Week by Week
November 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 61 WEEK BY WEEK PRESIDENT COOLIDGE'S Armistice Day ad-*• dress at Kansas City once more conceded to domestic partisan opinion the argument concerning the...
...Speaking to it in a tone of apology for what has been done on behalf of world organization was equivalent to commending its attitude of indifference...
...If this were merely a declaration of opinion that "self-determination" is in danger, one might view it calmly for the reason that the United States has never seriously threatened the rights of the Nicaraguan people...
...lHE effort to improve a little the minor arts related to the spirit, for instance, is often shattered by the 64 THE COMMONWEAL November 24, 1926 difficulty of transmuting theory into practice...
...The appeal is rather to the zest for a certain program of social revolution, and to the feeling of race solidarity...
...There is just one thing left for us to do—leave them...
...We here believe that the modifications under which it was proposed that the United States should join this tribunal are of such a character as to render the tasks of international adjudgment harmless and ineffective —and that a court clearly designed to serve as the instrument of the League of Nations cannot well be diverted to other uses without loss...
...What if Princetonian lawyers should refuse to argue cases where the opposing counsel are Cantabridgians...
...The reformer is free to make what he can out of this statement...
...The President obviously resigned any ambition he may have entertained to lead the groups which are attempting to formulate an advanced program for the conduct of foreign affairs...
...Beginning with the knowledge that many young women in the neighborhood, some of them parentless and others very poor, were being deprived of all opportunity for education, she founded a school in which the teaching of cultural subjects was combined with training in practical trades...
...It matters little that the contemporary picture of American-European relations is queer and shadowy—a picture having, on the one hand, an incomparably wealthy people intent upon swelling its income, not only through foreign financial investments and commerce, but also through collecting war-time subsidies by means of heavy taxation...
...INCE football tickets are surely the main objective of collegiate training, what if Princeton and Harvard graduates should extend the zone of hate and bring the nation to a standstill...
...Carl Avery Werner, editor of the Tobacco Leaf, and which have reached this office by the circuitous route of the Paris Figaro, the habit of deferring resolutions has become our most deeply-rooted national vice...
...That various warnings of danger have been received Is a likely conclusion from such remarks as those addressed by Professor Gilbert Murray to a New York audience...
...The retreat of the British government from the scene really leaves Washington no choice: it must assume the burden of talking or coercing Mexico into a decent respect for alien property rights...
...But still it needs to be borne in mind that Mr...
...Historical and literary societies have already done wonders and by the public interest they have aroused, have prevented many an aesthetic outrage...
...The making of beautiful things depends upon conditions only partly determinable in advance—upon the spirit of the artisan, the opportunity for profit without commercialization, and the natural gifts of the promoter of the enterprise...
...Slovak separatism would add just one more barrier to the necessary economic and social amity of the continent...
...Statistics are always fascinating, and even the habit of thinking in billions which is one of the aftermaths of the war, does not deprive the figures quoted by Mr...
...Practically the only party which supports the present Mexican policy is the Crom, and this, according to accumulated recent evidence, is disintegrating rapidly...
...That it will sooner or later bring on an upheaval in the political domain, quite as destructive as that already witnessed in the realm of spiritual matters, is a fact that must be accepted and prepared for...
...On the whole, a more probable suggestion is the deeply psychoanalytical one that Harvard men, being so long November 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 63 repressed in New England isolation, had developed a New York complex and envied the greater freedom of wealthy Princetonians to speed in mighty cars along the lovely swamps of Jersey toward picturesque Broadway...
...But there also is not the same excuse, as in overcrowded Europe, for their demolition that newer buildings may rise in their place...
...The real opportunity for trouble lies precisely where Obregon, in a characteristic address, said it does—in the possibility that the stand of the United States on petroleum and land legislation may be confused with the religious struggle...
...From the Slovak point of view, the new republic was only an experiment...
...There are difficulties in the way in this country, not unconnected with the change in the racial population of our older towns, which hinder a strong feeling of local pride in ancient buildings...
...Under the circumstances, one really cannot help applauding the remarkable deftness with which the President set forth the only two points of contact with Europe he recognizes: friendly participation in the World Court, which he patently frowns upon...
...There a Sister of Mercy—long since well known as the editor of a monthly magazine—has founded a little society truly mediaeval in spirit, even though modern in aims and atmosphere...
...Hence the slanderous nature of the Lampoon references...
...Success will come through associated scholarship and insight...
...IF, as the President remarked, the national credit is a most important bulwark in the system of national defense, can we afford to endanger the increasingly large sums now invested in foreign industry and commerce...
...Similarly, the development of United States wealth is, to a large extent, dependent upon the growth and maintenance of world commerce...
...But little by little, the artistic instincts of some of the young women were quickened...
...If the voters do not favor any such action, he seems to have thought, why should the government uselessly antagonize them...
...This document has been declared invalid by President Masaryk on the ground that it was signed on a legal holiday, and therefore can claim no legal standing...
...We are not inclined to think the difficulties involved will be stupendous...
...1 HAT these are intimately connected with revolutionary movements of an ambitious character, becomes clear once again from the negotiations opened between the "Revolutionary Junta" of Nicaragua and President Calles...
...Of these last, an Englishman's heart and mind are always conscious...
...If one could find, beyond the architectural monuments it erected, the virile tempo of mediaeval society, one might profitably try to work in the same spirit and with similar artistic ideals...
...It was, he thought, stereotyped copying throughout...
...But there is no doubt that the present condition of the petroleum industry is a matter which proves that the Monroe Doctrine is a source of trouble as well as of prestige...
...Having swept the unsolicited services of the United States from the political scene, having checked the aspirations of expansion and dominion of that imperialistic country, and having achieved the Central American Union, there will be concerted a true and lasting alliance between Mexico and the new nation of the Isthmus," says the official document...
...One is that the entire editorial staff of the Harvard Lampoon was composed of Princeton men in disguise— agents provocateurs of embattled Tigerdom...
...and today the Magnificat Press supplies to many a variety of appropriate art material for use at Christmas time and numerous other occasions...
...By common consent, the declaration that the Senate would not be asked to reconsider the reservations upon which entry into the World Court is made contingent, was premature—excepting in so far as it satisfied those who oppose every kind of affiliation between the United States and Europe...
...they began to try making graceful pictures which they adorned or colored by hand...
...This school was made self-supporting in the sense that the girls admitted met the current expenses of the establishment by work done during part of their leisure time...
...Were all the hard things that have been said about nicotine justified in medical fact, the citizenry of the Union, male and female, would by now be wards of the state, and only psychopaths would be free to make any decision at all...
...A printing press, which reproduced religious cards and pamphlets, was the chief source of revenue...
...And, of course, that indifference was never so illogical or dangerous as now...
...It remains to be seen whether this and all similar experiments will bring about a situation as desirable, not to speak of more desirable, than the old imperial government assumed was normal...
...Little can be done against a hang-over from war-time indignation and disillusionment...
...Briefly, the annual consumption of cigarettes in the United States, which in i860 only totaled the paltry figure of 1,751,495, had risen within the next decade to 13,881,417...
...When one observes that the answer of a Slovak peasant to Masaryk's inquiry about the government was, "All Czechs should be packed into a cannon, and then it should be fired," and that this bitter response has been made a kind of slogan by Slovak separatists, it is easy to see that harmony does not reign as preeminently as it might...
...Gentlemen, at all costs, let's be serious...
...The chief point brought out, however, is not so much the quantity of interest revealed (the lists might easily be added to) as the diversity of subjects upon which that interest is expended...
...Coolidge, in describing the share our natural resources and agriculture take in the military defense of the nation, did not wish to imply that prosperity, too, may rely upon purely local sources...
...It need scarcely be observed, however, that the "danger" is by no means so great in Europe proper, as it is in various districts attached to Europe by imperial tenure...
...One can, at least in a dozen universities, study Old English under men really fond of the human background against which their rather parched and dry specialty reposes...
...That would not be imitation, but creative energy using the priceless and inexhaustible auxiliaries of tradition...
...But it cannot be done alone, or without effort...
...But perhaps the most practical measure would be some form of declaration, as used in France, that certain buildings are "national monuments" and not to be lightly touched by those whose attitude was summed up once and for all in Lewis Carroll's distich: " 'If this could all be cleared away,' they said, 'it would be grand.' " uOME idea of the interest now being taken in mediaeval arts and social practices throughout what may be termed the scholarly United States, is to be gained from a compilation recently made by Professor Wil-lard, of the University of Colorado, and published as "Bulletin 4" by the Mediaeval Academy of America...
...r EW will disagree with the Reverend Edward Russell, rector of Saint Anne's Episcopal Church in New York, in his suggestion that love and respect for the national story should take the form of preserving memorials which are associated with it...
...lN the face of official silence, it is impossible to assert definitely that the latest note sent to the Mexican government by the State Department is more than usually frank and emphatic...
...November 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 61 WEEK BY WEEK PRESIDENT COOLIDGE'S Armistice Day ad-*• dress at Kansas City once more conceded to domestic partisan opinion the argument concerning the nation's attitude toward world affairs...
...Many mediaevalists are, of course, frankly little more than specialists in some branch of linguistic study...
...It is therefore a pleasure to draw attention to a little experiment in the craft of printing now being made in the small and not too sophisticated city of Manchester, New Hampshire...
...and rigid debt collection, so agreeable to his soul...
...Coolidge is indebted to an important section of the electorate for his inspiration...
...That hope is reinforced, a little cynically, by the attention given to war indebtedness—a matter emphasized, of course, by the inevitable appeal to "righteousness," against which no amount of realism can prevail...
...The foundation of the Mediaeval Academy was therefore timely and healthful because it can coordinate and develop still further the spiritual and creative directions tangent to studies in pre-modern European cultural matters...
...JVlANY theories have been advanced for the dark and sinister doings in Cambridge and Princeton...
...JNEWS of a pact between various Asiatic countries under the leadership of Russia has naturally been received with great interest...
...Could this standpoint be transformed into one of friendly cooperation with Geneva, and inferentially of tolerance for parliaments, a grave danger would be averted...
...A definite communistic virus, derived from European sources, has poisoned the whole Mexican and Central-American consciousness...
...and by 1880, to 408,-708,366...
...Because they teach the languages of the ninth and tenth centuries, it is assumed that they are also curious about the life of the ninth and tenth centuries...
...Meanwhile, it is important that all American citizens should recognize the delicate and important problems with which their representatives are dealing...
...Small wonder that the "rest of the world" enjoyed the address thoroughly...
...In any case, his argument has to face the danger that the figures quoted, by proving too much, prove nothing at all...
...In due time, the persecution will end...
...But if the principle of self-determination was right, it ought honestly to be carried through regardless of the details agreed upon immediately after the war...
...One of the actions of Monsignor Hlinka, the Slovak leader, while on a visit to this country, was to secure the original copy of the Pittsburgh Agreement on the basis of which the new republic was established...
...The consequences of such a step would, of course, be very great...
...Within the next thirty or forty years, figures soar to a height where only the processes of arithmetical progression can follow them, and not to be tiresome, the series may fittingly be rounded off by a rough calculation of this year's manufacture which, with ten weeks still to go, is put, always by the same authority, at 75,000,000,000...
...The future development of the place depends, of course, upon its being able to interest a larger public...
...In view of present conditions, it seems that the most important result of such organization would be the alliance of Turkey and Sovietism...
...But the opinion, the electorate, Mr...
...There may be a grain of truth in the cynic's remark that providence, in permitting America and tobacco to be discovered at the same time, knew what it was about...
...He had much to say in our praise, but expressed himself surprised at the uniformity and meaninglessness of American Catholic ecclesiastical architecture...
...It is true that an architect who merely attempts to copy Sainte-Clothilde or the spires of Cologne—often under circumstances which preclude the expenditure of money— is usually only a rather unfortunately ambitious contractor...
...Above all, what dire consequences if both camps should awaken some sunny morning to find the lost trappings of their humor hanging outside their tents...
...1 HE problem of racial minorities in southeastern Europe, brought into prominence once more by a protest against certain happenings in Roumania, is most crucial in the Czecho-Slovakian republic...
...It should be obvious that the yield and even the principle involved can be safe only if the peace of the world is not disturbed and if the danger of catastrophe is averted...
...and having, on the other hand, a series of weakened and discouraged nations who are expected, for the sake of righteousness, to surrender their savings with a smile during more than a generation...
...If we may rely upon figures lately published by Mr...
...He repeated a favorite German thesis that the continued efficacy of the League depends upon the maintenance of "parliamentary governments"—that an association of European nations will be successful only if the members are similar in basic political character...
...It is encouraging to note that this assumption is now more amply justified than it was ten or twenty seasons ago...
...The trouble with this point of view is not so much that it endangers our national support of the specific mechanism known as the World Court...
...We have had eight years of evolution and nothing has come from them...
...The distinguished English liberal felt that Russia 62 THE COMMONWEAL November 24, 1926 should be admitted into the League of Nations...
...It is simply not interested in the possibility of any international cooperation...
...W E should like to connect this observation with the remarks made by Monsignor Seipel to a Viennese audience after his return from the United States...
...Werner of a breath-taking quality all their own...
...The very fact that our churches are so frequently "reprints" is widely used as a plea against subservience to the mediaeval pattern...
...At the very moment of the address, another enormous loan was being floated here upon German security...
...One hopes that Mr...
...We are informed by a reliable authority that the Monsignor's parting words to his American friends were: "They can decapitate me, but they cannot make me give up the fight for Slovak rights...
...Doubtless it would be easy to spread the belief that our government, acting purely in the realm of economic and legal matters, was rushing to the aid of the Catholic Church in Mexico...
...Then—perish the thought!—this fair country of ours might explode with the thunders of Gargantuan laughter...
...Because Russia is essentially anti-parliamentarian, it is also hostile to Geneva...
...But to those who do possess a strong sense of the past, such destruction comes home as a poignant and irrevocable loss...
...and the hour will be hastened by prayer and charity...
...What if financial houses, dominated by sinister Harvard interests, should refuse participation in syndicates originated by Princetonian houses...
...LIGHTING and smoking a cigarette has been defined, by one of that troublesome class, the "ethico-medical authorities," as "an alternative to taking a decision...
...Now we fancy that Monsignor Seipel would be a little astonished if he knew how many people here agree with him...
...Both are directly affected by the political situation in the Near East, and might combine to shut the gate of Constantinople against the West...
...Even if we accept this as the fundamental reason why several thousand young men of voting age find it impossible to jostle a football with several thousand similar young men a few miles away (and in accepting, we demand a new suffrage law extending the vote to grammar-grade children) there remains the horrible suspicion that the future of our republican institutions is at stake...
...Coolidge bowed to at Kansas City, is opposed to the very concept of a new post-war world...
...To give a single instance, it will be remembered with what a light heart the destruction of the Smith mansion on the Hudson, where no less a turning point of history than the Arnold-Andre treason took place, was proposed a few months ago...
...To forestall that, it is quite essential that Catholics themselves should refrain from clouding the issue with appeals for intervention or repudiation...
...Everyone does not possess the "genius loci" which is stirred by contact with the actual buildings in which the drama of the nation was played out...
...Several hundred professional scholars are enumerated, and a long list of doctoral dissertations and other published works of recent date is appended...
Vol. 5 • November 1926 • No. 3
