little of
what could be done by united action, by courageous
leadership, by the training of Christians to see their lives as
a Christian whole. In France, in the United States, in the
smaller democracies, in Catholic Spain and Catholic
208 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
America, the Christian pressure could be even heavier, if
the opportunity were recognised and the leadership avail
able. And so little, after all, is required to effect this
revolution. Since the Reformation, if I am right, Christian
ity itself by its emphasis upon its religious and ecclesiastical
aspect in opposition to a growingly secularist world has
frightened the world off. The non-Christian and, very
often, the Christian as well, have come to think of
Christianity only as a religion, in the narrower sense of the
word. They have forgotten that the religious aspect fits
into and completes what is also a philosophy of life, the
philosophy of life that underlies the history of the West.
Religious leaders themselves have, if not forgotten this
truth, failed to attach to it its proper importance and
concentrated solely on building and strengthening the
religious and devotional side of Christianity. The world,
on the other hand, has either dismissed Christianity as a
religion for the devout and interested or accepted a certain
amount of the Christian philosophy in abstraction from the
religious and spiritual force that gives it life.
Time and again I have spoken of the vocation of the
individual Christian person to make himself one, religiously
and devotionally Christian in the religious side of life, but
also morally, socially and secularly Christian in the week
day side of life. The needed Christian renaissance can only
be effected by millions of Christians in every country and
every walk of life seeing and living this. But after so pro
longed a period of insistence on the exclusively Sunday side
of Christianity, we must recognise that it will at best take
some time to train Catholics to appreciate the breadth and
depth of a Christian's vocation. For this reason, though
the actual work must ultimately be done by the mass of
Christian people, the first call is on the national Churches
and on the clergy to whom Catholics have been accustomed
to look for guidance in all matters. Only if these have the
courage to demand of the faithful an integral Christian
outlook, not only in church observance and personal
morality but not less in uncompromising fidelity to Christian
principles as citizens, business men, members of political and
 CONCLUSIONS—II 209
other associations ; only if these have the courage to stand
out from the nation as guides to a better and fuller way of
life than any Nationalism, Socialist, ' Dawnist,' Capitalist
gospel can offer—and not do this merely in abstract phrases,
but in concrete examples and instructions ; only if these
have the courage to train Catholics to develop their own
consciences and initiative in seeking the true Christian way
in their public and social lives rather than to rely upon a
spoon-feeding that must prove hopelessly abstract, mechani
cal and out-of-touch with realities as they are lived—only if
they have such courage can we expect the rapid re-growth of
a Christendom able to permeate and save the chaotic world.
The world has to be taught by uncompromising Christian
leadership and an all-round integrated Christian observance
and practice that the philosophy of Christianity not only
exists but actually interprets the wishes of all sincere and
right-minded men. The world has also to learn that,
whether it can accept the fullness of the Christian religion
or not, the Christian philosophy has no meaning and no
hope of succeeding if it is detached from the spiritual force
. of the Christian religion. But Christians, on their side, have
to make it clear that they are not mere votaries of a religious
sect, but the defenders of an order, a way of life that per
meates everything, that is wholly secular as well as wholly
religious, that is practical, reformist, up and doing, that
encompasses all men and all social behaviour in the measure
of what they can honestly and sincerely accept. For if
Christianity reaches unto Heaven, its base is as broad as
God's creation and as all-inclusive.
If this sense of Christianity can once again be conveyed
to the world, the sense of Christianity, rigid and orthodox
and rich in its spiritual life at its core yet penetrating out
wards in every direction so as to gather into God's design
for living all social forces and all men who are moving in
God's direction and in the measure of the light vouchsafed
them and their spiritual strength, then the restoration of
Christendom becomes again a practical possibility.
I sincerely believe that the world is ready for it, that
after the great disillusion it is dividing itself into those who
210 CHRISTIAN CRISIS
arc prepared to go whatever way God calls them on the
road to the full truth and those who are sick of all ideals and
determined to wreck civilisation at any cost for what they
can pick up for themselves by their wits. I believe that
even during this war it is possible for Christians in every
country to be thinking and working in these terms, making
themselves ready to take action during the chaotic months "
that will follow it. Then will come the opportunity
and the supreme crisis. If we cannot prevent another
era of enslavement to the false gods of Nationalism,
' Dawnism ' and Socialism, we shall have fought in vain and
the civilisation of Europe will perish. But if between now
and then Christianity can be made a public reality in the
world by the rightly directed pressure and leadership of
the Christian Churches, working together in co-operation,
where co-operation is possible, and supported by the millions
of fully integrated Christians themselves, educated to
recognise what Christianity as a spiritual and social force
means under the circumstances of to-day and in the light
of the counter-forces, then Europe can be saved.
It goes without saying that the chief contribution to this
renaissance must come from countries where Christianity
remains substantially free ; but perhaps the most striking
move in the right direction could be made by the millions
of Christians at present bound in totalitarian or authoritarian
countries to a set philosophy of exaggerated Nationalism.
Meanwhile no material circumstances can be such as to
prevent that preparation of soul and mind and those
desirable internal reforms which will equip us all to meet a
critical future.