THE CASE OF ERNESTO NATHAN: THE EDITOR.

THE AMERICAN FREEMASON
MAY 1914

A FEW weeks ago the cables brought information of selection, by the Italian
government, of Ernesto Nathan, until lately Mayor of Rome, as
commissioner for that nation at the Panama Exposition in San Francisco. 
The average American citizen, if he thought of the matter at all, acquiesced
in the appointment. The responsible government of Italy made the
selection; was acquainted with the qualifications of the man, had to pay the
bills, and was, presumably, only or chiefly concerned to secure the best
ability for the task in hand.  But so soon as the selection was announced
in the United States there arose a clamour of protest and a storm of slander
directed against the appointee.  To the uninformed this sudden attack may
have seemed inexplicable; to that one having knowledge of international
affairs the source, the cause and the meaning of such assault are not
subjects of wonder.

Ernesto Nathan has been Mayor of Rome. He represented in that exalted
position the secular government of Italy, and the liberalizing forces that
have made United Italy possible and permanent.  By fulfilling his highest
duty as a patriot and an official he earned not only the disapproval, but the
active hatred, of those who still hold to the regime supplanted by the
revolution of 1870.

More than this Ernesto Nathan is a Jew.  The ecclesiastical reactionists of
Rome still hate a Jew with medieval hatred.  They can not adapt
themselves to changed conditions, and that one of the long-despised and
maltreated and despoiled race should hold first civic place in the Eternal
City stirred them to an implacable rage.

And, again, Ernesto Nathan is a Freemason, and has been Grand Master
of Italian Masons.  And in the erstwhile stronghold of the papacy, whence
were issued the fiercest denunciations of the Craft, condemning
Freemasons to death and their goods to confiscation, one of the most
prominent of the fraternity held position of rule, was matter not to be
forgiven.

So the fuglemen of Roman ecclesiasticism gave the instant signal, and
uproar was started against this appointment.  That this was a matter
concerning Italy alone seems not to have been apparent to those making
protest.  Indeed they seem unable to conceive of any situation, whether
national or international, into which they should not intrude.  Already, as we
are informed, meetings have been held in a number of our critics to make
protest, and it is stated that "the Catholic people of America will do all in
their power to prevent Nathan coming here."

I had waited, in the writing of this, with hope that some Grand Master, or
other man prominent in the American Craft, would come to the defence of
a brother "wrongfully traduced." Had an English or American Mason of
prominence been so assailed in France or Italy, for example, there would
have been prompt movement on the part of Masonic officials to resist the
assault.  In the absence of any official pronouncement it rests with the
fraternal press of the United States to speak with vigour and without
hesitation.  We have no need to apologize for such action; the brother so
slanderously assailed is worthy of our best support.  Spite of all the slurs
that have been cast upon him by the church papers, he is a splendid
example of the Masonry of Continental Europe.

But we are told that Past Grand Master Nathan abused his position as
Mayor of Rome to harass and insult the pope.  Especially are we referred
to parts of speeches delivered at the Porta Pia in 1911.  Because of this,
says Rome, an English weekly published in the Italian capital, he "will never
be forgotten nor forgiven by Catholics." The Monitor (Catholic) of San
Francisco, gives extracts from this speech, presumably taking those
paragraphs most fit for its use.  From this church paper we quote the
utterance of Brother Nathan relative to the Pope and the Vatican, as
follows:

Another Rome, prototype of the past, shuts itself up within an area more
confined than the walls of Belisarius, striving to crush thought within the
narrowest limits, in the fear that, like the embalmed corpses of old Egypt,
contact with the free air may resolve it into dust.  From there, from the
fortress of dogma, the last desperate effort to perpetuate the reign of
ignorance comes.  On the one hand is the order to the faithful to banish
from the schools that periodical press which tells of modern life and
thought; and on the other hand it thunders proscription against men and
associations that desire to reconcile the practices and dictates of their faith
with the teachings of the intellect, of real life, of the moral and social
aspirations of civilization.  That city on the slope of the Janiculum, as
cosmic matter in dissolution, is the fragment of a spent sun, hurled into the
orbit of the contemporary world.

These same accusations, made even more forcible and with greater
emphasis, have been repeated again and again by clear-seeing men in
every country of the world.  In these phrases Mayor Nathan did no more
than reiterate the veriest commonplaces in the world of thought.  He
pointed out what is apparent to every thinking man - that ecclesiastical
Rome is a decaying and doomed institution, altogether out of touch with
the true affairs and activities of the world, and yet from a middle-age
seclusion arrogating to itself the right to pronounce on men and matters far
beyond its ken.  So we are not yet shocked by the showing.  But the
Monitor, with an editorial shudder at the impiety of the words, gives still
another extract from the speeches, for which the former Mayor of Rome is
to be turned back from American shores:

It is well to bear in mind that before the 20th of September, 1870, Rome,
wrapped in the darkness of enforced superstition, lying under an intolerable
servitude, thirsting for light, tunnelled the earth interposed between itself
and the sun's smile, with ear extended toward Italy - toward Italy labouring
with pick and mine to liberate its beloved! A few cannon shots sufficed to
batter down the frail diaphragm which had till then segregated the city from
free human intercourse, gripping her within the narrow circle of dogma,
divorcing her from her pure, radiant beginnings, as well as from the truths
revealed by civilization and by science.  And across the breach mother and
daughter clasp hands; they embrace, never more to be separated; and on
their heads alights, surrounded by an aureole, the angel of liberty, that from
the seven immortal hills might be proclaimed to the world - to the human
conscience - the advent of its kingdom upon earth.

With all deference to the wisdom of the priests and prelates who persist in
reading into these sentences a terrible insult to the pope and the papacy,
we are too obtuse to discover the unforgivable crime.  The student of
modern history will not need to be told that Brother Nathan, rhetoric apart,
was well within the truth in all these statements.

It is just possible that the Catholic hierarchy are alarmed at the prospect of
Mayor Nathan's visit to the United States for any considerable stay.  He is
informed as to actual conditions in Italy, and would probably tell a far
different story as to the papacy and its injurious influence in the affairs of
his country.  As it is, the priests and the priestly-directed press would prefer
to keep up the fiction of "the prisoner in the Vatican;" they want the people
to see only the pathetic figure of their own imaginations - the Chief
Shepherd of Christendom, yearning over the souls of men, and subjected
to insult from the blasphemous Jews, Freemasons and Protestants, in
alliance with the hoodlums of the peninsula.  At any rate the Monitor, from
which I quote, works itself into a passion, as thus:

If Nathan is allowed to come here as a representative of Italy, it will be
against the wishes of millions of citizens of the United States.  The Catholic
people of our country will, to a man, refuse to accept him, and it goes
without saying that they will be supported in their protest by every
fair-minded non-Catholic - Protestant or Jew - in the land.  For Nathan is
the most infamous sworn enemy of religion in the world today.  A Jew, born
in England, but raised in Italy, he is the chief of Europe's Freemason
politicians.  For the past five years, and more, as Mayor of Rome, he has
held his office to harass the Catholic church, to insult the Pope, and to
outrage the feelings of Catholics the world over.  So far has he gone in his
violent hatred of the church that he has not only aroused the indignation
of the whole Christian world, but has been repudiated even by his own.  He
was thrown out of office at the last elections a few months ago.

The best that can be made out of all this for the Catholic protest is that
Mayor Nathan, mindful of his position as an official did not kow-tow to the
Vatican; that he told some unpalatable truths in public speeches, and
otherwise conducted himself as he should, without praising or excusing the
papacy.  Because of this, impertinent demand is now being made that the
choice of the government of Italy, be put aside because of Catholic hatred
for a man who did his official duty, difficulty shall be raised between two
friendly nations.  No other organization on earth would assume to make
such an impertinent demand.

In the absence of any official Masonic protest, I can only hope that the
fraternal press will take up the subject, and put the real facts before
readers.  We can expect, at least, that our government will ignore the rage
of those who put their religion forward on every occasion; who are so afraid
at all times that someone will injure their faith or their susceptibilities, or will
not acquiesce in their demands in politics, education and economics.

Our more recent Catholic exchanges return to the subject of Mayor
Nathan's appointment with renewed rancour.  Now had a foreign nation
designated a man for any reason obnoxious to Protestants, does any one
think the Evangelical churches would have act up a howl and declared
themselves insulted? Most Protestants know how to keep their religion
separate from their citizenship.  Had some open enemy of Freemasonry
been appointed to a like position, the Craft of the United States would not
have considered itself warranted in demanding that he should not be
received.  No others but the adherents of this church would have such
effrontery as to ask that this nation should insult another.  And now comes
America (Jesuit) usually fair beyond all others of  the clerically controlled
press, and urges a boycott of the Exposition unless Nathan's appointment
is recalled.  It says: "No Catholic who respects himself and the Holy Father
will have part with the Exposition in which he is to take part." Arrogance can
go no farther, nor could this minority more clearly show its purpose to "rule
or ruin."

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