Stalin Writes to the Pope

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 142, 13 March 1942, Page 4

Stalin Writes to the Pope

T is not certain as we write this that i Stalin did send a birthday message to the Pope, but a majority of sensible people must hope that he did. The Pope would know why the message was sent. Stalin would know that the Pope would know. There would be no possibility of deception or misunderstanding on one side or the other, and therefore no attempt at dissimulation. If a message was sent it meant this, and no more than this, in whatever language it was actually expressed: "We have a common enemy. Let us co-operate against him." In the presence of Hitlerism, Christianity and commonsense mean the same thing. In other words it is as Christian as it is sensible to give and to accept help in resisting thugs and savages. Unless they can be beaten off our religious as well as our political systems will be swept away; the convictions on which they rest will be denied expression; and since faith without works is dead, lack of expression will bring moral even if it does not bring mental death. We shall either cease to care, becoming scientific robots or monkeys, or we shall care so much that no country for two or three generations will again know peace. This the Pope and Stalin see with the same realistic clarity; and since each leads a vast host of faithful followers, neither can afford to sacrifice them to the fears of the fantastically consistent. Nor does companionship part of the way commit either to the same route all the way. To suppose that it does is as foolish as to suppose that a white man rescued from drowning by a black man must go to the black man’s home and adopt his way of life; or that two soldiers who serve throughout a war in the same platoon must afterwards support the same political party. They need not, and as often as not they will not. But they are likely, if they go each his own way, to go without the heat that might otherwise have embittered their political relations.