BOOKS
123
state, then,
1n
no uncertain terms, that the Terror would long ago
have worn itself out if the more or less . open, or even conscious,
complicity of the priests and the faithful had not finally succeeded
in giving it a religious character."
It is impossible to question the impartiality of M. Bernanos'
appraisal of the situation in Spain. But he returned to France not
merely to tell what he knew of the trans-Pyrenean conflict. He has
written his moving book as a· warning to his countrymen. With
subdued indignation, he shows the men of the right
in
France what
they are heading toward and desperately calls on the French clergy
not to emulate their Spanish colleagues. He raises
his
voice against
that of Claude!, against Maurras and Tardieu and Flandin, against
the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy. To him France is the last stronghold
of Christendom and he fears mightily for its future. The men of
today, he insists, "have hard hearts and soft guts.
As
after the Deluge,
tomorrow the world may belong to spineless monsters."
Much too long and discursive, the book's great quality is its
sincerity and its fairly calm accent of a man talking to us in the midst
of a crumbling world. The frequence of incisive remarks makes up
for the lack of any plan, surprising in the work of so accomplished a
novelist. Some of the best passages are those self-justifying speeches
which M. Bernanos ironically puts into the mouths of the Spanish
bishops or the French royalists. The bishops recognize that, "Society
gets along well enough with her poor as long as she can absorb the
dissatisfied in poorhouses or prisons. When the proportion of dissatis–
fied increases dangerously, she calls in her police and opens wide her
cemeteries." But the Church being a society herself, she must deal
with human societies as they are: "Do you want us to be forever on
the side of the dissatisfied? Our temporal credit would soon be ex–
hausted! Indeed, we never fail to respect poverty and to teach that
it deserves to be honored. But there is not only poverty in the world;
there are the poor. The only poor we can vouch for are the voluntarily
poor, our own monks and nuns." The Papal message to the rebellious
Basques for use in the event of a Loyalist victory and the Saint–
Theresa-of-Lisieux sermon by the agnostic constitute models of the
type.
Though this is not a book for Sheed and Ward, it would be too
bad if Catholics failed to read it. Macmillan has already announced
a translation under the title of "A Diary of My Times" and promised
that "to that great crowd of intelligent men and women who want to
find some middle ground between Fascism and Communism, it gives
a clear and eloquent response." This the book emphatically does not
do. It offers no more than the testimony of a man of good will.
Georges Bernanos has had the courage to do his awaking in public
and he makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is still rubbing
his
eyes.
JusTIN O'BRIEN.
