Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK THE attitude taken by the administration in de-*¦ dining to accept the invitation to attend a League of Nations parley concerning the reservations appended by the Senate to its...
...Was there ever a more stupid coat of whitewash...
...These things must have cheered Dr...
...Though the spirit of Christ is mild, it is also charitable and just...
...Good will and common sense, joined to enthusiasm, have before now turned a dream into a business against the glum judgment of the literalminded...
...Germany emerged from the Locarno conferences and the imbroglio at Geneva stronger and more universally respected than ever before in her history, because she concealed nothing, violated no point of international honor, and in no way departed from a steadfast fidelity to the best hopes of European reconstruction...
...With all respect to the judgment of the learned rector, his method seems singularly ill-directed toward encouraging a love of the ancient tongue...
...A university professor informs us that there are more than a thousand dividend-paying crime concerns in Chicago...
...We are glad to see that it is making headway and that the men it has formed are at their posts in number...
...There is something like the tocsin of a revolt by age against its crabbedness in the comment which Dr...
...Given a man unfitted for education and too lazy to work, and what avenue of life is so open and so alluring as banditry...
...Fortunately enough, we have the economic prestige which recent war years have showered upon us...
...But should it overlook altogether—as seems to be the case when a treaty officially recognizes the authority of a nation—the crimes which such a power as Turkey has committed against certain abiding human rights...
...Fehrenbach became the leader of his party and guided its policy in the same spirit of good will and fidelity to promises given which had marked his official acts...
...A language that has been revived almost from death cannot take immediate part in such a mental rough-and-tumble as is implied by classical studies and lessons in mathematics...
...If there were no crime news to read, respectable citizens might take to beating their wives...
...The Senate authorized our adherence to the World Court...
...It is not so very many years ago since a group of Czech philologists, assembled in an upper room of Prague, were told by their chairman that, if the roof fell in on them during the session, the hope of ever seeing the old Bohemian tongue a literary one again would be suspended indefinitely...
...It grows out of the awakened consciousness of Spain, free now of the incubus of her empire and ready to become internationally powerful on the strength of active thought and commerce...
...In exercising these rights we would probably be in a better position to counteract a little of Moslem frenzy than we should be if left to act without any program whatever...
...Ever 620 THE COMMONWEAL April 14, 1926 since the action which President Wilson initiated, at the "moral" suggestion of Mr...
...Brauns, who has survived nine changes of the government, is a Rhineland priest whose knowledge of economic affairs was gained by long years of intimate contact with life in factory towns...
...Wenceslao Oliveres became the recipient of enthusiastic cheers from his audience, who are working to establish in their country a university of the North American type...
...Manning, Episcopal bishop of New York City, recently devoted to the theme...
...It was all an immense downpour of slush...
...GrERALD CHAPMAN dangling at the end of a prison rope would not be a pleasant spectacle...
...The treaty does stipulate that certain American rights shall be respected by Constantinople, although it does not grant everything which Mr...
...But to listen attentively and editorially to one —as the New York Times, for instance, does—and to relegate the other to news comment buried amid several dozen columns, is more than an error in logic...
...1 HE bishops are, however, to be commended upon the stand taken...
...The only agency which can bring notable pressure to bear upon the Turk is the League of Nations...
...Western civilization hjas long since displayed abysmal moral weakness in its failure to carry on the age-old task of defending Christian society in the Near East against Moslem barbarism...
...Kellogg proceeds to peer about for spooks and scent intrigue in the wind...
...IT is sure that there is more than a casual relation between the trend of population figures and this increase in the number of mental patients...
...No doubt this change is responsible for numberless unobserved cases of partial debility—for states of mind which are like fertile areas for the crop of crime, for the fostering of sudden bloodthirsty impulses, and above all for the deadening of the moral sense...
...Senator Reed's suggestion, that by basing the duty on pig iron upon the cost of producing milling iron ore in the North, producers in Birmingham, Alabama, might be made "rich beyond the dreams of avarice," may be purposely rhetorical...
...His greatest achievement has been, possibly, the organization of industrial conciliation—the establishment of practical means for bringing strikes and lockouts to a halt by arbitration...
...The harrowing conditions which have been laid before the American public during the last decade, by the Society for Near East Relief, are almost incredibly ghastly...
...Dennis, who would have representative rather than hand-picked costs taken into account when the amount of duty is decided upon...
...1 HE death of Dr...
...But it has never been a secret that behind the tariff, which is levied for the protection of American industry and to maintain the high standard of living which is America's boast, greed may reap a rich harvest by the simple process of depressing wages, or worsening the quality of goods against which the public have not the redress of free imports...
...We are touched by physical infirmities...
...and the conservative East, though not yet ready to challenge this record, is learning fast...
...The present scientific day is a critical one for the intellectual values of the nineteenth century...
...It must become immediately apparent how deeply society is indebted to persons like Chapman for going to the dogs and getting themselves hanged...
...But—the sceptical will ask themselves, not wholly convinced—may one conclude that some Spaniards are building air castles in the United States...
...Fehrenbach was a man of great personal power who, though hampered by the circumstances of the time from carrying out fully his social mission, brought to the culture which he shared a magnanimous courage and cordiality...
...With a guilty conscience, the New York World washed its hands under cover of unctuous words from Dr...
...We think all of this energy is very useful...
...Born into this world with a clean ancestry to look back upon, with an equipment for meeting the tasks of life which was far above the average, with every encouragement to aid in discovering the peace of morals and religion, Chapman squandered all his soul's treasure until he had nothing to give society excepting the life which it felt in duty bound to take...
...All social workers are unanimous in feeling that collapses of mental energy are responsible for much that borders on lawbreaking and unsocial conduct...
...Perhaps the publication of the Census Bureau's findings will draw a salutary attention to this important problem...
...The question is of supreme significance in an era when urban conditions are so largely determinant of human welfare...
...Constantin Fehrenbach, the former German chancellor, has robbed his country of far more than a marked political talent...
...Why, then, should not the Catholic protest against Mexican outrage merit just as much attention as the Episcopal protest against the treatment of Armenia ? To urge both is not to discountenance either...
...If we are to build up a cultural ideal, we must become 'Americanized' Vather than 'Europeanized.' The new continent received and has preserved the essence of our century-old culture...
...Since 1880, the number of those classified as insane has increased by 160 per 100,000...
...The plain truth is that Turkey, as a European power, is not very likely to be influenced by the hostility of American moral opinion...
...And though these years of financial depression have led to much industrial strife in Germany, Dr...
...But he could find consolation also in the sympathetic respect of millions of his countrymen who remembered the integrity of his life and the simplicity of character and of faith which he had retained from his humble youth in a Baden town...
...Hughes tried to obtain during the course of negotiations at Lausanne...
...The appalling simplicity with which the criminal can carry on his profession is, indeed, the most dangerous aspect of the present situation...
...Europe is exhausted...
...The only root and branch cure, however, is to reduce the number of those who apply to the cut-throat employment agency...
...Departments for Hispano-American studies are quite the vogue, and the members of the confederation, led by their professors, are planning to inaugurate a system of exchange professorships and affiliated confederations...
...Among the motives which underlie this venture, is the desire to cement the bonds of intellectual friendship between Spain and the countries it once colonized in the new world...
...It is based not merely upon blindness to what is actually modern diplomacy, but upon indifference to any diplomacy whatsoever...
...Modern diplomacy has for its chief aim the establishment of relations which will guarantee as far as possible the peaceful conduct of business...
...But under it there lives and thrives a venom of print which we can analyze accurately when we remember this—not even Gerald Chapman, with the sins of a lifetime on his soul, wished to leave a murderer's name which might kindle the fancy of those in whom the lingering animal seeks about for a thrilling road of blood...
...JVlORE suggestive than the report of the inspectors is the frank admission of the Reverend Michael Quinlan, S.J., rector of Belvedere College, Dublin, that he has been forced to suspend the classes in which mathematics, history, etc., were taught in Erse, for the simple reason that the students concentrated on the language and paid little heed to the matter it was being used to convey...
...Fehrenbach, adhering to the conciliatory Centrist policy inaugurated by such men as Erzberger, failed to carry his point largely because of the antagonism from ultra-conservative groups in his own country...
...Perhaps the action of the pupils in eating the jam and leaving the powder was in the nature of a protest...
...Fehrenbach as he lay dying...
...we do not hesitate to admit that the sufferer from tuberculosis or senile debility is entitled to assistance and even support...
...From my own contact with the young, and from the judgment of teachers and others intimately associated with them," he said, "I am convinced that our young men and women of today are better prepared to meet the tests of life than the generation they have followed, and will do their part better than we have done ours...
...Obviously, the better coordinated and equipped the watch-dogs of the law are, the more obstacles will be thrown across the path of crime...
...These meetings, it will be remembered, marked the beginning of an effort by the Reich to deal with its vanquishers on an equal footing...
...but the work yet to be done is vast and insufficiently aided...
...If all our genuinely honest religious and educational enterprise had wholly failed to compete with the jazz band, we could only conclude that the gates of darkness are commensurate with the earth...
...and we have listened to a constant narrative of the acts of barbarism committed by a government quite as deaf to charity and truth, quite as reprehensibly cruel in its treatment of established Christianity, as that of Turkey...
...Like his predecessor from the Centre party in the same high office— Count von Herding—Dr...
...Really excellent opportunity for the right type of citizen...
...1 HE picturesque details which have flavored news accounts subsequent to the capture of Whittemore, the bandit and murderer, make the peaceful wonder if they may not wake up some morning to find the following advertisement flaunted across a page: "Wanted: healthy, aggressive young men, preferably with a college education, for membership in a highly lucrative crime-gang...
...To hold the victims responsible would be irrational and unjust...
...and that should have implied, at least as far as the State Department was concerned, a new fact in the history of our international relations...
...Otherwise, Priscilla would bear the marks of the lash on her dainty body, and the modern David Copperfield would welcome his Agnes with a blackthorn...
...But any suspicion that it is being maintained to make the rich automatically richer, or to spoon-feed uneconomic industries into prosperity, should be countered at once, and no suggestion seems more practical than that of Mr...
...Perhaps April 14, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 621 society can accomplish something through its legal and police organizations...
...The change from the open, quiet circumstances of country living to the crowded, busy, heartless environment of the factory town, brings with it an appalling toll of insanity, especially among those who, at the close of middle age, succumb to worries because they can no longer meet the physical exactions of their toil...
...and possibly, if in a spirit of friendly cooperation, we proceeded to urge the cause of eastern Christian minorities at Geneva, something definite could be accomplished there...
...It cowers in fear before the grumbling Middle-West which, led on by those who are indigenous on principle, threatens to change its vote if there is too much "international nonsense" in the air...
...Suppressed tendencies of law-abiding citizens would have to take other bypaths to relief...
...All of which is not immediately verifiable but which has in its favor an accumulated evidence that challenges respect...
...In delivering this educational dynamite to the recent congress of the Confederation of Catholic Students, Dr...
...Such an endeavor as that outlined by the recent Religious Survey issued by the University of Notre Dame is not only a newly instituted and increasingly effective means for guiding young men in the proper way, but its excellent results will astonish anybody who recalls how the same work was done ten years ago...
...In reply it may be urged that a mere refusal to deal with Turkey would do neither us nor the Christian minorities any good...
...People are beginning to take it for granted that neither bobbed hair nor the saxophone was the ultimate distinguishing characteristic of perverse Babylonian architecture...
...If the Free State authorities are really in earnest in desiring the revival of Gaelic as a popular language, some attention to the means by which the tongue of their Welsh cousins has been revived and kept alive through its association with the leisure of the people—eisteddfods, choral societies, and vernacular prayer and preaching—might not be amiss...
...If the newspapers were to stop printing crime news," declared this fountain of modern wisdom, "it would be harmful...
...Brauns, is also symbolic of the valuable social work which the Catholic organizations of central Europe have been accomplishing...
...WE are so accustomed to view the American system of higher education with some disrespect that it is quite like the shock of an unexpected cold "immersing" to pick up the morning paper and read this declaration by the Spanish director-general of higher education: "We must turn to North America...
...A. A. Brill, the translator of Freud...
...L-/AST week's verbatim report in the United States Daily, of the hearings before the Select Committee of the Senate which is examining the ramifications and gyrations of that very nimble unit in our national prosperity, the tariff, deserves more from public attention than, it is to be feared, it will receive...
...1 HE visit to England of the German minister of labor, Dr...
...Leisure has borne fruit...
...Today the wisdom of this course is apparent...
...CHOOL inspectors are a prosaic and unimaginative clan, though Matthew Arnold once helped to shed lustre upon the body, and the almost unanimous report of the inspectors for primary schools in southern Ireland, who think the revival of the old Gaelic tongue is going too far and too fast, need not depress us into a fear that so interesting an experiment is threatened with failure...
...The purposes for which the tariff were designed are, ostensibly, so good, that to attack it, root and branch, is a ticklish matter...
...Through its various forms of social endeavor it can, if properly assisted, induce the inquiring young man to knock at another door than the one which housed the ambitious Whittemore from the world...
...The bishops, dwelling on the horrible accounts of what has been happening in Armenia and other Christian territories of the Near East, declared that the ratification of the treaty would mean closing an eye to "acts which are abhorrent to all who love justice and righteousness...
...1 HE spirit of youth, indeed, continues to be an affair variously qualified as "flaming," "serious," and "questing...
...But it should also occur to the minds of those who are stirred to righteous wrath by Turkish fury that the Catholic protest against similar conditions in Mexico is at least equally reasonable...
...WEEK BY WEEK THE attitude taken by the administration in de-*¦ dining to accept the invitation to attend a League of Nations parley concerning the reservations appended by the Senate to its permission of adherence to the World Court, can be explained in only one way...
...for, were American interests dependent upon statesmanship for their advancement, the progress would be at the same rate as that achieved by the old gentleman who, on a languid afternoon, tried to wish himself across the street...
...Brauns's fairness to both parties engaged in production has gained for him the profound respect of even the violently radical elements...
...Premising its remarks with a reference to the fact that between the years 1910 and 1920, the city population of the United States increased at a percentage five times as great as that which marked the growth of the rural population, the Census Bureau concludes: "This marked change in the environment of a large part of the citizenry has been a significant factor in the increase of mental diseases shown by the reports gathered...
...and we may take from it the spirit of initiative, energy, optimism and economic organization—in a word, the spirit of youth...
...The man himself was nothing more than a grim illustration of the demon's tragical triumph over human nature...
...Here the Church is surely the most effective force...
...But though this speculation about the hand which guides Mr...
...Convalescence, in some respects, is very like childhood...
...IN this connection it may be observed that the investigation of mental diseases in the United States, recently completed by the Federal Census Bureau, is of great social importance...
...They would demand brutality in the prize ring—blood, suffering...
...He is simply a fellow who "knew the ropes...
...And this would not be merely obscurantist folly, but simply and obviously a mistake...
...But when the organization with which we are dealing, with which we knew all along that we were going to deal, proposes a practical means for disposing of certain difficulties of detail created by reservations stipulated by us, Mr...
...The celebrated Whittemore, who, with his confederates, ignored the rights of life and private property with marvelous thoroughness, is not a master-mind...
...But when his term as chancellor had ended, Dr...
...Kellogg may be interesting psychologically, it merely reinforces the impression that our foreign policy is sterile and provincial...
...In France, M. Frangois Mauriac has written a book about it, in which passages of rare enthusiasm alternate with pages of a somewhat disillusioned psychology...
...The German young people of both sexes have banded themselves together under rules which must make them either horrible prigs or superior persons—an alternative which creates both wrath and hilarity in those of crabbed age...
...1 HE respect with which the Senate listened to the protest of more than a hundred bishops of the American Episcopal Church against ratifying the treaty with Turkey is an indication of the importance which attaches to moral and religious arguments in the conduct of government...
...Washington is not afraid of the sinister diplomacy of even so formidable a person as M. Paul Boncour...
...Peter F. Dennis, of Maryland and of the United States Department of Commerce, amounts to a charge that the costs of production on which the tariff is, presumably, based, are obtained in haphazard fashion or are guided by interests that aim at securing the maximum duty by presenting cases where these costs are swollen by local circumstances...
...Commission basis only...
...It was his lot to represent the German government on two difficult and unsuccessful occasions—at the negotiations with the Allies at Spa, and at the London Conference of 1921...
...John Lind, we have welcomed refugees from across the border whose only offense was that they served religion...
...Fortunately enough, youth in America seems to have outgrown the period when it was desperately written about and 622 THE COMMONWEAL April 14, 1926 analyzed...
...What excuse does such a career offer for the garish accounts, the oozing sentimentality, and the profuse picturesqueness with which even the best papers besmeared themselves on his account...
...But what is done with those who are intellectually or temperamentally defective...
...But suffering as we do from the practical results of their misfortune, no attempt at cure or prevention should be left untried...
...Briefly put, the evidence of Mr...
...It is nothing less than discourteousness which has grown out of a mistaken impression of values...
...And because it is one of the most practical of these forms of social endeavor, the boy-guidance movement sponsored by Brother Barnabas is worthy of especial attention just now...
...The only difference is that the Rio Grande lies closer at hand than the Straits of Bosphorus...
...A wise and experienced spiritual director once declared that the most dangerous confusion of morals is that which results from treating without due charitableness the victims of mental illness...
...We have had, during the past twenty years, more time to study the problems of youth and more help toward solving them...
...The alternative to the Geneva parley concerning American reservations can only be a dickering with the various nations individually, with possible disagreements and discourtesies in number...
...The purpose of his visit to England is to take part in the International Conference on Hours of Labor, now sitting under the chairmanship of the British minister of labor, and to pave the way for the ratification of the eight-hour day agreement adopted at a previous Washington conference...
Vol. 3 • April 1926 • No. 23
