Week by Week
THE COMMONWEAL Published weekly and copyrighted 1925, in the United States by the Calvert Publishing Corporation, 25 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City, N. Y. MICHAEL W:t.LIAMS, Editor Assistant...
...and that the motto, "religion must remain isolated from poli...
...But that an American attorney--who, at that, is promi- nent in religious activitiestcould so far forget him-self as to compare Mr...
...We assume that the retroactive nationalism such words imply it not held by very many persons...
...The atmosphere of the court-room, in which individual wealth and prominence were pitted against community greatness and dignity, was singularly de- void of what can only be called legal decorum...
...For in-difference would not only seem to condone actions which are beyond the pale of civilized society, but would also encourage those forces which are every-where attempting to root out tolerance and to curtail liberty of conscience...
...The drive is to open on January 23, and it is hoped that the support of I,ooo,ooo men and women will have been pledged by February I2...
...If the big battle of the "blue laws" must be fought, Irvington is content that some other battlefield shall be chosen for the conflict...
...A poorly reported and badly mis- understood Rota decision inspired reams of print, af- fording even a leading dramatic critic opportunity for a caustic joke in the middle of his daily column...
...They called a meeting of parents and let the children dance before them as a jury...
...The magnitude of the suffering, the omnipresent need, and the opportunity to salvage human bodies and souls is almost unrivaled in modern history...
...To some extent, this conviction is the out-growth of much recent experience--the Holy Father's personal observation during the years when he served as nuncio in Warsaw...
...All we suggest is that the portent of two statesmen, of views so opposed that they are almost one another's antithesis, who make no secret of their differences, and who both happen to be loyal and practical Catholics, is so complete an answer to the charge that some secret or underground Catholic understanding is at work in the political field, that anyone who asserts it in future will tag himself as intellectually negligible...
...Doheny and ex-Senator Fall were involved...
...But granted his moral rectitude, and granted that ex-Senator Fall was only a blundering go-between, the nation cannot forego combing the evidence gathered by Congress until it finds out just who was responsible and precisely what was done...
...Those suffering from this disease, "a form of conceit rapidly developing into insanity, if not checked," are not all isolated within the confines of the city of Irvington...
...If so, international opinion is to be killed before it is born...
...We are inclined to think it should, at least on two points: first, that Mr...
...the data gathered by the foun- dations whose especial purpose has been the redemp- tion of Catholicism in Russia...
...If it were really of the opinion that Catholicism in Mexico had no right to live, it would easily have found occasion to say so in a hundred forms of innuendo...
...Meanwhile the Papacy, familiar with the situation which has been created by the collapse of Russia and the constant fighting in Asia Minor, has arrived at the conviction that relief is a duty incumbent upon the Church as a whole...
...All talk of "mysterious negotiations" at this time is therefore not merely improbable in itself, but contrary to the whole historic trend of recent Vatican action...
...Pierre, Martinique, and having shared in the total destruction of that city dur- ing the eruption of Mt...
...There are, in Alexandria alone, we are told, 380 houses whose inmates are largely hapless girls who have been lured to Egypt from central Europe by fake advertisements offering employment as governesses or domestic servants at high salaries, which are all the more easily credited as it is notorious that Egypt, during the war, was a centre of profiteering...
...It traces them so unerringly to their real source in atavistic religious prejudice, that The Commonweal now refers to it, not to attempt to add anything, but to enforce a major conclusion which its author, perhaps by an oversight, perhaps through an exaggerated confidence in the abil- ity of his readers to draw it for themselves, left un-stressed...
...Once in Alexandria or Cairo, the mask which the procurer or procuress has worn, is thrown off, and imprisonment and starvation are added to persuasion...
...MILITARYmovements on the Franco-Italian fron- tier, which have been responsible during the past two weeks for press headlines recalling the days of August, 1914, have apparently been reduced to their proper proportions as "precautionary measures undertaken quite as much for the benefit of one government as of the other...
...The New York World professed to believe that "Mexicans themselves" were the proper ones to decide what is right and wrong in the matter...
...During re-cent years, news despatches, one after another, have revealed massacre and pillage, social chaos, hunger and dire spiritual need...
...TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE" T HE pastoral letter of the Catholic bishops of the United States on the subject of religious conditions in Mexico came as the only possible satisfactory response to a great demand...
...Many of the girls rescued through the coSperation of foreign consuls and the police, the Sisters assert, bear the marks of this ill- usage on their bodies...
...On the other hand, "as a defender of the rights of the state against a highly centralized Washington oligarchy, Governor Smith is in line with southern sentiment," and his position on the right of each state to handle its liquor problem in its own in-terests needs no restatement...
...Upon the prohibition is-sue, his attitude is so uncompromising that "if the prohibitionists in the Democratic party really want the Volstead Act enforced, they should rally around Senator Walsh...
...N~'OTHING that we could say here would describe adequately the agony of the Near East...
...But the bishops are careful to insist that the inevitable opposite of indifference is not armed force...
...One would have been quite ready to forgive Mr...
...Charles Vickrey and his associates, who succeeded in keeping alive the enthusiasm of their fellow-citizens, and in rescuing thousands of Armenian and other oriental Christians from lingering death...
...The particular form of selfishness manifested by the ministers who could not stand the sight of theatres filled, and churches more than half empty, was that originating from the germ of coercive morality that a writer in the New York Times declares he has isolated, the chief char- acteristic of which is a settled belief that the victim is born to rule the moral world--and by force...
...This is as it should be, and only mischief- makers will care to go behind an explanation that has all the air of being accepted in advance...
...The pastoral letter is an admirable and dignified statement...
...Briefly summarized, his argument is that in two outstanding political figures, Governor Smith and Senator Walsh, of Montana, the Democratic party finds the conflict now going on within its own ranks so fully reflected and personified that only one or the other of the two could be the logical choice, if either wing gained a complete victory...
...Walter Duranty, of the New York Times, among them--also report that opinion whispers of "mysterious negotia- tions" in which "representatives of the Vatican" have figured...
...For the rest, God will bring His will to pass in His own good time and in His own good way...
...Probably Mr...
...To take a little share in this most noble of cam- paigns, will seem a worthy business to everyone...
...second, that ex-Senator Fall has borne the brunt of a national reproach which should have been divided among a number of prominent and, for the most part, still undetected men...
...The vigor- ous old phrase describes fairly well what public opin- ion has felt all along concerning the transactions in which Mr...
...It is all very, very obscure and Machia- vellian...
...They had the opinion of experts that they were sowing the seeds of immorality, and yet they had watched the children and had not discerned even a germ of the indecorous...
...ONE of the least creditable incidents in the history of the League of Nations, was the failure, during its early sessions, to arrive at some method of interna- tional control to help suppress the iniquitous commerce in women and girls, only too familiar as the white slave traffic...
...The parents not only so far forgot themselves as to applaud the immodest spectacle, but went to the length of criticizing the reformers and demanding that the classes be continued...
...For here "the cup of cold water" is a literal necessity, and the fingers of mercy are clasped and intertwined with the hands of little children...
...SENATOR WALSH is known as a strong advocate of centralized government...
...and the good done by the corps of relief-workers who have already been active in the field...
...We may note that no phase of recent papal diplomacy has been more flagrantly misunderstood than the story of relations between Lithuania and Rome...
...Some day, somewhere, men of good will from all parts of the country will gather to aid the cause of true Sunday observance, to minimize as much as possible the necessity for work on the first day of the week, and to demand the aboli- tion of asinine restrictions on a day of gladness...
...We have grown callous to reports about remote human catastrophe...
...But the case against Calles is as firm and complete as the case against any recent...
...tics," has not been urged more strongly anywhere than in Riga...
...It is not a tirade...
...The facts in the case are that the Holy See was almost the first power to recognize the independence of Lithuania...
...New Jersey is not the only state whose statutes are cluttered with hoary blue laws...
...It merely sets forth certain accepted principles of American governmental practice, going on then to show how the present Mexican r~gime has violated every one of these, with results to which the people of the United States cannot be indifferent...
...Every-body seemed set on contributing to as mammoth an amalgamation of bathos, rhetoric, personal abuse, and horse-play as has ever been presented for public con-templation...
...This was abun-dantly proved by their actions when their opponents were willing to declare a truce...
...To the worldly and wide-awake men sitting at Geneva, it must have been obvious that, even if the war were not re-sponsible for white slavery, the conditions which it had brought upon Europe might be trusted to aggravate its worst features...
...In a certain remote and reverent sense, every innocent human tragedy can be likened to the great redemptive example of Calvary...
...But of course he did not...
...By comparison, the authoritative Catholic pronouncement on an issue of the gravest importance to every Ameri- can citizen, regardless of his religious affiliations, was handled with padded gloves where it was dealt with at all...
...Doheny's arraignment at the bar of the United States with Christ's appearance be- fore the high priests, is an astonishing occurrence...
...It reached an unpardon-able level in the use of the gift for analogy possessed by Mr...
...If the Teapot Dome epoch in United States history be neither edifying nor rational, it may have, at least, the value of being eminently instructive...
...It is an essential part of that vast and in- spiring program for universal reconstruction in the spirit of charity which the Church has preached since the fatal days of I9I 4. The offensive is to be con-ducted without helmeted soldiers or giant engines of force, but with all the bread and the solace, all the courtesy and medicinal aid, that Christendom can mus- ter...
...MANY things might be said regarding the conduct of the case...
...Is no citizen to consider and to pass judgment upon events that lie beyond the boundaries fixed by his government...
...It was as if the court itself had been fated to keep up the low level upon which the "oil scandals" have consistently moved...
...And so the summons to Catholics in the United States, that they organize to support the new Catholic Near East Welfare Association, is sure to meet with a hearty response...
...The school of- ficials were disturbed---and rightly so...
...But if we must express the real reason why the pastoral lettermand, indeed, the whole Mexican con-troversy--has been passed over in silence, here it is" the press of America has not been brave enough to take a stand...
...The American reader can guess what these are now if he considers what they have been in history...
...It is when poverty, bereavement, and general upheaval have jolted the fabric of the family loose, that the predatory elements which prowl around it at all times and under all conditions, realize their opportunity and redouble their activity...
...Pel~e in May, I9o2...
...It feels, however, that the issue was not raised when ministers and movie managers started to squabble, and that no settlement of a ques- tion of large and far-reaching importance was to be expected from the airing of a local disagreement...
...Too much praise cannot be given the work of Mr...
...Some writers--Mr...
...Those on the French side of the fence who feel aggrieved at recent manifestations might well let their memories go back to days, not very many years ago, when, under the very eyes of an Italy still officially neutral, French forts were dismantled of their ordnance for the benefit of the western front...
...The question of Sunday observance should not be obscured by the selfishness of two parties to a purely local squabble...
...Doheny (who lives on the Pacific coast) swallowed ever~ drop of the scare and added a nightmare or two of his own concoction...
...And certainly what they have said will be listened to as a careful and convincing statement of as great a case as has ever been tried at the bar of public opinion...
...Going into the mat- ter a little more deeply, it is not easy to see how any United States official, normally endowed with intelli- gence, could have got so tangled up in a nebulous and amorphous "war scare" that he proceeded to scatter the naval resources of the country prodigally and to avail himself of capitalistic helpers who demanded con- siderably more than a dollar a year...
...and the thoughts we enter-tained during the Boer War, the struggle for Irish independence, and the great war were not only un-important, but actually had no right to exist...
...responds to that carried on by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in this country...
...It is instructive to note, however, to what a meagre extent the offidal American press has dealt with the pastoral letter, and to see how cautious its comment has usually been...
...A jury has now brought in a verdict for acquittal from the charge of "conspiracy to defraud...
...Of all conceivable international collisions that imagination can conjure up, a Franco-Italian one would seem to be just now the most insane and suicidal...
...but the present accession of M. Smetona to the presiden- tial office, involving as it does a quasi-military dictatorship, is bound up with general European political problems of the greatest importance...
...Their fellow.citizens, inhibited from knowing the real situation by a lack of information no less than by the fact that they are liberally deluged with propaganda supplied by indecorous Mexican officials in this country, obviously required an authoritative statement of the Catholic position on the matter...
...AN Associated Press despatch from Detroit conveys the distressing news that Dearborn, Michigan, re-fuses to declare itself on the side of the angels...
...They feel like invoking a plague on both ministery and theatre- owners who precipitated much unwelcome publicity, and are delighted that the passage of arms should have ended in a draw...
...Catholics in this country, having listened to much talk concerning the bitter Calles persecution, needed information and counsel...
...Immediately a protest was filed by the Reverend Frederick C. Krumpling, an evangelical minister, and other leaders of light, that the teaching of these steps of an age which knew not the Bunny Hug and would have been impervious to the charms of the Charleston, tended toward immorality among the pupils and should be banned from the schools...
...Will public opinion agree...
...WITH a sigh of relief, Irvington, New Jersey, settles back with satisfaction that its suburban Sabbath is not to be signalized by recurrent strife...
...THERE is a great deal to be said for the attitude assumed by the majority of the inhabitants of the little New Jersey city...
...Doheny any actual guilt committed during moments of weakness if he had shown enough greatness to arise at that moment and protest...
...That a preliminary skirmish should have been staged within its city limits is not a matter of pride to the citizens of a community that regards the contiguous Newark as a nest of iniquity...
...Legal technicalities of the most obstruc- tive kind were freely resorted to...
...And so the article dealing with Kosciuszko, contributed by Joseph Koncevicius to this issue of The Commonweal, has a very particular timely interest...
...That is--apparently it should make no difference to thought- ful people resident in the United States that in a coun- try immediately bordering upon their own land, a country to some extent intimately affiliated with the conduct of their government under an international code of long standing, the inalienable rights held sacred by all civilized law are long since abrogated...
...But at the present moment, the Holy Father himself is preaching a new crusade...
...It is apparent, at all events, that the League of Nations, which once took so large a part in the affairs of Lithuania when it ceded Vilna to Poland, cannot help viewing the present situa- tion with grave concern...
...There was a quan- tity of fury and hot air which might have come better from the lips of Dogberry...
...The Sisters of Notre Dame de la D~livrande, who are now asking for funds to build a third home and to continue their work of res- cue, are, it is interesting to recall, one of the few relig- ious orders founded in the Americas, the mother-house having for years been at St...
...In short, the prosecution was really trying neither the entire case, nor arraigning all the offenders...
...The Reverend Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., vice-president of Georgetown Univer- sity, has been placed in charge of the work, which will begin with a nation-wide drive for paying mem- berships...
...THE extent to which the evil has grown in recent years, especially in that Near East which has been assigned by the highest ecclesiastical authority in New York as a special goal for Christian charity this Christ- mas, may be gathered from the statement issued by Soeur Laure, of the order of Notre Dame de la D~livrande, who has arrived from Alexandria, Egypt, in order to collect funds for a work which closely cor...
...The situa-tion which the recent Garibaldi disclosures evidenced is enigmatic, not to say Gilbertian...
...Doheny would probably have made a heavy loan to his old friend regardless of whether or not there was a deal pending in Washington...
...FRANCIS BACON declared that "it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs...
...After all, the matter to the Irvington theatre managers who invoked the gen- eral blue laws of the state of New Jersey, was one of profits rather than one of principle...
...It is not an argument...
...The best thing, under the circumstances, is a resolute determination never to let Irredentism be- get irritation...
...Some time ago, the school officials of the Michigan town, following a suggestion of Henry Ford, authorized the use of the school buildings for the teaching of old-fashioned dances, such as the quadrille and the polka...
...The object now is neither the conquest of sacred places nor the safe-guarding of civilization: the goal is peace, and the practice of the noblest works of mercy...
...Their object is rather to accomplish a duty which, in the words of the letter, "will be done when, by telling the story, defending the truth and em- phasizing the principles, we sound a warning to Chris- tian civilization that its foundations are again being attacked and undermined...
...This strange situation suggests certain practical possibilities to the writer of this letter, which we can only hope are justified, and we do not propose, in this place, to examine them...
...Of course the situation is, and has always been, deeply colored by the claims and activi- ties of Poland...
...Or is a new "declaration of independence" in process of being writ- ten...
...THE COMMONWEAL Published weekly and copyrighted 1925, in the United States by the Calvert Publishing Corporation, 25 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City, N. Y. MICHAEL W:t.LIAMS, Editor Assistant Editors THOMAS WALSH HELEN WALKER HENRY LONGAN STUART GEORGE N. SHUSTER JOHN F, McCoRMIClL Business Manager Editorial Council T. L~,waasoN RIc~s JAMEs J. W~a.SH CARL~ON J. H. HAYES R. DANA SKINNER BrRraa~ C. A. W:NDLe Subscription Rates Yearly: $10.00 Single Copies: $0.20 WEEK BY WEEK O RDINARILY a coup d'&at in Lithuania might be considered merely a domestic disturbance...
...That, in a way, characterizes them quite as well as the verdict itself...
...that the diocese of Vilna was made dependent directly upon Rome and not incorporated under the Polish hierarchy...
...FOR some years, Near East relief has been one of the foremost concerns of American charity...
...It was not as though an old grievance were being aired in a tribunal whose competence to legislate for it were a matter of opinion...
...Frank J. Hogan...
...THE long communication from A Southern Demo-crat, entitled An Analysis of the South's Attitude, published recently by the New York Times, examines the objections to Governor Smith of New York as a presidential candidate authoritatively...
...In tracing the career of a great American patriot, it also reveals much of the Lithuanian past--a past which seems destined to affect considerably the European present and the world future...
...Some observers profess to see Polish, German, and even British in- fluence involved in the intrigue...
...Judging from what they revealed, it would not now be clear, should any sudden incursion into Mentone and Nice occur from the Italian side, whether the invaders were Fascists anxious to force the hand of their Duce, or anti-Fascists ready, at the probable cost of their lives, to create an international situation which might lead to his downfall...
...To a large extent these misconceptions are due to the violent nationalistic sentiment fanned by the cession of Vilna...
...Yet even comfortable and complacent Irvington acknowledges that the issue of Sunday observance has been raised, and that some day, some time, in some place, it will have to be settled sanely and sensibly...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 8
