Week by Week
491 THE COMMONWEAL Published weekly and copyrighted 1925, in the United States by the Calvert Publishing Corporation, 25 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City, N. Y. Michael Williams,...
...Having registered the extreme point of a reaction from the archaeological school of Mansfield and Tree, the innovators will only continue their efforts under pain of becoming as troublesome as they are self-conscious...
...FRENCHMEN have not forgotten the disastrous treaty of Tilsit, and the iniquitous desertion of Poland that was its immediate fruit...
...1 HE grip of Robert Marion La Follette upon his native state was not loosened by death...
...It is rather clear to the observant citizen that if there were anything in promoting Bolshevism in the United States, home talent would supply all the elbow-grease necessary...
...492 THE COMMONWEAL September 30, 1925 an IT is heartening to see the New York Times ( organ not at all prone to sentimental enthusiasms) insisting editorially that the question of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia shall, on no account, be kept out of the forthcoming security conference...
...In addition, everybody knows that the Institute of Politics is not talking nonsense when it declares that any attempt on the part of the French to meet their obligations in full would speedily result in hopeless bankruptcy...
...This same variety of prompt meddlesomeness, of unnecessary readiness to sight a chip, has cost us much international friendship in the past in places where amicable relations were desirable...
...And upon those faces, fresh and eager, were written reverence, awe, and the joy of a triumph...
...W E have so often advocated the necessity for more careful thought about the agencies that make for international peace, that it is a pleasure to note the address on the subject delivered by the Reverend John A. Ryan before the National Conference of Catholic Charities...
...secondly, that the younger La Follette has been given a splendid opportunity to uphold respectability and civic common sense in Wisconsin...
...JJ UT this law is not the only thing of its kind in France...
...491 THE COMMONWEAL Published weekly and copyrighted 1925, in the United States by the Calvert Publishing Corporation, 25 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City, N. Y. Michael Williams, Editor Assistant Editors Thomas Walsh Helen Walker John F. McCormick, Business Manager Editorial Council Carlton J. H. Hayes James J. Walsh Bertram C. A. Windle R. Dana Skinner Henry Longan Stuart T. Lawrason Riggs Subscription Rates: Yearly: $10.00 Single Copies: $0.20 WEEK BY WEEK A S WE go to press, representatives of the American ¦**¦ people are looking into the French bank account...
...Dithmar, who will also receive what can be mustered of the vote cast by the Klan in the primary...
...Civilization and national poverty are not the best of friends...
...That Senator Lenroot "should have dared to come before the citizens of his commonwealth with a proposal so contrary to all the rules of decent political sportsmanship, can mean only two things—first, that the stalwart Republicans are afraid of their hides and will use every possible trick to save them...
...Great Britain must be not a little edified at a sociological super-orthodoxy which so promptly hastens to its own rescue...
...Forty French judges in extending the interpretation of the old "Loi de la Presse," have decided that when a scribe shall have been pummeled in a journal or critical review, he may reply to the charges and exact space from the offending periodical...
...But will the debts entailed by this "indirect influence" be whisked away speedily...
...After all, though we often marvel at the power of faith over those who have grown old while coming down strange paths, the most radiant might of religion is its control of little ones...
...To abolish alimony, lock, stock, and barrel, unless she goes on to the extremer separation, so far from "serving the best ends of justice," might well prove a temptation to violate conscience which the courts have no right to hold out...
...But to base a plea for the abolition of support upon the "equal rights" which women possess today before the law, is a futile gesture...
...Granted that he is the most dangerous man in the world—which obviously he can scarcely be—it would have cost nothing to waive a point, avoid friction, and—test the steadiness of the American people...
...Obviously, the Badger commonwealth—and possibly the Northwest—is in no hurry to alter its political faith...
...To some such conclusion these modernist clerics seem to be coming...
...The Secretary's plea that the immigration statutes must be administered impartially, reminds us strongly of that literalness which induced the old gentleman in the story to believe he was dead the morning after he arrived at three-score and ten...
...Brent in Europe...
...It must have been memorable to see them all there, lads from every corner of America, from Arabia, from all the fringes of Europe—the world's hope and responsibility for the future, assembled internationally and fraternally, as no other power could assemble them...
...The whole enterprise was hopelessly wrong, and of course proved a hopeless failure...
...Baumann, who is the author of L'Anneau d'Or des Grands Mystiques, is himself a mystic, a fiery Catholic, and a realist, at one and the same time...
...We hope the citizens of the state will not swerve from the route indicated by the primary...
...It still believes in having direct, liberal and outspoken representation at Washington, no matter if pronouncedly La Follette doctrine may sometimes be a little difficult to keep up with...
...IRATELY we called attention to the extraordinary sermon preached in Westminster Abbey by Bishop Barnes, of Birmingham, England, in which he revived the ancient and now wholly exploded theory that the Mass was but a parody of the Mithraic ceremonies...
...1 HE attack of Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court at Brooklyn, upon the alimony system, made last week, strikes one as rather an ex parte statement...
...They will never altogether eliminate God from their sphere of ideas...
...The glorious consequences of this legal innovation must be apparent to everybody...
...It would be nothing short of a calamity if the immediate advantages that would accrue to European settlement by a removal of the stumblingblock, should gain advocates in this country...
...N. R. Melhorn, editor of The Lutheran, who accompanied Dr...
...We await a further manifesto respecting his more recent "distressing and scandalous" speech extolling birth control...
...N OW that Shakespeare's Hamlet, from all accounts, has survived the acid test of being presented in dinnerjackets and bowler hats, it is to be hoped the caprices of young intellectuals across the water will be set at rest, and that their sedulous apes in this country will not force us to contemplate the doubting Prince in the "korrect klose" of bedroom comedy...
...They have already lightened the pack of any belief in the Virgin Birth, in the Resurrection and in miracles, and this year really marks an important advance...
...Emile Baumann, internationally famous since he won the Prix Balzac, has been sparing no effort to clear himself of guilt for "episodes malpropres...
...1 HE decision of Secretary Kellogg to bar from this country a delegate to the congress of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, seems a rather overweening example of vigilance on behalf of the country's internal security...
...It was a singular spot to choose for such a performance, and we cannot wonder that the opposite party in the Church of England has made strong protest...
...Not only were plans for a better world frankly discussed, but plans for a less crowded one too...
...A particularly bad novelist, against whom all critical thumbs are turned down, can reap fame none the less by means of an intricate published correspondence...
...Wilcox is the candidate chosen by the regular and representative Republican convention and he is a Catholic...
...1 HE Third International Congress of Entomologists has been holding session at Zurich, and the reports of its doings show that that veteran of science, Father Wasmann, S.J., has lost none of his early vigor...
...Perhaps it might be added that the average Catholic has hardly the time to study carefully these problems for himself...
...The cloaks, the trunk hose, the swinging swords, were just so many aids to an illusion that former generations had not needed...
...The printed works of atrocious poets may be extended without cost to themselves...
...Or think of the zest a present-day student could get from Walt Whitman's meaty responses to journals which had been shocked out of their beards by his rhymeless dithyrambs...
...This fact has been impressed upon the stalwarts of Wisconsin and elsewhere by the outcome of a primary election, which gave the Senator's son a comfortable majority over all his opponents combined...
...Many women who would not dream of seeking a divorce resort to the courts for the protection which a separation decree affords themselves and their children...
...He concluded by saying—"Any particular method of securing world peace must be adopted by political governments before it can become effective...
...While there are some who profess to be worried lest nothing more substantial than roses will be placed on Lafayette's tomb, there are others who feel the sentimental significance of that tomb so profoundly that they should like a complete cancellation of the sums due...
...r RANCE, in the person of M. Caillaux, is hastening to come to an* agreement because financial instability is the greatest obstacle to her present concerns...
...Particularly offensive to Catholics and the many outside the Church who share her views on the indissolubility of marriage, is the suggestion that alimony shall only be granted when the "final decree" has been pronounced...
...Brent, has enthusiasm to report so genuine that it expressed itself in cheers, was when "an Australian speaker advocated the dissemination of contraceptive information...
...But certain statements from English church leaders of note within the past few months are disquieting...
...To leave the ancient victim of dynastic greed, the historic prey of the three black eagles, unprotected in the face of Hindenburg's Germany (moving towards union with what is left of Austria) to say nothing of a Russia concerning which prophecy is idle, is about the safest way to guarantee new wars in the near future that even the ingenuity of diplomats could devise...
...His Holiness watched their little parade, blessed them with his lifted hand, told them that life in the spirit would keep them and their world beautiful and free...
...One can hardly think so...
...The determination of the French government and people that some covenanted means of coming to the assistance of these creations of the Versailles treaty any time they are threatened, should be left them, has its roots, not only in logic, but in historical good sense...
...and, for the honor of the American people, even the Secretary from Minnesota might forget about it...
...Out of all the pilgrimage pageant, the Holy Father has chosen one scene for especial notice—the march of Boy Scouts into Saint Peter's for Mass and Benediction...
...No doubt there are hardships in its application, and the court procedure which enables a separated wife, upon a single default, to have her errant spouse cast into jail, might well bear revision...
...Finally they appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the head of the body to which they and Dr...
...He ought, therefore, to attribute due weight to the authoritative voices of those who are in a position to speak from a knowledge of Catholic teaching and political reality...
...but there is every reason why the terms granted should be generous...
...Wilcox, the regular candidate, has been repudiated by Senator Lenroot and Chairman Butler, presumably because he does not guarantee a victory...
...In other words, what the head of the Western New York diocese brings back is the vision of a world so vastly improved that the old haphazard type of life that came by love and trust in the Father of all men, can no longer be invited to step into it...
...But at first sight it is hardly compatible with the apostolic fervor and desire to see the Kingdom of God cover the earth that one would expect from men who have no hesitation in usurping the title "universal"—even when representatives of the Universal Church are left outside their deliberations...
...Our legislators should have the benefit of our reasoned opinion on one or all of these methods—the World Court, outlawry of war, disarmament, and compulsory arbitration...
...And in the end, we say that Rome is eternal because perennially—as was expressed by the symbol of the Boy Scout pageant—it renews itself in the hearts of children...
...WHETHER the news that Bishop Charles H. Brent, of the Episcopal diocese of Western New York, brings back with him from Stockholm is cheering or not, would seem to depend on the length of the views life and work" which he and his fellow conferees on were satisfied to take at the Universal Christian ConSeptember 30, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 493 ference held this month in Sweden's pleasantly aerated capital...
...Unless we are willing to study these proposals and to acquire an intelligent attitude toward them, we are neither good citizens nor loyal subjects of the Pope and bishops...
...Dithmar ran on his own accord and is sponsored by the Klan...
...We trust that its plans will not be unluckily upset in Washington...
...We do not doubt that the coming senatorial election will mean victory for liberal Republicanism...
...This epoch-making decision involves the Revue des Deux Mondes, and certain translators of Aeschylus who were once accused of staging a mediocre performance...
...International relationships today are not the same as they were during the furious years of war, but certainly a few sparks of antique idealism must remain to suggest that we do not wish the financial ruin of France any more than we wished her to crumble in battle...
...494 THE COMMONWEAL September 30, 1925 I EAR by year, as the autumn comes round, the people of the British Isles may be envisaged as standing with their ears open to be told by the self-styled modern churchmen at their annual conference, exactly how much of the intolerable burden of belief may be sloughed off for the next year...
...Like the bright rags worn at Mr...
...We could not consistently abrogate the French debt without at the same time cancelling what other countries owe...
...1 HE issue is so clear that it could be sighted by a blind man...
...Barnes belong, to take such steps as will "provide against a recurrence of this most distressing and scandalous event...
...And yet there are many stones in this same Rome that might speak of child faces suddenly cold in death —the faces of early martyrs whom different Sovereign Pontiffs were not afraid to send out against wild beasts and instruments of torture, confident that the sacred trust was safe with them...
...I have studied court records," says Judge Strong, "and find that twenty separation suits are started to every divorce...
...What prodigal use John Milton might have made of such a law, in the days when Royalist bloods had cornered all the literary journals...
...The connection between that title and warfare, in which the victor implies the vanquished, does not seem very clear, neither is the further aphorism that "another anachronism was the conception of God as a judge of assize...
...All the rights which the law can confer will not redress the inequalities which press upon women in the marital adventure...
...The Anglican and American Episcopal churches contain too many men of faith and good works, for us to believe that as teaching bodies they endorse the "strong sympathy" for birth control which surprised Dr...
...Britling's Saturday night parties, their function was to give a sense of escape from the workaday world, and to gratify the eternal love of the child in man for "dressing up...
...One hope, however, is left to us...
...There are savage races who, believing in a Supreme Being, yet conceive Him as so far off as to be completely detached from, and uninterested in, the affairs of man...
...Nothing can be imagined that will damage their reputation more or give a better text to hostile critics who already censure them as the churches of the privileged minority, as a suspicion that they are putting up the "House Full" signs, not because the building is crowded, but because those inside want more space and air...
...Their support—which is the help of the National Republican committee—is pledged to Mr...
...But it is hardly less urgent in many a case where the wife is not in her first youth, or is an invalid, or has no special training that will enable her to earn a living in the rough and tumble of life...
...To flaunt the old scare is not even good political capital in this era...
...Unfortunately, it also indicates something like a want of national courtesy...
...and we hope that now, since the challenge has been issued, the one shortly to follow will be similarly distinguished and provide Senator Lenroot with a nonstop ticket for the political limbo he is so thoroughly qualified to inhabit...
...Many of her citizens feel, as the Temps expresses it, that "the matter of interallied debts has influenced the relations between America and Europe, and has enabled the United States, which has refused all direct responsibility for the political and economic reconstruction of Europe, to bear indirectly with all the influence of its financial power on the solution of the grave questions relative to the execution of the treaties...
...The Reverend J. Bezzant, vice-president of the Ripon Theological College, an institution in which young men are trained for the ministry of the Established Church of England, has announced at the conference which has just concluded, that God should no longer be described as "Omnipotent," since that title is a "relic of the time when God was chiefly used for military purposes...
...The one occasion, indeed, on which Mr...
...And in this Holy Year, Orient and the ends of the West mingle in the sombre glory where deathless human recollections, of battle and of peace, recover the vividness of departed yesterdays...
...But amusement is not the only circumstance involved...
...Wisdom will seek a middle course, realizing that both the prestige and the welfare of this country are bound up with financial realism...
...In a word, they were symbols, and to dress Hamlet like a waiter is as futile a gesture as to dress him like a viking...
...In attempting to saddle upon Germany full responsibility for the war, he tried to justify an arrangement that would make her sole debtor...
...If they did, Othello's occupation would indeed be gone...
...Meanwhile France must see more and more clearly the futility of M. Poincare's ideas and hopes...
...Time alone will tell...
...We hope so the more because old-line Republican activities have revealed an almost incredible stupidity and indifference to the public weal...
...This combination September 30, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL...
...But in a larger sense it has to do with the criticism of the critics...
...That something of the kind exists, there can be no doubt, but upon the explanation of specific cases—teleological, chemical, physiological, or mechanical—that continually arise, there are a multitude of opinions, and perhaps all that can be said at present is that the factors are multiple and each of them applicable only in given instances...
...The fact of the matter is that archaeology stepped in, only when contemporary dress had become too standardized and drab not to be a discrepancy beside the language and denouements of romance...
...Barnes's "intellectual reputation has been won exclusively within the realm of mathematics," they continue, again very much on our lines, to speak of his discourse as "crude in the extreme, suggesting rather a young student's hasty assimilation of some text-book than the mature scholar's investigation of original sources...
...By comparison, the present French government must be credited with a sensible understanding of what the European situation is, and which way the safety of the nation lies...
...These are economic and natural, and legislation cannot alter them...
...Calling attention in the first place, as we did in our note, to the fact that Dr...
...It was all a pleasure to him, as it must have been to them...
...Did anybody seriously believe that Saklatvala, a comparatively amusing example of Oriental furore, could spread Bolshevism on the four American winds while seeing the sights of Washington...
...This has taken the shape of a communication from the committee of the English Church Union, signed in their name by Lord Shaftesbury—a leader of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Establishment...
...Hence, it must become the subject of political discussion, both without and within legislative chambers...
...JN O longer may poor authors, aware of their own merit and achievement, be pigeon-holed with a shrug by critics of whatever stamp...
...To them it brings a vision which all the clouds of living cannot often dim...
...The Jesuit scientist has been discoursing on the manners and customs of ants, of which he admittedly knows more than any other living man, especially on their curious habit of keeping slaves in their dwelling places to help them in carrying on their labors...
...A BETTER time for fewer people, is a slogan that does not lack the quality of appeal for a generation where love of well-being and mistrust of the future are logical stable companions...
...Further, he has been taking part in a great debate on the subject of mimicry, a fertile subject of discussion since early Darwinian days...
...The general feeling is that leniency will characterize the settlement...
...Women only want alimony...
...The assumption seems gratuitous...
...In the latter case, even the Judge admits the justice of continued maintenance...
...As usual, the speaker was frank and practical...
...They see in this breach of national faith, committed to secure the friendship of Russia, the point from which Napoleon's fortunes date their decline, and they are not inclined to repeat his mistake now, when peace, not dominion, is their goal...
...1 HE human throng, as it surges past the eternal monuments of Rome, is often spontaneously picturesque...
...That influences, occult and sinister, are at work for its exclusion, is apparent to political weather-prophets in Europe, if not here...
...oAKLATVALA, after all, was coming as a guest to a conference which, if it does anything, will promote harmony among nations...
...Commentators in the American press upon this storm in an English tea-cup, have allowed themselves too easily to be impressed by the argument that Shakespeare, until the day of Garrick, was costumed in fashions of the period...
...and when everything has been said, we do subscribe to the civilizing mission of France, and we do agree that the vision which has distinguished her past must be preserved for the future...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 21
