‘If good people feel disgust at a nation which—simply with a view to extending its dominion—spontaneously provokes a war with neighbouring States which are at peace with it and have done them no harm—then I can only say that I applaud their praiseworthy feelings.’—De Civitate Dei, IV, xiv.

Remarkably little seems to have been written on this subject. Yet Augustine is quite justly described as the Father of the Philosophy of History,’ and even if he had not treated of the subject almost ‘ex professo ‘—as we hope to show—no remarks of his on the part war has played in the history of the world could fail to be of interest. So far the only discussion on his attitude to the problems are a Paper by Fr. Vincent Scully, C.R.L., in the Clergy Review for Feb., 1932, and also Ypres de la Brière, La Conception de la Paix et de la Guerre chez S. Augustin, Revue de la Philosophic, 1916. See too R. Regout, S.J., La doctrine de la guerre juste de S. Augustin ii nos jours d'apres les théologiens et les canonistes catholiques, 1935, though the author is more concerned with Franciscus de Victoria who has, he thinks, broken with scholastic teaching on the requisites for a just war.

The above passage—so peculiarly apropos to the events of to-day—shows us what the Bishop of Hippo’s reactions to the present crisis would have been. Yet to gentle, peace- loving Augustine, ever absorbed in the needs spiritual as well as temporal of his flock, war was-—as indeed it must be to every thinking man—-something unspeakably horrible.

I am not attempting to discuss here the wider problems of evacuation taken in its most general sense. The general scheme and its results have come in for much adverse criticism both in the secular press and in our catholic papers. It seems only fair, then, that one should give some of the good effects where one has found them. Of course it is only in the normal order of things that first things come first with Catholics. So we make no apology for the fact that in the case of children evacuated from our catholic schools it is with their religious welfare that we are primarily concerned. Not that we think the material welfare of the child to be unimportant. It is merely considered in its proper place. For convenience I shall, however, take this less important aspect first.

The evacuees came from the danger areas, namely the large industrial cities with their congested conditions of life, and from crowded seaports. Such places are unhealthy not only in war time, and for fear of German bombers. When one thinks, then, of the money that is spent in an ever-increasing amount, year by year, in peace time, in bringing children from the worst of such areas into the healthy surroundings of seaside or countryside; and that the evacuation scheme did this very thing on a wholesale scale—for all children, and not merely for a week or two, but indefinitely—it seems evident from this, the point of view of national health and fitness, that the scheme deserved more support from the public generally.

As so often in history, so in our time, a gross disorder in Christendom was heralded by a wave of anti-Semitic persecution.

Had we been used to thinking of Christendom as an entity, we should have been more alarmed when this happened. The Jews are a sign, a witness. Mediaeval consciousness was tormentingly aware of the presence of these strangers with its sublime or sinister meaning. It was angry with them: the Jews whose conversion was to precede the Second Coming delayed the kingdom of glory by their refusal. They stood for the official sign of disbelief, but also for God’s answer to it; they were man’s denial of the Incarnation, yet the Incarnation had made their wounds the wounds of Christ.

Was it part of their business to harry the Christian conscience? Did not their spiritual pride quicken humility? Was not their lack of faith somehow a testing of the fruits of faith? Did they not even mysteriously escape God’s condemnation so long as there was an excuse for not recognising His Son in those who should manifest Him? Perhaps they were like hard seeds left in a wintry soil, closed up until the water of baptism had softened it and charity had made it gentle for the slow shoots to break out into the daylight of faith. This might not happen until the end of the world; meanwhile, the world had to suffer it and be prevented from crystalising into mineral perfection.

There are many puzzling features about this war. For instance: how is it that the Germans appear to have accomplished all they wanted so far in double-quick time? How is it that there is a powerful fifth column not only in every allied country, but also in every neutral country?

To provide an answer to questions of this kind, one must try and establish the true nature of the war.

In spite of what the communists say, this is not a war of rival imperialisms. It is not even a war of Great Britain versus Germany—a war of rival nations. It is a religious war—anyhow on the part of Germany. The reason why the Germans are prepared to sacrifice everything for victory, and were willing to dispense with most of the amenities and comforts of civilisation for years before they actually launched their attack on the world, is that they were buoyed up by great spiritual force and religious fanaticism. Spiritual force can only be met with spiritual force. Even if we possessed parity in numbers and equipment and were deficient in spiritual force, we could not beat the Germans. Islam, in the days when it was a young, militant, missionary religion, nearly succeeded in conquering the whole of Europe and destroying its civilization. There were moments when it seemed that nothing short of a miracle could succeed in holding the invading hordes at bay and preventing them from capturing the whole Mediterranean basin and most of Central Europe. But the miracle happened, and like all miracles it was in the first and last instance a change in the spiritual order of events.

The ordinary Christian is apt to wonder at the traditional teaching of theologians and spiritual writers on the two ways of living a Christian life. He hears of the active and contemplative lives, but to which of the two, he asks himself, does he belong? Of course, his life is one long activity; but it would not seem to be precisely Christian activity. His days are spent in earning his living, and what little time he has for himself he uses for his personal recreation. Must he, therefore, conclude that his life does not come into the Christian scheme of things, that it is neither active nor contemplative? Then again, he remembers how Martha hurried about the house in Bethany; but Mary sat still at His feet. It seems that the rebuke is turned towards him: ‘Martha, Martha, thou art careful and art troubled about many things. But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her’ (Luke x, 41-42). How distant it all seems, how remote from his own life. And what chance has he got of practising the one thing necessary, tvhich would seem to be the life of contemplation? But he recollects perhaps how St. Paul, and the Fathers of the Church after him, taught that variety is necessary for the perfection of the Mystical Body which has some members for more abundant honour and some for less honourable functions: he is perfect if he fills his perfect place in that Body. But he does not appreciate the idea of living perpetually among the second rate.

The Franciscan Bonaventure of Bagnorea and the Dominican Thomas Aquinas are typical of their respective Orders.

St. Bonaventure has been described as ‘one of the most lovable figures in the whole history of mediaeval thought, the great doctor of mystical contemplation, the most perfect exponent of Franciscan theology, that is of a theology thoroughly imbued with the religious genius of St. Francis of Assisi.’ St. Thomas has been characterized as the architect of the most perfect philosophical synthesis, ‘one of the three greatest metaphysicians who ever existed,’ whose only love was the quest for and the championing of truth, unice veritatis amator, the most eminent personification of St. Dominic’s ideal, that is, to uphold, to spread and to defend the Truth.

If it is true that St. Francis never condemned learning for itself, it is equally true that he had no desire to see it developed in his Order. The pursuit of learning was always considered by St. Francis to be more dangerous than useful, and desired it neither for himself nor the members of his Order. His personal influence, profound as it was, did not, however, and could not prevail against the pressure of facts; and the Franciscans soon realized the necessity of developing theological studies.

Because it expresses the ideal at which all must aim, the idea of perfection has always found its place in Christian thought. In the first centuries of vigorous faith strengthened in persecution there was less need for the intellectual systematization that was to come much later. Our Saviour did not present His disciples with a complete and coherent body of abstract truths. His doctrinal discourses and discussions had the practical purpose of teaching the way to salvation, and it was the first preoccupation of the Church to preach Jesus crucified. In the course of the centuries the living Church, faced with controversies and doctrinal extravagances, would find it necessary—relying on the promise of divine assistance—to define the implications of the teaching of Christ, and this in turn would make a fuller synthesis possible and even necessary. In the meantime the different obstacles to the Christian life encountered by men of different ages and cultures inevitably led them to stress different elements in the fullness of the Christian life. The Fathers of the Desert had escaped from a profoundly corrupt society, and as a consequence they emphasized the need for penance, and purity of heart, and avoidance of sin, so that the conception of perfection which can be disengaged from their lives and writings is of a more negative character; the positive side of Christian life is not absent, but it is less in relief.

Few words are more ambiguous than ‘liberalism.’ Liberals of the Manchester school invoked liberalism in their efforts to liberate economic activity from state control, whereas modern liberals are even more anxious than Socialists to extend the sphere of the state’s activities. When Lord Shaftesbury, the Conservative, introduced the Factory Acts to liberate small children from the tyranny of the machines, John Bright and Cobden protested in the name of liberalism against any attempt to fetter the economic activities of the factory owners. Towards the end of the century, Mr. Lloyd George, in the name of Liberalism, imposed compulsory insurance on the nation.

My father’s Liberalism was derived not from Manchester, but from Nazareth. He was one of the last survivors of those Victorians who were Christian Liberals as opposed to secular Liberals. The Liberalism of the convinced Christian must always be qualified by the conclusions which he draws from the great premise that man is made in the image of God, and therefore has rights which no dictator and no democratic majority can over-ride. Secular Liberalism, on the other hand, with its deification of the ‘General Will,’ inevitably leads to the servile state. If man is nothing more than first cousin to the chimpanzee there is no reason why a dictator or a dictatorial majority should not put him behind bars. It is only man’s supernatural estate which alone guarantees his personal dignity and his inalienable rights.

In these last months England, individualistic, active, bustling England, has been called upon to defend for Europe, and for the world, the precious treasure of Christian Culture. That culture has, however, been handed down to us, not by an active, utilitarian philanthropy characteristic of all that is not mere self-seeking in England to-day, but by the tradition of Christian contemplation incarnate in the contemplative orders of the Church, and in particular in the Order of St. Benedict. England has become permeated with that American pragmatism which discountenances contemplation as useless, and at best she retains a certain attachment to ‘useless’ knowledge and to art only as the remnant of the pagan classical period of enlightenment that forsook Christianity and the supernatural order and adopted a purely natural type of contemplation and culture. If the British victory for which we hope and pray is, therefore, to prove itself worthy of its noble cause it would be necessary for the British citizen to return to a more integral Christian life which should include a contemplative culture that is basically supernatural.

Divine praise and adoration form the heart of religion. As the plot gives life and meaning to the varied characters and actions in the novel, so adoration co-ordinates the many and varied elements of religion and gives them life. And by religion we mean something more than looking pious on Sundays or giving half-a-crown to a beggarman. Religion is not a vestment put over the individuality of the man, nor is it a particular type of action; it is not even the special preserve of man. He may like to think that he alone of all creation can praise God and that the rest of nature is irreligious, but if he does so he will delude himself. For religion pierces to the very depths of being, not merely of man's being, but of all created being. According to St. Thomas, to reverence the one God for one specific reason is the proper action of religion, and that one specific reason is that God is the first principle of creation and of the government of all things. God the creator and director of the universe is the object of religion, so that the whole universe, according to the most fundamental principles of its being, takes some part in religion. God created the universe for his glory, and the universe as a whole, not man alone, glorifies him as its Creator and Governor.

A yearning for lasting peace is the common property of all times and of all peoples, and finds expression in all religions. It can be found in the conception underlying the Golden Age and in that of the Garden of Eden, just as in the eschatological idea of heavenly peace.

Christianity, as the sum total of truth, proclaims ‘peace on earth’ in the Christmas message to ‘men of good will.’

We, who are living twenty years after the world conflagration and in the midst of a new one, or rather in the re-kindling of the old, have a special duty to reflect how best wars can be prevented and a durable peace maintained. Our times, in fact, abound in such ideas and projects.

There has probably never been a war in history during which peace and its permanent organization have been so much discussed. Indeed, there has probably never been a time in the world’s history when a great turning point has been so clearly recognized and consciously experienced by so many contemporaries.

If we disregard the day-dreams of pacifists which escape from the reality of the problem into misguided asceticism or into the heresy of Gnosticism, we shall see that the ideas and schemes offering lasting peace to the world are concerned with agreements between nations, with the foedus among peoples, with federalism. Whether these effiorts appear as a reform of the League of Nations or call themselves the ‘Federal-Union’ or ‘Pan-Europe’ movement, they all aim, by some form of agreement, at banishing war from the world.

The Communion of Saints is an article of faith recalled daily in the Creed, and its acceptance is implied in most common acts of religion, prayers to the saints in Heaven, prayers for the souls in Purgatory, prayers for one another. These practical and frequent applications of this article of faith, however, seldom seem to rouse curiosity as to the implication of the belief itself. Yet its importance in the ordinary things of Christian life gives meaning, for instance, to the feast of All Saints. The latter is more than a makeweight feast for all the saints who cannot otherwise be fitted into the calendar. It is, in a sense, our own feast; it is a reminder of the capabilities for grace which we all possess; it is a counsel to see more profound possibilities in the familiar sides of our daily life.

The principle of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints is enunciated in the Catechism of the Council of Trent: ‘Every pious and holy action done by one belongs and is profitable to all through charity which seeketh not her own.’

Belief in the holy Catholic Church is required on precisely the same terms and for the same reasons as is belief in the other mysteries and dogmas of the faith, such as the Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation. A passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the Confession of St. Peter, provides a good analogy for focussing the Mystery of the Church. Our Lord asks of His disciples concerning Himself: ‘Whom do men say that the Son of Man is?’ The different answers given: John the Baptist, Elias, Jeremias, one of the prophets, imply agreement in one thing, namely that Jesus Christ is a man, evidently a religious man and seemingly one who comes front God. Those Jews who made these judgments were right in confessing the humanity of Christ; they were wrong in not distinguishing Him from other men. For them He was only a man, though worthy to be compared with the great religious figures of their history. But He was also truly God and the Son of God. It is the recognition of this profound truth by St. Peter that moves our Lord to His eulogy that ends with the prediction of St. Peter’s position in the Church.

‘Adversity,’ wrote Francis Bacon, ‘like a toad ugly and venomous, yet holds a precious jewel in its head.’ In our present adversity the ugliness and venom bulk so large that the precious jewel, the one redeeming feature best calculated to afford consolation, may be easily missed. To the thoughtful mind, and especially to the religious mind that is rooted in God as the one sure foundation of all things, this consoling side can most easily be seen in a comparison between the sort of victory that most were looking for and the kind of victor)-’ that must now be won.

Most people began with a short-sighted view of the war as a conflict for supremacy between certain combinations of nations. They hoped that we had a better combination than our opponents, and that in the long run we should beat them by the weight of our resources and superior position rather than, necessarily, in the field. That seemed the easiest way and the least painful to ourselves. It was but human nature to hope for victory without great suffering to ourselves. Such a view, however, misses both the deeper underlying nature of the conflict and the fact that such a victory would have no more chance, rather considerably less, of solving the real problems than did the victory of 1918. Not peace, but an armed truce would be again the state of the world.

‘All over the world . . . our troubles have one bitter root . . . the ignoring of God’s majesty, the complete neglect of His heavenly commandments or, at best, a woeful inconsistency that can do nothing but hesitate between right and wrong.

’ It is this that gives rise to our blind excess of self-love— to our thirst for pleasure . . . the Flight from the Land (.Agrorum desertio), to levity in contracting marriage (in matrimoniis contrahendis ludificatio).’ Encyclical Letter, Sertum Laetitiae, to the United States Hierarchy on the 150th anniversary of their establishment.

We have set down this authoritative statement on a fundamental principle because only through authoritative statements and not through individual opinions can a sick world be led back to health. Individuals, and perhaps especially the young when endowed with a sensitive nature, are often capable of sensing social ailments. Yet their power to descry and describe social disease does not empower them to prescribe the remedy for the disease. Zeal to staunch the wounds of the world is amongst youth's most engaging qualities. But those of us who once were young —’ and that was long ago ‘—know that the best words an individual in the Church can now say to a world in extremis must only be words of commentary on what the Church’s authority has already said.

(2). Two anecdotes will serve to prepare the readers of this commentary to see what the commentator sees.

If there is one temptation more strong than any other in this time of falling bombs and unbelievable cruelties it is to despair of man. As in the time of Tacitus we have entered upon ‘a time rich in disasters, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions and savage in its very hour of peace.’ Purges within the states, wars between the states, cities flaming to heaven, women and children buried beneath the ruins, death raining from the sky, a new and brutal generation of scientific killers riding down fleeing refugees in their tanks or spraying machine-gun bullets on defenceless streets, on children at play—the list is endless. And this is human society. These are men. What can we hope from such corruption? Even if we survive the war, what can be built upon a generation whose nerves have been shattered by constant bombing and whose characters are maimed by the orgy of killing in which they have grown up? Even where bodies are intact, what can be hoped from these twisted souls? It is an obvious reaction to abandon all interest in the future of human society, to concentrate on the otherness of the spirit, the transcendance of God, the nothingness of creation, to adopt an apocalyptic attitude towards the present struggle.

It is sometimes said in travellers’ tales that Christianity does more harm than good among the African peoples. It seems at first to destroy their native virtues without building up new ones, to change external observances without giving real Christian character.

There is a certain amount of truth in this, and apart from the more mysterious causes—that first knowledge of the moral law tends, as St. Paul said, to multiply sin—there are many others not far to seek.

The real Africans, the negroes and the peoples called the Bantu, who are nearly negroes, covering the southern two-thirds of the continent, are essentially gregarious. In the village community, which was more or less uniform from the northern tropics to the Cape before the white man came and brought his individualism, there was a most strict community of life. There is a story of some European philanthropist who wrote to a Bishop in Africa offering to finance an orphanage. The missionaries laughed. There was not, and hardly is, in spite of all changes, an ‘orphan’ among the tribes. The children belonged to the community as much as to the father. Food was virtually pooled in this society; all the communty turned out, freely without payment, to build each other’s house, to hoe each other’s field, to herd each other’s cattle. It went to extremes when, as in some tribes, the chief’s relatives had to be buried with him, whether they happened to be dead or alive.

It often seems to us who view the Church from within that the primitive simplicity of her organisation and life has developed into something quite unnecessarily complex. The mind almost reels before the numerical vastness of the different religious orders, congregations, societies, institutes, companies, etc., especially when considered in conjunction with the yet vaster number of lay associations, sodalities, societies, guilds, confraternities, etc. Yet this is not all, for hardly a week passes that one does not read of some new movement being proposed by someone or other. Very bewildering sometimes even to those of the faith, and certainly incomprehensible to those outside the Church. The explanation, however, is quite simple and natural.

When Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Protestant Bishop of Derry, died on July 8th, 1803, in Albano, having about him none but hired servants, Cardinal Erskine took upon himself the troublesome duty more properly to have been discharged by a British representative in Rome if there had been one, of winding up his affairs.

This wealthy eccentric is best known by the vivid picture given by Froude in The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, of his activities in connection with the Irish Volunteers. He drove to the National Convention of the Volunteers at Dublin in November, 1783, in an open landau drawn by six horses magnificently apparrelled in purple, with white gloves, gold fringed, and gold tassels dangling from them, and buckles of diamonds on knee and shoe: ‘His own mounted servants, in gorgeous liveries, attended on either side of his carriage. George Robert Fitzgerald rode in front with a squadron of dragoons in gold and scarlet uniforms, on the finest horses which could be bought in the land. A second squadron brought up the rear in equal splendour, and thus, with slow and regal pace, the procession passed on, volunteers falling in with bands playing and colours flying, the crowd shouting: “Long life to the Bishop,” the Bishop bowing to the crowd.’

The incident certainly typifies the Earl-Bishop’s strange spectacular character and career, but whilst many popular articles have been written on his queer antics and conduct, he was by no means an inconsiderable man as a political thinker.