POPULAR FRONT IDEOLOGY

Unpatriotic Attempt to Cause Disunity
Christian Outlook Is Not On Trial
IBy Michael de la Bedoyere NO one can study the British press. especially the weekly press, without realising the existence of a veritable underground conspiracy to identify the Allied cause with the cause of that sort of Left intelligentsia leadership that has stood throughout for the " Popular Front."
A CONSPIRACY THIS movement is nothing less than a conspiracy, and an extremely unpatriotic conspiracy at that. Readers of this newspaper who care to look up our files will fail to find—except in occasional letters to the paper—any support for the views of those who detect nothing but organised Bolshevik or Masonic or Jewish conspiracies behind the social changes and movements of the past few years. While we have never doubted that Bolshevism and continental Masonry have been powerful factors in the disintegration of Christian morals, discipline and order, we have time and again rejected articles that purport to document the secret forces at work behind the scenes. We can scarcely therefore be classed among the type of persons who scent a secret anti-Christian enemy lurking behind every bush. Our view has rather been that the open secularist and paganising propaganda of a generation that has lost all real sense of God has so eaten into the social texture that the organised conspirators have been able to sit back and watch the work of self-destruction. at most having to give a gentle push here and there. But we confess that we now find it hard to explain how, since this tragic war began, the patriotism of our people has steadily been made into the instrument that will best further the ends of the anti-Christian forces behind the Popular Front. It required something more than a mere process of disintegration to try to convert into a Left internationalist ramp the great constructive national effort to repel the dangers of totalitarianism, whether of the Right or of the Left, and to put an end to their tyrannies at home and their criminal foreign policy.
ITS DISLOYALTY MORE important still is the element of subtle disloyalty in this conspiracy. We are not now referring to the inherent evil of the ends associated with the Popular Front mentality, for this is a matter of opinion. We are referring to the attempt to divide the nation in time of war by putting ideological considerations before national ones. Those who detest the aims of the Popular Front have hitherto maintained a patriotic silence about this matter, because they feared to weaken the unity of the country in its hour of need and danger. But there must be a limit. imposed by conscience, on this silence, for we cannot stand by indefinitely and watch the cause of Britain and the cause of Christianity deliberately prostituted for ends which we believe to be evil in themselves and ultimately disastrous for our country. If the Lcft intelligentsia leadership, which has got hold of most of the press and powerfully pushes a Government that is too pre-occupied with the gigantic work of defence to realise what is happening, ceases to attack with undisguised venom all who have stood in the past for order and European construction as traitors, Fascists and capitalists, responsible for the present disasters, if it ceases to foster the cause of friendship with the bloodiest tyrant of them all (and one self-confessedly the eternal enemy of all that is Christian, European and civilised), if it refrains from dubbing " defeatist " everyone who writes the truth, considers the economic implications of the war, refuses to emulate the barbarity of the Nazi leadership, and asks what our peace aims really are, then we shall be only too glad to refrain from underlining our point of view, and to concentrate only on the task of winning the war. But we do not see why they should be allowed to say what they like, under the disguise of true patriotism, while we are asked to remain silent, in case we appear disloyal and give Christians a bad name.
FRANCE'S SURRENDER AvE speak now especially because the surrender of France has given to this Left leadership the opportunity it required to come out into the open. This surrender, we are told, is the work of those who opposed the Popular Front, who sought appeasement with Germany, who tried to improve relations with Italy, who denounced the Spanish Reds for the murderers and incendiaries that they were. Even this is not true, for the surrender, on the word of Mr. Churchill himself, was the inevitable policy imposed upon a defeated country and agreed to by leaders of all parties, including M. Reynaud. There were three alternatives. The Government could fly the country, leaving the French people and the French soil to the tender mercies of the Germans. This is the alternative that would appeal to the British Popular Front, for it is a matter of indifference to them on what land the pink international flag is hoisted, just as the fate of the ordinary people of their own blood does not enter into their calculations. But apparently there were few French leaders who in the last hour were prepared for this alternative. French patriotism is tougher than that. The second alternative, that of M. Reynaud and his followers, was to ensure the resistance of the French fleet and the safety of German refugees before asking for an armistice. How far this was an honest alternative is arguable, but we ourselves do not mind saying that it was much the best one in the sad circumstances and should have been followed. The third one was the policy adopted by men who were prepared to trust the Germans and Italians considerably further than we do. Time alone will show whether they were wise, WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE ?
BUT all this is not to the point. It is not the nature of the surrender nor the personality of those who made it that matters; it is the causes of the surrender which indicate those who were ultimately responsible for it. In an article in last week's New Statesman, " A French Socialist now in London " indicts the French Right for the sorry state which France reached last month. The most significant sentence in his article is the following one : " The time has not come to examine the mistakes madc by the Popular Front Government." Why not? For the very simple reason that any such examination would make childish nonsense of the rest of his article. Not that these mistakes are unknown. Even if they are meant to, people have not forgotten the successive and disastrous devaluations of the franc, the state of the Air Ministry after Cot has. spent his time secretly helping the Spanish Reds and allowing his country's most vital defensive weapon to rot, the series of strikes paralysing French industry, the relations with a foreign Power, Soviet Russia. which make any occasional Right intrigues with Germany or Italy pale by comparison. The plain fact is that the time of the Blum Government was by far the most disastrous period in a long series of bad Governments. For the Christian indictment is not only against the French Communists and Socialists; it is against the whole business of French politics through two or three generations. We rightly condemn Hitler for secularising German education, but the secularisation of French education by the anti-clerical and Masonic powers that have ruled France in the Third Republic has long been an accomplished fact. What Hitler hopes to effect tomorrow. French politicians have long accomplished with the results which we now behold. The whole political, social and economic structure of the Third Republic, Right, Centre and Left, has been so rotten and corrupt for years that in the end this corruption has eaten even into the two stable pillars of French policy. her foreign affairs and her military organisation. That is the simple truth, and the cause is the exclusion of the Christian elements (with their natural and immediate interests in the real welfare, spiritual and bodily, of the people) from the running of the country.
No, it is not Christianity, Christian social reform after the pattern of the Popes. the corporations into which a nation should be organised, the defence of the interests of the peasant and the ordinary people, the seeking of friendship with Christian neighbours. it is not these things which are on their defence to-day; it is money-power among the capitalists and the worship of money-security among the bourgeoisie; it is political intrigue in the name of republicanism among the careerists and the army of officials blackmailed by them; it is Marxism among the organised workers and their far more responsible intellectual leaders. If you seek their monument, look at France to-day.
(v)
THE STATE OF BRITAIN IN Great Britain, thank God! things are still very different. The breach between the country's tradition and her would-be irresponsible rulers has never been completed. Some spiritual and moral contact between those who have the power and those who have to yield to power has always remained. In the first place, the Christian heritage, general security, and the tough moral character of the race has maintained at least a standard of probity in public affairs. Wealth, even though it has been greater than in France and tolerated a more cruel and unnatural division between the " haves " and the " have-nots," has associated itself more intimately with the different classes, namely, the aristocracy, that still remains closely related to the land and to the industrial wealth built on it, the commercial middle classes, and the workers, through their conserva tive and truly British Trade Unions. Parliament has represented more accurately the diverse, but inter-knit interests of the country. Only at either end, among the controllers of the great financial and industrial enterprises (often not British by race), and among the army of unemployed, does one find a complete break-away from the communal interests, the first voluntary, the second enforced. This closer texture of British society makes for strength, especially in a time of crisis, and it is the stuff upon which sound leadership can be built.
(vi) FORCES OF DISINTEGRATION BUT the forces making for disintegration have been growing " steadily stronger. Capitalism and the money-power are rapidly side-stepping the links that still bind them to the country by getting hold of the bureaucratic State and controlling a large part of the quite irresponsible press. And through the press, the wireless (to some extent), the teachers in university and school, a continuous campaign, ostensibly in the name of the people, of liberty and of progress, is maintained to get possession of the soul of the country. These two influences, irresponsible money-power and the pink intelligentsia, are trying to ruin Britain for the sake of internationalisms whose magnetic poles are cosmopolitan New York and Moscow. They are trying to bring Britain to the point at which a thousand years of French history cracked in a few weeks. And we must add to this political and intellectual danger the by no means unrelated religious and moral failure which Main aptly summed up in the case of France in the words : " The spirit of pleasure has prevailed over the spirit of sacrifice and people have demanded more than they have given." The appalling failures of the past—entirely wrongly attributed to the men of Munich, but most correctly applied to the parties of the Left which consistently pressed for bellicose internationalism while opposing every sort of military and industrial preparation—and the wholesale failure to learn the true lesson, show today that the candid and realist Christian critic is the true British patriot. Unless Christians and all true Britishers have the courage to speak their mind and reverse the position by putting on trial those whose philosophy has brought us to our present pass, our country cannot be saved, while any success we may achieve will not be credited to Britain and her Empire. but to the anti-Christian internationalism of the Popular Front.