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there is no justice in a law that abrogates elementary human rights like the right of conscience; there is no validity in a law which violates the law of God. The official apologists for the action of the present Calles Government have first to justify the 1917 Constitution. For it is within the Mexican law itself -not to be cited as the tablets of Sinai, but as a human document susceptible of error and discussion - that the right or wrong of the case lies.

The Catholic bishops in an open pastoral letter protested against the manner in which the Government, in the early part of the present year, began to enforce these dormant penal laws. The Pope, in an encyclical, also raised his voice in protest. Both pleaded for constitutional amendment by constitutional means; both proclaimed obedience to the laws so far as the same might be compatible with conscience, but not beyond; both pleaded for justice and for peace. These messages infuriated the radicals of the Government, and were qualified as treasonable and incendiary under Article 130.

Then, in punishment of the spirit revealed by the Church heads, the grinding force of the Constitution was brought to bear. All foreign priests were expelled, and all religious communities, regardless of the interruption of their mission, whether conducting schools, orphanages, hospitals, or other beneficent work, were seized and closed and the inmates scattered. Much needless brutality, such as night raids by military on the establishments of women, added to the vindictiveness and hardship of the expulsions and confiscations, and the scholars, sick, or orphans, inmates of the establishments, were frequently deprived overnight of their only succor, and set adrift.

Again rose lamentation and protest from the Catholic prelates, and indignant, but still pacific, protest from the

Catholic community, and again, in requital for this attitude of 'insubordination' and 'rebellion,' fell the heavy hand of the penal laws, now weighted with the utmost metal of their iron clauses. Nor were there lacking indications that the Government realized, even while denying it, the underlying gravity of the conflict that it had provoked. By presidential decree the press was silenced: Universal, the greatest daily of Mexico, was constrained to publish, for the satisfaction of its readers, the explanation that it could no longer print news or comment on the religious question, as discussion of the same would cause it to be suspended under the new decree, pointing out at the same time, though a nonsectarian paper, that the same decree violated the freedom of the press proclaimed in the very Constitution that the Government professed.

And so the press says nothing of the persecution, being muzzled and afraid; but from hand to hand pass furtively the pamphlets of the new Catholic League, now organized for the defense of religion and managing to survive. Though its heads have been, in swift succession, arrested and clapped into prison, there have always been others to step forward to their place of peril. And, day by day, on every lip, in every place wherever two men meet, rich or poor, Catholic or freethinker, there is but one topic, one question - and no answer. The happenings in the provinces, which the papers dare not tell, pass from mouth to mouth and grow in the telling. And there is uneasiness and restlessness and furtive discontent such as there has not been for many years in Mexico, and everywhere fear, and the dread of news of violence, where feeling runs so high and repression is so fierce. This very article has had to be smuggled out of Mexico, and it must be anonymous, because its writer, if dis

covered, would, without trial, be expelled instantly from the Republic.

On July 2 the President retorted to the determined Catholic attitude of protest by issuing a new code of laws, increasing the proscriptions of the Constitution and weighting them with definite prison sentences for the different offenses. Any member of a religious community, for instance, although not living in community, but merely for the offense of taking common vows and obeying common rules of life, is to be punished by from one to two years of imprisonment, women to receive two thirds of the male sentence. Any ecclesiastic criticizing publicly or in private the Law or the Constitution is liable to six years' imprisonment. All parochial clergy must register with the State, after the manner of Government officials, the reason being given that the Government must know and control these priests as being in charge of State-owned (confiscated) churches.

This latter 'law' brought the stubborn conflict to a climax, the Catholic bishops ordering their priests to withdraw from the churches rather than to submit to State administration and control. The Socialist State now holds the open but empty churches, where the timid faithful drift in and out and gaze at the empty altars. Once again the patient Church has evaded the attempted plan of absorption that, after the expulsion of the religious communities, would have brought the secular clergy under State control.

In one way alone has the Catholic body struck back at its tormentor. A Catholic League has been formed to boycott all luxuries and amusements, all avoidable purchase and expenditure of any kind, with the avowed object of slowly paralyzing business, and thus, by reflex action, is bringing pressure to bear upon the unrelenting Government. Evading the

dragooning, too elusive to permit of repressive action by direct measures, the movement has spread and is making itself generally felt. The Government of General Calles finds itself much in the position of a bull that has gored a hornets' nest and now must stay and fight the elusive creatures, because pride forbids retreat. It claims that it has deserved well of the nation, that it has sought the national welfare even at its own peril, has balanced the Budget, has made payments against old debts, has accumulated reserves, has valiantly defended the interests of the citizens, and that the latter therefore should rally to it in its need; and many a 'liberal' citizen of Mexico does feel the force of that claim the need that there is to defeat that subtle, black-frocked crowd, a State within the State, that would, they think, again thwart progress and delay prosperity.

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So all through the land, as in the days of the French or Russian 'Terror,' there is suppressed tension and apprehension, heightened by the abolition of freedom of speech and news; there is a sullen muttering of old hatreds and mistrusts, and the fear of an open clash between powers that find themselves in positions from which neither can recede. The Government has raised the rallying cry of patriotism against this cloud, risen, like the genii of fable, from the heedlessly opened bottle, but is baffled to find that its thrusts and slashes cut only smoke. Rome and the bishops counsel patience, and prudence, and peace, but can the prelates indefinitely hold their followers to the middle path of refraining from violence, yet remaining staunch under the hardship of the long siege that has commenced? Time alone will show, but there is no need for time to realize that Mexico alone, without foreign intervention, must solve her own problem. Foreign

interference would be as unhappy in the outcome as was ten years ago the intrusion of the white armies in Russia, and nothing should be done from without that may further embitter the strife that, being a conflict between ultimate things, is already bitter enough. The depth and breadth of this bitterness has to be sensed to be appreciated the uneasy, stifled voice of a large mass of public opinion and sentiment, the shuffling of restless feet under the vigilant guard of the Government, its troops, and its organizedlabor allies.

Happy if there be no rupture of the public peace, of the peace that the prelates are preaching; but Mexico, with its tradition of the ultimate adjustment of all questions by the arbitrament of the sword, is apprehensive of bloodshed, and the con

dottieri of Mexico, the restless and ambitious soldiers of fortune and enemies of any government, caring nothing for the Church, would clutch at its banner, at any banner, so that they might rise in revolt. Still, the counsel of prudence, the policy of the heads of the Church of peaceful resistance, may, and should, prevail. It would have a better chance if the Government were less provocative, but this is Mexico, and methods of passion alone are understood. There is at least this phenomenon manifestthat of a passionate public issue being wrestled out without appeal to armed revolt, and, for us who know Mexico and have read her story, this alone marks great progress in the difficult path of true self-government-by self-control. The meek, we are promised, shall inherit the earth.

II. A KLANISH BRITISH SURVEY 2

BY HUGH E. M. STUTFIELD

A FEW years ago the versatile Dean of attempt to give an answer and at the St. Paul's hit the nail on the head as he so often does hit it - by describing the Bolshevik and the Ultramontane, or extreme Roman Catholic, as 'the two enemies of civilization.' At the present moment this turbulent pair of trouble-makers are quarreling violently in Mexico, and the fight this time bids fair to be a fight to a finish. The public over here is not uninterested in the fray, but many people are puzzled owing to the paucity of news supplied them by the press, and I am constantly being asked questions as to what are the real rights and wrongs of the controversy. This article is an

? From the National Review (London Tory monthly), November

same time to express an opinion which, whether it be right or wrong, is at least an honest one based on long and careful study of the facts. My personal interests in the question are twofold, and circumstance combines in my case with sentiment to act as a check upon any possible bias. As an investor- for my sins in Mexican securities I wish only to see the country peaceful and prosperous, and its inhabitants left free to develop its vast natural resources; as a student of religious problems I watch this highly spectacular broil, the Communist Mexican bull disporting himself in the clerical china-shop, from a more detached and philosophic standpoint.

The existing régime in Mexico is strongly antireligious, Marxian, and Communistic; a good many of its ideals are distinctly Bolshevist in character, while the methods of its supporters would do credit to the followers of Lenin and Trotskii, and a leading English trade-unionist has coupled Mexico with Soviet Russia as 'leading the way' to the blessings of the higher democracy. It is, however, an interesting fact that the Socialistic theories held by President Calles do not wholly spring from European sources, but are largely founded on, and inspired by, native Indian customs, traditions, and sentiment; and this is worth bearing in mind when we are told that all the Indians are on the side of the Church. This may have been the case formerly, but of late years the anticlerical spirit, which, strangely enough, infects chiefly the upper and ruling classes of Mexico, now largely pervades the native-born peons. The Indian is religious, — a mystic, or nature-mystic, but, like other people, he hankers after freedom and the good things of life, such as land, and he is beginning to see that he is more likely to receive these blessings from the secular than from the ecclesiastical arm.

The larger number of British and American settlers probably view the situation in a different light. During recent years they have felt the heavy hand of Red rule, which appears to be hardly less unpleasant in Mexico than it is in Russia; many of them have been despoiled of their property, and their lives are continually in danger. The abominable persecution of Mrs. Evans, culminating in her murder by Bolshevist assassins, will not readily be forgotten, and for these and other good reasons our British Cabinet has wisely refused to recognize the Mexican Government.

Side by side with Red rule in Mexico

is the rule of the Blacks, those intransigentists of the Roman Church who cause so much trouble all over the Western Hemisphere. Which of these two forms of rule is the more objectionable is a fair subject for argument, which I do not propose to discuss here; what we have to remember at the present juncture is that the unfortunate inhabitants of Mexico are, or have been until quite lately, harried by both. Much of the present trouble is due to the temporal pretensions of a Church which, while assuring us that her kingdom is not of this world, continues to assert those pretensions in an aggravated form. The Ultramontane quality of Mexican sacerdotalism is illustrated by the recent refusal of a bishop to recognize any authority except that of the Pope; he added that the present difficulties can be settled by Rome's decision alone.

The era of Red rule throughout Mexico began in the year 1857, when the Indian President Juárez, who killed the luckless Emperor Maximilian, instituted the Republican Constitution under which Mexicans have lived ever since. He separated Church and State, and passed strong antipapist laws, stripping the Church of much of her vast wealth and proscribing the religious orders. His aim was to destroy the Spanish system of ecclesiastical patronage and authority, alien and hateful in Mexican eyes, which gave the Church practically unlimited power in Mexico, and enabled her to oppress the people and keep them in poverty, ignorance, and subjection. The seeds of this anticlerical legislation had been sown during the previous hundred years or more, when Jesuitism was abolished, the monastic orders were banished, and other attacks made upon sacerdotal power. Juárez's anti-Catholic laws were never repealed, but when Porfirio Diaz came into power

fifty years ago they passed into abeyance. Diaz, like Signor Mussolini and many other great rulers belonging to various faiths before him, found that religion was too great a power to be antagonized with impunity, and he restored to the hierarchy its privileges and strength, receiving in return its support for his policy of tyranny and reaction. At the same time he took good care, as we have done in England, to keep the anticlerical laws in reserve for occasions when the priests became more than usually troublesome. Under his iron rule, aided by the Church, the land had peace, of a sort, for more than thirty years commerce flourished, concessionaires profited, and investors received some return upon the money they had entrusted to him; but the mental, moral, and social conditions of the people went from bad to worse. After Diaz there was nobody whose shoulders were equal to bearing the burden of empire, and the usual consequences of dictatorship followed. A number of worthless and often ruffianly adventurers contended for the mastery, promising the people a Bolshevist millennium, but producing little more than anarchy, carnage, brigandage, and bankruptcy. On the other side the Church, with her finger in every political pie, maintained her strangle-hold upon the people's minds and wills and faculties, and, as usual, offered an invincible bar to moral and material progress.

The immediate cause of the present disorder is the remarkable and violently antipapal Constitution signed by President Carranza in January 1917, and made law a week later. It seems fairly clear that this Constitution, sponsored by Carranza, originated in the more fertile brain of the nowreigning President, Plutarcho Elias Calles, who has out-Heroded Herod in his continued efforts to suppress or

ganized religion. The laws defining the position of the Church and her priesthood are set out in Chapter VII and Article 130 of the Constitution, which enact that all Church property is to be henceforth taken over by the State, public and private schools are to be secularized, and no priest or nun may teach. Priests have to be registered as members of a profession. Their numbers are to be limited by the State, and ministers of all creeds must be born Mexicans. No religious services or rites may be celebrated except in church, and clerics and clerical papers are forbidden to comment on political affairs. Marriage is made a purely civil contract. Monastic orders are suppressed, and ministers of all religions are forbidden under severe penalties to form political associations. No Church of any creed can hold, acquire, or administer real estate. As though the Constitution were not sufficiently drastic in itself, the President supplemented it last July by decreeing further anticlerical regulations.

It seems fairly obvious that only stern necessity or clear exigencies of State could justify such drastic measures as President Calles seems bent on enforcing. Roman Catholics and their supporters raise the slogan of persecution, and denounce the edicts as being-what they undoubtedly are a flagrant infraction of personal liberty and the fundamental principles of democracy. The question we have to consider is whether, in spite of priestly provocation, Laïcité of so uncompromising a type is necessary, or even desirable. President Calles has issued his apologia, and, judging from the rather scrappy information which most of the newspapers have served out to us, many people think that he has made out a fairly good case. That the inhabitants of Mexico, the Indian peons in particular, have owed much to

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