The Fate Of Austria Catholic Action Plan

Austria's fate is sealed. This is not an alarmist but a sober conclusion to he drawn from the chief political event of the week.
No one who has read even the least circumstantial account of events, the official communique issued in Austria, can doubt that the Austrian Chancellor has been forced against his will to comply with Hitler's demand that the Austrian police should be controlled by a strong Nazi sympathiser, and forced to accept an aim, the fulfilment of " the history and common interests of the whole German nation," which does not harmonise with the meaning of his long fight for his country's integrity. When to tflis are added circumstantial details that seem well-founded (a hint made by Hitler about the small risk involved in the present step as compared with the re-occupation of the Rhineland, the caution that there are no third parties to help Austria out of her dilemma, and the presence of three important German generals symbolic of Germany's will), it becomes evident that this is and is meant to be a coup of the very first importance in Germany's aspirations to control Central Europe and refound her Empire.
The Catholic Herald has not been a critic of Germany's fight, outside the League laws, for the restoration of her proper place in Europe which was madly filched from her at Versailles, nor would it feel justified in opposing the Anschluss just because it was another nail in the coffin of Versailles and the League or because it was a blow against the hypocritical attempt pf, the democratic Powers to rule the world fcsr their Own good in the name of the laW which they themselves made. If the Austrian people freely speaking their national mind wished to be re-incorporated with Germany, it would support them, blaming only the blind and ignorant Versailles statesmen, in particular the anti-Catholic Clemenceau, for refusing to take their chance of creating a strong Christian State out of Bavaria and Austria.
But to see clearly the grave shortcomings of the League and of the democratic Powers does not prevent one from seeing equally clearly the brutality and immorality of the methods often adopted by the totalitarian States to attain their ends.
The Osservatore Romano in an important and, we are led to believe, specially inspired article has just denounced the evil of the war of words, the propaganda, the press, the creation of an atmosphere, all of which maintain in time of nominal peace the air, behaviour and consequences of war. Both sides, alas! have resorted to this, and past-master of the technique is Soviet Russia. But Russia is herself the worst of the totalitarian States, as Stalin's pronouncement this week on the need for a world-wide Marxist fighting front to support the Red Czar once again proves. But irresponsible propaganda in democratic countries, largely in conscious or unconscious response to Moscow, is not, we think, to be compared with the cool, calculating, directed-to-a-specific-end, lies and inflammation of spirits that go on in Germany and continually threaten in certain other states.
Austria to-day has been the victim of such a campaign as surely as if she had been defeated in war. She is the victim of brute force, cunningly wielded.
Though the matter has its puzzling features, it is not an accident that Nazi Germany is essentially anti-Christian, for true Christianity stands for a way of life, a regard for truth, a sense of moral values greater than any force, an awareness of the rights of one's neighbour, all of which are infinitely removed from the behaviour exhibited this week over Austria.
One would like to hope that the attempt to Nazify and annex a Catholic country like Austria would cause Hitler to halt in his persecution of religion or at least enable the Catholicism of Aus tria to infiltrate into the governing circles of the Reich. Of this, however, there is little chance. It will not be the purer and finer mentality of Austria that will prevail, but the barbaric men tality of her bluffing .and defiant conqueror.
The Archbishop of Munich appropriately compared the methods of Germany with those of Soviet Russia. Our fear is that, wherever the springs of social, cultural and intellectual life are forcibly made into the instruments of power of one man and one party, Christianity and all the moral values that spring from it will one day be suffocated. At any time the temptation may become too great for one man to master. Already Italy in her foreign policy and her desertion of Austria is showing that the duty to Christianity and the " sincere Christian inspiration," of which an Italian cleric speaks, cannot compare with the vital interests of power.