Evening star., 1951-12-04
In League With the Devil

Five Roman Catholic nuns from Canada are
Peiping's latest victims. They are the victims,
that is, of the Communists barbarous but coldly
calculating campaign to make the Chinese people
hate the West and purge themselves of the
Christian faith that has been spread among them
by generations Of gentle, self-sacrificing men
and women engaged in Gods work. Not in a
long time has there been more revolving ex-
ample of the baseness of the Red totalitarians
"a baseness almost too vile to be comprehended
by decent civilized minds.
Monstrous though it is, however, this thing
is not really beyond comprehension. To under
stand it we have only to keep in mind the fact
that the Kremlin serving Pepng regime, in at
tempting to Sovetize China, must first clear
away numerous major obstacles. One of the
most important of these is made up of the ties
of friendship and even affection, developed be-
tween the people of that country and most Of
the Western world during the past half century.
Another is the spiritual legacy-a belief in God
and Christianity-left behind by the missionaries,
Protestant and Catholic alike. These are in
fiuences that the Communists cannot tolerate.
AS long as great numbers Of Chinese remember
the mutual enrichment of relations with the
West, as long as the principles of freedom color
their thinking, as long they maintain religious
faith-the strongest single deterrent to atheistic
MarxiSm-Mao TZe-tung and his co-conspirators
will be hard put to regiment them into a
faceless mass.
Hence, for well over year now, the Com
munists-through terrible blood purges and
ceaseleSs propaganda consisting of the most
malevolent les-have been Systematically striv
ing to destroy those influences and poison the
minds of the Chinese people against everything
and everybody associated with the United States
and Western civilization in general including not
least Of all Christianity and the missionaries
What has happened to the nuns at Canton must
be recorded as merely another incident in the
campaign. But 1t is an especially vicious incident
an atrociouS perversion OF truth and justice
and simple ordinary human decency. Here are
five good women who have dedicated their lives
to God and gone far from home to perform
works of charity in an orphanage And what
has the Red regime done to them? After holding
them incommunicado for months it has sub
jected them to the fendish ordeal of mob
trial" on equally flendish charges of having
murdered" over 1000 homeless waits; it has
paraded them through the streets as agents" of
"imperialism"; it has exposed them to the foulest
kind of invective; but then, as If anxious not to
outrage the world too much, it has shown
mercy" by handing down "lenient" sentences
flve-year prison terms for two of the sisters and
deportation for the others.
All this has been broadcast to the Chinese
masses, obviously as part of Peiping's around
the-clock drive to fill them with increasing
hostility toward our free world and to undermine
the faith any of them may have in Christianity.
At this distance, with the Iron Curtain hiding
everything, nobody can know whether the drive
is succeeding or falling but this much is sure:
In undertaking it, the Communists have placed
themselves in league with the devil, not hesi-
tating to descend to the lowest depths of evil to
gain their ends. The thing is grim measure
of what we are up against, in Korea and else
where, in seeking live -and-let-live understand
ing with them.