In one of his most important and most carefully prepared speeches, a vast American as well as British and French public listening on the radio or reading the printed word next day (August 25, 1941), Churchill deliberately described in these words the relation of the French to the Czechs in 1938:
"A French government deserted their faithful ally and broke a plighted word in that ally's hour of need."
Note carefully that this was not an attack on the miserable group of Catholic weaklings which was called the Vichy government. If it were, we might allow for strong feeling and over-emphasis. But it was a cold and responsible Statement of what had happened in the tragic days of Munich. At that time Britain and America were cordial friends of France, and the betrayal was softened with vague phrases or even, since the whole world was still steeped in calumny against the great Soviet civilization, excused on the ground that Russia could not be trusted. In war, as in wine, the truth comes out. France basely deserted its ally. Why?
Military considerations lie outside my many fields of interest but it can safely be said that they afford no justification of the action of France. Indeed now that we see the supreme French commanders in their true light as priest-ridden mediocrities who put the interest of their Church above the interests of their nation and the dictates of honor we wonder if they did not strain these military considerations in 1938 in order to avoid an effective alliance with Russia which the Vatican, which sought an alliance with Germany against Russia, would bitterly resent. There is a fallacy in the plea that events have proved that and war at that time against Germany would have been disastrous. Neither France (always too selfish to tax itself sufficiently for adequate defense) nor Russia had the forces they would later develop, but Germany also was far short of the power it would deploy in 1941 after being in a position for a year or two to enslave half of Europe. The Maginot Line was complete. and the Czechs had, to the great profit of the French Steel Trust—a similar line, an army limited in numbers, but of superb quality, and a stanch ally in Russia. If Germany had turned the Maginot Line by invading Belgium the British Fleet would be added to the coalition. The prospect was more hopeful than in 1939 and 1940 or at any time until Russia was drawn in.
But can we suppose that France at any time before 1940 was sensitive to the wishes and counsels of the Vatican? It was one of the most irreligious countries in the world, or at least it ran Britain close for that title. I have repeatedly quoted Catholic admissions that only about six or seven million of its 42,000,000 people were in any real sense Catholics. All its statesmen were, and had been for more than half a century, Freethinkers (except one Protestant) and apart from artists and literary men, whose convictions are not conviction's in an intellectual sense, nearly all its cultural leaders were skeptics,
We shall study France more closely in a later book when we have to try to understand the monumental treachery of the Catholic military leaders, but a few points must be discussed here in order to complete the record of the action of the Black International in preparing the world, whether it realized what it was doing or not, for the historic crime of the war. In an earlier chapter I mentioned, incidentally, how in 1937 Pacelli went—we will not say was sent for he made his own policy—to Paris as the Pope's legate. This was the first time the Papacy had sent a Legate to France since 1814. All reference-books had continued to describe it as a Catholic country, as they do today, and few thought of explaining this very singular attitude of the Vatican to it. But we will return to that latter. Pacelli, who hated democracy in general and France in particular, was so very amiable and successful that on the following New Year's Day the gifts received by the Premier and the Minister of Finance, both Freethinkers, included Papal decorations.
Naturally this was not the beginning of pleasant relations, but I must give a very summary account of events at this stage. The Thirty Years' War (say 1884 to 1914) of France and the Vatican ended in the truce of 1914-1918, when the close union of all parties in France was demanded, and this led on to such amiable relations after the war that the very powerful French Freethought Party was never reconstructed.