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Bdat«d by E. Haldeman-Jaliua

The Black International No. 9

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HOW THE WICKED BOLSHEVIKS ARE TO SAVE
OUR CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

by JOSEPH McCABE

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Edited by E. Haldeman-JulittS

The Black International No. 9

Atheist Russia Shakes

the World

HOW THE WICKED BOLSHEVIKS SAVE OUR

CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

by JOSEPH McCABE

HALDBMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS

GIRARD — :— KANSAS



Copyright, 1942

Haldeman-Julius Company

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I The Vatican Courts Russia for Years 3

II The Supposed Persecution of Religion 10

III The Papal Hymn of Hate 18

IV Hitler’s Magnificent Blunder 27

Printed in the United States of America



Chapter I

THE VATICAN COURTS RUSSIA FOR YEARS

On the very morning on which I begin to write this little book

the news comes that Japan has attacked America. It completes my
case against the Vatican. Its third big friend and ally joins the

struggle to destroy all freedom, all enlightenment, all that we most

deeply prize in what we call our civilization. The Papacy has

still other friends, it is true. It has Vichy France and Franco

Spain, those islands of Fascism amidst populations in chains which

loathe them. It has Salazar Portugal, Leopold of Belgium, the

miserable new Slovakia and Montenegro, and the rats of Eire,

Hungary, and Rumania. One hopes lit is proud of them. Until

today it flattered itself that amongst its loyal friends it numbered

nearly all the Republics of South land Central America but this

latest outrage on all human decency by one of the big Papal Allies

seems to have 'shaken most of them. The powerful friends of the

Vatican are Germany, Italy, and Japan—the most brutalized powers
of modern history, the enemies of the human raq£.

It is not nine months since the Pope gave Matsuoka so gracious

an interview at the Vatican that the wily Jap called it “the most

beautiful moment of my life” and he put amongst his treasures the
gold medal which the Pope gave him. Matsuoka had done more than

any other representative of Japan to; fool Americans and delay their

armament. He is a more unctuous liar than Ribbentrop. Last

March, when he was so affectionately received by the Pope, he

had just come from interviews with Hitler and Mussolini, in

which beyond question the date, if not the manner, of Japan’s inter-

vention must have been discussed. There is here no room for one of

those “unauthorized” assurances that the Pope was saddened or

depressed or murmured about barbarous outrages. From the audi-

ence he went, radiant, to his .usual public audience—ten to fifty
dollars a head—and said, according to the Osservatore (his own
organ) as well as the Italian and German journalists who were

present, that he had had “a fine conversation” with Matsuoka. And
the unscrupulous Japs went home to join in the concerting of the

plot to dupe America to the last moment and fall upon it with all

the brutal cunning and treachery which have characterized the

greedy enterprises of the Pope’s two other big friends.

Why call the Pope Japan’s ally and friend, your Catholic neigh-
bor may ask? I had better recall for you what I said briefly
on the subject in the second book of this series. When in the
most fateful hour of this catastrophic development, the rape of

Manchuria, the first trial of strength of barbarism against civiliza-

tion, Japan looked round a hostile world for a friend it found

only the Vatican. The new Secretary of State, the present Pope,
directed French priests in the East to cooperate with the bandits.

I should not think that any decent American Catholic will ask

you to believe that the Papacy was merely concerned about the



4 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

spiritual welfare of the few thousand (or hundred) miserable rice-

converts to the Church in Manchuria. Anyhow, it was the begin-

ning of a most edifying friendship. Although there were only

100,000 Catholics in Japan there was 'soon talk of an exchange of

ambassadors between Tokio and the Vatican City, and just when

Japan exposed its own lies about Manchuria by seizing and cor-

rupting other provinces of China the Vatican proudly announced,

and the Catholic press everywhere joyously repeated, that that

proof of amity between two “civilizations” had been achieved.

Since then, as I quoted in the Words of a French Catholic, no

Japanese of any standing visited Europe without calling to pay his

respects to “the Holy Father.”

By what name will this beastly war be known in the history-
books of the future? We hope that our great-grandchildren will
read of it with amazement in their High Schools as “The Last

Great War.” If the men and women of the rising generation who
have shuddered at its horrors do not make a life-vow of critical
vigilance, if they again trust priests and politicians to prevent the

world from drifting into so shameful a surrender to banditry,

they are unworthy of the years of sunlight which the chances of

life have offered them.

Some think that the title will be “The Most Amazing War m
History.” From 1919 onward hundreds of writers thrilled us with
gruesome pictures of the super-brutalities of the next war, and

for the last ten yearg at least there cannot have been a doubt in

any man's mind which nations were expected to rain down fire
and poison upon peaceful cities and which peoples were to suffer.

Yet the aggressive nations openly flaunted their programs of con-

quest and their plainly named victims went from jazz to swing and

let even the weapons of 1918 rot in the fields. When the time
came little England declared war with an equipment of 18 good
planes, quarter of a million cardboard-coffins, and 40,000,000.

gas-masks. France entrusted its fate to naval and military com-

manders who allow priests to tell them that an appalling national
calamity purifies the soul of a people and that no price is too high

to pay for the destruction of Communism £nd Atheism. (Then
there was the long spell of “cockeyed war” in which profiteers

waxed fat. Then, most amazing of all, the great power that every

other nation in the world had maligned and every Church cursed

entered the arena in which we were supposed to be fighting for

Christian civilization and lit it at last with valor and heroism.

Some day historians and military experts will estimate more

coldly than we can and more boldly than we dare today what

chance the British Empire, even with what We might call the

morganatic alliance of America, had of escaping destruction after

the appalling betrayal of civilization by France. There will be at

least many who will conclude that if Hitler had at that time
persevered in his designs against Russia before turning to attack

Yugo-Sjavia, Greece, and Russia, the issue would have been. . . .

Let me, since I am an Englishman, leave it at that.

But the most amazing feature of all is the story of the rela-

tions of the Vatican with the ^Soviet civilization. In all that mael-

strom of emotion that agitated the press and peoples of the

world when mighty Russia entered the war nothing was more in-

triguing than the wavering and discordant note of the Catholic



THE VATICAN COURTS RUSSIA FOR YEARS 5

press. Even when it was clear, as it must have been to every

informed person, that the world’s peril was mightily relieved, if

not dissipated, by the accession of this new strength to the forces

of good, large numbers of Catholics in every country denounced

the idea of employing it, and a certain reserve or hesitation wa’s

found throughout the entire Church. You know why. Every Church

had attacked Russia for its Atheism and its supposed persecution

of religion, but the others had been temperate in comparison with

the Church of Rome. Ten years ago it had borrowed and adopted

the motto which Voltaire had coined against itself, “Wipe out the

Infamous Thing.” We had been reading in Catholic writers for
decades that the truculence of that slogan was proof of the

essential vulgarity of the irreligious soul, and suddenly, five or

six years ago, the gentle voice of Mother Church began its “Wipe

out Bolshevism in Russia, Spain, and Mexico.” Even a Catholic

writer does not pretend that Voltaire urged men to extinguish the
Roman Church in blood. But that is the only possible meaning of
the Pope’s slogan. He appealed to “governments.” The German
hierarchy appealed to Hitler to let them add their prayers ito the

thunder of his guns. The American hierarchy appealed to Wall

Street, which is believed to have some influence at Washington.

All that is known, but what is your Catholic friend likely

to say if you tell him that in what his own (as well as general)

literature calls the very worst years of Bolshevik power, the years

when priests like Father Walsh, who spent two years in Russia,

tell him that bishops and priests were murdered by the hundreds

and with sadistic savagery, the Vatican was straining every nerve

to court the favor of Lenin and his colleagues? That in the first

year of Bolshevik power, the summer of 1918, Russian Catholics

held, for the first time in the history of Russia, the most solemn

and august of their public processions, with the consecrated host,

in the streets of Leningrad, and no one was allowed to molest

them?

That is really the most amazing feature of the story of the

Vatican and Russia. As long as the Bolsheviks were Bolsheviks

—

that is to say, as long as Lenin attempted to run the country on

Communist lines—and a savage White War and famine did pro-
foundly disturb the normal Socialist psychology—the Papacy was
the only power in the world that repeatedly attempted to enter

into cordial relations with them. But when the New Economic Policy-
suspended Communism in Russia, when the passions of the civil
war had died down and the stately structure of a new and higher
civilization began to rise from its foundations, the Pope began to

denounce Bolshevism as the spawn of the devil and call for a

crusade to wipe it out in blood!

Yet the evidence for that can be taken entirely from Catholic

sources, and any man who has read my account—fully supported
by the Catholic Teeling—of the Papal ambition to take over the
eastern Churche’s, will be prepared to accept it. To many, however,

it will seem not merely one of those “libels” of which Catholics

are taught to complain so pathetically, but a quite impossible sug-

gestion. So let us take this attempt of the Vatican to court the

Soviet government during the four or five years when all the
rest of the world hated it as our first point.

From the Catholic Teeling (The Pope in Politics), who is no



6 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

rebel against his Church, I quoted the statement that the Vatican

was most eager to capture the Greek and other eastern Churches

in order to counterbalance the growth of democratic elements

(chiefly American and British) in the Latin Church. He goes

on to describe how the destruction of the power of the Greek or

Orthodox Church in Russia by the Bolsheviks—in fact, the knowl-
edge that they would very soon achieve this—gave the Papacy a.
wonderful new outlook for its anti-democratic ambition. By flatter-

ing the Bolshevik leaders and thanking them for delivering Russian

Pacifists from the tyranny of the Orthodox Church it hoped to

take the place of the discredited heads of the old national Church.

The somewhat sympathetic American writer George Seldes

(The Vatican) says the same, with a slight difference. He says
that the Vatican regarded the rise of the Bolsheviks to power with

mixed feelings: ia loathing of their economic philosophy and re-

joicing—for which he quotes the Osservatore—in the splendid op-
portunity of the Church. Seldes states on the title-page of his book

that the historical part of it is taken from a work by two French

Catholics, G. London and C. Pichon (Le Vatican et le monde

moderne, 1933). He does not explain how 20 small pages of his-

torical matter in the French book have become more than 100

large pages in his own book. Anyhow, he here retouches their text.

They simply say that the Papacy rejoiced in the Russian Revolution

in so far as it opened out a golden prospect to itself. The talk

about the infamy of the Bolshevik philosophy began later. At the

time doubtless Rome had just the same idea of Bolshevism but it

was prepared to sup with the devil.

Another Catholic writer who candidly describes this early

phase is Miss M. A. Almedingen (The Catholic Church in Russia

Today, 1923). Her little book is valuable not only because the

author is one of those ardent (in the pious sense) virgins who are

the treasure of the clergy but because she lived in Russia during

these years of courtship. She tells u's that the Bolsheviks at once

released the head of the Roman Church whom the Tsarists had put
in prison—a Pole who had been guilty of political intrigue, be
it noted—and lifted all the restrictions which the Tsarists had
laid upon Papist activities. It is this same devout Catholic and

very truthful lady who tells us that in the summer of 1918 Cath-
olics were allowed to hold, for the first time in Russian history,

their sacred Corpus Christi procession, a priest openly carrying

what they call the Blessed Sacrament, in the street's of Petrograd

and at least one other city. The Bolsheviks actually favored the

Roman against the Greek Catholics, and there was, this ideal wit-
ness assures us, no interference whatever with their religion until

the summer of 1919, nearly two years after Lenin got power, and no

“persecution” until three years after that. In 1920, she says, Rome
was still so intent upon friendship with the Soviet authorities that

bodies of friars waited on the frontiers for the signal to march in

and win the Russian people for the Vatican.

I have earlier explained the 'situation. The Russian Orthodox

Church was the largest of the sections into which political develop-

ments in the 19th Century had split the old Greek Church. It dif-

fered from the Roman in ritual and on one very abstruse point of
doctrine (the procession of the Holy Ghost) but most emphatically

in rejecting the Pope's pretensions. That it was, and had always



THE VATICAN COURTS RUSSIA FOR YEARS 7

been, very 'corrupt is agreed. “The Orthodox Church was filthy

with corruption and debauchery,” says Seldes (p. 287). The 10,000

monks were “very lax,” says the Catholic Encyclopedia. But most

people have read the very characteristic story of St. Rasputin. Any-

body who care's to look up a copy of The Romance of the Roman-

offs which I wrote and published in New York in 1917 will find
many piquant pages on church-life. Peter the Great had so open

a contempt for it that in the drunken debauches he held with his

court he and the men often dressed as monks and his loosest women
dressed as nuns. Catherine the Great had hardly less contempt for

it. We recognize in every age a decent and religious minority in it
but it remained until 1917 so generally corrupt that most educated

Russians despised it.

The Bolsheviks had another reason to attack it besides the

spectacle of so corrupt a body owning “fabulous wealth,” as the

most neutral historians say, and exploiting the ignorant. From the

time of the French Revolution it had drawn closer to the autocracy,

knowing that they would stand or fall together. Every atrocity of

the statesmen and their hirelings who protected the throne of the

Tsars was blessed by the Holy Synod, and this continued in the

19th Century. In the last great revolutionary period, 1904-5, the

jails of Russia, which were supposed to have a capacity of 107,000,

were crammed with 174,000 prisoners, besides 100,000 in the Siberian

colonies. These prisoners were to a very large extent young men
and women of the university-student class. Thousands—after
boldly stitching tabs with their names on their clothes—went out
on the streets to be shot. Hundreds committed suicide or were

carried off by epidemics in the fetid jails every month. Brutal

jailers raped the refined young women in their cells. The press
abroad put these horrors in small paragraphs, if they were men-

tioned at all. The banner-headlines were reserved for the fictitious

“Bolshevik atrocities” of a later date. But you will not be surprised

that a great debt was inscribed in the memory of the Socialists.

Yet Lenin and his colleagues were content, as long as the

clergy kept out of politics, to disestablish the Church, destroy its

monopoly, and confiscate the bulk of its superfluous wealth. Be-

yond that, Miss Almedinger insists, there was no persecution

for four or five years, and the complete freedom, and equality of

cults, which the Orthodox heirarchy had refused, were warmly wel-

comed by the Romanists. The Vatican, however, which had from

long experience a cynical distrust of argumentative proselytism

and a decided preference for the knout, wanted more than freedom.

The Orthodox Church had been richer than any section of the

Roman Church, which in Russia was exceptionally poor. A very
impartial note on the religious situation in Kiesing’s Contemporary

Archives (October 18, 1941, ip. 4848) says that the monks and high-

er clergy of the Orthodox Church had a wealth in land alone of

$3,500,000,000, and the property, jewels, etc. of their churches and

monasteries represented a vast further sum. The Vatican's dream

of taking over this was soon dissipated, as the Bolsheviks more

sensibly transferred it to the people of Russia. But it was said,

since the census of 1913, that the Orthodox Church had 98,000,000

communicants, and doubtless, since the only difference in doctrine

was one that not one Russian in 100,000 could comprehend, a little

pressure from the Soyiet authorities would help these millions



8 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

(mostly illiterate) to see that the Pope was a far holier person than

the Orthodox patriarch.

The Bolsheviks had other designs but for a year or two they

were not unwilling to see Roman Catholicism, of which they knew

very little, replace the Catholicism which they had so much ground

to hate. Meantime, however, the White War, in which passions

flamed to redness and even conservative writer's admit that the

Imperialist Russians themselves committed appalling atrocities had

broken out. How this led to what is called persecution we shall
see in the next chapter, but it is worth noting that we have here a

parallel with the French Revolution of a very different kind from

that which is usually, and falsely, pressed upon us. Aulard and

other leading French historians have shown that Danton and Robes-

pierre, instead of trying to destroy religion, made every effort to

maintain the Church but the people overruled them. In much the

same way Miss Almedinger, then living in Russia, describes Lenin

and his colleagues following a policy of religious freedom and the

people impatient of it. The Red guards, she says, frowned on the

public Catholic processions of 1918 but did not interfere. In the

following year they began to disturb services in the churches and

were checked by the authorities, but these did not ’seriously inter-

fere with religion until 1922, when large numbers of churches were

closed and priests arrested.

We shall ’see why. For the moment let us follow the wooing of
the Kremlin by the Vatican. In 1922 the Romanists in Russia, who

were now reduced to one or two millions, mostly Poles and Lithuan-
ians, by the formation of the independent republic of Poland, suf-

fered like the Orthodox for' having intrigued with the invading

Poles and White Russians, and the golden prospect that had

opened up in 1917 to the eyes of the Papacy was replaced by a

fear that its Church was doomed to total destruction in Russia.

The Genoa Conference in 1922, at which the European powers were

to meet and come to a friendly agreement with representatives of

Russia, the higher interests of trade and the recovery of debts hav-

ing overruled the world’s repugnance to Atheist Russia, gave the

Vatican a new hope. The Archbishop of Genoa was instructed to
get in touch with and cultviate Comrade Chicherin.

London and Pichon, whose account is followed by Seldes and

Teeling, tell the story. After several futile attempts to meet Chich-

erin the archbishop got himself placed next to the Russian at a

banquet which the king of Italy gave to the delegates and he was

as amiable as an Italian prelate knows how to be. He came away
with Chicherin’s autograph on his menu, exchanging it for hi’s own.

Bear in mind that according to later Catholic literature these

Bolsheviks had already slaughtered a thousand bishops and heaven

knows how many thousand priests. Doubtless the archbishop sent
a roseate account of hi’s success to Rome, but Chicherin was not

so simple as the prelate imagined. Russia, disgusted at the hypo-

critical patronage and greed of the powers, made a separate trade-
agreement with Germany, and the conference ended in confusion.

The Vatican still wooed the hated Russians. Some men com-
pare it to a blond golddigger pursuing a wealthy gangster but we
will confine ourselves strictly to the facts, as told by Catholic

writers. The agents of the Vatican transferred their solicitation

to the Russian representative in Rome, The civil war had been



THE VATICAN COURTS RUSSIA FOR YEARS 9

followed by a famine in which millions died, and the Pope pressed

for permission to help in the work of relief in which many nations

cooperated. Even Catholic writers do not go so far as to ask us

to admire the generosity of the Vatican in helping the nation which

had, it was alleged all over the world, been guilty of an atrocious

massacre of priests. The aim was so clearly propaganda that the

Russians exacted an agreement that the members of the Vatican

relief mission should avoid politics and propaganda before they

were allowed to enter the country.

Everyone knows the value of these Catholic promises to refrain

from propaganda; when, for instance, you send your children to a

nun’s school or an invalid to a Catholic hospital or convalescent

home. A priest or nun is bound in conscience to get round that
promise. So the American Jesuit Father Walsh, the head of the

Vatican mission, set out with a million nice parcels “for the

children of Russia from the Pope of Rome.” So Seldes says, but

he does not add, as London and Pichon do, that they took allso

colored photographs of the Pope to stick in their relief-centers; and

you can imagine for yourself what answers the Jesuits gave when

the Russians made inquiries about this picturesque and benevolent

gentleman. The Russians found that they were proselytizing and

in 1924 conducted them to the frontier. Walsh went back to Ameri-

ca and published one of the vilest of the attacks on Russia which

were now beginning to 'gladden the heart of Wall Street. He swept
together the wildest and most incredible stories of Bolshevik sav-

agery; and you will find it interesting to remember that these

things are supposed to have been perpetrated before or during the

two years when the Jesuit was working in Russia in friendly rela-

tionship with the Soviet authorities.

Still the Vatican hoped. It chose a French Jesuit, Father

D’Herbigny, whom it turned into a bishop to make him more accept-
able to the simple Soviet authorities. He and a few others got into
Russia and were expelled for intrigue, and the long courtship,

which was now clearly hopeless, ended in a Hymn of Hate. D’Her-
bigny joined the libellers and may be regarded as the author of
the Papal bugle-call for “the extinction of Bolshevism.” It is con-

venient for Catholics to forget that the Vatican pressed its friend-

ship on Russia during these year’s when the appalling condition of
the country did give rise to a great deal of violence and all the

rest of the world was hostile. But the facts I have given are quoted

entirely from Catholic sources, and we must not allow them to be
concealed. What the Papacy believed about the character of the
power with which it sought an alliance did not matter to it. All

that it regarded was, as it thought, a new chance of attaining
wealth and power. As soon as that chance was definitely lost and

Communism and Atheism spread from Russia and threatened the
Church’s wealth and power in other countries it turned against

Russia and tried to excite a war against it. The fact that Russia
was now building up a peaceful and humane civilization did not
matter to it. Indeed, the clearer Russia’s peaceful and humane in-
tentions became and the greater its success the more savage the

language of the Vatican became. Did I overstate the truth when
I said that the first aim of the Black International is the protec-

tion and increase, by hook or crook, of its own wealth and power?



10 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

Chapter II

THE SUPPOSED PERSECUTION OF RELIGION

When Mr. Roosevelt recently sent Harriman to Moscow to In-
quire what help Russia required he told his envoy to raise the ques-

tion of freedom of religion. That fact was stated in many papers

and is duly recorded in the Keesing daily summary of the press.

Nothing but heavy pressure from the Churches could have induced

so broad-minded a statesman as Mr. Roosevelt thus to interfere in

the internal affairs of another nation and, by implication, lay down

conditions on which he would grant help to a power that was

bearing the whole brunt of the attack on civilization; and back of

this pressure of the Churches is, notoriously, the charge that Rus-

sia persecutes religion or put's penalties of some sort on those who

practice it.

Most of us know the insincerity of that charge. Russia was

feared and hatedi until it entered the war because its rapid progress

from about 1928 to 1940 discredited two very sacred principles

of the British and American press, literature, and politicians.

One, the ancient and, threadbare charge against Socialism, the really

fundamental reason why Russia was treated as an outlaw nation
and the truth about it concealed, was the assertion that you cannot

make progress without private enterprise or, in the ordinary mean-

ing of the word, capitalism. It would not do to let the people of

the world know that Socialist Russia was advancing so rapidly

that this most emphatic principle of individualism was completely

discredited.

The second principle was that you cannot even maintain an

existing civilization without religion; and, since in this respect we

are thinking of the ruling or guiding class of a nation, the principle

refers particularly to these. Yet, whatever be the 'strength of re-

ligion in Russia today, which we will discuss later, no one ques-

tions or could question that the members of the administration

from the Commissars at Moscow to the administrative officials of
a small town are all Atheists. These Atheists have achieved in

twenty years one of the greatest feats in history in the construction

of a civilization. They took over, not a working and fairly solid

economy as they Fascists and the Nazis did, but a country that had

been reduced to a state of social and cultural chaos. Tsarist Rus-

sia had been low in culture and character and, for so large a

country with such resources, far from rich. But the three years

of the European War, the ensuing two years of the White and the

Polish War, and the two years subsequently of famine and disease,

had made a wilderness of the vast land. Anyone who does not
realize that ought to look into a good annual, like the Annual

Register, for 1923 and 1924. It was still a few years before the

Communist statesmen could begin serious construction, and I repeat

that what they did' between 1928 and 1940 is beyond all historical

precedents. All the world knows it today.

Hence when American writers so far removed from Commu-
nism as John Dewey, Duranty, etc. began to assert this fact the

anti-Socialist slogan was discredited and criticism, to be plausible,

had to be confined to the supposed interference with religion.

Here again priests ‘and bankers joined hands, and the most un-



THE SUPPOSED PERSECUTION OF RELIGION 11

scrupulous priests of all were the Roman Catholic. Although, par-

ticularly in Britain, the charge of persecuting religion was, as we

shall see, officially disproved years ago, we must admit that the

Church of Rome was not the only offender. The entry of Russia

into the war roused the same ecclesiastical fussiness in England

as in America, to which Mr. Roosevelt’s unhappy instruction to Har-

riman hears witness. The President of the Baptist World Alliance

publicly denied Maisky’s claim that religion is, and has been for

years, free in Russia. To that we will return but we, at once, recog-

nize one distinction between Protestant and Catholic anti-Commu-

nism. The Protestant Churches wanted such diplomatic pressure as

their government could bring to bear upon Moscow, but as I have

quoted repeatedly in the Pope’s own words, the Vatican wanted

Communism extinguished by war.

Some of my readers may occasionally regard my language about
that Church, which is treated with profound respect in most papers,

as over-emphatic, but candidly, could any man with moderate his-
torical knowledge characterize in milder terms the effrontery of the

Vatican’s diatribes against Russia? Hell hath no fury like a Pope’s

scorn, of course, but most people do not expect the strident and un-

reasoning language of a rejected suitor from the heads of any

Church, and for the Popes to complain of persecution is simply

grotesque. Ever since Europe returned to some degree of mental

sanity in the 20th Century the Popes have relied on savage perse-

cution to maintain their power and of the half-million democrats

who forfeited their lives for freedom in the 19th Century all but
a few hundred were victims of Catholic authorities, lay and clerical

acting together.

But there is no need to go into history. In our own day, we
have seen repeatedly in this series of books, Rome follows the old
policy of persecution wherever it can. We saw that the Catholic
Church and authorities of Poland maintained a brutal persecution of

the Orthodox Catholics in the Galician Ukraine, indeed of Protes-

tants in Poland itself, from 1919 to 1939. We saw that when Pacelli
had traversed South America the most terrible persecution, includ-

ing torture, broke out everywhere. It followed the seizure of power

from the Socialists by the Catholics of Vienna. ... In short, the

policy has been enforced wherever the Vatican had the power to

enforce right down to the time, only a few months ago, when the

priests of Croatia and Bulgaria fell upon the priests of the Serb

Church.

The supreme irony is that, as I have shown until most of my
readers must be tired of it, in its Canon Law today the Church
lays down that it “can and must put heretics to death.” Catholics

in Britain and America are so keen to prevent this from becoming

generally known that it astonishes most people. Only two days
ago I had a letter from a businessman asking where he could buy a

copy of this Canon Law as, if that is impossible—as it is, for the
Vatican Press alone publishes it, and only for priests—whether I
could get for him a photostat of the page—there are five or six
pages—making the claim! I have not found any priest bold
enough to deny it in writing for the non-Catholic public. The mod-
ern world rightly laughs at

,
the idea of Roman priests burning

heretics, or forcing the police to burn them, in the market-place,

but there is here a serious question of principle. The great major-



12 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

ity of people in every advanced modern civilization claim freedom

to go to church or stay away, to accept a religious creed or reject

them all. Why do we tolerate all this fuss about “freedom of re-
ligion” from Catholic writers and priests who say they will,

wherever they get the power, suppress all freedom of irreligion?

Clerical-Fascist power has in our own time fallen truculently upon

tens of millions of seceders from the Church in Italy, Spain, Portu-

gal, France, and Latin America, and none are more vehement than

these countries in demanding the blood of the Bolsheviks because

they put certain mild restrictions on the propaganda, not the per-

sonal practice, of religion!

There is another forgotten aspect which will interest every

man who wants honesty even in religious propaganda. I said that
one of the first things the Bolsheviks did was to release the head of

the Catholic Church in Russia from the jail to which “Holy Russia”

of Tsarist days had sent him. This was only a last trace of a bitter

persecution of Roman Catholics that the Orthodox Russians had

maintained for a century. Catholics now generally suppress the
facts—though you may read some account of them in the Catholic
Encyclopedia, since it was written before 1920—in order to be able
to represent the “persecution of religion” as a wicked practice

introduced into Russia by those terrible Bolsheviks.

In point of fact, such restrictions as the Bolshevik authorities

have really laid upon religion, apart from the legal punishment

of priests for treason, are trifles in comparison with what the

Greek Catholics did to the Latin Catholics in the last century. You

will find it amusing to read in the article on Russia in the Catholic

Encyclopedia how 70 or 80 years ago Pope Pius IX was using

about his brothers in Christ of the Orthodox Church exactly the

same abusive language as the Vatican now uses about the Bolshe-
viks! But what was then done out of religious hatred—we must
admit that the chief ground was that the Russian Catholics were

then, as now, mostly Poles and political intriguers—was far worse
than Catholics have suffered in Soviet Russia. Hundreds of priests

were hanged and whole communities of nuns were raped and

brutally treated. They were stripped and flogged and in some

cases burned alive. Young Catholic nuns were put in Orthodox

convents, and it was hell. One Orthodox mother-superior took an

axe to one of these stubborn Romanist nuns. At one place a num-

ber of nuns were put in sacks and dragged over the surface of

lakes in winter, the people cheering from the banks. Monks had to

let down their pants and sit on the ice. I really wonder why
Father Walsh did not get hold of some of these true stories of 80

years ago and turn them into Bolshevik outrages of 1923 and 1924!

These things make a mockery of all this modern twaddle about

cruel Atheists and sadistic Bolsheviks. And when we examine the
stories which are offered us even by writers who pose as experts

we find them often grotesque. There is, for instance, a much-

consulted history of the early Bolshevik years by Lancelot ;Lawton

(The Russian Revolution, 1927). Most people know only that he

was a correspondent in Russia of the Liberal Daily Chronicle and

not that—so a Russian official assured me—he married a White
Russian. Most of the folk who talk about the horrors of the early

years would quote Lawton. Well, here is a specimen of his “his-

tory.” He says, “The number of ecclesiastical persons executed from



THE SUPPOSED PERSECUTION OF RELIGION 13

1917 to 1920 was 8,050, including 1,275 bishops.” How magnanimous
of the Vatican to press its friendship upon Russia after such a

ghastly slaughter! But if you put together the details given in the

Catholic Encyclopedia and its supplement and the last edition of the

Encyclopedia Britannica you will be relieved to find that in

1917 there were not more than 80 archbishops and bishops, of both

Churches, in Russia, and most of them escaped—the Encyclopedia
Britannica describes 15 of them setting up a synod in Belgrade

—

or went to prison for intrigue with the invaders. It is a nice

example of the “historical” basis for the talk about Bolshevik

atrocities and persecution of religion.

As far as the Roman Catholics are concerned we may follow

Miss Almedinger because she not only lived in Russia at the time

but she is so really religious that she won’t lie even in the good

cause. She tells us that one Catholic bishop and a number of anony-

mous Catholics were put to death and admits that they were guilty

in Russian law. Bolshevik law was so wicked that it imposed sen-

tence of death on traitors or men who intrigued with and helped
the invaders. One of the most impartial histories of the time, J.

H. Jackson’s Post-War World (1935, p. 189) says that “no case

has been discovered of a priest or anyone else being punished for

the practice of religion.” Those words, we shall see presently, are

part of the official report of the British ambassador and were

read in the British House of Commons by the Foreign Secretary (a
very religious man). The charge has been so discredited that it does

not appear in the supplement of the Catholic Encyclopedia which

was published after the alleged period of sanguinary persecution,

but other Catholic writers sustain throughout the world the tat-

tered legend of Bolshevik atrocities. It is the chief foundation for

their gospel of hatred of Russia and their demand (until recently)

that other powers should make war upon it.

The period in question is still as obscure as some parts of

ancient history, for the confusion was such that few authentic

records were kept while the intense passion on both sides gave rise

to vast quantities of reckless rumors. There is again a real analogy

with the French Revolution—with the true story of the revolution
—for, as I said, Lenin and Stalin no more interfered with religion
for the first few years, beyond disestablishing the corrupt Ortho-

dox Church and nationalizing its superfluous wealth, than the

leaders of the French Revolution had done. And in both cases it
was hostile invasion and the intrigues of the clergy with the in-

vaders which soured the people and forced the hand of the author-

ities. After the November Revolution Lenin repudiated the huge

foreign debt incurred by the Tsarists, and foreign armies were sent

to help the Whites or refugee imperialists. About 300,000 Whites,

Poles, Rumanians, Czechs, Japanese, British, and French entered the

distressed and impoverished country for the purpose of destroying

the new regime, and there never was a more savage war. As in the
French Revolution, again, the refugees told wild stories (as is now
definitely proved by French histories) of the number of victims.

The -Russians say 50,000. Some unprejudiced historians suggest

between 100,000 and 200,000. But even so responsible an organ as

the London Times gave the figure as 7,700,000 with just such im-

possible exaggerations in detail as that I quoted from Lawton.

The Poles continued this war when the other Allies quit, and



14 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

at a time when the country suffered as no other land has done in
modern times, and it would be absurd to doubt that the Catholic

clergy and the peasants they controlled did all they could to help

them. At one time it looked as if the Poles were likely to win and
restore the autocracy of the Church. In any case the vast majority

of the Roman Catholics- left in Russia after the detachment of prov-
inces to form Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, were Poles. How many
there were no one knows. They were too poor for the Church to

organize them. The Catholic Encyclopedia claims 5,000,000 and then

talks of dioceses in which there was only one priest to 5,000 or even

10,000 Catholics! There were probably not a million subjects of the

Pope then in Russia, and the number today is negligible. It was

the heritage of the Orthodox Church for which the Vatican was

fighting.

The Orthodox clergy and the few Romanist priests continued to

intrigue with Poland and the White refugees abroad, and there

were /further executions. Any fair-minded man ought to recognize
the real character of these after the official verdict given in the

British House of Commons. In 1929 some of the religious members

of Parliament, under Church pressure, shamelessly ignoring the

rule that one country does not interfere in the internal affairs of

another, insisted that the government should inquire into the perse-

cution of religion in Russia. This, it will be remembered, was the

year in which the Papacy signed its Concordat with Mussolini, and

desperate efforts were made to get Mussolini to forbid the practice

of any religion but the Roman in Italy. Severe restrictions were, in

fact, put on Protestantism, and the grossest intolerance to seceders

from the Church, was embodied in the law, with the approval of

those Catholics in all countries who continued ^o talk about Rus-

sian persecution of religion. The oracle of American Catholicism,

Msgr. Ryan, blandly explained it on the principle that truth has

rights but error none!

However, the British government asked its ambassador in

Moscow, Sir Esmond Ovey, for a report, and it contained this

sentence which was 'tread to the House of Commons by the Foreign

Secretary, the pious Henderson—the government was then under
that arch-trimmer Ramsay Macdonald, who was at one time a per-

sonal friend- of mine and a complete Agnostic-—on April 23 and
reported in the press next day:

There is no religious persecution in Russia.' in the strict
1

sense

of the word persecution, and no case has been discovered of a

priest or anyone else being punished for practicing religion.

It is characteristic of the way in which the public is educated

by it's press in our time, under pressure of Roman Catholicism,
that a persecution of the Ukrainians by the Poles on the ground

of religion (as well as nationality) was then at its height and only

three papers in Britain and America dared refer to it. At the most

Russia restricted religious folk to their own premises while in Po-

land priests opposed to Rome were flogged, grossly insulted, rob-

bed and jailed. But did you hear any outcry about the persecution

of religion in Poland or any demand that American or British

authorities ought to make an inquiry?

To this official assurance that no priest or anyone had been

“punished for practicing religion” could be added the words of a



THE SUPPOSED PERSECUTION OF RELIGION 15

large number of religious leaders in Russia itself. In a booklet pub-

lished in America (The Soviet War on Religion, 1930) Mr. Sher-

wood give's, with exact reference to the date of publication in the

Russian press, a number of these admissions. One is signed by

three archbishops of the Orthodox Church (p. 27), one by 31 Jew-

ish rabbis, (p. 28), one by a group of Roman Catholic priests, and so

on. They insist that there is no persecution, say that the stories

of atrocities are “inventions and slanders unworthy of serious peo-

ple's attention” and that there is no question even \of “pressure”

on them, and that there had been general political intrigue on the

part of the clergy, especially of the Roman Church. The Catholic

priests, admitting this, actually say:

*
The dark era of oppression has disappeared without a trace,

together with the Tsardom which maintained it, and the star of

liberty has begun to shine with j its bright radiance on the life

of the Catholic Church (p. 29).

This was in 1927 and refutes the strongest claims of atrocities,

which are located before that date. Yet the Vatican not merely en-

couraged the circulation of those stories in the Catholic Church but

actually became more vitriolic in its indictment of Russia after that

date; just at the time when its pets (Spain, Portugal, the South

American Republics, Italy, and Austria) were beginning to en-

force a policy of persecution of religion.

Putting aside therefore all stories of execution or outrage on

the ground of religion, which are thus disproved by the best author-

ities, what is the law or practice in regard to religion which, though

it ought to be well known at Washington, moves Mr. Roosevelt to

raise the question ,of freedom of religion in such form as to sug-

gest that there is none, or only a restricted liberty, in Russia?

The prominence given in the press to the President’s instruction to

Mr. Harriman led Keesing’s Contemporary Archives to insert at that

date (October 18, 1941, p. 4848) one of its impartial explanatory

notes. It speaks of the “corruption” and “fabulous wealth” of the

Tsarist Orthodox Church and says that the action taken against its

clergy after the Revolution was taken on the ground of “their secu-

lar activities rather than religious partisanship.” Whatever the

ground no one who knows anything about the old Church will feel
surprise that in June 1918 the Church was disestablished, the

ecclesiastical property (nearly $4,000,000,000 worth of land) na-

tionalized, religious education excluded from the schools, and mis-

sionary activities suppressed. Within these limits every Russian

was free to follow his conscience. This was the extent of persecu-

tion of religion in the years of the first violent reaction against

the foul older era.
,

It is complained that the Soviet authorities then gave all the

unofficial assistance they could to the Atheist League which was
rapidly weaning the people from religion. It is rather funny to read

this complaint in countries in which the political authorities do

everything in their power to help the Churches; and the Soviet

authorities were more deeply and sincerely convinced that religion

is prejudicial to progress than democratic statesmen are that it is

beneficial, to say nothing of the treasonable activities of the Rus-

sian clergy. It is complained also that as time went on a large num-
ber of seminaries, monasteries, and churches were closed. In hun-



16 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

dreds of instances the churches were converted to more useful pur-

poses at the request of the people who used to frequent them, and
political intrigue sufficiently excuse's the closing of seminaries and

monasteries. The writer of the note in Keesing quaintly says that

“in spite of all this” the Orthodox Church counted 98,000,000 com-

municants and the Roman Church 11,000,000 members, but “the
last census,” to which he appeals, was taken in 1913!

We will try presently to ascertain how many folk in Russia
still belong to the Churches and will continue here to examine

this supposedly neutral account. As Russia entered into relations

with other countries the zeal against religion was modified. In

1935 the attempt to suppress the celebration of Christmas was

dropped, the more violent literature of the Atheist League was with-

drawn from the bookstores, and the famous anti-Christian museums,

with their caricatures of religion, became respectable museums of
religion! In 1939 there was, this writer says, a great religious re-

vival, though “not within the framework of the Churches.” How
Christian writers love vague phrases like that. In plain English

the Churches continued to lose, but there were now large numbers
of priests who fought to modernize theology, even to combine
Communism with a “new Christianity,” and there was a good deal
of fresh discussion of religion. At the outbreak of the wrar with
Germany the government—the Christian Science Monitor announced
—suppressed the Atheist paper (Bezboznik).

In other words, the increasing danger from Germany induced

the authorities to take various steps which might mitigate the

hatred of Russia which the Churches inspired in America and

Britain, but the law was not altered, and Mr. Roosevelt seems to

have been persuaded that it contained an element of persecution

of religion. Senator Smith bluntly put it: “Harriman’s job seems to

be to try to get Stalin to join the Church so we can call him broth-
er.” We all understood what it really meant. The representatives
of Churches at Washington thought it a good opportunity to get

Russian law made more favorable to religion. What is wrong with
the law?

As Maisky, speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce

in London on September 23, and Lozovsky in Moscow said, its funda-
mental principle is that all religions are free and equal; which we
were always asked to regard as one of the finest achievements of

the American Constitution. Let me repeat, as so few seem to
realize it, that you will not find that just law and elementary human
right conceded in any Roman Catholic country in the world today.
Even in Eire and Quebec there is no religious equality, and the

more docile to the Vatican Catholic states are, the more of its

Canon Law they admit into their legislation, the more intolerant
they are. Persecution of religion—any religion that rejects the
Pope’s authority—is, we have seen, a first principle of Catholic
la^y and theology. And, though we moderns insist that the non-re-
ligious man has the same right to liberty as the members of any
Church, the intolerance is in this respect worse than ever. The

Vatican’s first excuse for its demand of the extinction of Bolshe-

vism is that the Russians are Atheists.

Maisky later added to his statement of Russian law. The gov-

ernment, which owns all property, puts a building at the disposal of

any group of worshipers and charges no rent or taxes. Certainly a



THE SUPPOSED PERSECUTION OF RELIGION 17

queer kind of persecution of religion! The police arrest and the

courts punish any who “violate the rights of believers.” Ministers

of all religions have just the same political and legal rights as other

citizens.

To this the President of the Baptist World Alliance made a

heated reply, and we may take it that his letter enumerates every
respect in which he and his colleagues see the shadow of persecu-

tion. Worshipers, he says, must confine their worship to a church.

Sunday Schools and religious lessons to children are forbidden.

The Churches must have no social gatherings, no lectures, and no

libraries. Mr. Rushbrooke might be advised to compare these re-

strictions on priests with the restrictions on Protestant Churches

and Atheists in Catholic lands; and if he replies that Protestants

do not do these things the answer is simple. They certainly did in

England until, in the 19th Century, the Church of England, which

inspired the law, dropped to a minority. We might even raise a
question about Baptist tolerance in certain states of America, but

it is enough to reflect that Baptists or Methodists were never yet

the majority in any country so we must not be too sure what they

would or would not do if they had the power.

To sum up the contents of this chapter and give the reader a

clear idea on an issue that often confronts him in his reading,

there is no truth in the stories that Catholics, Orthodox or Roman,

were ever physically persecuted in Russia, that is to say, ever sent

to jail, much less executed, for belonging to a Church or practicing
religion. An unknown number of bishops and priests, which in
certain cases we have definitely proved to be exaggerated fifteen-

fold, were put to death in the dark early years, but the ground was

political, and our religious authorities admit that the clergy did

quite generally conspire with attempts to subvert the government.

We do not blame them when they saw a chance of the restoration of
the Church to wealth and power, but it is silly to call this persecu-

tion. The law of treason is much the same in every country, and

Russia was in such circumstances at the time that a. drastic appli-

cation of the law was essential.

As to later years and the present time we frankly admit that

the Churches are not free to do what they like in Russia. The

restrictions are mild in comparison with the restrictions on religion

imposed in Catholic countries, and we very justly resent the prac-

tice of calling them persecution and implying that they are some-

thing peculiar to Soviet Russia. That is implied in the great ma-

jority of reference's to religion in Russia, and not a word of appre-

ciation is given the Bolsheviks for their introduction of the prin-

ciple of individual freedom of conscience. The restrictions are that

the priests must not impose religious doctrines on children, who

can’t argue with their teachers, or do propaganda other than by

holding religious services which any person may attend.

Apart from those whose admiration of Russia is so great that

we might regard their judgment as biased, Atheists would differ

about the propriety of these restrictions. We must, however, at
least not judge the Russian authorities in the light of our experience

in America. The Russian Church, which alone we need consider

since the Roman brand of Catholicism is nearly dead, has been

an enemy of the people for a thousand years. It allowed the Tsars

and the nobles to keep nearly half a million peasants until 100



18 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

years ago in the state of slavery (serfdom) which Europe generally

abolished 700 years ago. It supported a corrupt and murderous

autocracy until 1917. It continued for the next 10 yearns to help

every .attempt to destroy a regime in which, whatever else you may
think of it, the wealth produced by the people is shared amongst

the people. To me personally it seems that if the Soviet authorities
still think it dangerous, they have the right to impose these mild

restrictions. Please yourself. They do not care the toss of a coin
what you and I think about it. But as a vast amount of evil has

been done by the Churches, and most particularly the Vatican,

spreading a hatred of Russia, I have had to show that there is no
justification for this in any persecution of religion.

Chapter III

THE PAPAL HYMN OF HATE

I invite the readers’ particular attention to the chronological

parallel between the successive phases of the Vatican’s attitude to

Russia and the developments in that country. I have briefly referred

to it but it deserves careful consideration. Until about 1925, when

Jesuit Bishop D’Herbigny was still trying to get a foothold in Rus-

sia, the Vatican made friendly approaches to the Soviet govern-

ment. Apart from the futile gesture of the Genoa Conference no

other power in the world was so amiable with Russia, and the coun-

try itself was. in a very miserable condition. Long after that year

our papers and novelists were still serving up pictures of Russians

in rags clinging to ramshackle overcrowded cars, sadistic officials

of the 0. G. P. U. who had innocent maids waiting in the ante-

rooms until they had finished their champagne-orgies, priests

boiled in oil or burned in lime, and so on.

During the next ten years the world-hostility to Russia moder-

ated. There was always money for a fiery indictment of the Soviet

system, but level-headed men began to see that Russia had got on

to a line on which it might travel far. During this indecisive period

the Vatican had not much to say about Russia as. far as I can as-

certain. Locally members of the Black International like the

American Jesuit Walsh might inflame sentiment against Russia.

Business and financial men were not really very sensitive about

outrages of religion. They were more deeply pained by the refusal

of the Soviet authorities to pay interest on thei Tsarist loans and on

British and American investments. But if there were a few million

folk who believed Walsh’s stories and helped to swell the feeling

against Russia, it was all to the good. Still the Papacy, as I said,

was fairly quiet about Russia. In fact, as late as 1930 the Pope

politely summoned the Catholic world, not to agitate for war but to

pray fervently for Russia, the consequences of which I cannot

discover.

About 1934 what we might broadly call the third phase of Rus-

sia’s internal development and relation to other powers began.

Russia had after so many years of bovine prejudice become rather

indifferent to the opinion of the outside world but it received a

large number of visitors from America and Britain every year, and

men and women of very different schools and respected character



19THE PAPAL HYMN OF HATE

wrote in high appreciation of its recovery. So neutral an authority

as the Statesmen’s Year Book showed that Russia more than

doubled its annual production of wealth from 1932 to 1935—a feat
far beyond the achievement of any other country—and there were
no rich men to absorb any of it. Duranty has written sympathetic

accounts for years to the New York Times, and his volume of
articles (Russia Reported, 1934) made a deep impression. In the

same year Sherwiood Eddy’s Russia Today, written from a dif-

ferent rather conservative angle, confirmed the impression. A lady
of the Tsarist family who had settled in America, Countess Skarya-

tina, still very conservative and religious, had the courage to go

to Russia and the honesty to jsay that the Bolsheviks had made

great progress (First to Go Back, 1935). An equally conservative
British general, W. H. Waters, also a lover of the old regime, paid

a visit and made the same report. Sir Bernard Pares, high British

authority on the East and for years a heavy critic of Bolsheviks,

now gave a very appreciative account and joined the “Friends of
Russia.” He spoke of a “hostile foreign diplomat” in Moscow who
grudgingly admitted to him that “the Bolsheviks have won all along
the line.” We shall see other equally notable impartial witnesses
later.

Naturally, the . literature about Russia was very mixed. Some

writers expressly catered to the chronic demand for blood-curdling

stories of the O.G.P.U. and the poor folk who wept when their
ikons were torn away from them. Others, with milder prejudice,

denounced Russia because it had no political elections of the demo-

cratic purity of those of America or because the workers, who a

few years ago had been the worst paid and most ignorant in Eu-

rope, had not yet risen to the high standard of American workers

—not mentioning that there was no unemployment in Russia and
the workers had vast free social services and cheap rents in the

cities. Typical was the work of Sir W. Citrine, who went with
all .the prejudice which the British Labor Party still stupidly fos-

tered and poked into tenements to see if the baths all had stoppers,

and after traveling hundreds of miles found a woman who seemed
no better than she ought to be and something like a slum (such

as he could have found within a mile of his house in London).

However, my point here is that as appreciation of Russia grew
in the rest of the world the attitude of the Vatican to it became

more sombre and bitter. Catholic apologists are nothing if not

bold but I have not yet heard of one who has asked us to admire
the Pope because he was friendly to Russia when the rest of the

world was venomous and became critical only when, and in propor-

tion as, it no longer needed friends. We might get near the truth
if we remember that the power behind the Pope, the Secretary of

State, was changed in 1930. Pacelli, the present Pope, an aristocrat

to his toenails, then became the dictator at the Vatican, for the

Pope was very old and feeble. We might remember, too, that Pacelli
entered, at the end of 1932, into a policy of friendliness to Germany,

and Germany was pledged by its bible, Hitler’s book, to make war

sooner or later on Russia.

When precisely the Vatican began to snarl at Russia it is dif-
ficult to determine. The Encyclical Quadragesimo anno of May 15,
1931 makes the earliest reference that I find, and the hand of Pacelli

in that vapid manifesto is clear. It is a recommendation of the Cor-



20 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

porative State to all Catholic countries; in fact, to the whole

world, as the Pope ingenuously remarks that the truth on even

the social and economic order can come only from Rome. How
journalists ever stoop to praise these Papal utterances on 'social

questions puzzles me. They are like the ideas of a Baptist preacher

in Tennessee blinded with those of Thomas Aquinas and almost

lost in a jelly of Latin verbiage. There is, as I have already explain-

ed, no English translation of this Encyclical, because it approves

—indeed imposes—such restrictions on capitalism and private
enterprise as are provided in Mussolini’s Corporative State, which

industrialists in America who are assured by Catholic writers that
their “freedom of the individual” is thoroughly Catholic, detest

almost as much as Socialism.

The Pope tells the world, with quite an air of profundity and

originality, that Socialism has split into moderate Socialism an^

Communism. As we saw, and it may be convenient to repeat, he

answers the question, on which, he say's, Rome has often been
consulted, whether a Catholic can be a Socialist by saying that

“Socialism, as long as it remains real Socialism . . . cannot be rec-

onciled with the teaching of the Catholic Church.” He insists that
“religious Socialism or Christian Socialism is a contradiction in

terms,” and he winds up by saying that “no genuine Socialist can

be a good Catholic.” That is another reason why the Encyclical
is not translated into English. It might prevent Catholic writers for

the workers from continuing to say, as they do, that the Church

has never condemned Socialism; while Catholic writer's for the

wealthy, like Ryan, tell them that the Church regards any attack on

private ownership as a sin.

However, the Pope is still more drastic when he passes on to

Communism. It is too “impious” to consider. When it gets power
it shrinks from nothing “however atrocious and inhuman.” As

Russia was the only country in wThich it had power this was
pointed enough, but the Pope goes on to speak of “the massa-

cres (strages) and ruin it has brought upon Eastern Europe and

Asia.” There may be earlier pronouncements on Russian atrocitie’s
for all I know but this is ten years old . A Jesuit writer quotes
from the British Communist Daily Worker an account of a meet-

ing in the offices of that paper on December 30, 1932 which passed

a valiant resolution to attack religion “considering that the clergy

of all creeds and denominations are, with religion as their pretext,

following the lead of the Pope in his call for a crusade against

the U. S. S. R.” They resolved:

. to organize an unflinching resistance to every variety of

religious attack ... to vindicate the policy of the U.S.S.R. in

regard to religion and the Churches against all and every attack

... to urge the complete separation of Church and State and the

complete exclusion of religion from the school,” and so on.

Communists must feel like biting the carpet when they reflect

how they abandoned that attitude. A few years later, when I was
writing my Militant Atheist—perhaps the most congenial work I
ever did—a member of the staff of the Daily Worker asked me to

call at the office, making a definite appointment, to see him as he

edited a column of the Daily Worker with that title and would like

to cooperate. I called—and saw none but the editors who explained



21THE PAPAL HYMN OF HATE

that they had changed their policy and no longer thought it of

any importance to attack the Churches.

It was a mistake even of Moscow to drop the criticism of re-

ligion while adhering slavishly to everything else that Marx had

said. American and * British Communists, on whom they relied for
information, told them that the bitter hostility to them would cease

if they quit criticizing religion. One or two influential clerics like

the Dean of Canterbury had taken to patronizing Russia, and pub-

lishers (skeptics) who felt that Rationalism checked trade added

their persuasion. In May 1938 the Communist International pub-
lished in England for America and Britain, had an article which

would, if there were any truth in superstition, have made Marx

turn in his grave. I am quoting ithe Jesuit Ryder at the Cambridge
Summer School of Russian Studies in 1938. The article, headed

“The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Catholic Masses,” recom-

mends the policy of conciliating Catholics and Protestants. The

Soviet Union, it claimed, was “realizing the ideals of Christianity,”

and Communists must “not ignore the more than 400,000,000 Cath-

olics of the world”; which is 50,000,000 more than the more opti-

mistic Catholics claim and double the true figure. The writer

poured scorn on “the Left phrasemongers” who attack the policy

of “the outstretched hand” and, by a tour de force, said that “we

come forward in the defense of religion against the Fascist perse-

cution of believers” yet had not the least idea of deviating from

the teaching of Marx! We recognize the accents of the American
and British Communists, who were* at that time offering coopera-

tion to the Catholic Church. Now there is “a smile on the face of
the tiger.” The blood of Communists reddens the earth in Catholic

Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Vichy France, Italy,

Brazil, Peru, etc. etc.

In 'so far as Moscow was involved in this change of policy,
chiefly owing to false information from Britain and America, we

have an extraordinary situation. The change was carried out just

at the time when the Vatican was inflaming Catholic sentiment
against Russia all over the world and beginning to call for war

upon Russia; and the change brought about no modification what-

ever of the world-cry of “persecution of religion in Russia.” What
moved the ^Papacy to enter upon this more bitter and more danger-

ous campaign? I say more dangerous because it would be difficult

to exaggerate the profit to the Axis of this Papal preaching of

hatred of Russia in every Catholic land and amongst the Catholics

of all countries.

The reasons given by the Vatican, as in the above Encyclical,

are puerile. In speaking of the “massacres”—it is interesting that
in his Latin text Pacelli uses just the word which the Pope put on

his gold medal of triumph at the time of the St. Bartholomew

Massacre—which the Bolsheviks committed he endorses the wild
legends and lies which I have disproved from Catholic writers. As
to their having brought “ruin” upon the land, the Pope, granting

him sincerity, seems to have been as crudely ignorant of Russian

affairs as a nun in a Quebec convent. By 1931 the Bolsheviks had

'save<i Russia from the real ruin which the White War (zealously
supported by the two Churches) had brought upon Russia and were

rapidly restoring prosperity and creating one of the finest educa-

tional and social services in the world.



22 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

His attacks in 1936 and his broadcasts to Spain in 1939—in
fact, all his characterizations of Bolshevism in his appeals for war
from 1935 onward—are just as childish. I quoted elsewhere the
address of Pius XI to Spanish refugees in 1936, in which he plainly

invited the destruction of Bolshevism “from Russia to China, from

Mexico to South America.” The reference to South America is cool,

as Pacelli, who clearly wrote the address, had just got Communism
violently destroyed in nearly every republic. But the whole diatribe

is fatuous. Everywhere, the Pope says, there is “a satanic prepara-

tion” for the work of “subverting established orders of every kind”

and “attacking every institution, human and divine.” At that very
time, philosophers like Professor Dewey, Liberal individualists like

Sir Ernest Simon (brother of Sir John Simon), and a few clerics

like the Dean of Canterbury were describing to the public how
Russia was creating a new social order which in its care for chil-
dren, women, and the mass of the people, had no equal in history.

We may make allowance for the real ignorance of Pacelli and
the Vatican. They never even try to get accurate information about

movements or bodies which are offensive to them on religious

grounds. They see everything through a red haze of professional

piety. But there is deliberate policy behind it all. By 1935 Japan

had got the innocent western powers to support Chiang Kai-shek

in his costly campaign to crush Communism in China and smooth,
the way for Japan itself. Hitler and Mussolini were wondering

how they could get the same powers to overlook their proposed
intervention in Spain. Hitler was repeating in public speeches that

the noble German race must have the Ukraine. Wall Street wanted

a good pretext for stirring the country to attack Mexico. Labor #
and Socialist movements everywhere were to be encouraged in their

tragic policy of attacking and disowning Communists so as to

prevent the formation of a Popular Front until it was too late.

This sacred fury against Bolshevism was one of the' Vatican’s

greatest contributions to the preparation of the world for the on-

slaught of barbarism.

But, you may ask, is it possible .that the Pope, the Black

International which forced his slogan upon the Catholic masses

(which do not read encyclicals) in every country, and the Catholic

press which made “the extinction of Bolshevism” as familiar to

Catholics as “Heil Hitler” is to Germans and “‘Mussolini solo” to

Italians, realized what they were doing?

You can analyze that for yourself. There is, of course, no docu-

mentary evidence beyond the very plain evidence that the Papacy

blessed the rebellion and the intervention of Italy and Germany in

Spain and just as plainly wanted war on Russia. It must seem

equally certain to anyone who knows the ecclesiastical mind that

the Vatican and the Black International in America wanted war

for the annexation of Mexico. The Knights of Columbus, who may

be considered unconsecrated members of the Black International,

made open offers of alliance with Wall Street and called for inter-

vention in Mexico. Whether the Pope and the unscrupulous Ital-

ian branch of the Black International knew in advance of the war

upon the western democracies we have considered in other booklets.

As I there said, so objective a review as the Annual Record gives

It as commonly received information, that Ribbentrop told the Pope

in April that the Germans would be in Paris in June and in London



.

THE PAPAL HYMN OF HATE 23

m •

in August. As to the main body of Catholics who chanted the anti-
Bolshevik slogan, they were probably as hazy about what they meant

as the average German is. about the pure Aryan sharing the world

with a race of Mongolian-Malayan mongrels.

One of the most ironic features of it all, if there is any room

for irony in considering the colossal tragedy, is that Russia, the

irreligion of which is blamed by the Vatican for all the world’s

troubles, is more religious than Great Britain or than France was

before Vichy.

The question how many of the people of Russia are 'still re-
ligious has been raised innumerable times, and it has invariably

been answered with all the slovenliness and inconsistency that are

characteristic of such discussions. Generally the writers spoke of

“atheistic Russia” as if it were a phenomenally irreligious country,

but when they recollected that religion was supposed to be indestruc-

tible or when the plain evidence (which we have seen) that there
is no persecution of religion and any few dozen men and women
can get a building from the government for worship was produced

the writer's gave us pictures of crowds packing the churches on

festivals. As long as there was some dead cat to fling at Russia

—like the common misrepresentation of the trials and executions
of leading Russians for treason—we were reminded that the gov-
erning body is solidly atheistic, and when some reputable author

testified that the social service is the most generous and most hu-

mane in the world we were told Russia is still far more religious

than is commonly supposed.

On one point there is no controversy. The officials, from those
in the smallest town to Stalin, are all Atheists. The Communist

party governs Russia—hence the stupidity of calling Stalin a dic-
tator like Hitler and Mussolini—and all its members are Atheists.
These officials determine the form and institutions of the state.

The mass of the people produce the wealth, of course, and in that

sense create the state, but these atheist officials direct the distribu-

tion of it and are responsible for all social legislation. They have

given a form to the state which now elicits the admiration of

writer's of every class. They have lifted the average Russian char-

acter high above the level at which it was in the religious Tsarist

days, when atheism was confined to a relatively small minority,

with no influence on the state, in the cities. This unquestionable

truth is one of the chief reasons why the clergy hate or fear it,
and why the most discredited libels of it are still in circulation.
Russia—the creative part of Russia—has not merely disproved the
common claim that a state decays when atheism spreads. It has

shown that, the reality is the exact opposite.

The question what proportion of the mass of the people are still

Christians is, therefore, of no importance, but you will find it amus-

ing to assure your neighbor whose idea of Russia is taken from the

press that it is much more religious than Great Britain. The
Church of England a few years ago appointed a committee to

inquire carefully how many people in England go to church or
are in any definite sense Christians. They reported, and the lead-

ers of other Churches agreed: 10 percent in London and 20 percent

in the rest of England. This—a total of 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 in
42,000,000—fairly agrees with the statistic's of membership annual-
ly published by the Churches, and these, are always optimistic. There



24 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

is evidence that the Churches put the figure of churchgoers too

high but let us accept them here. Between three-fourths and four-

fifths of the people of Great Britain are not Christians. It was

the same in France, and Vichy has made only a superficial com-

pulsory change. In America the Churches claim 55 percent of

the people, but we know what these claims are worth. Allowing
for the Bible Belt and the greater wealth and business organiza-

tions of the Churches in America we should expect a higher pro-
portion of churchgoers: say, two-thirds of the total population.

It follows that Russia is, on the best available estimates, as

religious as the United States and much more religious than Great
Britain or France! The best gauge is Yaroslavsky, the able and

accomplished leader of the Atheist League. He has several times
estimated that about one-third of the people in the Soviet Union

are still Christians. The Jesuit Ryder, speaking at the Cambridge

Summer School of Russian States, said, that this mean's 30,000,000
and is a ridiculous under-estimate. It is his Jesuitical arithmetic

that is ridiculous. One-third of the population means nearly 60,000,-

000. But notice what follows. If you call Yaroslavsky’s estimate too

small you must mean that more than a third are still Christians,
or a far higher proportion than in Great Britain and France, and

probably America. On any estimate Russia is more religious than
Great Britain. Now that it is smashing Germany the clergy begin
to say: We always thought so.

Maisky, addressing the American Chamber of Commerce in

London on September 23, 1941, gave some figures which seem at

first sight to show that Yaroslavsky greatly over-estimated in-

stead of under-estimating the number of believers. He quoted an
official statement that on June 1, 1941, there were 8,338 churches,

mosques, and synagogues in the Union, and 30,000 registered re-

ligious societies (or, as we should say, parishes) of 20 or more

person's. But there must be here a serious misprint as to the

number of churches. Considering that there are about 10,000,000

Jews and Romanists and 14,000,000 Moslem in the Soviet Union

besides members of the Orthodox Church the error is apparent.

Great Britain has more than 40,000 churches and chapels to less

than 10,000,000 churchgoers. America has 200,000 religious organiza-

tions (organized units or parishes) to less than 50,000,000 church-

goers. If the figure of 8,000 churches, mostly in villages, in Rus-

sia were correct we should have to allow more than 7,000 worship-

ers to a church to make even 60,000,000. As I have no access to the

Soviet official announcement .(on August 15, 1941) I have to leave

the matter open, but we may reflect that if the figure of 30,000
parishes is correct it suggests less than 60,000,000 worshipers.

We do better to follow the estimate of Yaroslavsky, who has
no interest in exaggerating the number of churchgoers, amd we may

reflect that the change from the solid orthodoxy of the overwhelm-

ing^ mass of the people less than thirty years ago means that

Atheism spread more rapidly between 1920 and 1940 than any re-

ligion in history ever spread in 100 years; indeed forty or fifty

times as rapidly as Christianity spread in the first 250 years of

its career. We might also invite the attention of some of our
modern skeptics to the fact that it was mainly effected by pointing

out the absurdity of the current belief and the monstrous history

of the Orthodox Black International. There is no religious revival



THE PAPAL HYMN OF HATE 25

in recent years but there is evidence that suggests that the extraor-

dinarily rapid progress of Atheism has been slowed. This is in part

due to the fact that education has won nearly all but the hard core

of stubborn old folk—though it is remarkable how thousands of
villages including nearly all their old folk quit the Church and

demanded that the chapel be converted into a library or debating

club—and in part to the clergy of what calls itself the New
Church and turns the older Christian teaching inside out. It is,

however, clear that the discouragement by the government of the

methods of the Atheist League, which made a very extensive use

of ridicule and direct satirical attack, has retarded the spread of

Atheism.

One would like to draw the attention of those very superior

Rationalists of our day who say that ridicule of religion “defeats

its own end” to this phenomenal success of such methods during

10 or 15 years. The Russian Atheist's did not, of course, fail to fol-

low up their first direct assault on religious belief with solid

scientific and historical information. The cultural change jin Rus-

sia is not less remarkable than the economic. The gross general ig-

norance and illiteracy of Tsarist Russia was many shades worse

by 1923, after four years of war and famine. Yet by 1936 the

country had 164,081 schools besides 1,797 factory schools, 2,572

technical schools, 716 workers colleges, 595 higher schools and

universities, and 794 institutions for scientific research. More

than 10,000 newspapers and 2,100 magazines (700,000,000 copies)

circulated. In 1935 the output of books was 42,700, and the 53,380

free libraries, largely in villages, contained more than 100,000,000

books. Upon this vast and finely selected literature the Atheist

propagandist drew, and he was welcomed in the 71,770 clubs (57,-

700 in the villages) where the favorite entertainment was a seri-

ous debate. As the government adheres to its law that religious

doctrines shall not be taught to children, who must be left to

consider religion when they have at least a moderate capacity to see

through fallacy and resent mere dogmatism, the young generation

has for the far greater part definitely abandoned religion. A very
short account of the cultural as well as economic development will

be found in my booklet Economic Gains of the Soviet Union (1937)
in the ABC Library of Living Knowledge.

This is what the Pope calls destroying the very foundations of

the social order: this is one line of the real program of national

life which our press until Russia became our ally habitually coupled

with the gross greed-programs of Germany, Italy, and Japan as

“the four totalitarian powers.” Russia never received and never

'sought to gain a single rouble by the labor of the people outside

its own Soviet Union, but there were few papers in the world

which, until we so urgently needed its help, did not class it with

the three powers which openly boasted they were going to dominate

and exploit most of the earth. Russia gave better conditions to

women (see Prof. Susan W. Kingsbury and Prof Mildred Fairchild’s
Factory, Family, and Women in the Soviet Union, 1935) than any
other nation, while Germany and Italy, and the Pope’s new subject-
’states told woman to sacrifice all their hard-won rights and con-
fine themselves to cooking and bearing future soldiers. Russia gave

more sympathetic conditions to children (see Playtime in Russia by

Ethel Manning and others, 1935) than any other country, allowing



26 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

no distinction of class, giving all a two-month vacation with en-
tertainments or tours provided every summer, and providing 'spe-

cial theaters (three in Moscow) and parks (26 in Moscow) for
them; while Germany and Italy brutalized their lives and minds
with militarism. Russia encouraged the mass of the workers to en-
joy art as no other country did, while in Germany and Italy art
was starved and all culture debased.

This was the civilization which the Pope taught the Catholics
of the world to curse and demand war against, and the more it
shed the imperfections due to its recent rise from chaos, the more it
won recognition for its splendid social ideals, the more bitterly
he attacked it, and the more stridently the Black International
broadcast his sentiments in every land. Is the complete collapse of

his Church in Russia enough to explain this? Is his failure to get
the billions of dollars and millions of members of the Orthodox
Church, the explanation? No, he hates Russia because it was show-
ing the world that you could not merely build a civilization with-

out priests but you could build a far finer, juster, more peaceful

and more humane civilization. He hate's Russia because from it
there spread, as far as China and Indo-China in the east and as far

as Peru and Chile in the west, that formidable wave of Atheism

which I described in the second booklet of this series: because

it was in Roman Catholic countries particularly that it was effec-
tive since Papal dotrine and history were as vulnerable as those of

Orthodox Russia.

Some may say that a churchman, if his creed is sincere and
deeply felt, is bound to regard a spread of Atheism as a great

evil and may be understood even when he thinks war to prevent the
spread a lesser evil. There is no need for a profane person like

myself to discuss that question or to try to determine whether

the Pope really believes (as half the clergy do not) -and deeply

feels the peculiar teaching of his Church about man and his
destiny. We ask a simple question: Why didn’t he say so? Why
need he give as the pretext for his demand of war upon Russia

every lie about Bolshevik atrocities and persecution of religion that

was current in capitalist literature? Why did he assure the mil-
lions of ignorant Catholics whom he wanted to inflame that the
Bolsheviks were out to destroy the moral and social order, to ad-

vocate cruelty and violence, when it was easy for any man, to say

nothing of a billion-dollar international organization, to find out

that Russia, with its magnificent and complete resources, had no

more reason for war than the United States and was building a far

finer social order than that of the United State's? And remember

that we are not here dealing with the Pope alone. We are consid-
ering the action of a world-wide Black International that is- satur-

ated with skepticism and hypocrisy and keener on dollars than

harps.

That is answer enough for most people but /we may go further.

We moderns—by which I mean the majority of the men and women
who live in the cities of the world and have shed the limitations of

village-life—will not have our affairs ruled or dictated by men,
however sincere they may be, who act on the myth that there is

another world that is far more important to men than this in

which we find ourselves-. Whatever be the truth about religion this

life and the control of this life are secularized, We turn aside



27HITLER’S MAGNIFICENT BLUNDER

from nothing fair and pleasant that it offers us because some of

our less-instructed neighbors think they see flames of hell reflected

from below the horizon or discern ghostly battlements of some weird

sort of heaven high above. And the clergy so far know this that
they plead that Atheism injures us in this life. We are always
open to argument but we resent lies. The clerical case for hatred of

Russia on human grounds is based upon a mass of demonstrable lies.

Its real basis is, as ever, the primary aim of the Black Interna-

tional: wealth and power.

Chapter IV

HITLER’S MAGNIFICENT BLUNDER

In September 1934 it was proposed to admit Soviet Russia to

the League of Nations. Nazi Germany, with Mein Kampf (the

brigand’s guide) for its standard, had been retained in it. Japan

had not been expelled for its sordid violation of the League’s

principles. Italy was an honored member although it made no

secret of its glorification of war and aggression. But the pro-

posal to admit Russia horrified and brought a shower of insults

from the representatives of various nations; and these outraged

folk were subjects of the Pope, and the Vatican warmly approved

their conduct.

The attack on Russia was led by the Swiss Motta, a representa-

tive of the nation that has always been loudest in praise of peace

—

which is very profitable at Geneva—and is now making much
wealth by manufacturing the more delicate mechanisms of German

planes, tanks, and submarines and selling food to Germany while

its neighbors starve. At that time, perhaps, not even a member of
the middle-class that rules or misrules the Swiss would have made

this disgraceful attack on a progressive and peace-loving civiliza-

tion that could have taught Switzerland a higher idealism but

Motta, from the small Italian part of the country, was a zealous

Catholic
;

and that he acted for the Church is 'shown by the

Vatican comment on his vituperative speech in the Osservatore
Romano (quoted with approval in the British Catholic Universe,
October 5, 1934)

:

Mr. Motta faced the problem of the admission of Russia
with a clarity of vision, a nobility of sentiment, and a rectitude
of Christian and civil conscience that finds a profound echo in
the hearts of all! for whom justice and right are still the unshake-
able bases of civil society.

Nobility of sentiment! The man was striking the first note
of that Hymn of Hate which the Vatican would soon urge upon
Catholics everywhere; the stupid chant that was to prevent, or help
to prevent, a cordial world-alliance against the bandits when the
crisis came, the chant that was pleasant music in the ears of Hitler,
Mussolini, and Matsuoka. The Vatican organ rejoiced That ten
states at Geneva opposed the admission of Russia or pointedly ab-
stained from voting for it, and we see Catholic influence in the
whole group. Holland voted against, and the press recorded that

this was due to Catholic influence in the : cabinet. De Valera’s



48 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

representative and Schuschnigg of Austria attacked Russia as vir-

ulently as Motta but did not vote.

Two months before this Nazi Germany had shocked the world
with the mass-murder of prominent men, including Catholics, which

ia called the Blood Purge. Did any Catholic orator or power, or the

Vatican, call it to account at the tribunal of civilization? Oh, no;

just then the Vatican was trying hard to persuade Hitler to observe

the Concordat and Catholic German bishops were flattering him to

his teeth. Two months after the Geneva meeting Japan, probably
encouraged by this outburst, threatened Russia, and there was talk

of war. What did Catholics say to that? Here is a specimen, from

the Catholic Times*, November 3, 1934:

The Japanese are not anti-God. They have brought freedom
from persecution to our missionaries in Manchuria and adjacent
parts of China. They have consented to their settlers in Brazil
being instructed in the Catholic faith, and, while they dream of
influencing the world by the spread of Buddhism, they give

freedom of worship to their own Catholic nationals. In the event
of a war between Japan and Russia Catholics would sympathize
with Japan, at least in so far as religion is concerned, so let us

beware of an Anglo-American bloc against Japan involving us on

the side of Russia.

There you have the pure Papal note, the accents of the Vatican

oracle! Japan is “not anti-God”—as a matter of fact, its ruling
class is almost as solidly Atheistic as the Russian—while Russia
is, and Japan has made small concession's in the interest of the

Roman Church. So defend Japan and libel Russia in the Catholic
press of all lands. In that very year, 1934, Upton Close (J. W.

Hall) plainly exposed to America in his Challenge, with full docu-

mentary evidence, that Japan was conquest-mad and had removed

the last shred of disguise from its greedy plan to monopolize eastern

Asia and drive out all Christians, particularly Americans. And be-
cause it hypocritically made promises to the Pope, Catholics must

be used as its agents in Britain and America to obscure the mind of

those countries in regard to its aims and divert them into hatred

of Russia.

A few months later the same Catholic press went further in its
deadly work (Catholic Times, April, 1935)

:

Disarmament is dead ... We can, nevertheless, have thirty
years’ peace in Western Europe if France, Germany, Italy, and

Great Britain concentrate on Western Europe and its needs.

We cannot have agreement about Russia, since Germany has
lifted the veil which hides her ambitions. She wants the Ukraine.

Few Catholics in this country will approve a war against Russia,
bad as her recordi is, but fewer still will be happy if our alliances

draw us into a war in defense of the Godless. Russia must safe-

guard her own interests. We are not concerned to uphold her.
The wretched Franco-German quarrel can be composed if France

is willing to leave Russia to her devices. If France insists on

allying herself with the Soviet, she should be told that Great

Britain will! have no part with her . . . We must choose between
two evils, and Russia’s possible loss of the Ukraine is a much less

evil than war-fires all over Europe, whilst many would say that
the undoing of Godless Sovietism is no evil at all.

As the British National Newspaper Library, the finest in Eu-

rope, has been bombed and burned out of existence by the Ger-



HITLER’S MAGNIFICENT BLUNDER 29

mans, I cannot verify the three quotations I have just given.
I take them from Miss E. Moore’s No Friend of Democracy (1941)
and I know the author as a very careful and conscientious student
of these matters.

This passage is a typical specimen of the slavery of the Cath-
olic press to the Vatican and its policy of judging all international
events from

/ the single viewpoint of the interest of the Church
while professing to consult the interest of the race. The statement
that few Catholics will approve of war against Russia might seem
to be written in defiance of the Pope’s demand for a crusade
against that country, but the paper itself repeatedly echoed the cry
for the extinction of Bolshevism,” and the last words of the above
passage are plain enough. Not “many” but all Catholics, as the
writer knew, would rejoice at “the undoing of Godless Sovietism.”
Notice, incidentally, how carefully these Catholic writers avoid
the word Socialism. They know that large numbers of Irish workers
in Britain—these workers of Irish birth or descent are the main
body of “English” Romanism—belong to the Labor Party, and
this m rare moments of courage calls itself Socialist.

But the chief point is that this interpreter of Papal wishes
to the people of England emphatically advocates a national policy
which would be very acceptable to Hitler and was, in so far as it
was followed by Chamberlain and Halifax, most disastrous to Eu-
rope. Russia was the one great European power that sincerely pro-
posed general disarmament. When its appeal was unheeded it was
the one power that began to devote a colossal part of its national
resources, which were very badly needed for social reconstruction
and education, to preparation for war. Thus in 1936, when British
statesmen were beginning to doubt the Baldwin policy of do-noth-
ing, Great Britain spent less than a fourth of its budget-revenue on
armaments and the United States one-tenth. But Soviet Russia
set aside one-fifth (20 billion out of 100 billion roubles) of its
total annual income for in that country the government-revenue
represents practically the whole of the wealth produced—to de-
^e
+^"?eaf

Ures
’
an.^ ^ increased the sum every year until nearly

a third of the entire wealth produced in the country was devoted
to preparing for the barbarous and clearly-foreseen onslaught of
JN azism.

, ,

Wha
£
an all>

T Russia would have been from 1936 onward, and
what a different course of events in Europe might have followed!
It must be left to the historians of the future to say if a sincere
and dynamic alliance of Russia, Britain, France, Czechoslovakia,
and Poland would not have intimidated Germany and Italy from that
piecemeal aggressive program upon which they entered To me it

*er*ain - But the Vatican and the Black International and
the Catholic press in every country did all in their power to prevent
it. Had the United States realized that Japan was one of the ban-
dit^powers—had the press freely and fully informed the people
ot the open boast of Japanese politicians, military and naval men
a
5
d

i.if

dit
A

rS
’
and toId how hjghly colored models of the destruction

of the Amenc^ fleet were exhibited to the public in Japanese
cities five or S1X years ago—and joined the alliance, not in the in-
terest of Europe but its own interest, it probably never would have
known the vile treachery it has now experienced, for the people
themselves would have demanded adequate armament. But the



30 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

Vatican, the whole Roman Church, was opposed. There must be no
alliance with Bolshevism.

Could there be a more terrible demonstration of the evil of the

sacerdotal viewpoint, the folly of listening to the Black International

on human affairs? At that time, 1936, the leading powers were
stirring from their criminal lethargy and beginning to expand their

armament-budgets. The League pf Nations published a statement

that the world spent about $5,000,000,000 in that year on armament.

I have shown (What War and Militarism Cost) that it spent some-
thing like $15,000,000,000, and one-third of this sum was, according
to the best experts, spent by Germany. What Japan and Italy spent
we do not know. No one trusts their figures. And the: two richest
powers in the world, the two at which the great conspiracy was

chiefly aimed, America and Britain, spent (together) one half the

sum that Germany did. Russia alone spent something like the sum

that Germany did, though unlike Germany and Italy, it did not

starve or suppress its social services to find the money but main-

tained and developed them.

What guidance
,

did the Papacy and its local agents give the

world? It bleated biennially about peace and between Christma's

and Easter cried for war on Communism in China, Spain, Mexico,
and Russia, above all Russia. It maintained its diplomatic alliance

with Germany, Italy, and Japan but spat poison whenever Russia

was mentioned. Its hierarchy flattered the ruler’s of the three ag-

gressive, fully treacherous, and debauched bandit-states and told

the British and French people that they would have “thirty years

peace” if they would continue to outlaw Russia and trust Germany,

Italy, and Japan! What hilarious scene’s there must have been be-
hind closed doors in Berlin, Rome, and Tokio!

Russia patiently, perhaps cynically, bore the hostility which the

Catholic Church and other interests fostered against it. It is need-

less for me to observe that the Vatican was not the only libellous
enemy of Russia, but its share in the conspiracy is, on account of

its claim of lofty and disinterested idealism, in an entirely different

category from the share of bankers, industrialists, and politicians.

I am, however, not concerned with finding adjectives to hurl at the

Church of Rome. I am content to establish facts. And if it is
not a fact that Rome contributed mightily until 1941 to that con-
tempt and ostracism of Russia which rendered vast service to the

Axis and did incalculable harm to the race we may as well doubt
that the earth is a globe.

So persistent and emphatic was this teaching of the Vatican,

especially during the fateful six or seven years before 1941, that

the Catholic world was paralyzed when at length Hitler made his

splendid blunder and attacked Russia. Less than a year earlier

the Papal Hymn of Hate had been more strident than ever. There
were many of us who, imperfectly informed by the press, felt our
admiration of Russia chilled when it seized part of Finland and

the little Baltic states. But we did not use the vituperative lan-

guage of the Pope’s organ, the Osservatore Romano, the paper that

had not said a word about outrages like those in China, Abyssinia,

Albania, Czecho-Slovakia, Norway, Denmark, Yugo-Slavia, Greece,

and even Belgium and France, for which even a liar could not plead,

as we now see Russia could truthfully plead, an essential piece of

defense against an openly-declared aggressor. The Vatican, in



HITLER’S MAGNIFICENT BLUNDER 31
its paper, not only completely ignored Russia’s reasons but wallowed

Europef

^ lnvectlvei as lf thls were the first aggression in modern
T.«l

he
7i

e
o^ a" aTsing Paragraph in Stephen Graham’s NewsLetter (1940) reproducing the language of the Osservatore when

the Russian troops took back the Ukrainian and White Russian nrov

hv

e

the

T
R
e Papa ' 0rgan shuddered *0 recall the Itrocm^cTmmiUed

(Vh |, r. a |
Sla

M'°
,PS m 1918

;

The soldiers were then Orthodox
Catholics almost to a man, and the Osservatore trembles to thinkwhat will happen now that they are Atheist's. And in the nextparagraph Stephen Graham, a strict member of the Church of Eng-

{SfSSr
°‘ “ ”h« “» *“

/ political commissars for the slightest breach of discipline.
Y

The religious mind is weird and wonderful. Stephen Graham
actually goes on to reflect that this contrast of 1918 and 1940 su^gests that the atheist soldiers of 1918” were now extinct and theRussians were generally Christians! Not for a moment do I sug-gest that atheist soldiers never commit outrages, but what are we
to think of a Papal newspaper that sheds tears over the fictitiousoutrages of atheist soldiers—I earlier quoted the Vatican radio
(January 22, 1940) bemoaning the “infamy of all kinds” perpetratedby the Russian troops in Poland and has not a word to say whenwe get positive proof that the German soldiers perpetrated feaT in-famies and savagery in Russia?

u al m

Here again it is not a question of the Pope or the Vatican
alone. The Black International everywhere repeated the cry of Rus-sian atrocities (made in Germany). I„ an address by CardinalHmsely published recently in a work titled The Bond of Peacewe read of his “deep indignation” at “the enslavement of moretoan eleven mdlion inhabitants of the Polish state by Soviet Russia ”He talks of a treacherous attack from behind” and the “Bolshevist
horror, and says that these “Poles,” as he calls them, are “re-ably reported to be suffering from those persecutions which hadmade our generation the era of unparalleled martyrdom.” Perhapswe should not expect * cardinal, even if he does pose as an oSon world-affairs, to know that Ukrainians and White Russians are
j
0t

,F°'
es

’
b

,

ut 1S he real*y ignorant that the “unparalleled martvrdom that these millions of members of the Orthodox Church suf-fered was inflicted by the Catholic Poles, had been going on for20 years, and was at once stopped by the Russians?
Now, as I have earlier quoted, there are signs of a most bravenrepud.ation of the Hymn of Hate which the Papacy has had theCatholic world chant from Montreal to Syria for the last six nr

seven years. Catholics boast that they are in a better position th»n
Protestants in that they have one clear authoritative, unwavering
voice to guide them It sounds like a dictatorship of the Hitle?
sort ' Phe truth is, however, that Rome speaks to them in five orsix different voices, and one can blandly repudiate the other when
it goes wrong. The only thing which they cannot repudiate is theinfallible or ex cathedra utterances of the Pope-but he never makesany. The Pope has several voices—in conversations, addresses, ser-



32 ATHEIST RUSSIA SHAKES THE WORLD

mons, allocutions, encyclicals, etc. Then he has,
in the second line

a daily paper and a radio. In the third
line he has prelates and

Catholic ambassadors, agents, etc., who can repeat
conversations

with him. On this third line we now have Myron C.
Taylor whisper-

ing that the Pope always recognized in
private a vast distinction

between the naughtiness of the Nazis and that
of the Bolsheviks.

Nazi wickedness is foul and unspeakable—
though he never cared to

say so. Bolshevik wickedness is just
virtue without a Catholic

foundation—though he has a hundred times called it
foul and un-

speakable.^

e^t attributed to Mr. Taylor,
solemnly cabled

to a London daily by its American
correspondent, is this gem:

The general belief here is that important
Washington-Vatican-

London-Moscow negotiations are in progress and that
they are di-

rected towards the consolidation of the
Christian front against

Nazism throughout the world.

If we allow the Church of Rome to put over a maneuver
of that

kind after its ten years of monstrous libel and
vituperation of Rus-

sia we have learned nothing by the terrible
experience through

which we are passing. The Papacy could not
hope to have any

success with it if it did not believe that
we still have, unchanged,

the mentality with which we indolently contemplated
the greediest

and most unscrupulous bandits of all time
equipping themselves to

loot the world. There is no change in
Russia. It is as atheistic as

war Tho chancre is in its critics. They have been compelled to

xuriner uemuitmicu vy oia ,-n
and disease, the “Godless Bolsheviks, as

the Catholic press still

f Vipm rmlv six months ago, have created the greatest civiliza-



“DUST” IS A STORY
|j|

HUNDREDS OF MAR-

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|

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|

AND YET NO ONE

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SHORN OF SENTIMEN-

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By E. and M. Haldeman-Julius

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