Knowing what we know today, we marvel that it was possible for Germany to prepare through so many years for her assault on civilization, and for England to have slept through it all. In exactly the same way, the historian of a generation from now will marvel that America should have slept, while the New Inquisition was planning to strangle her. For we are told with the utmost explicitness precisely what is to be done. We are to see wiped out these gains of civilization for which our race has bled and agonized for many centuries; the very gains are to serve as the means of their own destruction! Have we not heard Pope Leo tell his faithful how to take advantage of what they find in America—our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty, our open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met democracy? We see the army being organized and drilled under our eyes; and we can read upon its banners its purpose proclaimed. Just as the Prussian military caste had its slogan "Deutschland ueber Alles!" so the Knights of Slavery have their slogan: "Make America Catholic!"
Their attitude to democratic institutions is attested by the fact that none of their conventions ever fails in its resolutions to "deeply deplore the loss of the temporal power of Our Father, the Pope." Their subjection to priestly domination is indicated by such resolutions as this, bearing date of May 13th, 1914:
The Knights of Columbus of Texas in annual convention assembled, prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, present filial regards with assurances of loyalty and obedience to the Holy See and request the Papal blessing.
On June 10th, 1912, one T. J. Carey of Palestine, Texas, wrote to Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate: "Must I, as a Catholic, surrender my political freedom to the Church? And by this I mean the right to vote for the Democratic, Socialist, or Republican parties when and where I please?" The answer was: "You should submit to the decisions of the Church, even at the cost of sacrificing political principles." And to the same effect Mgr. Preston, In New York City, Jan. 1, 1888: "The man who says, 'I will take my faith from Peter, but I will not take my politics from Peter,' is not a true Catholic."
Such is the Papal machine; and not a day passes that it does not discover some new scheme to advance the Papal glory; a "Catholic battle-ship" in the United States navy; Catholic chaplains on all ships of the navy; Catholic holidays—-such as Columbus Day—to be celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million dollars worth of church p............