When the Great War ended, it didn\u2019t end. That is why it would later be known as World War I.<\/p>\n
G.K. Chesterton argued that the armistice of 1918 was not a peace, but a truce. Less than fifteen years later, he saw that the truce was crumbling, that the world was headed towards a new war, a horrible war, worse than the first, and that it would start on the Polish border. He did not live to see his predictions come true. But his publisher, Frank Sheed, did see the frightful fulfillment of Chesterton\u2019s prophecies, prompting him to remark: \u201cNow when a man is as right as that in his forecasts, there is some reason to think he may be right in his premises.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the Great War, Part Two, commenced, Frank Sheed compiled some Chesterton essays, drawn primarily from\u00a0G.K.\u2019s Weekly<\/em>, and laid them out in a perfect order so that it looks like Chesterton himself had designed this to be a book. But as Sheed indicates in his introduction, Chesterton\u2019s essays \u201cform a unity because of the unity in his own mind.\u2019<\/p>\n The prophecies come fast and faster as Chesterton not only predicts the outbreak of the new war but many things that would happen after the war, including events in our own day. \u201cThe outlook in Europe is dark,\u201d he writes, \u201cAnd it looks as if the Pacifists will succeed in dragging us all into War.\u201d By Pacifists, he means the internationalists who want to create an artificial \u201cunion\u201d of nations, denying them their autonomy and national character, under the illusion that this will do away with hostilities. Chesterton says it will only create hostilities, and it will be the internationalists intervening with force into every other nation. Internationalism is against nations. In Chesterton\u2019s time it was the League of Nations. In our time it is the United Nations and European Union.<\/p>\n The internationalists in Chesterton\u2019s time were pathetically trying to pacify two empires that were growing into monsters. The first of these was Nazi Germany (which according to Chesterton was nothing more than a continuation of the Prussian empire), the second was the Soviet Union. The rest of Europe and America watched in a sort of daze as these two beasts devoured Poland.<\/p>\n Chesterton blasts both the Liberals, who are enthusiastic towards a universal Communism, \u201ctheir enthusiasm being tinged with euthanasia,\u201d and the Conservatives, who are \u201cold men bullying young men by roaring in a raucous voice that all foreigners are fools.\u201d The hatred of Poland, he says, was, in essence, the hatred of Christianity.<\/p>\n The most interesting and most chilling part of this volume is Chesterton\u2019s view of Hitler. He starts out with the rather plainspoken remark that the stupidest thing done in the last two or three centuries was the acceptance by the Germans of the Dictatorship of Hitler. The desire for the strong man, as Chesterton had long pointed out, is itself a sign of weakness, and a system built on the strong man is one that cannot be sustained.<\/p>\n The growth of Protestantism in Germany led to a strange and steady distancing from the universal Church of Christendom and an embrace of Old Testament ideas, particularly the ancient story of the Covenant with Israel. Thus the Germans grew more and more into the mood of seeing their religion as a mystical religion of Race. Inflamed by the rhetoric of Hitler, they began to see themselves as the new Chosen People, an irony Chesterton sums up as \u201cThe Judaism of Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n It was not nationalism, which Chesterton says is the \u201cthe recognition of traditional frontiers.\u201d The religion of Race was \u201cAnthropology gone mad.\u201d It means \u201ceverlastingly looking for your own countrymen in other people\u2019s countries.\u201d<\/p>\n Chesterton says the cult of race has two downfalls. The first and most obvious is the tendency towards pride. The second he calls \u201cThe Indefinite.\u201d Though the Cult insists on racial purity, races are not pure; there are too many variations with no clear definitions. It is, says Chesterton, an \u201cordeal by blood: the blood test.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically, it is the same problem encountered by Bob Jones University (see page XX). Both Hitler and Bob Jones fell for the fallacy of racial purity \u2013 Hitler using Darwin by way of Nietzsche, Bob Jones using the Curse of Ham (Gen.9:20-27). Both attacked the Catholic doctrine of free will and in turn attacked the Catholic Church. They were not protecting a tradition, but they were protecting something that had gone wrong in a tradition. \u2018The problem is a problem of human will; of human motives and morals, and therefore of human souls.\u201d In the case of Hitler, the ordeal by blood test led to the bloodiest war in history and unspeakable acts against millions of Jews, Catholics, and others in the Nazi death camps.<\/p>\n Though Chesterton\u2019s analysis of Hitler and the Nazis is prophetic and pointed, condemning what happened even before it happened, his remarks are balanced by some sobering words for the rest of us: \u201cIt will be well before criticising another people, to make it a sort of religious exercise to remember what could be said against our own people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Essays from G.K.\u2019s Weekly that Prophesied World War II<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[1070,1095],"class_list":["post-2078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chesterton-101","tag-frank-sheed","tag-world-war"],"yoast_head":"\n