—Says Capt. McCullagh
"Having lived both among the Nazis in Germany and the Bolsheviks in Russia, I can testify from personal experience that the Bolsheviks are the more dangerous of the two." So writes Captain Francis McCullagh, famous Catholic Isar correspondent, in the American Catholic Press.
Describing the rape of the Baltic States, Captain McCullagh notes how small the world reaction has been, and says: " A thug who robs a lonely and defenceless traveller at the muzzle of a revolver is no better than a thug who first slugs his victim over the head because he hears several of that victim's friends rushing to his assistance."
CHURCH MAY DIE OUT " All the Catholic chaplains have already been dismissed from the Lithuanian army. All ministers of religion will be exiled or imprisoned, and all churches pulled down or devoted to secular purposes: some of them may even he converted into antireligious museums like the Catholic church of St. Catherine on the former Nevsky Prospckt in Leningrad. Christianity may die out altogether in Lithuania owing to the absence of priests and the malignity of the persecutors. Such disasters have happened to the Church before.
" Although Polish refugees do not like the Germans they admit that in the Polish provinces occupied by them Catholics are treated with a tolerance quite unknown in the Polish provinces occupied by the Reds.
" In Warsaw, for example, two new seminaries accommodating 710 young ecclesiastical students have just been opened by Hans Frank, the German governor.
IN RUSSIAN POLAND
" In Russian Poland, on the contrary, all the seminaries are being confiscated and, unfortunately, the present Russian Poland Comprises some very Catholic territory which was never ruled by the Tsars. I refer to the former Austrian province of Galicia, a country rich in Catholic churches and the centre of a great movement for the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church with Rome, a movement directed by one of the most remarkable prelates in the Catholic Church, Bishop Scheptitsky of Lvov."
Comparing the Nazi menace with the Soviet menace, Captain McCullagh argues that the second is far more serious, not only because Germany's racial policy is inherently limited, but because Hitler is bound to fail.
" The Nazi Empire," he says, " be as ephemeral as the Empire of Genghis Khan or that of Napoleon. It is a raid, not a permanent conquest, and future historians will probably be surprised at our simplicity in ranking it as a greater danger to civilisation than Communism.
CONTAGIOUS CONLMUNISM " For Communion, as we know, is extremely contagious because it does not appeal to any one race; it appeals to the submerged and oppressed and embittered classes of all races.
" Stalin's great opportunity will probably come at the end of the war when Europe will have been converted into an ideal field for Communist activity, filled as it will probably be with an impoverished, starved and embittered proletariat crowded together under the tottering walls of ruined cities like Bedouins amid the ruins of Baalbek."
Discussing the position of Britain, Captain. McCullagh holds that Chamberlain rightly warted to drive the Nazis against the Bolsheviks, whereby " two nuisances would have annihilated one another like the fabled cats of Kilkenny." He was unable to carry this policy through owing to the power of the Left and the weakness of the Conservatives.
DRIFT TO THE LEFT He foresees a great drift to the Left and to bureaucracy in Britain. " When peace comes," he concludes, " and the impenetrable smokescreen of governmental propaganda lifts, the oligarchical and aristocratic system under which Britain built up her empire will have disappeared ; the powerful middle class will have been crushed out of existence by taxation; bureaucracy will be triumphant.
" An omnipotent super-state will interfere in every department of private life from the weaning of infants to the painless elimination of the aged. The Church of England will be disestablished, for' the sake of its endowments."
" Instead of taking a part of the Englishman's income, the Government will take all of it, giving in exchange ration cards entitling the recipient to standardised meals in a communal eating house, standardised clothing, and other necessities of life."