SIR, The spectacle of a distinguished Catholic priest being vilified by a leading Catholic publicist is it cause ol distress among Catholics. It is playing into the hands of the enemies of the Church, whose policy is to cause confusion of opinion. Whether or no the White Paper mullions Kuhn, Loeb and Co. is a matter of relative unimportance except as a debating point against Fr. Coughlin. Mr. Oudendyke's teSitrU011y on Bolshev ism in the White Paper stands: " It is oiganised and worked by Jews who have no nationality and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things." And the letter from the Rev. P. S. Lombord to Earl Curzon, also contained in the White Paper: " I have been for ten years in Russia and have been in Petrograd during the whole of the revolution. . . It originated in German propaganda, and was, and is being carried out, by international Jews."
Mr. Lunn is not quite so naive as to be taken in by the suggestion that these things " just &rowed "—the inevitable and mechanical working out of such-and-such a philosophy. Ile, surely, is not unaware of the pervasive influence of secret societies in revolutions and subversive movements. Pope Pius XI M the " Encyclical Letter on the Persecution of the Church in Spain, June 3, 1933," said: " This persecution of the Church in Spain has been set on foot, not so much from ignorance of Catholic teaching and of ha benefits, as from the hatred and enmity which the destroyers of all order, religious and civil, banded together in secret societies as in Mexico and Russia, cherish and stir up against the Lord and against Hi y Christ."
Thet these societies arc the tools of financial forces the following quotation from the secret report of Count Lamsdorf former Russian Foreign Minister to Emperor Nicholas II, will show, This report is dated January 3, 1906, and is taken from 7-he World at The Cross Roads, by the Russian writer, Boris Brasol. It deals with the international aspect .of the first revolutionary outbreak in Russia. In the course of the report Count Lamsdorf says.," ... We may feel entitled to assume that the above-mentioned foreign support of the Russian revolutionary movement comes from Jewish capitalist circles. In this respect one must not ignore the following concurrences of facts which lead to further conclusions, namely, that the revolutionary movement is not only supported but also to a certain degree directed from abroad.
" On the one hand, the strilsc broke out with special violence and spread all over Russia not before and not after October, that is. just at the time that Our Government tried to realise a considerable foreign loan without the participation of the Rothschilds and just in time to prevent the carrying out of thin :financial opelation; the panic proyoked among the buyers and holders of Russian loans could not fail to give additional advantage to the Jewish bankers and capitalists who openly and knowingly speculated upon the fall of the Russian rates..." Count Lamsdorf goes on to say that " in June, 1905, a special Jewish committee of capitalists was openly established in England for the pui pose of collecting money for arming lighting groups of Russian Jews ... Another committee of Jewish orpitaliets was formed in England, under the leadership of Lord Rothschild, which collected considerable amounts for the officially alleged purpose of helping Russian Jews who suffered from pogroms." (The full text of this report was published in the American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger" in its issue of July 13, 1918.)
Instead of attacking Fr. Coughlin (who, after all. was only trying to do what Mr. Lunn and others should be doing), Mr. Lunn would render better service to Catholics by devoting his talents to investigating these points There is a lamentable ignorance or indifference among Catholics in regard to the reality of the forces arrayed
against the Church. One wonders if this indifference is due primarily to our dislike of having Our complacency disturbed with the consequent necessity of reviling our theories and mode of judgment of affairs. The dissipation of the ignorance rests with our publicists who have a duty towards their less Wellinformed brethren.
STUDENT.
SIR, — I alb as tired of this COI-respondence as your readers muse he, and refuse to prolong it by digressing into a general discussion of the relation between Jews and Communism. For my views on that subject see my book, Whither Europe ?
Mr. Barry, in effect, concedes my principal charge: That Er. Coughlin is recklessly inaccurate in his statements. Fr. Coughlin stated that he had in his posses.vion a British While Paper which mentioned the names of Kuhn, Loeb and Company as among those who financed Russian Communism. Mr. Barry now tells Lit that these wild slatemeats were the result of confusion. Fr. Coughlin " confused the two reports through an inaccurate misleading of ..."—the British White Paper ? No —" of pages 88-91 of The Mysticed Body of Christ in the Modern World," by an Irish priest, my old friend Fr. Fahey, whose integrity I respect but whose views on this point 1 am unable to accept.
Mr. Barry continues: " Mr. Lunn says his letters arc based on the American Jewish Committee's publications."
I laid no such thing. My views are based on a careful comparison of the case for the prosecution as set forth in these publications and the case for the defence as set forth in the publications which, Fr. Coughlin sent me at my request. There is eomething to be said for following in these matters the normal procedure of our law courts. Mr. Barry. on the other hand, who dismisses with contempt as of no value any statement made by the Jews against Fr. Coughlin accepts with uncritical faith every etatement made by Fr. Fahey. and the compiler of that curious anti-Semite anthology which claims the tide Documentation Catholique, against the Jews.
Every race has its characteristic defects, and it is not an indictable offence to criticise the British or the Jews, but it is a sin to bear false witnees against one's neighbour.
Fr. Burns quotes against Dr:Fairfield a sentence which Mr. Hollis wrote
many years ago. Mr. Hellis will not return to this country for some weeks, and be will have the sympathy of many of your readers in being cited, during hie absence, as a supporter of a priest whose paper was suppressed for its unpatriotic activities after Pearl Harbour.
In conclusion, let roe say just this. If an English priest had carried out for many years a syetenLetie campaign of defamation against Ireland, no Irish layman would be attacked by Trish Catholics for refusing to accept the position that such a priest should only be criticised by his Bishop.
ARNOLD LOW
The Mb:banns.