—SAYS U.S. PRELATE
Mgr. Francis I. Spellman, Archbishop of New York, one of America's most influential prelates, lately illustrated the remarkable change which has come over U.S. opinion. Making a strong plea for America's defence programme, the Archbishop drew rather on Soviet examples of wanton aggression than on the plethora of instances offered by Nazi Germany.
The Archbishop was addressing a large' gathering of men of the American Legion— the U.S. Ex-Servicemen's organisation which, wielding tremendous power on popular opinion, has hitherto been obstinately isolationist—on the eve of the twenty-second National Convention.
" We Americans want peace, and it is now evident that we must be prepared to demand it. For other peoples have wanted peace and the peace they received was the peace of death."
The Archbishop said that he was " a man of peace, but gone is my hope of building a world safe for democracy on such foundations as the Treaty of Versailles.
THE BLASTED DREAM
" Vanished, too, is the mirage of many philanthropic optimists who cherished the vision of a world united in peace and fraternal charity beneath the aegis of science, divorced from religion and around the altar of godless education.
" Blasted is the dream of a communistic universal brotherhood—blasted by the telltale rattle of machine guns and the roar of cannon over Finland.
" We can no longer afford to he moles who cannot see or ostriches who will not see, for some solemn agreements are no longer sacred and vices have become virtues and truth a synonym of falsehood. We Americans want peace and we shall pre re for peace, but not for a peace whose dilemmatic definition is slavery or death."
THE ONE ROAD TO PEACE Archbishop Spellman told the Legionnaires that " science, knowledge, Communism, these three great hopes of men, these three great deified abstractions, have wavered and failed beneath the pressure of human prejudice and selfishness and the spirit of ;rushy and wickedness in high places."
This country, he said, must take the " only one road to peace I know of, the high road of democracy, the road marked by the signposts of the Ten Commandments, the road back to Christ and His teachings, in personal life, in national life, and in international life."