Week by Week

...If these questions are not satisfactorily answered during the proceedings, it is going to be extremely difficult to get away with a verdict hostile to Colonel Mitchell...

...What is the attitude of the President toward the arm of the service which Colonel Mitchell thought endangered by inefficient management...

...The largest of these spots is naturally the one which gets most attention—that expanse of acres which begins around Indianapolis and stretches northward to Grand Rapids...

...But the hour has come to safeguard the honor of Catholic missionary enterprise by obtaining, through the mediation of the League of Nations or otherwise, an international rule against the military exploitation of the Christian ministry by political aggrandizers and military despots...

...All the news that reaches us from Italy these days shows that dignity there is a short crop, or, to be more precise, a crop that has been pretty tightly cornered by its "podesta" and is now peddled out as his will-to-power directs...

...In the first place, Catholics themselves will be aroused to a better understanding of educational problems that await settlement...

...But it is interesting to find a confusion which M. Jacques Maritain, in his Trois Reformateurs has identified as the initial mistake of the Protestant Reformation, namely—the confusion between the "individual" and the "person," voiced in the land of the Pontiffs...

...One handful that, by reason of its very consistency, is not likely to stick anywhere or upon anything except the hand that threw it, is the circular distributed in Richmond, Virginia, on the eve of the election for state treasurer, and purporting to be issued by the Knights of Columbus...

...We cannot at this time but insist," declared the Masons' committee, "upon the existence of the principle that the right of the child to avail himself of the educational opportunities of the public school system is superior to the right of the parent or of any corporation, secular or religious, to THE COMMONWEAL November n, 1925 shape in advance his intellectual allegiance, and we should be alert to unite with every movement which tends to the maintenance of such right...

...But at least the idea of peace by agreement is being familiarized...

...Justice must have its way, superiors wrongfully criticized should get an opportunity to clear themselves...

...1 HE verdict in the trial of Colonel Mitchell is still in abeyance...

...If the plan is followed out widely—and we think it will be —a twofold benefit must result...

...It is said, no doubt for our edification, that the magnificently rhetorical M. Boncour will be the next governor of Syria...

...W E are obliged to concede, however, that enlightenment is carefully excluded from certain circles which view religious education with the benignity and impartiality of a band of roving Tartars about to pounce upon a caravan...

...tells of a candidate for office who, after a two hours' exposition of his political faith, concluded by observing—"These are my principles, gentlemen, but if you don't like them, I can change them...

...Or will a wise foresight make provision for machinery of arbitration which can be improved in accordance with necessity...

...Spur yourself viciously and ride as on a mighty war-horse to war and victory, planting the entrusted [sic] guards in the key positions for the defense of the Holy Church of Rome...

...There are a few pictographs of the elk and the moose, but what is most interesting perhaps is that pieces of the eggshells of the giant ostrich and of the dinosaur have been discovered perforated so as to be strung on a string of some kind, most probably for purposes of personal ornament...

...Political salvation for Italy, and for Fascism too, would seem to lie in its prospect of outgrowing the ideals of its founder...

...Coolidge said, that the South American republics have suffered less from the ravages of war than have the peoples who founded them...

...The prompt disavowal that it has met with from James A. Flaherty, chief executive of the Knights of Columbus, was hardly necessary for those who may have the slightest acquaintance with the style or tenor of any document this body has issued...

...IHOUGH the President's address upon the occasion of the dedication, in Washington, of a statue to the memory of Argentina's hero, General Jose de San Martin, did not go far beyond the courtesies usual to such occasions, he emphasized one matter which is becoming increasingly important...

...This resolution, drawn up with the aid of certain of those provincial judges whom life and environment seem to harden into a stony, Lot's-wife-like illiberality, carefully drew attention to a matter of principle...

...Even in law-abiding, traditional England, the barbarity of the law which inflicted the capital penalty for petty theft was speeded into oblivion, not so much through legislation in Parliament, as by a long series of verdicts of "not guilty," rendered in the face of legal browbeating...

...1T is a good thing to set apart one week of every year for the consideration of educational needs and accomplishments...

...He also finds that the Democrats excel the Republicans in university education and finally—perhaps hardly a discovery—that more than half of the legislation which originates in the Senate receives little or no attention...

...WEEK BY WEEK HP HE problems that the great war has bequeathed -*¦ us are a matter of such daily preoccupation that it is difficult to comment adequately upon them each time a recurrent anniversary of Armistice Day solicits our attention afresh to the magnitude and poignancy of the tragedy that came to an end upon November ii, 1918...

...but primarily there should be an open and above-board declaration of what is going on in aeronautics...

...and in the long run the public must rule...

...This would seem to indicate that the League is not inclined to view the compulsory clauses in the covenant as inconsequential, and that an effort will be made to bring these clauses to the fore whenever possible...

...South American delegates are courteously received in Geneva, but their interest in continental affairs is necessarily limited and their influence of slight weight...

...Its origin is shrouded in a disreputable obscurity that those who like may strive to pierce...

...It was first explored and settled by French missionaries and their companions, which is to the point, because it proves that historical science is not a "native" accomplishment...

...These fossil eggs have of course been found formerly, but the coincidence of the recent discovery with the fragments utilized by man is certainly interesting...

...But they are the price we pay for the democratic conception of government, and to contemplate changing them for a more judge-ridden system, where misdirection has often worked justice quite as doubtful, seems questionable wisdom...

...and they may well join in a deeper study arid appreciation of the national spirit and legal heritage...

...One of the ineluctable hall-marks of tyranny is a dislike of complexity...

...vjAN we arrive at any general conclusions as to organizations of men like those which seem to have been made out concerning animal organizations...

...Our neighbor continent has had its share of petty turmoil, but it is essentially a land of the future...

...The eggs were arranged in a circle in the sand with the narrow ends out, and left to hatch out as is the habit of crocodiles today...

...As long as those are alive who witnessed the delirium of public rejoicing that hailed the lifting of the four years' nightmare, there will never be much delusion as to the worthwhileness of war...

...It means that those who are opposed to the religious education of children have a greater right than the parents or church immediately responsible for those children, to dictate what school shall be attended...

...Indeed, some of the changes attendant upon growth are noticeable already: the establishment of trade concessions and tariffs...

...others were maimed and injured...

...There is reason to believe that between November 16 and 22, much can be done towards enlivening the nation's sense of responsibility for the training of worthy future citizens...

...Whether that period is long enough to afford sufficient data may perhaps be doubted, but at any rate the results which he has obtained are not without interest...

...The Associated Press reports that at the convention of the Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Masons, southern jurisdiction, a resolution was adopted to support the pending bill to create a federal department of education...

...In Scotland the verdict "not proven" which the Roman law, prevailing there, permits as a middle course between the verdicts of "guilty" or "not guilty," has more than once given voice to a feeling that the prisoner in the dock was more sinned against than sinning...

...Nothing registers popular discontent with a law, or so redresses the tendency of law-makers to over-legislate or judges to administer their code inhumanly, as repeated over-riding by juries of its letter in favor of what they consider its spirit...

...perhaps their view is winning respect...

...Luckily Armistice Day, 1925, is being celebrated amid circumstances that seem to render the prospect a hopeful one...

...the settlement of disputed boundaries...

...To cap the climax comes the news, as reported to Le Croix of Paris by the president of the League of Religious Veterans, that Sarrail impressed a number of missionary priests and brothers into service against the Druses...

...The dinosaur was a huge lizard and belongs to the middle-ages of geological time, long years before the wildest imagination has pictured the existence of man upon the earth, yet this expedition has discovered what are believed to be the nests of dinosaurs with the contained eggs in a fossil condition...

...To realize how great an advance that is, one has only to cast an eye back upon the efforts to save Europe that were made seven years ago but were futile for sheer lack of some machinery that could have made them operative, and upon the seemingly hopeless prospect its peoples faced four years later, when the wild rejoicing over the first Armistice Day had ebbed away, to leave them sobered and dismayed at the havoc, material and moral, that war had wrought in their lives...

...W E spoke just now of mud...

...Coolidge is not likely to side-step this platitude...

...For that reason alone, all lovers of peace must hope and pray that the efforts which the world is making to render a recurrence of the disaster impossible will reach a successful consummation while its memory is acute, and before a generation arises to whom the tragic outlines are blurred by time...

...1 HE report of the discoveries made in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia by Mr...

...The darling, of Hoosierdom—Ed Jackson—is for the moment engaged in preparing for a battle Senatewards...

...and if things do not change in the little time remaining, he may actually see Washington with all expenses paid...

...November n, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 5 W E think the answer to these questions lies primarily in the hands of the United States...

...Some of these men were killed in the attempt to relieve the garrison of Sueida...

...1 HERE are Americans and American interests in Syria...

...One pictures a long series of docile ministers and rabbis on ceremonial Saturdays or Sundays, inviting the myrmidons of proper authority to a full and frank inspection of the cup, with the disarming comment that—"This is our ancient rite, Mister, but if you don't like it, we can change it...

...The Church," Rabbi Lyons is on record as saying, "should dispense with wine for sacramental purposes and substitute grape-juice or some other beverage that cannot be turned into a violation of the prohibition law . . . Any religious ceremony is only a means to an end and can, by proper authority, be abolished or supplemented...

...It is true, as Mr...

...but the reason must be sought rather in geographic and economic circumstances than in the lack of military ardor...

...Both powers have agreed to withdraw troops from what has been the scene of action and to await the report of a League commission which is "to carry out a full inquiry into recent incidents...

...It is true the powers concerned are small and weak and that the true test of the League's efficacy will not come until more powerful nations and deeper antagonisms are involved...

...But if we courageously invited them to join with us in guaranteeing the American status quo, on a frank basis of equality, we should all gain leverage for action in world affairs far beyond the potentiality of any existing arrangement...

...Be ye not a laggard, as the many thousands in the ranks of the heretics...

...One blushes at the memory of Barres's high-spirited appeal for the gift of French culture to a Syria that should be taught to "rule herself wisely...

...Anybody at all will be an improvement...

...For Catholic schools the present Education Week is, of course, a fitting prelude to the celebration of Thanksgiving...

...We are given to understand that things were in readiness to establish a blockade against Greece, had she taken a recalcitrant stand...

...To and fro roam the kleagles and knights, with a specialty for entering political campaigns wherever there is a chance to remind folks that their grandparents used to be- deacons and elders...

...For months English and American people with a knowledge of conditions in the Near East have been alarmed at the turn of affairs since the Herriot ministry placed the Syrian mandate in the hands of a man whose record has been a consistent display of tactlessness, brutal sergeantry, and avowed hostility to religion in every form...

...JVl EN who preach the peace of Christ are drafted by a hopeless military blunderer whose sole claim to distinction is his opposition to the Church...

...We fancy whoever has to pay the printer's bill must feel like giving himself a particularly vicious kick, with a fully-rowelled spur, when he listens to the laughter that greets his copy...

...Meanwhile, it remains as true as ever that the larger European powers control the League but refuse in any important detail to submit their problems to its jurisdiction...

...It does not, however, justify exuberant enthusiasm about the work of the League...

...These, at present, like the famous insects bred in Dr...

...Perhaps never before has a French colonial governor been either so indifferent to the people under his care, or so careless of the rules of the game...

...That is also why we hope the present French government will do at least one good deed and recall General Sarrail without further delay...

...and indignation banishes the remembrance of what the great men of Gaul—from Godfrey to Louis the Saint—took for their mission in the Near East...

...This is a question which Mr...

...JLJUE notice that he is going to let fly with both barrels, choke and rifle, at the sacramental wine industry has just been served by Brigadier General Andrews, and if there is any lack of alacrity in climbing down, it will not be the fault of such leaders of religious thought as Rabbi Alexander Lyons of Brooklyn...

...Caligari's cabinet, seem to be quite grandiose in scale and quite mean in conception...

...Technically the General acted under the French rule of military service, which permits the summoning of religious to the colors, but perhaps only the most addled of the anti-clerical sponsors of that law would have wished to see it applied under circumstances such as those prevailing in Syria...

...and such organizations as the Klan—not to mention individuals like the grave-digger —-are sent to remind us of our humble origins...

...No step towards the deepening of international amity would be so easy to take, and none is so directly in accord with our best interests, as the amalgamation of all American peoples, in both continents, into an association modeled upon the European League...

...That is why, leaving the larger humanitarian standards out of consideration for the moment, recent carnage in Damascus and its vicinity is of immediate concern to us...

...French critics have been particularly insistent upon the futility of international arbitration without authority to carry out mandates...

...There is no doubt that people everywhere are deeply interested in the outcome...

...The occasional indulgence and delays of the American jury may be as harmful as they are claimed to be...

...Few court-martials have been more spectacular...

...Its sentimentality and its accessibility to the mere human appeal, its refusal to be overawed by the bench, whose knowledge of the law is so much superior to its own, to say nothing of the delay in making a panel caused by the reluctance of citizens to serve on it at all, have been a favorite target for so many speakers and editorial writers, that one sometimes wonders whether the institution is not in danger of following other outworn conceptions of popular rights and liberties into the limbo of the past...

...And this is said, it may be remarked in passing, with a full realization of the perils from which Fascisma saved Italy, and of the many men of light and leading now involved in its administration...

...To pick out the literary beauties and disentangle the mixed metaphors in this farrago of spite, where the will to harm has defeated its very object, would be a thankless task...

...It would be difficult, one imagines, to conceive of a more wholesale surrender to the supreme state than that which this Jewish pastor recommends in an interview accorded by him to a correspondent of the New York Times while the echoes of General Andrews's warning blast were still ringing in the empyrean...

...Arthur MacDonald, of Washington, D. C, has set himself to study, since he thinks that the answer should be in the affirmative...

...Therefore the department of education of the National Catholic Welfare Conference has wisely sent a letter and a suggested program to the 20,000 schools affiliated with it, calling attention both to the elements of civic education and the especial purposes of religious schools...

...And now here is Judge Philip J. McCook, of the New York Supreme Court, telling the city Bar Association that the American jury with all its faults, and perhaps because of them, is the palladium of liberty, the one check upon unpopular legislation without which "turbulence and even revolt would have been commoner in our country...

...This will depend for success largely upon the report which is due in December, and the nature and influence of which no one can predict...

...Perhaps the decrease of interest in the sport is due to the super-refinement of the present generation...

...Americans are concerned with the case, not because they care much about a fine distinction in military law, but because events have led them to worry about the country's defense...

...The effect upon French prestige in the Orient, not to mention at all the effect upon Catholic missionary enterprise, may be left to the imagination...

...OBVIOUSLY the United States may rightly watch the progress of affairs as they affect Geneva, with deep interest and good will...

...moreover, this group has a very much higher average in frequency of speech than the business group...

...Between Nero, who wished Rome had one head that he might cut it off, and Mussolini, who edicts that the Italian "molecule" shall have a single life-cell that it may work out his social theories, the difference lies less in the fashion of the thought than in the fashion of expressing it that 1,800 years have brought in their train...

...Upon the rebuff to human dignity such a phrase embodies, it is needless THE COMMONWEAL November n, 1925 to insist...

...in the second place, their neighbors of other faiths may gain a more correct appraisal of the genuine service rendered to the republic by schools which, without receiving a cent from the common taxes, teach the fruitful development of the mind and the abiding discipline of the will...

...But the demand that the person must "feel" with them, too—in other words, submerge the personality right to judge and weigh in his soul, that is his as a son of God, into a mass-spirit and a massconscience, is a direct challenge to it...

...Dana (or was it Webster...

...He should have been ordered into a corner long ago...

...Will all these things as they develop take care of themselves...

...To what extent is he likely to be swayed by indubitable public feeling that all is not well in the nation's aerodromes...

...For his first study he has taken that important body, the Senate of the United States, and has made a statistical examination of its doings extending over three sessions in all...

...Nothing else will satisfy the public...

...Perhaps it would be more exact to call it a "law-controlling side...

...At any rate, there are a few spots in the United States where you can sell stock in the invisible empire for cash and no argument...

...Professional men, he finds, are in a majority and a large proportion of those were reared in the country...

...Roy Chapman Andrews, leader of the expedition sent out by the Natural History Museum of New York, contains some very interesting pieces of information...

...O F course there is nothing particularly new or particularly American in the view expressed by Judge McCook that, besides its function of finding verdicts on evidence, there is "a law-making side to the jury...

...1 HE success of the League of Nations in bringing to a halt the warfare between Greece and Bulgaria is rightly considered an achievement in the interests of international arbitration...

...Even in so far as Bulgaria and Greece are concerned, the real test is yet to come: a settlement of those differences which embroil the southeastern portion of Europe, and an impartial evaluation of territorial claims...

...The meaning of this ample sentence is clear...

...The past year has seen the passing of a great danger through the decision of the Supreme Court on the Oregon School law...

...First of all, two skulls of the newer stone age have been found and a number of implements said to correspond to those belonging to the Azilian era in Europe—that is, to the time of transition between the older and newer stone ages...

...1 HAT the individual must at times sink his likes and dislikes to take lot and shot with his fellow-citizens (or, to use Signor Mussolini's hectic phrase, "pulsate" with them in some common effort) is old Catholic teaching...

...and whether or not he is permitted to remain in the army, the Colonel must continue to have a great deal of influence upon the development of aviation...

...POLITICS, as the old soldier remarked, is a game you can play with mud...

...One of them lurks behind the bulging brow of Italy's dictator, who, in an oration delivered at Milan on the third anniversary of the "march on Rome" told his black-shirted myrmidons that each must be content henceforth to consider himself "a molecule, feeling and pulsating with the entire organism...

...The international relations of the peoples established there—and incidentally their relations with us—will become complex and difficult only when expansion of various kinds breeds problems...

...There is hardly a jurist who returns from a vacation in England without bringing back with him an unfavorable comparison to the home product gleaned from Gothic halls of law in England, where twelve grim and unsusceptible citizens, chosen with a "property qualification," sit in awed docility under a bewigged and befurred judge...

...To avert even a small war is, in these first days of supra-national conciliation, a real achievement...

...Religious teachers and the public which supports them may now rest assured that the constitutional traditions of our country will be their defense against the possible aggression of bigots...

...Besides, we should gradually approach the end of a situation which has always been annoying and which may become dangerous—a situation which assumes that our will can be law in countries which we value far below their worth, whose resources we attempt to capitalize upon, and whose traditions our representatives far too frequently hold in scorn...

...IT is pleasant to find that Aunt Sally and King-Pin of criticism, the American jury, coming in for a little praise at last...

...X HE action of the League in the recent clash between Greece and Bulgaria proves that it is possible to localize and appease national jealousies before any irretrievable step is taken, and even that a step which twelve years ago would have been thought irreparable can now be retraced in time...

...the regulation of financial exchange...

...Since it has been revealed that President Coolidge ordered the trial, and since the defense rests its case primarily upon the Annapolis address which declared that "the officers of the navy are given the fullest latitude in expressing their views before their fellow-citizens," we are justified in supposing that the Chief Executive's power as commanderin-chief of the military forces is directly involved...

...W E are so used to conceding evolution as a oneway line of human progress that it comes as something of a shock to find there are other conceptions of the progress it may, and indeed should, at need, take...