Week by Week

...Many might vote it a matter of stupid bungling by a physician who, very likely only a little interested in a down-and-outer, considered he did not have "a hospital case...

...For the most part, however, the citizenry forgot all about the hope, being far more certain of stifling stockyard odors on sultry nights, or of the endless squalor of the Negro quarter and the ghetto...

...It was only natural that during the critical business years which came with the war, he should have been selected as one of those best fitted to solve the problems of transportation and commissariat created by the rise of a vast army...

...Presbyter Ignotus praises us for fighting for "ancient ways as against modern," and, somewhat inconsistently, finds that the logical outcome of our efforts would be a vernacular liturgy...

...The courtesy and grace with which the knock-out blow is administered will depend on two essential features—swiftness and reliability...

...This statement is clearly true if the bids to be submitted are no better than the sixpenny sop offered by Mr...

...Since a recent questionnaire to 68^4 percent of Princeton graduates who are married revealed that the average family has produced I 48/100 children, the danger, in some quarters, looks as though it were providing its own remedy...

...The story was concerned with life at Cambridge University, and dealt in the main with religious subjects, but it also contained certain passages introducing unusually outspoken statements on sex...

...The social action department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference takes advantage of the interim to recall the official dictum uthat government 564 THE COMMONWEAL March 31, 1926 competition with certain kinds of monopoly deserves more attention than it has yet received," and to ask favorable consideration for the bill introduced by Senator Norris...

...Nothing, since frank speech is necessary, could be further from our thoughts than admiration for Anglican religious nationalism, Anglican fondness for teaching the hierarchy how to be "Catholic," Anglican zeal for converting the Church to orthodoxy...

...If any political fact is clear, it is the obvious truth that the United States can take its share in the work of these bodies without identifying itself with the League...

...With this for our goal, we might find it easy to cooperate with the European will for world stability without forever entangling ourselves in reservations and awkward suspicions...

...Destined for extinction, the old water-front with its haggard cobblestones, its dingy markets, and its stands where the men of all races haggle over produce, makes ready for its journey into the pages of history...

...Even so slight a matter as joining the Elks might have saved him...

...The tendency of "junior" to absorb and claim as his right a volume of attention that should have been distributed over a baker's half-dozen of little brothers and sisters, does not make for family peace and concord...

...If Pius X was an Americanizer, Presbyter Ignotus is a Buddhist...

...Not one of these, we feel sure, but might well applaud the Laetare Medalist of 1926...

...A man who loses out in the business of life as completely as Mr...

...Unusual interest attaches, therefore, to the recent resolve of the Benedictines of Fort Augustus Abbey, Scotland, to open a preparatory school at Portsmouth, Rhode Island...

...The Washington police, who have just been instructed by Superintendent Edwin B. Hesse to hit prisoners who are resisting arrest "in a courteous way," may well be wondering whether their executive's own head has met with accident...

...it shows that among Catholics, at least, there is a censorship of conscience real and effective in its workings...

...The patrolman who found Sanatulski on the pavement, surrounded by a curious crowd, was aware of the truth that this inert human bundle had certain rights—perhaps even a certain innate royalty...

...It begins to be apparent that—after a variety of modernisms have run their course—the solid, steadfast, educational art of Loyola and other great religious instructors is far more adequate than anything proposed to take its place...

...The school at Portsmouth, however, will be to some extent an innovation...

...Shane Leslie, in voluntarily withdrawing a novel which, in its general character, had won the commendations of the literary critics...

...The success of Downside Abbey in this regard is known to all the world...

...This provides for a government corporation to supply such an amount of nitrates as are needed for the public defense, and to develop to the utmost the hydro-electric power lying idle in the project...

...But so great is the extent of the twine in which social ministration is involved, that the starving man—utterly exhausted from lack of food—could not be attended to by a physician before he had been packed into a prison cell, where he collapsed and had to be carried in for his sentence...

...In conferring the Laetare Medal upon him, the University is not merely a donor, but the agent of grateful public opinion as well...

...As an augury for the future, one may recall that recently the parent English foundations have attracted a number of educated American men, who now take their share in the task of instruction at Fort Augustus Abbey and elsewhere...

...To find our discussion described as part of "an * Americanizing' movement in the Roman communion" would be merely amusing if it were not so indicative of grave misapprehension which we feel bound to correct...

...As one complainant put it, with homely realism, "there's no doubt that when the kiddies come, the wife forgets she owes an obligation to her husband...

...It will attempt to bring to this country the character of the English public school, taking for its chief purpose the training of young men for leadership in civic life...

...Edward Nash Hurley, of Chicago, is really too widely known to require introduction through a summary of his good deeds...

...We meant, of course, that the devotion of a certain group of Anglicans to all that is liturgically and aesthetically best in the Catholic tradition held a valuable lesson for many Catholics...

...was described as a "spirited debate" took place recently at the Hotel Astor, when members of the Legislative League of New York aired their views on an alleged "neglect of the wage-earning partner" which overcomes the great adventure when children March 31, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL have added one more peril to its much advertised tendency to founder in storms and shallows...

...Having gained business success by reason of effort and personal integrity, he was among the first to see the possibilities open to United States industry in foreign trade, and to undertake the difficult task of earning the good will of South America...

...The imprimatur of the diocesan, as instructed Catholics were fully aware, merely certified that the new version contained nothing contrary to faith or morals and, in the nature of things, did not cover the question of the omissions complained of...

...She forgets to be his pal...

...The Public Prosecutor, Sir Chartres Biron, when the matter was brought up in the Bow Street Court, declared he had read the book in question and found two or three passages of so gross a kind that he would have had no hesitation in issuing an order of suppression, had riot the author, after receiving a public reprimand from the Bishop of Northampton, agreed on his own part to withdraw the offending work...

...From the ranks of these will come the pioneer teachers of the Rhode Island school, all well equipped to carry on the great Benedictine tradition...

...In his invitation to Catholics to be present, Monsignor McMahon, pastor of the church, to whose righteous indignation a great deal of the pressure that has forced the question to the front is due, puts the matter conclusively when he says: "Your attendance at this presentation will be in the nature of a protest...

...Those who know the value of Benedictine culture to such countries as Austria—where, as someone has said, "the fragrance of old minsters is in the intellectual atmosphere"— will long since have wished that the educational work done by this old order in the United States might be extended far beyond its already sizeable area...

...The interest of our friend is, however, considerably keener than his discernment...

...But have the few been right after all...

...In the first place, all that is included in the idea of liturgical reform—the restoration of the Gregorian chant, popular participation in the liturgy, cultivation of the best artistic traditions in regard to vestments and church furnishings—has made far more progress in Europe than in America...

...W HEN Stanley Sanatulski, of Brooklyn, figured in the news, it was as the subject of an abrupt obituary notice: "He was then sent to Kings County Hospital, where he died last night...

...But what if compromise should have been spurned...

...What is to come—spacious, two-level drives to feed the continuously throbbing artery of Michigan Avenue, and tall houses for commerce— also makes an interesting reference to the past...

...We could go to Geneva for a conference without advertising to the world the fact that we expected to be taken in...

...We fight for ancient ways, not as ancient, but when such ways seem to represent a sounder tradition...

...1 HOUGH the action of Congress in authorizing bids from private corporations on Muscle Shoals makes the destination of this government property a subject for further spirited public debate, it does not indicate a speedy disposition of the problem...

...Is the "new" Chicago a return to the vigorous impulse of 1894...

...There is seldom a welcome—a cordial greeting—for the poor...

...and the endeavor of its derivative school ought to prove similarly useful...

...True as it is that Rome itself has not been free from liturgical decadence and inferior standards of ecclesiastical art, it is also true that no one has done more for reform than the Roman Pontiff, Pius X, of saintly memory, whose Motu Proprio on Church music has been the Magna Charta of the movement...

...The "Catholic advisers" who urged the publication of the new version remain anonymous...

...The child, or even the pair of children, to which the family is often limited today, pay a big price for the misdirected foresight of their parents...

...1 HERE is literary tradition that a very mild-mannered man can cut a throat, and cut it with neatness and despatch...

...Presbyter Ignotus is not unaware of this, yet he persists in talking about "Americanizing...

...There can be no excuse nor apology, except to those who must most regret to have to call me a Catholic man of letters...

...His statement gives hope to the advocates of propriety and decency in our public prints...

...The spectacle of a Washington cop, reciting a versified edition of the civic code and accompanying it with graceful passades from his night-stick until the moment comes for the psychological and sleep-inducing thwack, may yet be vouchsafed us...

...1HE venture of preparatory education is nothing more nor less than an attempt to solve the problems of adolescence...

...The defense made by those responsible for the change leaves the charge that a very real injustice was done to a dead author, about where it was...

...WEEK BY WEEK THE series of sharp antagonisms at Geneva has involved American opinion of the League more deeply than might have been expected when the great argument between France and Germany was opened...

...IT is pleasant to note the sympathetic interest in our recent correspondence and articles on liturgical matters shown by the well-known Episcopal clergyman who writes as "Presbyter Ignotus" for the columns of The Living Church...

...The difference between a government corporation" and a "private lease," we are told, "is the difference between operation of government property for the benefit of the people, and operation in the interests of a private monopoly...

...Why not recognize the distinction...

...But in others, less sophisticated or less circumspect, it is acute...

...And as for that symptom of religious nationalism, a vernacular liturgy, it ought to be unnecessary to say that it forms no part of our aims...

...Protestant publishers have mutilated The Imitation of Christ, distorted the great thirteenth-century Ave Maria of Arcadelt to suit their erroneous views, robbed us of our great Catholic hymns or changed their meaning, eviscerated Newman's classic, The Dream of Gerontius, until public clamor forced them to restore the original...

...The Locarno compacts, together with most of the prestige gained by the League during recent years, would have lost their meaning, and Europe would be just as close to chaos as she was during the era of the first great Bolshevik offensive...

...1 HE occasions upon which a protest, made in the name of taste and fair dealing and which has commercial expediency as the counter party, registers any success at all are very rare...

...It is all the more satisfactory to find that the stand made in the Catholic Standard and Times of Philadelphia against the foisting on the public of an edition of Monsignor Benson's Upper Room, edited out of all Catholicity by its publishers, has taken effect and that the "revised" version is to be issued under a title which will clear up any confusion...

...An American nation, by merely injecting its otherwise legitimate point of view into the debate, could wrfeck the chief business of the League...

...They afford opportunity for legitimate joint sessions in which affairs of justice and expediency common to America and Europe can be dealt with...

...JUR remark about not being too proud to take a lesson from separated brethren, though we thought we had made it clear, seems to have been misunderstood...

...Father Faber, years ago, had some hard words to say about the "inordinateness" of the exemplary domestic character...

...It is a common experience that this inordinateness, upon which, as the ladies of the Legislative League confess, the family too often is shipwrecked, may be in inverse proportion to the number of hostages which husband and wife have given to fortune...

...One thing is certain...

...Hesse had just been brushing up on Maeterlinck...

...Under all the circumstances, The Commonweal sees no reason to depart from the comment it had to make upon its Philadelphia contemporary's stand for literary justice, and notes with pleasure that The Tablet, the leading Catholic organ in Monsignor Benson's own country, took exactly the same position...

...Among the number of those who have received the honor are persons unforgettable because of achievement on behalf of human welfare—philanthropists, eminent physicians, artists and writers...

...IjECAUSE the Laetare Medal, conferred every year by the University of Notre Dame, is the most signal distinction obtainable by a Catholic layman, the news of its award is of general public interest...

...Such a man, we are told, "exhales peace like a flower...

...Sanatulski, has of course failed utterly to take advantage of opportunity...

...The Belgian master, in a purple passage upon the pugilist, has described for us the poise and dignity that accrues to the man who knows he can end any discussion that has grown tiresome by a single blow, delivered at the right time and in the right place...

...It ought also to be unnecessary, but for the enlightenment of Presbyter Ignotus it may be well, to state that our zeal for liturgical reform is entirely secondary to our devotion to Catholic authority, and that we could not conceivably hold any views or advocate any measures incompatible with the completest loyalty to the hierarchy and the Holy See...

...Americans then rubbed their eyes in astonishment at the fairy-like tapestry of pinnacles, gardens, domes, and archways which all seemed to have been hurried into existence by some capable Aladdin for a day...

...and thus once again the workers gather and depart, in the ancient monastic fashion which knows neither boundaries nor bonds...

...INDEED, the "carefulness" of the administration is occasionally quite painful...

...Henry Ford...

...encouraging sign in the campaign against indecency in England, may be seen in the conduct of a well-known Catholic author, Mr...

...A sentence for starving!* Meanwhile, the pampered were rustling southward, bank-stock was soaring to new figures, and the custodians of the public conscience were, on the whole, satisfied with the machinery of charitable relief...

...announcement that may well close this disagreeable incident comes in the form of news that a dramatic version of The Upper Room, as Monsignor Benson wrote it, is to be given in New York at the auditorium of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, on West 143 Street, on the evenings of March 29 and 30...

...Unfortunately, the rest of the world argued that it must have come from him, because obviously an intelligent State Department would not express an opinion without weighing the evidence supplied by its most important foreign representatives...

...For the glory and beauty of a community does bring forget* fulness of individual deprivation, as the lonely plainsman is awed by his vision of the common stars in the heavens...

...We feel that the Senate is right in not committing the government to a final policy until all aspects of the case for private operation can have been investigated...

...The bill authorizing the submission of bids is therefore rather plainly a move in accordance with sane, sober, government common sense...

...and many clung to the dream resolutely, even while mile on mile of ghastly tenement structures and wan little flats crept out over the vast sandy plain on which destiny had decreed that a city should stand...

...She stays at home, and then, by degrees, her husband goes out and then some 'smarty' comes along...

...Later he dedicated his energies to the promotion of the merchant marine, the story of which is preserved in his own spirited book...

...Granted a person bewildered by the machinery of urbanism, rebuffed by the professional ministers of mercy, and unable to master the art of begging, and you have a man who can go on peering about for a job until all days of labor are ended...

...Its association with the person of the author and preacher and playwright, is of very old standing, for it was at this church that he preached, through several Lenten seasons, a course of sermons upon the Passion in which the share of the Mother of God, excluded from the new version by worldly-wise publishers and executors, was given its just and traditional place...

...At all events, the present fear of doing something—anything, in fact—to use American public opinion for world betterment is as comically old-maidish as it is disastrous civically...

...Why, the caustically ironical may ask, should there be...

...IjUT the plain point of the affair is that human beings can starve in the midst of plenty...

...A calm re-reading makes for the humiliation, and even despair, of the author...

...Brazil's demand for a permanent place on the Council, fatal as it was to last minute hopes for a compromise, strengthens a conclusion which might have been drawn long since from the inertia of public opinion in the United States—the conclusion that the League is preeminently a European assembly, concerned with continental problems, and dedicated to the guarantee of peace between peoples whose relations one with the other are governed by traditions and interests unique in kind...

...The "executors" who consented to the new version turn out to be, as everyone suspected, non-Catholics...

...Why not shape our international consciousness in the manner dictated by the logic of events ? While recognizing to the full the value of the League as an organization for the pacific betterment of Europe, we can, if we are willing, begin the task of forming a similar society for the American continents—a society which, as history indicates, has already been prepared for by long-lived experiments, and for which a multitude of difficulties clamor at the present time for settlement...

...In the face of repeated charges and denials, no one can safely assert that the gloomy comment on Locarno and the League which the press of the country gathered up in Washington originated with Ambassador Houghton...

...1 HOSE of us who have lived through the era when families of five, six, and seven children were a commonplace, and into the epoch of the fractional (and fractious) household, will have a shrewd idea that what is at fault is not the number of children who bless a union, but the unwise intensity of mother-love when it is concentrated on one or two...

...Many will hope so, not least of all those whose share in the wealth that is to fringe the vast new boulevards can only be very small...

...Or perhaps he was recalling Mr...

...But it still remains within the realms of possibility that some new private offer, subject to reasonable control, will be of greater advantage to the country at large than a federal experiment in power production...

...The locale at which this little classic of the Passion is to be performed is no matter of accident...

...Not only do they miss the healthy competition, the rough and tumble of life lived in common, and the suppression of egotism which the world will have to teach them later and far less gently, but from their very dependence upon the society of their elders they not infrequently introduce an added element of irritation at the times when the domestic situation is undergoing strain...

...But the events which led to this stoical finale were, to say the least, of a significance which made their victim a kind of index to the ruthlessness of civilization as it is...

...It is not convincing to predict the success of such an experiment on the basis of what a few municipal power systems have been able to accomplish...

...But just how a blow with a billy is to be reconciled with the minor graces is not clear...

...Is it fear of succumbing to the blandishments of moral alliance with Britain which makes all our world policy so dilatory and indecisive...

...In the face of what remains to be done for disarmament and international law, this deduction is not so salutary as some that might be mentioned...

...Only one thing must not be done—no advertisement shall tell a starving man of a place where feeding him will be considered a pleasure, in memory of the suffering Christ...

...To speak of the movement as an "Americanizing" tendency is as fantastic as it would be to speak of its very noteworthy progress in France as "Gallicanizing...

...ON the other hand, the effort of some to disparage the disarmament conference and to predict the meaninglessness of the World Court is wholly reprehensible...

...Very likely a way out of the impasse created by the Brazilian representative can be found, primarily because of the good will of the existing German government...

...Walter Hampden in Cyrano, and the sonnet improvised by that lovable swashbuckler, at the concluding word of whose sextet a discourteous adversary, who had commented upon the famous nose, is sent to hospital—or eternity...

...Obviously the humane ought to begin a system of propaganda— huge electrical signs in public parks, for instance—to inform the incompetent about the various modern methods of personal progress...

...Indifferent to cults of "new thought" which might have strengthened his will-power, unaware possibly of the truth that the "secret of success is thrift," he paid the penalty for his incredibly enormous stupidity...

...W HILE the Fascisti dream of a new imperial Rome, the plain citizens of Chicago are hard at work turning their most ungainly districts into a maze of towers and boulevards expressive of modern industrial energy...

...In all likelihood, neither the law nor the bids can be made concrete before Congress agrees to go its separate ways...

...Perhaps all the comfortable would have been shocked a little by the news from Brooklyn...

...Or has the political scare created by the permanently irreconcilable intimidated the administration...

...It recalls the stupendous, for that epoch almost unrivaled, architectural effort made to create the Exposition City in 1894...

...The penitent author makes the following declaration which can leave no doubt of its existence: "Though the majority of my characters are ascetic, I must regret the sensualism I have inexcusably described...

...It is time Catholics warn these destroyers of a dead man's work that tolerance has a limit...

...Today we know more specifically what these are, but our methods for dealing with them are to a large extent lamentably undeveloped and un566 THE COMMONWEAL March 31, 1926 formed...

...If Ambassador Houghton did make a report that lacked the radiant tints of optimism, the result ought really to have been, not a panicky summons to retreat from the world scene, but a new resolve to make our energies count for something in the victory that must be gained...

...All in all, his career has been a salutary example of unusual business energy devoted only secondarily to the satisfaction of personal ambition, and given primarily to the service of his people...

...Perhaps Mr...

...Then was born the vision of a beautiful Chicago, and indeed of an America fashioning loveliness out of its own primeval chaos...