Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/64

CHAPTER 4. SOCIAL WORK 51 continued refusal to follow the party line of the Church in praising Franco gained my admiration.

One night Peter Maurin spoke at Holy Family House. A Communist friend came to the meeting and when time came for questions commenced to quote Marx. Peter answered, "You did not quote Marx right—here is the correct sentence. Marx got it from the anarchist Proudhon." And then he began to give an Easy Essay on the subject in question. I said, "Peter, you talk like an anarchist." "Sure, I am an anarchist; all thinking people are anarchists. But I prefer the name personalist."

Peter was a wonderful man, the second man of stature whom I had known; Berkman being the first.

Early in 1941 Eric Gill, the English Catholic artist sculptor, died. WAR COMMENTARY, the London anarchist weekly, had a front page article about him by the poet, Herbert Read, which quoted a letter from Gill, "I am really in complete agreement with you about the necessity of anarchism, the ultimate truth of it, and its immediate practibility as syndicalism." Read ended the article with this sentence, speaking of Gill, "He was the most honest man I have even known, or am likely to know."

The opposition of the CATHOLIC WORKER to Franco aroused the ire of patriotic Catholics. I remember a priest speaking at the CW one night who said that if a Catholic fighting for Franco killed a Catholic who was a Loyalist he was doing the latter a favor, for if it was the other way around the Loyalist would be committing murder and would go to hell because he was on the wrong side. During this time I wrote letters to every Protestant church in the city telling them of the coming war and asking for permission to present the Christian anarchist view to their young people. I received but four answers, one of them from a pastor of the Missouri Synod of the Lutherans, which was an accomplishment. On May 20, 1940 I held a memorial meeting for Emma Goldman. Bill Ryan and Ed Lehmann, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, spoke.

I had been selling CWs and CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS every other Monday night at meetings of a lecture forum at the largest Protestant church in the city. On Monday Dec. 8, Jan Valtin was to speak. All of my relatives and comrades advised me not to run the danger of being beaten up by going there. I felt that all of us would be killed for a dime as much as for a dollar, so we might as well sow our seeds and not worry about whether they fell on stony ground or whether we were endangered in the sowing of them. Those who rely on force are reaping the fruits of violence sown for generations. Here is more violence and this is the very time when we must be active. Accordingly I went down to the church with my papers. Half a dozen women spit at me and several men grumbled at me. Suddenly four police grabbed me by the neck and shoulders demanding to know if I was a Communist. "Wake up, fellows. The Party Line has changed. The Commies are on your side." They wanted to know what I was if I was not a Communist. "You wouldn't know if I told you," I replied. "Tell us" they asked, "I am a Christian Anarchist," I answered. "What is that?" was their query. "Someone who doesn't need a cop to make