Liberalism and Protestantism

 ROOT CAUSES OF "SOCIAL QUESTION" :: LIBERALS REPUDIATE DIVINE AUTHORITY IN SOCIAL LIFE.

Unchristian liberalism began in England and spread to the Continent where it paved the way for the French Revolution. It is the direct outcome of the principles of Protestantism and repudiates divine authority in public and social life, which, according to its ideals, should be organised and conducted as if God did not exist. Liberal teaching rejects or ignores the whole supernatural order, including divine revelation, a divinely instituted Church and man's predestination to eternal life.

BY E. CAHILL, S.J.

Unchristian Liberalism is a direct outcome of the principles of Protestantism. Beginning in England, it spread into France where it prepared the way for the Revolution (1789), after which it gradually impressed itself on the public life of nearly every country in Europe and America. Liberal principles and policy are the root causes of the evils comprised under what is usually called the "Social Question"; and are at present the greatest obstacle to social prosperity and peace. Resting on an assumption of man's innate independence of any authority or rule of conduct outside himself, Liberal teaching rejects or ignores the whole supernatural order, including divine revelation, a divinely instituted church, and man's predestination to eternal life. Without formally committing themselves to a positive denial of God's existence or His possible claims on men in their individual capacity, Liberals repudiate all divine authority in public and social life, which, according to their ideals, should be organised and conducted as if God did not exist; much less will they take account of the teaching of our Divine Lord, or acknowledge the authority of the church which He founded. Absolute and unlimited freedom (and by freedom the Liberals mean licence) including freedom of thought, of religion and of conscience; unchecked freedom of speech and of the Press, freedom in political and social institutions, is according to Liberal principles man's inalienable right. These un-Christian principles, which, by their repudiation of divine authority are in opposition even to the natural law, are applied by Liberals to the moral, political and economic spheres. Modern systems of statecraft, of civic organisation, of international relations, etc., have been shaped largely under the influence of their principles. Hence Liberalism tends strongly to reproduce in society the most repulsive features of pagan civilisation.

"Put Out the Lights of Heaven."

Freemasonry, permeated and reinforced by international Judaism, has been the strongest driving force behind the Liberalist movement during the past two centuries. Socialism, which is opposed to many of the economic and political principles of Liberalism, is in harmony with it in its materialistic view of life, and in its assumption of man's emancipation from a supernatural or divine law. The Catholic Church, with its hierarchical constitution, and its God-given power of authoritative teaching, forms the only effective barrier against the progress of Liberalism. This fact has always been frankly recognised by the Liberal leaders. Voltaire's impious cry: "Ecrasez l'Infame" (Crush and destroy the unsightly monster, viz., the Catholic Church) has been re-echoed down to our own day by Voltaire's disciples, who openly proclaim it their aim to "put out the lights of Heaven," and who would fain believe that Catholic principles and authority, even in Ireland, are doomed to the fate of "icebergs in warm water." The words of Charles Bradlaugh (d. 1891), a professed atheist and one of the founders of the present secularist or extreme Liberalist movement in Britain, are equally significant: — "One element of danger in Europe is the approach of the Roman Catholic Church towards meddling in political life . . . There is danger to freedom of thought, to freedom of speech, to freedom of action. The great struggle in this country (England) will not be between Free Thought and the Church of England . . . but between Free Thought and Rome."

Vague and Intangible.

In order to convey a general but connected idea of modern Liberalism which, like Protestantism, is often vague and somewhat intangible, partaking more of the nature of a spirit permeating modern society than of a definite and consistent system, we shall give a brief sketch first of intellectual Liberalism, often called Rationalism or Naturalism, which forms the philosophic ground-work of the movement; secondly, of political Liberalism or Secularism upon whose principles the constitutions of most modern states are largely modelled, and finally of economic Liberalism. which reached its apogee in the 19th century, and is closely allied with modern capitalism. 

REPUDIATION OF REVELATION.

 The spirit and tendency of the un-Christian Humanism of the 15th century, and still more the principle put forward by the 16th century Reformers that every individual has the right of interpreting divine revelation according to his own judgment without the aid of a teaching Church, opened the way, first to a repudiation of all supernatural revelation, and then to Atheism and Materialism. During the second half of the 17th century there arose in England a school of Freethinkers and Deists whose teachings without spreading, for the time being, to any great extent in England itself, exerted much influence in France and the Continental countries. A few of these Deists remained nominally Christian, but most rejected completely all supernatural religion; and some threw doubt even on the existence of God. Among the best known were John Locke, author of the "Essay on the Human Understanding." (d. 1704). John Hobbes, author of the "Leviathan"; Collins, Roland, Tyndal, Charles Blount, Lord Bolingbroke, etc., and later on, Hume and Berkeley. Protestant Germany gave birth to a similar Rationalistic school, founded on the teachings of Leibnitz, Wolf and others, whose names were afterwards overshadowed by that of Emmanuel Kant, the greatest of German Rationalistic philosophers, and the real founder of the modern German Rationalistic School.

 FRANCE CENTRE OF MOVEMENT.

 France, however, was, or soon became, the real centre of the Naturalist movement. The ground had been prepared there by the Gallican and Jansenistic propaganda of the preceding generation and by the strong Rationalistic tendencies of Descartes' philosophy. But the principal cause of the rapid spread of the movement was the moral corruption which had eaten, like a canker, into the wealthy classes, the aristocracy, and even the clergy. Voltaire brought from England the doctrines of the English Freethinkers and Deists, and with Jean Jacques Rousseau, became the most powerful apostle of the new ideas. Soon a whole galaxy of brilliant writers appeared, filled with the spirit of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau and Voltaire. Ecclesiastical authority, religion, revelation all the cherished ideals and principles of Christianity, were now persistently held up to ridicule in poetry, romance, drama, letters, historical and philosophical treatises, written mostly in a brilliant and very attractive style. The extreme Rationalistic doctrine, which denies the existence of God, and the immortality of the human soul, rejects the moral law, and proclaims war against all authority, was summarised in the celebrated "Encyclopedie." This monumental work, the first of its kind, appeared about the middle of the 18th century, under the editorship of Diderot and d'Alembert, and immediately secured unprecedented popularity. In the "Encyclopedie" all kinds of subjects were treated and discussed, sometimes with a superficial veneer of fairness and impartiality, but always with the underlying purpose of discrediting Christianity. Diderot, in whose mind the virtue of chastity is only the result of ignorant prejudice, sketched an ideal society whose perfection lies in the complete gratification of the sexual passions, while the professed ambition of Naigeon, one of the Diderot's disciples, was to "strangle the last of the priests with the entrails of the last of the kings." This anti-religious campaign in France, resulting in the excesses and religious persecution associated with the French Revolution, was the first great effort of the Liberal anti-Christian revolt, which has continued to spread and gain strength down to our own day. 

EXTREME AND SELFISH INDIVIDUALISM.

 During the 19th century the Rationalistic movement manifested itself in the pseudo-philosophic theories of Pantheism, Materialism and Positivism, culminating in the Modernism, Neo-Gnosticism, Theosophism, Christian Scientism, etc., of the present day. The movement has gathered into its wake most of the perverted intellectual forces of Europe outside the Catholic Church. It has spread more or less into every country, but has taken deepest hold in France, Britain, the Protestant portions of Germany, the United States of North America, and the British Dominions. The Pantheistic philosophy of Kant and Hegel in Germany, tending to make each individual a kind of God unto himself, and setting up actual fact, the "fait accompli," as the sole criterion of what is reasonable and right, leads, when applied to social life, to a glorification of brute force, and contains besides a philosophic ground-work for the most extreme and selfish individualism. The whole philosophy of Materialism, as propounded by Haeckel, Huxley, Spencer and others, and especially the theories of the Evolutionists, including those of "struggle for life" and "the survival of the fittest," as well as Nietzche's theory of the "superman," for whose sake other men are born to toil, have similar practical applications.

 POSITIVISM.

 Positivism, which was first put forward by Auguste Comte (d. 1857), was widely adopted by French and English Rationalists, such as J. S. Mill, during the second half of the century. In this system a new deity is set up for men to worship and serve. That deity is none other than Humanity. Positivism, while encouraging a vague and ineffective philanthropy or humanitarianism, has a predominant tendency, like all forms of Rationalism, to an extreme and unnatural individualism. For a Positivist of the average type of character tends to regard himself as representing Humanity, and consequently to consider himself, and not God, as the summit and centre of the Universe, towards whose glorification all his interests and efforts most converge. Modernism, Neo-Gnosticism, Kabbalism, Theosophism, Spiritism, etc., are at present the most dangerous and insidious form of Rationalism and Naturalism. The Modernists, who aimed at remaining within the Church's fold while working to undermine her teaching, were condemned by Pius X. in 1903. They deny or strive to whittle down and explain away by specious reasoning everything supernatural, including miracles, divine revelation, supernatural grace, etc. Neo-Gnosticism essays to get rid of a deity distinct from man and to whom man is responsible. Hence they deny the dogma of creation. All things, according to their philosophy, are in some way or other emanations of the divine essence: hence man himself is practically identified with the deity, so that whatever he thinks or does must be right and good.

 DIRECT INFLUENCE OF THE DEVIL.

 Neo-Gnostic philosophy is practically the same as that of the ancient Gnostics so often referred to in the New Testament and the writings of the early Fathers of the Church. This philosophy has reappeared at different times in the history of the Church assuming various shapes, but remaining always substantially the same, and invariably tending to supply an apparent justification for the unrestrained gratification of man's worst passions. It was under varying forms the underlying philosophy of the Manichaeans of the 5th century, of the Albigenses of the 12th century, of the Waldenses, etc., of later times. It was the heresy, too, of which the Templars of the 15th century were rightly or wrongly accused. Gnosticism and Neo-Gnosticism are closely associated with the occult practices and beliefs of certain pre-Christian secretaries of the East which have always attracted a certain type of depraved minds, and seem to show strong indications of the direct influence of the evil one. Gnosticism and its different manifestations are not improbably the heresy or philosophy to which St. Paul is said to refer in his First Epistle to Timothy: "In the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy and having the conscience seared."*

The Kabbalists and Theosophists are closely associated with the Neo-Gnostics, and their theories are only different manifestations of the same desire to free man from all supernatural law, and even from the rule and authority of God. Kabbalism, which betrays the Jewish influence in the modern Naturalistic movement, would found its Rationalistic doctrines on ancient Jewish tradition. Theosophy relies for all knowledge, and especially for knowledge of the deity, upon some kind of interior revelation of illumination, the result of the study and contemplation of secret rites and symbols. It is closely allied to Brahminism and Buddhism, and tends to teach some kind of universal faith which would be as it were, a common denominator in which all religions and creeds would agree. For according to the Theosophists, all religions of all times, including Christianity, are but different manifestations of the one true religion, which the Divine Wisdom reveals under varying forms suited to different times, places, and persons.

 TENDENCY TOWARDS DESTRUCTION.

 All these phases of Naturalism are closely associated with the present day Judaeo-Masonic movement, whose aim and object is the destruction of Christianity. The propagation of the Neo-Gnostic pseudo-philosophy, as well as that of the Kabbalists, the Illuminists, the Theosophists, the Spiritists, etc., is in fact the most dangerous phase of the war now waged throughout the world against the Church by the Masonic and Jewish sectaries. Their philosophy cuts deeper into Christian life and affects more fatally the Christian organism of society than their purely political and governmental activities, as it tends to destroy the very foundations of all Christian morality and belief.

* I. Tim. I.V., 1-2.

Catholic Advocate (Brisbane, Qld. 1927,)http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article258727750

The Freemasons' Version of Jonah.

 Freemasonry takes itself very seriously. To many of its members it is no more than a pleasant social centre. That is all it seems to be in the opinion of the ignorant outsider. But, to the true Mason, it is something infinitely greater.
The symbols of Masonry resemble Browning's poetry. Give the enthusiast a passage from the poet, and he will extract meanings Browning would have been amazed to know were in it. Give a Mason some symbols; that seem familiar and meaningless enough, and he will invest them with a mysticism that is positively awesome.
Freemasonry is certainly a wonderful institution. In a way, it is as broad as it is long. For history, it goes back to the dawn of time; for members, it drawn upon the entire human race. Freemasons are plentiful in Peru; the brotherhood includes many Chinese. Its ubiquity is worthy of its antiquity. And its claim to antiquity is the first thing to astound the uninitiated.
You must not feel nervous about figures; you must prepare for some stiff swallowing. One accredited historian proves that the order existed 300,000 years ago. That it is so largely based on ideography is offered as proof of the validity of this claim. Signs preceded words, words preceded writing, all at long distances. If the theory be accepted, the antiquity of Masonry is reasonably established. But in many respects its history is as great a mystery as its ritual.
Its forms have in many instances been affected by time and distance, but all retain traces of common origin.  That origin is alleged to be found in the sacred mysteries of the ancient Egyptians. There is a consensus of opinion that Egypt was its earliest home. The Great Pyramid was really the first Masonic Temple. When the old Egyptian empire fell, 5000 years ago, the brotherhood was scattered, and carried its secrets into all parts of the world.
The true Mason scorns the suggestion that his order originated in any utilitarian trades union. Its philosophy soars far beyond its ceremonies. In its highest significance it seeks to lift man above all religious sectarianism. Its signs are no meaningless mummery; they are saturated with the wisdom of the ancients. During the long period of its existence the outer aspects of civilisation have changed again and again. But over that enormous stretch of years two things have remained unchanged — men and Freemasonry.
And the two have formed the greatest brotherhood the world has ever known. They proclaimed the doctrine of universal brotherhood to every land ages before temples and churches were ever thought of. Prior to the birth of the religions which unite and divide men to-day, they found their universal religion in Freemasonry. It is the only real democracy in existence and in active operation. Even in the British army, where rank is venerated, Freemasonry banishes distinctions. Non-commissioned officers control lodges where superior officers sit.
Freemason rites were practised by the ancient Britons and Gauls. How the practices were conveyed from the Orient to the distant north is inexplicable. It may have been by the great wandering from North India, or it may have been by the Mediterranean merchants; who traded in every part of the then known world, from India to Britain. In any event, there they demonstrably were. The simple coins of the period supply further proof. Long before the Roman Conquest Northern Europe had a rude coinage. And in the markings of these coins can be traced the Masonic symbolism of ancient Egypt.
Long before the Christian era Masons' emblems were employed as moral symbols, and one deity was common to all people, from the Himalayas to the North Sea. He was the god of Nature and the god of Mystery. His northern priests were the Druids, probably the most frequently mentioned and least understood of all the institutions of the past. They were really Brahmins. They were the Magi, of the north. There are many points of similarity between their rites and the Chaldean cults. And the symbols and mysteries common to both are still employed in modern Freemasonry.
But neither the testimony of history nor the voice of legend will induce the uninitiated to concede all that Freemasonry claims. It is asserted that there is a close identity between Freemasonry and the ancient Hebrew mysteries. You can scarce mention a prominent person in the Old Testament over whom the Masons have not pegged out a prior claim. Take Jonah. Without any acquaintance with Scripture you know at least the opening incident in his adventure. Now the Masons can explain Jonah in quite a novel way. It was all a piece of mythology and masonry.
Ancient Nineveh has been rediscovered. On its walls are found lavish pictures of one named Oannes. The Hebrew story of Jonah is a legend of this Oannes. He is a great figure in the folklore of the period. He was a being part man, part fish, who rose out of the Persian Gulf, and taught the people on the neighboring coasts architecture and the arts and sciences, which education achieved, he departed as he came. His cult spread among all the Semitic races of Syria, and the colossal figure of a man emerging from the body of a huge fish is the principal ornament found, amid the ruins of Nineveh, in palace and temple indiscriminately.
These were days when astrology determined the value of everything under the sun. All philosophy and religion gathered round the Zodiacal signs. Palestine as a country was considered under the special guardianship of the Pisces.
The geographical feature which connoted Palestine with this Sign of the Fishes was that of its situation bordering upon the shores of the Mediterranean, into which the sun nightly seemed to sink. When this conception prevailed the sun seemed to die out of winter and be born into spring in the Zodiacal sign of the Fishes. The symbol, therefore, became typical of causing dead matter to live by infusion of spirit. For this reason the Pisces came to represent Vishnu, the life preserver, and Shiva, the life destroyer. The whole subject of the fish symbolism of the ancient world and its embodiment in Scripture and in Freemasonry is linked up with the idea of the sun as a dying hero slain in the western heavens for the benefit of humanity, and rising again to rule and govern a grateful world.
The transmission of this mixture of Semitic mythology to Hebrew thought was natural, and almost inevitable. Improved and made more convincing, the idea appears in the familiar Old Testament story of Jonah. Even the orthodox may still find trace of the myth in the fact that the fish's head is now the mitre of Christian bishops, and that the Greek word "ixthos" (the fish) has came to mean "Jesous Xristos Theos Oios Soter."
The explanation of it all lies back in the days when the sun appeared to die at the winter solstice in the sign of the fishes. As it slowly changed its course from south to north in order to return to light and fertility, the shadows of the columns set up by the astronomer priest's in the temple court yards neither shortened nor lengthened for 72 hours. The sun was swallowed by the Fishes. In similar fashion Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the solstitial fish.
From the dim recesses of Freemason archives comes this remarkable version of the famous Bible story. Whether it will be pleasing will largely depend on our religious upbringing. Some have had difficulty in accepting Jonah as explained by the theologians. They will not have less difficulty in accepting him as explained by the Freemasons.

Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Saturday 17 January 1920, page 21

SECRET SOCIETIES.

"Secret Societies and Subversive Movements," by Nesta H. Webster ;  published by the Boswell Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd., London.

In these days when much is again heard of secret societies and organised movement against Civilisation and Christianity, it is necessary that one should strive to come to the facts. Mrs. Webster's books on "The French Revolution" and "The Plot Against Civilisation" proved her to be a competent historian and an indefatigable searcher for the truth. It is but fair to say that when we are considering secret societies a distinction must be made. There are beneficent secret societies; there are such societies as Disraeli referred to in the House of Commons so long ago as 1856, organised for political objects; there are societies, if we believe some historians, constantly aiming at world revolution, with no object but the overthrow of civilisation. Mrs. Webster is one of those who hold that there is a constant secret attack on civilisation and all it stands for. She therefore holds that the French Revolution did not arise merely out of conditions or ideas peculiar to the eighteenth century, nor the Bolshevist revolution out of political and social conditions in Russia, or the teachings of Karl Marx. If we are to agree with this view we must be content to be taken very far back in the history of the world, and then we may be convinced that "recent explosions have been produced by forces which, making use of popular suffering and discontent, had long been gathering strength for an onslaught not only on Christianity, but on all social and moral order." Mrs. Webster divides her survey into two parts dealing respectively with the past and the present. In the past more particularly she considers "the ancient secret tradition," the revolt against Islam, the Templars, occultism, the origins of Freemasonry, the Grand Lodge Era, German Templarism and French Illuminism, the Jewish Cabalists, and the Bavarian Illuminati. To our modern ears the very sound of some of these titles is too far distant to cause disturbance. Mrs. Webster follows a double line of investigation— the course of associations enveloping themselves in secrecy for the pursuit of esoteric knowledge and the course of those using mystery and secrecy for an ulterior and usually a political purpose. Secret societies, it is alleged, came from the east; from the earliest ages there appeared to be a fascination in mysterious associations. Sometimes the aim was good and continued to be good; at other times the aim was good, but was eventually diverted to evil. Amusement must surely be felt at some of the "abstruse" studies with which early secret societies concerned themselves. We should say that it was sheer waste of intellectual power to discuss how many white hairs a red cow may have and yet remain a red cow. These we feel do not account for the secret societies and their undoubted power. We find that some times the ostensible object covered dark designs, as for instance, secret attacks on early Christianity. As regards Masonry, Mrs. Webster declares that Craft Masonry is largely founded on the Cabala, but she distinguishes between the different Cabalas, one of which, at least, was undoubtedly perverted.
 The study is complete; whether Mrs. Webster is correct in her deductions is a matter for further discussion. It is shown that in the middle ages the Vehmgerichts, said to have been established by Charlemagne, became so formidable that succeeding emperors were unable to control their workings and found themselves forced to become initiates from motives of self-protection. In dealing with the Grand Lodge Era, which, of course, is a point of particular interest to Masons, Mrs. Webster remarks that unfortunately, as too often happens when men form secret confederacies for a wholly honourable purpose, their ranks were penetrated by confederates of another kind. This is the prelude to a recital of the divergencies between Craft Masonry as practised in England, and the movement on the continent, which is elsewhere alluded to as a superstructure. We doubt whether Mrs. Webster's explanation will remove all misapprehensions about English craft Masonry even now entertained in exalted quarters of the continent, but there is evidence here that English Masonry has never been used for such purposes as were the French Illumines — a Cabalistic sect. It is usual to associate the name of "Weishaupt with the first deliberate attempt to found Illuminism, but Mrs. Webster iterates and reiterates her belief that men aiming at the overthrow of the existing social order and of all accepted religion had existed from the earliest times, and that in the Cainites, the Carpocratians, the Manicheans, the Batinis, the Fatimites, and the Karmathites, many of Weishaupt's idea had already been foreshadowed. Even Weishaupt's system of organisation was not his own; it was used in the enlisting of proselytes by the Ismailis.
 Coming to open subversive movements, Mrs. Webster asks why should the Socialists of Great Britain be differentiated from the Bolsheviks of Russia, since in every question of importance they have always lent them their support. "It would not be an exaggeration," writes Mrs. Webster in the concluding chapter, "to say that no subversive movement in the world to-day is either pro-French, pro-British, or 'anti-Semitic.' We must conclude, then, that if one Power controls the rest, it is either the Pan-German power, the Jewish power, or what we can only call Illuminism." And it is evident that Mrs. Webster does fear that, so far as Britain is concerned, only a great national movement can save the people from destruction.

Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 - 1947), Saturday 11 October 1924, page 11

FREEMASONRY: THE ENEMY OF CHURCH AND STATE.

Freemasonry is the deadly enemy of Church and State, and has wrought incalculable evil in every quarter of the globe, but especially in Catholic countries. Spain and Portugal, with their colonies, are, at the present day, noteworthy object-lessons of the spiritual and temporal ruin which Masonry can bring about in Catholic countries. In the official classes in South America, sad to say, Masonry is universal, and it is the chief, if not the sole, cause of the chronic revolutions that devastate those fine countries.  It is commonly believed that the encyclopedists and philosophers were the only men who overturned by their writings altar and throne at the time of revolution in unfortunate France. But, apart from the fact that these writers were to a man Freemasons, it can easily be shown that other Freemasons were everywhere, and even more practically engaged in the same evil work. Louis Blanc, a distinguished Freemason, himself, thus writes : "It is of no consequence to introduce the reader into the mine which at that time was being dug beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, very much more profound and active than the encyclopaedia, an association composed of men of all countries, of all religions, of all ranks, bound together by symbolic bonds, engaged under an inviolable oath to preserve the secret of their interior existence. They were forced to undergo terrific proofs, while occupying themselves with fantastic ceremonies, but, other wise, practised beneficence, and looked upon themselves as equals, although divided into three classes, apprentices, companions, and masters. Now, on, the eve of the French Revolution Freemasonry was found to have received an immense development. Spread throughout the entire of Europe, it seconded the meditative genius of Germany, agitated France silently, and presented everywhere the image of a society, founded on principles contrary to those of Civil Society. That revolution agitated not France alone, but all Europe. The world, in the words of Monsignor Segur, was in the power of Masonry. All the lodges came, in 1781, to Wilhelmsbad, by delegates from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; from the most distant coasts discovered by navigators they came, zealous apostles of Masonry. They all returned penetrated with the Illuminism of Weishaupt, that is, Atheism, and animated with the poison of unbelief, with which the Orators of the Conclave had inspired them. Europe and the Masonic world were in arms against Catholicity. Therefore, when the signal was given, the shock was terrible, terrible, especially in France, in Italy, in Spain, in the Catholic nations, which they wished to separate from the Pope and cast into Schism until the time came when they could completely de-Christianise them. This accounts well for the Captivities of Pius VI. and Pius VII. The Cardinals were dispersed, the Bishops torn from their Sees, the pastors separated from their flocks, the religious Orders destroyed, the goods of the Church confiscated, the churches overturned, the convents turned into barracks, the sac red vessels seized, and melted down by sacrilegious avidity, the church bells turned into money and cannons, scaffolds erected everywhere, and victims in thousands, especially from among the clergy, sacrificed upon them ; in a word, all the horrors of the revolution, and the end, the moving power of its actions, to see Christ cast down from His altars, and the goddess called Reason enthroned."
 As early as 1797 the connection between Masonry and the French Revolution was well understood. Since then Louis Blanc and other Masonic writers glory in the fact. What Masonry did in France, it labours now to do throughout the entire world. Before the celebrated "Convent" (as they called it) of Wilhelmsbad there was a thorough understanding between the Free-masons of the various Catholic countries of Europe. This was manifested in the horrible intrigues which led to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Germany, and which, finally, compelled Clement XIV. to dissolve the Society by ecclesiastical authority. Doubtless, the Jesuits had very potent enemies in the Jansenites, the Gallicans, and in others, whose party spirit and jealousy were stronger than their love for the real good of religion. But without the unscrupulous intrigues of the infidels of Voltaire's school, banded into a compact active league, by the newly-developed Freemasonry, the hostile efforts of the former could never effect an effacement so complete and so general. The Duke of Choiseul, a Freemason, with the aid of the abominable De Pampadour, the harlot of Louis XV., succeeded in driving the Jesuits from France. He then set about influencing his brother Masons, the Count de Arnada, Prime Minister of Charles III. of Spain, and the infamous Carvalho Pombal, the alter-ego of the weak King of Portugal, to do the same wicked work in the Catholic States of their respective sovereigns. The Marquis De L'Angle, a French Atheist, and a friend of his brother Masons, the Count de Aranda, the only man which Spain can be proud of at this moment. He is the sole Spaniard of our days whom posterity will place on its tablets. He is the man whose name it will love to place in the front of its temples, and whose name it will engrave on its escutcheon, along with the names of Luther, Calvin, and Mahomet. He it is who desired to sell the wardrobe of the saints, the property of virgins, and to convert the cross, the chandeliers, the patens, and the chalices, into inns Choiseud, thus writes of De Aranda: "He is conspired with Choisuel to forge a letter, as if from Father Ricci, the General or the Jesuits, which purported to prove that the King had no claim to the Spanish throne, that his mother was an adulteress. Secretly, therefore, an order was obtained from the weak and credulous Monarch and on a given day the Jesuits in all parts of the Spanish dominions were dragged from their homes, placed on board ships, and cast on the shores of the Pontifical States, in a state of utter destitution. A calumny equally unfounded and atrocious, enabled Pombal to inflict a still worse fate on the Jesuits of Portugal and its dependencies. Charles III. ordered Panucci, another Masonic enemy of the Jesuits, to banish them from Naples, where his son was sovereign. Geiser writes to Voltaire that the half fool, Joseph II., was initiated into the mysteries of Masonry ; and, accordingly, the Jesuits, notwithstanding the sympathies of the Empress Marie Therese, were proscribed in Austria. The world was thus left, so far, free for the Masonic philosophers to compass the destruction which they planned at Wilhelmsbad, and effected in the Revolution eight years afterwards.
 Eckart informs us that Mazzini, the Apostle of the Poniard, was, in his day, the head of the  warlike power of Freemasonry. M. Eckart was a Saxon lawyer of immense erudition, who devoted his life to unravel the mysteries of Secret Societies, and who published several documents of great value upon their actions. "Masonry," he says, "being a universal association, is governed by one only chief called a Patriarch. Scotland, England, France, and Germany have had, in turn, the unenviable distinction of supplying to the order its supreme chief. In Eckart's time, Lord Palmerston held that post. At the side of the Patriarch are found two committees, the one legislative, the other executive. These committees, composed of delegates of the Grand Orient, or Mother National Lodge, alone know the Patriarch, and are alone in relation with him. All the revolutions of modern times prove that the order is divided into two distinct sections — the one pacific, the other warlike. The first employs only intellectual means, that is, speech and writing. It brings the authorities, or the persons whose ruin it has resolved upon, to succumb or to effect mutual destruction. It seeks for the profit of the Order all the places worth having, in Church and State. It seduces the masses and dominates public opinion by means of associations, and by the power of the press. Its Directory bears the name of the Grand Orient, and closes its lodges the moment the warlike division causes the masses, which they have won over to Secret Societies, to descend into the street. At the moment when the pacific division has pushed its works so far that a violent attack has chances of success, then, at a time not far distant, when men's passions are inflamed, when authority is sufficiently weakened, or when the important posts are occupied by traitors, the warlike division will receive orders to employ all its activity. The Directory of the belligerent division is called the Firmament. From the moment that they come to armed attacks, and that the belligerent division has taken the reins, the pages of the pacific division are closed. These tactics again denote all the ruses of the Order. In effect, they thus prevent the Order from being accused of co-operating in the revolt. Moreover, the members of the belligerent division, as high dignitaries, form part of the pacific division — but not reciprocally, as the existence of that division is unknown to the great part of the members of the other division — the first can fall back on the second, in case of want of success. The brethren of the pacific division are eager to protect by all the means in their power the brethren of the belligerent division, representing them as patriots too ardent, who have permitted themselves to be carried away by the current in defiance of the prescriptions of order and prudence.
 Mazzini, after exhorting his followers to attract as many of the higher classes as possible to the secret plotting, which has resulted in United Italy, and is meant to end in Republican Italy, as a prelude to Republican Europe, said: "Associate, associate; all is contained in that word. The secret societies can give an irresistible force to a party who are able to invoke them. Do not fear to see them divided; the more they are divided the better it will be. All of them advance to the same end, by different paths. The secret will be often unveiled. So much the better. The secret is necessary to give security to members, but a certain transparency is necessary to strike fear into those wishing to remain stationary. When a great number of associates receiving the word of command to scatter an idea abroad and make it public opinion can concert even for a moment, they will find the old edifice pierced in all its parts, and falling as if by a miracle at the least breath of progress. They will be astonished to see kings, lords, men of capital, priests, and all those who from the carcass of the old social edifice, fly before the sole power of public opinion."
 At the Council of Verona, held by the European Sovereigns in the year 1822, to guard their thrones and peoples from the revolutionary excesses which threatened Spain, Naples, and Peidmont, the Count Haugwitz, Minister of the King of Prussia, who was present with his master, made the following speech: "Having arrived at the end of my career, I believe it to be my duty to cast a glance upon the secret societies, whose power menaces humanity to-day more than ever. Their history is so bound up with that of my life that I cannot refrain from publishing it once more, and from giving some details regarding it. My natural disposition and my education having excited in me so great a desire for information that I could not content myself with ordinary knowledge, I wished to penetrate into the very essence of things. But as shadow follows light, thus an insatiable curiosity develops itself in proportion to the efforts which one makes to penetrate further into the sanctuary of science. These two sentiments impelled me to enter into the Society of Freemasons.
 It is well known that first step which one makes in the order is little calculated to satisfy the mind. That is precisely the danger to be dreaded for the inflammable imagination of youth. Scarcely had I attained my majority when not only did I find myself at the head of Masonry, but what is more, I occupied a high place in the chapter of high grades. Before I had the power of knowing myself, before I could comprehend the situation in which I had rashly engaged myself, I found myself charged with the superior direction of Masonic reunions of a part of Prussia, of Poland, and of Russia. Masonry was at that time divided into two parts in its secret labours. In open conflict between themselves, the two parties gave each other the hand, in order to obtain dominion of tho world; to conquer thrones; such was their aim. It would be superfluous to explain how, in my ardent curiosity, I came to know the secrets of the one party and of the other. The truth is, the secret of the two sections is no longer a mystery to me. That secret is revolting. It was in the year 1777 that I became charged with the direction of one part of the Prussian lodges three or four years before the Conclave of Wilhelmsbad, and the invasion of the lodges by illuminism. My action extended even over the brethren dispersed throughout Poland and Russia. If I did not myself see it, I could not give myself even a plausible explanation of the carelessness with which Governments have been able to shut their eyes to such a disorder, a veritable State within a State. Not only were the chiefs in constant correspondence and employing particular cyphers, but they reciprocally sent emissaries, one to another. To exercise a dominant influence over thrones —such was our aim. I thus acquired the firm conviction that the drama commenced in 1788 and 1789, the French Revolution, the regicide, with all its horrors, not only was then resolved upon but was even the result of these associations. Of all my contemporaries of that epoch there is not one left. . . . My first care was to communicate to William III. all my discoveries. We came to the conclusion that all the Masonic associations, from the most humble even to the very highest degrees, could not do otherwise than employ religious sentiments in order to execute plans the most criminal, and made use of the first in order to cover the second."
 Enough I think, has been said, to show that Freemasonry is the enemy of authority, and a danger to the State as well as to the Church ; yet statesmen are to be found in its ranks, and the most civilised States not only allow it to live but treat it as a friend and smile upon it. They carry a serpent in their bosom that will one day sting them to death J. B.

Freeman's Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1850 - 1932), Thursday 3 October 1907, page 7

THE LOST SECRETS OF HISTORY.

This was tho attractive title of a lecture delivered in tho Mechanics' Institute, last evening, by Mr David Blair, who displayed much erudition in dealing with a subject which, to say the least, is an abstruse one; and he was most successful in interesting an unusually numerous and attentive audience.
The lecturer began by directing attention to what, he said, must strike every student in investigating the history of mankind—the immense difference between the people of antiquity, and those of the present day in all things relating to spiritual ideas; a difference as great as that which exists between us and the Chinese or Hindoos. The ancient times were times of mystery and belief in the marvellous and supernatural. If the same motives ruled man in all former ages as at present it must be allowed that the sources of the knowledge of the ancients are unknown to us, and that something infinitely more potent than imagination originated the traditions and the monuments that have lasted to our times. Something must be lost—much was lost. As the wells of Abraham (according to the Arabs) were filled up with the dust of the desert, so the fountains of ancient lore have been alloyed to dry up. It was the fashion at the present day to think that all beginning of history was barbarous. He denied it. Looking back to the remotest antiquity we saw, not primeval barbarism and savagery, but the visible evidences of a splendid civilisation and of vast progress achieved in science and art ;—a civilization, he might say, more magnificent (though not Christianised) than that in which we lived. See the superb Babylonian and Assyrian empires; the wondrous lore of the old Chaldean magi—"the world's grey fathers"—who went up into their observatories to watch the progress of the stars as accurately as the astronomer royal does now; the teeming populousness, the stupendous mythological system, and the boundless wealth of Egypt. Look, again, just at our own threshhold !— three thousand years ago the people of India and China were as they are now : no difference in them—the difference is with us! They extended their gorgeous empires far beyond our mental horizon. If we looked back we were not in darkness, but light; we looked not on barbarism, but civilisation. Tho whole Eastern world glowed as with a supernatural and resplendant dawn. The polished Greeks, the hardy Romans, all looked back to the East, where existed an earlier civilisation, and as high as their own. In support of this was historic truth impregnable to criticism, unshakable by scepticism: the early records of the human race in the inspired writings of the Old Testament.
 He then proceeded to deal with his subject in detail, and first he addressed himself to the origin of secret societies, which, though not standing first in order of age, stood first in order of logic. In the early ages it was the invariable rule that the priests were kings—the illustration, that of Melchisedeck. In tracing the origin and progress of science it was found that the earliest vestiges of knowledge were the cherished possessions of priests and kings; who, to preserve that knowledge—a good motive—kept it to themselves ; but they did so also from a bad motive—as by keeping their knowledge from the general community their own power and despotism was strengthened. Knowledge in the possession of an exclusive class incited that class to further research; and in the course of time the priestly and kingly class mastered an amount of knowledge perfectly incomprehensible at this distant day. It was the means of their being regarded as demi-gods—it brought them to be worshipped as gods. What existed at the present day in India?—the Brahmins were the priests, who by the institution of "caste" (who instituted "caste?") stood in relation to the rest of the people precisely as they did in the age of the patriarchs. The motives for secrecy were plain—its origin comprehensive.
 The lecturer then quoted at length from the writings of a learned French philosopher of our own times, M. Salverte, who has written a treatise on the "Occult Sciences" to show that the vast bulk of what ancient writers hand down to us as prodigy or miracle, instead of being mere fable, is capable of explanation on grounds intelligible to the present age; and thus that history, as far as those things are concerned, may be received as true in its narrative of facts, though it be often in error in the view it takes of the nature of the facts narrated.
 The quotations went further to show that a great mass of scientific knowledge was treasured up by the ancients in their temples, and that the most important mechanical inventions of modern times were nothing but re-discoveries of what formed part of the occult sciences of the periods of Egypt and Chaldea three thousand years ago. Electricity and magnetism, the steam engine, gunpowder, the air-balloon, the diorama, the magic-lantern, the camera obscura, the telescope, and the air-gun, chemistry, pharmacy, and hydrostatics, were but a few of the secrets with which the ancient thaumaturgists were acquainted. It was hardly more the objects of the priests to gain this knowledge themselves than to keep it from the people. Their writings and all else that referred to it were deposited in the temple, and were written in a secret character. Hence arose the idea and the fact of secret societies —which have had an infinitely more powerful influence on the fortunes of the world than is generally believed. Englishmen were slow to believe in the power of secret societies ; but it was a power almost preter-natural, which had enabled paganism to maintain its influence over six-sevenths of the human race for above three thousand years. The practice of "initiation" to the secrets was next described at length. The Freemasons, by their best writers, testified that initiation existed before the flood. In every country and every creed it was found. In Egypt, Syria, Nineveh, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. In ancient Britain, the Druids kept it up; in ancient Ireland, the Bards; in Scotland, the priests of Odin. It is inscribed, according to Mr Swyer, in serpent symbols on the immemorial ruins of the cities of Central America. It exists to-day just as it existed three thousand years ago in India and China. It exists among the Freemasons of Geelong just as it did amongst the builders of the Tower of Babel. Moses was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians"—the true meaning of which is, he was "initiated." A quotation from M. Selverte and references to Moore's beautiful tale "the Epicurean," and to "Alciphron," were made to acquaint the audience with the details of the ancient "initiation;" while De Quincey was drawn upon for his humorous account of the origin of Freemasonry. The system of Judaism itself, divine as it was, proceeded upon the principles of secrecy and reserve. Students of the Bible were puzzled to account for the fact that no reference whatever was made, in the books of Moses, to the spiritual and immortal life. It was a system applied exclusively to this world. The spiritual side of it was not written, but orally communicated. This explained the absence of all reference to the rewards and punishments in a future life. That was one of the lost secrets. With regard to the origin of Pagan idolatry, what was it that first constituted or originated that stupendous system. The common answer was—it is a delusion; all imposture. Never believe it. How did that system arise ? He would answer. A single text in the Old Testament, which by a misfortune had been slightly mistranslated, would set that at rest, the translators were plainly in doubt as to the true meaning of the word, and in the margin of the Testament the true meaning was inserted— as it was usual to do when there were other meanings of a word—and the reader was at liberty to take which word he chose. In the 4th chapter of Genesis, 26th verse—" And to Seth, to him also there was born a son, and he called his name Enos. Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." Look to the margin and it would be found—" to call themselves by the name of the Lord;" and this was how he read the text. Here then he found how men began to deify themselves; here was the origin of pagan idolatry—during Adam's time. Who commenced that practice? Cain. Read carefully the 4th, 5th, and 6th chapters of Genesis two genealogies would be to Cain, an account of the murder of his father. Abel, was cast out from the race of Adam ; but he had a posterity and they increased and multiplied and built cities. But the true religion was in Adam's race, and was transmitted through Seth. Abel would have been the transmitter from generation to generation if he had not been murdered. Thus the two genealogies went on equally but distinct. But in time, as set forth in the 6th chapter of Genesis, the Cainites seduced the Sethites, and unhappily the true worship of God became lost.
"The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose" (Gen- 6: 1-4) The distinction between the two people was strongly marked—" the sons of God," "the daughters of men." That was the apostasy; and, by the conjunction of the two races, says the Bible, "There were giants in the earth in those days." But this was wrongly translated ; it should be "apostate leaders," who raised themselves into power over the heads of their people. But God determined upon the punishment of the universal apostacy. But first came the hundred and twenty years of probation, and then the mighty and desolating Deluge. Thus had we from the Old Testament the whole history of the origin of idolatry; and that was one of the lost secrets of history.
 He would take another—the Tower of Babel. The first of the "giants" before mentioned was Nimrod —a man of gigantic energy. After the Flood, Pagan idolatry revived ; and the apostacy converged in Nimrod. The building of the Tower of Babel was the reinstitution of the antediluvian idolatry, The idolators had settled in the plain of Shin aar (the first syllable short); the word was commonly mispronounced Shi-nar. The pronunciation was something, because in the first syllable was found the name of the Chinese,who to the present day called themselves Chin or Shin ; and they originally came from the plains of the Euphrates. When the apostate race reached the plains of Shin-aar, under the leadership of Nimrod, they said, according to Genesis Chap.11.1-9. Let us build a city and a tower that "may reach unto" heaven. The words quoted were in italics in the Bible as indicating that they were not in the original. They were wrong ; the reading should be "Let us build a city and a tower with its top to the Heavens." The childish misapprehension was that the tower was for the purpose of saving the human race from a second deluge. The true idea of the tower was a gorgeous temple built to the worship of Baal, the Sun god, the Life-giver, the active principle in nature; and it was to be surmounted by a splendid astronomical observatory for the Chaldean priests to watch the sun and stars day and night. But the Lord again scattered the people by the "confusion of tongues," and the system of idolatry spread over the other nations. The universality of the Babel idolatry and of the tower symbols was discovered in India, China, Central America, Greece, Rome, England, and Ireland. The round towers and pyramids were symbols of systems of paganism whose principles were identical though they differed in their attributes. They were astronomical as well as mythological symbols dedicated to Phra, of the Egyptians; and to Baal of the Babylonians. The lecturer discoursed at length upon the Pyramids of Egypt and Magic.
 With regard to the constellations, which were such a puzzle to the learned that they were abandoned as of no use in the celestial map, he said that he had discovered (through a friend) a solution to the enigma. The grotesque figures, between which [they] and the stars we could trace no rational connection, were the Kabbalism of the heavens. They were inscribed by the Chaldean astronomers on the broad firmament of the starry heavens in order to perpetuate their great mythological system after they had completed it: perpetuate it while sun and moon and stars endure! His friend had reduced the whole of those figures to a system, which he had verified in ten thousand instances.
 In conclusion the lecturer touched upon the " Lost Secret of Christianity," which however, he would not disclose. He laid great stress upon the consideration that there has been a conflict between Christianity and Paganism, as two systems, from the antediluvian apostacy to the present time, which conflict, if the original omnipotent force of Christianity had not been lost, should have terminated long ago by all the world clinging to the true faith. How was that force lost ?—where was it now ? How was it to be restored ? At the coming of the Redeemer eighteen hundred years ago, there existed in the land of Judea a sect of anchorites who had remained true to the faith of their fathers. They were called the Essenes. Their existence was a historical fact; yet, while the Scribes and Pharisees, the Herodians, were named in the New Testament, the Essenes were never mentioned. John the Baptist was an Essenist. He knew why they were left out. He knew the secret. The problem for those who heard him was to find out why that sect was not mentioned in the word of God. When they could tell him that he would tell them the Lost Secret of Christianity ; which must be found, or Christianity will fail in its mission. The lecturer concluded amid applause, which had frequently accompanied him during his discourse.

Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 - 1929), Wednesday 2 April 1862, page 2

THE PLOT AGAINST CIVILISATION.

Reviews and Literary Notes

"World Revolution," by Nesta H. Webster; published by Messrs. Constable and Co., Ltd., London; a recent addition to the Brisbane School of Arts Library.

Many persons are inclined to regard the French Revolution as a justifiable uprising of the people of France against cruel oppressors, and to claim that the principles for which the sans culottes fought have established themselves as the principles by which all modern government must be guided. Mrs. Webster, in her book entitled, "The French Revolution" did much to show that if we take the trouble to trace the origin of the revolutionary movement in France, we shall not be so enamoured by its leaders, though we may have greater sympathy for those of the "proletariat" who suffered. That there is a revolutionary movement to-day is undeniable, and that movement certainly is not wholly industrial — not a mere attempt by employed to obtain higher wages and better conditions of labour from employers. In "The French Revolution," Mrs. Webster plainly enough said that we are face to face with a plot against civilisation which has been pursued more or less fanatically ever since the 1st May, 1770, on which date Adam Weishaupt, Professor of Law at Ingolstadt, founded a secret society, the Illuminati, "for mutual assistance in attaining a higher degree of morality and virtue." If "The Illuminati" had actually set themselves to improve the world, all would have been well. But though some, even many, of its members were persons of great talents and high rank, the society itself soon became suspect. Its constitution and organisation, as any encyclopedia will tell you, were taken partly from the Jesuits and partly from the Masons, and within a decade the Bavarian Government decided to dissolve it. But we must be fair to both the Jesuits and the Masons. We must understand that neither Jesuits nor Masons of British orders had the remotest idea of the aims of Weishaupt and his disciples (who remain to this day). Mrs. Webster attacks neither Jesuits nor British Freemasons. She merely says that the methods of the Jesuits and the lodges of Continental Masons were used by Weishaupt and his disciples (mostly Jews), to overthrow civilisation as we know it. And here again it is necessary to explain. These Jews who worked, and are working against civilisation, are not the Jews who honour and practise their religion, but apostate atheistic Jews who take not the slightest thought for the sufferings which they may cause to their fellow men.
 Very often it is said that the movement towards "World Revolution" must be attributed to "war weariness." Mrs. Webster tells us that this is the most fallacious explanation which could be offered. It is not a matter of "nerves" at all; it is a real "plot." "Revolution is not the product of war, but a malady that a nation suffering from the after-effects of war is most likely to develop, just as a man enfeebled by fatigue is more liable to contract disease than one who is in a state of perfect vigour. The truth is that for the last 145 years the fire of revolution has smouldered steadily beneath the ancient structure of civilisation, and already, at moments, has burst out into flames, threatening to destroy, to its very foundations, that social edifice which 18 centuries have been spent in constructing. The crisis of to-day is then no development of modern times, but a mere continuation of the immense movement that began in the middle of the 18th century. The revolution through which we are now passing is not local but universal, it is not political but social, and its causes must be sought not in popular discontent, but in a deep-laid conspiracy that uses the people to their own undoing."
 It is a tremendous task to endeavour to link up all revolutionary movements for the last 145 years into one whole, to show that the very principle or want of principle which guided Weishaupt, guided Lenin in the twentieth century. Yet that is exactly what Mrs. Webster has attempted. But who and what was Weishaupt? Mrs. Webster says: "Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, was born on the 6th February, 1748. His early training by the Jesuits had inspired him with a violent dislike for their order, and he turned with eagerness to the subversive teaching of the French philosophers and the anti-Christian doctrines of the Manicheans. It is said that he was also indoctrinated into Egyptian occultism by a certain merchant of unknown origin from Jutland, named Kolmer, who was travelling about Europe, during the year 1771, in search of 'adepts.' Weishaupt, who combined the practical German brain with the cunning of Machiavelli, spent no less than five years thinking out a plan by which all these ideals should be reduced to a system, and at the end of this period he had evolved the following theory. Civilisation, Weishaupt held with Rousseau, was a mistake; it had developed along the wrong lines, and to this cause all the inequalities of human life were due. 'Man,' he declared 'is fallen from the condition of liberty and equality, the state of pure nature. He is under subordination and civil bondage arising from the vices of man. This is the fall and original sin.' The first step towards regaining the state of primitive liberty consisted in learning to do without things. Man must divest himself of all the trappings laid on him by civilisation and return to nomadic conditions— even clothing, food, and fixed abodes should be abandoned. Necessarily, therefore, all arts and sciences must be abolished. 'Do the common sciences afford real enlightenment, real human happiness, or are they not rather children of necessity, the complicated needs of a state contrary to nature, the inventions of vain and empty brains?' "
 Thus Weishaupt constructed the machinery of revolution. He trained his "adepts" with assiduous care. He was the first "Spartacus" of Germany, and that fact may explain much that has happened in Germany within recent years. Reduced to a formula, the aims of the Illuminati are thus stated: (1) Abolition of monarchy and all ordered government ; (2) abolition of private property; (3) abolition of inheritance; (4) abolition of patriotism; (5) abolition of the family (that is, of marriage and all morality, and the institution of the communal education of children). Mrs. Webster insists that this formula was advocated throughout the French Revolution and has been consistently advocated by the present-day Bolshevists. Even the French Revolution of 1848, we are told, was a result of the "conspiracy" which began in 1770. In Mrs. Webster's eyes Karl Marx is nothing more than an impostor who did not originate anything; he was merely a plagiarist, and a poor plagiarist at that. And very mercilessly, the author exposes the bitter animosities, the quarrelllngs, and the pettinesses of the men who like Marx and Bakunin in the nineteenth century, were purporting to be striving to make the whole world "one happy family." Socialism, Syndicalism, and Anarchism are fully discussed ; they all seem to come into the "plot." Writing of the French Revolution of 1871, Mrs. Webster says: "It will be seen then that Internationalism as devised by Weishaupt, interpreted by Clootz, and carried out by Marx and Engels, and in our own day by the agent of Germany, Nicholas Lenin, has served two causes only — German Imperialism and Jewish intrigue." If the reader is not prepared to admit Mrs. Webster's conclusions or even her statements of facts, he must still allow that her case is presented with the greatest ingenuity. The warning runs thus: "Let us not forget that the cult of Satan which flourished in Bavaria at the same time as Illuminism, and was in all probability connected with it, is practised to-day in our own country. The powers exercised by the modern Illuminati are occult powers, and range from hypnotism to black magic, which, since the days of the magician Cagliostro, have always formed part of that stock-in-trade of the sect. It is therefore no fantastic theory but the literal truth to say that the present world crisis is a conflict between the power of good and evil. Christianity is a beleaguered citadel surrounded by the dark forces which have mustered for the supreme onslaught. Only in one way can it be withstood. The words of Joseph de Maistre, who, like Barruel, regarded the French Revolution merely as the first stage in the campaign, must be taken as the battle-cry of the white army to-day: 'The French revolution is Satanic in its principle and can be only really killed, exterminated and finished by the contrary principle ! The Christian principle — that is the force that must be opposed to the Satanic power of the world revolution."

Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 - 1947), Saturday 14 January 1922, page 11

WHAT FASCISM MEANS TO ITALY

CHURCH AND STATE RELATIONSHIP, AND HOW IT MAY DEVELOP

FIFTY YEARS OF LIBERALISM OVERTHROWN

By Rev. W. A. SPENCE

In the following well-informed analysis of the present position of Italy under the Fascist regime, the "Catholic Times" correspondent sets a new and extremely interesting angle upon a subject that is of very real importance to Catholics, and particularly those in England. The relations between Church and State in the Italy of to-day, as well as a thought-provoking view of what they may become in the future, are matters of prime concern in view of the recent dispute between the Holy Father and Signor Mussolini.

Fifty Years of Liberalism.

The Italian nation is a Catholic people, and their culture is a Catholic culture. It is evidently difficult for the average Englishman, who is still insular, to appreciate many of the qualities of the Italian mind. A tincture of cosmopolitanism, where it is found, does not help; for no more than insularity does cosmopolitanism make for the valuing of national distinctions.
In spite of a mischievous propaganda, Protestantism gains no ground in recommending itself to the Italian mind. The vast mass of the people cannot understand it at all; it is simply a form of infidelity. Where the propaganda—which is indirect—makes any way, it succeeds only in robbing the Italian of his own religion; but that is probably sufficient to satisfy its agents.
Italians are realists; they are apt to be passionate, but not sentimental, as the English are. Generally, they do not suffer from the idealistic philosophy which, consciously, or (for the most part) unconsciously, forms the mentality of the non-Catholic English man. If the idealism of Croce and Gentile should spread beyond the intellectuals who at present affect it, it will be a serious thing for the national character.
There is still, at least latent, a good deal of Liberalism, both anti-clerical and of that peculiarly incoherent and distressing kind known as "Catholic Liberalism." We have to remember that the cause of Italian unity was, as it happened, bound up with Liberalism, and that for half a century the united nation suffered Liberal Government, whether of the Right or of the Left. Loyal Catholics were for long deterred from an exercise of political power at the elections by the non-expedit; the State schools and the Government offices were in the hands of Liberals.
Where Liberalism prevails, there Freemasonry find a home. Though the actual number of Freemasons in Italy was never very large, they were very powerful in proportion to that number, and had great influence over national and municipal politics. It will take time to undo the harm done between 1870 and 1922.
Liberalism, as the Holy Father has lately reminded us, is the parent of Socialism, and until the advent of the Fascist regime, Socialism had made considerable progress among the working classes and middle-class "intellectuals." Though it is now suppressed, and though most of the Socialists have been converted to Fascism, no doubt in some cases—perhaps in many—that conversion is not altogether sincere, and as somebody has said, underneath a good many black shirts there is still a red one, and from time to time a rent lets that appear. Freemasonry, too, is scotched, but not killed, and the peculiar conscience it produces does not favor sincerity and thoroughness in conversion. It is not easy for the leopard to change his spots.
All this has to be taken into account in estimating the political condition of the country, and the relations between Church and State in Italy.

 . . . .

National Unity and Religion.

We know Italy as a united nation; but we have to remember that its unity is of very recent growth. It is not many years since it was said, with a good deal of truth, "United Italy is a geographical expression." The Great War, more than anything else, unified Italy politically, and Fascism has consolidated its work. Hence the saying, "Fascism was born in the trenches." Liberalism was never really at home in Italy; nor did the Liberal-Democratic regime suit the country, nor govern it effectually and profitably, still less unify it.
Until the war the only unifying force in the country was its religion, and the religious revival under Pius X. came before, or at any rate, advanced more rapidly than the national movement. I think it is true to say that without the religious revival the Fascist success would have been impossible.

The Nationalist Spirit.

The Fascist State is, then, intensely nationalistic, and in that quality there are, of course, dangers. As we know very well, nationalism may be carried too far, and produce a bellicose and chauvinistic spirit. The sense of national greatness and desire for national glory (in themselves good in the natural order) may lead to an aggressive imperialism and contempt for other nations' rights. It may do so eventually in Italy; but it need not do so, and there is no sufficient reason to think that it will grow beyond bounds under Mussolini. He wants peace in order to consolidate his work, and is hardly likely to run the risk of an aggressive war, and the ruin of the prosperity which he is slowly building up amid great difficulties.
The "sabre rattling" is largely dramatic, and intended to keep up the military spirit of the nation; and that is clearly necessary.
Fascism is the foe of Internationalism and Communism, and we shall do well to remember that these are the chief enemies of the Church. No Pope has ever condemned nationalism as such (which is patriotism), but excessive nationalism; and certainly no Pope has ever blessed or encouraged godless internationalism, which is a more deadly enemy of the Church even than extreme or perverted nationalism.
Now, International Communism is out for the conquest of Europe, and, indeed, of the world. It cannot permeate Catholic Italy as it is attempting to permeate Protestant England, and it has failed once to raise a successful Bolshevist revolution, such as it seems to have inaugurated in Spain. It will probably try, later, conquest by arms. Hence the need for a militant nationalistic spirit in the Italian people. If Fascism remains what it is—still more if it becomes more and more permeated and informed by the Catholic religion—it would seem that Fascist Italy has to look forward to a time (perhaps not so very far distant) when she will have to fight for her life, or at least for all that makes life worth living. No greater disaster could befall the world than the conquest of Italy by Atheistic Communism.

Fascism and Liberal Democracy.

If Fascism is the enemy of Communism (itself hostis humani generis), it is also opposed to Liberal Democracy. Now, Liberal Democracy is the offspring of the "Reformation" and the French Revolution. Consequently, although a working agreement may be come to between a Liberal Democratic State and the Church (of course, many such agreements or concordats have been made), Liberal Democracy cannot be ultimately reconciled with Catholicism. I do not say Democracy, but Liberal Democracy. Liberalism is its specific quality, and Liberalism has been condemned by Pope after Pope in the course of the last hundred years or more. But the only Pope who has had experience of Fascism has not condemned that system—at any rate, as yet. On the contrary, Pius XI. has said in his Encyclical, "Non-Abbiamo Bisogno" (on Catholic Action):—
"In everything that we have said up to the present we have not said that we wished to condemn the party [i.e., the Fascist Party] as such. Our aim has been to point out and to condemn all those things in the programme and in the activities of the party which have been found to be contrary to Catholic doctrine and Catholic practice, and therefore irreconcilable with the Catholic name and profession."
The Liberal State is agnostic, mechanical, individualistic; the Fascist State is dogmatic, organic, authoritative. The Fascist State is monarchical and hierarchical, and is not divided horizontally into classes, but rather vertically into professions and occupations. The Liberal State leaves the seat of authority with the people, and is governed (at least in theory) by the will of mechanical majorities. It would seem, then, that the Fascist State can become a truly Catholic State in that it is consonant with the Catholic doctrine of authority. But it is not yet a fully Catholic State. As the Pope says: There are—"things in the programme and in the activities of the party which have been found contrary to Catholic doctrine and Catholic practice."
The Fascist State in Italy does not yet, perhaps, see (by reason of the foreign elements already mentioned, which cloud its vision) the full implication of its principles. If it develops, as it should do, into fully right relations with the Church—if it sincerely and whole-heartedly acknowledges the Church's magisterium in faith and morals, and her supreme rights as guardian of the moral law—it will surely become a Catholic State, which no Liberal State can do. If the Liberal, Socialistic, and Masonic elements, not yet completely absorbed and transformed, gain the upper hand, and the State presses its claims beyond their proper limits, it will become, no doubt, a form of Socialism, and eventually Communistic.

The "National Church" Danger.

All discerning Catholics must rejoice that the late quarrel of the Fascist Government with the Church has been made up. If a final rupture between the Church and the Italian State were to take place, Fascism would almost certainly break up, and Italy would suffer what Spain is now suffering— and perhaps a worse fate. As things are we have to expect disagreements between Church and State from time to time; but as long as the government is in the hands of wise, patriotic, and honest (if fallible) men, such disagreements will eventually be settled. Even in a fully Catholic State clashes would sometimes occur, as they did frequently in the Middle Ages.
To some people there has seemed to be a danger that the Fascist State may come to regard the Church as a national thing, or attempt to set up a national Church. But if Italianita is a mark of Fascist Italy, so is Romanita; and the Roman spirit is supranational. Rome, it is true, is now the capital of Italy, and as such, it will never become the capital of the world. But Rome is also the seat of the Papacy, for the Pope is still the Bishop of Rome, and as such it is the centre of a supranational and world-wide institution.

. . . . .

Fascist Discipline.

The Fascist regime is authoritative and disciplinarian; the Government really governs. Firm government—and therefore strict discipline — is not tyranny if it is not arbitrary, but is in accordance with justice. The laws of Italy are more satisfactory of the requirements of Christianity than are those of England. For example: the Catholic religion must be taught in the State schools; adultery is a crime; divorce is not recognised; the sale of birth-preventive literature and appliances is forbidden. The discipline is, no doubt, strict; but strictness is required. The Italians, having undergone a terrible experience, have no desire to see it repeated. "But there is a censorship of the press." Yes! Articles subversive of morality, order, and political security fall under the ban, and the immodest pictures which disgrace so many of our English papers are not seen in Italy now. Secret societies and subversive movements and their agents are severely dealt with; but there is no tyranny in this. A good dose of Fascist discipline would not be amiss in England !
In more tranquil and less perilous days that discipline may be safely, and no doubt will, be relaxed; meanwhile it is necessary.
English Catholics will do well to follow the development of Fascism with more attention and greater sympathy than many of them do now—and with earnest prayer. Much that concerns ourselves, and the future of Europe, depends upon its fate.—"Catholic Times."

Southern Cross (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1954), Friday 26 February 1932, page 5

HITLER'S PURGE.

IS IT PERSECUTION?

There are many points in recent German domestic policy which must be considered in the light of history before we can pass judgment on them. We cordially accept the proposition that no person should be penalised because he is a Jew. But we also hold that no anarchist or oppressor should be excused simply because he happens to be a Jew. There are solid reasons for believing that the alleged persecution in Germany has been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented. So say the president of the Central Council of German Jewish citizens, and the American Ambassador at Berlin (not reported in the Australian cables). It is well known that the world's newspaper press is dominated by Jews. The three greatest news-collecting agencies — Reuters, Wolffs and Havas — are owned by Jews. They were described by William Liebknecht as the invisible orchestra which strikes the same note in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Sydney and New York. The example of their perfect unanimity was shown in the Dreyfus affair and the Ferrer case. Jews control the big journals in the great metropolitan centres of Europe and America. Where they do not own papers, Rothschild or Mendelssohn money is often behind them.
 The action of Cardinal Schulte, Archbishop of Cologne, and the German Catholic Hierarchy, confirms our opinion that the Jewish press campaign is grossly exaggerated. They lifted the ban which prevented Catholics from joining the "Nazis," which they certainly would not have done if any section of the people were persecuted on account of their religion. In addition, the Lenten Pastoral of Bishop Gfollner, of Upper Austria, quoted in the London "Universe" of March 23, refers in the following terms to certain types of Jews, very numerous in Central Europe:
 Different from the Jewish nationality and Jewish religion is the international Jewish world spirit. No doubt many ungodly Jews exercise a ruinous influence on almost all fields of modern cultural life. Commerce and trade, business and competition, the legal and medical professions, revolutionary social and political changes are frequently penetrated and decayed by materialistic and liberal principles having their origin with Jews. The press and advertisements, the theatre and cinema are often filled with frivolous and cynical tendencies which poison the Christian soul of the people to the very heart, and, with equal frequency, are nourished and propagated by Jews. Depraved Jewry, in alliance with international Freemasonry, is also the main support of mammonistic capitalism and chiefly the founder and apostle of Socialism and Communism, the forerunners and pace-makers of Bolshevism.
 The Bishop declares that it is the conscientious duty of every good citizen to break that ruinous influence.
 No deep acquaintance with history is required to understand the Bishop's allusion. There is ample evidence that many Jews have forgotten their religion, and have become leaders of ungodly revolution. When Karl (Mordecai) Marx launched the First Communist International, at St. Martin's Hall, London, in 1864, his associates were Engels, Lassalle, Bebel and Singer (Germany); Neumayer, Victor Adler and Aaron Liebermann (Austria) ; Fribourg, Frankel and Haltmauer (France); De Leon and Kahn (U.S.A.). These leaders were all of the Jewish race, though most of them had become atheists. Their agents were busy in the Paris Commune of 1871. The "Cambridge Modern History" states that per sons of Jewish descent played an unexpected part in spreading Nihilism, as Czar Alexander II. was much more tolerant towards them than his predecessors. L'Olper, a Jew, was the counsellor of Mazzini, the anarchist; Isaac Artom was the secretary of Cavour, the arch anti-clerical. Nathan, the Anglo-Jew, who became Mayor of Rome, was a notorious Pope-baiter. Daniel De Leon, Marx's friend, founded the I.W.W. in America, and with the Jews, Hillquit and Berger, became the preceptors of the Jew Trotsky and Lenin, when they were exiles in New York. Bela Kuhn (Cohen), the notorious Hungarian tyrant of 1919, headed a Jewish Cabinet, which perpetrated atrocities ten times worse than those of Germany to-day.
 The rapid growth of Communism naturally alarmed intelligent Germans. They remembered the abortive insurrections of 1918 and 1920, if the British press and politicians conveniently forgot them. The Jews were busy then. In 1918, the faction then known as Independent Socialists, under its Jewish leaders, Dr. Liebknecht, Rosa Luxembourg and Daunig, adopted Soviet models. One of the leaders, Cohn, admitted receiving 12½ million roubles from Russia to foment rebellion. Two months' sanguinary fighting were required to suppress the movement, which ended when Liebknecht and Luxembourg were shot. After the establishment of the Republic, Independent Socialists, under the Jewish leaders, Dr. Levi and Klara Zetkin, joined the Red Internationale, and began a rebellion in Central Germany. Many lives were lost before it was suppressed. Levi was deposed; Zetkin figured prominently when, as Red Klara, she was made a vice-president of the 1932 Reichstag and delivered a fiery address. Nor can it be overlooked that leading German statesmen as well as "Nazis" have been assassinated within the last two years. Rathenau was an outstanding example. The new Government might very well realise that these insurrectionists, who, if tolerated, would attract millions of mischievous people to their cave of Adullam, must be suppressed by force, to preserve constitutional Government. If there are many Jews among them so much the worse for these Jews.
 Bishop Gfollner's allusion to the alliance of Jews and Freemasonry is well known to students of European history. Many years ago Disraeli, who ought to know, said, "Nearly all the secret societies have a Jew at their head." He also pointed out, in "Coningsby," that it was the Jews who, behind the scenes, pulled the strings of international intrigue and revolution. The founders of esoteric, or speculative, Freemasonry, the arch-foe of Christianity, were the Jews, Weishaupt, Pasqualis and Cagliostro. The kindly gentlemen in dinner jackets, who sing with gusto, "The More We are Together," and thrill at the sublimated punk about Hiram, Solomon's Temple, and the Brotherhood of Man, which passes for philosophy in innocent Australian Masonic circles, never dream that it was concocted by such a Jewish adventurer as Cagliostro. The worst harm their Masonry does is to pack the Civil Service and the offices of Joint Stock Companies with officials whose chief qualification is their Masonic membership. But in Europe Grand Orient Freemasonry is very different, so much so, that British Freemasons affect to ignore it. Leroy Beaulieu, a French Jew, whose literary reputation is world-wide, said that the "aims and ideals of the Jews are practically identical with international Freemasonry." The "Jewish Encyclopaedia" admits that "Jews have been most conspicuous in Freemasonry since the French Revolution." They make it a kind of Theosophic religion, and while they stand for internationalism, they reject toleration. Much of Mussolini's unpopularity in the Jewish-controlled press arose when he suppressed Masonry. But though of the Jewish race, most of these miscreants are not Jews. They are renegades, like those Catholics who neglect the practice of their religion, but yell for Catholic help when they lose their jobs through incompetence, though they protest that the cause was intolerance. As Bishop Gfollner says, Jewish Freemasonry is the main support of mammonistic Capitalism. There may have been exaggeration in the assertion that rivalry between the great Jewish financiers of London, Paris, Berlin and New York had much to do with the outbreak of war in 1914. But there is no doubt that the Rothschilds, Mendelssohns, Kahns and their satellites fanned the flames. The creation of the American Federal Reserve Bank was said to be a potent factor in this campaign. The Jews were behind the great financial scandals of last century, Humbert, Lesseps, Cornelius Herz, and Dreyfus. This pernicious influence led reasonable men like Chesterton, Belloc, and Henry Ford to resist Jewish financial domination. Ford ceased when he found it difficult to control selfish followers. That may be the experience of Germany. The victims of Jewish middlemen, labour sweaters and money lenders take advantage of civil trouble to wreak private vengeance. But the propaganda pointing to attacks on learning and culture is hypocritical. The books and papers destroyed were not the fruit of scholarship, but of decadence. And if Einstein was a great mathematician, he was also an aggressive leader of the International War Resisters' League, a body with a suggestively Bolshevik title.

Catholic Press (Sydney, NSW : 1895 - 1942), Thursday 18 May 1933, page 24

[This poisonous apology (after the book-burning) is quoted verbatim]

FEDERAL UNION

What does "Federal Union" mean?

 Here is an explanation of it, taken from the "Saturday Evening Post," of February 10. 1940: "What 'Federal Union' proposes is a federation of fifteen democracies — namely, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland — in the form of a supreme world government, with a constitution, a legislature, a judiciary, and a common citizenship; with the ultimate power to make war and peace, to make treaties, to issue money and to regulate trade. The military strength of this federation would be such that it could be reduced to one half and still stand as 2 to 1 against the rest of the world. Its economic strength would be even more formidable, since, to begin with, it would own half the earth, control two thirds of all trade, and possess a practical monopoly of all materials. What could survive against it? Other nations would be permitted to join only provided the people in them overthrew their dictators and embraced democracy."
 Such is the outline of the scheme as given by the "Saturday Evening Post" which goes on to say that "Federal Union doesn't make sense," and, after referring to the highly organised campaign behind the scheme, adds: "A little wonder is permitted."
 In a modified form, "Federal Union" appears as a Federation of the States of Europe.

Its Origins.

Who started the idea?
 The idea is not new. The scheme of a World State was embodied in the oath of the notorious secret society, the 'Illuminati' of Bavaria, which was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt. In a book entitled 'La Republique Universelle,' written in 1793 by Clootz, nearly all the ideas now regarded as 'progressive' by modern internationalists are formulated. After the permeation of French freemasonry by the 'Illuminati,' the idea of a universal republic became the slogan of the lodges, and the abolition of all frontiers, nationalities and differences of language and religion constituted the doctrine of the French Grand Orient.
 The communist scheme of a World Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to be established by world revolution, is based on a similar plan of the same inspiration.
 It would seem, then, that Federal Union, the World Soviet Union, and the World Masonic Republic are merely distinctions of name, without much distinction of substance.

Who's Who?

Who is sponsoring the movement to-day?
 The scheme of Federal Union is supported by the usual clique of extreme, left-wing politicians, pseudo-scientists, men who are well known for their bitter anti-Christian bias, and by a few "pink" clergymen. Prominent amongst its supporters are Professors Bentwick, Joad, Haldane and Laski, and others who took part in the anti-God Congress held in London in September, 1938. We also find the names of H. G. Wells of "Home Sapiens" absurdity, Clarence Streit, an American journalist, and W. B. Curry, who is headmaster of the notorious co-educational school of Dartington Hall, Devon.
 Perhaps even more significant than this is the support given to the movement by the P.E.P. (Political and Economic Planning) Group, whose chairman is Mr. Israel Moses Sieff. This group is completely materialistic in character and outlook and stands —inter alia—for the complete elimination of the smaller trader (My. Israel Moses Sieff is at the head of a vast chain store organisation), and has been defined as "Bolshevism by stealth."
 It is supported also by the Engineers' Study Group, an offshoot of the P.E.P., and by the Royal Institute of international Affairs, better known as the Chatham House Group, which is a government-subsidised organisation, some of whose members have distinguished themselves for their left-wing bias.

 Not An Asset.

 A friends showed me a book on the subject.
 The title was: "The Case for Federal Union." The author of that book is the notorious W. B. Curry already mentioned. He is the headmaster of the ill famed co-educational school called Dartington Hall. In this school which caters for children of both sexes from two to eighteen years of age, nudity is the rule—insofar as there are any rules. He is also President of the high-sounding "Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals." According to a pamphlet issued by the 'Liberty Restoration League":  "The objects of this organisation . . . include the usual communist aims in industrial matters and the establishment of a World State. It devotes a great deal of its attention, however, to its social aims. These include legislation to secure reform of the Divorce Laws; legalisation of abortion with proper safe guards; abolition of the laws penalising abnormality; provision of facilities for voluntary sterilisation; adequate provision of information on and facilities for birth control; abolition of literary, dramatic and film censorship; disestablishment and disendowment of all State Churches, and the abolition of the blasphemy laws."
 Finally, Mr. Curry and five other prominent supporters of the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals were members of the "Committee of Honour" of the anti-God Congress (Congress of the World Union of Freethinkers).
That Federal Union finds an ardent supporter in men like W. B. Curry is sufficient indication that it should be regarded with the greatest suspicion by decent men.
 Extreme left-wing politicians, Mr. Israel Moses Sieff's 'P.E.P.,' the Chatham House Group, the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals, the World Union of Freethinkers or the anti-God League, the Dartington Hall Co-educational School, continental freemasonry — such memberships, affiliations and contacts will enable thinking people to form a fairly accurate idea of the forces behind the present campaign for Federal Union.

Good or Bad?

   Is "Federal Union" a good thing, or is it just another racket ?
 In itself the idea of Federal Union is quite good and is, in fact, an eminently Christian concept, just as the ideal of the League of Nations was an eminently Christian concept. But in the hands of atheists, materialists, body-worshippers and other enemies of Christianity, it will simply become an instrument of tyranny and oppression as cruel and as irresponsible as any godless dictatorship.
 There are too many who forget that Leagues and Federations and forms of government do not guarantee our human decencies and liberties, but moral principles which have their meaning and their guarantee in religion and in religion alone. The acceptance of any scheme of Federal Union divorced from Christianity and Christian moral standards would be an appalling catastrophe for the free peoples of the world. And in the hands of its present sponsors. Federal Union has all the appearances of something anti-Christian and unclean.

Is it Fascism?

  The friend who opposed it in the argument said that It was just Fascism under another name.
 A world super-government, with supreme military and economic power at its disposal, and free from the sane restraints imposed by Christian moral standards, could easily become an irresponsible dictatorship of the Hitler or Stalin type on a world-wide instead of merely a national scale.
 Moreover, the national, political, economic and social differences of the various peoples cannot be eliminated simply by uniting them into a sort of political and economic federation. The way to unite peoples is not to abolish, natural differences, but to unite them in the love of something higher. This higher something is not likely to be the super-government of the federation which, without Christianity, would simply become a hotbed of intrigue and an instrument of oppression.
 It is only love of Christ and of Christian ideals which can effectively unite peoples, and lead them to subordinate selfish interests to the common welfare of the human race.

 I would be glad to have your views on the subject.
 They should be sufficiently clear from what has been already said, and I think they are the views of every Christian acquainted with the facts.
 Federal Union is an excellent idea in itself but divorced from Christianity it has not only no chance of success, but would, in logic and reality, lead to world slavery. In the hands of those at present so prominently associated with it, the scheme may well provide adequate training and preparation for the establishment of a world Bedlam, but not for the establishment of a thoroughly Christian democracy for which we are fighting. People like Messrs. Curry and Sieff should have no part in the planning of the new social order to come after the war which, we are told, is being fought for "Christian civilisation."
 Would you recommend some literature on the about it because I would like to know more about it.
 You will find the scheme explained in "Union Now" by Clarence Streit, and " The Case for Federal Union" by W. B Curry. You will find a history of the movement and a searching analysis of it in two books by Nesta Webster: "Secret Societies and Subversive Movements" and "The Surrender of an Empire." These may be obtained at the Southern Cross Library, Roma House, 543 George Street, Sydney.

Catholic Freeman's Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1932 - 1942), Thursday 1 August 1940, page 9