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CITY EDITION
PERTH, SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 1936.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
MASONRY AND ITALY The Hidden Forces in European Politics Mr. Belloc Analyses the Causes of the Present Conflict
The various causes converging to form tile attack on Italy, the strange alliance of various contingents which have united to destroy, if they can, the Government and power of that country are of all sorts and kinds. Many of them are in actual contradiction with others, but all arc agreed on the main object.
The most important, of course, by far ,and the most respectable is the political necessity of this country: A strong power on the Red Sea, a new and increasing military power in the Mediterranean, if it be hostile is a menace to that by which England lives—the exploitation of the Fast and general commerce between Asia and Europe; to which must be added the vital position of Egypt and the high tribute indirectly levied upon that country and the Sudan. Italy need not have been made hostile—but it is too late to correct that fatal blunder. Perhaps the next most important group in the alliance is the highly organised internationalist communist movement led by intelligent and active Jews who work from Moscow and whose principal public spokesman is Wallach-Finklestein, who is put forward under the false name of "LitvinotT." in the now vain hope that people will take him for a Russian. Who should be put third on the list it is not easy to say. but I am inclined to think that international freemasonry deserves that position. There are a vreat many other factors in the alliance; there are the masses of honest men who detest unlimited monarchy; there are the numerous belated people who still believe in parliamentary institutions and live under the illusion that professional politicians are -representative"; there are financial forces at work, also international—for instance, the advantages to be derived from forming loans on a bracer' Italy after her defeat. It is a classic manoeuvre, which the money-lenders adopt in every crisis. Then there is the hatred and contempt felt by the mass of the Protestant culture for the Catholic culture. There is at the present moment also the powerful motive of humiliation. The folly of our recent foreign policy has got us into a deadlock out of which the only way seems to be that of a national humiliation and patriotic men do not swallow national humiliation easily. There are, I say, all these motives at work and one might add the strong puritanical motive of moral indignation over other people's evil deeds. But numeron5 •
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While the daily cables are concerned with "atrocities" and s tupidities attributed to the Italian campaign in Abyssinia, aimed at inflaming the public mind against the Duce as the instigator of an unparalleled example of "colonial aggression," thinking men in many parts of the world have conceived the whole conflict as a matter of larger issues. Mr. Belloc has described it provacatively as "The Mediterranean Conflict." Whether one agrees or not with this view, Mr. Belloc's viewpoint must be treated with respect. Here is his penetrating analysis of the three major causes of the attack on Italy:
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as these contingents are that make up this variegated alliance against Italy and all her future, I would still put Masonry upon the whole as high up as third in the list. I think it comes next after the political interests of Great Itrit:.;11 -h id the organised campaign of the. Moscow Jews. It is easy to exaggerate the power of international freemasonry. and the temptation to exaggerate it is so strong that not a few men of outstanding intelligence have yielded to it in the past—but then, in the past, international freemasonry was more powerful than it is to-day. Freemasonry is no longer a secret society. Everybody knows all about it. and after all there is not so very much to know. Its doc--foes are harmless enough; but there is this about it which is re-markable and could only be explained by the association of ideas that wherever the Catholic Church is powerful masonry becomes the organisation or caucus directing the political forces which aim at a destruction ot Catholic society. There is no logical connection between the quaint Herbraic ritual (invented apparently at the end of the seventeenth century) and hostility to the Catholic Church. Still less is there any apparent rational link between the vague humanitarian ideals which run through masonry and the body of Catholic doctrine. The main complaint is that masonry being non-doctrinal saps organised and doctrinal religion. but that does not explain the conflict. The connection between one thing and another in practical
MR HILAIRE BELLOC life depends not only on links that can be rationally explained, but also upon mere association of ideas. If a man meets with insult from another man in a red cloak the association of red cloaks with insult would arise through it would be slight. But if a 5ec3nd man in a red cloak is rude to him, and then after some interval, a third man in a red cloak plays a practical joke upon him, he will come to identify the wearing of red cloaks with hostility to himself. If a body of men whose bond is fidelity to a particular creed are in practice constantly at loggerheadis with those who care nothing about the creed but are given to Olaying the flute the followers of the creed will inevitably get irrto a state of mind where fluteplaying is to them an abomination. The doctrine of adult baptism has nothing whatever to do with the doctrine that fermented liquor is an evil. but by an association of ideas there arose after a few generations a permanent hostility between Baptists on the one hand and hearty drinking on the other. That is the answer to those who say that there cannot be any real hostility between masonry and Catholic society. It is an h ostility bred from an association of ideas which has exiisted so long that it has taken on strength and struck rocks and become permanent. It has body and real existence. Go where you will in any Catholic nation or policy—Ireland. Franc, Belgium, Vienna. Portugal, Spain— everywhere you will find masonry furnishes the framework. the organisation and the direc-
Featured in This Issue Is Czechoslovakia .4n11-Cath,olic? - P. 7 Gambling and Common Sense, - - R 9 Cath,olic Ideal of Marriccoe - - P. 13 The Soul of a Poet (A Short Story) - ••
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Live, of attack against the socia and religious tradition of the II people. • International masonry there- 6 fore has already a natural antipathy to the presence of a new powerful Catholic state, such a.s Italy was manifestly becoming Still, that tendency was vague ; •• what made it exceedingly active • was the direct attack made b) • the new Italian Government oL 6, the Masonic Lodges and the corn 6 plete success of that attack • There was no subterfuge or hy , 6 pocrisy on either side. The masons would destroy Fascism if they could, and Fascism did actually and physically destroy •0 Freemasonry. The young Fascists raided the Lodges, broke ui 6 and burnt the emblems, expellek. and attacked the venerables and • the rest and made their lives burden. Therefore it is that a; over the world (in America, for instance, where there are mot( f reemasons than in all the rest o' Christendom put together, i Mexico, where the Government is openly masopic, in Bohemia, where the government is also purely masonic, as may be seen in the persons of Masaryk and Belies). masonry is working against Italy. It is only one of the many highly comic things about our modern press in England that a matter of this importance is never spoken of. I say again. the thing must not be exaggerated. Our newspapers suppress a great deal more than comment on f reemasonry. They suppress c omment on the money-power and on the share-shuffling of anciers. They suppress the relationship between Gog and his cousin Magog. They suppress all analysis of patent medicines. They do not only suppress. They are also innocent of instruction. The public is left not only ant also of a thousand other things which the newspaper monoplists have either never heard of or arrange to keep silent about. No, the effect of freemasonry on the present crisis must not be exaggerated—but to ignore it is idiotic.
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