Communications

...A CORRECTION Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—I wish to correct an error which occurred in the editorial, Women and Poverty, published in The Commonweal on December 9. I was quoted as having said that "the number of women now gainfully employed is 2,000,000, almost half of whom are in the manufacturing and mechanical industries...

...It has been nullified by the very people who now clamor for obedience to the Eighteenth Amendment...

...TAO the Editor:—Mr...

...Granting this fact, and the physical evidence abounds to a degree not warranting denial, data on the width of the naves of European cathedrals is scarcely to the point...

...The church plan, as it naturally has developed in this country, is that of a relatively broad and shallow building...

...The premises of the editorial were sound and the conclusions are not to be denied...

...I believe, was given in my preceding article...

...Theoretically, the Fourteenth Amendment (Sees...

...Even so...

...He has voiced the universal hope of a mute laity, too long tongue-tied on the subject of its right to share in the musical praises of God...

...There is no doubt that the automobile, like wine, is one of the most potent instrumentalities of moral destruction that have ever been rendered available to mankind...

...McGowan prefers to call his program "reactionary," so be it...

...The play certainly makes an admirable appeal for world peace, and the effect on the audience is remarkably good from that standpoint...

...Furthermore, its Catholicity surely is questionable* The Church is the Church of all time, including the present^ and as it animated other ages and other arts, so it can, and will^ animate them again, granting the devotion of artists who have the spirit and faith for the effort of creation...

...Cram disagrees, is that Catholic Church design is one of these problems, the logical solution of which creates forms differing from those of the old architectures...

...The quality of art is a matter of spiritual content and is emotionally moving to the degree that it expresses the feeling and impulses of its creator...

...Let them take arms...

...REACTIONARY AND RADICAL Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—Doctor McGowan apparently has misapprehended the purport of my questions respecting his"Catholic economic program...

...Joseph P. Conroy...

...The sentence is this—"The college or university should not concern itself with striving to perpetuate a convention like pre-marital chastity...

...Architecture always has resulted from definite and logical thinking as to the best way of meeting the problems that existed, and in our time as in the past, it must be with an intensity of feeling for the inspirational power of the age in which we live and whose product we are...

...and, as if this was not bad enough, we are encouraged to sing (or rather, to hear the choir sing) the line—"All on earth Thy sceptre claim"—which would be blasphemous were it not idiotic, for its only possible meaning is that every creature on earth is trying to usurp the sovereignty of God...

...Rothwell, writing for your issue of JL December 30, takes exception to what he calls the "tone" of the argument in your editorial, Pulpits and Politics, published December 2. Like every other supporter of this so-called prohibition he cries out for respect for the Constitution, and like every other such he sums up the Constitution in this one amendment...

...o & Mark O. Shriver...

...One need only turn to the words of that ultra-conservative—Alexander Hamilton—to make the point...

...White's...

...Mary T. Waggaman...

...I am a conservative...

...But the idea that there is any obligation on the part of freemen to respect or obey such legislation is as false in theory as it is futile in practice, and I know of no exception, throughout the entire history of liberty, to the rule that such ukases are invariably hurled back into the teeth of those responsible for them...

...This quoted idea is not peculiar ta Mr...

...But he entirely overlooks the fact that this is exactly what the legislation completely failed to do...

...TO the Editor:—The question contained in this title may be said to be as pertinent as that which headed Mr...

...Schuyler N. Warren, Jr...

...Those agents consumed quantities of liquor bought at public expense but they failed to carry off enough to secure a conviction...

...May the suggestion of Mr...

...I shall appreciate publication of this correction in your columns...

...I wonder what the Catholic parents, or any decent parents, who have sons at Dartmouth, will think when they read this doctrine printed openly, and when they reflect that if this much is said in public, how much more, and worse, is said in private...

...Or rather, I do not wander...

...And is it too much to hope that we who have at our disposal so magnificent a hymnology should abandon a drivel as low, if a trifle more pompous, as anything in Sankey and Moody's Sacred Songs and Solos...

...Rothwell calls well-disposed citizens...

...CONSECRATED EMOTION New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—"Sursum Corda" indeed, in gratitude to Elisha Francis Riggs for his communication in your number of December 30...

...But the methods should be changed...

...These amendments generally are ignored in these specious dry pleas for this counterfeit law enforcement which is the aim of prohibition...

...I used the word "radical" in the sense in which most people seem to understand it...

...I wonder if they would feel their sons were safe in Mr...

...It attempted to write into the fundamental law of the land a rule of personal conduct...

...How can the actions of the agents who lived in a Washington hotel and spent thousands of dollars of public money in high living command the respect of what Mr...

...And then again, Mr...

...Cram do not permit of their adaptation with success to buildings which might be of the same width, but would scarcely be one-fourth their length and possibly one-third their height...

...My contention, with which Mr...

...The thoroughgoing mediaevalist of today is an astounding...

...What they did concern was that class of proposalswhich require "mandatory" legislation because they involve the compulsory transfer of either property rights or "economic power" from one person or class to another person or class,, or because they require of one person or class a specified course of action, whether the subject of that legislation likes it or notJanuary 13,1926 THE COMMONWEAL 273 I hope that is clear...

...Cram's, for the doctrine requires a denial of the physical facts of the life which surrounds us and in which we participate...

...Practically, it is nonsense...

...I am not unmindful of the fact that in republics, revolutions are more fashionable than nullifications, and I have not forgotten that Jefferson said—"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive...

...1 and 2, enfranchising Negroes, etc...

...Thomas F. Woodlock...

...I prefer Hamilton to Jefferson and nullification to revolution...

...Consecrated emotion often is a safety-valve for the soul...

...CAN MORALS BE TAUGHT...

...First, he says that the "amendment has all the binding force of any other article of the Constitution...

...It is its natural manure...

...The way for art as for life must be forward, and contemplation of the future and its possibilities profits more than sentimentalizing over the ideality of the past and the lamenting of perfectionswhich cannot be reproduced...

...Obviously, the sublime work of the great masters must be reserved for the ritual of the Mass and utilized by trained choirs—but O, Salutaris, Tan turn Ergo, Holy God, and other measures of the Benediction belong to the people...

...If the law is to be enforced let it be all law, and let every amendment receive its proper consideration...

...Today reckless agents with facile guns shoot down citizens peacefully about their own business in the public streets and highways...

...As an intellectual diversion, this viewpoint is at least harmless, but as a basis for the production of art it is obscurantic...

...The article takes the negative side of a debate on the question, Can Morals Be Taught...

...The idea, as Mr...

...unjust law, I do not contest the right which the majority has of commanding, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind...

...Today agents of the government bribe citizens to commit the very crimes which those agents are hired to detect, and above and beyond it all, there is a gang of super-spies to prey on these crime-inciting agents...

...The custom of drinking is no more like the problem of drunkenness than the custom of eating is like the problem of gluttony...

...272 THE COMMONWEAL January 13, 1926 One reason that these enactments in pursuance of the Volsteadic theory of life are so hard to enforce is the total lack of respect manifested for ordinary amenities of life and for customary decencies observed between gentlemen...

...It is not a case of what we ought, as Catholics, to do ourselves, but what we are compelled, as Catholics, to demand that others shall do...

...The mediaevalist, it would seem, however, falls into the error of the neo-Greek...

...If this be true, the designing of architecture is the only human activity so divinely inspired and controlled that human effort is not necessary to determine the direction of its growth and the character suitable to a given age...

...Dissatisfaction with our age and its work is the requisite of growth, and I hold no brief for our follies and errors which, in justice to ourselves, I believe are no greater than those of other periods of history...

...The first of its verse is disfigured by the false rhymes "domain" and "name...

...In it I stated as a demonstrated architectural theory, which he does not question in his article, that changes in form rise out of the necessity of solving new problems and that our age proposes these problems to the architect...

...Rothwell would support, in theory or practice, legislation intended to proscribe the use of automobiles by those who do not use them for criminal or (immoral) purposes, because others do abuse their freedom...

...They did not concern—or, at least they were not intended to concern—that class of economic proposals which depend upon voluntary action or require merely "permissive" legislation...

...Indeed, to so believe today might be to invite a charge of radicalism...

...person, the more so when his sincerity is as great as Mr...

...One does not have to believe in personal liberty, as distinguished from license, to the extent advocated by Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Henry, Mill, Macaulay, or Nietzsche to believe that it is the sacred duty of every patriot to reject such violent assaults upon freedom of conscience as that attempted by the Eighteenth Amendment...

...Right...

...White's English class...

...Pollock made it impossible to shed tears over the misery of men and nations unless you catch a glimpse of why they are miserable and that he failed to do this...

...Could we not return to correct usage in this matter...

...Besides, there is something about nullification that has the stamp of American approval...

...Chicago, 111...

...Cram states it, that we must "wait until our culture and our civilization are such that a new style, if such is to be, will blossom naturally," suggests a condition of unnatural passiveness...

...Added song services at holy hours and other occasions would be inspiring—even adoption of the time revered hymns used in all Christian churches would be welcome...

...It seems to be customary in America to substitute for the noble psalm, Laudate Dominum, Omnes Gentes, which is liturgically correct, the hymn, Holy God, We Praise Thy Name," which is the abomination of desolation...

...But this language is that of a slave...

...The establishment of our own great country is only one example out of many...

...It was, therefore, un-American...

...On the other hand, thousands of other citizens abuse it, as some abuse wine...

...Following the idea to its logical conclusion, we should inveigh against the temerity of those builders of the early middle-ages who devised new forms in architecture and construction, their culture being, at the time, undeveloped...

...The proportions of length to breadth and of these dimensions to height of the naves of the cathedrals adduced by Mr...

...TO the Editor:—In the November number of The Forum appears an article by Arthur Corning White, described as a member of the English department of Dartmouth...

...May we have cathedral, church and chapel re-echoing God's songs by all His people in the United States, as they still do in old Provence and in many of the great corners of the old world, where piety still prevails among the chastened peoples...

...Fundamentally, our prohibitive liquor legislation was an attempt by a majority (?) to inflict its drastic will upon a considerable and resentful minority...

...Skinner said in his article that the play was depressing through its lack of insight, trite superficiality, and also that Mr...

...Theodore Maynard...

...j0HN M Gibbons...

...It is like a storm in the atmosphere . . . What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance...

...It was enacted at the dictation of a pressure bloc without due regard for the views, wishes, opinions, or resentment of the millions who opposed it...

...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants...

...DEFENDING THE ENEMY New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—I read R. Dana Skinner's criticism of The Enemy by Channing Pollock and am writing to say that I disagree with his view of the play...

...Cram's article in the December 15 issue of The Commonweal...

...has "all the binding force of any other article of the Constitution...

...Millions of our citizens use it, as they use wine, with moderation and for pleasure...

...and I refer to it merely to quote one sentence from it, which gives the key to, and the animus of, the whole article...

...We only have to compare our reaction to the Gothic work of the middle-ages with that derived from the ablest imitations of our time to realize the profound difference between work possessed of vitality and that which has only the semblance of it...

...BACK TO PULPITS AND POLITICS Baltimore, Md...

...The artist, in turn, is an authentic creator to the measure of his response to his own age...

...Riggs to the Calverts take fire...

...It has been asserted that a people can never entirely outstep the boundaries of justice and of reason in those affairs which are more peculiarly its own, and that consequently full power may be given fearlessly to the majority by which it is represented...

...I wonder what anyone who loves America...

...And if he have a sense oi humor (and since he suggested the processes of orderly repeal, I take it that he has) he ought to be grateful that the method adopted in dealing with the present infringement has been nullification instead of revolution...

...The answer to the question he asks—"Why a New Architecture...

...It is our usual method of getting rid of the surplus product of our law factories...

...I hold it to be an impious and execrable maxim," says Tocqueville in his classic, The Tyranny of the Majority, "that politically speaking, a people has a right to do whatsoever it pleases . . . When I refuse to obey an...

...n F Barry Byrne...

...Cram alone, as it is that around which most academic architects rally, the implied theory being, in effect, that progress will result from inaction...

...It was a political blunder from any point of view, and in the light of its consequences, it was a crime against the principles of democracy...

...If there should be any inference of contempt for methods employed by the government through its shameless soapy agents, it is unfortunate...

...Rothwell says—"We must draw, hard and fast, the line that divides liberty and license...

...As the subject is so vast, and as most of the general suggestions that anyone will offer are unfortunately likely to be dismissd as impracticable, I wish to confine myself to one very definite and simple point...

...If Dr...

...He says—"When human laws contradict or discountenance the means which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void...

...Appeals from the law of the land to the law of mankind are as old as history...

...FOR A CORRECT HYMNOLOGY Flushing, L. I. TO the Editor:—I have been reading with great interest the article and the letters in The Commonweal on the Liturgical Movement...

...We must deal with the facts of an existing and reasonable condition, not with the glories of dead architecture which cannot be revivified, although we lack wisdom and attempt it...

...Small wonder such tactics arouse resentment in the hearts of clean-thinking men and women...

...One has to assemble only the mental images of such diverse things as the automobile, a steel plant against the evening sky, the Leviathan edging its way to the dock, the locomotive and the telephone, and then to contemplate the repetition of the construction and art of the thirteenth or other century, in our buildings, to realize that herein is incongruity...

...Today agents beyond all counting, spend money raised through the taxing power to tempt citizens to a violation of law...

...Isabel Inez Garrison...

...Bernard J. Rothwell's communication, urging the obligation of the citizen to obey the Eighteenth Amendment and its enabling legislation, is interesting but not well founded...

...Practically, it has no effect whatever...

...I wonder what the police, busily herding morons behind the bars, would have to say...

...The foreshortening of the perspective of time eliminates the gross details which would mar the imagined picture of life which he has fashioned, not so much with regard to fact, as to his heart's desire...

...Theoretically, this is unsound...

...anyone who realizes that the hope of the nation, its future vitality and intelligence, lie in its boys and girls, clean in soul and body—I wonder what such a one would answer to this dogma of Mr...

...But, personally, I don't like revolutions, and to be frank, I don't like Jefferson...

...Perhaps this may shed some light on my references to "minima" and strict justice...

...The Enemy is not a perfect play by any means, it is true, and there is a certain amount of artificiality about it, but it gives a vivid picture of the effects of the war on the minds and lives of the people of Austria (the scene of the play) and shows how futile and terrible the sacrifices of the war proved to most people of that country outside of the profiteers...

...Emotional...

...It is picayune to drag in this eternal whimper for law enforcement when a question is at issue such as that presented by your editorial...

...Now, of course, there is nothing new or unusual about legislative attempts to restrict the reasonable liberties of the governed...

...Such methods of dealing with sumptuary legislation derive their sanctions from the age-old struggle of mankind for freedom...

...I wonder, too, what any reputable physician, or lawyer, or the mayor of any city would say to this teaching...

...WHY AN OLD ARCHITECTURE...

...Chicago, 111...

...He forgets, apparently, that there likewise is a Fourth Amendment and a Fifth and a Sixth, which are to protect citizens against unwarranted searches, double jeopardy, selfincrimination, use of private property without compensation, arid guarantee speedy trial by impartial juries...

...If Mr...

...I wonder if Mr...

...It hardly seems fair because of certain defects in a play to sweepingly condemn it in every other respect...

...The statement as originally made by me, read—"The 1920 census shows that there are almost 2,000,000 married women gainfully employed in the United States . . . and almost a half a million of them are in the manufacturing and mechanical industries...

...Rothwell loves his country (and since he hails from the Cradle of Liberty, I take it that he does) he ought to thank God that there is a sufficient number of sufficient strength to make this latest encroachment upon his liberties not only impossible but ridiculous...