However ludicrous all this may seem to the British public, yet for the honour of our country such accusations should not remain unrefuted. A witness of the disorders that took place in Portugal declared to the present writer that if only Grand Lodge of England would have published a notice in the Continental press disassociating itself from the Grand Orient in general and from Portuguese Freemasonry in particular, the power of the revolutionaries would have been immensely weakened and the anti-British and pro-German propaganda then circulating in the country defeated. But British Freemasonry preferred to maintain an attitude of aloofness, contenting itself with issuing periodical warnings against the Grand Orient privately to the lodges. This policy has done much to damage not only the good name of England but of British Masonry in the eyes of the outside world, and particularly in those of Roman Catholics, which is the more regrettable since Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church are the only two organized bodies in this country which really exercise discipline over their members and forbid them to belong to subversive secret societies; hence they provide the two strongest bulwarks against the occult forces of revolution. For this reason, as we shall see later, they are the two bodies which are the most feared by the recruiting agents of these societies. But in the case of Freemasonry the fact is unfortunately too little known to the world in general. As a singularly broad-minded Jesuit has recently expressed it: The anti-clerical and revolutionary activities of Continental Freemasonry did not begin when the Grand Orient finally abolished God. During a century and more these evil forces had been at work. Nevertheless English Masons only shrugged their shoulders and looked another way, though the true character of foreign Masonry was brought to their notice in such books as that of John Robison, _Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe_.... No doubt [the same writer says again] there has been at times a deplorable amount of exaggeration among Continental Catholics in attributing all the moral and social evils of the world to the insidious workings of Freemasonry.... But so long as English Freemasons resolutely avert their gaze from the anti-religious and anti-social activities of their Continental brethren there can be no hope of any better understanding.[692]