By this time we are all aware of the Communist ‘peril’ and ‘menace.’ But is it so clear who is imperilled? what is menaced? The fearsomeness of the unknown attends the very words ‘peril’ and ‘menace we feel that danger lurks unseen, that a hidden hand has sinister designs upon our pockets. Or alternately, the hidden hand is disbursing large sums of money sent from Moscow, much in the same manner as ‘the man in the moon,’ or a similar mysterious agent appeared at parliamentary elections to corrupt the enlightened but very limited electorate in the good old days of Eatanswill.

If we do not lie awake at nights pondering how the ‘peril’ can be averted and the ‘menace’ overthrown, it is from no lack of honest endeavour. We must be scared, it seems, if we are to realise what the Communists are after. We are to be scared fix:and after that told precisely where the danger lies. ‘wants to make your flesh creep,’ said the Fat Boy to old Mrs. Wardle in the arbour before he indicated the enormities of Miss Rachel. So we are to be thoroughly frightened by suggestions of secret conspiracy and dark plot, and then we shall be ready to go any lengths in the suppression of Communist propaganda and the imprisonment of Communists. The feeling that a plot exists is sufficient to create the vision of plotters, busy and all around us waiting the signal to commence their foul and bloody work. (Catholics of all people know what it means to be the victims of panic. In the atmosphere of fog and suspicion, how many of our Catholic martyrs were done to death!)