Places and Persons

...They will do their best to smash society even when they have no vaguest notion of what they wish to substitute for the system they will to destroy...

...I was told to say that next only to the supreme spiritual interests which engage the attention of the Pope and his assistants (having to do with the eternal destinies of human souls) three major problems confronted the world: first, international peace...

...The soil is rich for the seeds of Bolshevist agitation...

...still less did I wish to appear to be pouring oil upon fires that nobody save social incendiaries desire to set blazing: the devouring flames of discontent and anger among the poor and the blamelessly unemployed...

...possibly to meet in some great conflagration...

...secondly, the persecution of religion in Mexico...

...Both the "governments" of Russia and of Mexico (for "governments" translate, accurately, "oligarchical dictatorships") solemnly assured the rest of the world that their victims were "counter-revolutionists," and had transgressed their sacred "constitutions and laws...

...If Christian leaders do not appear with such a hopeful and reasonable doctrine, it is certain that wide and eager will be the hearing given to the apostles of Bolshevism, or to the preachers of less logical but equally erroneous nostrums of social betterment...

...or a job for Jimmy or Jane, or Mary or Bob, thrown out of work without fault of their own...

...It was news of a startling character: a bulletin from the first-line trenches, so to speak, where the opening engagements of what may become a social war, or at least the skirmishes and demonstrations of a war, are now happening...

...They will organize discontent...

...each one begging for help to secure a job...

...but which tomorrow may crash through into open and even worldwide disorder...

...Nearly three years ago, in the pages of the New York Times (October 2, 1927) I wrote what I was told to tell the world (so far as my feeble voice could reach it) by no less a priest than the Pontiff of the Catholic Church, through his cardinal Secretary of State...

...Brown, solemnly accepted the preposterous statements...

...They will put arms in the hands of the legions of the discontented...

...Certain is it also that many of the new evangels will not stop at stirring up discontent...

...Moreover, there is discontent...

...So it goes...

...for the new invaders press upon us not only from without our walls, they are within the city...

...But our religious forces, our religious leaders, are called upon to do more than thunder against the invaders...

...Among these clergymen, and occasionally among the laymen (who mostly were Catholics) there were some who were students of Pope Leo XIII's encyclicals, and were keenly aware that the principles and the program announced in the social reconstruction letter of the American bishops, issued just after the world war, had not been promoted as widely and as vigorously as the times demanded that they should be...

...however many of those readers may disbelieve in or even oppose the religion of the priests, no sane observer of the Catholic clergy would be likely to deny that the priests are very close to the common people...

...But the New York Times is the best newspaper in the world -in the sense of being the best repository of news- and it gave an important page to publish the views of one who, as George Bernard Shaw told me at the time, had the right to be listened to attentively no matter what subject he discussed...

...and not only is Europe threatened, but the whole world as well: and what is much more important, we are threatened, here at home...

...Now, what this prudent, experienced and very wise prelate told me-he who considers anything even resembling social revolution to be a worse evil than the bad conditions which revolutionaries try to cure with violent or drastic measures-was confirmed over and over again in the course of the journey to the cities named above...

...Or will a few here and there recognize a voice from under the surface of superficiality which smothers our real lives most of the time, and bestir themselves, and seek leaders, or be leaders themselves...

...know what is going on in the depths of society...

...For, some weeks ago, I was in possession of information which indicated that there would be demonstrations and riots of the unemployed, incited or encouraged by agents of the Communists, in many places: and everybody knows that these have since occurred...

...And they are being scattered lavishly...

...What I learned in the cities I have named, came first to my attention in New York, before I left on my journey...

...Whatever the statistics of unemployment may say," he told me, "whether the number of idle workers runs into many millions or not, I do not know...

...And certain elements of "big business," through highly paid "public-relations counsels," have fought the efforts to bring the truth about Russia to public attention...

...They merely set forth facts which they had observed, leaving it to others to draw their own conclusions, or to act upon such conclusions...

...and the world outside, except for a few religious people among the Jews, the Orthodox, the Catholics, the Anglicans in England, and some of the leaders of other religious bodies in America, like Bishop Manning, and Dr...

...that they know the poor...

...nevertheless, it is an uncontrovertible fact that Moscow and its agents take the whole world for the field of their Red apostolate, and are busy wherever there is a chance-and where is there not today?-to work beneath the surface of society in order to destroy it...

...They are mere pawns in the hands of the Bolsheviks...

...Had I written the article, I might have won for myself the dubious honor of a prophet of disaster...

...When, in particular, will our easy-going American Catholics wake up, they upon whom rests the duty of following their leader, Pope Pius XI, in this new crusade of Catholic action...

...but I do know, and so do most other pastors in New York, that not for many years have there been so many people out of work, and in such keen distress because of unemployment...

...However, my first informant was neither a supporter nor an opponent of any particular social system: he was and is an experienced, prudent, devoted Catholic priest: the pastor of a large congregation, one who is closely and intimately in touch not only with the spiritual state and problems of his people, but also with their material cares and worries...

...thirdly, the menace of Bolshevism to all forms of civilization throughout the world...

...The "liberals" proved how hopelessly they have lost the power and the justification that once might have been attached to that ambiguous and (today) positively misleading term...

...In short, under that surface there is war going on: at present a war of creeds and wills...

...We are facing a situation like unto that faced by Europe when the Mohammedan invasion threatened to overwhelm Christianity...

...One of these gentry prevented the calling of a mass meeting of various religious bodies...

...They should meet the most practical arguments of the destroyers by reforming social conditions...

...But the greater number of my informants were not particularly well informed or interested in the Papal plans for applying Christian principles to the practical solution of the problems of today...

...Scores of priests had been slain in Mexico, then running red with blood and flame...

...And upon these smoldering sparks of sullen anger, of justifiable discontent, are being blown the winds of the revolutionary spirit...

...And if they have a chance to take root among our people: among decent, Christian families, not unused to periods of poverty-think of the ranker soil ready for that dreadful sowing among the millions of people in this country who are without the steadying factors of religion...

...Shaw might have added that the Vatican is the best-informed centre of real news in all the world...

...Many European papers commented gravely, were deeply concerned...

...When will our complacent, easy-going, bewildered American people wake up...

...Or such a situation as the western world faced when the French Revolution flooded Europe with its armies...

...I believe that if today or tomorrow there appeared a man of magnetic personality, an apostle of social revolt, fires would soon flame up in many places...

...The poor are asking why they should suffer so, when the rich multiply...

...Our Saint Vincent de Paul society cannot possibly get enough money to help the really desperate cases...

...Through my reception rooms last week there passed nearly two hundreds of my parishioners...

...and while certain unscrupulous financial interests may labor-as they do -to discredit all attempts at social reform by tarring them all with the black brush of the creed of Lenin and Stalin...

...Who will come with some hopeful doctrine of reform out from under the surface of decent reticence and restraint now covering the misery and needless suffering of millions of honest men and women who desire nothing better than to work, to receive proper wages for their work, to pay their own way and put aside a little something for sickness and old age, and yet who are cast out of work, they and their children, by hundreds and then by millions, because the intricate social machinery of production and selling, for some mysterious reason which seems beyond the comprehension even of the supposed experts in such matters, begins to falter...

...Society or individuals may very sensibly and rightly react from wild or dangerous social theories just as society or individuals may wisely or unwisely react from or to conservative theories or systems...

...for hundreds of families that generally would not be classed among the poor-respectable people, usually quite safe and fairly prosperous- are now sinking down among the indigent class...

...I like to think that The Commonweal readers are more than complacent, take-things-easily Catholics...

...Well-informed people know that they were merely preludes and curtain-raisers to much more serious social dramas -if not tragedies-that are almost (but, thank God, not quite) inevitable...

...Mammon does not like to have its work disturbed by the tears of the widows and orphans, or the cries of the tortured victims of the persecution in Russia...

...there is sullen anger, in addition to bewilderment and distress...

...They believe with Nietzsche that temples must be destroyed before temples may be erected again...

...And while the wildest exaggerations may be spread about this or that particular strike or demonstration being directed or financed from Moscow...

...All the Catholic bishops of Russia had been killed, imprisoned or exiled...

...But it is worse, rather, it may be worse if action is not taken in time to prevent it...

...but many professional and business men, talking not for quotation, but in confidence, under the surface, had much the same thing to say...

...But I am afraid that only brief and passing attention was given to what the Pope said three years ago...

...And not only did the clergy (and there were bishops among them) tell me harrowing stories of the distress among their people, and the increase of crime, and the spread of anger...

...They are potentially the leaders of the masses...

...Reactions and reactionaries, of course, as a matter of fact, are not necessarily to be regarded in an invidious sense: although sentimental or unthinking sympathizers with all sorts of experimental sociological ideas almost unvariably do use those words in that sense...

...And he escaped, and now in Rome he labors on with preparing the apostolate to Russia...

...They are mining it, they are poisoning the wells...

...But the Pope does not merely speak: he acts, and he called to his presence the general of the Jesuits, and with him Father Michael d'Herbigny, the great authority on Russia and the near East...

...The Pope's views were considered to have so little human interest and news importance that the newspaper syndicate which had offered me $10,000 to get an interview with the Holy Father about "flaming youth" and the length of flappers' skirts, and other really live stuff, rejected my authorized interview, which under their contract with me they were quite legally entitled to do...

...Whatever the opinions of my readers may be as to the theology preached by Catholic priests...

...Will what I am now writing be read with any more concern than is given to the sports page or the society column...

...They should take the lead in seeing to it that the rights and needs of the poor, of the workers, of the inarticulate and honest but angered masses of the people are recognized fully and frankly...

...and not only is it the very poor who ask that difficult question...

...but the American press passed it by...

...Places and Persons UNDER THE SURFACE By MICHAEL WILLIAMS RETURNING to New York recently from a business journey which took me to the cities of Boston, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New Bedford, I was moved to write the article I am writing now: but I refrained because I did not wish to seem an alarmist, or a pessimist...

...Yet shortly before that very time, hundreds if not thousands of clergymen-of the Jewish, the Orthodox, and the Roman Catholic faiths-had been tortured, slaughtered, imprisoned or exiled by the Bolshevists in Russia...

...Who will take the lead...

...Father D'Herbigny, under obedience to the Pope, and under secrecy imposed as well upon his general, was sent to Berlin to be consecrated a bishop by Archbishop Pacelli, then the papal nuncio to Germany, and after that he made his way in disguise into Russia, where he consecrated twelve Catholic priests as bishops: the twelve apostles, one might dare to say, of the rebirth of the ruined Catholic Church in holy Russia...

...that they are aware of the problems of the poor, and that under the surface of society, long before the newspapers hear the first murmurs of trouble, they in their confessionals, and their pastoral visits, and in their presbytery parlors (odd word to describe those austere rooms...

...Fifty million militant atheists pouring out of Russia five years from now, joined by the discontented of the world outside, would be a menace compared to which Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, or Mohammed were as straws in the wind...

...And it came not from Communists, nor from radical critics of our social system: it came from a stoutly conservative source, from what some might term, with an invidious meaning, a reactionary source...

...Wipe out preventible and justifiable social discontent, and whatever Moscow may be able to do at home need little concern the rest of the world-save only that charity demands that all that it is possible for those outside Russia to do to aid the victims of the tyranny within shall be done: and promptly done...