We Christians of 1937 are the spectators of a terrible drama, a drama which confronts our consciences with agonizing problems. This drama is the disastrous struggle for power between two rival complex ideologies which have come to be known as “Right” and “Left.” Already this conflict is sapping the life-blood of Spain; already it is breeding rancour and hatred of brother for brother throughout the civilized world, and threatens the very foundations of civilization with irreparable disaster.

Elsewhere (in my Lettre sur l’Indépendance) I have sketched some of the characteristic traits which seem to me, as a student of philosophy and of current political trends, to be the distinguishing features of “Right” and “Left.”

To those observations one might add that in concrete experience, which is for the most part in actual fact an experience of misrepresentation (for misrepresentation pertains to man and leaves him only at the price of supreme intellectual discipline—omnis homo mendax), in concrete experience, I say, a particular and typical misrepresentation, closely bound up with the complex question which we are considering, makes its appearance.

The noble quality of the sentiments of this book will account for its having received on the whole a far more indulgent treatment by the reviewers—even by those writing on behalf of the Churches—than it properly deserves. There might be a strong temptation to follow this general lead, if it were any less easy than it is, while attacking the book, to maintain entire respect for the author. The doctrine is completely untrue to the principles of the Anglo-Catholic Creed which the author professes. It is in fact but a travesty of Christian doctrine. But this clearly is a mischance that has come about through an undisciplined cavalry charge by the Left wing of the author’s mind. A reviewer can take his stand comfortably between the author and his book.

Christ as portrayed in these pages shows Himself to be first and foremost a socio-political revolutionary. An order of social well-being, of justice and plenty achieved for all men, does not appear to Him as an effect that should naturally follow upon and be as the fulfilment and expression of the spiritual life He brings to men, but rather as an essential constitutive means for the formation of a state of “salvation.” That is to say, it is only by a successfully achieved reordering of social conditions that the salvation He offers can become a “saving” thing at all. If He is to be called our Saviour (in any sense that He Himself would approve) it can only be through a salvation which in fact delivers our bodies in this world from the evils of injustice and poverty and the rest.

Some little time ago the present writer was ordered by his Prior to speak at an Inter-denominational Anti-War demonstration on Hampstead Heath. The demonstration was no doubt due to a widespread opinion that, all physical and political expedients for ensuring peace having failed, the only hope for peace would be through moral means. This opinion bore on its face the outline of sanity and almost of inevitability. Indeed so sane and inevitable did it seem, and does it still seem, that even men who profess to believe that religion is the opium of the people are often found blaming the ministers of religion for not bringing in, as by a miracle, the reign of peace.

The difficulty I felt in being obedient to the command of obedience was not a distaste for any command. Still less was it a disagreement with the belief that no physical nor political expedients but only moral expedients will end war. But I felt a great disinclination to speak on an interdenominational peace platform; and that, firstly, because of an inevitable conclusion and, secondly, because of an undeniable observation.

The inevitable conclusion was that if war could be ended only by moral means the chief agents in ending it could only be the moral expert or professionals, namely the ministers of religion.

The undeniable observation was that nowhere was there such a state of war and such a need of peace as in the sphere of religion.

Whatever opinion Catholics may hold about the utility of the World Conference on Faith and Order recently held at Edinburgh we must at least recognize the witness it bears to a deep and growing determination on the part of Christians of widely differing allegiances to bring to an end the disastrous divisions of Christendom. This determination has given rise to a new way of approach to the problem of re-union, a new technique in dealing with the differences which divide Christians. Controversy of the old type between antagonists, who laboured without any attempt at mutual understanding or sympathy to prove themselves entirely right and their opponents entirely wrong, is of comparatively little use in attaining truth. Its place has been taken by the way of affirmation which first explores and emphasizes every possible point of agreement and by so doing clearly marks off the points at which divergence begins and how far it extends. Experience shows that such divergence is often due more to the partial or faulty presentation of truth than to perversity of mind or will in accepting it. The careful probing of historical causes can do much to prepare the way for reconciliation, by a frank acknowledgment of shortcomings where they exist and a sympathetic understanding of the false emphasis and consequent error to which such shortcomings have often given rise. This is the human and preparatory element in the work of the Reunion of Christendom; the necessary spade-work which must be done before the soil is ready for the Holy Spirit to produce the fruits of reconciliation—a perfect union of heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

One of the minor tragedies of the Spanish Civil War lies in the fact that Professor Dempf of Bonn was not able to give at Santander in 1936 his projected course of lectures on “Christian Political Philosophy in Spain.” It is however no small compensation that he should have published these lectures, which are thereby communicated at present to all who understand German and, it is to be hoped, later to English-speaking readers.

And behind this there is a greater hope yet. In reading the book one cannot refrain from asking again and again, “Will Spain which has so magnificent a Christian tradition, which has produced so many of the world’s greatest political theorists, succeed this time after the agony of revolution and martyrdom in realizing the noblest ideas in practice and returning to the authentic Christian and Catholic outlook in politics?” Or will it be as before—a noble idealism existing side by side with an unintelligent hard realism personified in the classical figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Dr. Dempf is content to remind us of the historic Spanish paradox, to express the hope that the Spanish people will rediscover themselves after the thunders of the civil war and then, as if preparing the way for return, to indicate with the insight and conciseness of a master the teaching of the great Spanish political theorists. For only by returning to the ideas built up by these men will Spain be able to re-establish a healthy political life.

It is commonly thought that gnostic systems are grounded upon a dualist conception of the origin of the Universe, but this is subject to question. Gnosticism was the source of many religious and philosophical movements in nowise marked by dualism, suffice it to recall Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and later the mediaeval adepts of secret teachings who, through many perversions, were seeking for the one Divine Absolute. Dualistic elements, more or less marked in different gnostic systems, co-existed with a monistic element often predominant.

In Christianity pure dualism, i.e., the essential and primordial opposition between two distinct principles, has existed only within Manicheism which owed its origin to Persian Mazdeism. Before Manes this Persian dualism had only an indirect influence upon the great syncretistic movement of the Hellenic world. Actually this term—dualism— is applicable only there where the principle of evil is considered to be in its origin independent of its opposite—the principle of good. In the gnostic systems the evil principle is the outcome of a slow evolution proceeding from a unique First Principle. These systems are essentially monistic, differing one from another precisely by the way they conceive this creative evolution resulting in an inferior world and its final reintegration into the Godhead. The ancient gnosis, with its multiple systems, was an effort to connect the actuality of the material world with the divine transcendency. Modern Russian thinkers are concerned with the same problems. Gnosticism originated outside Christianity, but borrowed its soteriological doctrine as a basis for speculations closer to pantheism than to dualism, and it is within this pantheist evolution that the idea of Sophia, link between the unknowable and the actual, originated.

The business of preparation is complete. The men know what work lies in front of them, if life is spared, before the sun, now setting behind the steep roofs and towers of Bailleul, rises again above the fortified ridge of Messines, still held by the enemy. As the column leaves its high resting place on Mount Ravetsburg and winds on towards the darkening East, a ground mist veils the sordid straggle of wreckage in the valley, where heaped debris of earth, metal and smouldering timber had once been trains of linked trucks loaded with explosives. A chance bomb dropped from the air yesterday had blown wagons, wheels, rails, sheds and men skywards in blasts of flame.

The thick dust stirred by the movement of many men fills eyes, mouth and nose, for the grass underfoot that once carpeted the country lane has been crushed out of life, and the earth that fed it has been powdered by the tread of innumerable feet. Yet the June evening is still redolent with hawthorn; and the scent of the hedgerows softens the acrid impact of sweat. Shellfire has not yet violated the virginity of trees in full leaf; and the eye lingers on their shapeliness as if to stamp their form on the mind. Within an hour the memory of them will seem as fantastic as the prospect of the trees further ahead which stand with stark limbless trunks pared of life-giving foliage by the engines of war.

Comparing his own book with M. Maritain's Art and Scholasticism, Mr. Adler says of the latter that it is “for me the best analysis of fine art.” He continues: “The scope of that is more general than this. I am concerned primarily with one problem and, moreover, with that problem as it occurs in the special case made by the cinema as a fine art. The attempt to apply everything that is relevant in the intellectual tradition to this contemporary problem necessarily requires some interpretation and extension of the basic texts I have relied upon. To this extent, and only to this extent, my work has been constructive.” These words of the author fully outline the scope and nature of his work, but not I feel, with the right emphasis.

The book, with its seven hundred pages of texts and notes, may be only “an interpretation and extension of basic texts,” but the result is almost of a different order to the sources of his texts. Without wishing in the least to underestimate the importance of his sources, it would be more accurate to see in this a work of a different kind, and something of equal importance.

We all know that Great Britain is suffering from some ill. We are all becoming rather tired of all the examinations of this fact and of all the cures. Generally we find that the “doctors” are only concerned with bolstering up present economic order by removing the more glaring evils. We find Communists and Fascists all opposing capitalism with another form of capitalism in which they will be the capitalists.

Very rarely do we find anyone questioning the fundamental issues on which Great Britain and the Empire have been built.

We know we have lost a great proportion of our export trade, but we hope to recover it. Few of us ask if this is possible.

Now we have a distributist examining the sick—Great Britain, and wisely pointing out the fallacies of the treatment prescribed by other doctors. In the first part of this booklet we find all the causes; “Small minority possessing property and the vast proletarianised majority ...” “The deadly effect of urbanization possesses a profound biological significance.” “Only a minute fraction of the population is engaged in work on the land ...” “England’s industrial monopoly is on the wane ...” “The beginning of a process which will end in England possessing but a fraction of its present population; and of that fraction, half will be mentally deficient ...”

Work and Property To the Editor of Blackfriars,

Sir,—Fr. Ceolfrid Heron’s very valuable and appreciative article in the August Blackfriars, on my book Work and Property, invites a short comment. Misunderstanding seems to arise from my advocacy of “collective ownership” by the “workers.” It is thought that such advocacy is out of line with adverse criticism of industrialism and the “leisure state.” People ask: how can you be in favour of collectivism and of a return to responsible workmanship at the same time? How can you believe in distributed property and also acquiesce in industrialism? The answer is easy. I believe in workers’ ownership of means of production and distribution. I believe in the village blacksmith (still one or two left) owning his own workshop and tools. I believe in the farmer owning his own farm and implements.

But what about the Great Western Railway? That also is an affair of workmen. Is it a bad thing? Is it immoral? Does the Pope refuse to go by train? And what about all the other great industrial enterprises? I may not like the kind of world they imply. I may be able to show that it is all wrong and leading to war and disaster—cheap amusements and conveniences, vulgarity on every hand, not to mention the corruption of family life, the destruction of humane culture and an increasing madness of international rivalry. But what of it? Does any theologian of importance condemn railway trains or telephones or tinned food? Does any theologian condemn the factory system, as such, or say anything against the wage system? As far as my information goes theologians ask for no more than good trade unionists do—higher wages, shorter hours, better canteens, insurance against ill-health and unemployment and possibly a share of the profits large enough to enable employees to buy a bit of property (if there's any for sale).