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hate and fear, broke the national covenant, and for its own purposes
used the enemy against the nation."
Bernanos must have realized, while writing that, that he was simply
restating one of the fundamental principles of French republicanism
since 17'92: the irreconcilable opposition between the Naltion and
those who lay claim to the ownership of the Nation. So that the in–
famous exclan1ation of General Weygand at Bordeaux, after the armis–
tice,
"Au moins> on se sera debarasse de la Gueuse"
(the
gueuse)
the
"hussy," being, in the language of those gentlemen, the Republic), while
it scandalized Bernanos and several of his friends, did not come as a sur–
prise to any average radical-socialist.
Leon Bloy also used to attack the meanness of the bourgeoisie and
of modern Catholics oblivious of Christian grandeur. He spoke, as Ber–
nanos does, in the name of a purely imaginary Christianity which was
essentially the thirteenth century idealized. What distinguishes Bernanos,
together with the lack of ascetic harshness, is the fact that, after having
unmasked, with a frankness and a vigor which command great respect,
the Pharisees of the Church and of the upper classes, he is pras;tically
forced back (yielding gracefully enough) to that humble hope so deeply
rooted in the customs and ways of thinking of the French, and yet so
fragile and so constantly challenged:
La R epublique.
A hope which, in–
sofar as it was authentic, had no ordinal numbers attached. This course
of Bernanos is smartly symbolized on the cover of this English transla–
tion of his
Lettres aux Anglais
by the flaming tricolor which frames and
overwhelms an Orleans fleur-de-lis. Of course, Bernanos still affirms that
he wants to see restored what he believes to have been the basic prin–
ciple of the French monarchy: "There are no privileges, only duties."
At the same time, he advances the questionable claim that "Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity" are the very essence of Christianity on the march,
as he calls it.
If
asked to give one single example of the Catholic Church
not answering with anathema and secular fire the people who raised
that standard, he would be at a loss. But one has to understand that for
Bernanos Christianity, the Church, and such things, are pure ideas, or
rather, enthralling phantoms which can never be denied, only given new
shapes by the poetic imagination.
Quite justly, Bernanos identifies the French ruling class, which
he hates, with the reactionary upper classes, the financial, military and
clerical castes in whose hands the power eventually rested, and not with
the radical-socialist and socialist politicians who never really ruled,
aliliough they were often the parasites and the accomplices of the rulers.
And about the relations between the French people and its rulers, Ber–
nanos has some keen insights : "Our elites," he writes, "began to hate
the people almost without knowing it on the day when they despaired
of it; and I can put my finger on that day : it was the day, in May, 1923,
that famous "black Sunday," disappointing all the hopes which, only
