Week by Week
July 28, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 297 THERE can be no...
...Nevertheless, as The Commonweal had occasion to The nervousness of the authorities, based on a fear remark several weeks ago, at the time of the Malines that every traveler westward, not authenticated by gathering and Lord Halifax's pathetic speech thereat, money, is a surreptitious and potential immigrant, will the best proof that the movement for reunion does probably act as a deterrent on any volume of "cheap" not hold the danger some seem to perceive is to be tourist traffic westward for years to come...
...But that the type justice provided he were assured it would never deof "paper mind" which the revolutionary leader rep- liver a verdict against him...
...Ruskin once said that anyone who Military life succeeds because its virtues are as detook an interest in man could not be indifferent to the pendable and regularly progressive as the actions of fate of human institutions, however little practical aid a clock...
...Mery to de Vaissiere or the awakening of either of the great political parties Eugene Aubin, will be aware what rich pickings for a to the necessity for taking a clear stand upon prohibi- certain type of imagination lurk in the delinquencies of tion that will register the will of the people...
...It is up to Europe to watch the financial succeeded Poincare, public opinion generally welcomed horizon...
...Its pithy and steady narration of nors Island, promises to become a mystery equally as the happenings during one month ought to make the baffling as that of Edwin Drood...
...that their frank airing, while it may not effect conversion, nevertheless results in the creation of a helpMANY unpleasant things have been written and said ful atmosphere, seems somehow part of contemporary about the immigration authority of the port of New thought...
...and military, en route for their posts in the Dominion...
...Carl Schmitt...
...The Cartel was smoothly manoeuvered out of it...
...But the effect has been to rank a very large phere...
...This sequence of daily brutal viola- and could not, therefore, be expected to follow his tions of elementary civic liberty has nothing in com- subjects about with a more than eagle eye...
...And with a penetrative insight which, as far present to the world...
...as we know, has seldom been equaled, these queries sarily arbitrary, and the division of the week itself are weighed in a recent study by a brilliant German into seven, a prime number not divisible into any num- student of political science, Dr...
...A hastily convened most near-sighted persons see that the Calles govern- court-martial concluded that the officer in command ment has really undertaken an organized campaign was not necessarily a master of the fourth dimension against religion...
...It is worth notingTHE LEAGUE UNDER SCRUTINY no matter how theoretical it may seem to manyRECENT happenings have not been of the kind to precisely because our own approach to the League promote the very desirable efficacy of the League has been opportunistic rather than reflective.- Ameriof Nations...
...T HE case of the President of Haiti, saluted a full What does seem to call for passing comment is the -fifteen minutes too late by the official guns of Gover- very marked divergence between books written of, and July 28, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 299 books written by, the American Negro, when educa- cause of corporate reunion between the Catholic tion and social ambition have made him articulate...
...tional species which shows itself cold to Esperanto and The second ought, therefore, to be equally as promiVolapuk, and upon whose bad old habits even the nent as the first, and can only be exercised through advantages of the decimal system of weights and the World Court...
...Few men able publishing firms is incubating an encyclopaedic in office bring to their daily tasks such a rigorous book upon the Negro in Haiti...
...Subscription Rates Yearly : $10.00 Single Copies : $0.20 MEANWHILE Americans cannot remain indifferent to the conviction spreading among Europeans that WEEK BY WEEK financial interests identified, for the most part, with T HE French government seems to totter about on Wall Street, are aiming at the domination of the the franc in much the same perilous fashion as world...
...Mellon...
...None in recent years, after the has not an unlimited budget to expend, will receive great Cardinal himself, has had so large a share in the attention they deserve...
...The "dollar offensive" is described, not only the young lady who once ventured to dance on a dime...
...The purpose of these brief remarks is not to point them out...
...A few old people still live in Boston who can re- the possibility of a compromise where none knew betmember when hotels would be filled by officials, civil ter than he that ground for compromise did not exist...
...In Concerning the Mexican Problem does not add anyshort, the initial rise of the Cartel to power was criti- thing new to the data already collected with reference cal, and may prove a turning point in the main direc- to the situation in Mexico, one welcomes its appeartions of the French political story...
...they may be ques- lay between "the colonel and an orderly"-the sly tioned in our own country, and . . . may undermine emphasis being not wholly uncalculated...
...And though Mr...
...It is only not its fault at all but to have been due to an over- justice to add that the character of Abbe Portal, less sight by the Ottawa government...
...in the conversation of dreamy persons who like to While cabinet follows cabinet, the basic ineffectiveness invent calamitous bogies, but also in the press of many of parliamentary rule under the Third Republic is con- cities...
...But one found in the large number of Anglican priests who may hope that it is only a question of time and the have found heart to make the final gesture of submisgeneral humanizing of the business of getting about sion since its inception...
...An editorial article in the Paris La Croix consistently demonstrated...
...His alternative is collective direction by the THOMAS WALSH HELEN WALKER Chambre-the same dreary, hopeless melee of contraHENRY LONGAN STUART GEORGE N. SHUSTER dictory voices which has lived on since the fall of JOHN F. McCoRMicK, Business Manager Poincare...
...Is it a natural or an artificial mittee in Holland, Greece, and France, is going to union...
...They do not seek new territories...
...In fact, the recent defeat of cludes as follows : "The American plan appears clearer Briand by Herriot is nearly the last necessary proof and clearer...
...able firmness...
...If the former is given the chief a synthetic present upon which the past could not be role, a great deal will depend upon the homogeneity superimposed without the aid of a slide-rule-may of those who strive to effect the compromise...
...It is the first, the kindest thing to say is that they are arti- made all the more impressive by taking place on the ficially constructed and dubiously conceived...
...The new ruling familiar though it was to the general Catholic world, which permits "tourist thirds" who have passed exam- was just as good a guarantee...
...bringing it about as the holy Abbe Portal...
...Its atmosforced...
...But, like everything to which mankind has reply brings to light the fundamental duality of ingrown accustomed, current chronology has the supreme ternational organization as it exists at present-one advantage that mankind has adjusted itself to it...
...prejudiced, scientific investigation of the facts should be undertaken at the direction of the Congress of the SOMEHOW or other, the literary rumor has got United States," need to be correlated with the Mayor's about in literary circles that one of our most respectown experience as a municipal executive...
...that, clocks and the military spirit are among the necessary and most dependable things in the world...
...Our entry into the panied by a visible narrowing of the political hori- World Court, for instance, was characterized chiefly zons...
...the black republicans of Santo Domingo...
...from the legislation that established the League and which, therefore, views the matter with the clear eye IT is not quite clear, on the face of things, what of a detached spectator...
...Financial chaos has forced many Euro- can statesmen seem to be notably unwilling o accept pean powers to concentrate their attention upon do- the organization which developed out of American mestic problems and so to borrow from nationalism principles as an institution...
...The attainment of an ambient before the possibilities of America as a land to visit of mutual respect and mutual belief in sincerity is a and as a vacation country for the jaded European who very positive good...
...It is by interNow, as then, the government is stifled by disagree- vening in the meetings of boards of directors and by ments which prevent action, and the fruit of a long stock exchange manipulations that they would rule the series of blunders must be harvested...
...July 28, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 297 THERE can be no doubt of the fundamental ability THE COMMONWEAL of the French people to solve their financial problems...
...But it is pretty safe to prophesy that an irra- titude of differences remarkably diverse in character...
...at all creditable to the white American author-this eagerness of the colored citizen, two generations up WITHIN the past few years, at Geneva and elsefrom slavery, to prove his worthiness, and the avidity where, we have become accustomed to seeing irreconof our own literary panders to exploit for their spuri- cilable views, with which religion and dogma have ous and obvious purposes, the rubbish heap of impulse nothing to do, carried into conference, and the feeling and blind instinct he has discarded in his ascent...
...But it is worth observing that when Herriot aided in the dispersion of the Caillaux myth, he put an end to all hopes that adequate financial direcMICHAEL WILLIAMS, Editor tion could be designated to any one person by parliaAssistant Editors ment...
...out a struggle to maintain the occasional pleasant sur- Dr...
...The upon...
...But whether it can exist apart from measurements has not yet made a very perceptible dent, its complement as fixed by the League Covenant is a is not going to welcome the tridecasyllabic year with- question not to be answered at once in the affirmative...
...reaction which has now enlisted almost all the intellectual bourgeoisie, but also the demand for autonomy ALTHOUGH Mr...
...We liberty and true liberalism can be denied with impunity are reminded of an English officer who, having lost in Mexico, they may so be denied in other republics a document of value, reported that the responsibility of Central and South America...
...Now the ordinary hard-working American-often all advantages of position, so that France today enough he or she must wrestle vigorously with a reis without even such fruits of victory as advantageous bellious budget-may stare angrily and uncomprehendalliances...
...Such a as ending an embarrassing position, depends, not so magazine as Opportunity, for instance, which has just much upon the view taken by Catholics of Anglican concluded a prize poetry competition among colored claims to continuity, which is quite remarkably unanipoets, is a positive revelation, both as regards volume mous, as upon the value that the individual temperaand quality, of the work which is being done by men ment cares to attach to all "get-togethers" of men and women of African blood...
...What is its real backed though it be by a powerful international com- diplomatic function...
...Finally, the disillusionresented is by no means dead is proven by a new sug- ment with which our delegates have returned from gestion offered, according to press report, by Professor the Arms Conference is shared quite generally by W. S. Echelberger, director of the Almanac of the friends of peace, and may safely be described as the Naval Observatory at Washington, that the pres- having been caused by the uncertainty with which ent division of the calendar into months of uneven Europe still looks upon the Versailles agreement, the length shall be abolished, and the place of the present Russian revolution, and the various colonial mandates...
...Montavon is man might suppose that a function so delicately admoderate in his conclusion and avers that "neither the justed to diplomatic good feeling as the welcome of American people nor the American government has any a foreign official ought not to be submerged under the desire to intervene by force in the affairs of the Mexi- general routine of duty...
...As a nation we need more honest language the background by all other European nations...
...And until the United States of Europe are the change because it believed that intransigeant na- formed and are able to defend themselves against the tionalism was giving way to conciliation, and that the United States of America, the nations that do not end of force was at hand...
...but the layman has relatively can nation," his position is not without a commend- no conception of the really august character of routine...
...yearly dozen be taken by thirteen nice even months of But when everything has been said, there is less four weeks apiece, with a day thrown in for luck at the reason to be pessimistic than there is to be studious...
...It naturally asks questions exact advantage, other than that of replacing present like these : What can be expected of the League in confusions with quite new ones, the Professor's scheme, the domain of international law...
...To further simplify the ingenious The German approach to Geneva, for instance, enscheme, every fourth year, "except years beginning a listed the attention of a nation which had stood apart century," is to be burdened with an extra day in June...
...There was matter of course and when no regulations hampered ground for the feeling that he seemed to hold out it...
...William F. Montavon's Facts which is at present alarmingly powerful in Alsace...
...And so a deposition at the court-martial to he could render them...
...But either before this investigation is conducted or after- ANY student aware of the sources of Haitian hisward, a still more important thing must be done- tory, from Moreau de St...
...This demon with "oil" or "historical antecedents...
...In opposition to that, something definite Editorial Council and reliable in the way of a national program must T. LAWRASON Riocs JAMES J. WALSH appear...
...in the principal European enterprises...
...and about the situation than one can get, for instance, Herriot induced not only the strong movement toward from the recent vague pronouncement by Mr...
...Our own country has "clearing-house" power...
...But for all our own understanding and enjoyment of true liberty...
...His ber that is not a multiple of seven, has not a leg that purpose is to determine simply what the League Professor Echelberger would consider logical to stand actually is, and what it can normally accomplish...
...Of the second class, what meetings, is probably well-founded...
...is to be "evil," and complete naturalism is to number of the citizenry with criminals, and to make be secured through a residence of weeks or months the business of policing about as easy as the reform- by the chosen author among the obscurer quarters of ing activities of an enemy of chop-sticks would be in the island...
...In all truth, however, the care to become absorbed should get into the closest change was a bad mistake from the French point of mutual relations, face the situation, and provide for view...
...and intelligent citizens than Pussyfoot Johnson...
...Chicagoans know, some of them to their dis- mistically, classes as "unsentimental...
...The layplain persecution...
...Whether the colis to be noted is an eagerness, that sometimes ap- lapse of the movement, or, rather, of the phase it proaches pathos, to share in the fullest measure the assumed at Malines, is to be regretted, or welcomed sobriety and culture of Caucasian civilization...
...The purlieus of the Harlem dance-halls China...
...But they are frank and too widely chiefly to the introduction of the capital-labor antithesis at the very moment when this was being forced into credited...
...THE death of Abbe Portal, following so closely MORE than one hundred and thirty years have upon the death of the great Cardinal-Archbishop of passed since Abbe Sieyes, of pamphleteering memory, Malines, will be bound to have its repercussion on the stood up in the French Convention to propose that 300 THE COMMONWEAL July 28, 1926 the whole of France be divided into thirty-nine square a continental statesman as being quite like that of a departments, identical in shape and size and ignoring citizen who should agree to uphold a tribunal of all natural boundaries whatsoever...
...And in all sober truth, we Geneva a settlement of its controversies with the might have found it less dangerous to adhere to the United States, are also calculated to rob League his- League assembly, which in itself has no more than torians of their optimism...
...end of the year...
...the activities of some one among our emancipated The report it would submit might be a powerful argu- writers are to be transferred to the opulent field of ment in support of those who believe that settlement the Caribbees, before the work of sanitation belatedly of the alcohol problem must be left to more tactful undertaken by our government has gone too far...
...for the kingdom of God were quite compatible with There was a time when travel to Canada via the error occasionally gave a tone to his persuasive pen United States, especially in winter, was taken as a which was unpalatable to many Catholics...
...Ernest Boyd, euphecitizen...
...Written eve of the projected resumption of the famous conby men whose sophistication is apparent in every versations, and the opinion, very widely expressed by phrase, what they register most vividly is a sick con- both Anglicans and Catholics, that it marks the end, cern with primitive passions and uninhibited appetites or, at any rate the indefinite postponement of the closely approximating envy...
...function being that of legalized compromise, the other To abolish it by legislative enactment-to create of law establishment...
...It is just cision seems quite pertinent and respectable...
...Not even his own political associates could repose a firm trust in him...
...Of Church and its separated brethren in England...
...the rift in parliamentarism was begun, owing ingly at these words...
...and commend itself to the mathematical and professorial this homogeneity is threatened, of course, by a mulmind...
...All divisions of time are neces...
...Plans and specificareverence for law as he has done-a reverence ac- tions, not to say the name of the author, are undequired during years of recognized integrity on the cided to date, though, naturally, those suggested bebench and other years of sterling life as a private long to the category which Mr...
...ance under the auspices of the National Catholic Wel298 THE COMMONWEAL July 28, 1926 fare Conference...
...THE words of Mayor William E. Dever of Chicago and sadly enough we pay little attention to the beauto the American Bar Association, declaring that the tiful efficiency of both, but rise to wrath at the moliquor question remains unsettled and that "an un- mentary lapses of either...
...What they are after is the France into almost precisely the same situation as control of Europe through the invasion of the dollar that faced by the old regime before the Revolution...
...Where the conversations at Malines were York...
...The junta regime is deadly to the effect that the guard-house timepiece, looked to some of these institutions-to orderly and consider- by the Island for enlightenment, is notoriously erratic ate government, to the legitimate expression of opin- owing to the sinful desires of culprits for longer hours ion, to organized Christianity-"If the principles of of slumber, is replete with symbolic information...
...But one sine comfiture, how resolutely the Mayor took the stand qua non of the scheme throws its own light upon the that since the Volstead Act was law it had to be en- nature and scope of the projected work...
...of how a succession of political errors has brought America is big enough...
...and those of his countrymen who understand the drift of the last twenty-five years would probably prefer to face disaster courageously than to pin their hope to a man who on several occasions has been the "'evil genius" of France...
...It is a pleasure to note that the unforeseen concerned, the character and loyalty of Cardinal experience suffered by a party of women school teachers Mercier were sufficient warrant to the mass of Cathofrom England, en route to Canada, who were detained lics that no possible misunderstanding of the Church's for medical inspection at Ellis Island, proves to be position in the matter would be permitted...
...What it will be, what effect it will have upon CARLTON J. H. HAYES R. DANA SKINNER Bsrn AM C. A. WINDLE the general politics of Europe, remains to be seen...
...The retreat of Brazil, the dissatisfaction of by a frightened enumeration of the things the mythical Germany, and the failure of Japan to manage through tribunal might do to us...
...they are, however, afraid its tenet of near-dictatorship, which is always accom- to dispense with it as a weapon...
...When Herriot old world...
...Whether there is any merit in the idea of having yielded their scanty, though appetizing harvest, congressional investigation needs careful consideration...
...No doubt the French ination before sailing, to land "like cabin passengers," priest's ardent wish for reunion, the strong conviction removes an unpleasant possibility from the new move- he must have received from his lifelong friendship ment for economic travel which is so surprising a de- with Lord Halifax that complete sincerity and desire velopment in trans-Atlantic tourist traffic since the war...
...national problems, such as the nature of the guarantee which upholds League decisions, and the character of world juridical action...
...In short, international action added to the disorder through its peculiar attitude is too important and complex to be entered upon withtoward the World Court-an attitude described by out accurate knowledge of the established machinery...
...It is a contrast not representing opposing thoughts and convictions...
...The proposals of Caillaux were of indubitable value Published weekly and copyrighted 1925, in the United States by the Calvert Publishing Corporation, 25 Vanderbilt Avenue, in theory, but the rise of antagonism to the man himNew York City, N. Y. self was inevitable...
...Schmitt's analysis goes on to weigh other interprise of five pay-days in a month...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 12
