The Banned Lecture

ledge were at the best under strong suspicion of heresy. I need not quote the obvious names. But there were certain bodies of people who did carry on the old knowledge, mostly by oral tradition, and who were perforce tolerated to a certain extent, because even the little knowledge that they did possess was so exceedingly useful. The best way to make armour, or to build Cathedrals, or to heal sickness would enable the Christian to get ahead of his friends. Therefore, although conscience evidently demanded the maximum amount of persecution compatible with the existence of villains, the Jews and the Arabs were at least allowed to live. Besides, the Arabs saw to that themselves. But no one was better aware than the Pope that knowledge was power. For all he know, and he probably knew that he did not know much, the Jews and the Arabs might get together and overturn the whole construction of society. Had he not in his own records the very best example of such a catastrophe ? There is a large number of excellent people, possessed of even less that the minimum amount of brains required to grease a gimlet, who are always boring us with the bogey of the Jew-Bolshevist peril. But as most of them are Roman Catholic and unaware that Rome is laughing in its sleeve at them, they conveniently ignore what should be— if they realised it—their best argument. What was the ultimate cause of the destruction of the great civilization of Rome ? What corrupted the spirit of a people unconquerable in arms ? What but the spread of the slave morality of the Jewish communists of the period ? If you will take your