Douai in Decay
Wolf, Lawrence O.
January i9, i927 THE COMMONWEAL 295 States with rapidly multiplying populations for which there is no corresponding increase in potentialities of ab- sorption are a threat to the peace of the...
...Elizabeth's agents, their plotting and defaming, and the consequent popular hos- tility in Douai to the new institution...
...Edmund's and Ushaw in England...
...We may safely predict that the wreckers will soon be at work and that before long this disheartening silhouette will be removed...
...It is the problem of old countries where popula- tion presses upon the means of subsistence, and where there is the demand for the open door to more spacious lands of ampler resources...
...You loved...
...In accordance with our announcement of yesterday, the last troops have evacuated the barracks...
...I was astonished at the sense of familiarity it evoked...
...DOUAI IN DECAY By LAWRENCE O. WOLF M Y ticket read, "Douai...
...THOMAS WALSH...
...If selfishness keeps out justice and charity from the consideration of the allocation of the world's resources to the world's people, the issue may be universal disaster...
...It is stone-paved and slightly concave at the end opposite the entrance, which is through the college...
...France and Belgium which, since the war, have been immigrant-receiving countries, were easily brought to favor restriction...
...the exile and flight to Rheims...
...I turned to my newspaper...
...Its sole ornament is an army bulletin of procedure to be followed in case of fire...
...Tongue--feel my cutlass...
...That is to have estab- lished at least some contact with its history, a history, the material phase of which measures nearly four centuries, and the great chapters of which can be sketched in as many words: college, military hospital, cotton factory, barracks...
...the halls of Oxford abandoned by a conscientious group of professors and students, whose love for Christ was greater even than their great love for learning, men to whom heaven meant more than home, who abandoned the amenities of their native land for the discomfort and trials of a life of exile in the Low Countries...
...The central court was a horrid waste of weeds gone to seed...
...I was about to seek the "electric cheer" of the hotel, when the recollection of an old woodcut of Douai's English College flashed upon me...
...on the other, what was once the walled town...
...Durutte Barracks to Be Demolished) and beneath it, this: "Grace aux efforts tenace et aux d~marches nombreuses de la munidpalit6, l'administration de la guerre vient de l$cher sa proie...
...This richly historic town lies dose to the Belgian border, and is now one of France's industrial centres...
...You must not think of emigration as the remedy for your poverty and unemployment and overcrowding...
...Never did shriveled cocoon less suggest its radiant winged issue, than this wretched ruin, the illustrious progeny once nurtured within its walls...
...I left the hotel for a short walk before retiring...
...The British section sided with the domin- ions though they were responsible for the introduc-tion of the resolution...
...The congress in London did something to educate Europeans as to the problems of social assimilation as well as economic absorption which have to be faced by countries which receive im- migrants...
...I looked about to assure my return, when a long, silent building flanking one side of the Place attracted me...
...Australia expressed most unyieldingly, one might say, brutally, the attitude of restriction...
...Some of us must emigrate or all must sink in misery," was the burden of speech after speech...
...On the one hand stretches a miniature city of modern red-tiled laborers' dwellings...
...oCines from the Armenian Eyes---to the burning coals till sight is slain...
...Under the in- fluence of the doubt awakened the preceding evening, I was penetrating into the barracks, when a French officer arrived on bicycle...
...There were the inevitable appeals to the solidarity of the working-class of the world...
...The vital question before the congress was em-bodied in the following resolution submitted by the Preparatory Commission: This congress declares that in principle migration should be free, that is to say, purely political reasons should not interfere with freedom of migration: economic conditions alone should weigh in the balance when decisions are be- ing made, and only in very exceptional circumstances should other factors be allowed to influence these decisions...
...We were not long in finding what had been the chapel...
...January i9, i927 THE COMMONWEAL 295 States with rapidly multiplying populations for which there is no corresponding increase in potentialities of ab- sorption are a threat to the peace of the world...
...Before I could form my question, it was answered...
...The approach by rail is through a forest of foun- dries and smoking stacks...
...I1 est ~ penser maintenant, que les d~molisseurs ne tarderont pas ~ en prendre possession et que bientSt la d&olante silhouette aura disparu...
...Nothing in its appearance recalls the romance of its past...
...He was somewhat of a Don Quixote and rode full speed against the wooden partition that barricaded the entrance...
...A spectre is haunting Europe," though not the spectre that Marx meant, and it is haunting not Europe only...
...There in the trumeaux between the second- story windows were the squares of white stone, twenty-one of them, bearing the arms and names of the English benefactors who had contributed to the reconstruction and enlargement of the college almost two hundred years ago...
...We stood within an immense court dosed on three sides behind us, by the build- ing, through the tunneling arch of which we had come--on the left and right, by extensive wings of equal height...
...Through an alley of elms the moon revealed a great plain structure of three stories and three long rows of unlighted windows, the black- ness of which against the pallor of the moonlit wall was suggestively funereal...
...Such wars, whatever their ostensible or immediate causes, would be migration wars...
...always active: praying, planning, voyaging, studying, teaching, all under the grim shadow of an assassin's pursuing arm...
...But after it was carried it was withdrawn and it was agreed that an announcement of what had happened should be made to the full congress with the explanation that the resolution was shelved in order to preserve una-nimity but that it was to be brought up again at a future congress...
...The reading of them is a kind of legitimate eavesdropping--an unobserved scrutiny of the workings of our neighbor's household, without the disquieting apprehension of being humiliated by discovery...
...A poilu was at the gate and consented to accompany me about, assuring me, however, that it was at my own risk...
...The evils from which their fathers escaped have not dis-appeared in the old world...
...I saw the energetic Cardinal Allen: now at Rome, now at Louvain, founding his college at Douai, and saving it by re- moval to Rheims...
...It may be said at once that this resolution was not passed...
...Six deep- set windows on the left hand look out into a small lateral court which floods the whitewashed walls and ceiling with a cold light...
...There was a fine moon, but no street lights...
...At this session a resolution virtually the same as that quoted was carried by a vote of twenty-five to fourteen...
...My inquiries the next morning revealed nothing...
...I turned to the building...
...But I had come primarily to look up the old English College, which, from the Elizabethan persecutions when Catholicism and Christ's priesthood were proscribed in England, had been the home of so many learned martyrs and saintly scholars...
...Nothing but a trifling detail in its construction suggested its one-time character...
...Was it possible that here but no, over the round arch of the portal I read: Caserne Durutte...
...Somewhat lower, a decaying gutter stretched part- way across the faqade like an unclean reptile...
...The natural desire of the workers of the more favored countries to defend their standards of life was recog-nized...
...But they must not base their prosperity on our misery...
...and the future may see devastating wars break out on this account...
...By daylight, the college or barracks was a skeleton of leprous walls and gaping windows...
...My eye was caught by the caption: Enfin...
...The exploration of the interior was rendered difficult by the masses of drbris encumbering the corridors, and somewhat peril- ous by reason of the insecurity of the floors...
...And it is probable that somewhere under this disheartening rectangle, there moulders the c/lice of Thomas ~ Becket, and the Cardi- nal's biretta of Saint Charles Borromeo, for all that has been found is the plate which is now at St...
...There is something in the journals of small towns which fascinates...
...I was traversing a spacious irregular square, planted with tall starved-looking trees...
...The saintly Doctor Martin, broken in health, but ceaselessly bent over his exhausting task of translating the Bible into English...
...Its station is new...
...296 THE COMMONWEAL January 19 , 1927 The tone of exasperation and suggestion of wounded civic pride, made me idly curious to see the "drsolante silhouette," which had become the object of an animus so impatient for destruction...
...Perhaps he would not have been so invidious if Japanese and Italian representatives had been present...
...Heroically sustaining the shock of the collision, he, bicycle, spurs and all wriggled through the slender aperture formed by a swinging wooden gate which the impact had set in motion...
...his friend Campion...
...The populations of the new countries are themselves of immigrant stock...
...Dtsolante silhouette"l--the newspaper's phrase came unsought to my lips...
...But surely there is something for the new countries to learn and understand in the awful diffi-culties which oppress those lands where population out- runs the natural resources...
...La Caserne Durutte va Disparaitre (At Last...
...The Salle ~t manger of the Grand Hotel de la Gare, was full of electric lights, commercial travelers, and tobacco smoke...
...As my arrival was in the early evening, I sought a guide-book for consumption with my dinner, but finding that none exists-- Douai is off the tourist-trail---I contented myself with a news- paper...
...Heart--with a thrust I quench you in your gore.-Nay, fool...
...In our countries there are too many of us...
...Although the image was not clear, a growing suspicion occupied me...
...Your remedy is to resolve at any cost to raise your standards of life by the restriction and improvement of your popula-tion," said the spokesman for Australia, a country nearly the size of the United States with only the popu- lation of New York City...
...Douai seemingly was as ignorant of the existence of the venerable monument I was seeking, as was the English-speaking world at large of that monument's historic significance...
...e He specifically mentioned Japan and Italy as men-aces to world peace on this account...
...There is not enough land for all, not enough work...
...D~j;~ hier, nous avons annonc~ que les derniers services militaires avaient quitt~ la easerne...
...something of the feeling we experience when we meet an acquaintance of long ago, whose name has escaped our memory...
...Once I realized that I was in Douai, all thought of barracks was obscured by the moving tableaux that occupied my imagination: sixteenth-century England estranged from the Church...
...and then the students, of whom during the next fifty years, lO9 gave their lives in the effort to restore and maintain in England the faith of their fathers--a veritable martyrum candidatus exercitus--who claim, by the rubrics written in their blood, a becoming reverence for the chronicle of their alma mater...
...Thanks to the efficient policy and untiring efforts of the local authorities, the War Department has relinquished its prey...
...Groan in your little pain...
...I reached him as he was dismounting...
...This was the old English College...
...It occupied the ground floor of a two-story rectangular edifice built end to end against an extremity of the body of the college, and form- ing with it a continuous wall along the public square...
...Here during the Revolution, on the occasion of the sec- ond expulsion, when the rebel functionaries were already in possession, a few students and a priest, under cover of darkness, hurriedly buried the college plate and the altar's relics...
...Its spiritual history can never be adequately written, for that has reaches which transcend the limits of space and time...
...The hammers of the Revolution, weather, and moss had done much to deface them, but they still served to identify what once they had embellished...
...A southern Slav delegate, however, took advantage to say that war might easily come from the Balkan countries where there were hundreds of thousands of workers who could not get a living and who found themselves shut out from the countries where there were opportu- nities for livelihood...
...The attitude of Canada and Australia pre-vented it...
...A commission of the congress held a private session...
...Catholics, above all, should take a wide and sympathetic view...
...It was frankly stated that if the congress had been held without the presence of "extra,Euro-pean" delegates (Canadian and Australian) the resolu- tion would probably have been carried unanimously...
...I am happy to have seen it and known it at first hand before it crumbles under the wreckers' blows...
...Above the third story, a black paper roof, invisible at night, was broken by a series of windows en mansarde...
...you shall speak no more...
...Such is the English College of Douai, cradle of martyrs, origin of the English Bible text which bears its name, and very probably the first seminary to be established in conformity with the legislation of Trent, or such it was a twelvemonth ago...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 11
