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Vichy France and the Catholic Press in England. Contrasting Attitudes to a Moral Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Thomas R. Greene
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Extract

Luigi Sturzo, the exiled founder of the suppressed Italian Christian Democrats, wrote in May 1942 that American Catholic papers prior to the American entry into the war had been sympathetic to Franco and even Mussolini as well as to Vichy France. After Pearl Harbor, these papers retained their sympathy for Vichy France.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , May 1992 , pp. 111 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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References

Notes

1 Luigi, Sturzo, ‘Anglo-American Catholics and Vichy’, People and Freedom Newsletter, May, 1942, p. 3.Google Scholar

2 On English Catholic membership in the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s see Stuart Rawnsly, ‘The Membership of the British Union of Fascists’ in Kenneth Lunn and Richard Thurlow, C., eds, British Fascism: Essays on the Radical Right in Interwar Britain (St. Martin’s Press, 1980), pp. 161–162 Google Scholar wherein Rawnsly suggests that Catholic membership, at least in the north of England, appeared higher than their percentage of the population. He also acknowledges that the evidence is impressionistic.

3 Jay, P. Corrin, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc: The Battle Against Modernity (Ohio University Press, 1981), pp. 167–168.Google Scholar

4 Christina, Scott, A Historian and His World (Sheed and Ward, 1984) p. 123 Google Scholar claims that Dawson’s ruminations about corporatism and Christianity in the mid-1930s led those most opposed to corporatism to suggest Dawson had Fascist sympathies. Christina Scott is Dawson’s daughter.

5 John, Hellman, Emmanuel Mournier and the New Catholic Left, 1930–1950 (University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 33.Google Scholar

6 Barbara, Ward, ‘Revolution from the Right’, Dublin Review, Vol. 205 (October, 1939), pp. 310–326.Google Scholar

7 Adrien, Dansette, Religious History of Modern France, Vol. II (Herder and Herder, 1961), p. xiii.Google Scholar

8 Ibidem, Book III, scattered.

9 ‘Left and Right in France’, Arena No. 2 (July, 1937), pp. 112–113. The journal lasted but a year; it also viewed favourably the social justice efforts of the Blum government; Boulevard, ‘Monsieur Blum and Social Justice’, Ibidem, p. 112,

10 ‘Paris Letter’, Ta, February 13, April 3, 1937, pp. 226, 472; the first entry also refers to France suffering the same travails as unhappy Spain.

11 Lucien Corpechat, ‘French Electoral Reform’, Ta, January 21, 1939, p. 71.

12 Weekly Review, June 17, August 19, 1937; pp. 242, 387–388. F. Y. Eccles, ‘Fixed Points in the French Horizon’, Ibidem, September 17, 1936, p. 27 acknowledged the possibility of civil war in France.

13 Analyses and instructive portrayals of societies supposedly built upon the papal social encyclicals were a common enough theme in Catholic journalism in the 1930s. Examples would include Girard Lake, ‘The Mission of the New Austria’, Mo, Vol. 168, (October, 1936), pp. 301–309; Reiner, A. A. C., ‘Catholic Social Doctrine in Portugese Corporatism’, Blackfriars, Vol. 19, (November, 1938), pp. 810–819 Google Scholar; ‘Portugal, A Christian State’, Ta, (July 16, 1938), pp. 76–77.

14 John, Grigg, ‘Nobility and War’, Encounter, Vol. 74 (March, 1990), pp. 21–27.Google Scholar

15 David Reynolds, ‘Churchill and the British Decision to Fight on in 1940’, in Richard, Longhorne, ed., Diplomacy and Intelligence During the Second World War, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 151, 153–154 Google Scholar. Reynolds also notes the rôle of hindsight in giving the war a cosmic significance it did not have at its inception.

16 On the speculations of Michael de la Bedoyère, e.g. regarding the significance of Germany’s Catholics, see below, pp. 13–14.

17 Keith Robbins, ‘Britain, 1940 and “Christian Civilization”, in Derek, Beales and Geoffrey, Best, eds., History, Society and the Churches, (Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 279–299 Google Scholar; pp. 279–281 on the absence of a religious commitment in government circles.

18 Ibidem p. 293.

19 Michael de la Bedoyère [The Jotter] to James Gillis, January 25, 1940, Gillis Paper, St. Paul’s College, Washington, D.C.

20 Paul, A. Gagnon France Since 1789 (Harper and Row, 1972), p. 437.Google Scholar

21 Robert, O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (Knopf Publishing Co., 1972), pp. 236, 222, 166–168 Google Scholar; the law against divorce was not enacted until April, 1941, pp. 151–152 and 172–173. Paxton notes that the régime was anti-Masonic, not anti-Protestant; the prohibition was against secret societies, and was added to in August, 1941, pp. 215–217. Relevant to this, it might be noted as an addendum that Osservatore Romano, November 27, 1941, p. 1, the Vatican paper, noted the influence of the papal encyclicals upon the Charter of Labour.

22 Paxton, Vichy France, scattered.

23 Oscar L. Arnal, Ambivalent Alliance: The Catholic Church and the Action Française, 1899–1939 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), p. 179. It goes without saying that if the defeat was blamed on secularism and communism, the Left blamed it on a conservative and Catholic plot of revenge.

24 Barbara Ward, Wartime Diaries, (Unpublished), Part IV, June 19, 1941; Georgetown University Archives.

25 Arnolf Lunn to Michael De la Bedoyère, August 1 and 29, 1941; Arnold Lunn Papers, Georgetown University Archives.

26 Michael de la Bedoyère to Douglas Woodruff, November 12, 1946; Douglas Woodruff Papers, Georgetown University Archives.

27 Bolton, C. A., ‘The New French Family Law: Fifty Years Too Late’, The Clergy Review, Vol. 19, August, 1940, pp. 95–111 Google Scholar, concluded that the laws provided a good model for England. Barbara Ward, ‘The Fall of France’, Dublin Review, Vol. 207, (Oct./Nov./Dec., 1940), pp. 216–217, pointed to a French pacificism induced by a declining birth-rate as well as divisions within France as causes of the defeat.

28 Godden, G. M., ‘Warning from France’, Catholic World, Vol. 151 (September, 1940), pp. 698–703 Google Scholar. Godden was English and had written extensively on the Communist threat, especially during the Spanish Civil War. This particular piece was rather shrill, arguing that, first, the Germans had broken through so easily in 1940 because they had been given French military locations by Moscow, which Moscow had known as a consequence of the earlier Russo-French treaty, and also claimed that French military forces were still intact at the time of the surrender—both rather difficult positions to defend. The article also directed a warning to England, where defeatist propaganda flooded English towns, and to the United States as well. It was addressed to an American audience. The Catholic World was an American Paulist publication.

29 On the view that the Vichy government was a revenge for the Popular Front of 1936, see John Dixon, ‘Manipulators of Vichy Propaganda: A Case Study in Personality’, in Kedward, R. and Austin, R., eds, Vichy France and the Resistance (Totowa, New Jersey, 1985), p. 49 Google Scholar. Dixon notes that some claimed it was a revenge for 45 years of the Republic. See also Jean-Pierre, Azema, From Munich to the Liberation, 1938–1944 (Janet Lloyd, trans.) (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 31 Google Scholar on 1940 as the revenge for 1936.

30 Robert, Sencourt, ‘Reynaud Was Responsible’, CH, June 21, 1940, p. 1.Google Scholar

31 Michael, de la Bedoyère, ‘Now It Should Be Said’, CH, June 21, 1940, p. 4.Google Scholar

32 Editorial, CH, June 28, 1940, p. 4.

33 Editorial, CH, July 12, 1940. The editorial indicated that the Latin Bloc idea had been noted in a recent Observer piece. It might be noted here that Walter d’Ormesson, Vichy’s Ambassador to the Vatican, was also discussing the idea in Rome, Paxton, Vichy France, p. 10.

34 Michael, de la Bedoyère, ‘Christian Reform in Europe’, CH, October 11, 1940. p. 4.Google Scholar

35 Editorial, CH, February 7, 1941; underlining mine.

36 CH, April 10, 24, 1942; this was just as Laval was being restored to power, which for all practical purposes ended speculation about the degree of French independence. Even so, as late as July, 1942, The Catholic Herald conjured up a vision of the Latin Bloc. It referred to its ‘view held since the beginning of the war that our policy would have been stronger if we had taken into account the strength of the Catholic and Latin tradition’. CH, July 3, 1942, p. 4. This was written with a view to Portugal, not Italy or Spain.

37 Ta, April 18, 1942, p. 189.

38 Douglas, Jerrold, ‘Catholics and the War’, CH, August 9, 1940, p. 4 Google Scholar. Jerrold dated this presumption from the Spanish Civil War. He stated that, far from this being the case, English Catholics would now fight against Spain should it be necessary.

39 ‘Total Catholicity’ (editorial), CH, August 15, 1940, p. 4. As to Pétain specifically, the paper, more than a year after the establishment of the Vichy government, could refer to modern Catholic statesmen like Salazar, de Valera, Schussnigg’and, we hope, Pétain … ’, September 5, 1941. Lest it be thought a simple identity of Catholic faith and true statesmanship was the fashion, the paper also pointed to such figures as von Papen, Degrelle and Monsignor Tiso ‘from whom we have nothing to learn except as a warning …’, A Question of Conscience (editorial), CH, July 11, 1941, p. 4.

40 ‘The Problem of France,’ CH, September 9, August 16, 1940, pp. 4, 2; May 16, 1941, p. 4, for the latter statement.

41 Horsfall Carter, W., ‘The Catholic-Latin Myth’, The New Statesman and Nation, October 5, 1940, p. 326.Google Scholar

42 Ibidem, p. 327.

43 Sword of the Spirit, Bulletin, No. 7, November 2, 1940. The point was repeated by Saunders, J. J., ‘A Latin Catholic Bloc’, Dublin Review, Vol. 209, July/Aug./Sept./1941, pp. 23–35 Google Scholar, who noted that France was now the centre of the idea. In Saunders’s view, while the concept had merit, especially as a via media between nationalism and newer totalitarian states, it was nevertheless dangerous and narrow, for it ignored the Church’s world mission. He also suggested that the present was no time to erect fresh barriers between Germany and the rest of Europe—a rather interesting variation of the theme of the presumed bloc’s erecting barriers against England. Christopher Dawson was also conscious of the dangers inherent in representing Catholicism as an anti-national force which the Latin bloc concept seemed to do; ‘Unity of Purpose’, Sword of the Spirit, Bulletin, First (mimeographed), pp. 3–4. In this piece Dawson also placed the blame for the French defeat on a spirit of defection, loss of purpose, etc., in other words, spiritual failures.

44 Mira Beneson, ‘Unity of Purpose’, Sword of the Spirit, Bulletin, No. 24, July 24, 1941. The thrust of the article was, as the title implies, to maintain a unity of purpose with the Allies. She was inclined to blame the identity of Catholics with Fascism on the one hand, and the Catholic concern that the rest of the country was verging on communism on the other, on Nazi propaganda designed to separate the English Catholics from the mass of the English. Actually, neither of these views needed Nazi propaganda for their dissemination.

45 Christopher Hollis, ‘English Catholics’, Clergy Review, Vol. 20, March, 1941, pp. 189–197; quotations, pp. 190 and 191. Hollis was not the only one to make this point. Arnold Lunn, ‘For Some It Is a Crusade; For All It Is Against Hitler’, America, Vol. 64 (January 25,1941), pp. 431–432, addressing an American readership, referred to his own sons in the armed forces.

46 Ta, July 20, 1940, p. 42.

47 Donald Attwater, ‘English Catholic Fascists’, Co, Vol. 33, January 10, 1941, pp. 299–302. Attwater referred to one English Catholic paper which was accused of placing nationalism before religious considerations, although he did not name it. Neither did he mention any specific individuals except Belloc and Chesterton, although these would probably have been brought up in any event. Attwater also noted the tendency within this group to romanticize the profession of arms, and an attitude to and ‘tone of voice’ about Jewry and problems it presented that fell little short of formal anti-Semitism, p. 301. The article only in part concerned France, but the author did note that anti-Semitism had emerged in France before Germany, ‘although the Germans seemed to have learned it better’.

48 As, for example, the Charter of Peasants; see below, p. 29.

49 CH, August 30, 1940, p. 5. On Monarchy, see CH, October 18, 1940, p. 5; ‘The Problem of France’ (editorial), September 20, 1940; de la Bedoyère, Michael, ‘Is Europe Groaning?’ October 4, 1940, p. 4 Google Scholar for quotation.

50 CH, August 30, 1940, p. 5; October 18, 1940, p. 5 on the reforms begun by Pétain.

51 This was one of the points in dispute between The Catholic Herald and The Tablet; The Catholic Herald claimed that The Tablet equated the aims of the Grand Alliance with the future welfare of Christianity; ‘The “Tablet”’, CH January 23, 1942, p. 4.

52 Gosling to Woodruff, August 16, 1942; Woodruff Papers. On the other hand, Arnold Lunn in criticizing de la Bedoyère, maintained that The Tablet consistently espoused the Catholic view along with an intent to defeat Hitler. While not a specific reference to Catholic social doctrine one might choose to read such a reference into this; Lunn to de la Bedoyère, August 1, 1941; Lunn Papers.

53 CH, September 20, 1940, p. 4.

54 ‘Pétain’s Stand’, CH, November 8, 1940. This was presented in the context of France as well—with a hint of the Latin Bloc. Here too, the paper expressed its pity that the English had not refrained ‘from superficial moral judgments’ and had not held out a hand to strengthen ‘the very real Christian Continental movement against Hitler and Bolshevik tyranny’, As to the Montoire meeting, little was actually settled, although contemporaries took it to be significant; Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 74ff.

55 CH, December 20, 1940, p. 5.

56 Michael de la Bedoyère, ‘Pétain’s France’, March 21,1941. De la Bedoyère also argued that Pétain had done much to insure the loyalty of the working class, and that the Church, army, civil service and the mass of the French peasantry and bourgeoisie supported him. In another place he claimed that others were disappointed that there was no evidence that Pétain had moved away from Montoire—yet he claimed ‘… if ever a nation showed a desire to be morally on our side against the evils of Nazism it is Pétain’s France …’ CH, May 16, 1941.

57 CH, May 8, 1942, p. 5.

58 CH, May 8, 1942, p. 5; ‘Admiral Leahy Goes to Vichy’, Ta, January 11, 1941, pp. 24–25.

59 Mo, Vol. 176, August and November, 1940; Vol 177, March/April, May/June, and September/October, 1941, pp. 71–72, 259–60, 105, 204 and 390–391 respectively. See also Francis March, ‘But What of France?’ Mo, Vol 176, November/December, 1941, p. 509.

61 Ibidem, p. 515.

62 Ibidem. Relevant to this was the concern raised by one correspondent of Arnold Lunn who wrote about Lunn’s revelations in The Catholic Herald of Pétain’s marital irregularities: ‘If Bedoyère knew all along that Pétain had not been a sound and practising Catholic, I think he ought to have mentioned and even emphasized the fact as a factor which might bear on the puzzling problem as to whether Pétain’s almost incredibly saintly and Catholic peasant attitude is genuine or not’. It was quite as important as the question of Benes’s freemasonry. John Simcox to Arnold Lunn; Arnold Lunn Papers.

63 Ta, August 24, 1840, p. 144.

64 ‘La France Eternelle’, Ta, August 24, 1940, p. 145. Even more, the danger facing a Catholic restoration was that it would be swept away if Hitler won, and if he lost, bound as the restoration was to Vichy, it would produce a reaction by the parties of the Left; ‘A French Dilemma’, by a Frenchman with De Gaulle, Ta, December 14, 1940, p. 467.

65 ‘The Vichy Government’, Ta, September 7, 1940, pp. 185–186; quotation, p. 186.

66 ‘The Spirit of France’, Ta, June 8, 1940, p. 564; France, 1940, Ta, June 29, 1940, p. 624.

67 ‘France, 1940’, Ta, June 29, 1940, p. 624.

68 Ta, December 28, 1940, p. 185–186.

69 Ta, December 28, 1940, p. 502.

70 Ibidem.

71 Ibidem, May 24, 1941, pp. 401–402.

72 ‘Britain and France’, Ta, May 24, 1941, pp. 404–405.

73 ‘German Calculations About France—the End of a Myth’, Ta, September 13, 1941, pp. 165–166.

74 Ta, June 14, 1941.

75 Christopher, Hollis, ‘Men and Movements’, Ta, September 13, 1941, p. 172.Google Scholar

76 Ta, April 18, 1942, p. 189.

77 Ibidem, July 18, 1942, p. 26.

78 Ibidem, September 12, 1942, p. 122.

79 ‘Our Attitude Towards the War’, CH, May 16, 1941, p. 4. De la Bedoyère offered a third possibility to overwhelming violence and quick negotiation; he offered, in fact, the mobilization of the Christian consciousness and accepted the fact that the war would probably be of long duration.

80 Ibidem, May 1, 1942.

81 Ibidem, November 13, 1942. Editorial.