Communications

...Moreover, the hesitation has had the very bad moral effect of giving the evildoers the impression that they were immune from prosecution, that they could carry out violence, illegalism, with impunity...

...But the otber parties could not prevent it," I remarked...

...It is in the atmosphere...

...Mussolini evidently hoped for time—for five years in government with a stable majority, obtained by the temporary expedient of the electoral law of 1923...

...And the reason was that everybody k-new that the event was due to a fluke and had no real skill behind it...

...penal nd zaendcd (mAim...

...Now, I conceive that any literary effort, to do real good outside our body, to put us in our right place as the heirs and conservators and sole preservers of tradition and of dnlLzation, can only be useful if it is on the first and not on th6 latter plan...

...Remember that the stupidity of British politicians is unfathomably clever...

...Orate uphed...

...Oragv said...

...Orage replied, "than to the fall of Humpty Dumpty...

...But that was not given him...

...This political opposition culminated after the Matteotti crime in refusal to take any further part in the work of Parliament unless certain demands formulated were complied wIth, conditions laid down realized...

...Its propaganda, to use a modern phrasej is confined to those who already accept, and is therefore wasted...

...How long will it be before Labor returns...

...Such is the stupidity of the political leaders that another absurd accident may happat at the nat election," Mr...

...While credit must be given for some really thoughtful distrust of an autocratic r6gime which had arisen out of a movement ~vhich might without exaggeration be called revolutionary, it has all along been obvious that the bulk of the opposition has been based on the narrowest considerations of party political interests...

...Not only has Labor been revealed as hopelessly divided within itself (you know that MacDonald was scarcely on speaking terms with his Cabinet) not'only has its powerlessness in the matter of unemployment, houshig and wages been demonstrated...

...The visible opposition has been that of the politicians, people and papers...

...Unless an article or hook appeals to men upon general grounds, men cannot appreciate the strength of the Catholic foundation...

...HUAms Umuoc...

...in refusal to give any credit at all to the government's declaration that its own policy was to realize those conditions, to which end it asked the aid of all good Irjians...

...MacDonald's motor-car...

...What significance," I asked Mr...

...The consequence of this situation is that the Catholic Church is regarded by men around it as no more than a sect, and a hostile sect at that, that is inclined to emphasize its particular orgznization, to put the fnmework of religion forward as though it was the whole of religion...

...Orage, "must be attached to this overwhelming defeat of the Labor Ministry at the polls ?" "Not more," Mr...

...Tbc recent election does not look like it," Mr...

...There is the world of the old traditional European culture in France, the Valley of thc Rhine, and upper Danube, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the Southern Netherlands or Belgium, and there is another region of which Engl:nd is by far the most typical exanipie, wbere the culture springs from Pmtestanflsn...

...It is possible that long ago Mussolini might have felt that he had the strength needed to take extreme measures against offenders if he had had the loyal, wholehearted support of all good Italians...

...From which, and possibly through a new election in the near future on a less one-party system, may issue the normalization, constitutionalization, which the opposition demands and which Mussolini and the best in Fascism would welcome—provided always that it is not shaped to the destruction of their work, of the new order in all the affairs of the nation...

...they did not make the moment...

...One after another, individuals and bodies, whose interests were tied up with the old r6gime, went into opposition...

...Under the editorship of A. R. Orage, an editor who possessed much of the intuitive genius displayed by William Ernest Henley in his once famous English Review, in divining and encouraging literary talent, The New Age was a brilliant, staunch champion of the rights of the poor people of England, and opened the door to the practical study of the guilds of the Middle Ages, which study is preparing the way for real improvemeAt in the relations between the rich and the poor...

...They ivanted a rest after the war to settle their nerves...

...It was time and more than time...

...Their advertisements are the advertisements of Catbolk schools and colleges, ecclesiastical furnhure and the likt Their news has been news of the hierarchy, of the founding of the new mjssions, of the Vatican, of prominent Catholic men and women in their church aspect alone...

...There are indeed violent enemies to the Catholic Church and even to most things of Catholic tradition and culture, but tbe general tonc is ours, and a man defending the institution of martiage, for instance, or property or any other one of those social points which are essentially bound up with Catholic tradition, may take in a book or an article the hill Catholic point of view without a single reference to the Church...

...The consequence has naturally been that our pins has had no influence outside their own body...

...Churchill and Birkenbead up against Austen Chamberlain—all dop in tbc manger that couldn't lead themselves, and wouldn't let each other lead...

...The historic parties were all to pieces: Lloyd George fighting Asquith...

...That settles Labor's hash for am time...

...What we need, if it cnn be done, 6 an organ which shall discus all the big questions of the day with the strength, lucidity, certitude and intellectual superiority cithe Catholic views k~ thcauo~t...

...Summary action against individuals in the second and third categories, some of whom it must be remembered, had supported him loyally through the fighting times, might have split Fascism, broken the strength and power of the movement, made it impossible for him to carry out the work he had set himself to do...

...it is alien to the Catholic Church and almost universally ignorant of the Catholic spirit...

...If it had not been these, it would have been somc others...

...17' 0 tbe Editor: I cannot pretend to speak of conditions on your side of the Atlantic, for it has been the most vivid impression received by me upon every visit to the United States, that die new world was so utterly different from the old as to make any pretense of criticism or advice from us to you ridiculous...

...From the second category come the organizers of outrages running from trusted men in ministries to "Rasses" in the villages...

...Katherine Mansfield was one of Mr...

...You mean," I said, "that the Labor Ministry owed its risc to an accident, and now its fall...

...The moment made them...

...Catch them unprepared and put them into office, mid let tbeir swollen gas bags shrink before tbe world...

...14 C.M.W...

...But has not the Labor Ministry falsified these predictions by making good ?" I enquired...

...There were plenty before this election if the other parties had thought the moment bad come...

...An understudy would be useful, perhaps...

...November ±6, 1924 THE COMMONWEAL 75 the movement as a means to put an end to the Communism which was making life impossible...

...There the Catholic Church is at the best a subject though large minority...

...Orage smiled...

...Though declaring himself no longer interested in British politics, Mr...

...Wells, Hilaire Belloc, Bernard Shaw, Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton, Francis Grierson, and other makers and shakers of world thought were among the writers who gladly contributed to The New Age...

...For he must have known of the bad streak, even if he did not believe it capable of going to the lengths revealed by the Matteotti crime...

...but the more extraordinary accident was how in the world Humpty Dumpty ever got on the wall...

...With a Labor ministry such as t14 anything, indeed, may happen...

...We, in England, did not turn a hair on account of it...

...Could Achilles help sulking...

...But~ with no more intelligence than a board cx~mda on a commercial business, thc older political panic in Kiaglmnd ought w be able to exclude Labor from power for at hut two more elections—let us say, tm years...

...Mr...

...I asked...

...76 THE COMMONWEAL November a6, 1924...

...Parliament reopened on November 1±, and there are, happily, some signs that general good sense, expressed through men of moderation on each side, will by degrees soften the acuteness of the deadlock and, when the opposition return to their places, open discussion of the budget and other administrative affairs of the nation will afford an outlet, replacing acrimonious newspaper polemics...

...Or it is, at the worst (and Englznd is the most ~nspicuous example of thjs) a small and timd body virtually neglected and, when it shows any strength, boycotted...

...Tens of thousands of both Conservatives and Liberals 'let in' the Labor ministry, with these reflections in their minds, and with the perfect confidence that it could always be turned out at a moment's notice...

...BELLOC ON CATHOLIC JOURNALISM London, England...

...In the first of these divisions, the Catholic attitude towards life as a whole, towards morals, every civic action, Iitenry activity and the rest can be naturally expressed without any emphasis upon the hierarchy or discipline of the Catholic Church...

...But surely," I said, "the issues of the election were unfortuwaite for Labor—thc ambiguous, possibly forged Russian letter and Mr...

...That is as it should be, but in the Protestant wkure things are very different...

...It was never fairly earned, so to say, but just a beggar's windfall...

...Precisely...

...Women may not count much k pdie~ is England, but they number...

...It is easier to start a movement, under a big spur such as patriotism, than to get order, discipline, self-sacrifice subsequently into the individuals who compose it...

...That is at least an intelligible explanation of his delay, his hesitation to clean out the evildoers, to punish summarily the frequent episodes of violence in the country...

...it will require somshing like a genius for folly to bring Labor back before ~ upecially now that the womi voters have been finally and irrevocably rallied against Labor...

...It is at the best put under its opponents and its ~vhole culture and tradition treated as something inferior znd largely boycotted...

...Under the open refusal ~vas the thinly disguked hope and aim that the moral effect of the Matteotti revelations might shake the Prime Minister's position so badly as to cause his downfall and the disappearance of Fascism as a system and a power...

...I think the one or two brains in the old parties are entitled to chuckle over the result...

...Orage expressed, in a conversation I had with him recently, interesting and doubtless well-informed views regarding the defeat of the labor party in England...

...COMMUNICATIONS THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY New York, N. Y. 370 the Editor: It will doubtless be interesting to your readera to know that the man who some years ago created one of the most valuable, best written, stimulating and creative literary weekly reviews of England, The New Age, is now in this country...

...Then there ~vere certain things that the older parties were too much compromised to do—for example, to settle with France about Germany and to recognize Russia...

...but, as a sort of additional reward for their gamble, the older parties see their own personal feuds partially reconciled, the Labor electorate disheartened, and the solid mass of women voters thrown bodily into thc Conservative camp...

...These have gone back to their work and live their lives in peace, which is all they want to do...

...As you biow, the stock market never fluttered...

...In fact, these predictions themselves have been more than made good...

...Agents are found readily in the third category...

...These simply happened to wmddc with the general situation...

...People over here, and, in fact, everywhere but in England itself, heralded the Labor ministry as an omen of profound significance...

...But perhaps the experience I have bad in Europe, especially in England, upon the same kind of task as that which you nre undertaking, may be of some service, and for what it is worth I will give it...

...Figure to yourself the situation as I often heard old fogeys in London clubs putting it to each other...

...Then, again, these old fogeys had learned something shice Disraeli, namely, that there is a better way of dishing your political opponents than stealing thek program...

...There has been a political deadlock since, with four months' newspaper vituperation by extremists on each side...

...Humpty Dumpty fell by an accident...

...and thefr numbers are w d~dwW splat Labor...

...We have in Europe two very distinct worlds in which to found any Catholic effort...

...Our papers in that atmosphere have hardly ever been able to avoid falling into the rut of sectarian isolation...

...Recently a number in high places have been removed, others have been laid by the heels, local organizations have been purged of unruly elements...

...Orage's discoveries— cnlyoneol may-' Such veran wrieers.as 1kG...

...The Catholic atmosphere is known and recognized and there is no more temptation to or hecessity for specifically Catholic action than there is in the United States for specifically republican action...

...and treated it a& if it implied some vast change in the character and mentality of the British electorate...