The Play

...The total number of Catholics in the Reich—20,320,472—is almost exactly a third of the population...

...MEANTIME, the first Pan-American Congress of Journalists is scheduled to take place in Washington during the week of April 7. This will be an important event for all interested in the harmonies and prosperities that ought to exist permanently between our country and the republics of South and Central America...

...But we should suffer most from an attempt to support the dollar with soldiery and imperialistic tricks...

...In his play a people arises, unified in its faith, mighty and alert to the activities of peace...

...Certainly, on the face of it, and unless currency undergoes a change into something very rich and strange when it passes into army hands and pockets, thirty-three cents per day for "three squares" does not suggest a dietary very rich in proteids and calories...

...A CRITICAL attitude toward his rations is an agelong tradition with the fighting man, and even the great precursor of the Messiah, when telling the soldier to be "content with his pay," seems to have tactfully avoided the subject of messing...

...But that it has at times reached a crisis in our American army is to be gathered from some of the old tales of campaigners, preserved in diaries and biographies...

...Nearly one-half of those who contracted such marriages during the period under observation, were content with purely civil rites, so probably many children will be brought up outside the Church...

...Seldom," deplores Mr...

...The inscription was there when the cave was rediscovered and many fallacious opinions as to the date of the other objects found in it were formed by those who were ignorant of the great variations in the rate of the deposit of stalagmite...

...also by Dean Buckland, at that time the leading geologist in England and the author of the once well-known book, Reliquiae Diluvianae, though it is difficult to understand on what grounds...

...In considering its moral and legal justification, it makes no difference whatever that it comes from the judicial and not from the legislative branch...

...The academic doors will open more and more widely to initiative and competence—to men for whom the conquest of life is as important as the eternal battle with their books...

...The use of the injunction to kill strikes at their inception is one of the most outstanding instances of effective "interference" by government that is possible to imagine...

...During a visit from Archbishop Mostyn of Cardiff, himself the descendant of an ancient Welsh family, which gave martyrs and confessors to the Faith during penal days, the talk turned upon the place of Welsh among the Celtic languages...

...A CONCEPTION of the proper function of government in labor disputes all his own, seems to be entertained by Mr...

...It is precisely the relation between foreign money and political disturbance which induces the intelligent and patriotic Latin-American to try ruling out money...

...We read with awe: "His philosophical studies have been enriched by fruitful contacts with activities outside the boundaries of his special subject...

...it is to be hoped that due heed will be taken to his strictures...

...And what is this which President Frank stresses in making the appointment...

...More important to the observer than all such matters, is the indubitable fact that during the February 3, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL last few years a stirring revival of loyalty to the Church has been in progress, influencing not only the spiritual life of the masses but winning new respect for social principle staunchly asserted, and for intellectual effort honestly put forward...

...Three studies by him, published in the Rassegna d'Arte between the years 1910 and 1912, would be sufficient to earn him this reputation...

...but these the poet used only as a pianist might employ keys, to give expression to a symphonic meditation on the greatness and destiny of man as he walks "under the stars, in the garden of God...

...The other articles definitely ascribed the authorship of certain speculative paintings to Luini, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, and dispersed an undeserved obscurity which covers a miniature painter of Milan named Fra da Monza...

...It should be understood, of course, that these statistics apply to the year 1923...

...COMMENT is also invited by the fact that the list of important Reich functionaries includes proportionately few Catholics—eighty-one out of 680...

...Signor Amadore Porcella, a distinguished art critic, has just been reminding the Roman public that the Pope, while still Monsignor Ratti, and librarian of the Ambrogiana Library, was an art critic of the keenest and most authoritative calibre...

...Sargent) is to raise (and to beg) a very big question indeed...

...As a German critic declares—"Because Weismantel sees in every human being the weakness of the flesh and the strength of the 'armor of virtue,' he reveals the spirit of the Christian democracy...

...To suspect that a doctor of philosophy ought not merely to distinguish between the one thousand historical gradations of the noumenon, but might permissibly explore the habits of his generation—this is an airing drastic enough to leave the hallowed study dismayed and disheveled...

...Alexander Meiklejohn as professor of philosophy...

...Why shouldn't he ? For nearly one hundred years we have looked southward through the eyes of no goddess of liberty, but through the spectacles of sharpers, meddlers and militarists...

...Sir Robert Falconer's lectures on The United States from a Canadian Point of View indicate the genuine cooperative friendship which can exist between neighboring countries when political and economic fear is eliminated...

...Sargent, "are employers allowed to settle an important strike without their intervention...

...ONE of the finest things done by Glenn Frank to justify Wisconsin's faith in his ability to conduct a university, is the appointment of Dr...

...A particularly attractive refrain lies in the constant suggestion that charity, in the intention of Christendom, is not a mere individual adornment but verily the soul of the community...

...JNI EAR Torquay there is a remarkable cave named Kent's Hole, which, though known to exist, had been lost for many years until rediscovered by Father McEnery...

...If this be not pedagogical revolution, the future will belong solely to the conservative...

...own constant discussion of American census figures suggests the interesting summary of the Catholic population of Germany, as published by the Kolnische Volkszeitung on the basis of statistics furnished by the official Catholic directory...

...Apart from this, one at least of the instances chosen to buttress his argument is singularly unfortunate...

...and the statistics on mixed marriage are particularly indicative of disregard for canonical legislation...

...The treasure-trove unearthed by Father McEnery included immense quantities of the bones of extinct animals and implements both of bone and stone, the work of the prehistoric inhabitants of that part of what is now an island but was then probably part of the continent we call Europe...

...It is a difficult thing to change the filing system in education...

...He was favored, to be sure, with an unusual setting—the ruins of the Roman baths at Trier, which themselves stimulate imagination towards conception of the long ages of tangled human action, of fading color and eternal significance, that have passed since the first Christian martyrs announced that the world would succumb to the Divine empire of love...

...It is a pity we cannot become more familiar with this kind of art...

...What, on the other hand, is to be thought of our continued tilts with Mexico...

...A Pan-American press association is an ideal to be fostered...

...The labors of a very early worker in this field are now being recalled by the publication in Blackfriars, the monthly of the English Dominicans, of an account of the life and work of the Reverend John McEnery, who was born in 1796, became a priest, and was appointed private chaplain to the Catholic family of Carey, then living at Tor Abbey near Torquay, that lovely spot on the Devonshire coast...

...But it is pleasant to know that one can estimate this success by the recent triumph of the poet, Leo Weismantel, whose play in honor of the Rhineland celebrations is so signally worthy of attention...

...In warning his hearers against a similar tendency which he thinks he observes in this country, the speaker called "particular attention" to two recent instances—one the Illinois bill limiting the right of injunction, and another a rider, introduced into federal appropriation bills, forbidding the use of federal funds to prosecute labor unions for "otherwise criminal acts...

...S TORIES that feature the versatility of the sovereign Pontiff in many provinces not necessarily associated with clerical life are becoming a familiar feature in the columns of the daily press, and there can be no doubt, the world being what it is, that they play an important part in furthering an idea of Pius XI as one of the most "human" of the many distinguished and saintly men who have sat in the seat of the Fisherman...

...and the coming of several hundred publishers, including 100 directors of Spanish-American journals, should be made an occasion for the creation of really fraternal relations between the press representatives of the different parts of our continent...

...but "do we eat at all...

...Our beef came to us on the hoof, and poor, and we had little or nothing to fatten them with...

...In the course of the interview, the former Monsignor Ratti not only showed a real acquaintance with the philology of the Cambrian tongue, but was able to cite textually phrases from a grammar of the language published at Milan by a Welsh historian, Griffith Roberts, who was exiled for his religious beliefs during the reign o( Elizabeth and became vicar-general of the Lombardian diocese...

...And indeed, it was this transcendent miracle of charity which Weismantel undertook to symbolize...

...This was at the time when the penal laws against Catholics had been largely relaxed, though before Catholic emancipation had come into effect, and it was, in fact, these little private chapels, maintained by well-to-do families in different parts of the country, which kept the light of the Faith burning in England during the long, dark period of persecution...

...JVlORE than once in these columns attention has been called to the very remarkable part played by Catholic priests in the realm of prehistoric archaeology...

...1 HE undertaking given by the British colonel that his regiment would fight to the last man so long as there was someone to bring the last man his rations, about sums up the outlook of the soldier in all countries and in all epochs, toward the duties of the commissariat department...

...This is how General Hugh Brady, that stout old fighter who dictated his reminiscences in old age (he died as late as 1851) describes the food served out to Uncle Sam's regulars during the infancy of the republic: "During that winter—1794-1795—we lived very poorly...

...Sargent* Indeed, what seeps out from between the lines of his very significant speech is not resentment towards "interference" at all...

...It is generally admitted that a great deal of moral laxity followed the war...

...The attempt embroiled Dr...

...Having no salt to cure it, it was slaughtered and hung up under a shed, where, by exposure, it became perfectly weatherbeaten, and as tough as an old hide...

...1 HERE is no novelty in the remark that the endeavor to create a popular Christian theatre has met with success in Germany...

...We should suffer even more were the new laws to ignore accepted practice and confiscate holdings of long standing...

...If a proper moderation and judiciousness of taste can be observed in its administration, a great good can be accomplished...

...But an age of education will learn sometime...

...Meiklejohn in the kind of controversy which is not appreciated in academic circles, but it proved him one of the few men courageous enough to suspect that an America which is asking new things of education might be relatively pleased with a request granted...

...One might reasonably ask whether "interference" in the shape of high tariff is not responsible for much of the prosperity enjoyed by the men for whom, presumably, he speaks, and whether he and they would be satisfied were the sheer laws of demand and supply suffered to work 34O THE COMMONWEAL February 3, 1926 themselves out not only in the sphere of wages, but in the sphere of production...

...There are some difficult adjustments to be presented to the PanAmerican Congress of Journalists, and it is to be hoped that some of them will have a happy result...

...Buckland's book was founded on observations made in the Kirkland cave in Yorkshire, and in accordance with the ideas of the time he held that all these bones and other objects had been washed into the caves by the universal deluge...

...If the press is merely to be the means of a vaster circulation of the horrors and scandals of our day, we shall only add to the parlous discords of our present newspaper situation...

...Secretary Kellogg might reasonably be moved to remonstrate with a government which seemed to strike a legislative blow at our financial interests...

...Forming a majority of citizens in the Rhenish provinces, Bavaria and Baden, Catholics share equally in the numerical strength of Westphalia, Silesia, and Hesse-Nassau, but are increasingly in the minority throughout Wiirtemburg, Saxony, SchleswigHolstein, Brandenburg and East Prussia...

...The details of his story were drawn from a popular Rhenish legend concerning dim historical personages...

...We shall suffer from the enforced inactivity of our capital in Mexican mines and oil-wells...

...ANOTHER anecdote, reported by the Roman correspondent of La Vie Catholique, throws some light upon the wide-reaching erudition acquired by the Pontiff while in charge of the Ambrosian Library...

...One refers to a painting on copper, the joint work of Bruegel and Rubens, representing the Madonna and Child, which the scholarly Cardinal not only ascribed to its true source by meticulous examination only possible with one to whom the technical side of art was familiar ground, but of which he gave an historical account, based on little-known correspondence between Bruegel and Cardinal Borromeo of Milan...

...We see," says La Vie Catholique, in commenting on the picturesque incident, "that the Holy Father, in his day of office, was a model librarian, knowing his books, not only by their names, but by their contents as well...

...1 O call government intervention, in a matter so vitally affecting the interests of the government as the conduct of industries on which millions of the governed depend for their livelihood, "interference" at all (in the sense used by Mr...

...and quite inevitably we have been taken for what we professed to be, during precious years when sound industrial and political foundations should have been laid and friendships established...

...The inequality can be accounted for to a large extent also when it is borne in mind that the German system leaves the separate states considerable autonomy, so that the prominent officials of Bavaria and the Rhenish provinces, to mention only two cases, are frequently Catholics...

...At first sight its limitation seems to be well in line with the policy of impartiality in labor troubles recently evidenced by the Executive in connection with the coal strike, and a step towards the clear field and no favor asked for by Mr...

...While statistics would seem to argue for the injustice of this distribution, we must remember that the government of the Reich still takes for granted the supremacy of Prussia, and that the Centrum is a minority party...

...Wlien such an authority as Major General John F. O'Ryan, who commanded the famous Twenty-seventh division overseas, tells an audience of veterans that the army is being starved, not in any metaphorical, but in a very literal sense, and that the question is no longer the old one, "when do we eat...

...His observations were challenged by no less a person than Cuvier...

...Noel Sargent, manager of the industrial relations department of the National Association of Manufacturers, who is just back from making a uminute study" of labor conditions in England, and who has been telling the students of Illinois University that much of the trouble in that harassed country is due to 4'meddlesome and usually unWise interference by politicians" in a matter so little within their province as the economic conditions of the mass of the people for whom they legislate...

...Generally speaking, the South American newspapers enjoy an immunity as to their contents and expressions of opinions that is unknown even in the United States...

...It is a desire that interference should be left in the hands of that branch of our "checks and balances" least likely to be influenced by popular opinion and the popular vote...

...The future of our relations with countries to the south will not be improved by following out the suggestion incorporated in so much financial comment on the situation—by lifting the embargo on arms so that revolution may break out in Mexico...

...Like many caves it is full of stalactitic formations, and near the entrance on a boss of rock is carved the inscription, now covered by stalagmite, "Robert Hedges of Ireland, 1688," which was in all probability cut by some Irish fugitive "on his keeping" from the myrmidons of Dutch William...