A CAPITALIST WAR?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21646, 6 May 1940, Page 2

A CAPITALIST WAR?

ROMAN CATHOLIC VIEW The well-known Dominican preacher and writer, Father Vincent McNabb, recently answered the question, “How can an English Catholic think the present war is just, when, in fact, it is a war in defence of capitalism?” “Those loyal and Intelligent Englishmen whose hatred of capitalism would lead them to defend Germany can hardly escape the charge of selfcontradiction,” he says. “For if on England's side this is a war in defence of capitalism because capitalists are strong in England, on Germany’s side this should be equally reckoned a capitalist war because even Germany has so many capitalists that Nazi-ism has to control them by almost inhuman force.”

And he concludes with these pregnant words: “The thing that is England, the thing that was the creation of Catholic culture, the thing that even now gives the Catholic Church almost unique freedom of action, the thing whose love of liberty is almost wholly the fruiting of our Catholic martyrs is still something which the Catholics of this country think worthy of self-defence. If among those defended there are some or even many who are not worths' of defence, the days that follow victory may surely be expected to stem the menace of their selfishness.”