Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK XX7HILE the general philosophy of President * * Coolidge's address to the New York Chamber of Commerce was not startlingly novel, it found expression in a pretty definite...
...Why...
...The reason underlying the new glozes becomes apparent when they are examined...
...Indeed, what more could any reputable man desire...
...An aging Virgil wishes to burn his work after twenty years, while a little girl can hardly wait to get hers off the typewriter...
...Like every great moment in the story of human courage, this one ticked out its sixty anxious seconds to the last...
...If the Court is a contribution merely to the "enlightening processes," why not send over halfa-dozen professors and so avoid a great deal of bothersome argument...
...OAVE you a little fairy in your home...
...If {he rich favored it," asks Dr...
...Fate, which hangs on a hair, was kind...
...and on the mere facts it quotes, the Philadelphia Standard and Times (which goes so far as to term the incident an "indecency" and "amazing impudence") calls for a public reply...
...Reisner's remarkable theory...
...The word 'priest' is changed into 'angel.' The sacred chalice becomes 'the wine-cup.' " And so on...
...Meanwhile the public is not convinced that a way out of the situation cannot be found...
...They fought on a narrow margin, while the men in the engine-room gasped and their officers staggered through the heat...
...and that a foreword to the present edition admits changes made to enhance the dramatic possibilities of the play...
...1F pride in achievement has anything to do with keeping ships on the sea, America should rise to the occasion after the burning of the Lenape...
...A whole generation of playgoers thrilled at her highly emotional portrayals of Camille, Miss Multon and Jane Eyre...
...translators are traitors, says an old Italian proverb widely quoted...
...her native city, Toronto, Canada, where she was born in 1849...
...Apparently, they are no nearer to an agreement, though with the passing of time it has become somewhat easier to sum up the situation...
...John Farrar remarked, with the bluff directness of the younger generation, "I read her poetry, and I can say it's fine...
...Longmans, Green and Company, seems a case in point...
...Then learn to regard her as a literary possibility...
...1 HERE is a sombre dignity in the rites with which England has mourned the passing of the Dowager Queen Alexandra...
...Since the Black Death ravaged Europe, and, incidentally, paved the way to the Reformation by the havoc it wrought among priests and religious, there has been no parallel to this...
...IT seems to be the rule these days that a new ancient skull—if the term "new" may be applied to something which, in the nature of things can hardly be very fresh—should be turned up for us every month at least, and gravely assigned its place in the evolutionary ladder by some leading craniologist...
...Considering that neanderthal man believed in a future life, and quite possibly said his prayers, that he was a good workman and had a head as large or larger than ours, it is rather a slur upon his character to be looked upon (per contra) as homo insipiens...
...It was just barely done...
...He believed that over and above the practical effect, "which might be somewhat small," there would be ua sentimental effect which would be tremendous...
...There has been considerable speculation about the matter, to which we can add nothing of value...
...But obviously Mr...
...But difficult though it may be to define poetry, that portion of it which is treasured for long seems to have garnered wisdom and ripe emotion for its essence...
...America never witnessed anything at all equivalent until the arrival here of Eleanora Duse...
...No doubt the Senate will pass the measure, if it comes up for vote, only after heated discussion, and one may reasonably expect that still other reservations than those specified by the Harding-Hughes proposal will figure in any law that shall arrange for adherence by the United States to the World Court...
...Reisner, with all the air of propounding the unanswerable, "why do they guzzle so commonly now?n The endless possibilities of this line of reasoning in allaying popular discontent will appeal to everyone...
...Still more amazing in its effrontery is an evident desire to meet Protestant susceptibilities by eliminating the Mother of Sorrows altogether...
...W HAT the reader will get in fact and what the dramatist will produce, if the new edition be followed, is not Monsignor Benson's devout and reverent recreation of the old devotional Passion Play, but a Protestant edition that has been denatured to suit the palate that cannot savor Catholic meat, but is ready enough, as witness the books upon Christ's life and death that are pouring from the press, to exploit the dramatic possibilities of the Gospel story, softened by taking out all its dogmatic implications...
...The English, who accepted her from a foreign court quite as they would have accepted any other woman, a little curiously, have parted with her sadly, mindful of the charity which gives a crown its most radiant splendor and of the human pain that makes all classes kin...
...Yet it is apparent once again that the lure of danger and great things to be done is on the high seas, where men may go if they relish battle, with bright dreams of the honor which adds new lustre to the flag they follow...
...General inoculation, having regard to the territory to be covered and the stupidity, fatalism and ignorance of so many backward races and people, seems almost impossible...
...After examination, Professor Smith, a noted authority in such matters, declares that while it reveals characteristics which closely resemble those oi neanderthaloid man, it is nevertheless clearly a skull belonging to the type usually called homo sapiens...
...Gas masks for everyone were suggested at the height of the panic, and something of the sort was worn in hospitals, but it is not easy to contemplate a world entirely gas-masked...
...Her real name was Morrison...
...Obviously, granting sufficient technical mastery, childhood is in possession of some essential poetic gifts...
...The figure arrived at—20,000,000—is positively staggering...
...is a question which once again touches upon poetry...
...In iany case, this will serve to introduce the Reverend Christian F. Reisner, of the Chelsea Methodist Episcopal Church, Broadway, New York, who, in his sermon a Sunday or two ago, shattered the theory, held by a good many unregenerate and unslaked workers that the employing classes had anything to do with prohibition...
...Father Curran, who knows the situation through and through and who aided Roosevelt in 1902, advocates no such legislative measure...
...that those who care for it, have Monsignor Benson's early edition at their service...
...In other werds, Father Curran considers the strike wholly an industrial problem to be settled by the parties at issue...
...An oversight ? Possibly...
...If we are to judge by his views on life beyond the tumulus, the neanderthaloid man was, at any rate, not this sort of an insipiens...
...and crews are not always reliable in an emergency...
...Still more disquieting is an apprehension, only too well founded, that the visitation may be repeated, and that medical science has as yet found no positive specific, reliable in all cases, with which to combat it on the sweeping scale called for by the danger...
...As Mr...
...T RADUTTORE—tradittore...
...Clara Morris struggled for years with ill-health, and in later years became totally blind...
...It has every advantage as a social solvent, and only one drawback...
...WEEK BY WEEK XX7HILE the general philosophy of President * * Coolidge's address to the New York Chamber of Commerce was not startlingly novel, it found expression in a pretty definite statement of the government's attitude toward foreign affairs...
...I can conceive of nothing that we could do," he added, "which involves assuming so few obligations on our part, that would be likely to prove of so much value to the world...
...Queen Alexandra cannot always have been happy, but she was truly good...
...Coolidge spoke with one ear intent upon the approaching congressional debate, in which will be made manifest whatever opposition to American cooperation with Europe is still alive...
...and while 88 THE COMMONWEAL December 2, 1925 the public waits, it will come more and more to feel for the miner, who suffers as the wealthy are never in any danger of suffering, and whose privations, even when self-imposed, compel sympathy...
...We believe there might well have been such action, in so far as seizure and distribution of available stocks was concerned, but anything like federal management would admittedly be a nostrum...
...The horror of the sea's immensity comes home fiercely when the two elements snarl at each other in the fury of a battle to the death...
...Could anyone hope to be more fanciful than a child...
...I HE tenor of this declaration is relatively peculiar...
...The operators counter Father Curran's stand on the wage controversy by declaring that any increase in the price would push the public still farther towards the use of substitute fuels...
...He finds that the chief point at issue is an increase of miners' wages, and adds —"I am in favor of putting a little more upon the retail price of coal to cover the increase in pay...
...If she says she wrote it—that's enough for me...
...JLVEN though these statements cannot be denied, it is quite clear that the advance in price has been due to expensive transportation and distribution costs rather than to wages...
...A lesson is written on her tomb, of course—the lesson which Jeremy Taylor read from all princely monuments—"where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more: an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to dying like men...
...There is no reason, in all fairness, why the miner should be penalized so that the workers in associate industries may profit...
...In the second place, the injustice is December 2, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL committed against a dead author, who is not there to protest for himself, and whose whole life and writings prove that the sort of conformity with the worldly spirit and commercial expediency of which this new version of his play is a glaring example was, of all things on earth, the most repugnant to his singular character—uncompromising almost to intransigence...
...The little girl sent tripping off to school may hide in her bosom a gift that will make her another Nathalia Crane...
...The rescuing ships gathered their human cargo from the shell of a floating volcano, with all the dramatic verve of firemen saving people in upper windows of a house afire...
...But we have some difficulty in persuading ourselves that an enterprise which is not practical nor dedicated to the settlement of concrete tasks can ever afford great leverage for our "enormous influences...
...and at the end only an accidental casualty robbed the victory of a bloodless record...
...Such a reply, if made, will evade the real injustice against which the Philadelphia paper utters its timely protest...
...lines of thought are so often leading us nowhere these days that anyone who opens up a new one deserves at least a wqrd .of recognition...
...and her girlhood and education belong to Cleveland, Ohio...
...The edition of Monsignor Hugh Benson's Upper Room, recently issued by Messrs...
...A sterling crew fought for the saving hours which would permit beaching the ship in quiet waters, so that the risk of life-boat rescue would be eliminated as far as possible...
...If the operators really are worried about the future of their industry, they should make up their minds that the periodical crippling of their business by labor strife must cease...
...Even the anthologies treasure no sprig of rosemary from their hands...
...And their good faith will be evident when they begin to display an interest, first in the findings of the Federal Coal Commission, and secondly in the general principles of cooperative production which have been sponsored by American labor as a whole...
...The present strike has taught more people the use of substitute fuels than would have been learned about them otherwise in a half century...
...We, across whose national life the pathos of a reigning caste throws no similar shadow, read of the hush, the tolling of great bells and the omnipresent mourning as if these things were being done in a world remote in time and place, where the old "mentem mortalia tangunt" of the poet is chanted with regal pomp under arches dim in purple gloom...
...Some prophylactic is badly needed, and it is devoutly to be hoped that the devotees of research who are at work in our hospitals and laboratories will have discovered it before another influenza epidemic arrives...
...I feel that the American people would be willing to pay for this increase...
...But there is, perhaps, a still more abiding note in the symbol of regal life and death, which we Americans may venerate without coveting it for ourselves...
...Miss Morris was always a highly creditable member of her profession : she had enjoyed the fine training of Augustin Daly, and derived from that master of stagecraft the remarkable qualities of naturalness, simplicity and perfect enunciation that are so conspicuously lacking in our theatre of today...
...Coolidge, frugal of mind, seems to regard the Court as something which will pay very large dividends upon a small investment...
...It is the note of humanity which a cherished prince or princess brings into the business of government, declaring by their very joys and sorrows that sovereignty is not a device nor a machine, but the interweaving of human hearts in a great scheme for the common glory...
...everything is the body of Nathalia's imagination...
...The Eucharist is no longer the Body of Christ, it is 'a pledge.' The primacy of Peter is carefully eliminated...
...There are some who look for an explanation in the subconscious, while others have been rereading Trilby with scientific attention...
...Why does the world forget its child poets so very quickly...
...there were hundreds of inexperienced passengers on board...
...But, indeed, one might go on indefinitely multiplying the implications of Dr...
...In game-law ridden England, for instance, it might very reasonably be objected that the man-traps and trespass boards set across pheasant preserves were not likely to have been set there at the order of the rich, who are notoriously fond of a bit of shooting themselves...
...1 HE death toll of the great influenza epidemic which followed the Armistice is vaguely known to have been very heavy, but figures which have only just been published, and which are based on researches which guarantee at least comparative accuracy, reveal the fact that it was far heavier than was popularly supposed...
...Dixit insipiens in corde suo, non est Deus...
...AFTER three months of continued inactivity in the anthracite fields, the public is once more calling for federal action...
...Because it would prove that our "enormous influences" supported "the enlightening processes of civilization...
...It was quiet and dark when flames were detected in the hold...
...They aver that in some districts nearly half of their trade has already been lost due to the high market figure of anthracite...
...But Captain Devereaux was master, not only of himself but of everyone on board...
...But it was done, without hysterics or selfishness...
...Nor are anti-bacillic gases such as chlorine of much more avail...
...They tiptoe out, bow, and are gone...
...Apparently it interests him because it is "safe...
...One strange question, however, obtrudes itself...
...Could even a grey poet declare that his sense of rhythm is as spontaneous as it was when first he learned to know the wings of language...
...Perhaps not many men would like to risk a chance to resemble Jim Bludso as nearly as engineer Gaudet did...
...In spite of the dead author's express words in his prologue that his play is "most of all of Mary," the Virgin Mother "only appears once in the tableau at the end of the last act...
...Briefly recapitulated, the charge of the Philadelphia organ is that out of 460 lines in the new edition, 180 are not Benson's at all—that in 280 lines, alterations have been made involving entire phrases—in a word that "the play is not merely rewritten: it is completely changed...
...In the first place, probably not one in a hundred readers (even Catholic readers) will have any idea how vital the changes are...
...The judgment may be sound, but we dislike its implication...
...Again, the hard coal market suffers from nothing so much as from periods of inactivity...
...Nathalia---aged twelve, as everybody must know by this time—sits at the typewriter and waits until words come that transfigure the family circle, and make even the "three-cornered lot" Shakespearean...
...The answer will probably be made, and with considerable plausibility, that by so doing a wider public is reached...
...Her novels and notably her Stage Confidences, published in 1902, give the highly interesting story of a long life devoted to an art which, to our sorrow, seems to have lost its greater figures and fallen into a temporary decline...
...Which is that it is sheer nonsense...
...Cuts in wages, which are proposed from time to time even in prosperous America, will have a good deal of the sting taken out of them once it is shown that they cannot possibly be the work of directors whose personal preference is for more instead of less money year by year...
...uMindful of our determination to avoid all interference in the political affairs which do not corlcern us, of other nations, I can think of no more reassuring action than the declaration of America that it will whole-heartedly join with others in the support of the tribunal for the administration of international justice which they have created," the President asserted...
...The well known firm of Lloyds is erecting new offices in London, and in course of digging the foundations a considerable portion of a human skull was found...
...Whether so sweeping a charge can be justly extended to editors must depend on the merits of specific cases, but there is only too much reason to fear that its extension to cover them could be justified...
...Books, pictures, neighbors, meals...
...American adherence to the Permanent Court of International Justice was recommended and endorsed...
...She writes them herself—or she doesn't write them herself...
...WlTH the passing away of Clara Morris, the American stage loses one of the figures that added lustre to its annals during the distinguished period of great theatrical stars, lasting from 1870 to 1890...
Vol. 3 • December 1925 • No. 4
