The Diary of a Country Priest

by Georges Bernanos

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!”