" Italy And The War Mind"

SOME COMMENTS ON AN ARTICLE
Miss Barbara Barclay Carter's article in the " Catholic Herald" last week on " Italy and the War Mind " has called forth a number of letters from our readers, of which we print a selection below.
If any of our readers wish to comment on the following, they are urged to keep their letters to 300 words. And we remind them that, for Christians, the fundamental point at issue is: Is Italy's war a Christlike undertaking, or is it not?
From "Altera Vox''
Many of your readers must deplore the attack on Italy and the Italian people by Barbara Barclay Carter. No doubt she writes in good faith, blinded by her dislike of Fascism and by her innate conviction that this country is never actuated except by her " greatest quality," " that sense or justice, that national conscience that was aroused by the attack on Abyssinia."
All the same, it is somewhat naive to cope-et Belloc and Chesterton to undertake to inform the Continent that none but the highest motives are behind the policy dic tated from Geneva. Countless are the balanced and patriotic Englishmen who make no such pretence, and frankly admit that the present attitude is concerned with British supremacy in the Mediterranean and only indirectly with the " wrongs " of slave-trading Abyssinia.
Those of us who have loyally supported the principles of the League from its beginnings continue to hope that it will be maintained as an instrument for developing international social services and for teaching peoples to co-operate in the eradication of vice, slavery, and other evils. But the League is not infallible and it is inconceivable that Italy should bend to the particular type of diplomacy now being pursued by fifty nations who have chosen to condemn her without a hearing.
The U.S.S.R. Interest Italy can hardly be accused of having violated her engagements to the League which has given so many sorry examples of timidity to deal with previous infractions, injustices, and wars on four continents. Geneva is no longer timid today, for the U.S.S.R. holds a permanent scat in the Council and the most zealous protagonist of effective sanctions against Italy is Mr. Litvinov.
Catholics should reflect that it is a main interest of the Soviets that Italy should be destroyed, not because she has been guilty of " aggression," but because she stands in Europe as a bulwark against Communism and godlessness.
Why mince matters? The Italians are a Catholic people and their national renascence under the leadership of Mussolini has brought them back into the front rank as a European power capable of resuming her civilising and cultural mission beyond her own frontiers. So Italy must be crushed and cowed before she finds legitimate expansion for her growing population. (Birth-control and divorce are no part of Italy's creed, religious or national.) Italy has been accused of aggression. There is such a thing as justifiable defence in face of provocation and peril. She has, moreover, been given no adequate opportunity of stating her case.
"Violation of the Pact " by Italy, forsooth! A survey of the history of the League during the past few years or even the past few months, soon puts Italy in the right towards a politically debased League which is being used to-day for particular and not for universal aims.
Sob-Stuff About Abyssinia
Some newspapers give us a lot of sobstuff about Abyssinia which, in so far as it is a State at all. is ruled by a usurper whose high-faluting proclamations to the world cannot cover up the fact that he actually owns slaves in his very household. Too little space is given in the press to the magnificent stand of every Italian man, woman and child in their unflinching devotion to the cause of their fatherland (a Catholic fatherland), and the super-human sacrifices they are prepared to make before they allow themselves to be strangled and humiliated as a nation. Catholics at least should be less partial and in this connection they could learn something from several outstanding English Protestants.
Glorious Italy is actually being placed on the same level as savage, uncivilised Abyssinia where the Negus through his representatives collects taxes from conquered tribes in human kind, men and women. Even the enemies of Italy are prepared to admit that there will have to be European control for the peoples of Abyssinia.
One thing may be said for Haile Selassie. He deserves congratulation on his excellent publicity service, which equals in efficiency any of the propaganda poured forth from European and American chanceries during the world-war. What is most regrettable, however, is that the ignorant and well-meaning man in the street here, in Holland, and in the Scandinavian countries is being subtly poisoned by lying reports from AddisAbaba on Italian conduct of the war, coupled with sanctimonious statements about disloyalty to the League deity, and thus hatred is fostered until it may even reach mob frenzy.
Hostility Towards Italians The Black Emperor may be proud of his success. A recently-returned visitor from _ posed to pin-pricks, scoffs, and reproaches from ignorant. fellow-workers and they live in constant dread of dismissal by their cm ployers.
The unseemly campaign against Italian waiters as a whole has fortunately been arrested, thanks to the sense of fair-play among the best in our communit,y.
But who will guarantee that a certain little waitress of Italian parentage whose business it is to serve cheap meals to Jewish customers in the East End will not soon be forced to join the ranks of the unemployed? Already she had been reprimanded for wearing a religious emblem. and now she is made the butt of vindictive remarks against Mussolini by British naturalised Jews.
One is amazed at Miss Carter's strictures on the Italian hierarchy. Does she really expect pastors not to be at one with their flocks in their unswerving love of country and loyalty to its cause at this time of crisis? It is both their right and their duty to remind Italy that part of her task is to carry the Christian standard to Abyssinia and to liberate the oppressed slaves of the Negus.
From Mr. Bernard Wall
To avoid false impressions which are liable to be made by an article such as that of Miss Barbara Barclay Carter in the last Catholic Herald, I am endeavouring to set down a few principles which seem to me essential preliminaries to judging the Italo-Abyssinian dispute and the historical position of the papacy.
(I) We must try to see the outbreak of war, not as an isolated instance, but as one expression of a principle upon which modern history is largely based. And if we attempt to judge Italy, we must judge the imperialist-nationalist ideal, which is the basis of modern politics. Now, for all our fine phrases, Great Britain, as well as nearly every other power, still accepts the imperialist-nationalist ideal as the basis for action.
(2) The nationalist spirit, which became a reality in England with the sixteenth century, when it was consecrated by a state church, only became a reality in Italy with the risorgimentd.
Italy, by coming on to the stage so late, had the alternative either of being a second-class power or of undergoing a process of mechanisation and unification which is part of the meaning of fascism. Italy thus entered into competition with a world which accepts the "first-class-power" standard, and (as in the case of Japan) she modelled her colonial policy on that of the two imperialist world-powers, France and Great Britain.
Italy and Japan are thus struggling to get to the top in a world which—however tine its sentiments—has not really abandoned the imperialist ideal. That is the beginning of the trouble.
Conflicting Imperialist-Nationalist Ideals
(3) The existence of the League of Nations does not alter the fact that the modern map of the world is the creation of conflicting imperialist-nationalist ideals, and on one view, the League of Nations is seen as a means of guaranteeing permanently historical conquests of imperialism and nationalism. In the view of the " discontented " or " thwarted" nations, the League, though a gigantic alliance, is not incomprehensibly more gigantic than the league of the Allies at the end of the world war.
This historical connection with the Allies must be taken into account in an estimate of the League, because it has been thc basis of the criticism of Versailles and the League which has been made by the " discontented'' and "defeated" countries since the peace. Hence, whereas in France and England the League is seen as a world union and world arbiter, in Germany, Italy and Japan it is seen as a means of guaranteeing the allied acquisitions in 1918. This explains why Italians are so unimpressed with the decisions made at Geneva.
(4) The price of Italy's collapse in Abyssinia would probably be an extension of the conflict, and hence there is a danger that the fluctuation of liberal-humanitarian sentiment in this country may bring sufficient pressure on the government to force us into art impasse and put Italy back to the wall.
As it happens, this fluctuating and fickle body of opinion has concentrated on the Italian case rather than the Japanese case, and the Japanese aggression in northern China has passed almost unnoticed during the last few days. I do not believe that British policy (which is admittedly imperialist) is totally governed by the popular pendulum, but the popular pendulum is an unfortunate influence, because it always picks on one tree in a whole forest.
A Series of Condemnations can scarcely speak without raising the issue of Versailles and the rights of Chinese appeals to the League, quite apart from mentioning running sores in Memel, Ulster, Bolivia, and even India, the minority conflicts in eastern Europe, or the fortifications at Gibraltar. If Italy has broken tier pledges, we cannot expect the papacy to interfere directly every time a pledge is broken!
Moreover, League supporters should remember that four great powers (America, Japan, Germany, and Italy) suspect the League of being partisan, and it is historically sensible of the Holy See not to commit itself too far to the judgments of an institution which may turn out to be ephemeral like the Holy Alliance after the Napoleonic wars. It is absurd to compare the Pope with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is a subject and official of one of the states involved, and who can as readily condemn Italy now as he could bless the British arms in 1914.
(6) Both English and Italian Catholics should beware of interpreting the principles laid down by the Pope as though he had made a judgment about the facts. The conviction on each side of the utter justice of the cause has made for a tendency to interpret the Pope's statements in exactly opposite senses.
The papacy has stated through history the principles upon which world peace can be guaranteed, but it does not answer for the consequences unless these principles are accepted unflinchingly and in toto. As these principles are not the basis of contemporary society, and still less of international agreements, a merely local judgment might do more harm than good.
From Count George Bennigsen
There is a much greater danger at this moment than the Italian " war mind " of which Miss Barclay Carter speaks in her article in your last issue—it is the English " war mind " which is fostered by the ceaseless propaganda of " pacifists."
Leading Catholics of Italy are said to support a war " that does not fulfill a single one of the conditions of a just war as defined by St. Thomas." These leading Catholics, including cardinals, archbishops and bishops, great scholars and writers, have apparently been so misled by fascist propaganda that they have to be reminded of St. Thomas by Miss Barclay Carter, But does not the writer wish to prove too much? Where does St. Thomas condemn a war of aggression which appears to be the decisive question for Miss Barclay Carter? St. Thomas lays down three conditions for a just war:
(1) A lawful authority for its declaration, which in the present case no one could deny; (2) A just cause, " namely that those who are attacked should be attacked because they deserve it on account of rome fault "—this does not seem to condemn aggression, but quite the reverse; (3) A rightful intention, so that the belligerent " intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil," and St. Thomas quotes here the words of St. Augustine permitting those wars " that are waged not for motives of aggrandisement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the eood."