To-day Deputy Mulcahy asked on behalf of Deputy McGilligan permission to raise on the adjournment matters arising out of question No. 9 on the Order Paper. The Chair granted permission, but meantime I have given the matter some consideration and have decided that it is not to be taken as establishing a precedent. If a Deputy desires to raise a matter on his own question on the adjournment he must himself in future request leave to do so.
Committee on Finance. - Debate on the Adjournment—Censorship Regulations.
I had two questions on the Order Paper to-day. The second one concerned the publication by a newspaper called the Examiner, Dundalk, of an editorial entitled “Roosevelt's Cock-and-Bull story.” I founded certain demands for certain information on that and in so far as the answer dealt with the insult or affront offered to the head of a friendly State by that particular type of editorial slogan, I have no fault to find. I understand the situation to be that the matter was published without the Censor having seen it and that it is regarded as a defiance of the censorship regulations and I am told that this particular paper will be under the same restraint in future as are other papers that have offended against the regulations. I do not find that in many cases it has gone the length that has been gone in regard to other publications. I have been told that any future comment will be submitted. I understand that not merely comment but all other matters have to be submitted in respect of a journal that has offended against the regulations. I trust that the same punishment will be given to this particular paper as to the others.
However, I referred in the end to the second part of the editorial under the headline, not having anything to do with the affront offered in set terms to the head of a friendly State. I asked whether other newspapers may now publish such information as they may have as to the attitude of the belligerent Powers to religion and to Church institutions. On that the Minister made, as far as I am concerned, no reply. It may have been an inadvertence that he got away with that part of the question, and to that I have nothing to say except that if he hoped to do so it would have been evasive and childish and, at any rate, ineffective. A part of the article on which I founded the question—I do not say I took exception to it as I am not in favour of censorship, even of this type of rubbish—and to which I want to draw attention is towards the end of the editorial, where it was stated:
"For religion in general——"
I am leaving out the earlier part of the commentary: the Minister can read it if he thinks it necessary—
"——which is to be saved, we presume, by a combination of the forces of Soviet Russia and Freemason levies, lined up against such Godless countries as Catholic Italy, Catholic Spain, Rumania, Hungary and the 48,000,000 of Catholics in Germany."
The last paragraph but one of the editorial says:
"The facts are that the Catholic Church is still endowed by the State in Germany; that Hitler in Mein Kampf has proclaimed that there must be religious freedom in the Reich, that he has paid tribute to the Catholic Church, which, as he says, does not change her doctrines to suit the passing whims and fashions of the time; that the Church, as the editor of the Catholic Herald put it recently, flourishes in Germany.”
I do not object to that being published in regard to one State if there is allowed to percolate freely through the country the answers to it also. My objection in regard to the censorship is that it prevents people forming any opinion on the moral issues at stake in this war. They cannot form much judgment on the moral issue. Whether in the war or while preserving the strictest front possible in the way of neutrality it seems ludicrous to expect people now or hereafter not to be called on to form any judgment on what has happened leading up to the war and from that on. Some two or three people, who I do not think would arrogate to themselves any superior intellectual power, say that they are not to read that matter or the material published in answer to it. If the Minister tries to take refuge in part of what he said in answer to supplementaries, that the Censor tries to be impartial and tries to stop both being published, then he has not entirely succeeded, because one knows that comments have crept in of that type telling people everything is going to ruin so far as Bolshevist Russia is concerned and that England must be described as a Freemason country, that the Freemasons have come out in support of matters at the root of the war; and, on the other hand, you are told that the Church is marvellously preserved in Germany. I do not object to that sort of thing being said, but I do object to that being allowed more occasionally than the answer to it. I would much rather see the situation where they were allowed publication until the people were tired of it all, and where the answers were also being published until people agreed to differ in the matter.
On the question whether the Church is free or not in Germany, we are not without authority either. The Pope published an Encyclical which has not been published in this country. I wonder if the newspapers would be allowed to publish it, in serial form. The Pope had no doubt about where he stood with regard to the whole philosophy of the Nazi system. The title of the Encyclical to the German Bishops is "Mit Brennender Sorge". He says:
"We have never ceased to represent to the responsible rulers of your country's destiny the consequences which would inevitably follow the protection and even the favour extended to such a policy——"
That is, the policy he is condemning is the racial policy that the Germans are trying to enforce in place of religion. He has used this phrase in regard to Nazi Socialism in the same Encyclical:
"This substitute faith, that has nothing in common with the Faith of the Cross."
I do not know if words could be plainer. He went on to say:
"None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, a national religion or an attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the Universe, the King and Legislator of all nations, before Whose immensity they are `as a drop in a bucket'."
Can we have that published in this country? I do not believe the editor of the Dundalk Examiner wrote this editorial, as I do not believe the individual who runs that paper is capable of putting together such an editorial, but I would like to see the people who stand behind him having at least to write one or two other editorials in defence of their view of religion in Germany merely against half a dozen sentences in the Encyclical I have quoted.
This is not the end of the matter of religion in relation to that country. One of my colleagues here asked what the situation was with regard to sermons preached by the Catholic Bishop of Münster in Westphalia. As far as I can gather, the Bishop of Münster's sermon was given in two parts—one by the British Press Association and the other by the German Press Agency. It appears that on July 13th he talked about an attack made by the British Air Force on the town of Münster a few days before and said that he was handing over to his flock some meditations on this attack by a war-like adversary, but he was stopped on that because he had other things to say. He continued:—
"Münster had not recovered from the appalling devastation which the external enemy and military adversary caused us when yesterday at the end of this dreadful week—yesterday, on July 12th, 1941—the secret State police, the Gestapo, confiscated both houses of the Society of Jesus in the city——
Then he mentions who they are:—
——"and forced the Reverend Fathers and lay brothers to leave without delay not only their houses, not only our city, but also the province of Westphalia and the Rhine province. The same hard fate has overtaken the Good Sisters in Steinfurt street. Their convent has also been confiscated. The nuns are expelled from Westphalia, and must leave Münster by six o'clock this evening.
He talks about some sequels to that. Then he adds—
"And so we see that the assault upon monasteries which has been raging for some time already in Austria, in southern Germany, in the recently acquired territories of western Poland. Luxemburg, Lorraine and in other parts of the German Empire, has now been let loose on Westphalia."
Then the Bishop goes on to say that the people must be prepared for the repetition of such terrible things. He said that he had been threatened with arrest. He has been arrested since. Yet this paper is allowed to publish this story about the way the Church flourishes in Germany and no opportunity is given to state what the Bishop of Münster says. No answer is allowed. The Minister says that it was done in defiance of censorship regulations. That is no excuse and no betterment of the harm done.
The Government themselves are not without some concern in this matter. It is only in the month of October, by a publication that does come into this country that one learns that the Government Information Bureau sent a reply to an American journal over some comments that appeared in that journal with regard to the censorship in this country. The article quoted statements; it talked of giving certain definite statements and talked about certain things that had been censored and the publication of which had been definitely prohibited. This journal prints in full what they call an official reply received from the Dublin Government. Now, this has been done without the knowledge of anybody here; it is done particularly without the knowledge of the Leader of the Opposition Party, who is quoted by the Government Information Bureau in terms which only mean that he is backing the censorship as it exists at present. That is hardly a fair thing to do. One would not call it an honourable thing to do, and it certainly is not true as it is represented here.
One of the things they talk of is that here they did not allow the dissemination of a book published by Burns and Oates and distributed by the British Ministry of Information. It is a book called The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich. Some of my colleagues asked about that and I asked about it a year ago and, so far as I remember, the excuse then given was not that it was a propagandist work but that it made an attack upon the head of a friendly State, such an attack as the Pope himself has launched. It is now known that the book was compiled by certain German priests whose names cannot be given— they are still in Germany. If it were allowed to be circulated here, that book would be a complete refutation of the stuff carried by the Dundalk Examiner. The Minister has allowed the Dundalk Examiner to get the start with this stuff, but he takes good care that the book which so completely disrupts the ideas conveyed in the published article will not get circulation here.
I presume the reply to the American journal comes from somebody in the censor's department. It was officially issued by the Government Information Bureau and the American paper says that it was received from the Dublin Government. At the end it says that fair journalism requires that when various people, who are mentioned, are quoted, the official reply of the Government should also be quoted. Then there follow two quotations in justification of the censorship in this country. One is taken from The Leader and the other is stated in this way:—“The Irish attitude on the Christian aspects of the war was recently stated as follows in the Dáil by Deputy William Cosgrave, Leader of the Opposition.” Then there follows a distorted excerpt from a speech which that Deputy made in circumstances well known to the House.
Decency would have demanded that before that script went to America Deputy Cosgrave should have been consulted about it. At least he should have been allowed to see, when he was paraded in America as being behind the censorship here, what was quoted from his statement. It is completely dishonourable. I say it is an inaccurate quotation and it was torn from its context. Deputy Cosgrave was the most astonished man in the world to discover that he was paraded there as backing the working of the censorship in this country.
For some reason or other the Government have decided that they must clamp together the preservation of neutrality and the censorship as it is at present being worked. I am at one with them in stopping insulting remarks directed against the heads of other States. I think that if the journal that published that article was worth anything, or if it was to be taken as representative of any body of opinion in this country, then the country would suffer lamentably, even from the headline. I think it defames itself more than it defames the person against whom the article is directed.
The Government are behind this kind of thing. They will not allow the free dissemination of material which will enable the people to make up their minds on the moral issues in the background of the war. I do not see how our progress towards war or our hesitation on the threshold of neutrality would be affected by allowing the people freely to discuss the international materialism of Moscow, the Fascist oath of Rome or the German philosophy of nationalism rooted in a racial stock. The Pope has condemned all three, and I think it would be a good thing if the country could get to know the terms in which he has condemned them and the reasons given for the condemnation.
There appears to be the view that the Government must be neutral, even on moral issues. That matter has been referred to recently in another article which, I am sure, will not be allowed publication in this country. I refer to the sermon which was delivered recently and which the Minister can get verbatim from our representative in Portugal, where the article is in circulation. The sermon was preached by Cardinal Van Roey, the Archbishop of Malines, and in it he speaks in this way: He said the Church could adapt herself to many situations but she could not tolerate conditions which tended to stifle her. Italy and Portugal, for example, were both dictatorships, he said, but how different were the conditions of life for the Church in those two countries. As for Germany, she represented the rockbottom in this matter. One had only to read the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge. And the situation was not improving. Then he went on:—
"It was unlawful for Roman Catholics to collaborate with an oppressive régime. Indeed, they had an obligation to work with those who tried to resist such a régime. It was sometimes objected that the Church was concerned only with souls—that the altar, the confessional-box, and the pulpit were the limits of a priest's domain, and that the rest belonged to the State. That was not so. The Church claimed to have an interest in all that belonged to God. One had only to take the case of Cardinal Innitzer. On the day after the Anschluss he had written, `In present circumstances it is necessary to emphasise that the duty of the Church is the cure of souls— through worship, the sacraments, and preaching. She must remain aloof from all else.' But Cardinal Innitzer was recalled to Rome, where the Supreme Pontiff led him back on to the right path. The next month Cardinal Innitzer spoke very differently. `The Church,' he then said, `must exercise her rights of proclaiming and defending the Catholic Faith in every department of human life.' ”
Have not the Government in a Catholic country, where the majority of the citizens represent one Faith, an equal duty to see that people will be allowed to get the material on which they will be able to form a proper judgment as to the matters that lie behind the present conflict?
I am sure the Deputy is prepared to give the Minister time to reply?
One last thing. An Italian paper, the Osservatore Romano, publishes certain heads with regard to lectures to be delivered to the Catholic youth in Germany. They contain such things as these:—“Contrast how Christ died whimpering on the Cross and how Planetta died crying: ` Heil, Hitler; Heil, Germany' ”; “The Ten Commandments are the deposits of the lowest human instincts,” and finally: “For us Germans the inactivity of eternal life is simply foolishness.” Those are all authoritatively backed. I do not want these things to be given wide publicity. I think the Encyclicals, articles written by authoritative people in the Church, and particularly the Encyclicals of the Pope, ought to be allowed equal publicity to what the Dundalk Examiner gets.
We have a difficulty in the censorship in keeping the minds of our own people firmly fixed on the problems of this country. This Dáil, which is the body with the authority and the responsibility of deciding national policy, has decided that we are to be neutral in the war. Now, in modern times one of the principal weapons of war is propaganda, and we here do not know from day to day, we have no means of knowing—we are not prophets or magicians—or of judging the accuracy of statements or quotations or alleged quotations circulated by one belligerent and supposed to be coming from the citizens of its enemy. The Cardinal, to whom the Deputy has referred, Cardinal Innitzer, made statements as to the Church's duty and the duty of Catholics to defend morals in all circumstances, and he himself complained that utterances which he felt it his moral duty to make to the people of his diocese were twisted for propaganda purposes by the enemies of Germany. We all know that the "words of wise men are often twisted to make traps for fools"—I think somebody has said that somewhere before, and you all know it. We have discussed this thing here time and again. Personally, I think that the attitude of the vast majority of our people on this question of the moral issues could not have been better or more clearly stated than by the Leader of the Opposition on the occasion here when Deputy Dillon went berserker about religion. And if there is anybody in this House who is going to get up and say that this fight is a fight between the Cross of Christ and the cross of Nazism you will have somebody else the next day getting up and saying that it is a fight between the Cross of Christ and the Hammer and Sickle, or whatever the other symbol is. We have prevented both, and surely our people are well versed enough in international affairs to judge moral issues for themselves, if there are moral issues in this war.
Deputy McGilligan has pointed out that we have censored statements of certain bishops and cardinals and other important people from time to time. We have, but I say this much: that every night on the air, and every day in the newspapers, the chief spokesman of every nation in this world, who wants to speak, has direct access to the Irish people to convince them of his moral case for winning the war, if he has a moral case. There is no head of a State, a religious State or a temporal State, whose pronouncements have been censored in our papers since the beginning of this war, not one. If there are moral issues involved, these people should put them, and they are allowed to put them to the Irish people. If anyone wants an intellectual exercise, he can have it by comparing, on the one hand, what Herr Hitler says with what, on the other hand, Mr. Churchill or M. Stalin says. They are all free to do it.
Deputy McGilligan asked me about some Encyclical of the Pope's. If that is presented as an Encyclical the Irish people are quite free to read it, as far as I am concerned. But they are not free to read attacks on the Pope, such as were made in one Irish paper here which published a letter in which the Vatican was condemned as a small, little, Totalitarian State which was dictating to the people of this country and to this Government. If I "permitted," as has been alleged and as has been very gracefully withdrawn by Deputy McGilligan, the article in the Dundalk Examiner, so also did I “permit” the publication of this. To answer Deputy McGilligan in regard to religion I say: that we did not permit that editorial and neither did we permit the few—thank goodness, they were few—editorials that were directed against the heads of other friendly powers, including the Pope. We did not permit that—it was not submitted—and we did not change the regulations and do not propose to change them. I personally believe, with the Leader of the Opposition, that this war is not about religion, but if it is about religion, if it is about morals, it is up to the heads of the foreign States to prove it, and it is not up to us to circulate propagandist statements issued here by the publicity department of any belligerent about what the other side has said or is alleged to have said.
Now, my belief is that the people of this country have a better opportunity of forming a calm judgment on this war than if the headlines of our papers were filled every day with the fiery abuse which both belligerents are using, one about the other. This article in the Dundalk Examiner, like other articles that were published in other papers, did get a start, but up to the present time the Dundalk Examiner, like nearly all our other papers, has behaved in a very reasonable and correct way from the national point of view, and there was no cause for complaint. But Deputy Dillon, in the House to-day, made an allegation about the Dundalk Examiner: that it had at some time or another stated that Nazism was the protector of the Catholic Church, of Christianity, in Europe. I have had the Dundalk Examiner searched for the last two years, since the beginning of this war, and that statement did not appear in it. That statement is like a number of other wild statements which Deputy Dillon makes from time to time—baseless allegations, which also get a start —and nothing that I say here, or that Deputy McGilligan said to-night in accepting my explanation with regard to that article, will ever catch up on that lie. We will see that lie all over the world wherever it can be used as hurtful propaganda against the people of this country.
I hope the Minister will quote it more accurately than he has done.
I shall quote it as it appears in the draft Official Report of to-day's debate, so that there will be no dispute about it. I have a copy of the draft report here.
So have I.
Deputy Dillon said here to-day that "the newspaper in question", that is, the Dundalk Examiner, “recently published a statement that the Nazi organisation in Europe was looked upon in reliable circles as the natural protector of the Catholic Church”.
Oh, nonsense!
That is what he said. I have here the Official Report.
So have I. I have a "pull" of the report.
And further down at the end of the page, Deputy Dillon said— we all heard him here to-day——
Tell us what he said.
Deputy McGilligan was not here to hear him.
I have a copy here before me.
The Deputy may have corrected it since.
I have it here.
Here is the second statement that Deputy Dillon made to-day. He said:—
". . . . I now allege that this newspaper was permitted by the Censorship to publish a statement that the Nazi Government in Europe was regarded in authoritative quarters as the natural protector of the Catholic Church."
The two quotations are almost similar, and is there any Deputy here who will say that that was not what Deputy Dillon said?
I have a copy here in front of me, but would the Minister read the article?
The Deputy denied that what I said was true, and I have given him the quotation. The Deputy has the usual lawyer's trick: when caught out he makes a fuss to cover it up."
Read out the editorial.
I have explained what happened about the editorial, and exactly the same punishment was inflicted on the editor for that as on other editors for making attacks on the Pope or the heads of other States.
The Dáil adjourned at 10 p.m. until 3 p.m. Wednesday, 19th November, 1941.