Joseph McCabe

“ It was also the day on which Hitler sent a German plane to Slovakia to bring to Berlin the Slovak priest who was to sell Czecho-Slovakia to him for thirty pieces of silver.
One reads in the biography of the new Pope by Ransom that during the week after his coronation Pacelli was so beset with problems that he gave only three hours to sleep every night. What the problems were we do not know, but the problem that was then agitating the whole civilized world, the problem on the solution of which the peace of the world depended in the opinion of all thoughtful men, was not one of them. ”

“ It was far from clear whether it would be a gain or a loss to transfer a couple of million Catholics, who were entirely free to have their Catholic institutions and schools under the Czechs, to Nazi control. It would please Hitler, but what was the worth of his promises? In regard to Slovakia the policy was clear. The dense mass of ignorant or illiterate or semi-literate Catholicism must be protected from Czech culture and progress by autonomy or, when this coincided with Hitler's policy, separation. ”

“ If either priests or statesmen or, as in the case of Italy and Germany, both demand a full birth rate of their people so that the over-crowded population will ooze over the frontiers into neighboring countries and multiply there until they become the majority, as Mexicans might in parts of the southern States and Japanese in parts of the eastern, they have no right whatever to either autonomy or special privileges. ”

“ There is no Catholic in Europe who would shed a tear to see the collapse of democratic political disorder and who would not sincerely welcome the fall of economic Liberalism, which has been denounced by the Pope's Leading ideologist because it misuses the working people in favor of a few capitalistic exploiters. ”

“ The Munich agreement was that Germany was to have those towns and districts on the fringe of Czecho-Slovakia in which there was a German majority. The self-determination of peoples is an admirable principle, but in application it needs to be watched carefully. ”

“ Hacha and his colleagues at least realized that it was vital to keep the three national elements of the State—Bohemia-Moravia Slovakia, and Ruthenia—together, and the priest, Father Hlinka who was the oracle and leader of the Catholic Slovaks, agreed. They wanted, in order to protect their faith from the decay which it suffered amongst the Czechs, some sort of autonomy or Home Rule while remaining within the national unity. ”

“ But the question's that arose in Czecho-Slovakia were just of the kind that calls for ecclesiastical intervention. The Vatican has, besides its Secretariat of State, a number of "congregations", with large staffs, which correspond to the departments (trade, education, etc.) of ordinary countries. To these congregation's questions from all parts of the Catholic world are not only permitted. They are encouraged, for the business helps to maintain the Pope's vast revenue and the swarm of Italian clerical parasites who fatten in Rome. ”

“ Over-population, deliberately encouraged, was one of the chief pretexts—it was in this case not true—used by the arch- criminals to reconcile their own people to the idea of aggressive war and to secure the sympathy of muddle-headed humanitarians of the George Lansbury type abroad. ”