Blimpery in Exceuis

Abstract

Wishing no doubt to console a group who are more noisy at the moment than they are numerous, a firm of Catholic publishers has now perpetrated an English version of the Comte de Saint-Aulaire's venomous lampoon Genève contre la Paix, a work well calculated to offset their former productions, The Church and War and Peace and the Clergy, which were—well, not quite nice.It is the “stuff to give ‘em.” M. de Saint-Aulaire is the French equivalent of Colonel Blimp. But whereas our English hero is merely reduced by the thought of that dreadful League of Nations to an inarticulate spluttering of “Gad, sir! Stuff and nonsense, what, what,” his Gallic colleague has a more vivid imagination and the gift of tongues. True, he has his lucid moments, only too rare in this book, in which his shrewdness delights us; but for most of the time he sees red, or, should I say, Red. So eloquent indeed is this excited old gentleman that it is a little difficult sometimes for one, whose humdrum job it has been for sixteen years to acquaint himself with the actual history of the League, to follow his flights of fancy. His essay is not very coherent. It begins by explaining that the League has never existed or, alternatively, (as the lawyers would say), has long since compassed its own decomposition. Having proclaimed the dogma of equality (Has it?), it has built, though decomposed, upon inequality and privilege. The real forces behind it (if it exists) are those occult Internationals, Bolshevism, Freemasonry, Judaism and Pangermanism—oddly united, these last two—which, as Colonel Blimp would heartily agree, are well calculated to make the flesh of all good Christians creep. The League is “a prostitute,” “an abortion clinic,” “a corpse,” “a fantastic hoax,” “a gravedigger,” “aparalytic,” “anassassin,” “asuicide,"etc. It has committed nothing but errors: it has told nothing but lies.