The Priest and His Piffle. (1916)

From the January 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

One, Father Bernard Vaughan, of the Roman Catholic Church in England, has been setting about his congregation with the jaw-bone of an ass. The jaw-bone was the reverend father’s own. The oily priest has been ass enough to attempt to answer the question: Why does not God stop this war? and he had better have kept his jaw-bone engaged upon the comparatively un-asinine occupation of chewing thistles. He couldn’t have made such a mess of thistles, and thistles couldn’t have made such a mess of him, however they may have revolted his belly.

The thesis of this detestable churchman’s onslaught, delivered at his church in Farln-st, W., on December 12th, is thus given by the “Daily Chronicle” (December 13th):

   Why does not God stop this war? If he were Almighty and All-loving he would have done so long ago.

The preacher spoke of this question as “a sample of the blasphemies sent by post” A sample of the bogey-man's correspondence it well may be, for without doubt thousands of the earnest befogged are daily propounding to themselves that riddle—hourly trying, and failing, to reconcile the idea of an All-loving Almighty with the hard, stern fact of world-wide war, and it would be strange indeed if some of these seekers after light did not take their enquiry direct to those who know all about God and his ways and his motives, not to speak of his love that passeth all understanding, and his strap-oil that sur-passeth his love. That the Holy Joe should publicly try his fist at such a reconciliation may be taken as symptomatic of his consciousness of the wide harbouring of this and kindred “blasphemies,” whether they find expression through the post or not.

It has been the custom among the aristocratic plunderers, we are told, to shove the fool of the family in the Church. The idea, of course, is that of all fields of roguery the Church offers the easiest opportunity. There, where the very choicest mugs foregather, a child could work the oracle. As a matter of fact children sometimes do, though the infant prodigy is now more often to be found practicing “practical Christianity” in the trenches as the more manly way of bringing to fulfilment the Scriptural prophecy: “A little child shall bleed them.” Anyway, it did not need any superman to invent the answer to the riddle which the reverend father made “revelation ” to his flock, though perhaps only divine inspiration enabled him to cut his coat in such true and exact knowledge of his sheepskin. He answered the whydiddle thus :

   God did not stop the war because, being Almighty, He could draw good out of it, and, being All-loving, He did so.

You see how beautifully plain it is. Military experts who have explained in the columns of the seven-times daily Press every military move long before it didn’t come off, the prophets who prophesied all sorts of happenings from “Constantinople in a week” to “war babies by the million ’ (and they didn’t mean Group 1), the blusterers who were going to “dig them [the German fleet] out like rats’ and “fetch” us if we didn’t go—all these have draped their words in obfuscation. One hardly knew what they meant. But the priest is clear as claret. God, being Almighty, could draw good out of war, and being All-loving, he does so. Of course, being Almighty, He could draw good out of peace, but it would be rank blasphemy against heaven and treason against the realm to suggest that he should find it in his tender, loving heart to do so. That, the corollary of the reverend gent’s tale, we can all understand, without doubt.

Nevertheless, not all truths are pleasant, however clearly they may be presented, and in times like the present, when so many thousands of mothers and widows and sisters are more than a little bit impatient under the process of being put through the mangle of war in order that good (for somebody) may be drawn from their sufferings, it would not ill-become the servant of All-loving God to make some excusably hypocritical concession to public opinion. None can resist the power of conviction attaching to the reverend gentleman’s illustration, which I give as reported in the “Daily Chronicle” :

     By the way of illustration Father Vaughan told the story of'a young cavalry officer who, before going into the trenches—where he was blown to pieces—wrote to a friend, saying: “If I am killed, tell my mother not to worry, because, but for this war she would never have met me in Heaven. This war has brought me back to my own self, and I have made it all right in the confessional."
    If that instance were multiplied ten thousand times, continued the preacher, they could see how good was drawn out of the physical evil of the war.

The dullest can comprehend that if ten thousand young cavalry officers are going to meet their mothers in Heaven who would otherwise never have done so, the war was jolly well worthwhile. That the All-loving Almighty should find more acceptable one of His lambs who happens to be returned to him in pieces is also only in accordance with human ideas. We also know that the road to Heaven is broadened to those who traverse it with feet and hands soaked with the blood of their fellows slain in battle—the All-loving would see to that. But it would have been interesting to have been informed whether the ten thousand cavalry officers who have to thank the war for the opportunity of meeting their very fond mammas in Heaven, would not have done so because but for the war they would have lived for ever, or because the devil was finding work for their idle hands to do before the All-loving busied them with butchery. If the latter, a class whose sons so regularly go to hell except they find salvation in homicide are worth all the sacrifice the workers are making.

The all-abounding love and wisdom of God are not things patent to the untrained eye of the man in the street. But, luckily, our reverend fathers are always alive to these matters. Here is light and leading from Daddy Vaughan: 

   Personally, I feel that it would take eternity to thank God for not having stopped this war as He might have done. If it had been deferred for ten years, my beloved country would hare been a Mongolian desert. . . . Our dear island home, with its cathedrals, minsters, and abbeys would have been utterly destroyed; we should have had nothing left us but “our eyes to weep with."

But a “but” saved us from the dismal plight of having nothing left to weep with but our eyes, to say nothing of the destruction of our cathedrals, minsters, and abbeys, and perchance also the slums, prisons, lunatic asylums, work-houses, mansions, broad-acred, well-wooded and watered ancestral domains concerning which the war poster asks Bill Higgins, ‘Isn’t this worth fighting for? ” The preacher proceeded :

    But God, being Almighty and wise, and loving, has spared us the horrors of Belgium and Poland and the despair of the Armenians.

The wisdom and the love of God, the priest thus shows, are not revealed alone in the fact of what He has saved us from: they are revealed even more forceably in what, evidently for our worthy sakes, he has put upon Belgium, Poland, and Armenia. There’s love for you; verily it passeth all understanding!

See how Father Vaughan flattens out the man who asks the fool question: “Can you deny that Christianity has been proved by this war to be a ghastly failure?” He replies :

  Christianity has not failed, because it has not been used. If Christianity had been used and recognised, there would have been no war at all.

So it is seen what a good thing Christianity would have robbed us of had it been “used and recognised.” If it will take all eternity to thank God for the war, surely it will also take some time to thank Him for rendering futile the efforts of His (don’t forget the capitals, Mr. Printer) clergy to get Christianity “used and recognised.” 

Meanwhile, eternity is a long time; and a job that is going [to] last for eternity ought to be got on with. Would it be out of place to suggest that the reverend gentleman go out into the highways and bye-ways and call upon the multitude to thank God for the war? One interested spectator would be.

Bill Bailey

The Old, Old Story. (1916)

From the January 1916 of the Socialist Standard

A trade-union conference was recently held at the Central Hall, Westminster, at which three ministers addressed the delegates with the avowed object of gaining their influence against any movement by munition workers for an increase in wages. The ministers, with their usual contempt for the representatives of the workers, delivered their speeches and took their departure. What they had said, though economically unsound, contradictory and absurd, was to be taken as gospel and transmitted to the workers. The delegates made no attempt to expose the ludicrous mistakes and wilful misrepresentations contained in the statements of the three ministers. They came to heel, and carried out the instructions of their masters—as good labour leaders have always done in the past.

Asquith figured first, and destroyed the case of his colleagues before they spoke. Four-and-a-half million workers, one-third of the total, had received an average increase of three and sixpence per week. An increase of a fraction over 5 per cent. for the whole of the working-class. He then showed that the cost of living had risen in the same period by 30 per cent. Thus proving that the working class of this country had sustained a reduction in wages of 25 per cent.

No wonder that Mr. McKenna followed with the remark: “I am not sure that I am very fond of explaining to an audience of this kind why, in the present circumstances, it is contrary to the interests of the State to put forward claims for higher wages in particular trades.” The State having, without friction, achieved a 25 per cent, reduction all round could, of course, afford to pay for the overtime worked in those particular trades and even grant a substantial increase in wages but, that would not be business, and besides, the rest of the workers might want a rise as well. We pass over the insinuating remark that the speaker dislikes the task of dissuading the workers from attempting to improve their conditions. He is no doubt fully alive to its contemptible nature. The insinuation is only one trick in the miserable game played by professional politicians and their colleagues the labour leaders.

Mr. McKenna then proceeded to argue that higher wages means higher prices. He may or may not believe in this oft exposed fallacy. But he is confident of one thing: it is a convenient doctrine to impress upon the workers. Especially that section of the workers completely at the mercy of the masters because they are unorganised. Millions of workers, who's wages are below the average, and who are unable to distinguish the real cause of their poverty, are easily persuaded that their fellow-workers are responsible for some of it when they strike for higher wages.

"Very large wages” said Mr. McKenna, “have been earned in many cases. Now, half the trouble would never have arisen if those large wages had not been lavishly spent.’’

Mr. Asquith had previously demonstrated to the delegates that the workers had sustained a 25 per cent. reduction in wages. Thereby proving that their purchasing power had been reduced. But Mr. McKenna bad the audacity to tell them that four-and-a-half million workers whose actual wages have only fallen by 15 per cent. instead of 25 per cent, are responsible for half the trouble, because they spent this fictitious increase, together with their overtime money, instead of saving it. Note, too, the concern of the little brother of the very poor. “The larger demand amongst that section of the community which was enjoying higher wages and higher income sent up the price of the article and diminished, therefore, the power to purchase of their poorer neighbours."

The whole burden of Mr. McKenna’s speech is summed up in his concluding sentences. “Those who demand higher wages must show themselves worthy of higher wages. They must show they can save in the interests of the State and their neighbours, their families and themselves . . . That is the demand you have to make, and, until you can do so, you are not justified in asking for higher wages for a special trade to the injury of all other classes of the community."

His speech was a transparent attempt to raise a popular outcry against that section of the workers who, in the present crisis, could by organised action demand and obtain a substantial—though temporary increase in the price of their labour-power.

It was reserved for Mr. Runciman to insult the intelligence of the assembled delegates. Many labour leaders profess Socialism. Mr. Runciman, of course, knew the extent of their Socialistic knowledge—nationalisation of industries and the like so, after informing them that the Government had spent forty millions buying up sugar, he gravely informed them that it was “one of the greatest Socialistic experiments ever entered upon by any government.” They also purchased wheat from India, the United States, Canada, and the Argentine in enormous quantities. “That” he said, “was Socialism again, but it was Socialism on a business basis, and I should always be prepared to do business on those terms.” And the delegates, well, they quite appreciated these profound remarks because they coincided with their own limited knowledge and confused ideas of Socialism. We read, therefore, without a symptom of surprise that the conference “decided to send to the members of all trade unions copies of the speeches and commend the appeals to their earnest and favourable consideration.’’

F. Foan

Here and there. (1916)

From the January 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arnold Bennett has been touring munition factories with the object of discovering why the workers do not invest in the war loan. He discovered that, the workers there, living from hand to mouth as they do elsewhere, prefer to keep the few shillings they are able to save in the house, They dare not risk lending them to the Government, because they may be wanted before 1935.

"After I had done visiting works" says the same writer, "an employer said to me: 'Some of the union leaders are splendid. I have one. He always does everything he can to make things run smooth and increase the output. And about 50 per cent of the men are the same—quite in earnest'". Good, old labour leaders. The employer in question knows that something of an oily nature is required to make things run smoothly. But what a simple Simon Arnold must be to give the show away. The function of the labour leader—to make things run smoothly—must be kept dark or "the things" get suspicious and the oil-can is ineffective.

*    *   *

Mr. Ford, of peace fame, has visions of a practical utopia in the very near future, to be reared on "The manufacture of a new farm tractor, which is to make it possible for farmers to have a six-hour day. for it is claimed that the machine will do the ploughing, threshing, pumping, churning, washing, stacking, harvesting, mowing and transportation of produce, and then will carry the family to church on Sunday. The active member of the firm is to be Mr. Ford's son, Edsel, who says that both workmen and buyers will share in the profits, and the workmen will spend only four months in the factory, the other eight being spent on the farm, where they will be able to study possible improvements."

The instalment of this mechanical wonder will necessarily reduce the number of hands required, and if these make the best use of their time during the eight months on the farm, the machine, when not carrying some of them to church, will be busy carrying fresh batches to the workhouse. That is the beauty of profit-sharing: the more you study the harder you have to work to keep your job.

*    *   *

"I should like to go toward those they call our enemies and say to them: 'Brothers, let us fight together: the enemy is behind us. Yes, since I have been wearing this uniform I do not feel any hatred toward those who are in front; but my hatred has grown against those who have power in their hands."

The above is from a letter found on a German prisoner and quoted by the "Daily Chronicle" (17.12.15) We send him greetings, and do not mind in the least anonymous letters or attacks by the "Globe" or any other capitalist rag. Our German comrade, though inclined to be sentimental in the rest of his letter, at least recognises that the workers, after they have fought their master's war, have yet to fight their own against the masters - the Class War.

F. Foan