Week by Week
ates himself in theory with the American Federation of Labor which is now definitely pledged to a wagescale based on labor's share in production. In short, the modern policy of economic reform...
...No one, in the new sphere of influence to which his influence and activities will probably be transferred, will think any the less of the Reverend Dr...
...In spite of a bitter primary campaign, during which the chieftains of Democracy in the metropolis called each other names with the most evident relish and threatened to bring even Tammany down upon themselves, a record vote on Election Day completely buried the Republican machine...
...But Doctor Wirth is absolutely right in thinking that this country will not bind itself to abiding political and economic agreements with European nations, that it will not abandon its policy of aloofness from international federation until it is reasonably sure that the floods of war-fed lava have hardened sufficiently to make roads of peace more reliable...
...It is something which alienates and antagonizes still further a largely deChristianized community...
...People are living in holes in the wall: the social graces of the home have become the manners of the restaurant and the public dancing hall...
...He wishes "to allow men access to different points of view and to secure their adherence to conclusions on the basis of their own thinking...
...there are two sides to every fight...
...he feels that the collegebred ought not to be placed at a disadvantage with regard to the young in industrial plants who "swarm out to listen to the earnest presentation of all sorts of wild social theories...
...Hoover and for substantial bank-accounts...
...WEEK BY WEEK were days when people used to talk earnestly about Socialism and wonder if "the party of protest" might succeed in establishing itself federally...
...During the last two elections in New York, the vote cast for the Socialist candidates stood at the spare total of 45,000—a total which is of such meagre importance electorally that only the firmest kind of political allegiance could induce a citizen to affiliate himself with it...
...In any case, Catholics, sick at heart and disgusted at the coarse abuse and misrepresentation that greet them from quarters where their faith and practice are felt as utterly alien, cannot but welcome such a congress as that just held at New Haven with its reverent treatment of things they hold too dear to grudge to others who are in good faith...
...Can we suggest such a scheme to Americans ? The foundation of the state is civil allegiance...
...It will afford them support from within...
...It is simply this: many are convinced that the proposed treaties merely guarantee a status quo which itself was one of the great issues at Locarno...
...In view of the new interest in lay apostolate to which The Commonweal is proud to have given one voice the more, and the growing consciousness, in this country no less than in France, that the attack on Christian principles, by reason of its vjry extension and insidiousness, calls for new weapons and an intensive watchfulness, the words of the French Cardinal are worth laying to heart by American Catholics, due heed being paid to the different circumstances in the two countries...
...There must be no truce or armistice with modernism, no agreeing to a compromise that might even result in the Creeds becoming merely an "alternative use" in the liturgy of the English Church...
...r ATE tried to conceal him by naming him Smith," may be just as true now as it ever was...
...ONE of the encouraging things about education is the amount of attention it is getting from the press of the country...
...The Klan is an experiment of some years' standing...
...One is forced to concede, however reluctantly, that the stride of the formidable three across the greensward of their classic bowls is without the flexible vigor which inflates scores...
...W E referred recently to the very striking pilgrimages to Rome by working-class federations and fraternities which have been taking place during the past few months, and to the Supreme Pontiff's appreciation of all they signify...
...And yet we shall risk the statement that, compared with a football aggregation of the first water, Harvard elevens of the past few seasons have been noteworthy chiefly for their artistic temperaments...
...Kirk, of Baltimore, because he admits, while making up his mind whether to accept or refuse a call to a New York pastorate, that "New York is the only city in the world which frightens him...
...But Mr...
...But if the status quo is not itself peace, then the guarantee of its permanence is something worse than war—it is the legalizing of an unendurable compromise between peace and war, during which those who have political power deprive the politically weak not merely of life but also of rights and honor...
...It was a Smith victory...
...Doubtless also New York proudly had its eye on its possible Democratic candidate for the President's office...
...Much was said before the casting of ballots took place, and much was poorly said...
...The citizens of Detroit and elsewhere have given a verdict which, though it is probably not final, should impress sundry organizers as rather tart...
...It is only natural that mighty Harvard should leap to the fore once again, November 18, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 33 tugging at her crimson skirts her sisters of the formidable three...
...about the modern ideals...
...Although the position in France and in this country differs very widely, his words refer to an ideal of higher Catholic education that cannot too often be stated...
...and the very statistics of university life keep the telephone girls busy all Saturday afternoon and night...
...And of course you will know exactly what to do with both faculty and clamorous student body, in an age when even children have ideas of their own about the conduct of life...
...They are manifestly sincere and they are also manifestly out of date...
...They take the benediction of a holy, learned and spiritual head of a vast organization outside of which they stand, and listen in hushed bewilderment like the birds around some vine-clad cathedral where within there is chanting of the vast Misereres, the superb Te Deums and the eternal Kyries of a world ancient, modern and crowned with a deathless future...
...the standard is neither a tradition nor a doctrine but simply the individual will to embrace one of innumerable conflicting tendencies...
...And the congress was opened by a "Mass," the ornate solemnity of which must awaken a wistful wonder how long the Anglo-Catholic and American Episcopal communions will be content to stand apart from frank submission to the Holy See, and to refuse the gesture that would be the greatest triumph the cause of Christ has achieved in 500 years...
...Both politics and prejudices change...
...But Doctor Wirth's position here was that of a man who wished to learn, rather than that of a man who wished to teach...
...What we make of collegiate athletics," runs the dictum, "becomes the ideal for school athletics, where our mistakes and our sins are copied, and where their evil consequences are multiplied by the enthusiasm of imitation...
...His words may have their effect in helping to tide Germany over a difficult situation which is not easily or often understood...
...What he says to his fellow-citizens will be respected, if only because they are now so deeply interested in the policy of the United States...
...1N the first place, the Klan—owing to the temporary strength of the Republican party—has affiliated itself in many places with Republicanism...
...His numerous contacts with important individuals and groups in this country naturally did much in the way of restoring a more amiable American attitude of mind toward the people of the former Reich...
...But if a "party of protest" established itself upon another basis and wrote a theoretic syllabus adapted to American life, it would live on as a useful spur to the correction of abuses and the promotion of the public weal...
...Another among the important events with which the Holy Year has been crowded was the audience granted by Pius XI to the second Scandinavian pilgrimage, consisting of 210 persons, of whom only thirty were Catholics...
...The skyscrapers, it may be admitted, are a bit frightening to one whose lines have been cast in sleepy Baltimore...
...Perhaps the United States has not given sufficient heed to this point of view...
...1 HESE words have an honest Johnsonian ring...
...The people are rather in an uninstructed state, and regard with a sort of frightened mystery the continued existence and multiplying powers of Catholicity throughout the world, while they recognize, some of them with deep concern, the decline of religious spirit, especially in their cities, and the apparent lack of efficiency on the part of the Lutheran clergy to stem the tide of unbelief, misguided radicalism, and even immorality that assails their communities...
...A seven-day bicycle race is, as the Brook Farmers would have said, "beyond our sphere of influence...
...Modernists may grow in strength and may claim their concession at some future day...
...nor the only one who finds that, apart from the "Lumen Christi" so exquisitely typified in the meek sanctuary lamp which some of his communion would restore, all is darkness and despair...
...but it has most effectively stirred to cynical laughter that ever-increasing group for whom, in a very literal and disappointing fashion, uthe peace of God passeth all understanding.11 Catholics, of course, oppose the hooded organization from motives of self-defense...
...What is the cause of the severe struggle now being waged in Germany over an accord which everybody seemed to welcome so heartily...
...the basis of religion is either firm— firm as a rock—or it is nothing whatever...
...There was, to begin with, an amazing amount of liturgical discussion, so much indeed, that a listener with the historic sense might have felt tempted to rub his eyes, and wonder whether the rifling of the monasteries and the great wave of Puritanism that followed it, had been an evil dream...
...The university becomes a place where people learn rather than a place where people are taught...
...Our prayers and sympathies go with the Anglo-Catholic body in its struggle, for none of us can feel indifferent to the triumph of Christianity over rationalism at altars and in pulpits that were once the Catholic altars and pulpits of undivided Western Christianism...
...JNOW surely it is easy to see what happens to the principle of education under such an hypothesis...
...The first conclusion at which he arrived is that American financial aid for the rehabilitation of Europe depends upon the establishment of peace...
...Even they must feel that the materials of prejudice, smoulder however much they may, cannot in this country be easily fanned into a conflagration...
...and no internecine war, even when the weapons of combat were bloodless, has ever brought prosperity to the combatants...
...The whole proposition of allowing complete freedom of speech," said President Hopkins of Dartmouth College in a recent address, "is based on a sincere belief that freedom of thought is practically impossible if freedom of speech is denied, and that therefore without freedom of speech education is impossible...
...The time seems ripe for respectable Protestants to realize that crass ignorance, militant rigorism and unfair methods are not going to bring into the churches those people who go fishing on Sunday and gaming on Saturday...
...Ralph Adams Cram's Walled Towns...
...Perhaps we have let our natural longing for peace overwhelm our perception of great difficulties which still obstruct the road that leads to it...
...1 HE good folk of Scandinavia who are not of Catholic faith, have done well to kneel for the blessing of him whom Catholics hail as their Holy Father...
...This does not, of course, detract from the real value of what the Harvard committee on the regulation of athletic sports is trying to do—the attempt to make football and other games pastimes for college men instead of spectacular battles between young men who—too frequently—are on the ragged edge of being in the employment of their alma maters...
...And thereby he affiliTHE COMMONWEAL November 18, 1925 iSEWS from many centres indicates that the Klan without its false-face is at least no more terrifying than the Klan of yore...
...Our own advice to the hesitant Dr...
...Crowded among the Italians, Portuguese, French, Germans and English, they must have had a realization of the universal character of their ancient church, which is hinted at in the lovely pre-Reformation ruins and restored cathedrals of their native lands...
...Many thousands of men and women walk its canyons daily with no shadow of them at all upon their souls...
...At present, however, many are inclined to ask if this party is not on the road to utter extinction...
...They will shake off a great melancholy from their hearts as they restore themselves, in bodies daily increasing, to the bosom of their Mother Church...
...On their courage and loyalty, strengthened by the grace of God—which will not be lacking to them—depends the Christianity of the Church of England in the future...
...You can't very well organize the proletariat when it is busy getting out of proletarianism...
...The chief result of Klannish activities in the United States is, not to drive Catholics or anybody else into a hiding-place, but to arouse the contempt of a great agnostic populace for certain forms of Christian belief...
...DOCTOR JOSEPH WIRTH, before returning to Berlin after an extensive tour of the United States, to which he had come as a delegate to the Congress of the Interparliamentary Union, expressed certain convictions which should prove of interest to his 34 THE COMMONWEAL November 18, 1925 countrymen...
...but in their more philosophic moments they see that the menace is not merely an affair of election days, or personal to their own body...
...They feel that their representatives were outwitted in accepting a condition imposed by the Treaty of Versailles and now to be legalized by compact...
...Even so, perhaps the fundamental reason for the Socialist decline must be sought elsewhere—in the gradually deepening American conviction that the remedy for social distress and inequality is to be sought in cooperative effort...
...It is conceded that the stranger who ventures within its gates must pass through a novitiate of bewilderment and numbness before rising to the heights of its inspiration...
...She expresses her "belief and hope that these three universities may set up a standard which will improve all college athletics," going on modestly to affirm the effect of good example upon the straying young...
...This is especially true because—again it was Hazlitt who said so—"there is a feeling of eternity in youth...
...He must be termed a "boss"—one of a growing number of modern "bosses" who, like Mayor Dever of Chicago or the late Senator La Follette in Wisconsin, have substituted honesty for meanness, and public service for private depredation...
...IMITATION is the sincerest flattery, but trepidation runs it a close second, if, indeed, it does not outrun it at times...
...He might remember also that the thing for which his profession stands is very much taller and very much stronger rooted than the tallest building men's hands have made and that the destiny of the still, small voice is to be heard through the veriest hubbub man's inventions can create...
...The fact is, that with the exception of some remnants of old Lutheran controversies, there is very little rancor left in the Scandinavian heart in the questions of religion...
...It was just another in a series of Smith victories...
...The words of Father Francis Woodlock, of the Society of Jesus, taken from a treatise on "modernism" just published in England, may serve as a mouthpiece for the general feeling of Catholics toward what is commonly called the "High Church" in England—and America no less...
...We are not a sports writer...
...There might well have been some doubt in the minds of average citizens as to precisely what the leading candidates proposed to do for the betterment of urban life, but they let themselves be guided by the one bright luminary on the horizon—their governor, whose record as a public servant is clear and whose name as a man is honored everywhere...
...A free university should group together, for common action, at least a proportion of these defenders of the truth...
...D EING a university president is a form of exercise which Hazlitt—who was fond of comparisons—might have likened to that acrobatic endeavor which strives to ride four horses at the same time...
...This is not a fact which we should be inclined to regret...
...The defense of the faith and of the Church," says Cardinal Dubois, uhas to be made on every ground on which they are attacked . . . Theologians, philosophers, exegesists, historians, jurists, scholars and writers today form a solid phalanx, which leaves no attack, from whatever quarter it proceeds, without an answer...
...And now 'peace1 is the guarantee of the status quo...
...His demands for further assistance from the federal government are in the direction of the development of cooperative marketing...
...It may be the business of later life to seek after righteousness and reality, but it is essentially the affair of youth to learn the use of mental and spiritual implements which the race has discovered...
...There is really no fun whatever in casting your ballot for something which has only a phantom existence, and whose function is confined to holding its little self erect whatever winds may blow...
...His message will have its weight...
...Dooley has reminded us that if they are called skyscrapers, they are not called so by the sky...
...Of course these are prosperous times which afford abundant opportunity for addresses by Mr...
...1 HE "Catholic Congress" of the American Episcopal Church, held in New Haven, offered much upon which we should like to speculate...
...J\ T present it is again the farmer who, because of a suddenly too ample and low priced corn crop, is hard pressed for money and security, and by the very nature of things he neither is, nor can be, a Socialist...
...it has converted no one and certainly it has convinced no one...
...In the second place, Governor Smith is respected and admired by many who normally might shy at naming a Catholic for the Chief Executive's position...
...ON the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Institute Catholique, which will be celebrated with due solemnity during the week beginning November 24, Monsignor Dubois, the CardinalArchbishops of Paris, has addressed to the faithful of the diocese some stirring words upon the progress made since the law of August n, 1875, put an end to the monopoly of university teaching held by the Sorbonne...
...Ivins is not the only one whom the spectacle of modern life, particularly in prosperous and impetuous America, appals...
...A KEY-NOTE speech by Bishop Ivins, of Milwaukee, struck a chord which is familiar to readers of Mr...
...SINCERE Anglo-Catholics who hold firmly to the dogmas of the creeds, and who cling to so very many Catholic truths and practices, have a hard task before them today...
...Kirk is to take a little heart and realize that a thing can be very big in scale without being at all big in conception...
...The fact that they exist and are appreciated is one of the finest possible proofs that our system of government is responsive to the public will for betterment, and that improvement of the general political conscience is not beyond reasonable hope...
...Their studies will be mutually enlightening, and their conclusions will gain in force and in public attention...
...The reverential and even devout attitude of these pilgrims from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, has left a most favorable impression upon the minds of the cosmopolitan society that makes up the city of Rome...
...In short, the modern policy of economic reform in this country is so markedly at odds with whatever is definite in the Marxian system, that there seems to be no room for the system...
...He is not at all interested in government operative control...
...The Governor is, perhaps, our best example of virtue which is also political virtue: he knows the ins and outs of organization, the ways and means for getting out a big vote, and the management of subordinate party leaders...
...A very great deal of profound thinking is compressed into remarks such as this—uWe are rapidly losing the very foundations of our civilization...
...As a president you are supposed to have much to say about the nation's business...
...about the civilizations of other lands and races...
...It is in a very real sense a stone which is rolled before the Tomb in the Garden and the Day of Resurrection...
...but certainly the present governor of New York has won a magnificent victory over destiny...
...The peoples of Europe/' says Dr...
...The former chancellor is noted for his conviction that the republic must endure, and that a sound social order must be the goal of the Centre party and the nation...
...and though no one is as yet able to assert that the party will risk following a leader who is also a Catholic, circumstances favor the disavowal of this ancient prejudice as circumstances never did before...
...Who, then, will blame the stalwart prexy if occasionally he seeks to tune in on the popular intellectual melodies...
...Perhaps the most interesting and surprising recommendation was one to the effect that the sanctuary lamp, that glowing core of worship and recollection before which it has been hard for even the unbeliever to stand unmoved, should be hung in Episcopal churches...
...1 HE existing opposition to the Locarno treaties, as evidenced both in the ministry and in the Reichstag, is a matter of grave concern in London and Paris...
...It is something that makes a jest of charity...
...The very special state of mind which New York is expected to induce in every man who lives among its toppling buildings, is by now an article of faith...
...Books and poems are written whose object is to convey the effect of its overpowering confusions...
...and, as may well be imagined by all who understand the deep, silent impressionability of Scandinavian people, their innate poetry and refinement of nature, the events of their visit to the glorious halls and churches of the Vatican will leave undying memories in their hearts...
...The whole scheme is based on moral and mental relativity which breeds doubt and cynicism and which prevents organized effort...
...He has now declared, shortly after regaining his native country, that help will come when the stability of the new republic is assured and its eagerness to abandon hopes of a military revenge has been proved...
...and the substructure of knowledge itself is definite scientific truth...
...Many thousands of lives in the Empire City are lived out to their end in a Thebaide which takes little account of the confusion which reigns around them...
...In short many Germans—even many in the unusually conciliatory Centre party—are convinced that their country cannot honorably agree to underwrite a political condition which is in itself unjust and ruinous...
...Carl Schmitt, "have been asked to call a great many things 'peace/ from the Holy Alliance to the League of Nations...
...Something very like nostalgia creeps into the mood of him who sees so many well-intentioned movements of reform as mere unstable and fluttering phantoms, which cannot be brought to perch anywhere in company with a solid principle...
...The stupidity of basing a political campaign upon religious and race prejudice receives a fresh illustration...
...Each Sunday brings its six-page report, generously illustrated, of the furious activity now going on about the campuses...
Vol. 3 • November 1925 • No. 2
