But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn!
He tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for truth, but he
asks what there would be in it for him--
State the facts,
Read the text right, emancipate the world--
The emancipated world enjoys itself
With scarce a thank-you.
Blougram told it first
It could not owe a farthing,--not to him
More than St. Paul!
So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of
the contempt of intellectual people.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking virgin as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her,
And am a knave.
But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of
faith, that is what
Gives all the advantage, makes the difference,
With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule.
We are their lords, or they are free of us,
Just as we tighten or relax that hold.
So he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in his role of
shepherd to those whom he calls "King Bomba's lazzaroni," and
"ragamuffin saints."
I wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see what Bishop
Blougram is doing with his lazzaroni and his ragamuffin saints
here in this new country of the far West. It is easy to acquire
the information, for the saleswoman is polite and the prices fit
my purse. America is going to war, and Catholic boys are being
drafted to be trained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a
firmly bound little pamphlet called "God's Armor, a Prayer Book
for Soldiers." It is marked "Copyright by the G. R. C.
Central-Verein," and bears the "Nihil Obstat" of the "Censor
Theolog." and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus,
Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici"--which last you may at first fail
to recognize as a well-known city on the Mississippi River. Do
you not feel the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past
creeping over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? Such is
the Dead Hand, and its cunning, which can make even St. Louis
sound mysterious!
In this booklet I get no information as to the commercial causes
of war, nor about the part which the clerical vote may have
played throughout Europe in supporting military systems. I do not
even find anything about the sacred cause of democracy, the
resolve of a self-governing people to put an end to feudal rule.
Instead I discover a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and
who, in his inmost heart, is in the grip of terrors both of body
and soul. Poor, pitiful soldier-boy, marking yourself with
crosses, performing genuflexions, mumbling magic formulas in the
trenches--how many billions of you have been led out to slaughter
by the greeds and ambitions of your religious masters, since
first this accursed Antichrist got its grip upon the hearts of
men!