Week by Week
November 17, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 33 WEEK BY WEEK r I ''HE Congress of the Austrian Social Democratic -*¦ party, as held in Linz last week, was characterized by an interesting recession of...
...Small wonder that when somebody proposed to a New York assemblage of teachers that an attempt be made to corral fathers as well as mothers, there was a tired but fairly general murmur of dissent...
...A very interesting article in the current Christian Century, by Georgia Harkness, a professor of philosophy at Elmira College, termed Is Protestantism Destroying Itself?, puts the matter pretty plainly when it tells us that the ills under which we suffer are "very closely linked with the Protestant (particularly the Puritan) emphasis on labor, whose adherents have been enjoined to be 'diligent in business.' " From considering "diligence" in business with its inevitable rewards of money and power, an essential good, to working back and hesitating to condemn political manoeuvres whose result has been equivalent, is quite a natural transition...
...She is veritably the philosopher of the feminine faqade...
...It is the purpose of Mile...
...iLXCLUSION is always hard to defend, and when it is used as a gesture of dislike, either to principles or individuals who profess them, there is always something unworthy and offensive in it to generous minds...
...JL/IFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were propounded by the founders of the American commonwealth as three essentials which lay at the root ot government, and failing to secure which any government, no matter how plausibly democratic its form, would be an illusory benefit...
...In a recent number of his still virile weekly, Mr...
...This is a matter of primary importance because, as experience has shown, laymen can be unified satisfactorily only if members of the hierarchy take the lead...
...He is particularly severe in dealing with volunteer choirs who (he says) "finding the music of Haydn and Mozart beyond their powers, take refuge in the compositions of Roswig, Emerson, and other nonentities, the trashiness and musical illiteracy of whose compositions beggar description...
...Both parties were at the mercy of an organization which quietly decided all political issues by the test of its own private doctrine...
...But the great psychological error of using "prosperity" as a slogan seems to have been recognized pretty generally...
...and of the others, Alberta has 101...
...Jaegle bravely accepted the inevitable, and founded The Observer, which, in its work as the official organ of the Pittsburgh diocese, surmounted numerous difficulties and accomplished much good...
...It is true that the House preserves an orthodox complexion, but 237 representatives would not seem to mean a landslide, particularly when one remembers what happened in the neighboring senatorial realm...
...Perhaps the outstanding Catholic event—though there are many excellent plans in course of realization—is the convention of the National Catholic Alumni Federation, which opened on November 12, at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, Philadelphia...
...Sawyer, however, he was great as well as he was good...
...That many will follow seems assured when we consider the ever-increasing importance of education in American life...
...John B. Kennedy, and Dr...
...A note of concern with the cultural aspects of higher education dominates the program, although much is also being said about the practical business of organization and alumni solidarity...
...If the referenda conducted by a number of states to test the average citizen's affection for Volsteadism "show increased dry gains," as Mr...
...From a great variety of published programs one can safely estimate, however, the steadily increasing enthusiasm with which these days, set apart for the benefit of one of the most vital civic interests, are being observed over the entire country...
...The resources of diplomacy in a case like this can always be relied upon to end an "unfortunate" incident Those handy expedients, a disavowal by the higher-ups and an admission of ex34 THE COMMONWEAL November 17, 1926 cess of zeal on the part of subordinates, have once more proved their effectiveness, and, so far as immediate danger of a diplomatic break is concerned, the peril seems to have evaporated...
...It would be interesting to trace the matter from a historical standpoint and ascertain whether there are, as many of our more recent commentators believe, epochs of assertive-ness, followed by epochs of submission, and that we are, if not actually in the trough of this last, sinking toward it...
...A.N astonishing growth of interest in the work and personality of Anton Bruckner, Vienna's greatest musician and perhaps the last composer to conceive of his art in the lofty, almost ecclesiastical, sense in which Bach had thought of it, must surely be termed one of the phenomena of our time...
...Wheeler declares, the evidence must be of an esoteric character not visible to the eye When Congress passed the legislation so dear to the Anti-Saloon League's heart over the veto of President Wilson, the reason was simply that a great majority of popular representatives—many of whom, so history relates, had wine-cellars of the finest kind—were scared out of their wits by the fear of a dry vote that would reckon with them later back home...
...A point of view does exist from which the exclusion of officials from Russia, unless and until a change overtakes its foreign policy, is entirely logical...
...JLjKE all autumns, the one just past has elicited a great deal of enthusiasm for multicolored foliage and sunsets that seemed magical through the cool, scented harvest air...
...Manitoba, 79...
...Requests to supply an hourly temperature chart for little Johnny, for a graph of Susan's behavior under various teachers, for a copy of the wise things said by the twins during recreation periods— these and more like them are quite factual...
...Catt told us not long ago, in a lecture at Columbia University, "are dissatisfied with government and politics in national, state, and local affairs, complex modern life having changed the original conception of democracy...
...But at least another theory, and one gaining in its adherents every year, sets the prime cause still further back, and would have us know that what we are reaping is only the result of three centuries spent by the major nations under the Protestant ideal of life...
...A situation which seemed to justify one New York city editor not long ago in heading up his front page with a "streamer," France and Italy on Verge of War, may not be as dangerous as it is made to seem, but it is decidedly unpleasant...
...F OOTBALL almost deprives old autumn of its melancholy title...
...Even if their manners are not improved thereby, there will be ample compensation in an added gaiety and gratitude...
...In the first place, prosperity doesn't flow through everybody's channels, and too much insistence upon it as a national characteristic is sure to make many people ask when and how they were deprived of citizenship in this blessedness...
...We concur...
...On the other hand, in Prince Edward's Island there is a very large Catholic population, though not a majority, which boasts that it produces a larger percentage of religious vocations than any other part of the dominion...
...One appreciates, therefore, the care with which Mr...
...W E who latterly gazed upon many of the world's most charming women rushing into print and photography so that a certain complexion-cream might be raised above suspicion, may well remember the days when it was considered frightfully dangerous even to possess a powder-puff or a cream-jar...
...It is not easy to see what other reply could have been given to it than that this country, which already has on its hands a queen coming from very near Russia, would be just as glad if the all-sea route were taken...
...It should also do November 17, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 35 much to awaken parents from the lethargy into which so many of them fall once they take it for granted that responsibility for their children has been made the burden of someone else...
...And if Bruckner is the peer of Richard Wagner (as a good many qualified persons are now saying) it is one of the glories of American church music that a magnificent Mass composed by him was first played in public by a Chicago organist—Wilhelm Middle-schulte, who once helped to make the fame of the old Thomas orchestra...
...Ontario comes second, with 121 parliamentary ones...
...More competent church musicians are in course of training every year, and the final effect will surely be notable...
...Our author pays due tribute to the inventiveness of modern science, while conceding that the belles of yore who reappear "dolled up," in the very literal sense of the term, with new noses and throats among sundry other innovations, are not conducive to agreeable meditation...
...But he ends with a salutary reminder that "the devotion of the 36 THE COMMONWEAL November 17, 1926 Catholic congregation is happily such that services will be well attended irrespective of the character of the music"—an observation no doubt true in so far as Mass is concerned, but not altogether above suspicion with reference to the High Mass...
...Well may the faculties preserve the silence of death in the midst of the wrathful hurricane...
...But somehow one cannot help thinking a bit wistfully of Homer's Nausikaa, surprised by Odysseus before she could have referred to a vanity-case, and of the trim Irish girls who used to come wandering in through the door of New York, freckles and all, as November 17, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 37 faithful to nature as on the day they were made...
...It is to be traced to the declaration, repeated whenever the authorities at Moscow have occasion to define their foreign policy, that in some way or another the present government in the old empire of the czars is a body transcending national limitations— that it represents and is spokesman for an entire and world-wide category—the worker oppressed by capitalism...
...Cyril Clemens, president of the Mark Twain Society, suggests that the best way in which to celebrate the occasion is to introduce Mr...
...Jaegle as a fine representative of a type now becoming almost extinct...
...November 17, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 33 WEEK BY WEEK r I ''HE Congress of the Austrian Social Democratic -*¦ party, as held in Linz last week, was characterized by an interesting recession of extremism...
...Against the declarations of labor and realty financing that it "must," one can arraign the opinion of an increasing number of competent observers that it cannot If "prosperity" is to keep on being a Republican slogan, will it therefore be as attractive in 1928 as it was in 1924...
...Sawyer to the whole family, out loud...
...The query is interesting and, even if nothing besides political fortune were involved, highly important...
...Unfortunately, such titles to glory are still far from numerous...
...WHILE on this topic of education, we might as well note the growing attention now being given to the Parent-Teacher movement...
...The apparently irresistible Republican energies of 1924 may, of course, only be experiencing the ebb of a tide which will rise majestically again two years hence...
...Ralph Adams Cram...
...The former had 13 divorces (parliamentary...
...But as for the pencil, the orange-stick, the delicately tinted rouge, ah, that is another matter...
...But the day is coming speedily when even Mr...
...The demand which they filled helped to create realty values which profitably absorbed easily available money and distributed returns...
...We cannot avoid thinking an old thought—that the pedestrians have rather the best of the matter...
...If, as Mrs...
...1 HIS point of view does not depend for support on any evidence of communistic activities in this country...
...While various Viennese voices were lifted in support of the Russian experiment and the immemorial antagonism to all religion, the mood of moderateness prevailed even in the new platform adopted by the party...
...Thomas Woodlock, Senator Thomas J. Walsh, Mr...
...In short, the industrial realty field has been in the same position as farms were during the period of intense rural land speculation...
...These were, after all, the maidens of dawn—for which the modern substitute is, a little too obviously and cosmetically, three o'clock in the morning...
...Prince Edward's Island had no divorce during the year 1925, and it is in the proud position of having had but one divorce to its discredit since it entered confederation in 1868...
...Of these last, Senator Borah is undoubtedly one, and when the Idaho legislator protests against the refusal to vise the passport for the United States, of Madame Kollontai, minister from the Soviet to the Mexican republic, and terms it "unjustifiable and intolerant," he is sure of a fairly large body of opinion behind him...
...Nor, it must be admitted, is there anything so funny...
...It appears that 551 final decrees were given as against 543 in 1924...
...1 HE tendency which the suffrage leader and spokeswoman for so many a hard-tried cause in the past notes and deplores, has not escaped political thinkers and writers during the past few decades...
...Will it maintain the stride...
...But gradually, we suppose, the Parent-Teacher movement will succeed in enlightening parents...
...People," Mrs...
...She knows all their ins and outs very well...
...Mark Twain, it must be admitted, failed later to get a lot of accumulated bitterness out of his system...
...Under the circumstances, and with means of access to Mexico open other than via Texas, the request of the Soviet republic that its emissary be allowed passage through the United States has a good deal of the air of an attempt to provoke an incident...
...and a good thing, too...
...The high spirits so cheerfully expended on the gridiron seem to inoculate everybody with germs of hilarity and enthusiasm which triumphantly combat, for the moment at least, the morose infections of business and society...
...The American eats what he can get, sleeps where he can, and wears what he can pay for...
...A player under such stress might, however, justify his course with some measure of philosophy...
...The letter of the law is still on the side of the Eighteenth Amendment...
...To read the dramatic account of how the hard-pressed back of a Superior high-school team took refuge in prayer at a moment when it was up to his trembling toe to make it defeat or a tied game, is to catch new glimpses of the use to which petitions may be put...
...It will be remembered that there is quite a considerable non-Catholic population in that province...
...The first is that Europe is not yet prepared to consider war as even a remote possibility...
...The conscience —and the ear—of a mus;c lover who tries to worship his Creator while a contrivance of bells, suggested no doubt by Edgar Poe, rambles through the softer portions of a sentimental Credo or Sanctus, are assaulted by many things which the Motu Propno of Pius X once strove to banish...
...Turnpike gates at reasonable intervals," he says, "would involve a good deal of delay...
...There remain two provinces, both of them highly Catholic— Quebec and Prince Edward's Island...
...Nor should one fail to note that the officers of the federation have enjoyed the friendly assistance of Cardinal Dougherty, who has also presided over some of the convention sessions...
...On the vital matter of education, however, no real change of front was effected...
...On this point the coming elections will see a critical battle...
...One can naturally ascribe a great deal of this lofty reasonableness to the desire to conciliate peasant voters on the eve of elections likely to prove critical in the history of the nation, but opportunism was by no means the only note stressed...
...The final outcome, of course, was precisely what had been demanded...
...If they are not the secret of beauty —and to be perfectly honest, rouge is seldom, if ever, a secret any longer—they are, at least, a comfortable substitute...
...But, if we may continue the trend of thought initiated by Doctor James J. Walsh in these columns last week, it does seem as if a great deal of the humor of football is being missed...
...BAFFLED ambitions," says a French proverb, "make bad neighbors...
...Carrie Chapman Catt, the noted suffrage leader, is the latest to call attention to the change that has come over American life as a result of the unrestrained growth of wealth, and the general tendency of America's "plain people" to lose interest in a machine which they can no longer pretend to control...
...Of late years, motoring has become a popular habit while pedestrianism has grown into an attitude of distinction coveted by a sizable number of leisurely men and women...
...A contributing cause may, of course, be seen in the specialization and delegation of contemporary government unforeseen in the days in which its form was designed, which lifts it beyond the average man's capacity to understand—hence, to dare to touch...
...Prohibition then enjoyed the magnificent status of an unknown quantity...
...Then again, prosperity is now upon a somewhat precarious footing...
...When the Senator, however, adds the phrase, "from any point of view," it is not so easy to follow him in his strictures upon the State Department...
...But the accusation that Princeton men use "rough tactics" on the football field...
...As for the youngsters, no better treat could be designed for them...
...Theoretically, this is a very noble and helpful system for cooperation between those most vitally interested in the welfare of children...
...Nova Scotia, 30...
...Not on your life...
...and there, during three moments of humble solicitation, was the hero of the game...
...The domestic tyrant is notoriously a failure in a society where his pretensions have no current value, and apologies will generally be found strewing his path...
...1 HINK of it...
...James P. Dunn, writing in the periodical, Singing, has gone into the whole matter...
...British Columbia, usually considered a typically English province, heads the list with 150 court, not parliamentary, decrees...
...That they treat the sons of Harvard with less courtesy than their reputation as gentlemen calls for...
...At least he actually knew the colors of autumn woods and the sprites these colors clothe...
...And after all, he may have been a man of considerable insight...
...The second is that a dictatorship makes the worst imaginable school for international good manners...
...Delarue-Mandrus deals with all these lovingly and confidently...
...It should go far to modify the harmful impersonality that characterizes so much instruction given by teachers who feel that the drudgery of their daily routine is appreciated only as a matter of dollars and cents by the general public...
...and New Brunswick, 15...
...They see the world in stripes...
...Mother would detect certain basic resemblances between the present generation and its predecessors, although she might turn commendingly to Aunt Mary (who teaches the young) and remark that diction has undoubtedly been growing steadily more refined...
...Today, even if one leaves popular referenda strictly aside, a number of candidates have proved beyond any shadow of doubt that it is possible, and sometimes also highly profitable, to come out frankly as a "wet...
...and even in that radiant moment, given them by the mercy of the gods or the fairies, they do not look at the village but only at the car...
...But with the passing of time, readers of German became fewer and fewer, so that the influence an editor writing for them could hope to exert slowly shriveled into almost nothing...
...Tom Sawyer's turning fifty years of age this month reminds us all that a good friend—¦ or, if you prefer, a delightful and faithful friend— has been around for quite some time...
...For any country to thus try to internationalize foreign politics always creates a perilous situation, especially when evidence exists that behind the fagade imperial and territorial ambitions are only biding their time...
...The speakers for this convention include Mr...
...G. K. Chesterton is only the foremost to call attention to what he considers a new faculty for abdication among the classes who have the most right to feel dissatisfied with their lot, and from whom, in the past, movements for reform could be relied upon...
...During the past six years, the building trades have led the march of industrial development and have absorbed the surplus forces of labor, business, and manufacturing...
...Some of the delegates went so far as to suspect that here and there a freethinker was displaying an utterly ferocious dogmatism much more "priggish" than anything sponsored by the clergy...
...There is far too little delay in modern travel...
...To say that Socialism will not fight the Church, but will insist upon the separation of Church and state, can only mean, in a country like Austria, that national subsidies to religious educational institutions must end...
...WAYNE WHEELER'S remarks on the situation are almost as forceful as the words employed by Macbeth before the wood began to move...
...G. K. Chesterton gets at the matter with a reference to turnpikes...
...1 HE number of those who have served the cause of Catholic journalism is not so large but what the passing of a picturesque and staunchly honorable figure like Charles J. Jaegle deserves a mention that is at the same time a tribute...
...When one considers that this is only the second year of the federation's existence, the energy and purposiveness manifested is really surprising...
...AMERICAN Education Week is in progress at the time these observations are being written...
...Having been taunted with a red flag in the form of an editorial, the spirit that governs Princeton football threatens to put through a "cessation of athletic relations...
...a green stripe for a great forest and a grey stripe for a great town: it would be an excellent thing if somebody did fire after such fools with a blunderbuss, even if it had to be replaced by long-distance artillery...
...Friends of good journalism in America will remember Mr...
...Catt assures us, "the people's opposition is never sufficient to meet those with money," the fault must he at the doors of those among the people who have subscribed to unworthy standards never made for their benefit...
...Wheeler will discover that letters can be rewritten in the light of experience...
...That is genuine indignation for you and rings solid...
...There, we are told, was the crowd almost oppressively silent...
...Jaegle was one of a band of educated Germans who came to this country in the years immediately following the Civil War and entered into what was then an important and reasonably profitable venture—newspaper publication in the German language...
...Their comment upon affairs was often strikingly lucid and pertinent...
...Saskatchewan, 42...
...Two impressions remain behind—one comforting, and the other less so...
...Under her Duce, Italy's ambitions to be a great empire can hardly yet be termed baffled ones, but they are reaching out and impinging in many directions, and over more than one frontier, to the unsettlement of that atmosphere of good will which was never so desirable as now...
...Grandfather would lose himself in pleasant, incredible memories of what the world used to be hke in the days when—well, when lads like Tom had charge of things round about the Mississippi...
...The pursuit of money was not mentioned, and we can well imagine the frugal fathers of the republic opening their eyes very wide at the mere prospect that it might, in time, not only preempt all the others, but call for a social ideal hard to fit into the original Constitution...
...Nothing of the sort could be made to substantiate the tremendous effect achieved by the satirical journalism of the Harvard Lampoon...
...Delarue-Mandrus, a rather charming if not wholly edifying, French writer, to seat them firmly in good society by means of a volume entitled—we translate, of course—Make Yourselves Charming...
...Herr Bauer, the most brilliant of the Socialist leaders, sternly put down all praise of Sovietism and denounced the use of force with a vigor that must have reminded the old city of Linz of much tremendous rhetoric heard there in days long since gone by...
...One could stomach the allegation that all Pnncetonian prexies were old idiots, that the Princetonian faculty is infinitely worse than even its victims have declared it to be, or that the Princetonian system of study is wooden and worthless...
...These men were solidly educated, they were deeply religious, and they possessed a sound business sense...
...At all events, one feels certain that progress is being made, however slowly...
...N OW that the major excitements of the election have gone, the President's discovery of a Republican victory compares very well with the Anti-Saloon League's declaration of triumph...
...There is nothing so cosmic, so devastating, so attendant with evil consequences as a diatribe against a team...
...Lately an adequate German biography of the man has been published, and several excellent studies of his symphonic compositions have been written by competent critics...
...1 HE Canadian divorce figures for the year 1925 contain some very interesting facts, in considering which it should be remembered that in Quebec and Ontario divorces can only be obtained by act of Parliament, different regulations ruling in the other provinces...
...While in the company of Mr...
...Mile...
...But in practice, teachers are often made to realize the woeful unfamiliarity with actual classroom conditions displayed by many mothers...
...Are cosmetics legitimate after all...
...The statement cannot easily be dismissed as a rhetorical exaggeration, in view of the fact that, whenever this attitude is resented outside of Russia, the resentment is laid, not to a consciousness of any one country that its problems are its own, but to a capitalist reaction equally international...
...It reminds us of an Irish poet, none too familiar with the silks and purples of Tyre, who, upon a visit to the United States, could not restrain his wrath at what he considered a singularly conclusive proof of the capitalistic state in all its pomp and villainy—the fact that no carefully cemented and asphalted footpath ran along beside the great modern thoroughfares down which traffic buzzed and endangered the lives of poetic pedestrians...
...There are any number of motorists who go from end to end of England and never see an English village except when their car breaks down...
Vol. 5 • November 1926 • No. 2
