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An Issue of The Christian News-Letter
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- document
- Additional Information
Dear Member,
The writer of the previous number of this News-Letter introduced herself in terms of apology which will serve at least equally well for the present writer: I shall therefore not attempt to amplify or vary what she said in her first paragraph, but accept it as an introduction for myself also.
We know little of the situation in either occupied or unoccupied France; and those of us who have French friends receive no news, or hardly more than that they are still alive. Our public preoccupation, also, is with the foreign policy of the Vichy government and its immediate consequences for us. Yet it is of very great importance, in the long run, that we should take every opportunity of informing ourselves about the domestic policy of that government, and of the changes taking place inside France. For the problem of France will be one of the most vital and difficult of all the post-war problems; and we need to remind ourselves that the France which we shall have to get to know – after a period of isolation of the two countries from each other for which there is no parallel in history – may be different from the France which we knew up to fifteen months ago. For that reconstruction of understanding which will be essential, we shall need all our powers of imagination, sympathy and tolerance; and also all the information about the steps in France’s development that we can meanwhile obtain. The article in
As for the abolition of political parties, we know well that there were formerly far too many for parliamentary government to be anything but a tedious farce; and we know how prevalent was political corruption and venality. As for the abolition of Free Masonry, we must remember that the Grand Orient was a very different affair from Free Masonry as known in Britain – I have always understood that relations between the two bodies were broken off long ago.
In Spain – a country which I do not know – it may be that the vast majority of the population, however anti-clerical, is Christian and Catholic at heart. France has had a very different story. We may deplore the French Revolution, but we must accept it as a fact. In no...