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English Catholics and the Proposed Soviet Alliance, 1939
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
Extract
By and large, the western world received the news of the Nazi-Soviet Pact (23 August 1939) with horror and a sick apprehension of what would come next. Quite different was the response of Guy Crouchback, the fictional hero of Evelyn Waugh's Sword of honour trilogy on the Second World War:
News that shook the politicians and young poets of a dozen capitals brought deep peace to one English heart [He had] expected his country to go to war in a panic, for the wrong reasons or for no reason at all, with the wrong allies, in pitiful weakness. But now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle.
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References
1 Waugh, Evelyn, Sword of honour, Boston-Toronto 1961, 14–15Google Scholar.
2 For the development of this hostility among the Catholics of England see Flint, James, ‘English Catholics and the Bolshevik revolution: the origins of Catholic anti-communism’, American Benedictine Review xlii (1991), 4–21Google Scholar.
3 Idem, ‘“Must God go Fascist?”: English Catholic opinion and the Spanish Civil War’, Church History lvi (1987), 364–74.
4 Moloney, Thomas, Westminster, Whitehall and the Vatican: the role of Cardinal Hinsley, 1935–43, Tunbridge Wells 1985, 230Google Scholar.
5 Sower cxxv (10 1937), 190–1Google Scholar; cxxvi (Jan. 1938), 5–6.
6 The Tablet in early May acknowledged an opinion poll which reported that no less than 87% of the respondents had replied affirmatively to the question, ‘Are you in favour of a military alliance between Great Britain, France and Russia?’ To The Tablet such numbers made no difference, as the average citizen had nothing upon which to base an opinion except what was fed him by the media: ibid, clxxiii (6 May 1939), 571.
7 Catholic Herald, 24 Mar. 1939, 8.
8 Colosseum v (04–06 1939), 86–7Google Scholar. The July-Sept, issue, however, translated and printed two French articles offering greater or lesser approbation to an alliance with the Soviet Union.
9 Catholic Herald, 24 Mar. 1939, 6.
10 Ibid. 31 Mar. 1939, 8.
11 Universe, 31 Mar. 1939, 12.
12 Ibid. 14 Apr. 1939, 12.
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17 Catholic Times lxxx (28 04 1939), 14Google Scholar; (5 May 1939), 14; (12 May 1939), 14.
18 Ibid, lxxx (28 Apr. 1939), 12.
19 Month clxxiii (05 1939), 392–3Google Scholar. Injune the journal remarked ominously that many Catholics felt that a Soviet alliance ‘might raise grievous problems for themselves were they called upon to fight in such company’: ibid, clxxiii (June 1939), 487.
20 Universe, 28 Apr. 1939, 12. Kevin Hayes published an article in the American Jesuit journal, America, entitled ‘Uneasy England holds to Chamberlain: how the average English Catholic views the scene’, in which, while critical of the drift towards an unacceptable pact, he expressed gratitude that, in Chamberlain and Halifax, the nation was blessed with two statesmen attempting to govern by principles, Christian: America lxi (27 05 1939), 148–9Google Scholar.
21 Hinsley to Halifax, 1 May 1939, in Moloney, Thomas, Westminster, Whitehall and the Vatican, 128Google Scholar.
22 Anthony Eden expressed concern about this time that Halifax actually regarded Soviet Russia as AntiChrist. A leading Foreign Office official assured him this was not so, but admitted the Foreign Secretary's definite mistrust of the regime, Moscow: The diplomatic diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1937–1940, ed. Harvey, John, London 1970Google Scholar, entry for 16 May 1939 at p. 290.
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30 Tablet clxxiii (29 04 1939) 556–7Google Scholar. Lunn himself had been strongly sympathetic to the Nationalist cause in Spain, writing a series of articles on ‘The Unpopular Front’ in The Tablet during April–May 1937.
31 Ibid, clxxiii (6 May 1939), 591. The venerable Dublin Review, always published in London notwithstanding its name, printed an extended article by Dingle entitled ‘The European riddle’. There he admitted the natural repugnance which most in Great Britain would feel over ‘attempting to salvage Christian civilization in alliance with the only power in the world which is officially atheist’. But he went on to reiterate that ‘a doctrinal objection to an alliance with the Soviet Union is untenable’: ibid ccv (July 1939), 68.
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33 Ibid, clxxiii (13 May 1939), 621.
34 Ibid, clxxiii (20 May 1939), 661.
35 Ibid, clxxiii (27 May 1939), 690.
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37 Ibid, clxxiii (24 June 1939), 822.
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39 He had written to the Tablet that, among other problems, a pact with Russia ‘would weaken our moral case against Germany’ and create a situation where the ‘democracies would be allied with a dictatorship more hostile to religion than Nazi Germany’: ibid, clxxiii (13 May 1939), 621.
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76 Tablet clxxiv (30 09 1939), 414Google Scholar. Belloc, hating Germanic militarism and Russian Bolshevism, had long regarded the treatment of Catholic Poland as the test of whether his concept of Christendom could survive in the modern world: Wilson, A. N., Hilaire Belloc, New York 1984, 228–9Google Scholar.
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86 America lx (1 04 1939), 603Google Scholar. In the same issue, an article (pp. 605–6) by Thomas Davitt, ‘Can we ally with Russia in case of war?’ argued that a Soviet alliance would justify Catholic refusal to submit to conscription.
87 Waugh, , Sword of honour, 788Google Scholar.