The Diary of a Country Priest

by Georges Bernanos

Come to think of it, a slave cost something to buy, so his master was bound to spare him in some ways. Whilst I remember a filthy old glass-blower when I was young who used to get lads of fifteen to blow down his tubes, and when their poor little lungs were nearly done for, the swine could get as many more as he wanted;

No doubt still hoping to replace the slaves by machines. What a hope! The machines keep going round and round, and the ranks of unemployed keep swelling and swelling, as though the machines were just manufacturing unemployed, see what I mean? Ah, the poor take some getting rid of! Well, they’re still having a last try in Russia… Mind you, I don’t think the Russians are any worse than the rest—they’re all mad, mad dogs, the people of today—but those Russian bastards have got some guts. They’re the Flemish of the far-North, those blokes are! They can stomach anything. Give ’em another century or two and they’ll be able to swallow a polytechnic engineer—and keep him down! “After all, theirs isn’t such a fool’s plan. Get rid of the poor—that’s always been the idea, since the poor man bears witness for Jesus Christ, the heir of Jewry, isn’t that it?—but instead of making him a beast of burden or wiping him off the face of the earth, they’ve got the notion of turning him into a small rentier or even—supposing things should really go ahead—into a low-grade government official. Quite the easiest thing to manage, the most orderly and submissive!”

The ancient world is dead, as dead as its gods. And the titulary gods of the modern world—we know ’em; they dine out, they’re called bankers.

Dear God, I give You all, willingly. But I don’t know how to give, I just let them take. The best is to remain quiet. Because though I may not know how to give, You know how to take… Yet I would have wished to be, once, just once, magnificently generous to You!