BY L. M. HOPKINS.
This is an article written by Mr. L. M. Hopkins for “The Churchman’s Magazine,” which should be widely read, and where possible circulated among our people especially in the U.S.A., Canada, and New Zealand. It is a painful revelation of what has been going on, and still going on in the name of peace, justice, and morality! The Russians are no doubt thirsty for power, and to establish universal Communism, but the Americans are equally thirsty to retain and establish universal capitalism. Who is supporting that den of Satan—the Vatican in Rome? Financiers of the United States. It would be a revelation to know how many hundreds of millions of American dollars pass into the Vatican Bank per annum? Why should Multi-Millionaires of the U.S.A., support that cursed organisation in Rome. The following excellent paper is a complete revelation to our Free Presbyterian people of what was going on during the last war, and is now going on behind the scenes. It is for you praying people to be pleading to the Lord for our protection, and for the protection of your children, and the glorious Protestant cause that we stand for, against the curse, and blight of Communism, Romanism, and American capitalism. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. There are no doubt some wiseacre folk among the readers of the Magazine who will not hesitate to say in a pious tone of voice that matters of this kind should not appear in a religious Magazine like ours. How are our people to know what is going on in the world if they are not told, enlightened, and instructed what to pray for at a throne of grace? The religion that cannot pass beyond the fireside is not the faith of the gospel, and far apart from the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, in Psalm seventy two, and elsewhere. It is for the Lord’s people to pray; it is our duty to instruct them. This article is printed here by permission of the Protestant Truth Society—J. MacLeod.
Claiming to be the only true Church, outside of which there is no salvation (vide Art. xii., Creed of Pope Pius IV), the Church of Rome tries everywhere to create conditions conducive to her ultimate aim, the absolute supremacy of Roman Catholicism. To this end Vatican policy, however flexible, is designed. Control of education and Press censorship are sought, where a concordat proves impracticable, a modus vivendi is attempted.
In times past, the Vatican has not hesitated to ally herself to great military powers, such as Spain, France and Austria-Hungary once were. During the first half of the present century the Vatican was closely identified with Japanese imperialism, Spanish Fascism and the rise of Nazi Italy and Germany. Never did the Papacy protest against Nazism as such; only against Nazi failures to fulfil their parts of the unholy bargains which had been made. In 1942, when Germany, as part of her long-term, carefully planned policies of racial extermination, was proceeding with its massacre of some five million Jews, and an even larger number of non-Jews, Mr. Victor Gollancz appealed in vain to the Pope to use his unique authority to influence the German people to stay such appalling persecutions (vide “Let My People Go”).
Now, with unparalleled economic resources, the U.S.A. is regarded as the world’s mightiest power; and the Vatican, mobilising its American hierarchy, the Roman Catholic press and numerous organisations, has sought, with considerable success, to influence American policy and to co-operate in U.S. economic expansion. Moreover, the Vatican is able to exercise an indirect, but extensive and baneful influence over U.N.O., particularly through the Latin-American “dollar hanger-on” States, whose voting powers are fantastically disproportionate to their importance and populations. American democratic government is in grave danger of becoming subservient to pressure groups, a fact to which the great, warm-hearted American public needs to be awakened.
In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century the United States’ population increased by $37\frac{1}{2}$ millions, and had passed 105 millions in 1922, by which date the national wealth exceeded $320,000,000,000. During the 1914-18 war, colossal profits were made by the great American corporations, whose machinations in connexion with the Mexican oil-fields created so dangerous a situation in 1916 as to elicit a stern rebuke from President Wilson. After the war, Mr. John Foster Dulles made several visits to Germany and ardently advocated investment of American capital in that country. In the ‘thirties the powerful Hearst Press poured out pro-German articles, while American big business continued to co-operate with Thyssen and other German industrialists, who were giving the Nazis unstinted financial support.
By 1935, as a result of numerous mergers and “mopping-up” operations, over $60,000,000,000 of physical assets were controlled by 200 corporations. The outbreak of the World War found prodigious economic power concentrated in the hands of giant American financial trusts and corporations, some of whose secret international cartellisation activities forced the U.S. Government to appoint a number of investigating committees. Later, when President Roosevelt sought to establish the Monopoly Commission, he wrote of a growing unequalled concentration of private power. Inevitably such concentrated economic power must reperuss on national policies. At Quebec, in 1943, despite Britain’s unilateral sharing of her atomic knowledge, she was forced to accede to America’s demand to disinterest herself in its commercial aspects. In September, 1944, a memorandum was circulated at a high level within the U.S. government contending, in effect, that German power should be rebuilt as soon as possible after the war. This was subsequently disclosed by a former assistant to the Secretary of the American Treasury. In 1946, the American Bankers Association were told that it was essential to rebuild German economy and to assure American firms suitable profits. Early in the same year, America banned the dismantling of German industrial plants for reparation. Sabotage of the Allied plans for decartellisation had begun, and it was soon followed by the resurgence of an expanded German heavy industry, to the mutual satisfaction of vested interests on both sides of the Atlantic.
A naive disregard of history, an almost pathological fear and intense wishful thinking, fanned by intensive Papal propaganda, beget a blind American faith in Germany as an anti-Soviet bulwark, and tend to an over-simplification of the issue as Christianity versus Communism. Germany’s past relations with Russia are forgotten. Fredrick the Great’s secret pact with Peter III in 1762. Bismark’s secret pack of 1887. General von Seeckt’s secret deals leading to the Rapallo Treaty of 1922. Stresemann’s neutrality pact in 1926. The “Non-aggression” pack concluded by Ribbentrop and Stalin a week before Hitler attacked Poland. The old German Foreign Office’s chief commandment laid down that the supreme objective of the diplomatic art was to conceal intentions as much as possible, and about 90% of Chancellor Adenauer’s principal political advisers were trained by Ribbentrop, Goebbels and Haushofer. Before Washington relies too much on the sanctity of treaties she might recall the Nuremburg War Trials revelation that Germany had broken at least 69 to which it had subscribed between 1933 and 1941.
It was from documents disclosed at these trials that the world learned of the intimate relations between Hitler’s Government and the giant I.G. Farben Trust, which merged its resources with the Wehrmacht and constituted a vast espionage network—but some of whose buildings, e.g., at Frankfurt, said to be partly owned by American trusts escaped bombing. Aided by American capital, Farben now shares with Krupps and other great German concerns in a mighty industrial resurgence. Yet, after the 1914-18 War, although the German General Staff had helped to sow Bolshevism in Russia in 1917, it was Krupps who vitally assisted the development of Russia’s war potential, whilst the appointment of Dr. Wiedtfeld (a Krupps director) as ambassador to the U.S.A. had helped to increase American investments in Germany. Released after serving about a third of his sentence for last war crimes, Alfred Krupp, present head of the firm, which was estimated by The Financial Times (19.1.55) to be worth £150 million, once declared in a signed affidavit that “There are no ideals. Life is a struggle to stay alive, for bread and power.” Regarded as Federal Germany’s unofficial “industrial ambassador,” he has unequivocally stressed that Germany’s economic progress is closely linked with Soviet controlled markets.
Germans and Russians alike believe in realpolitik and both rely heavily on secret negotiations. The Western powers, led by America, discarding their trump cards one after another, have enabled Germany to score trick after trick. Krupp has launched world-wide projects; and, in 1952, the Adenauer Government announced the establishment of a “Deutscher Arbeitstab Afrika” to “interpolate German industries into the U.S. $8,000,000,000 programme for the development of Africa,” in 1954 Dulles and Adenauer sabotaged the efforts of Sir Winston Churchill and Mendes-France to liquidate the cold war. The following January Russia announced her intention of cancelling the Anglo-Soviet and Franco-Soviet treaties of friendship and mutual defence. Meanwhile, with marked finesse, Bonn had bettered relations with the Kremlin. As far back as 1948, Herr Brentano declared that Germany must eliminate reasons for Russian mistrust. In the Republic’s early days pro-Adenauer journals indicated how a final rapprochement with Russia could be initiated. During 1950-51, European papers reported secret negotiations between Bonn and Soviet officials. On 4.1.52, “Der Rheinische Merkur” reported that fear of Russia had receded because of “new facts which have taken the pressure from us.” Two months later, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine” advocated a deal with Russia. And behind the 1954 Adenauer Press campaign for pro-Eastern orientation were big industrialists, whose rewards would include vast increases of trade with Russia, satellite countries and China, and who were subsequently chief contributors of the £2½ million spent by the Christian Democrats to secure the Chancellor’s re-election.
In November, 1956, Dr. Adenauer said in Paris that his government recognised that its primary aim of German unification by peaceful means could not be achieved without the consent and co-operation of Russia. And, in view of Germany’s secret diplomatic and commercial negotiations with Russia, together with the manner in which the pro-Adenauer Press has advocated that, when sufficiently strengthened by America, Germany should turn Eastwards, could it be expected that she would refuse to barter her knowledge of Western atomic, military and political intelligence should realpolitik demand? Russia probably has a shrewder conception than America of Germany’s ultimate goal. The American eagle may fondly hope that the German eagle, revived, nourished and with sharpened claws, will mightily help in containing the Russian bear; but she must beware lest she find herself pitted against both bear and eagle. It will be well, too, to recall the words of Dr. Nathaniel Micklem (“British Weekly,” 16.12.54): “There is no doubt that the Vatican would come to an understanding with Russia tomorrow if the Russians were willing to enter into some kind of Concordat which might seem advantageous to the Church.”
On both sides of the Atlantic there is far too much individual preoccupation with materialistic domestic affairs, inevitably accompanied by a growing unawareness of the manner in which foreign policies are being influenced, indeed shaped, by powerful pressure groups and vested interests, whose aims are so often inimical to the traditions and liberties of the English speaking peoples. The interests of the British and American peoples are so closely intertwined that the strengthening of one country, at the expense of the other, is a folly, gratifying only the selfishness of vested interests, mutual enemies, and those who, like the late Cardinal Manning, believe that if Protestantism is crushed in Britain, all else will be but a war of detail.