Maryland Day
April 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 595 MARYLAND DAY celebration this year of Maryland Day, not only in the chief city of that state, but in such far centres as Chicago, and Norwalk, Connecticut,...
...Through the generosity of Most Reverend Michael J. Curley, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, a prize of $1,000 will be offered for the best essay on Maryland's early history submitted to The Commonweal...
...It is very probable that the treatment accorded it was not of deliberate intent at all, and is to be ascribed mainly to the vast volume of literature, historical and imaginative, which has focussed itself round an earlier and very different incident...
...Life is a conspiracy against memory, and those are doing good work to the state who rescue from all danger of oblivion any of history's heartening and inspiring traditions...
...It is no longer Maryland's debt, it is not even the debt which Catholicism in the western world owes him that is now seen to be his chief distinction...
...and Mr...
...Governor Albert C. Ritchie, the state executive...
...The comparative obscurity that has rested for years upon the memory of Calvert's effort as a national, apart from a local event, is a strange example of the accidents to which history is subject...
...And an historical significance that must have fired a train of thought in the least inflammable imagination was lent by the presence of the British Ambassador, Sir Esme Howard, who, in recalling the history of the settlement, could tell the audience that two of his immediate family had died, martyrs to the persecution from which Calvert and his associates sought refuge in a new continent...
...The passage of time will add or detract nothing from the prestige of George Calvert...
...Attorney General Thomas H. Robinson...
...What stands out from the success of this year's celebration is the fact that the pious cult which has enshrined Calvert's memory in the comparative obscurity of local commemorations was guided by a truer and more universal instinct than appeared at the time...
...From Chicago, where Dr...
...John A. Lapp, president of the Calvert Club, had as fellow speakers the city executive, Mayor Dever, and the former governor of the state whose founders sought, by every means in their power, to bring the experiment of toleration to nought...
...Nothing is to be gained now by considering the reasons that lay behind its relegation by official text-books to a place very far behind its real significance...
...Whenever any alarm or misgiving seizes upon the imagination of a people, a renewed attention, almost instinctive, is paid to the figures in its past who stand as sponsors of the threatened heritage...
...The founder of Maryland is quite simply taking his fitting place in history, a singularly significant and forehanded figure, the first to assert the principles upon which America would grow and prosper 140 years before the nation came into being...
...In this year's commemoration, all the elements which mark the emergence of a memory from local to national rank are to be noted...
...But in March, 1926, eight years before the three hundredth anniversary of his brave and farsighted adventure will be celebrated with fitting pomp and circumstance, he stands forth immeasurably more significant a figure than he has ever been in the past...
...from Norwalk, in Connecticut, where Dr...
...Announcement of the conditions will be made in full in our next issue.—The Editors...
...At Baltimore a platform as undenominational as it was representative made a point of putting aside, for the occasion, the religious and regional significance of the celebration, and of stressing the importance to the entire nation in present conjunctures of the root principle for which Calvert's name stands...
...April 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 595 MARYLAND DAY celebration this year of Maryland Day, not only in the chief city of that state, but in such far centres as Chicago, and Norwalk, Connecticut, upon a scale hitherto not attempted, and with the presence of distinguished figures in the political life of the nation as guests and speakers, is one proof the more of the value of local tradition, piously cultivated, and of the happy tendency of regional history to take its...
...proper place, by sheer force of events, in that larger life story from which the policy of the present looks for its inspiration in national crises and difficulties...
...The tercentenary celebrations are still eight years ahead, and it is idle to speculate what happenings in the interim may lend new significance to the imposing form they are certain to take...
...the Honorable William L. Marbury, president of the Sons of the American Revolution, in one eloquent speech after another proposed the name of the gentle and self-sacrificing peer from England as a rallying point for state rule, sane human liberty, and the inherent right of communities which have achieved a communal civilization all their own, doubly precious to them because it is compounded of the very dust of the men whose names they bear, to maintain the vividness and individual hues of their state complexion against obliteration and standardization that comes from over-centralized government...
...The tribute paid by these men, alien as their faith is to Calvert's, to his part in humanizing the history of the early settlement did not fall one whit behind the enthusiasm of Dr...
...Conde Pallen, an editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia...
...What is important and encouraging to consider today is that the veil which has covered the foundation of Maryland, as a community wKere men of every religion might breathe the air of tolerance, is lifting, and is lifting, first and foremost, because recent incidents, and still more, the revelation of certain tendencies unsuspected in our national life for 150 years, has given a fresh and sharp significance to toleration, considered as an unassailable principle in our national life...
...Peter Guilday, past president of the American Catholic Historical Association, or of Reverend John Lafarge, S.J., whose church stands upon the very spot of land first sighted by the Ark and the Dove...
...Edward J. Quinlan were the speakers, come the same reports of a newly aroused enthusiasm and interest in the figure of Calvert...
Vol. 3 • April 1926 • No. 22
