Revisited: Hilaire Belloc’s Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age (1928)

Santiago de Compostela Cathedral (Pixabay)

Dr. Robert Hickson

25 July 2022

Saint James the Greater (Santiago)

[The Author’s Additional Note Is Presented Here on 25 July 2022, Which Is Some Three Years Later Than the Original 29 June 2019 Text. The current note is also on the Liturgical Feast that honors Saint James the Greater, as well as Saint Christopher.

[During the years 2019-2022 our daughter and our son have grown in maturity and energy; and they are yet still receptive to good and enduring Classics as well as distinctly worthy Catholic Literature, such as The Betrothed of Alessandro Manzoni. I would include Hilaire Belloc’s Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age (1928, 1929). For example, it was the first time recently (2022) that my gifted German wife completely heard Belinda being read aloud to her, slowly and gratefully savored. (I read aloud from an illustrated 1929 text as published in London and New York by the Harper & Brother Publishers, on 188 small pages of the main text of the Tale.)

[My wife and I both now hope that Isabella Maria will soon read Belinda again, and thus to consider more fully its variety and its purity and its chivalric nobility, to do it now more slowly and thus more deeply to be henceforth intimately cherished. So too is our hope and purposiveness with our son, Robert Richard, who is now eleven years of age, and soon to be almost twelve years old. Isabella Maria, moreover, is herself now fourteen years old, somewhat restive as she is more than half-way to her fifteenth birthday. May Belinda be (or become) an External Channel of Grace to the Little Ones, and even a Sacramental for both their mother and their father. Yes, indeed, a purifying Sacramental.

[We shall now present below a representative selection of Hilaire Belloc’s inimitable Tale of Deep and Sincere and Varied Affections, in the Youth and in the Aged, as first published in 2019.]

[RDH, 25 July 2022–Feast of James the Greater]

Hilaire Belloc’s Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age (1928)

Dr. Robert Hickson 29 June 2019

The Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Hilaire Belloc’s Arrival Afoot in Rome (in 1901)

Epigraph

“’I have told you,’ he [Sir Robert Montgomery, Belinda’s father,] said, that ‘I know—I understand—the affections of youth….I married late: you have a father too much advanced in years for your opening life. Your mother, who is now a saint in Heaven, you never knew. But I myself, long before your age [now eighteen], had among my companions one to whom the deepest of human affections was far, far from unknown.’” (Hilaire Belloc, Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age (Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire: Loreto Publication, 2014—a re-print of the 1928 First Edition), page 31—my emphasis added)

***

“Such, gentle reader, were the loves of Belinda and Horatio; tried as by fire, torn asunder, rejoined, they attained at last to wedded felicity under an ancestral roof, until, after the brief accidents of this our mortality, they were united forever in Paradise.” (Hilaire Belloc, Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age, page 130)

***

Over the last few weeks, my wife and I have eagerly attempted to introduce our daughter (11) once again to some unmistakably challenging examples of excellent literature: such as Alessandro Manzoni’s 1840 historical novel of the early seventeenth century, The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi). We are now gratefully reading that book aloud together—along with our young son (8)—especially some of the extended central passages of that eloquent and memorable novel—with my wife herself now expressively and adroitly doing the reading. We are doing this, in part, so as to prepare an excited Isabella for her own reading soon of the entire demanding 500-page novel, now from the beginning.

Moreover, I have also thought that Isabella would thereby then be ready to read another, but shorter (130-page), nineteenth-century historical novel of purity (with its frequently gracious and expressed affections, as well as with some passionate robustness and youthfulness and vividly “chivalrous daring”). That is to say, Hilaire Belloc’ own cherished 1928 novel, Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age.¹

Hilaire Belloc especially cherished this carefully constructed and nuanced romantic tale; a tale of protective and attentive affection and the fidelity of faithful memory. (He had slowly composed and refined his gradually forming novel for some five years, between 1923 and 1928, and only then did he consent to publish his completed text.)

Set in England and France, the resultant Tale of Affection now tells us, in large part, about a young man of twenty-three and a young woman of eighteen, two neighbors who, having a common boundary between their spacious properties, had once been childhood playmates. But this Horatio and Belinda have just discovered in their unexpected outdoor meeting something deeper and more enduring. Something that touches and soon profoundly affects their faithfully plighted hearts.

However, this developing bond and its likely fuller maturation unto marriage displeases several persons, some of them in Belinda’s own family (to include her father) and some of them truly vulnerable men and already in deep debt and deceitful suitors of Belinda, such as Sir Henry Portly of Molcombe Abbey (43) and his intrusively malicious litigious agent, such as sly Lawyer Fox of Bath.

Because of certain customary limitations and strict prohibitions made by Belinda’s father, Sir Robert Montgomery, which were to be applied while he is to be away from Wiltshire for two important weeks in London, Belinda and Horatio are thwarted. They are not permitted to be with each other, but they could only write letters to each other. However, and fatefully, these four actually written letters of deep affection were intentionally blocked from their delivery—because of the malicious interdiction of a complicit lonely spinster woman.

Leaving Belinda, Horatio first goes apart from home on horseback, thinking that Belinda herself has rejected him and his sincere love. He intends to go permanently abroad to the main continent of Europe (to France at first). However, as it turns out, Horatio shows, now as a wandering pauper in France, much more of his virtuous moral character. With “chivalrous daring,” he even rescues from a gang of robbers by night a distinguished noble French woman who originally had come from England many years ago. Because he had been wounded in the rescue, he was taken by the widowed Marquise to her nearby Château and it was proposed to him, quite firmly, to remain there himself until he had fully healed. (The widow’s name, we gradually discover, was Esmeralda de la Ferronnière and she had been in retirement since about 1824, the year of death of the French King, Louis XVIII, when her own husband, the Marquis, also died.)

Not long after Horatio’s nighttime escorted arrival at the Château, Sir Robert Montgomery himself, along with Belinda and their whole entourage, came to seek a rescue themselves, after one of their three carriages (especially a smaller chaise) broke down and gravely wounded their lead horse.

When Robert Montgomery heard from one of the servants the spoken name of the Marquise of the Château, he was stunned. Thus began many memories from his own youth and his germinating affections, as well. This helped him better understand Belinda’s own plighted heart and “long fidelity,” as well as her special sufferings recently (which was why her father decided to take her on a refreshing tour to continental Europe). Self-knowledge grew and was expressed—though sometimes with restraint—also to the once-beloved and still cherished Marquise de la Ferronnière herself, who had her own cherished memories of deep affection and Robert’s own “long fidelity” (116).

Most movingly, Horatio and Belinda met again and understood the belatedly revealed reasons for their earlier and painful misperceptions of each other, especially as to why their own very affectionate love-letters were not received and then reciprocated. The honorable character of Horatio grew in the eyes of Sir Robert and Esmeralda, as well as of Belinda—and that much-tested young couple was now at last permitted to marry there in France. Belinda and Horatio prepared for their wedding and soon were bound in sacred matrimony by Reverend John Atkins, their accompanying Anglican vicar and Belinda’s own tutor, especially in intimate matters of religion. Then would soon come the return to England of the whole extended company, to include Marquise Esmerelda herself, where she would dwell for long portions of the year. For, the two Wiltshire estates of Halston and Marsden would now “eventually unite in their common patronage the two livings” (129) and then invite a beloved friend and companion of long ago to dwell there, even permanently, but in a companionship of fittingly gracious, respectful purity and thus “without peril.” (125).

In an earlier passage, Belloc—or rather the Narrator—deftly reveals part of the novel’s fertile theme:

They err who pretend that the years, though they may obscure, can eliminate a primal passion. The soul is immortal. If once it suffer the imprint of that one emotion [love] which links time with eternity, the imperishable mark remains. The flood will return in full, unconquerable might, provoked by a tone, a scent, a glance, a name. This man [Sir Robert Montgomery], so far advanced in the business of living, already conscious of the grave, had suffered a resurrection from the dead. He had heard the name of Ferronnière…. He heard a voice, he rose and trembled, the great doors were ceremoniously opened, and the woman appeared. (114)

Let us also briefly try to present the comparable courtesy and purity of youth, now that we have hopefully been touched by the gracious conduct and sentiments of Sir Robert and his affectionate companion of long ago, Marquise Esmeralda. We shall introduce the unexpected meeting of Belinda and Horatio out of doors, each of them walking near or along a stream that forms part of the boundary between their own individual family estates. First, we consider Belloc’s presentation of the awakening and subsequent wandering walk afield of Belinda “close on noon” (13):

She woke, indeed, to the day and place, yet these were changed as though now infused with wonder….So, dreaming in full wakefulness, the girl…wandered under the high sun across the lawn…toward a dense wood of pines; there she proposed to rest awhile in the shade, and commune with a little brook which eddied clear under a plank thrown across its waters, and ran with a happy murmur to join the Avon near at hand. The stream formed part of the boundary…and…[she] turned her feet toward that spot….
Upon the farther bank, in the neighbouring park from which the stream divided her, a sandy slope…led up by a narrow path…to a great grove which hid the old and ruinous house of Halston beyond [i.e., Horatio’s home]. Thence, at the same hour, with high noon past, and the more powerful sun distilling every savour from grass and leaf and earth, Horatio sauntered out, bound no whither, filled with the power of summer which grew to harvest all around….The grove summoned him to its recesses; he received the influence of the great beeches and their shade as though the half darkness were alive. He came out into the further blinding light, and the sound of the stream below beckoned him insensibly down the path to the water between the wealths of fern.
She saw him as he came through the bracken, with active carriage, with uplifted face. It seemed to her that there was something there inspired; and her imagination put courage and adventure into his advance, as though he were setting out on a quest. He turned a corner of the path to cross the rustic bridge, and was aware of one [who is] scarcely known yet deeply known, whose airy figure among the solemn pines arrested all his being. When he had approached and discovered her face, it was not the familiar feature of a friend, but Radiance personate. In him, for her, [there] approached a god.
The moment was magical. It was as though some music had transformed the world….But in the heart of the high wood a Presence, shining in a shaft of light, triumphantly let fly the arrow from the bow. (13-16—my emphasis added)

To appreciate more fully the personal qualities and religious-philosophical orientation of Belloc’s chosen Narrator of this Tale of Affection, we may now consider the way he is presented to us at the outset, especially on the first two pages. We may thereby notice what is there, but also what is not there—such as the absence of the Catholic Faith and of a fair presentation of earlier Catholic History:

Within the [Anglican] parish, and adjoining the village, of Marlden, in a stately mansion known as The Towers, whose ample lawn sweeps down in smooth luxuriance to the pellucid waters of the Avon, resided a gentleman respected throughout the County of Wiltshire as Sir Robert Montgomery….
The baronet (for such was his rank) enjoyed the esteem of his equals, the respectful affection of his inferiors, and the devotion of an only daughter, an only child, upon whom her mother (long dead) had bestowed the pleasing name of Belinda.
That devotion of the widowed father repaid with a particular and careful attention, the dignity of which could hardly veil his deep, his doting fondness. No expense was spared in providing Belinda’s earliest years with a solid grounding in the rudiments of polite learning, while, as her girlhood blossomed into riper charms, a further selection of instructors drawn from both sexes perfected her in Italian, French, the art of painting in water-colours, every department of deportment, and the pianoforte.
Thus did Belinda Montgomery, as she entered her eighteenth year, unite every refinement of culture to beauty of an entrancing mould; a mind naturally apt and generous, trained to its fullest powers, informed a frame of surpassing grace, and the whole was inspired by a soul wherein had been firmly planted the precepts of our sublime religion. (1-2—my emphasis added)

We may now wonder about the meaning of the “our” in “our sublime religion.” (2) Who is it, for example, who largely conducted Belinda’s own formative religious education?

We shall fittingly now meet at least one of her teachers, “the Reverend John Atkins,” (2) who will also be the one who later marries Belinda and Horatio. But the Narrator presents now the matter of Belinda’s deeper religious formation:

To this last and awful matter the good vicar of the parish, the Reverend John Atkins, had applied himself with constant zeal. His living (of which Sir Robert was patron) did not so completely engross his time as to forbid him the hours required for the young lady’s spiritual education: nor were the emoluments of such a task ungrateful to one whose humble needs were but narrowly met by the tithe and glebe of the parish.
Under such guidance Belinda grasped in turn the nature and attributes of her Creator, the scheme of the Atonement, the promise of a blessed Heaven, the menace of a dreadful Hell, the original institution of Episcopacy; and the errors of Rome upon the one hand, of dissent upon the other. The Book of Common Prayer was her constant companion, and on the richly inlaid table of her private boudoir lay open, for daily consultation, the Holy Bible. (2—my emphasis added)

Near the end of Belloc’s presented Tale, we see not only some of the more comic elements in Reverend Atkins’ beliefs and words and professional conduct; but also some of his deeply warm affection and good-hearted sentimentalism:

In the room which had been set aside for the chapel of the [marriage] ceremony,… the household was assembled, the Reverend Mr. Atkins vested and prepared. He had required, he had demanded, he had obtained, a glass of port wine and a biscuit, which was his invariable custom to consume before a Celebration, in protest against the Romish novelties of certain [Anglican] colleagues. As, with practiced intonation, he recited the profound phrases of the Marriage Service, the Marquise, who had missed for so long the beautiful Liturgy of her youth, was deeply moved; while old Fanchette, the only French domestic not a Papist and, therefore, privileged to attend, was equally affected by the sacred scene, though, being ignorant of the English tongue (a Huguenot [Calvinist] from the Vaudois), she could do no more than reverently follow the rhythms of the sacred office.
Averse though he was to the extempore usage of the Caledonian Communion [the Scotttish, and perhaps Calvinist Rite?], Mr. Atkins did not forbear to add at the end of his ministration a short but heartfelt prayer of his own for the young people [Belinda and Horatio] who would eventually unite in their combined patronage the two livings of Halston and Marlden. Tears stood in the eyes of the good old man as he alluded with a native delicacy to the possibility of offspring. Himself a celibate,…the more pathetically did he extend both hands in benediction over the bowed heads of the kneeling couple, while his uplifted eyes sought Heaven in a prayer for their fruitful happiness. (129-130—my emphasis added)

CODA

The reader of this tale of affection and purity will also gratefully find many memorable displays of Hilaire Belloc’s capacious versatility and depictions of lapses of true and chivalrous nobility. For example: Sir Robert Montgomery’s unexpected outburst and eloquent diatribe against the perceived character of Horatio Maltravers and his lineage (25); the presentation on the debt bondage of certain gentry and the cold manipulations of the financial oligarchs (to include the looting of the monasteries, both historically and now) (41-46); Horatio’s hospitable welcome at an inn and the special gift of his horse, Crusader (66-71); the voyage by ship from Dover to France (71-72); the Marquise’s rescue (78).

In the presence of his daughter Belinda, Sir Robert Montgomery passionately rejected her own choice, demeaned her beloved, and had an astonishing outburst at last, full of Shakespearean invective:

“Horatio!” he thundered. “Horatio Maltravers? A beggar’s brat, disreputably dragged up by a hermit? A pauper? A young wastrel? An out-at-elbows fellow, a scrap and rag-bag, a rotten Oxford coxcomb all curls and debts, a miserable futility.” (25)

On high finance and debt bondage and desperate (often immoral) attempts to become unsnarled:

This lamentable situation [of progressive and often compound interest and resultant “debt bondage”] had risen from an action only too common upon the part of the gentry. Sir Henry’s father [Sir Orlando Portly] had the fatal imprudence to speculate on ‘Change [sic—the Financial Exchange]….
The rumor spread by Herr Amschel—later and better known as Baron de Rothschild—that the glory of Britain had set on the field of Waterloo [fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815], had led Sir Orlando…to sell…in the hope of reaping an immense profit when all should be acquainted with the fatal truth [the purported loss of victory]. He [Sir Orlando] had not allowed for the business acumen of the great banker. For Amschel-Rothschild had secretly procured the news of victory in advance of all, and had had the admirable foresight to spread accounts of defeat for the better preparation of the market.
It was upon these accounts that Sir Orlando [Portly] had [disastrously] speculated in London, confident in the ruin of our cause. (42-43—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

Horatio’s necessary stopover at an inn in Dover, en route to France, because of the rough seas:

The landlord, standing at the door to welcome a guest [Horatio] whose distinguished bearing he had justly appreciated at his approach, bowed low to receive him, and asked him what service he might render.
“Let my horse [Crusader],” answered the gentleman dismounting, “be led to his stable, whither I will accompany the groom to see that all is in order: the saddle and its bags carefully lodged aside, the creature’s coat well rubbed down, a rug provided, and an ample feed of good oats—for a man’s first duty is to his mount. Next I will ask for a simple meal with a bottle of your best, and that disposed, I will beg a word with you.”….
“I would be brief. You have seen me accompany to his stall my best friend….Take, take I pray you, this steed of mine—the final object of my domestic affections—for I depart from England, and for ever! He is worthy of your acceptance….you will give him the home I desire….With you he will be secure from the sloth, the folly, the cruelty of bad horse-masters….I leave him in good hands. I ask no more….I go abroad for long, for long indeed. If you will harbour my gallant, my faithful Crusader, it is upon me that the boon is conferred.”
He was silent.
“Sir,” replied the host, in deep tones of ill-concealed emotion. “I shall keep him not as a gift, but as a trust, until I have the honour and pleasure of seeing your face again. (69-70—my emphasis added)

Then came Horatio’s journey by ship to France in the heavy storm:

Within a few minutes [out of the protective haven] the winds embraced her in full violence….The waves rose mountains high as the shore receded into the murk….The Captain (whose name was Beaver) affirmed, with rough sea-oaths, that in all his 317 crossings of the Channel he had never known so fearful a hurricane, and in the thickness of the flying scud the white sea-walls of England [of the cliffs of Dover] turned ghostly as though leagues away, (71-72—my emphasis added)

Then came Horatio’s answer to a question the Marquise Esmerelda posed to him after he had rescued her from night-robbers in France, a question as to his “destination”:

“Destination,” he answered, “I have none. I am a wanderer, self-exiled from the home of my childhood. I seek but the next hostelry [inn], thence to continue through the world my trackless and lonely way.”
“Nay,” said she decidedly, in that clear voice to which its mere hint of a French habit added a subtle charm, “then our course is plain. You must accompany me to my Château, which is near at hand, and there remain till you are healed of your wound. I will take no denial. That you are a gentleman your idiom, your gait, your accoutrement assure me. That you are the bravest of the brave [especially with your openly “Chivalric Daring” (81)] (she concluded, with an assuring glance) you have yourself proved.” (78—my emphasis added)

–Finis–

1See Hilaire Belloc, Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age (Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire: Loreto Publications, 2014—a re-print of the 1928 first edition). The first edition, as published in England in 1928, was published in London by Constable & Co. LTD. The American First Edition was published in New York and London by Harper & Brothers in 1929, and that edition additionally contains eight Illustrations. All future references, however, will be to the 2014 re-print text by Loreto Publications, and the references will placed above in parentheses in the main body of this essay.

Money-and-Language Manipulation: New Methods of Modern Oligarchs

A Note from the Authors on 24 June 2021 (the Nativity of St. John the Baptist): In late August 2012, now almost 10 years ago, while we were reading and discussing together candidly a variety of challenging books, my wife and I both considered a few recurring and connected insights in these counterpointed texts which we then decided to write down, and then also to present some of this thoughtful matter to some others, especially for their corrections and discerning deeper judgments. These matters included the isolation of the human soul and the trials of protracted human isolation (Belloc); a refreshing Christian paradox about the temporal and supernatural realms (Jacques Maritain); the uprooting of the family, not only of the Christian and of the Catholic family; the only partly knowable conduct of some influential financial and political oligarchs and their often unaccountable covert networks; and the misuse of language (as in sophistry) its consequential helping along, and often covering up, the abuse of power. May the brief consideration we offer here still be a worthy contribution to some important discourse, and be even timely.

Dr. Robert Hickson and Dr. Maike Hickson

25 August 2012

King Saint Louis IX of France (d. 1270)

Money-and-Language Manipulation: New Methods of Modern Oligarchs

Epigraph: A Christian Paradox to Limit the Temptation to Pharisaical Presumption

“The order of good moral and civil administration prescribes that publicans and prostitutes shall take rank after persons of honorable life. The order of the Kingdom of Heaven permits publicans and prostitutes to take rank, in the inscrutable judgment of God, before persons of honorable life.” (Jacques Maritain, Freedom in the Modern World, London: Sheed & Ward, 1935), p. 78 – my emphasis added.)

The inhuman state we humans are living in at this point of history is getting clearer every day. It gets more and more obvious that the ruling elites are detached from the people they are ruling and that even these elites are ruled by other, mostly financial, elites. The citizens often feel powerless in the face of social, moral, financial and even natural disorder.

Part of the analysis today will have to look at the effects of the destruction of the family. Much courage, independent thought and cohesiveness have been taken from the citizens (often with their own collaboration) by the isolation of man from his other family members, especially by divorce (the lack of care for the vulnerable, the little ones and the old, often is the result of a lack of a housewife who is at home and thereby able to provide the care). There is just barely any more an existing harbor for us, where we have a refuge and a stronghold, a support and the love that would sustain us more fully in any political struggle. Yes, we are weakened by broken bonds, strife over children’s custody, division of property, rebukes and remorse. We have sunk down into the moral and social anarchy which has grave effects for the Bonum Commune. Such a hedonistic (“I only do what gives me pleasure”) and atomized society is too much self-absorbed to be able to look at the large picture in society and to act upon its analyses.

The moral foundation of society has been wrecked, by an endless attack on the Christian faith and culture which was the foundation for a flourishing civilization. Analysts have shown the destructive effects of the theories of several cultural and political institutions and foundations (like the Tavistock Institute and the Frankfurt School) upon society and family. The Christian Creed and Morals gave the people the help and the disciplined structure to live better in this world, even though this world will always also be a valley of tears. We cannot escape the suffering. And love hurts.

Europe has seen many wars and revolutions in the last two and a half centuries. They have largely contributed to the self-destruction of a society where a child cannot (and may not) any more play unharmed in the public playgrounds and where elderly are not any more respected, protected and actively helped by the young. What kind of people are we that we do not protect any more the vulnerable ones, one of the major aims of Christianity? The Lord was not jesting in the Gospel of Matthew 25:31-46. “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.”

How have we come to this state of gradual rejection or quiet apostasy?

Much research has been done on the history of revolution and war as a means to fragment, destabilize, disrupt and atomize, formerly coherent and rooted societies, especially Christian. (These techniques are now, as it seems, applied more and more to the still somewhat consistent and resistant Muslim countries). War and revolution destroy the existing political stabilities and governments and uproot and destroy families by death and upheaval. Who was behind the destruction of the once coherent Christian countries in Europe?

It is known now that all the major leaders of the Enlightenment movement which replaced a Faith in God by a Faith in “Reason” of sorts were Freemasons. Freemasons aimed at the destruction of the Monarchy (as a stabilizing factor and somewhat a bulwark against money-manipulation, especially if the King was truly Christian) and of the Catholic Church as the moral guide. Both were attacked and undermined by the French Revolution, and in the sequence, by the growing nationalist movements in the 19^th century which aimed at the replacement of the previous order and morals by an overstrengthening of the nationalistic feelings of the people and by centralizing the political power. Monarchies were much more subsidarian than ever were modern states.

At a closer look, it becomes clear that the oligarchies who run today the money and language manipulation (as a tool for governance) were already then involved in the financing of the revolutions since 1789, most prominently in the Russian Revolution, but also even of the disruptive and inhuman national-socialist revolution in Germany. Names like the Warburgs, the Mellons, the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers are to be mentioned here, among others.

Many leading figures of all the revolutions and of new philosophies in the modern era have been very interested in the occult world, and often in the higher Gnostic Freemasonry, specifically. Karl Marx wrote poems in honor of Satan; Freud secretly believed in the occult; Hegel himself was deeply rooted in the Kabbalah; many of the leaders of the Enlightenment were Rosicrucians. Charles Darwin, whose theory of the survival of the fittest is in accord with dialectical thinking (i.e., there is always a purported thesis and an antithesis, out of whose environmental conflict results a “better” or “more fit” synthesis), stems from a family deeply rooted in Freemasonry. Friedrich Nietzsche was initiated into the Eleusinian Cults and his book “Beyond Good and Evil” represents the essence of Gnostic thinking, i.e., that in the dialectical way we humans have to move beyond the old Christian antagonism of good and evil and have to embrace both in a higher synthesis. Historical research only later will show how many of those intellectuals who convinced the masses that there is no God and that atheism is a form of liberty, were themselves truly believing in the existence of the world beyond, with the difference that they followed the evil one, often using an euphemism, such as Lucifer. It would explain the evil effects of their philosophies and theories. What if one day it would come to light that the so-called enlightened people of today had fallen into the trap of mere propaganda, deception and self-deception? One only needs to look at the fruits of those “freeing” theories. The financial oligarchies, intertwined with the intellectual elites, have both promoted and empowered the state we are in today. They have apparently needed uprooted people for their plans of manipulative governance and profit-making.

The history of the last two centuries and more cannot be written without the immense role of these financial oligarchies. Their aim: the destruction of the Christian culture and civilization with its human face and compassion for the poor and the vulnerable and the strengthening of ideologies and movements which lead to a fragmentation and destabilization of the societies, which are constituted by humans who are mostly living in families. That is where these oligarchies needed specious (but false) theories and propaganda to instill ideas into the minds of men that would lead them away from a healthy and more fully virtuous way of life: Feminism, Communism, Socialism, Darwinism, Capitalism, Gender-Mainstreaming, to name but a few, are all leading people to help to form a less humane society. They all lead to the disruption of family life, the nucleus of human freedom and love.

It is very worthwhile in this context to go back a hundred years and to look at the work and writings of a few courageous men with a big heart, men of mercy and magnanimity, who in England fought the beginning of this modern (early 20^th century) work of destruction, with love, keen intellect and the Catholic Faith as their differentiated tools: Hilaire Belloc, G.K Chesterton and Father Vincent McNabb. All three men discerningly saw the sprouting of these above-mentioned theories, many of which first sprang up in England at the time, and they perseveringly and joyfully resisted them. They had a longer historical view and the right criteria and standards to see the inherent actual consequences, as well as the fuller final logical implications, of such false theories.

Chesterton in his book What’s Wrong with the World (1910), for example, presented in a lovely and warm way the beauty of the home, especially made by a wife and mother who loves her whole family and makes a home with love and care. Elsewhere, he also showed the cruelty of divorce and its evil effects, especially upon the children.

Hilaire Belloc resisted the growing power of the state (something that seldom existed ever before in a Monarchical state) in his book The Servile State (1912). He also strongly resisted the spirit of mammon which was spreading in his time and defended the local and rooted life on the countryside.

Father McNabb, in his The Church and the Land book (1926),^¹ resisted the moving of the people into to the cities and argued that they should return more rootedly to the land, where a family can live independently and make a living by skilled crafts and by farming on its own land, and with responsibility and accountability.

They all three saw the importance of private property and personal responsibility and saw the frigidly indifferent and manipulative ill-rule of these financial oligarchies.

They fought with magnanimity and they always gave persevering encouragement.

They all three are connected with the mediating concept of Distributism, which is a real answer to the old dialectic between Capitalism and Socialism, inasmuch as it proposes to assure that the great majority of citizens owns their own land and are thereby made capable to live a dignified and ideologically independent life.

These three authors are worthy to be studied in the context of our time and the troubles we are facing. They, too, resisted, already then, aggressive military intrusions and intervention, as in the case of the British Empire’s two, and slyly expanding, Boer Wars (1880-1881; 1899-1902), especially the second one. They also criticized biological and social Darwinism, Euthanasia and any other form of inhumanity. But, they also acted in their own personal lives according to their beliefs. There is a very touching story about Father McNabb himself in old age, who, secretly dressed up in old woman’s clothes, sneaked regularly into a little apartment of a very elderly and sick woman and cleaned her apartment. This only came gradually to light when he died in 1943 and the woman was suddenly left without any help in her state of vulnerability and illness.

Criminal Capitalism for the Elites, Collective Socialism for the Masses?

Since the time of these authors we have now discussed, much has been further developed. The old dichotomy between Capitalism and Socialism has been brought into a new synthesis, into globalist Capitalism with a Socialist side: the merging of the two opposites, still following the old Hegelian dialectic. With each step, more and more cultural, religious and human substance gets destroyed and subtly undermined. Here is how these two former opposites work now together, enhanced by the new methods and technologies of the 21^th century, with its multi-media and consumerist apparatus and with it further-developed psycho-drugs and psycho-techniques.

Capitalism is used as a tool to further uproot local businesses and farms, to further destroy family life through inhuman work schedules and fear of loss of jobs, a new form of slavery.

Socialism is used in the welfare-warfare state to make people mentally vaguer, sluggish and inordinately dependent. It also is used as a tool to turn the limited state into an intrusive therapeutic state which has a say in every matter, even in the most intimate questions of the education of children, and of how women should run their household, and so on.

While the early revolutions in modern times manifested much violence, the new methods of domination and of manipulative control today have been sophisticated and are in general less violent. While Communism had still its Gulag System, and Nazism its concentration camps, the modern man today is in the trap of consumerism, body idolatry, sexual degeneration and technological bondage and especially “electronic slavery.” Many people are so softened and occupied that they have neither the capability nor the will any more to think, so as to draw essential conclusions and to act upon them.

One of the conclusions of this little essay is that one has to live out oneself, and more fully, the precepts and counsels and generous invitations of Christianity in order to be able to be convincing and appealing to other people. Real charity in its generous selflessness still touches the human heart. When truth is spoken, it still appeals to the human mind.

–CODA–

One of the great advantages in our time of the United States, with all its all-too-well-known problems, is the greater spiritual and spatial freedom that still exist. One good example is the Homeschool Movement. The numbers of families who withdraw their children from the state schools and their propaganda and moral sewage are growing very considerably. They just school them at home with the help of the many homeschool organizations which provide them with learning material and indispensable guidance, or they organize themselves into subsidiary co-operatives. These families make use of their still-legal liberties in this country to nourish the minds of their little ones with truth and a fitting sense of proportion and purpose, not with intellectual and moral corruption.

A timely and timeless warning from the wisdom of Hilaire Belloc, from his chapter concerning the truly tragic life of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots and rival of Elizabeth Tudor, the Queen of England who, at the persistent prompting of her main counsellor William Cecil, then finally herself reluctantly consented to Mary Stuart’s unjust execution, after having kept her imprisoned in England and sequestered for many years (almost nineteen). From his heart, Hilaire Belloc therefore says: “Isolation is the chief evil of human life and isolation was imposed upon this woman [Mary Stuart] always and everywhere. When she made one desperate effort to be rid of it [i.e., of that protracted, terrible isolation] that effort was itself fatal to her.” (Hilaire Belloc, Elizabethan Commentary (London: Cassell and Company LTD, 1942), page 158—my emphasis added.)

—FINIS—

1This book is a collection of essays addressing the problems of the Industrial Revolution with Christian philosophy and social thought. Among the topics included are industrialism and the rise of unemployment; the evil of the wage system; the importance of land ownership and the restoration of craft production; the necessary connection between real work and spiritual salvation. It is intended for anyone studying social and economic thought as well as Catholic and Christian studies.

Strategic Bombing and the Innocents: Considering Gertrud von Le Fort and Pope Pius XII in Response to World War II

Dr. Robert Hickson 8 September 2019

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Epigraphs

“I was…thinking…about the nights in the city when the sirens had wailed so horribly to say: The foreign airplanes are coming!….That was eight years ago, and the [1939-1945] war has been over for a long time. I am not a little child now; I am a big boy—twelve years old soon. Yet even today, Mommy never talks to me about airplanes—I know she wishes I would forget all about the sirens and the airplanes. But I cannot forget them, although my thoughts always go only up to the edge of the memory—when I try to think of the most terrible moments, then suddenly there is a big hole, as dark as the cellar where we were sitting then, and there is such a terrible droning noise that I can no longer think about anything. Then all I hear is Mommy’s voice, loud and clear as a shout through all the other shouting: ‘Mary, take my child into your arms!’….

“When I began to think and see again, I thought at first that it really was the Virgin Mary holding me in her arms because Mommy’s face was as black as the picture of Our Lady of Altötting that hung in her room. But soon I noticed that it was Mommy’s face, covered with smoke and soot, completely frozen with fear and terror….” (Gertrud von Le Fort, “The Innocents” (7-46) in The Innocents and Other Stories (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2019—first published in 1960 in German and entitled “Die Unschuldigen”), see now pages 7-8 for the above-cited passage.)

***

“Several days later the Church celebrated the Feast of the Holy Innocents, to whom the castle chapel is dedicated….The priest said that the [Psalm 124:7] verse expresses the voice of the Holy Innocents.

“Suddenly one of the refugee women began to whimper audibly. ‘But the children did not escape at all; they froze! They lay motionless and stiff on the ice when we fled across the lagoon [as was our coming from East Prussia]. They threw them into the water like dead fish!’ She moaned so loudly that the priest had to interrupt his sermon until they had led the woman out.

“Later when we left the chapel, Mommy was standing on the stairs holding in her arms the woman who had whimpered before. She had nestled her head on Mommy’s bosom and wept very gently and quietly. Later Grandmama told Mommy that she would like to explain to the woman [refugee] the psalm verse she had misunderstood. But Mommy just shook her head.” (Gertrud von Le Fort, “The Innocents,” pages 28-29—my emphasis added)

***

“Mommy [Melanie, Heini’s mother] never goes with Grandmama to church in Niederasslau. Since she lost her rosary, she does not go to Mass anymore, either—she does not even go to the castle chapel when one is said there. But Mommy cannot stand the castle chapel at all because it is dedicated to the Holy Innocents. On the chapel wall to the right of the altar is a painting of the massacre of the children in Bethlehem.” (Gertrud von Le Fort, “The Innocents,” page 18)

***

“I think that Grandmama was much fonder of Uncle Eberhard than of my father [Karl], who was also her son, after all….But there is something else that Grandmama has against my father.

“’You hold Karl’s death [by suicide] against him, Mother,’ Mommy recently said to her—Karl was my father–‘and yet it was a noble, heroic death,’

“’But not for a Christian,’ Grandmama replied. ‘A Christian must find another way out.’ Grandmama, I think, is very pious….

“But then she [Mommy] told me honestly and decisively, ‘No, Heini, your father shot himself, but his death was nevertheless a noble one. Your father preferred to die rather than to kill the innocent.’” Gertrud von Le Fort, “The Innocents,” pages 15-16 and 33—my emphasis added)

***

“’Karl [my officer husband] did not fear certain death,’ Mommy insisted. ‘He feared God, and you claim to be a pious woman.’

“’But you are unwilling to be one,’ Grandmama replied, ‘and that is at bottom the reason for all your trouble and unrest. God permitted this terrible event [a massacre in 1944 France at Oradour]; if you could believe in Him, you would soon find peace.’

“’No, on the contrary, then I most certainly would not find peace,’ Mommy said stubbornly, ‘because if God existed, He would have to be as indignant as I. But there cannot be a God, because the whole world is full of the suffering of the innocent!‘

“’That is precisely how the world was redeemed,’ Grandmama said calmly. ‘The guilty merely get their just punishment, but the sight of innocent people suffering softens hearts—Christ suffered, too, although He was innocent. Until you accept that, you cannot be a Christian woman.’

“’And I do not want to be one,’ Mommy protested, again looking quite desperate.’…I thought, ‘What Grandmama just said really sounded beautiful and mysterious. Why, then, will Mommy not accept it?’ But then I recalled what Herr Unger recently said to her: ‘But what could be the reason why people today no longer believe the piety of pious people?‘ (Gertrud von Le Fort, “The Innocents,” pages 30-31—my emphasis)

***

“’But why, then, did Grandmama weep so bitterly at my bedside [after again Heini’s having been wounded by the fall of the tower-bell, but not a bomb]? I never knew she [in her poised dignity] could still weep like that! And why did she then tell you that she can now understand why you no longer want to pray?‘….

“’Well, does Uncle Eberhard not want to marry you anymore?’

“’No, my poor child rescued me from that.’

“’Oh, then I am glad, Mommy. But why are you kneeling down all of a sudden? Can you pray again now? And why are you praying downstairs in the chapel? Is there another Mass today for the Holy Innocents?‘

“’It is the domestics and the refugees, darling [and all the “children of Oradour” in France (46)]. I think they are praying for you.’….

“’So, now I want to go to the children—but suddenly I can no longer stand up—someone has to carry me. Ah, Mommy if you can pray again [as on page 8], then please say once again: Mary, take my child in your arms…’

“’Mary, take my child…‘” (45-46—my emphasis added) [Finis]

***

Introducing Gertrud von Le Fort’s 1960 poignant and at times very disturbing novella, “The Innocents,” has seemed a fitting way to speak of Allied strategic bombing in World War II, as well as of the later 24 January 1943 Allied demand for unconditional surrender. It may also lead us to wonder what Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church first specifically thought and then did about these two major moral decisions and the consequential actions. (Pope Pius XII, who knew German well, died on 9 October 1958, not long before Gertrud von Le Fort published “The Innocents,” which was dedicated to the lost children: “In memory of the children who died in World War II.”¹)

Moreover, Gertrud von Le Fort—by her vivid fiction—has intimately depicted some of the deep and longstanding effects of the promiscuous and often cynical aerial bombing, to include the ill fruits of revenge that such bombing so often incited and aggressively reciprocated, especially after the innocent were deliberately or negligently slaughtered. Culpable ignorance and culpable negligence were frequently present, as it appears—and as I have been told by pilots and naval aviators.

In this short reflection, I therefore propose to discuss, without any apparatus of learning, some of what I have learned over the years, to include oral history, beginning with my time as an eager cadet at West Point from 1960-1964.

The theorists of strategic bombing all essentially claimed that such a method would shorten the war, and avoid the stalemate-situation and moral horror of the Trenches of World War I, especially in Western Europe.

But, a declaration of unconditional surrender would—and did—protract the war, especially in light of the earlier vengeful “Carthaginian Peace” of Versailles (and the related stark Trianon Treaty and such). The enemy would also become more resolute as well as much more distrusting and deceptively mistrustful. That is to say, an already betrayed enemy was all too likely to “hunker down” intransigently and try to endure.

The strategic air power theorists had a set of presuppositions—fundamental premises—on which to base their confidence and their practices: the “industrial web theory” (about a vulnerable interdependent society of modernity); the belief that the bombers could get though to their targets without a fighter escort; their confidence that they could find, and in a timely way, the most important long-range strategic targets (such as the key nodes and choke points in the infrastructure of Romanian oil fields, so indispensable for sustained logistics); the reliable and continuous employment and precision of the new Radar); and their pilots’ ability to handle safely unexpended ordnance after an incomplete bombing mission over Germany, for example. But, almost all these assumptions were false. (My former father-in-law, a combatant bomber pilot in the 8th Air Force, told me calmly that, of course, he, like the other crews, often just dumped unused bombs anywhere he could—on cities or on the countrysides—before he returned to England and safely landed without any active munitions. He also landed in the Soviet Union twice, both times because of near emergencies, but, he reported, it was not a welcoming place or “ally” to be visiting, even briefly.)

Stalin first said that he wanted the capitalistic Western societies to fight each other and thereby to deplete each other, and then he would arrive into their own dissolution and take charge. Later, he did not want his putative Western allies to come up through Northern Italy into Austria. He even made some suggestions that, if the West did that, he just might have to make a Separate Peace with Germany, instead, another Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty (on 3 March 1918, late in World War I). But, this time, he said, to the advantage of the Soviet-Russians and not to the Germans. Stalin slyly wanted his Western allies to attack as far west as possible, instead, for example starting in western France so that the Soviet Army could more easily advance into eastern and central Europe (like the Mongols, but even further). Here was the country who had made an August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, and then invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after losing to the Poles the decisive August 1920 Battle of Warsaw,² which occurred only two years after Brest-Litovsk Surrender (in March of 1918). To appease their new Soviet ally (soon after 22 June 1941), England, on 6 December 1941, even declared war on heroic, anti-Bolshevist Finland, opening the way to the Soviet conquest of the three Baltic Republics.

From all things I have read down the years—and from all the searching questions I have asked—I have never discovered that Pope Pius XII ever even mentioned his warning or cautious assessment of “Strategic Bombing” and of the moral and immoral effects of effectively unlimited “Unconditional Surrender,” which Stalin himself hesitated to accept and to proclaim openly and then also to apply.

If anyone could give me evidence of Pope Pius XII’s analysis and resistance to Strategic Bombing and Unconditional Surrender taken together, and mercilessly applied, I would be very grateful—and even consoled.

Father John Anthony Hardon, S.J. once tested me orally by asking: “Is evil within the Divine Providence?” I said “Yes” but that didn’t get me very far, nor help my understanding very much. But Father then slyly said: “If you had said ‘No,’ however, we would have a problem!”

Then we spoke about the Mystery of the Permissive Will of God. For, Father said that God allows certain evils to avoid a greater evil or sometimes to enable a greater good to come forth and to abide. Then I said: “Papal Diplomacy certainly is a Test of your larger and manifold insights about the Providence of God.” What Pope Pius XII did or did not do—nor mention—during World War II is another Test about the purposes and allowances of the Divine Providence. No matter what, World War II was not—is not—“the Good War.” Gertrud von Le Fort has helped us to realize and to spread this true fact with empathy and with compassion.

–Finis–

1Gertrud von Le Fort, The Innocents and Other Stories (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2019), page 7 for her Dedication. All further references to “The Innocents” will be to this recent edition, and will be placed above, in parentheses, in the main body of this brief essay.

2For the conduct and the strategic implications of this battle and victory against the great Soviet Marshal Toukhatchevsky, see the excellent book by Viscount Edgar Vincent D’Abernon (d. 1941), entitled The Eighteenth Decisive Battle in the World: Warsaw, 1920 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931—or its later 1977 Reprint by Hyperion Press in Westport, Connecticut.)

An Introduction to Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State (1912)

Dr. Robert Hickson 15 November 2018

Saint Albert the Great (d. 1280)

Epigraphs

“The Reformers and the Reformed are alike making for the Servile State—I propose [therefore] in this [8^th] section to show how the three interests which between them account for nearly the whole of the forces making for social change in modern England [as of 1912-1913] are all necessarily drifting towards the servile state….

“These three interests are, first, the socialist, who is the theoretical reformer working along the line of least resistance; secondly, the ‘practical man,’ who as a ‘practical’ reformer depends on his shortness of sight, and is therefore today a powerful factor….while the third is that proletarian mass for which the change is being effected, and on whom it is being imposed….

“The second factor [, moreover,] in the change [i.e., both in the proposed and in the actually operating reforms in England] is the ‘practical man’; and this fool, on account of his great numbers and determining influence in the details of legislation, must be carefully examined….

“It is not difficult to discern that the practical man in social reform is exactly the same animal as the practical man in every other department of human energy, and [he] may be discovered suffering from the same twin disabilities which stamp the practical man wherever found: these twin disabilities are an inability to define his own first principles and an inability to follow the consequences proceeding from his own action. Both these disabilities proceed from one simple and deplorable form of impotence, the inability to think.

“Let us help the practical man in his weakness and do a little thinking for him.” (Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State (London & Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1912, 1913), Section Eight—pp. 121, 130-131—italics in the original; my bold emphasis added.)

***

“[Donec…] nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus…. (“[Until we have reached such a point now that….] “we can tolerate neither our vices nor their remedies.” (Titi Vivi: Ab Urbe Condita by Livy, the Roman Historian, from his own Preface to his multi-volumed Histories) (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 2.)

***

“If we do not restore the Institution of Property, we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.” (Hilaire Belloc’s own terse Epigraph to The Servile State—my emphasis added)

***

When The Servile State was first published in 1912, Hilaire Belloc was forty-two years of age and full of energy, due in part to his largely robust and astonishingly varied experiences over his formative years. His own 1912 book, moreover, at once prompted such a range of intelligent and unintelligent commentary—to include some grave misunderstandings—that Belloc in fairness decided to publish a second edition in 1913, only one year later, which contains his important, articulate expansion, by way of a new, nine-page Preface, simply called “Preface to [the] Second Edition.”

Our wholehearted and manfully compassionate author was attentive throughout his life and his writings—at least those I have come to know rather thoroughly down the years—to the always consequential combination of “Insecurity and Insufficiency,” which constitutes a challenging and an abiding vulnerability for any human being, and for his dependents in society. Throughout The Servile State, Hilaire Belloc especially considers and quite vividly shows to us the recurrent “economic factor” and how men and their families, whether organized or not, cope with insecurity and insufficiency; and, obversely, how they also strive to attain to and preserve a modest consolation, one which, with more stability, combines a more reliable continuity of “security and sufficiency.”

In Hilaire Belloc’s first main chapter on “Definitions,” he tells us what he means by a servile state or a servile status and basis:

My last definition concerns the Servile State itself, and since the idea is both somewhat novel and also the subject of this book, I will not only establish but expand its definition.

The definition of the Servile State is as follows:–

‘That arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labour for the advantage of other families and individuals [so] as to stamp the whole community with the mark [i.e., with the character and the status] of such labour we call THE SERVILE STATE.’…

A clear boundary exists between the servile and non-servile condition of labour, and the conditions upon either side of that boundary utterly differ one from the other. Where there is compulsion applicable by positive law to men of a certain status, and such compulsion enforced in the last resort by the powers at the disposal of the State, there is the institution of Slavery; and if that institution be sufficiently expanded the whole State may be said to repose upon a servile basis, and is a Servile State. (italics in the original)

G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc’s intimate long-standing friend, has some unexpected insights that will further help us approach the content and methods of The Servile State and to understand, a little better, what it is not. In his 1934 book of essays, entitled Avowals and Denials, Chesterton has composed a six-page essay “On Dogs with Bad Names,” which begins and then continues like this—in part so as to render, as well, a very gracious tribute to Hilaire Belloc:

A negative disadvantage attaches to almost any man who has a positive character or, what commonly goes with it and is even more important, positive convictions. A literary man, for instance, who has strong likes and dislikes, in the style of Dr. Johnson or [William] Cobbett or Coventry Patmore [the Poet], becomes so much more of a proverb or a joke that nobody can believe there is anything new to be learnt about him. Anything new that he does say is coloured, or rather discoloured, either by what people know he has said or by what people think he would say….

But, curiously enough, in the course of this [an attempted interpretation of H.G. Wells], Mr. Shaw [George Bernard Shaw, himself a committed Socialist and a trenchant Dramatist] had occasion to refer to Mr. Belloc, and said that the theory of the Servile State was only Herbert Spencer’s attack on Socialism. From which it was obvious that Mr. Shaw never read Mr. Belloc’s book on the Servile State, or he would have known that it is not an attack on Socialism, and that it has not the remotest resemblance to Herbert Spencer. But, just as Mr. Wells took it for granted that Mr. Shaw would write certain [erroneous] things about the Superman, so Mr. Shaw took it for granted that Mr. Belloc would write certain things about the Servile State….This curious, crooked doom, on strong characters with strong convictions, has pursued Mr. Belloc also in later times, [for example,] in connexion with his historical biographies.¹

Hilaire Belloc, though it was largely unrecognized by George Bernard Shaw, has presented to us in a fresh—but realistic– way the long-standing, ancient history of the institution of slavery and of its protracted forms of servility, along with some of their later implications, to include, as of 1912, its drifting—or a sleepwalking–into servitude and some subtle and spreading forms of bondage (to include debt bondage); and it was just before the precarious outbreak of World War I.

But, Belloc makes no denunciation of Socialism or Collectivism, as such. Nor does he consider in his book whether the implantation of servility is, without any qualification, good or bad in itself. For, many persons may well accept certain forms of openly or subtly coercive servility if they (and their families) would thereby have more security and a greater sufficiency or perceived abundance. Rather, Belloc is proposing to show us analytically what is happening and how it is happening since the effective sixteenth-century looting in the monastic breakups and the greedy usurious dispossessions of other forms of Church property within “Christendom,” in “Catholic Civilisation” (Belloc’s own words).

Belloc also gives hints as to why—in the course of the Protestant reformations, especially in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—traditional Catholic Christendom became fractured and dissociated, and thus why the new Capitalist Overlords became a powerful class of oligarchs and plutocrats.

For those who may have preferred Socialism (along with the necessary operation of its indispensable Political Trustees and State Administrators), Belloc tried to convince them that, even collectively, they were not sufficiently able—directly or indirectly—to “confiscate” and “socialize” the inordinate cumulative wealth of the Big Capitalists (their land, stores, equipment-instruments, owed debt, varied finances along with usury, and the like). Nor does Belloc think that the State—to include a more “Collectivist State”—would be able “to buy out the Capitalists,” instead of “expropriating” them, as Belloc’s separate and extensive, analytical Appendix (in his Section VIII) proposes to show us, more fully.

After his giving us a principled description of how the ancient institution of slavery was, with the advent of Christianity, very gradually transformed over the years into a society (especially in Western Europe) of much greater “economic freedom,” not just as a putative increase of “political freedom,” Belloc then more explicitly shows us their changing forms of service and ownership, and the manifold increase of many co-operative associations (such as the protective and fair standard-setting array of Guilds), with their various and often seasonal connections with the Church. In contrast with later usurpations, confiscations, and the unaccountable monopolies or oligopolies and depleting forms of merciless usury (even for a non-productive loan, not just towards a productive loan), the high moral standards and ethos of Christendom (e.g., against inordinate greed and against unfair competition, as in the “leonine contracts”) were to become more respected and rooted, and they were gradually to spread in commerce and agriculture and the skilled crafts, as was also the case, somewhat, even with the military in the gradual Christianization of Warfare—until the retrograde story of Joan of Arc. Belloc considered that the fullest good fruits of Christendom were to be found to be gradually manifested from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries.

After presenting his account of the growing and more rooted economic virtues of Christendom, as it were, he later shows us in his book why such a civilization and culture would likely not come again in the Modern World, and certainly not in any rapid manner or hasty way. Belloc was also doubtful that citizens today (as of 1913) would even want to bear the various burdens and responsibilities of private (and small) ownership. Belloc wondered about the extent to which men and their families would still want to possess private property in land and for its productive agricultural uses and capital equipment. Therefore, he quite realistically expects that—at least in England—Modern Civilization and the mass of society would continue to drift into servitude, especially into the more permanent and permeating Servile State. Even the Legislature (Parliament) would promulgate laws and stifling regulations which would not favor small ownership.

A keen-minded (often slightly ironic) European friend of mine memorably said to me back in the late 1990s: “We are moving to a situation where there will be ‘Criminal Capitalism for the Elites and Socialism for the Masses.’” (He also saw that “organized crime is protected crime, protected by political and financial elites.”)

We then also proceeded to discuss a colleague and friend of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, and especially his friend’s books: namely Igor Shafarevich’s book, entitled (in English) The Socialist Phenomenon (1980), which was more revealingly entitled–in the original Russian—Socialism as a Manifestation of World History (1975). Furthermore, the mathematician Shafarevich’s deeply searching and uncommonly candid 1989 book in Russian, entitled Russophobia, was promptly translated into English by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and published by them on 22 March 1990. (JPRS-UPA-90-1990: pages 2-39—“Nationality Issues”—to include the phenomenon of “Jewish Nationalism”)

Belloc’s The Servile State and Shafarevich’s The Socialist Phenomenon and Russophobia could both be—and should be—fruitfully studied together and refreshingly counterpointed, which would also help restore the writings of the gifted Catholic historian, Augustin Cochin, who, as a young man, was to be killed in combat in 1916 on the battlefield in France in World War I. Cochin—often quoted by Shafarevich—had already brilliantly analyzed in his several learned books, not only the French Revolution, but also, especially, the nature and influential operations of oligarchs and the decisively formative networks of oligarchies (which sometimes includes influential plutocrats). He also knew of the frequent “civil wars” among certain sets of oligarchs, such as between the Girondins and the Jacobins, and within the Capitalists of High Finance, who were themselves, and significantly, not openly mentioned by Karl Marx in his own strategic and analytical writings. However, these civil wars within the Revolution are still ongoing against the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church, and even against a diminishing remnant of what was once called Catholic Culture and Civilization.

As we in conclusion again consider the far-sightedness of Hilaire Belloc—and the abiding truths of his objective analyses—we realize that, in 1912, he saw the Catholic Church (with Pope Pius X in leadership) as a strong and deeply rooted Cultural Institution, and more. Were he writing today, however, he would likely be more reticent and cautious and even pessimistic about that once fortifying bulwark, the Catholic Church.

Were he writing today, he would also likely include an analytic section on the nature and servile effects of modern technologies—to include some “breakthrough technologies” and modern forms of our “electronic servitude.”

Belloc would also likely refer to two clear-minded and far-sighted American thinkers who flourished in the twentieth century: Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) and James Burnham (1905-1987).

If Belloc had read and robustly discussed Nock’s Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943) in person, he would have likely also applied three fundamental socio-economic laws in the way Nock himself had so deftly applied them to many, not just to economic, aspects of human life and literature: namely, the Law of Diminishing Returns; Thomas Gresham’s Law (“bad money drives out good”—i.e., good, sound money); and Epstein’s Law (named after Nock’s friend): “the inherent tendency of human beings to satisfy their wants through the easiest means available,” and even with the dubious propensity and decision “to try to get something for nothing” and “with minimum impact on themselves” (in the words of Major General Mickey Finn).

Belloc would also have wanted to read and have discussions with James Burnham, a strategic-minded, lucid thinker and writer—a former Trotskyite who, near the end of his life, returned to his earlier-abandoned Catholic Faith. We would then have especially discussed James Burnham’s Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (1964) and The War We Are In (1967). Belloc might also have wanted to examine with Burnham his own profound understanding of the growing “Managerial Revolution” as an equivocal development of Industrial Capitalism and its derivative, stifling bureaucratic and political society and civilization.

With such men Belloc would have had a recurrent feast. Such men, for sure, would have greatly enriched each other’s thought and conduct. Belloc never forgot Cardinal Henry E. Manning’s words to him in his youth: “Truth confirms truth” and “All human conflict is ultimately theological.”

In his own recurrent and searching Catholic reflections down the years, Hilaire Belloc might often likely have posed Livy’s own profound question. Have we come now to such a point where “we can tolerate neither our vices nor their remedies” (“nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus”)?

Just think of how Belloc would consider the growing problem of “opioids.”

What, if anything, will first need to be sufficiently restored? What, for example, are the preconditions to be established before our achieving a stable institution of well-divided, small property in society and the State?

In The Servile State, Belloc recurrently articulates as well as implies that, throughout civilisation and culture, there must first be a more secure and sufficient restoration of the Faith.

–Finis–

This essay has been written in the form of a book-preface to a recently published German translation of Belloc’s 1912 book by Renovamen Verlag.

1G.K. Chesterton, Avowals and Denials (London: Methuen & Co. LTD, 1934), pp. 85, 88-89—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original. The essay “On Dogs with Bad Names” (Chapter XV) is to be found in its entirety on pp. 85-90.

“That Unended War…Against the Innocent”: Evelyn Waugh and Father McNabb, O.P.

Dr. Robert Hickson 9 January 2019 (Within the Octave of Epiphany)

Saint Julian of Antioch (d. 313 AD)

Epigraph

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“The present writer’s years of life can now be so few, at most, that the only reason for stating an opinion is that he thinks it true, and its opposite opinion not only untrue but harmful.” (Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., “The Family,” Chapter 5 of the 1934 anthology Flee to the Fields—Father McNabb, speaking himself, was to die eleven years later, during World War II, in 1943.)

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“As if in gratitude to the Family for having given Him welcome, He raised to the dignity of the supernatural the plighted love that unites husband and wife—father and mother.” (Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., “The Family,” Chapter 5 of Flee to the Fields (1934))

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“And He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.” (Luke 2:51)

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Recently re-reading after some twenty years one of Father Vincent McNabb’s own writings on the family, and thus on Nazareth, I saw for the first time the importance and timeliness of one of the principles that he so concisely and lucidly articulates.

Writing in the early 1930s about one of “The Dangers to the Family”–in one sub-section of his longer essay, entitled “The Family”—he acutely said:

The second danger arises from the sentimental as distinct from the rational and ethical view of divorce. We have reached a legal state [already in 1934] when the fate of children can be decided by the existent sentiment between their father and their mother. Our divorce laws [in England], although not considered wide enough, are sufficiently wide to be governed by the principle that “it is immoral for a man and woman to remain together when they have ceased to love each other.” This principle largely initiated here in the West has been carried out with characteristic consistency in Soviet Russia [under Lenin, N. Krupskaya, A. Kollontai, and Stalin].¹

Soon after reflecting on this principle and its increasingly promiscuous implementation, which is all too often to the grave detriment and long-term harm of the innocent children, I thought of Evelyn Waugh’s 1950 historical novel, Helena, especially one passage from Chapter 11, entitled “Epiphany.”² The conjunction and counterpoint of these two Catholic authors, with their fresh insights, will teach us still many important truths.

Shortly before Waugh’s Helen is to find the Cross in Jerusalem, she visits Bethlehem on the Feast of the Epiphany and, with deep wonder, identifies with the Three Royal Wise Men, as they were personified and presented by three Greek monks in their re-enactment of the composite scene:

Helena [herself a recent convert] knew little Greek and her thoughts were not in the words or anywhere in the immediate scene. She forgot even her quest [for the True Cross] and was dead to everything except the swaddled child long ago and those three royal sages who had come from so far to adore him.

“This is my day,” she thought, “and these [three royal sages] are my kind.”….

“Like me,” she said to them, “you were late in coming. The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle. They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way.”….

“How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds had run barefoot.”….

“You came at length to the final stage of your pilgrimage and the great star stood still above you. What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod [i.e., “Crudelis Herodes”]. Deadly exchange of compliments [false flattery and deception] in which there began that unended war of mobs and magistrates against the innocent!” (222-223—my emphasis added)

We think at once about the impending Slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the three-decade later call for the release of criminal Barabbas and the resultant raging betrayal of innocent Jesus. Today, too, the Little Ones—the Parvuli of Christ—are indifferently, even impenitently, slaughtered. We are numbed by the magnitude of the dead and we struggle yet with the Permissive Will of God.

The wholehearted Evelyn Waugh nonetheless chooses to show us more of Empress Helena’s heart (and Waugh’s own heart, too) as he presents further and imaginative expressions to “those three royal sages” (222):

“Yet you came [to the Nativity], and were not turned away. You too found room before the manger. Your gifts were not needed, but they were accepted and put carefully by, for they were brought with love. In that new order of charity that had just come to life, there was room for you, too. You were not lower in the eyes of the holy family….

“You are my especial patrons,” said Helena, “and patrons of all late-comers [to Christ], of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.

“Dear cousins [ye royal sages], pray for me,” said Helena, “and for my poor overloaded son [the still unbaptized Emperor Constantine]. May he, too, before the end, find kneeling-space in the straw….

“For His sake who did not reject your [three] curious gifts, pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.” (223-224—my emphasis added)

In this passage, Evelyn Waugh shows us a reverent mother’s prayer for her son, hoping that he, too, would soon come to kneel humbly in adoration before the Christ Child—considering also His later, maturing youth in Nazareth. Helena herself, despite her energetic quest and mission, manifests a gracious reverence and spiritual childhood. She again and again acknowledges and submits to Divine Authority, believing that her own son must yet, and soon, be baptized—not just on his deathbed. For, she sees that he is pitifully “overloaded” by his own “Power without Grace.”

In 1934, Father McNabb likewise saw the pitiful spread of temporal “power without grace”–that is, without divine grace. After first commenting on “the fate of children” (76) and thus on the ill fruits of an increasingly-resorted-to secular principle of disorder—namely, “it is immoral for a man and woman to remain together [in marriage and thus in the full rearing of their children] when they have [purportedly] ceased to love each other” (76—my emphasis added)—he speaks of another peril to the family:

The third danger to family life springs from the modern rejection of obedience to authority [to include the authority of the father]. This rejection begins by disobedience to the authority of God [thus also to the Rights of God abiding]. But, as all lawful authority is, as such, of divine right, the rejection of divine authority tends to dissolve the claims and rights of all authority. In this welter of might without right such fundamental rights as that of the parent and the family [as a unit] tend to be set aside as belated [outmoded] or suppressed as harmful. (76—my emphasis added)

Such interrelated matters are part of “the threatened social avalanche” (76) that was seemingly accumulating, and thus “of deep concern” (76) to Father McNabb five years before the outbreak of World War II.

Five years after the end of World War II, Evelyn Waugh had another insight about that then-actual “social avalanche.” For, like Father McNabb (1868-1943), Waugh knew that Christ was being hunted even at His birth and also soon thereafter. Other Holy Innocents were likewise altogether threatened. For, in a prior and deceitful “deadly exchange” with the graceless and cruel power of Herod (“Crudelis Herodes”) “there began that unended war of mobs and magistrates against the innocent!” (223—my emphasis added)

Almost seventy years after those heartfelt words from Evelyn Waugh, that war is still “unended.” The attacks on innocence and purity have now even increased. The amount and intensity of crude and cruel “power without grace” have also seemed to have increased. Yet, for the Loyal Faithful, wherever evil abounds, indispensable Divine Grace superabounds and we are to co-operate.

In one of his 416 A.D. sermons against the Pelagians (Sermo 169, 13—PL 38, 923), Saint Augustine of Hippo effectively said that God created us without our co-operation, but He will not save us without our co-operation. That is to say, without our free consent.

–Finis–

1Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., Chapter 5 of Flee to the Fields (Norfolk, Virginia: IHS Press, 2003), p. 76—my emphasis added. This is a new addition of the original 1934 book, Flee to the Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement, which also preserves Hilaire Belloc’s original 4-page Preface, which is now on pages 15-18. All further references to this book will be placed above in parentheses.

2Evelyn Waugh, Helena (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950). All further references to this book will be placed above in parentheses.