Week by Week

...The commissioner will have two novels tucked into their covers before it becomes necessary to think of that baffling problem, Johnnie's literary advice to Santa Claus...

...He would abolish the present boards of regents, along with the state superintendent of education, and substitute a single board, appointed by the governor, which would have control of all public educational institutions in the state...

...If official observers admitted, a year ago, that "no better example of cooperation to secure the elimination of national waste can be presented," most of us will experience some difficulty in deciding why the public and its government should not be eager to see that "cooperation" continued now...

...We here offer no apology for leaving aside many other social and economic events of the hour, in order to review in some detail what the Catholic women's movement has meant, and to take our share in the general act of thanksgiving...

...Your task is therefore a broad and far-reaching one...

...We feel sure that the resolution adopted will not fall to the ground...

...They are, to use a modest phrase, red-hot crook stuff...

...He recognizes the failure of the present system of incompetent regents and money-begging presidents...

...the meeting of the New York Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women...

...Officially this board of many functions now decrees the unfitness of one man because he is not in accord with the tenets of the church of Charles Wesley...

...Let a Ku Klux governor appoint a Ku Klux board—we know what would happen...

...The letters, in particular, coming as they do from many minds in many communions, are instructive...

...but fiction in the modern sense—as the vestibule to drama and scenarios, which are better calculated to halt the crime wave right where it begins...

...But whatever may be the causal connection between the anthracite strike and the threatened clash of interests in the bituminous fields, there seems no reason to doubt that Mr...

...When this institution was founded during the enthusiasm which followed the war, its future was contingent upon a line of policy that seemed firm but was really only too insubstantial...

...IT is we believe, an established physiological fact that a growth within a body can assume such proportions, become so invested with its arteries, veins, nervecells and general vital processes that extirpation is difficult without risking the death of the whole organism...

...or stand aside regretting their inability to take any proper part in social work at all...

...If they understood actual conditions, they would leap to their feet and give...

...and he adds that Doom expects its imperial guest to bring it fame as great as that of Weimar or Nuremberg...

...W E have no way of telling what the attitude of the administration will finally be, excepting that it promises to uphold the theory that federal intervention, even in the interests of a contract arrived at through collective bargaining and designed to aid the general welfare, is not provided for by law...

...WEEK BY WEEK ANYONE who wishes to grasp the importance of ^organized feminine action in our world and time need merely observe three events which were almost simultaneous: the fifth annual convention of the National Council of Catholic Women, held in Washington...

...Lewis is anxious to use the force of his entire organization to prevent the operation of soft-coal mines on a non-union basis, and to make the Jacksonville Agreement really binding...

...The labyrinth of failure and mistake which lies just on the outskirts of industrial life is no place for an amateur to try his skill in following a compass...

...In this place we desire to call particular attention to the effort launched by the National Council of Catholic Women to raise an adequate endowment fund for the School of Social Service at Washington...

...They palpitate with the emotions of an officer whose duties have taught him how valuable a deterrent from crime may be found in lurid pictures of criminal life...

...There are, of course, many ways of showing kindness towards the poor...

...Such centralization of power would render it easier than ever for politicians to make a shuttlecock of education...

...The Governor is at one with them in decrying the competitive spirit among state institutions...

...The false and pernicious notion that art is a mere luxury, pertaining to the rich, instead of a veritable necessity of life, constantly recurs...

...OARDLY more acceptable are the Governor's recommendations with regard to the secondary schools...

...The answer to these questions involved the honor of the Catholic body—the everlasting pledge of charity towards the wayward, the unfortunate, which cannot ever be forgotten while the sense of duty survives...

...The proportions which the doctrine of prohibition has assumed within the Methodist-Baptist bloc has by now something of this unpleasantly vital character...

...1 HE words which Cardinal Merry del Val addressed to the Roman congress are at once a resume and a resolution—"In a very especial way, women have the lofty mission to guard the integrity of the family, with the condition of which the fate of society is inextricably linked...

...on the contrary it would tend to intensify them...

...One can easily imagine the frantic effort of every institution to secure dominant representation on the single board upon whose favor and tolerance its very life would depend...

...One recalls the fact that when Cardinal Lavigerie, the bronzed n6 THE COMMONWEAL December 9, 1925 and masculine apostle of the desert, came back to France with the certain knowledge that slave-trading was still devastating Africa and with the resolve to blot it out, he ascended a fashionable pulpit and addressed fiery words to those assembled without moving them very sensibly...

...You must not look too confidently for immediate results, knowing as you do that while destruction is easy, the work of rebuilding is arduous and tiresome...

...attend other schools without the Catholic outlook and philosophy...

...Now when the secondary schools are beginning to try to restore it to him, it is sad that his very friends are so often the ones who intervene to stop the art of tardy justice...

...But though the time has been short, it seems in retrospect a veritable spring-time...

...JlLLSEWHERE we print several special articles dealing with important aspects of the organized work of the Catholic laywomen at home and abroad...

...A heavy fight is pending...

...A correspondent reports that the ex-Kaiser has once again been called upon to settle a controversy in art-appreciation...

...Crying aloud for separation of state and church," declares the writer, "these men themselves are laying the foundations for an ecclesiastical government of this country and the standardization or religion...

...1 HE blessings of a reputation are numerous...

...Surely the time has come to look for a way out, not in drastic legal expedients, but in some safe general policy which will guarantee the progress of cooperation, either through collective bargaining or through some other means...

...Enright, with the true modesty of an honored servant, has agreed to bothering himself with footlights— provided the reward of merit be not unworthy...

...but when they testify to a solidly organized program of action, sponsored by devoted thousands having common interests and serving common ideals, they are manifestations of spiritual power that cannot go unnoticed by the world...

...Lewis's statement and its insinuation...

...Richard Enright, will undertake to raise the level of American fiction...

...Of course he justified these statements by showing clearly what the school has accomplished up to date...

...But when he drew up from beneath the pulpit frame-work the mangled body of a martyred child, men and women rose from their seats, stunned and horrified, casting whatever of money or jewels they had about them at the feet of the prelate...

...According to all appearances, however, the President is not pleased with the tone of Mr...

...Lewis's letter to the President calls attention to a fact which is obvious and pertinent—the Jacksonville Agreement, arrived at in 1924 by representatives of the United Mine Workers and of the bituminous operators, has not been faithfully carried into effect...

...1 HE editorial comment that is appearing anent the Methodist Board of Temperance's anti-Smith manifesto must be making the leaders of the Methodist connection, sold to prohibition as its leading tenet, rather doubt the wisdom of their headlong course...

...and the public, placed at the mercy of the wrangling protagonists, discovers once again that industrial lawlessness is an expensive and harrowing neighbor...

...We know that public gatherings are in themselves of no major importance...

...It is the common man, above all, who has been deprived of his heritage of beauty...

...Kerby's plea for the service school—"If this school is not developed, Catholic social workers will be compelled to submit to one of three things: obtain only an incomplete training for their work...

...One published by the New York World from "a life-long member of a Protestant church" lets considerable light in upon the whole movement...

...And the correspondent further sees "the intemperate attack upon Governor Smith and the bare-faced misrepresentation of his standing as an American executive" recoiling "like a boomerang . . . discrediting the Methodist Church and humiliating every one of its members who believes in Christian tolerance in religion and fair play in politics...

...But theirs will be the high romance of the service all of us yearn to do, when we reflect upon the merciless victimizing of those whom Christ might have gathered into His arms, with the infinitude of Divine benediction, because He saw in them the innocent image of His Father...

...cannot help agreeing with Dr...

...No literary man was ever more diligent...

...The Borrowed Shield, and The Grogan Girl, are juicy slices of life cut from the joint where life is tenderest and most nutritious...

...Perhaps he will...

...The latter term, in the language of state educators usually refers to music and drawing, subjects which are almost always the first to be attacked in every movement for economy...

...Were its doors to be closed...

...and that this is why Mr...

...Furthermore, the change would not accomplish its alleged purpose of diminishing existing rivalries among institutions...

...But there are many people who, because they live far from the turmoil of industrial life and never see "how the other half lives," may dismiss the idea as only just another worthy cause...

...the souls of others who have despaired in their poverty and def enselessness, mothering babes whom some stern judge may sometime sentence to the gallows for other crimes than those which now so harrow the comfortable...

...It declares that despite his record and the general esteem of his fellow-citizens, he may not be chosen as President because of his attitude towards the one thing they have chosen to erect into a touchstone of morality and political good faith...

...and the mayor who retires in the commissioner's company must suffer not a few qualms at the thought of how stray moments of leisure from the burdensome cares of office might have been put to use artistically on books with such possible titles as The Man with a Hundred Nickels, or Boodle, the Traction Terror...

...It is likely, of course, that these stories can be really effective only when they are seen on the stage...

...He denounces the "extravagant and over-elaborate instruction" now given, and particularly the emphasis upon "frills...

...Whosoever attacks the unity and indissolubility of the domestic kingdom, and seeks to destroy the moral rule and authority enshrined there, delivers also a fatal blow to the welfare of the general human commonwealth, which depends upon the family as upon a life-giving source...

...And what could be more hopeful for the manifold duties of reconstruction than that women, pooling their interest and fortitude, should prepare bravely for a better tomorrow...

...Those who graduate from it and undertake the heavy labor in the name of that communion of the elect for which even the most wasted of human lives has been destined, will never profit greatly in an earthly sense...

...A total ignorance of what art meant to the common man in the middle-ages and the renaissance is partially responsible for this delusion...

...but there is none to compare with the systematic labor of those who minister with a full knowledge of what they are attempting...

...The remedy which he advocates is, however, worse than the disease...

...1N a message to the state of Washington just issued by Governor Hartley, many of the arguments advanced in the recent Commonweal series of articles on State Universities are reiterated...

...One would like to see the service school endowment made a Christmas gift to the American poor...

...It might be helpful if those who have battled with the terror and desolation of the streets could lift before us the wounded souls of some who have failed in the bitter industrial struggle—the souls of girls who have never in their lives touched the fringes of the mercy of Christ...

...IT is difficult to see precisely what are now the stakes in the long-drawn battle for coal supremacy...

...Was it then, to be neglected...

...Scarcely more than a quarter-century has passed since the modern mind, crying on the one hand for feministic independence and recognizing on the other hand the need for bringing to bear upon contemporary problems the energy that had once been incorporated, superbly, in Queen Isabella and Saint Catherine, urged "the angel of the house" to enter the civic arena...

...The little city of New York is on the verge of an era of creative splendor, now that its retiring police commissioner, Mr...

...Was the school to remain small and ill-equipped therefore...

...It then proceeds to the discussion of a matter of principle: whether or not the federal government is interested in trying to enforce a settlement in the making of which its Departments of Commerce and Labor had a share...

...Other letters are of the same tenor...

...and the International Congress of Catholic Women's Societies, convened in Rome...

...It has come to be not only the outstanding plank of Methodism, but the one test which Methodism employs when examining the fitness of any candidate for public office...