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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
**** ****
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL No. 2
HOW THE POPE OF PEACE TRADED IN BLOOD
THE RED POPE
by Joseph McCabe
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS
**** ****
Chapter I
THE RED RECORD OF THE HOLY FATHERS
The color chosen by the Popes is White. Their flag, it is
true, White and Gold, to remind us that they are Kings and need a
royal revenue of a billion a year, but that is, they say, necessary
to a ruler of the world. Their personal color-theme is white, a
flowing white cassock and a white-silk skull-cap: symbols of their
purity life and purpose and their never-ceasing efforts to keep the
world in peace and tranquillity. The vast economic organization
over which they preside, the Black International, takes its name
from the black-garbed clergy. For more than a hundred years after
America had embodied the elementary rights, of man in a
Constitution the priests called the claim of those rights in other
countries Liberalism and waged a bitter, blood-soaked fight against
it. This was the historic battle of the Blacks and the Whites
(Liberals).
Toward the end of the nineteenth century a new color, Red,
appeared in the arena. Whites and Blacks shuddered and got together
to oppress it. Red meant blood, violence, war. As I explained in
the last book, our folk are now educated in so false a version of
history, because truth is offensive to our Catholic fellow-
citizens, that few know the irony of this. Particularly in America
men and women were persuaded to greet the new banner with hatred,
rage, and disgust. These newcomers who preached violence, cruelty,
and war were outside the pale of our Christian civilization. Shoot
the dogs down, as Luther said about the rebel-peasants of his time.
Let me here just outline the historical evidence that the real
Reds, in this sense, are, and always have been, the Popes and their
bishops.
We have read hundreds of times the prophecy of the famous
British essayist, Lord Macaulay that when in some remote age a
traveller comes from New Zealand to see the ruins of London the
Papacy will still flourish. These literary men! Not only does it
seem unlikely that New Zealand will ever support 5,000,000 people
but the idea that an institution which has lasted 1800 years will
last another few millennia, or even a century, is childish. In
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Macaulay's time the world was beginning to perceive that
institutions which appeared thousands of years ago probably had
their roots in ignorance. There were then twenty Kings in Europe.
A century later there were ten, and most of them looked nervously
upon a hostile world. In another ten years they will probably be
reduced to one.
The Papacy is far more vulnerable than monarchy. As the
supreme head of the western half of Christianity it was established
about the middle of fifth century. It is quite literally what
Hobbes called it, "the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting upon the
grave thereof." As long as that Empire maintain civilization every
branch of the Church, east and west, scorned the Pope's
pretensions. But in a world of blind men the one-eyed man is king,
and Rome ruled the ruins. The Popes were masters of a that was so
debased that during the next seven centuries all Europe did not
produce one book that any but a bookworm now reads or raise one
building that any but an antiquarian would cross the street to
examine.
The brilliant civilization which the Arabs meantime created in
Spain and Sicily at last awakened Europe from its hog-like
slumbers, and for the next eight centuries the power of the Popes
was based upon violence and bloodshed. A distinguished German
historian has estimated that their victims numbered more than
10,000,00 in 500 years. Certainly they numbered some millions.
Until the American and French Revolutions these were frankly called
Heretics. Then the world, under the lead of America, decided that
it was a crime to put men to death for religion, so they were
called Liberals, and the Church got half a million of them
liquidated. By the twentieth century civilization generally had
become Liberal so they were called Reds or Bolsheviks. Very few
people are taught in school -- except in those disreputable
Communist Schools -- that it is simply an historical truth that
their flag is "red with martyrs' blood."
Is it credible that the Holy Fathers, clad in the symbols of
peace and purity, were guilty of these things? I recently published
in England a History of the Popes (1939) in which I could pay more
attention to the characters of the Popes than in my larger True
Story of the Roman Catholic Church (1930). Let me say shamelessly,
that I read the original authorities in Greek, Latin, Italian,
Spanish, German and French, and no Catholic has ever attempted to
answer any of my historical work. And I say, coldly, that these
Holy Fathers shed more blood in defense of their wealth and power
than all the other historic religions put together and that the
record of their vices is the worst in the whole history of
religion.
There have been about 260 of these Vicars of Christ, as they
call themselves. It is difficult to tell the exact number because
in certain periods there were two or three truculently fighting for
the holy title. In the tenth century there were 30 in 100 years --
there have been only six in the last 100 years -- and it is
impossible to be sure how many were murdered by rivals. Let us say
that there have been 260. We know nothing about the character of
the great majority of these during the first thousand years of the
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Christian Era. Catholic literature gives the title of martyr to
nearly every Pope to the year 310, though their most learned
historian, Duchesne, admits that only two were martyred. It gives
the title of Saint to all but one of them to the fifth century,
whereas we have definite information about only three of them, and
one of these (St. Victor) was at least shady, the second (St.
Callistus) was definitely a crook, and the third (St. Damasus) was
a forger, and an employer of murderous mobs and was charged under
the civil law with adultery. In short, of the 150 or so Popes about
whose characters we can be fairly sure at least 30 were sexually
loose men (six or seven of them sodomists) and about a dozen
murderers. Scores besides these were men of vile temper and great
cruelty; and most of them were guilty of simony, nepotism, and
protecting corruption.
So put out of your mind the conventional gush about "venerable
heads of the great Church," and remember that even the best Popes
were terrible shedders of blood. The holiest of them all, Innocent
III, was responsible for about 500,000 victims in 18 years (1198-
1216). The question here is whether this is ancient stuff that
throws no light or has no bearing on the conduct of the Papacy in
modern times. That is what Catholics say and most people believe;
but you will not understand the situation today unless you realize
that the "Red Record" which is the title of this chapter, mainly
refers to the record of the Popes from the fall of Napoleon (1814)
to our own time.
I said in the last booklet that during this period about
500,000 men, women, and children were done to death by the Church
and the feudal monarchs in alliance. With that disgusting meanness
to which the difficulties of their case drives them, Catholic
writers represent, and try to compel other writers and works of
reference to represent, these martyrs as a sort of early type of
Reds, or dangerous agitators against the social order as well as
religion. On the contrary they were as a rule less radical than
Washington and Jefferson. Republicanism was rare amongst them, and
the had no idea of persecuting the Church or, even in most cases,
of disestablishing it. They were just men and women who wanted
kings to govern them constitutionally and the Church to suppress
the horrible Inquisition and its vile dungeons. For this Kings and
Popes fell upon them, through the armies, police, and fanatical
mobs, with incredible savagery.
Do not listen to the excuse that it was still the Middle Ages.
Napoleon had made an end of that horror. Some now put Napoleon on
a level with our modern dictators, but with all his faults he was
a clean fighter, only in one case accused of murder (the Duc
d'Enghien), and he did magnificent work for Europe. He was a
skeptic, of course, as Lord Rosebery shows in The Last Phase
(1900), but he showered wealth and favor upon the Church -- on the
usual terms: the priests must keep the old Republicans quiet for
him. Yet after his fall the bishops joined with the royalists in a
White Terror which was more brutal than the Red Terror.
Catholics represent Pope Pius VII as a "martyr" under
Napoleon. They do not tell how under this Pius VII, when Napoleon
was beaten, tens of thousands of Liberals were martyred and under
his three successors hundreds of thousands. Well, what were these
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Holy Fathers, of modern times, like, and what were they protecting?
If you want a serious and unchallengeable answer look up that
highly respectable and most weighty authority the Cambridge Modern
History (Vol. X). You will find that Leo XII, who succeeded Pious
-- the Carbolic Encyclopedia admires his "intelligence and masterly
energy" -- was a converted rake and a doddering old fool who was
"hated by all, princes and beggars" (as the famous historian L. von
Ranke who knew him, said) and his death was hailed by the Romans
"with indecent joy" (the Prussian ambassador at Rome said). While
he shot birds in the Vatican garden his troops, with a sanguinary
cardinal in command, shot down his rebels, and many thousands of
them suffered a living death in jails of a repulsive character.
At his death the cardinals, after invoking the light of the
Holy Spirit, elected, to meet the grave problems of the new Europe
a man in the last stage of senile decay, drooling at the mouth as
they wheeled him round the Vatican garden in his baby-carriage. The
carnage of rebels went on. He soon died, and the fierce contest of
cardinals for the holy office was renewed. The ablest candidate
Albani, but he was so notorious a rogue that they thought the
heretics of England and Prussia might make ribald remarks if they
elected him Vicar of Christ, so they made him Secretary of State
(and real ruler of the Church) and elected a monk Gregory XVI.
Gregory was according to all Italian historians vulgar,
sensual, and frivolous. As one of the more distinguished of them
says, he "absorbed himself in ignoble interests while the country
groaned under misrule." It was widely believed in Rome that he was
intimate with the wife of his valet, and he was notorious for his
love of strong wine and candy. His horrible jails were crammed with
rebels -- 6,000 at one time -- and the best blood of Italy was
poured out or driven abroad. His ignorance was weird. He refused to
admit even gas and railways into the Papal States, as if that meant
that the devil got his foot in the door.
After fifteen years of this the cardinals elected what
Catholics call a Liberal Pope, Pius IX. But when he found that
Liberals wanted real freedom and a share in reforming his corrupt
kingdom he fled in disguise and called upon the Catholic powers to
kill his rebels for him. Then the jails were crammed again. In
Civita Veechia, which had once been enlivened by the orgies of
medieval Holy Fathers, rebels with a life-sentence were chained to
the wall and not released even for relieving themselves. So the
brutality continued until the Italians bought off the Pope's French
protectors and took over, with an overwhelming vote of the
inhabitants, the Papal Kingdom.
What was this kingdom (the Papal States) which they had shed
so much blood to protect? There is no dispute amongst non-Catholic
historians, and some Catholic historian's agree, that it was "the
most corrupt, backward, vicious, and inept in Europe." The British
ambassador publicly declared it "the opprobrium of Europe." The
leading monarchs of Europe in 1832 publicly warned the Papacy --
which is now pressed upon us as the most profound and serene oracle
on political morality -- that unless it cleaned up its Augaean
stable they would clean it themselves. Rome was described by a
devout French priest as "the most hideous sewer that was ever
opened up to the eye of man;" and this is approvingly quoted by a
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Catholic historian in the Cambridge Modern History (X, 164) in
which all this is admitted. The real ruler or Secretary of State,
Cardinal Antonelli, who had been born in a peasant's hut, died
worth $20,000,000, and left a bastard daughter, the Countess
Lambertini clamoring for it.
South Italy, the Kingdom of Naples, was virtually an extension
of the Pope's Kingdom in respect of Papal influence; and it
rivalled the Papal States in corruption and viciousness. Its
monarchs, the Pope's beloved sons, were veritable Neros. From 1790
to 1860 they slaughtered, sometimes with revolting barbarity, about
200,000 "Liberals." And since the Kings of Spain and Portugal were
just as servile to the Popes we are entitled to bring their
misdeeds also under the heading of the "moral influence" of the
Popes. Their "Butcher's bill" in 50 years was between 50,000 and
100,000. The savagery was so indiscriminate that no one can get
nearer to the truth.
Well, well, the Catholic says, this is still ancient history
-- less than a century ago -- and with the glorious pontificate of
Leo XIII a new era was inaugurated; the era of those beautiful
encyclicals on socio-political matters which are quoted in every
Catholic apology that is put before the American public. For an
understanding of the present situation it is very important to
realize that there was no change of policy whatever at the Vatican.
That is why I have given this very slight outline of the bloody
history of the past, which is fully described in my earlier works.
The policy of violence was merely suspended until it could once
more be applied.
Leo XIII could not, if he wanted, maintain the vile practices
of his predecessors. Italy and France witnessed a rapid growth of
skepticism in high quarters after 1870 and would not tolerate Papal
interference or advice. Poland was under Russia, which treated the
Pope as an Italian monkey. Austria, brought down by its defeats was
becoming very Liberal. The horrors of the dead Papal Kingdom and of
Naples were told by hundreds of writers and orators in Europe and
America. Moreover, the, Vatican had begun to see remarkable
possibilities of wealth in "converting", America and Great Britain,
and the Catholics in those countries had as yet not the least
influence on the press and education and could not have concealed
atrocities as they now do. So the wolf put on sheep's clothing for
a few years.
Then the menace of the Reds began and gave them their
opportunity. There was still only one country in which the "right
to kill", which (we saw in the last book) was solemnly reaffirmed
by Leo XIII, could be made the basis of policy. Spain was
geographically isolated and few people abroad took much notice of
it. In fact, in the last decade of the century the ruling and
wealthy classes everywhere were beginning to sniff at this Red
menace and would not inquire too closely. So in Spain the
hierarchy, which was more intimately connected with Rome than that
of any other country, began to cooperate with the corrupt state on
the old lines. From 1895 to 1909, when Ferrer was murdered and I
roused so much public attention that the policy had again to be
suspended, hundreds of rebels were shot and thousands tortured in
jail.
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THE RED POPE
They were not "anarchists." I became an intimate friend of one
of them, Professor Tarrida del Marmol, who fled to London and was
under sentence of death in Spain. He was a fine scholar and a
spanish gentleman of the best type, a man of aristocratic family.
loathed violence and was an anarchist only in the Tolstoian sense.
His great crime was that he was a rebel against the Church. In the
vile dungeons of Montjuich, where he was imprisoned, he saw what
was done. Men were fed for days on salt fish and dry bread and
refused water. Cords were tied tightly on their genitals. It was
afterwards proved that most of the "anarchist plots" were police
plots, and the Church was fully implicated. This want on under Leo
XIII and Pius X, and it brings the Red Record of the Popes down to
our own time. It continued in the only country in the world in
which it could be continued.
Chapter II
WHO IS THIS PIUS XII?
The present Pope Pius XII, is hailed throughout the Catholic
world as the Pope of Peace. Cardinal Hinsley explains in his
introduction to The Pope Speaks (1940) that the beautiful motto of
his ancient and aristocratic family is (translated): "Peace is the
Fruit of Justice." Yes; Mussolini has said that hundreds of times,
with the accent on the word justice. Hitler merely wants justice
and then he will give what is left of us peace. I am going to show
that Pius XII above any other Pope of modern times, even Pius IX,
is entitled to be called the Red Pore, the Pope of War.
One of the flatterers of "the venerable Church" has called him
"the Greatest Neutral." He never has been neutral. For at least
five years he has openly called for war on Bolshevism in Mexico,
Spain, China, and Russia. Does anyone suppose that he was thinking
of ancient Jericho and merely wanted the priests to blow their
trumpets? He was summoning Italy, Germany, Japan, and the United
States to war. Leaving out the United States, which was unwilling
to draw the chestnuts out of the fire for the Pope and Wall Street,
in this slogan which Pacelli, as Secretary of State, sent echoing
through the Catholic world he was shrieking for just that war on
Spain, China, and Russia which we have seen.
I am sometimes asked what Catholic apologists reply to these
very serious historical and actual charges which I make. They never
reply. They forbid their people to read me, which is much easier.
But do not Catholics regard that maneuver with suspicion? Listen.
The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland published a cheap booklet by
the Jesuit priest D.A. Lord with the title I Can Read Anything. It
meets the natural wish of many Catholics to read both sides, and it
takes the usual line that the books they are forbidden to read are
filthy and mendacious but dangerously clever. Catholic young men
and women are asked to be too sensible to "pit their minds" against
"the trained, clever, brilliant minds" of the Church's critics. And
lest the Catholic should ask if the Church and its 350,000,000
followers does not include a few equally brilliant writers to reply
the priest goes on (p. 22)
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And when they [the anti-Church writer's] are utterly
unscrupulous, as let's say, Joseph McCabe is, and will twist
any little bit of history to make a case, and pile yarn on
yarn to construct a proof, and use fable for fact and
supposition for solid argument, what chance has the average
reader against them?
The English Catholic Truth Society dare not publish this -- as
my friend Haldeman-Julitis shares the Jesuits' opposition with me
I gather that the book is of American origin -- because the British
libel courts are the straightest in the world. In an Irish court I
would get as much justice as a Jew in Berlin, So when folk in
England write to ask for the Catholic reply to me the officials
send them an address in Dublin where they can get this cowardly
little rag. Inquirers have reported this to me.
If anybody is unaware, which hardly seems likely, that the
present Pope has for the last five or six years used all his
influence to get Italy, Germany, and Japan to make war,
respectively, on Spain, Russia, and China, which would mean a
world-war, he will have ample evidence later. First let us see how
this Red Pope became what he is.
Eugenic Pacelli comes of what is commonly called an ancient an
Italian noble family which had lost its wealth but not its piety.
His father was a Papal lawyer and, as is usual in such cases, one
son was destined for the clerical career; especially as in the last
century government or military service was closed to good Catholics
in Italy, the Papacy still branding the government or the royal
family "robbers." More than four-fifths of the inhabitants of the
Papal States had voted to be transferred from Papal rule to that of
the Kings of Italy but that meant nothing to the "democratic" Leo
XIII. He was "the prisoner of the Vatican", eliciting golden
sympathy from America, and the Italian statesmen were robbers. So
careers for Catholic youths of noble birth and little money were
few in Italy.
I do not suggest that Pius XII does not believe his theology,
as probably half the clergy do not in one degree or other. No one
is likely to know except himself what he believes. Priests hardly
ever tell each other. Zeal is no criterion, however. The Catholic
priesthood and hierarchy are an immense economic corporation
centered in Rome just as Christian Science is, in its official
framework, a business with headquarters in Boston. Naturally its
members are zealous; and the more responsibility they have (which
is won by the extent of their zeal) the more zealous they are. The
Catholic who imagines its Pope and his cardinals regarding money as
a mundane affair with which they have to soil their white fingers
occasionally should hear two or three priests talking about them
when they get to the second bottle.
Here is some interesting information about the higher clergy
of Rome which came to me a few years ago from a priest through one
intermediary, a friend of high character. When Rome obliged English
Catholics a few years ago by making a Saint of witty old Thomas
More it sent them, to their stupefaction, a bill for $65,000
(costs) and of $20,000 for a little present to the Pope! This
present was a gold chalice which, as the price of gold rose, would
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be just a lump of pure gold worth about $50,000. The ceremonies at
Rome were a close monopoly of the Italians -- at least under
pressure they let one English priest hold a candle and charged him
$50 -- and every cardinal had his fixed price.
But understand that I suggest nothing whatever about the
Pope's belief or unbelief. He has a job of work, and this was his
apprenticeship for it. In college he discovered an ability for
learning languages and a special zeal for learning Canon Law, so he
was drafted into the Secretariat of State very soon after he became
priest, and there he would find himself on the fringe of the
mysteries of Vatican diplomacy. He also, being of noble birth,
joined and became a professor in The Academy of Ecclesiastics of
Noble Birth of course, the less said about that the better in
America, where one has to protect the legend that all his life --
when the great ones of the earth kissed his ring during his tours
of the world, when he occupied a gorgeous suite in the Vatican as
Secretary of State, and even now that he sits on the golden throne
-- his one ardent desire was that he could become a humble parish
priest amongst the poor. He is an aristocrat to his finger-tips. He
loathes democracy. He doubles Leo XIII (in his crooked diplomacy)
and Innocent III (who virtually founded the Inquisition).
Pacelli made such progress in the department that at the
comparatively early age of 41 he was sent out on a very important
mission. Pope Benedict XV, who had notoriously intrigued with the
Germans and the Austrians against the Italians, during the war
recollected that he was a Pope of Peace when, in 1917, it became
doubtful if the Germans would win. He then wanted to have the
world-prestige of bringing it to a close, and he sent Pacelli as
Nuncio (ambassador) with plans of peace to Germany. Pacelli was
announced as Nuncio to Bavaria, but within a week he was in Berlin
seeing the Chancellor. He even saw the Kaiser, who told him to take
his plans home because he was sure to win the war. Why doesn't the
Pope rather, he said, detach Italy from the Allies and link it with
Austria, as they are both Catholic countries? Because, said
Pacelli, there is a very strong patriotic movement in Italy in
favor of continuing the war led by a fiery young journalist named
Benito Mussolini. The Pope's biographers say that the Kaiser told
Pacelli to take no notice of "that scum" but to go ahead and detach
Italy from England. It is a neat little picture.
The gaunt, grim, swarthy young Nuncio next year saw the fall
of the Kaiser and the riots in Munich. He met the "mob" with simple
heroism, of course -- in Catholic literature -- but the important
point is that this was the beginning of his knowledge and hatred of
the Reds. He remained in Munich until 1925, so he saw, with what
feelings he has not told us, the rise of a similar "scum" in
Bavaria and the comic-opera "March on Berlin," when Hitler made the
record run of his life -- backwards. In 1925 he was sent as Nuncio
to Berlin, and as this was the beginning of the best period in
recent German history, the five years of peace and comparative
prosperity under a Liberal-Socialist coalition, Pacelli must know
better than any man in Italy that the excuse which was later made
for Hitler in the world-press, the flattery under shelter of which
the Nazis created their formidable power, the plea that they had
saved Germany from chaos and distress, is a lie.
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As part of the evidence, if evidence is required, that Pius
XII has only one aim in all his policy -- not the peace of the
world but the power of the Church -- the twelve years he spent in
Germany are important. He acquired a thorough knowledge of German,
thought he speaks it (and French) with, a marked accent, and as far
as German affairs are concerned he has never been at the mercy of
bigoted And muddle-headed Vatican officials. He saw the years of
confusion after the War end in a working compromise and a new
Germany rising cheerfully from the ruins. Lamentable as the feud of
Communists and Socialists was, it was a domestic squabble and did
not seriously disturb the national economy after 1924; and the
Catholic Church had more freedom and prestige than ever. Pacelli
knows as little about economics as he does about history and
science, but at least he was intelligent enough to see, during his
four years in Berlin, that under a predominantly Socialist rule
Germany was making all the progress that could be expected with so
crippling a debt, and it was not internal confusion but its share
in the world-slumps and the cessation of fat loans from America and
Britain from the end of 1929 that led to the comparative distress
of 1930-32 of which the Nazis took advantage. We shall see that
Pacelli at one time (1934) in a fit of temper wrote the sharpest
condemnation of Hitler that ever came from a clerical pen, He
always loathed Hitler as a plebeian upstart and an apostate from
the Church, even when he was compelling the German bishops to bow
humbly before him and beg to be allowed to have a share in his
dirty work. But Hitler promised to make an end of Socialism, and
that-not (outside of Russia) Communism or Bolshevism -- is the Big
Bad Wolf in the eyes of the Vatican. Socialism has not only a
constant anti-Papal tradition, which will surprise nobody who knows
the facts I summarized in the last chapter, but to oblige its
wealthy supporters the Vatican has been compelled for half a
century to condemn it as immoral on the ground that private
ownership is a right based upon natural moral law.
It was, however, not until Pacelli had left Germany that the
Nazis showed any prospect of ever attaining power, and he regarded
them as a vulgar and disorderly rabble led by a bunch of unsavory
apostates and "pansies." Three years later he would, as Secretary
of State, compel the proud German hierarchy, against their very
decided will, to greet Hitler as the Savior of Germany and the
White Hope of the Church, Let us remember, when we get to that
point in the next booklet, that Pacelli did not act from ignorance.
He was less innocent than Chamberlain. If he had any ability at all
-- and he has considerable ability -- he knew Germany thoroughly.
Will Catholics call it a wicked suspicion if we assume that this
observer of events, who lived eight years in Munich and four in
Berlin, had read Mein Kampf? He knew the program: the glorification
of the German race, the domination of Europe, the annexation of the
Ukraine, the massacre of the Jews, the annihilation of France -- in
a word, war on a stupendous scale. Catholics do not obtrude today
his intimate knowledge of Germany.
He was recalled to Rome in the summer of 1929 while Germany
was still cheerfully recovering and the Catholics cooperated
amiably with the Socialists and Liberals. Pacelli had been head of
the diplomatic corps at Berlin. The French ambassador had the real
right to that position and the Papal ambassador no right. But the
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Germans hated the French too much to let the honor fall to them. It
is another point to bear in mind about this pre-hitler Germany,
which Pacelli helped to ruin, that it genially tolerated a Papal
Nuncio at the head of the diplomatic corps and a Catholic
Chancellor in the Wilhelmsstragse. German Catholics had never
before seen such things.
Pacelli's patron, the Secretary of State Cardinal Gasparri,
was now 80 years old and unfit for office. He seems to have marked
out Pacelli as his successor, and he brought him back to the
Vatican for a few months of final training. Even Catholic
literature is a little confused here. Pacelli became Secretary of
State, which is the highest position in the Church after that of
the Pope, in February, 1930. In 1931 a gossip-paragraph appeared in
the Italian press to the effect that it was expected in Rome that
the new Secretary of State was about to be dismissed and old
Gasparri reinstated. Clearly the old men were conspiring against
Pacelli, but the same Catholic writers who say that it was because
he was too lenient to Mussolini had already said that Gasparri had
always been in favor of alliance with that brutal adventurer. We
will return to the point in a moment, but it will be useful first
to run a cursory eye over the ten years' activity of Pacelli as
Secretary of State.
He took up residence in the gorgeous suite of rooms, with
heavy gilt furniture and magnificent decorations, in the Vatican
Palace. Just at the time when the Pope and Mussolini, who had in
the previous year signed the infamous compact by which (in effect)
the Papacy undertook to condone all Mussolini's crimes in return
for $90,000,000 and a royal independence, had begun to quarrel
fiercely, as crooks are apt to do, over the bargain. Pacelli
smoothed out the quarrel, got the Duce to bend his knees in St.
Peter's, and got the Pope to have a cordial chat with him. So
Mussolini was safely launched on his bloody career.
In the same year, 1931, Japan seized Manchuria and began to
debauch the Chinese. While all the world looked on with disgust at
the brigandage Pacelli accepted the overtures of Japan and the more
Japan advanced and became a menace to half the world, the
deeper Pacelli made the Vatican's alliance with the callous and
unscrupulous bandits. In 1932 Hitler made his supreme bid for power
and failed, and Pacelli then ordered the German hierarchy to
withdraw their opposition to him so that he secured power and enter
upon his career of blood.
In 1934 Pacelli went to South America to preside at a
Eucharistic Congress and saw the heads of each "Republic and their
bishops; and by a remarkable coincidence, if you can think it that,
Fascism began to sweep the country, rebels against the Church went
to jail in tens of thousands, and the Germans and Italians in South
America entered upon their audacious plans. In the same year the
Christian Socialists of Austria, after their leaders visited the
Pope, treacherously crushed Socialism and prepared the way for
Hitler. In the same year Mussolini began the slaughter of Abyssinia
and the whole Italian Church made whoopee, and at the end the Pope
gave the Queen of Italy as Empress of Abyssinia Golden Rose, which
is the highest mark of Papal approval.
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In 1936 General Franco visited the Vatican, and his revolt,
which had the most open and solemn blessing of the Papacy, was the
first serious step of the Axis bregands in their projected
campaign. In 1938 Hitler annexed Austria with the full support of
the Austrian Church, which is one of the most docile to the Vatican
in the world. In the same year the Sudeten Catholics at one end of
Czecho-Slovakia and the Slovak Catholics at the other betrayed
their country and put Hitler in a position to defy the rest of
Europe and prepare for his insane attempt to dominate the world.
A remarkable ten-year record for the Pope of Peace, the
Greatest Neutral, the Friend of Democracy, and the Black
International which carried out his instructions! That record we
have to examine in detail, proving it by public acts and published
utterances, and then to consider the Pope's first two years of
pontifical activity. But, as we go into detail, do not lose sight
of the fact that Pacelli-Pius's ruling idea throughout is "the
extinction of Bolshevism" by the peaceful bombs and bayonets of the
Germans, Italians, Japanese; to which, in furtherance of the work
of peace, he now wants to add the bombs and bayonets of Vichy
France, Franco Spain, Salazar Portugal, and Horthy Hungary.
Chapter III
HIS GLORIOUS ALLY MUSSOLINI
It was on March 12, 1939, that Eugenio reached the summit of
ambition and was crowned in St. Peter's. Next day a man who lived
on the frontier of Italy and France sent to the most respected
newspaper in Great Britain, the Manchester Guardian, a letter which
it -- and probably it alone of the British or American press -- had
the courage to publish. The writer reminded people that March 12th
was also the last day for Jews to remain in Italy. He described
from personal observation the appalling sufferings of the 70,000
Jews who, robbed of their goods, were racing for frontiers which to
a large extent were sealed against them. He saw old men, women, and
children panting up the Alpine slopes to France and says that the
carabineri and frontier-troops had "orders to facilitate their
migration if necessary with the help of a bayonet." He saw elderly
folks "collapse on the way up the vast acres of the Italian slope";
little children "stagger, their feet bleeding, into the frontier
villages"; women try to throw themselves under the traffic when the
French at last put up the barriers; babies abandoned or lost by the
wayside.
This had gone on for a week and it was continuing in a last
frantic rush of the robbed Jews while the bells of St. Peter's and
all the churches in Italy rang out joyously over the sunny land.
What did the Pope of Peace do? The writer of the letter says that
the Italian carabinieri and soldiers were so moved that they forgot
their instructions about the bayonet and carried children tenderly
to the frontier. What did the Pope do? Nothing: except receive the
splendid congratulations of Mussolini and his ministers. Catholic
biographers boast that during the week which followed his
coronation Pacelli-Pius, sinking under the burden of work, slept
only three hours every night. Very heroic, but a little puzzling,
because as Secretary of State he had been doing just that work for
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ten years. Why the arrears? But what did he do for the Jews, for
crushed and bleeding democrats of Italy, for the heart-broken and
suffering Czechs? Nothing, just nothing.
The Italian problem had, as I said, been the first to engage
Pacelli when he became Secretary of State. I have told elsewhere
(Little Blue Book No. 1501 and ABC Library No. 2) the story of the
rise of Fascism and its early relation to the Church, In 1917
Mussolini and his cut-throats were, as the Kaiser had said, "scum."
They were atheists, republicans, and gangsters until 1921. Then, to
the surprise of many, Mussolini asked Cardinal Ratti for permission
for the Black Shirts to make a solemn procession to the tomb of the
Unknown Warrior in Milan Cathedral and the cardinal gladly accepted
and gave them a place of honor," says the Catholic Teeling (p.
106). Next year was the march on Rome (with Mussolini 100 miles
away), and the Duce pompously declared St. Peter's and all church
property under his special protection and ordered a thanksgiving
service with the King in attendance, At one of the principle
churches of Rome for the salvation of Italy. From Scum to Savior of
his Country in two years!
There is no secret about it. It is one of the most painful
features of the American literature of the subject that the
respected head of a great university, Nicholas Murray Butler, dupe
of American Catholics, lent his pen (Looking Forward) in that
glorification of Mussolini which was as useful as a smoke-screen to
the Fascists while they prepared for war, Professor Salvemini
(Under the Axe of Fascism, 1936) has given Dr. Butler a
chastisement such as few scholars ever give each other for his
gullibility in accepting Catholic lies about the "confusion and
ruin" caused by the Communists from which Mussolini saved Italy.
The author Selde's shows that Mussolini later confessed that he
invented the Communist boogie to help the loan he had floated in
America. The danger was Socialism which was conquering Italy, and
so politicians, royalists, generals, and industrialists put
Mussolini in the saddle, after fumigating him of his atheism and
republicanism.
But in spite of this powerful support of throne, army, and
capital the seat in the saddle remained very insecure for seven
years. Mussolini had not dared to extinguish the democracy for
which italians had fought so nobly from 1790 to 1870. Liberals and
Socialists were powerfully organized and, as in Spain, commanded
the majority of the votes in the cities, where the most intelligent
and the best-informed of the Italians lived. When, in 1924,
Mussolini was believed to have had the most respected leader of the
Socialists, Matteotti, removed by murder -- his public utterances
on the murder were so gross and callous that his guilt seemed clear
-- so many turned against him that at the elections of 1926 his
power was ominously shaken. He needed just one element to turn the
scale in his favor.
The peasants and a certain number of the urban workers were
organized in a powerful Catholic Democratic movement. The Pope had,
as in Germany and Austria, allowed this bastard Socialism to grow
up under their eyes as one way to cheek the loss of so many
millions to the Socialists and Communists. These Catholic democrats
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fought the Fascists as truculently as the Communists did and while
they equally detested the Socialists and Liberals and would not
cooperate with them, they at least represented further millions in
opposition to Mussolini.
As Pacelli was in Germany during these years we do not suppose
that he had much to do with Vatican policy in Italy and will
dismiss events with a brief notice. Both sides, Blackshirts and
Black International, saw that they must sooner or later enter into
alliance against Socialism, and Mussolini's backers, the throne,
army, and capital, insisted on it. Mussolini on his side sacrificed
his convictions and restrained his anti-Papal followers with all
the ease of an adventurer. He, as I said, ordered a superb
thanksgiving service in church for his accession to power and
presented a very valuable, old library to the Vatican. He then
complained to the Vatican about ending the conduct of the Catholic
democrats under the priest Sturzo. The priest disappeared because
of obscure Fascist threats of reprisals against the Church. Seldes
says (The Vatican, p. 331) and the party was weakened. But the
opposition went on and Mussolini made little progress. The Vatican
knew the strength of its hand and wanted a price that Mussolini
feared his followers would never agree to pay.
Seldes says that the revelation of the Pope's prestige in
America the Chicago Eucharistic Congress in 1926 at length stirred
Mussolini to bold action. It was more probably the menace of
Italian elections. Secret negotiations began at that time but the
Pope's terms were so exorbitant that they dragged out for two
years. In 1926 Farinacei, Mussolini's bulldog and leader of the
anti-clerical Old Guard of the Fascists, publicly declared that the
alliance was necessary. Mussolini, he said -- Seldes gives his
words -- was ready to deal with the Pope "in return for the moral
support of the Vatican for his policy." What the policy was" every
child knew -- the final extinction of liberty in Italy and, as a
minimum, the recovery of Savoy and Corsica from France, Malta from
England, Dalmatia from Yugo-Slavia -- and, instead of talking about
peaceful recovery by negotiation Mussolini was thundering about his
millions of bayonets whenever he opened his elegant mouth.
In 1928 the Maltese got up a kind of revolt against Britain.
There was a trial of strength between the civil and the clerical
authorities, and the Premier, Lord Strickland, though a Catholic,
bitterly resented the interference of the clergy in the elections.
It was proved that they even used the confessional to intimidate
voters. Mussolini watched with great interest, and, when the
British Government in the end began its historic policy of
appeasement and Strickland was sacrificed, the Duce had a new proof
of the utility of the Church. A high Anglican official in Malta at
the time informed me, privately, that the Governor of the island,
who let, down Strickland, was "grossly deceived by the Papal
Delegate, Msgr. Pascal Robinson"; and he added "more mischief-
making in Dublin." The Black International won first blood for
Mussolini.
So Fascists had to swallow the condition's, and in 1929 the
Blackshirts and the Blackmailer signed their compact. The Pope got
nearly $100,000,000, the independence and sovereignty of the
Vatican City, the control of all Italian education except in the
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universities, and the enforcement of the Canon Law, the
establishment of the Church and endowment of the priests. The Duce
got a hand for the complete destruction of democracy in Italy and
the silence of the Pope while he murdered democrats and get out on
his glorious campaign to make Empire by selecting weak countries
for aggression.
This was the year of Pacelli's return to Rome, but his
biographers are not lavish with detail at this point and do not
enable us to say definitely -- and I refuse to go on suspicions --
what, if any, share he had in this sordid business. I have to
recall it, as briefly as possible, because it was the first great
triumph of the Black International in our time, and it was one of
the most important steps in the advance of the brigands toward the
realization of their, plot. It finally established the power of
Mussolini. It caused Catholic papers and writers (and sympathizers
like Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler) to take the lead in that praise of
Fascism in italy -- had not the Pope blessed it? -- which was of
the greatest importance to the brigands in preparing their
armaments. And it gave Mussolini's imitator in Germany the idea
that after all it would pay to come to terms, hypocritically, with
the Black International.
But, whatever share Pacelli may have had in drafting the
treaty of alliance with Mussolini, he had a full share in securing
that the alliance was not wrecked. The Fascist Party was still so
bitterly anti-Papal that Mussolini had, in soothing his followers,
to use language which the Pope angrily described (in the
Osservatore, May 30) as "heretical, and worse than heretical."
Blackshirts in Rome and the country insulted the priests and the
Church. The Pope spoke publicly of the possibility that he would
repudiate the Treaty, and in that case, he said, "Vatican City
itself would fall together with the state that is dependent on
Vatican City for its being" (same letter in the Osservatore). The
Catholic world and the world-press were alarmed. If Mussolini fell,
they said, Socialism would capture Italy. As Cardinal Hinsley, head
of the Church in Britain, said at a later date, Fascism was "in
many respects unjust" but it "Prevented worse injustice -- if it
goes under, God's cause goes with it." (Catholic Times, October
18th, 1935). God's cause is, in the mouth of a cardinal, the power
of the Church: and the end justifies the means.
Pacelli to the rescue. Old Gasparri, who was stirring the Pope
to resist, was pushed aside, and the Saint George -- who wanted to
save the world -- the world of wealth and privilege -- from the
Dragon, Socialism donned his shining armor. Friction continued, of
course. Most of the leading Blackshirts hated the Pope, and the
Pope and his new Secretary of State heartily hated them. But the
alliance was indispensable. Mussolini now roared like any sucking
dove about the beauty of religion. "I wish to see religion
everywhere in the country," he said; "let us teach the children
their catechism" (Manchester Guardian, June 19, 1931). He, as I
said, publicly prayed in St. Peter's. Cardinal Gasparri at the
Eucharistic Congress of 1932 hailed him as "the man who first saw
clearly in the present world chaos" the man who is "getting the
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State to work in accordance with the moral law of God" (Catholic
Herald, September 16 1932). The, friction was reduced and the world
was officially assured that the last Census had proved that 99
percent of the, Italians were Catholics.
It was an insincere alliance. The organization of lay dupes
known as Catholic Action now gave Mussolini trouble. He demanded
that the Pope check it, and something seems to have been done, but
secretly Pacelli got the pope to write glowing praise of the
international Catholic Action and knowing that in spite of the
sacred independence of the Vatican City Mussolini's spies watched
it closely he sent the document by two priests to Paris for
publication. The old trickery of Vatican diplomacy was cultivated.
When, as in the case of the annexation of Austria, local prelates,
who would not dare to stir a finger against Papal policy, acted in
support of the Axis, the Vatican Radio would announce to the world
that the Pope disapproved. When this angered Axis supporters they
were assured that the radio message was unauthorized and sent out
without consulting the Vatican. Sometimes the Papal newspaper, the
Osservatore, was used and, to please both sides, was then declared
unauthorized. Neither the Radio nor the Osservatore would dare to
send out or print an unauthorized message on an important point.
Foreign correspondents in Rome received telephone messages from the
Vatican which were later declared unauthorized. Ambiguous
utterances, as in the case of Abyssinia, were put into the mouth of
the Pope, and Axis Catholics were encouraged to read them one way
and democratic Catholics to read them in the opposite way. And
every Easter and Christmas the beautiful message of Peace rolled
out, while between those festivals the Catholic world was inspired
everywhere to demand war on Spain, Russia, China, and Mexico.
There was another aspect of the alliance. While Cardinal
Gasparri assured the Catholic world that Mussolini was "getting the
state to work in accordance with the moral law of God" and Cardinal
Hinsley was warning it that "God's cause" would be lost in Italy if
Mussolini fell, it was open to anybody to ascertain what social
improvement, if any, the Duce had actually accomplished. Reference
books like the Statesman's Year Book which were in every good
library gave year by year the official Italian returns of crime,
education, production, trade, debt, etc.
It is astonishing today to reflect how very few people thought
of testing in this simple and positive way what truth there was in
almost universal press admiration of the efficiency and national
service of Fascism. It must, at least, seem astonishing to any man
who does not accept my suggestion that Mussolini's work in crushing
a great Socialist movement was so appreciated in the world-press
that it would not inquire whether his boast of efficiency was true
or not. It reproduced everything that its correspondents in Italy,
generally, Catholics, cared to send it about finer rail-services
(on some lines), new buildings, great farms on reclaimed land, and
so on, and it refused to see in works of reference, which were at
every editor's elbow that production was decaying and the internal
debt (chiefly due to forced loans) was increasing at so formidable
a rate that bankruptcy loomed ahead -- unless Mussolini brought
off, and brought off successfully, the aggressive war he promised
his people, and founded an Italian Empire by murdering and looting
other peoples.
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On the religious side it was worse. The only definite test
weather a nation is or is not getting more in accord with "the
moral law of God" is to examine its criminal statistics. In the
Papal States, before the Kingdom of Italy had been established,
there had been no statistics of any sort, but not a single
authority questions the statement of contemporary Italian statesmen
and foreign visitors that crime and corruption were appalling.
Italy then, from 1870 onward, had a very fair success in reducing
crime, though the success was not nearly so great as in less-
Catholic countries. But from the time of the accession to power of
Mussolini crime increased amazingly. Convictions rose from about
500,000 a year in the period which Dr. Nicholas Murrak Butler
describes so darkly, the Socialist-Communist-Liberal period (before
1923), to 800,000 a year in the period of Mussolini's remarkable
efficiency.
It makes it rather worse that this was due to some extent to
the poverty and distress he had brought upon both the workers and
the middle class while the Church, as I said, got an enormous
accession of wealth. Other causes were the impoverishment and
prostitution of education and the preparation of the people for the
wanton bloodshed of aggressive war. It was at the very time when
Pacelli, the future Pope of Peace, was bringing the Pope and the
Duce to have a cordial meeting in the Vatican that Mussolini was
writing the most official statement of the nature of Fascism for
the new Encyclopedia Italiana (article, "Fascism")
When Fascism looks to the future, the general development
of humanity, apart from considerations of present polities, it
rejects the idea that perpetual peace is either possible or
desirable. It repudiates Pacifism, which means a renunciation
of struggle, a refusal to make sacrifices, War alone raises
the energy of man to the highest pitch and impresses a seal of
nobility upon the nations which have the manliness to
undertake it. All other trials of strength are substitutes
which never prove a man's worth by confronting him with the
alternative of life and death.
That was taught to every child in every school in Italy.
Didn't the Vatican know it? Are we supposed to find documentary
proof that the Vatican knew what was going on in every part of
Italy?
Pacelli had come from Germany where he had seen Socialism as
a mighty power already in control of more than one-third of the
country, dreaded by the Catholic hierarchy because, though the
Social Democrats now worked with the Catholics, they drew millions
from the Church, dreaded by imperialists, militarists,
industrialists, and landowners. He came to Italy where he saw how
just such a powerful Socialist organization had been completely
destroyed as it was from 1928 onward by just such a coalition of
royalists, industrialists, militarists, and landowners taking up a
brutal spearhead resembling the German Nazism and consolidating its
position by an alliance with the Church just as in the good old
days of the early nineteenth, century. His grand idea, war on
Socialism, gradually took shape. How in its interest he kept the
Pope silent and the Italian Church wildly patriotic when Mussolini
began his imperial brigandage in Abyssinia we shall see later.
Other problems meantime confronted him and the Black International.
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Chapter IV
HIS DEAR YELLOW BROTHER IN BUDDHA
the year 1899 the democratic Pope Leo XIII had made the ears
of American Catholic's burn. Their apologists and prelates had
begun to put before the public that conception of the Church of
Rome as the devoted ally of democracy and freedom with which we
have grown very familiar in recent years. Leo smote them hip and
thigh. That was "Americanism" not sound Catholicism. The arch-
bishops writhed but were silent. Leo was not very far from death,
and "from that time to this no Pope has spoken out." So says the
Catholic Teeling, and he adds: "The reason would seem to have been
that America has provided an ever-increasing supply of funds and an
ever increasing supply of missionaries." (The Pope in Polities, p.
150). Certainly a golden reason; though why, on Catholic
principles, a particular version of Catholicism not backed by gold
Should be so humiliatingly denounced and then tolerated when it was
gold is not clear. If I assigned that reason for the Vatican's
change of policy in regard to American Catholic propaganda I would
be angrily accused of wicked suspicions and suggestions where I
could not give positive evidence.
But the Vatican only changed its tactics not its policy. Pius
XI, says Teeling, was particularly zealous to bring the oriental
Churches into his fold -- "so that the growth of democratic
Catholicism in the New World be counter-balanced." At the Vatican,
he says (p. 3), "Western influence is not considered very good for
the Church." That we shall see, is one reason why, Mussolini was
encouraged in the rape of Abyssinia and his design of becoming
Emperor of the East, why the Vatican flirted for years with Russia,
and why it approved the savage aggression against Yugo-Slavia and
Greece. To sustain this policy the Secretary of State had to do
some very neat tight-rope balancing. For British opinion, in spite
of all the "Lords" and aristocrats the Jesuits have captured, he
seems not to have cared much. If for once I cared to indulge in a
conjecture I should say that he detests England. Whether that is
connected with his chilly experiences when he was sent to represent
the Papacy at the coronation of George V or whether he sees through
the Catholic pretense that they are "converting England" I don't
know, but Teeling, who made a number of visits to Rome, says that
after Pacelli became secretary of State English Catholics found a
reception at the Vatican and could with difficulty get an audience
with the Pope. They were told to see Pacelli, and they discovered
that they were "not popular," though doubtless they left the
customary purse with Pacelli.
But American Catholicism was a very different matter. It
claimed 20,000,000 members and said that it would have the majority
in America by the end of the century. Its wealth is already in the
billions of dollars; its annual income $800,000,000. Imagine
Pacelli's eyes rolling as he turned these sum's into Italian lire!
In 1936 he visited America, Did he encourage the efforts as
described by Seldes, of American Catholics, in cooperation with
Mexican refugee priests, to get an alliance with Wall Street in
order to secure the liquidation of Bolshevism in Mexico? Had he any
meetings with the Italian and German plotters in America? Did he
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harden that feeling against Russia which Germany counted as one of
its favorable conditions? But we must not be suspicious. There is
no Proof. We know one thing that he did do. Instead of rebuking the
American propagandists who represented the Church as spontaneously
democratic and a lover of freedom and peace he went out of his way
everywhere to leave the impression that he cordially admired the
American spirit of freedom and democracy. He certainly did not
mention that the Vatican policy was to augment the oriental
elements in the Church so as to counter-balance "western influence"
which was "not considered very good for the Church, in the mild
language of a Catholic writer. And he certainly did not call the
attention of Americans to the fact that the Vatican had entered
into a close alliance with Japan.
This alliance with Japan ran the usual course in Catholic
literature. At first it was indignantly denied. Where was the
proof? When the Osservatore itself proudly announced on May 5,
1935, that the Pope was to send an ambassador to Tokyo and that
Tokyo was to appoint a representative at the Pope's court in
Vatican City a new note was struck. It was the Pope's duty to enter
into negotiation with any government to protect the spiritual
interests of Catholics under that government. Had not even England
sent a representative to the Pope's court? Yes: but "poor rich
powerful England" as Ambassador Dodd called it, was up to its eyes
in a policy of appeasement, while in 1936 Japan had started on its
full career of aggression and of the massacre, debauching, and
exploiting of hundreds of millions of weaker folk. That is some
difference. And when, in the spring of 1941, Pacelli-Plus had a
most cordial interview with that other Man of Peace Matsuoka, the
most brazen liar in a world of fluent liars, in the Vatican and,
just when Japan was plotting to take advantage of the heavy burden
of America and Britain to defy them by worse aggression and more
insolent outrages than ever, the Pope smilingly presented him with
a gold medal . . .
The story of the Japanese share in the world-crime is now
fairly well known -- see ABC Library No. 6 -- and cannot be
repeated here. All the world has seen its steady aggression for ten
years, and all the world ought to have known from the start that
Japan meant to conquer the whole eastern half of Asia and all
islands in the Pacific. That the truth of this depends upon the
disputed authenticity of some memoir by Baron Tanaka in the year
1927 is nonsense. I have described, largely from American
journalists and authors (like Upton Close's Challenge. 1933), the
very open growth of the plot since the later years of the last
century. America was in fact so well aware of it that it alone of
the democracies began years ago to take defensive naval measures,
but there was, under the usual trade-interests, a lamentable lack
of warning in the Press an almost general failure to see that
Japan's were part of a world-plot and in this case a very
mischievous appeasement-policy in religious periodicals on account
of Japan's threats to the Christian missions.
To state events very briefly up to the time when the Japanese
criminals, the American and European encouragement of modernization
in Japan (while it paid better not to encourage it in China), the
disbanding of the old Samurai swashbucklers (which sent vicious
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elements into the army, politics, and journalism), and the
successful wars of Japan on easy victims like China (1895) and
Tsarist Russia (1904) gave the yellow men inflated ideas of their
ability and importance. The Black Dragon Society, which wanted the
conquest of north-eastern Asia, was founded in 1901 and inspired
aggressive fanaticism in naval and military circles. Advantage was
taken of the European War of 1914-18 to get a strangle-hold on
China but a terrible earthquake and the quick recovery of the
Allies checked the ambition, though propaganda continued. By 1931
there were patriotic societies enthusiastically preaching it and
running to two or three million members. General Hayashi, who had
led the invasion of Manchuria in defiance of the civil government,
said in a speech to foreign correspondents; at the close of the
campaign:
Japan's desire for expansion on the Eastern Asiatic
Continent manifested in her Manchurian police has been her
unalterable policy since her foundation.
The development of the gangrene differed little from the
development in Europe. In Japan the army and navy were the nucleus
and source of infection. The score of rich families which mainly
represented capitalism were easily persuaded to see that it was the
destiny of the Yamato race to extend its culture to (or exploit)
China. The Emperor hardly needed persuading that soldiers know
best. The politicians and the heads of the Buddhist and Shinto
religions were bought. For the quite open share of these religions
and their sudden enrichment by the imperialist brigands see the
speeches at the Chicago International Conference on Religion in
1934 (edited by A.E. Haydon, Moderit World-Trends in Religion).
The occupation of Manchuria in 1931 was the first step in the
realization of what would prove to be a plot of Germany and Japan
to control and exploit the world: a crime which in future history
dwarf every other crime that was ever committed or attempted. The
world now pays a ghastly price for the obscene squabbling of trade-
interests which prevented the destruction of the plot at this early
stage by an economic ostracism of Japan, but few people still seem
to understand that the Black International at once moved to the
support of the aggressor.
This is no matter of "suspicion." It was done quietly and in
such a form that it could, if the world's attention was drawn to
it, be represented as an inevitable exercise of the Vatican's
religious functions. It was first disclosed, as far as I can trace,
in an article by a French priest in the Catholic Review des Deux
Mondes in 1935 (January 15). The negotiations which were then going
on at the Vatican for mutual ambassadors with Japan made it clear
that some years of cordial cooperation had preceded; and in any
case the French had played as sordid a part in the matter as the
Black International and they were disposed to boast about it.
The facts are now so well known that Catholic writers like
Teeling discuss them freely. It appears that the Vatican had
approached Japan, seeking favored-nation treatment, in 1922, but
the Buddhist authorities, already brought (or bought) to the
convention that the Yellow Race would sweep all White influence out
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of eastern Asia, successfully resisted the application. Buddhist
monks might take that view but Japanese statesmen knew that the
White Race was not to be turned down too openly until the plot was
far advanced. It was to be duped by smooth assurances that it would
have its share in a regenerated China and its enormously increased
capacity for consumption. It was particularly necessary to do this
after the first rape of China, so the Vatican got its opportunity.
The French clerical writer says:
"A short time after it had given birth to the new state
of Manchukuo the Japanese government advised its ward to turn
to the Holy See with a request that it should be officially
recognized; an event of some importance seeing that the Powers
refused to recognize it and Japan had left the League of
Nations. These Japanese-Manchukuoan overtures did not secure
formal recognition but, as the Catholic missions in Manchukuo
supported them the Vatican appointed a French Vicar Apostolic
to negotiate with the government of Manchuktio about religious
affairs." (p. 297).
He further explains that it was the French missionaries in
Japan who persuaded the Japanese government to approach the
Vatican. France was at the time, for reasons which will be given
later, working very amiably with the Vatican, and French
missionaries would not be ignorant of the golden rule that trade
and the evangelization of the heathen go together. The Vatican was
to get a monopoly of missionary work in Japan and China, which it
fully expected to be taken over by Japan (Teeling), and France
would be rewarded with trade.
It was a nice problem for Pacelli, the new Secretary of State,
and he solved it in his characteristic manner. Formally to
recognize the annexation of Manchuria just when merely secular
governments all over the world were condemning it as an outrage and
a danger to the peace was out of the question. Even the American
apologist would hardly be able to explain away that. So the Papal
organ announced quietly, as a matter of routine, that a Vicar
Apostolic had been set up in Manchukuo at the request of its
government. That was for the Japs a sufficiently clear recognition
of that government by the Vatican as a sovereign power. Does any
man suppose that the Japanese statesmen and military leaders nearly
all of whom are skeptics, cared the toss of a coin about the
spiritual interests or the immortal souls of the Manchurian
peasants? Or that the Vatican supposed they did? The brutalized
condition to which the Japs soon reduced the natives is answer
enough.
The Chinese in Shanghai sent me copies of bitter complaints of
the Protestant missionaries in China about the way in which the
Japs were persecuting them in favor of Catholic missionaries, but
a more important feature of the matter is that from that time the
Pope damped down in the whole Catholic world all criticism of his
dear Yellow Brother in Buddha. By 1934, the clerical writer in
Revue des Deux Mondes said, the cordial relations of the two had
gone so far that "no Japanese prince or mission now passes through
Rome without paying its homage to the Sovereign Pontiff." And to
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THE RED POPE
Mussolini, of course, who was now in prayerful communication with
the Vatican. Again, does anyone suppose that Japanese diplomats and
princes called upon the Pope to thank him for caring for the
immortal souls, in which they did not believe, of Manchurian
peasants?
But the alliance was brought into full light in 1935 when the
Obsservatore announced the proposal of an exchange of ambassadors.
There seems to have been some hard bargaining, but in 1936 a Roman
Catholic prelate appeared, incongruously enough, at the Mikado's
court and a yellow man in the Vatican City. By this time the
Japanese pretense of merely wishing to civilize Manchuria was a
mockery. It had now advanced far into China, having taken Jehol in
1933 and broken through the Great Wall in 1935. The mask was
cynically thrown aside just when the diplomatic relations with the
Vatican were put on the most respectable footing. By the customary
Axis method of brazen lying excuses for further aggression upon the
weak Chinese were invented, the "incident" was conducted with
appalling outrages, and a trail of misery and demoralization spread
in the wake of the Japanese armies. Japan was now as deadly a
menace to civilization as Germany and Italy, and the bland lies
with which it met every inquiry were nauseating.
During these years very little was said in the world-press
about this beautiful friendship of the supreme head of the Church
of Rome and the supreme head of the degenerate Shinto and Buddhist
religions. Catholics had won their claim and censorship of the
press on the edifying principle that it was not right to print
anything that was "offensive to Catholics"; and to obtrude this
cordial alliance of the Vatican with the Japanese government, which
had by this time incurred the loathing of every decent man and
would be decidedly offensive to Catholics. Yet the cordiality
continued through all the years of mendacity, hypocrisy, outrage,
and increasing menace to the world.
On December 26 Matsuoka, who was particularly used for some
years to dupe Americans because he was a Christian, said in the
Japanese Diet, dropping the mask of lust now that Japan could take
advantage of the war in Europe, that there would be peace only if
America agreed that Japan should "dominate the mainland and occupy
a preferential position in Indo-China and the Dutch Indies," and to
"dominate the Western Pacific"; not for its own profit, of course,
but for "the good of humanity." In March, 1941, this slimiest of
the yellow reptile-group went to Moscow and signed a cynical pact
with Russia. We will not call that hypocrisy because Stalin was
certainly not duped, but that was not for lack of intention on
Matsuoka's part. He went on to Berlin and Rome to discuss with the
other gangsters the real plan for the summer, the sudden attack on
Russia and the question of Japanese intervention, and he had also
a long cordial talk with the Pope, who presented him with a gold
medal. All this can be verified in Keesing's admirable day-to-day
survey of the world-press. Are we asked to believe that with the
Pope Matsuoka discussed only the spiritual interests of the Chinese
who were under the loving care of the Japanese army of occupation?
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What exactly the situation is today it is impossible to
ascertain. Japan will, of course, soon or later double cross the
Vatican, as those super-crooks always do. Has it already done so?
The latest news is that the Japanese are organizing a National
Spiritual Mobilization Campaign in which three recognized
religions, Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity are to cooperate. But
the Christian Church is to be purely Japanese. It must receive no
funds from abroad -- which opens up a nice prospect for the
American Protestant missions -- admit no foreign influence, and
make minute reports of all its services and activities; and the
worship of the Son of Heaven must be included in the cult
everywhere. Has Pacelli-Pius swallowed that pill?
In the eighteenth century Rome made it, one of its chief
counts in its indictment of the Jesuits that, in order to win more
converts than other missionaries, they had mixed heathen rites with
Christian. Pacelli has done just that. An Anglican prelate who was
present at the large International Conference on religion in India
in 1938 wrote me that the representatives of the Protestant
Churches learned with a shock that "the Papacy, after much
wavering, has finally given permission to Japanese Papists to
indulge in Emperor worship." Presumably they do not tell their
Japanese converts how early Christians died rather than worship the
Roman Emperor.
It should prove, when the details are known, a picturesque
development, but to most of us trifle in comparison with the
Vatican's moral apostasy and betrayal of civilization. For an
exhibition of greed, hypocrisy, and condonation of crime its
alliance with Japan would be hard to beat. During these ten years
when Pacelli was vilifying Russia, which was building up in peace
and with a sense of international honor what most people now call
great civilization, he was cultivating friendly relations with and
giving aid and encouragement to one of the real blackguard-nations.
It is futile to protest that we must look at the Situation from the
Papal angle. The most respectable light in which you can put it is
that a Churchman would be bound to consider that a prospect of
bringing into the Roman sphere of influence, which is so much more
morally effective than any other, all the missionary work in
eastern Asia, outweighs all other considerations. So much the worse
for the Churchman's creed or policy. It puts the increase of the
power of the Church above all decency of international intercourse,
above the appalling sufferings of hundreds of millions of Chinese
and their right to a national life of their own, above the ghastly
and very imminent chances of a world-war. it means that the Black
International tramples on those social, moral, and humanitarian
principles which are said by its apologists in America to be just
what the Church holds most sacred.
Chapter V
HE ORGANIZES THE PLOT IN SOUTH AMERICA
Pacelli-Pius was rightly selected for the Papacy as the ablest
cardinal in the Church of Rome. That does not imply genius. Half of
these cardinals would not successfully run a large grocery store.
Pacelli has considerable ability. He is also the most widely-
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informed cardinal on the world-situation. His immediate
predecessors were of the type that asks: What are Keats? Even Leo
XIII was amazingly duped by his Vatican 'specialists' about the
state of affairs in England -- they persuaded him that if he
recognized the validity of Anglican "orders" the whole Church of
England would join up under the Papal banner -- in France, and
elsewhere. Pacelli has travelled more than any. Besides spending
twelve years in Germany he has made three visits to England,
travelled all over North and South America, and visited France,
Hungary, and other countries.
Upon which boast of his biographers we may make two comments.
First that in very few of his acts can any apologist make the
excuse of ignorance or misinformation, the common Catholic excuse
for Papal misconduct. Matsuoka might deceive some people with his
bland assurances that his country sought "not the good of the good
of Japan but the good of humanity" and (in the spring of 1941) that
it had "not the slightest idea of taking advantage of the
misfortunes of France," but he no more deceived Pius XII than he
deceived Stalin. The Pope knew well that Japan was pledged to a
course, in its selfish interest, which would lead inexorably to war
math America and Great Britain. So it was in every other part of
his policy.
The second comment is that, instead of flowers springing up
wherever Pacelli trod, as is told of holy men in earlier ages, the
path might generally be traced by blood and misery. The violence
had occurred in Italy before he returned to it, but he took care
that it was not relaxed. He compels the Church in Germany to help
to power the most dangerous psychopath in Europe. He goes to South
America, and his visit is followed by the triumph of Fascist
violence everywhere. He goes to the United States, and there is a
fresh demand for the extinction of Bolshevism in Mexico and Russia.
He goes to Paris in 1937 and France prepares to betray Czecho-
Slovakia and, when the time comes, to betray itself. He goes to
Hungary in 1938 and it is ready to see Austria and Czecho-Slovakia
enslaved and to march itself against Russia and help in every way
the destroyers of civilization.
The visit to South America was in 1934, when the usual excuse
for Papal intrigue was given: he must preside at the Eucharistic
Congress at Buenos Aires. Twenty years, even thirty years ago, the
priests of Buenos Aires would not have dared to hold such a
function. When it was proposed to hold one in London Protestants
appealed to me to cooperate in getting Catholics forbidden to have
a procession of their Eucharist in one street. I said that I would
rather encourage them to do so -- and take care that the crowd
understood what it meant. The doctrine is so monstrous and
incredible that the journalists who every year write with profound
respect about the holding of the Eucharistic Congress cannot have
the least idea what it means.
You see a priest carrying a star-shaped golden vessel in the
center of which, enclosed in glass, is the white disk of a wafer of
wheaten flour. To the Catholic it was a thin wafer until the priest
breathed his magic wards over it, but there is no longer any flour
there. The substance of the cake has been annihilated: only the
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THE RED POPE
accidents (the color, shape, feel, etc.) remain. As I have hid to
swallow it -- the wafer, I mean, as well is the doctrine --
thousands of times I can assure that the "accidents" are very much
like those of a dry cracker. It sticks to the pilate, etc. And on
the strength of this prehistoric theory of substance and accidents,
begot by the genius Aquinas out of Aristotle, the Church today
sternly insists that the wafer has been annihilated, and the living
divine-human person of Jesus has taken its place -- quite literally
-- that if you broke it into a hundred crumbs the living and entire
body of Jesus would be present in each, and that this is true of
each one of the millions of wafers (Eucharists) which are stored in
little safes on the altars of all the Catholic Churches in the
world. Pfew!
I say that in the earlier part of this century priests in
Buenos Aries or Rio or Lima would not have made a parade of that
belief in the streets The historic conflict of the Blacks and
Whites in Latin America had ended in an incomplete but considerable
victory for the Liberals. The middle-class was substantially
skeptical. In 1906 the Freethinkers of South America held a
Congress in Buenos Aires. The delegates crowded the Teatro
Argentino. Argentinians of high position (Vice-Admiral Howard, Soto
and Alvarez of the Council of War, etc.) supported them. The
Presidents of Guatemala and Uruguay sent telegrams of
congratulations in the name of their republics. The Women's
Committee, of 50 members, included some the most brilliant writers
in South America. The leading papers treated the Congress with
respect . . .
And in 1934 the public men of Argentina were falling Over each
other to kiss Pacelli's ring. What had happened? The Reds, of
course. Socialism spread through South America with extraordinary
rapidity after the last war, and the news of the revolution in
Spain in 1932 gave a powerful impetus to the movement. So impartial
an observer as the famous woman traveller Rosita Forbes said in
1933 after a prolonged visit that "it is possible that the
organization and method's of Soviet Russia may be destined to
provide the machinery necessary to liberate the South American
Republics" (Eight Republics in search of a Future, p. 7.) In Peru,
she found that "the educated youth of Peru is in the hands of
Moscow." A minister who introduced an anti-Communist law in the
Chilean Congress was compelled to resign, and the government
refused to recognize degrees granted by Catholic universities. An
American merchant who had lived 25 years in Chile reported that
"Communism of the intellectual type" was very widespread. The
Alianza Popular Revolutionaria Americana (Apra) swept the
continent, and its leader would have become President of Peru but
for Black corruption of the vilest kind. The Rev. Dr. McKay, a
Protestant missionary in the Argentine, said that the Trade Unions
turned out any worker who supported the Church, that the workers
now commonly called a man they wanted to vituperate "you poor
Christ" (equivalent to the American "son of a lady-dog"), and that
one of their leaders said publicly that the sound of the word God
made him spew. I was editing the Militant Atheist in 1933 and gave
plenty of details of this sort.
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Pacelli to the rescue. Returning to the subject in the 'Appeal
to Reason' Library (No. 3) in 1935 I gave the symptoms of spreading
reaction and asked: "Will the struggle end as in Italy, Spain, and
Poland, in a coalition of all political parties with the Church
again Labor?" At the time Pacelli was still an obscure emissary of
the Vatican whose position as Secretary of State was according to
the Italian Press, not very secure. How bitterly we pay for not
watching the Black International more closely! In South America, as
in America and Britain and Italy and Germany, there were Socialist
leaders who said that the fight against the Church was over -- some
wanted friendly alliance with it -- and all attention must be
concentrated on the politico-economic struggle. And in the whole of
South America as in Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Czecho-
Slovakia, etc., within a year or two Socialism was bloodily trodden
underfoot and the Church was triumphant.
The change did not begin in 1934. The Blacks were already
organizing and intriguing everywhere, and futile revolts
strengthened their hands. But after 1934 the clerical-capitalist
revolution proceeded at a great pace. I have not a shred of proof
to offer that, Pacelli counted in the organization of this. Just
naughty suspicion, and you may please yourself whether you accept
it. I do not say that Pacelli intrigued to bring closer together
the heads of the Church and the heads of the army and state who in
every part of South America were shuddering before the Red Menace.
The only facts we know are that the situation was completely
transformed after 1934; that within a few years six of the ten
Republics of South America including Brazil and Peru, were
truculently Fascist, and even Argentina (where the priests have no
millions of Indians to stir up) and Chile were semi-Fascist; that
most of the Liberals had in fact lined up with the Church; and that
this coalition was first revealed on a large scale when Pacelli,
the arch-intriguer and hater of Socialism in every form had gone
from capital to capital and soldiers and statesmen knelt for his
blessing. You may want to go father than I do and believe that
Pacelli not only promoted the entire cordial of Liberal statesmen
and their traditional enemies, but encouraged also the leaders of
the millions of Italians and Germans, who, as the duped statesmen
have now found, were already secretly weaving their great plot.
Please yourself.
The upshot was that not only was "the menace of Bolshevism"
destroyed in South America but the Church got between ten and
twenty million apostates bullied into silence and their leaders
flung into jail. Figures are farcical in Latin America. In Mexico
a high official warned me privately that their published statement
that their population consisted of 4,000,000 Indians and 12,000,000
Mexicans might be turned the other way round. A careful recent
estimate is that there are 90,000,000 Indian's in South and Central
America. Few people seem to realize that these provide about one-
third of the total number of the Pope's real subjects. As in
Mexico, the majority of them would turn against the priests as soon
as they got encouragement to do so from their government. The
situation was closely parallel to that of Russia. Within another
ten years the great bulk of the 90,000,000 would be lost to the
Vatican. Are we asked to think that Pacelli scrupulously avoided
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THE RED POPE
political maneuvers that promised to avert that tragedy? Remember
the Irish revolutionaries confiding their plot to the Pope;
remember Dollfus's, Franco, Henlein, and others.
But we are concerned with actualities. The cream of the
Indians, of the millions of workers of such mixed blood that it is
time we dropped these racial distinctions, are the industrial
workers. The majority, we saw, had abandoned Rome, Add the
university youths and a large number of their professors and other
middle-class men and Liberals of the old school, and it will be
seen that Rome had to envisage an actual secession of between ten
and twenty millions. They are now back in the fold -- on paper.
They are bullied into silence and their most active representatives
are in jail. By the end of 1935 there were 10,000 political
prisoners in jail in Brazil alone. Yes, says the Catholic, the scum
who had recently organized a rebellion. So it was reported in
America. But the very impartial British 'Annual Register' (1935)
which gives the above figure adds: "Among these were university
professors and many other distinguished Brazilians belonging to the
best society" (p. 312). They were victims of the Black
International.
And by one of those blunders into which the brutally and
callousness of the agents of these Fascist governments are always
betraying them we learned that this Church-Wealth coalition is not
only using force but, as it has always done, using it savagely. The
Brazilian police arrested as spies two ladies of the British
aristocracy, Lady Hastings and Lady Cameron, who were visiting Rio.
Viscount Hastings wrote a letter to the London press (News-
Chronicle, July 14, 1936) on what they saw. It contained such
things as:
In the prison they saw men and women who had been so
badly beaten that they could only move with the greatest
difficulty; a man's wife had been beaten insensible in front
of him to make him confess; the hands of another man had been
mutilated by having iron spikes driven underneath the nails
... The day before my wife and sister were arrested, the
American boy Victor Baron was found dead in prison after
'questioning' . . .
Immutable Rome! So it was in France in the thirteenth century,
all over south Europe in the nineteenth, in Spain forty years ago,
and is now in many countries. If a mere working man, or even a
professor, had reported these things, moat people would say "Red
lies." There is obviously some use in Aristocrats.
In Mexico the struggle with the Church and the attempt of
Catholics in America to get intervention, which would certainly
mean war and annexation, had begun long before Pacelli became
Secretary of State. I am tracing the action of the Black
International not of Pacelli alone but I have written this earlier
history so fully elsewhere that I will not return to it. I need
repeat only about the acute conflict of 1926 that I was then in
Mexico and saw with what remarkable indifference the people
accepted what was mendaciously called the persecution of the
Church, and read articles by Mexican Catholic journalists in the
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THE RED POPE
leading Havana paper a little later expressing deep disgust with
the lies (executions of priests etc.) sent by the priests to the
Knights of Columbus, who zealously enlarged them and circulated
them in Wall Street. If you want a Catholic (or at all events pro-
Catholic) witness to this close alliance for years of American
Catholics. and Wall Street read George Seldes' 'The Vatican' (1934,
pp. 278-86). There was, of course, an outcry and the American
Catholic bishops published a letter denying that they were working
for armed intervention." They merely felt it their duty to "sound
a warning to Christian civilization that its foundations are being
attacked and undermined." God, they said would find a way to,
destroy the evil. By priests blowing trumpets, I suppose. A thinner
pretense of pacifism it would be hard to find. It has a Japanese
ring.
Pacelli did not go to Mexico, but the brilliant Church-Fascist
success that followed his visit to South America had echoes in the
north. In 1935 F.V. Williams, Al Smith's publicity agent, had a
revolting article in 'Liberty' (Aug. 24) calling for intervention.
A Mexican Catholic annihilated his statements in the 'Forum;' in
fact, they had been answered in advance by various visitors to
Mexico (World-Telegram, June 8, 1935, etc.) The Catholic Teeling
also admits that Catholics intrigued at Washington to get
intervention and that Msgr. Burke served as intermediary.
It is, at all events, true that from 1936 Pacelli included
Mexico in the list of countries in which he invited the great
powers to "extinguish" Bolshevism. It was so clearly a war-program
that I have never read even a Catholic attempt to give his words,
the slogan he sent through the whole Catholic world, any other
meaning. An innocent young nun or a Lord Halifax might suggest that
he "extinguish it by prayer." Is that what he meant when he sent
Cardinal Faulhaber, as we shall see, to beg Hitler to allow the
Church to cooperate with him in the good work? It was a war
program; a call to, as it has proved, the bloodiest war in history.
So who are the real Reds?
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