THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW
ESTABLISHED 1840 R EG ISTERED AS A N EW S PA P E R
VOL. 173 No. 5148
LONDON, JANUARY 7th, 1939
SIXPENCE
IN T H IS I S S U E
THE NEW COMMUNITY 2 I-FA SCISM , DEMOCRACY
AND THE ENGLISH TRADITION
By Christopher Dawson
CHANGES IN POLAND
The Significance of the Recent Elections
THE REFUGEES: WHAT IS BEING DONE
ABBOT VONIER
A Friend’s Tribute
By Edward Quinn
FOREIGN
BROADCASTS
Full L is t o f Contents on page 4.
THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK The Aims of Spain
President Roosevelt
In a New Year declaration General Franco made several statements of importance. In the first place he expressly ruled out the idea that the other Mediterranean Powers can make an abiding Mediterranean arrangement while ignoring Spain, and then he proceeded to a larger exposition of the abiding considerations which will underlie Spanish policy. Spain will be organized, he said, for the three following motives : in the first place, for the defence of the Christian faith, if the Church should see herself threatened, as in other centuries ; secondly, for the defence of territory threatened by invasion ; and thirdly, “ against the attempt to reduce us to slavery in the Mediterranean, because to live in international slavery is to live in a situation of indignity, and life of that kind is a thousand times worse than death.” This prominence given to religion and not vaguely to religion, but specifically to the Church, the custodian of revealed doctrine and the dispenser of the Sacraments, is an emphasis not very welcome in Germany. As much as General Franco’s declaration of neutrality last September, it is a measure of the wide difference of outlook which the practical assistance the Germans have provided has in no sense bridged. On the other side, Sr. Negrin made a New Year declaration which made great play with democracy, but did not mention religion.
Between the two opposed Spanish utterances there comes the address to Congress of President Roosevelt which firmly couples religion and democracy. The emphasis on religion was very marked throughout the President’s speech. He recognized that democracy passes inevitably to tyranny in the manner of the democracy of the ancients unless it is practised in a framework of religious doctrine, the only secure safeguard of individual liberty.
We wish we could feel confident that his listeners in America realized the full significance of this connection. Too many of them regard religion as a useful word, a rhetorical trimming for panegyrics of the democratic system, and they do not apply the President’s remarks about the attacks on religion coming from quarters which also hate democracy, to the organizations of the Spanish Left as much as to the Nazi Party. The outlook of the Spanish Socialists, the mentality of representative men like Largo Caballero, has in it no sort of safeguard for individual rights against majority votes and what those in control can represent as the will of the people.
President Roosevelt said, “ Storms from abroad directly challenge the three institutions indispensable to Americans, now and always. The first is religion. Religion is the source of the other two : democracy and international good faith. An order which relegates religion, democracy and good faith among nations to the background can find no place within it for the ideals of the Prince of Peace. The United States rejects such an order and retains its ancient faith.” This sentence was greeted with loud cheering. Public opinion in America, which always finds it difficult to attend to more than one thing at a time, is thinking today about Germany. But if we ask where in the world religion is being challenged or relegated to the background, the supreme example is the Soviet, and the whole order of ideas which it embodies, ideas which are reproduced in Mexico and in Spain, ideas which in a milder form have been the commonplaces of the secular Liberal Parliamentary regimes in pre-War France and Italy, and at times in other continental countries.
